“He’s fine,” Reni cut him off.
“Just to be sure.” Sato protested. “It’s another month of worry otherwise.”
“Sure I will. No problem.” Tanner offered a smile to both in hopes of easing the apparent tension. “Mind if I grab my wife and kids?”
* * *
Em was livid. She was livid in her cold, quiet way, arms crossed in the corner of Reni’s hut as Tanner examined the scars on a boy’s waist. “It’s only a month,” he said, then told the boy “You’re all right.” The child smiled shyly and ran out.
“This is our vacation? OUR vacation?”
“Look around Emily, it’s paradise! The boys love it. And these people need a physician.” If he expected her to be impressed by his charity, she wasn’t. These weren’t the early years. “We have a place to stay, food…”
“These people are strangers to us. And where are the boys, anyway?” she snapped. “Goat farm,” he replied, and she stormed out, muttered curses in her wake.
The first couple weeks were like that. She stayed in their hut, clean and well furnished, framed by exotic scenery, and loathed every second. Tanner kept Ray and Kelly at his side as he helped Reni review medical records and inspect what equipment Pati had; at night he took them to the beach, to the wall. If Em could’ve gotten back over it on her own, she’d have been staying on the boat already, he thought.
A communal area at the end of “Main Street” was where the islanders prepared and ate meals. Every day the village ate together: fresh fruit, roasted goat’s meat and milk. Tanner would bring Em’s meal back to the hut. “They ask about you,” he said softly. She took the food and turned away.
It was during breakfast one day that Amaya, one of the young food preparers, sat across from Tanner. He asked, “Do you ever wonder about the outside?”
He meant to lead into a question about the purpose of the wall, but Amaya shook her head happily. “I can’t think of a place better than here.” She added with a wry smile, “You seem very happy.” A light sunburn on Tanner’s arms had just begun to turn brown, and he admired her bronzed figure. Below her glistening neck a modest top was laced over her breasts. He became acutely aware of their rise and fall, found himself picturing them bare in the sun, and put down his plate. “I’m done.”
“Good, isn’t it?” Amaya took the ceramic dish, letting Ray and Kelly stack theirs atop it. “You should go out to the wall soon,” she told Tanner, “it’s pretty when the sun sits on it.”
* * *
She’s sixteen, seventeen at most, Tanner told himself. He’d joined Sato at the building site where Bama’d broken his leg. They were erecting a large storehouse. Amidst the construction, fruits wrapped in leaves were already being packed into the shade. Sato said something, and Tanner didn’t hear. “What?”
“Your wife, she isn’t sick?” The mayor repeated.
“No, just unhappy. It’s got nothing to do with Pati.” He looked again at his dark forearms. Em’s skin was still a pale cream. She was like a ghost in this place. “Bring her out tonight. Eat with us. The girls will be insulted otherwise.” Sato clapped Tanner hard on the back. “Your wife does as you say, yes?”
Tanner was taking an inventory of medicinal herbs when Reni lugged a bundle of freshly-pulled roots into the hut. “What are those?” Depositing the gray bundle on the exam table, Reni coughed, “Bitter root from the other side of the island. I need to cut it right now. Help me?”
Tanner nodded and Reni handed him a squat machete. “I think our doctor will be here in a week.”
“That’s a week early,” Tanner grunted. The root was tough. Wary of the heavy blade in his hand, he chopped uncertainly.
Reni buried a machete of his own in the table. “Come on, Tanner!” He laughed. “Too long away from surgery, old man.”
“We don’t operate with machetes in my neck of the woods,” Tanner cracked. “So I guess we’ll be able to leave early, then? To be honest, it wouldn’t be the worst thing. Em’s spoken barely a word.”
“She’s lovely,” Reni said. “Sometimes the island steals its beauty from its children.”
* * *
The boys coaxed Em out of the hut. The news of their planned early departure helped. She walked with Tanner to the evening feast at the end of Main Street. Warm smiles greeted them and Sato embraced the couple as one. “We wish to thank you both for blessing Pati.” The mayor grinned at Ray and Kelly. “Are you hungry?” “Starved!” Kelly yelped.
They all followed Sato around the bonfire to sit on the sand. “You know, I wish we still had that extra week,” Em said, lying.
“Mmm?” Sato’s face registered confusion as he passed them steaming plates.
“When your doctor arrives next week,” Em explained. Sato shook his head, and Tanner’s spirits sank.
“Two weeks,” the mayor said through a mouthful of goat meat. He shot a glare across the flames to where Reni sat.
Em excused herself abruptly. Tanner followed her out of the bonfire’s light. “Goddamn!” She snapped. “We’ll still have six more weeks on the water—” Tanner began. “No, we won’t! We won’t have anything! Christ Tanner, you say you worked and worked to make this vacation happen and fix things, and here we are – me and the children taking a backseat to another self-absorbed crusade! Fuck you!”
She left him there. He shuffled into the trees.
“The shouting was loud,” came a soft voice. Amaya was at his back. “Everyone heard?” He asked. Her feet shifted in the foliage. “You’ll leave Pati now.”
“No,” he answered. What would be the point? Nothing awaited him out there except the papers underneath their bunk on the boat, the papers he’d refused to sign until she gave him this last chance.
Amaya walked past him, deeper into the trees. He thought about returning to the fire, then went after her.
She led him to the beach and pointed to the full moon sitting atop the wall. It painted the sand bone-white beneath her feet; she seemed a mere shadow but for the way the light traced the muscular tone of her arms and legs. Tanner stood behind her without a word. “When the moon sits whole on the wall, it means change,” she said as if reciting a prayer. “I think it means you will go.” Kneeling at the wall, where seawater crept through, she bowed her head. He continued to watch in silence. Did she even know he was still there? Surely she felt his eyes on her. She’d led him out here, or so he thought…wringing water from her hair, she pulled it behind her head, giving him the slightest glance in the process. Tanner felt like the child again, but not angry for it as he’d have been with Em.
“Jesus,” he whispered. Wake up, Tanner. You will have to leave this place sooner or later. Face the music. You can make it simple or you can keep thinking what you’re thinking.
Amaya stood to brush the sand from her legs. This time as she bent over he saw, below the hem of her skirt, the cleft of her buttocks. “We must go back,” she said in a voice that sounded as short of breath as his own. She waited for him to say no. He said nothing, and left.
* * *
The completed storehouse was as sturdy as the wall and crammed with goods. “What’s it for?” Tanner asked Reni. “Storms are coming soon,” was the reply. Reni seemed on-edge lately, staying in the back of his hut with his assortment of roots and herbs, speaking only when spoken to. Tanner didn’t really have much to do anymore while waiting for the physician’s arrival. Em had taken the boys. They were always occupied with her now, and despite strong performances by both mom and dad, they knew. They’d known.
Five days before their expected departure, Tanner found Reni and Sato arguing over the midday meal. Reni shook a straw basket in the mayor’s face and snarled something in a tongue Tanner had never heard before. Sato swatted the basket away, and the gray bitter root spilled out over the ground. The long-unspoken tension had clearly boiled over; yet Sato threw on his smile when he saw Tanner. A politician’s smile, Tanner now realized - he also realized that, this entire time, he’d been l
ied to about something. The deception of that smile was reflected in Reni’s averted gaze.
Tanner went into the forest. By sunlight he retraced the path of a moonlit walk and emerged on the beach, where Amaya was sitting at the water’s edge, stirring it idly with her fingers. “Why did you want me to leave?” he asked.
She squinted over her shoulder, damp strands of hair matted to her cheeks. “You want me to leave and so does Reni,” Tanner said. “What is it? Storm season? Won’t we be able to get off the island?”
“No storms,” she answered. “Just changes.” Was she trying to be obtuse, or was this simply the way of Pati’s people? The girl went back to dipping her hand in the water. He still couldn’t figure out whether she was more coy or naïve. Approaching her, his shadow long across her back, Tanner lowered himself and touched her arm. Instead of looking at him, she cast her eyes downward. His hand encircled her limb, fingertips brushed the curve of her breast. He waited for her to say no. Instead, she bowed her head and the hair fell away from her neck, where he pressed his lips to the salty skin.
She shifted into his lap and he wrapped his arms around her, feeling nervous excitement in waves as she moved beneath his hands. She was silent all the while. Tanner slipped into her skirt and cupped the warmth between her legs. Amaya arched back and he eased her down onto the sand, kissed her belly. The skirt slid down to her knees.
Beneath his lips Tanner felt rough, puckered depressions. He pulled back. Her abdomen was a web of deep scars, as if she’d been flayed open, her womanhood torn out, and the flaps of flesh carelessly pasted back into place. Her eyes were closed and she thrust her sex at him, the old gashes parting slightly, an obscene array of lips marring her beauty, horrifying him. He sloshed into the water, trying to speak and trying to look away. “What – what is this? Why?”
Bronze cheeks turned deep red. Amaya clutched at her skirt, tried to stand and fell back down. “Who did this to you?” Tanner cried. His throat thick with bile, he spat in the water. She just stared at him, trembling. And in her eyes Tanner saw: I’m going to tell.
Stepping back onto the beach, he extended his hands to her. “I didn’t mean to…Tell me what happened.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” she stammered.
“Why did this happen?” he demanded. She looked past him. At the wall.
“We’re to be the last,” Amaya said quietly. “Reni made it so it didn’t hurt.”
He was in his hut. Tanner caught him by the back of the shirt and slammed him against the exam table. Reni’s feet upended a bowl of gray paste, and he thrashed against Tanner. “What are you doing?” But he knew.
“You did it to the boys too?” Tanner shouted. “Is this why you needed me? A surgeon?” Spinning Reni around, he beat him against the table. “Is that why?!”
“We don’t need you!” yelled Reni. “I tried to send you away! There’s no doctor coming!”
Tanner let him go. “Tell me what you mean, tell me now.”
“Sato lied. Everyone knew. And they knew it was wrong but they went along with it.”
“I have two sons.” Tanner growled. “I have CHILDREN here!! What is this! TELL ME!! The wall! TELL ME!!”
“There’s a change,” Reni said soberly. “It comes every year, and lasts half a year. We…our fathers did something to bring this upon us. We don’t even know what they did. But we change, we die inside and…
“Eat.”
Tanner was shaking. Every muscle in his body strained for the door, towards Em and the boys and escape. Yet he had to know. “What do you eat?”
“Everything. Each other, once the storehouse is empty.”
Ice knifed through Tanner’s veins. He could only whisper: “Why? There has to be a reason why.”
“We don’t know! I’m a doctor like you. I looked for answers in our flesh, our blood. I even prayed to the old gods, asking them what our ancestors did. Sato believes it was their greed, their lust for power. He says they stole magic from the old gods, and angered them. So now we pay for our people’s greed by consuming all we have, and once that is done...I can’t put into words what we’ll wake up to in six months.”
“Why did you do what you did to Amaya?”
“She showed you?”
“I saw.”
Reni said nothing to that. “We made a choice to end this. There will be no more children on Pati. No more Pati. The wall just doesn’t work anymore…doesn’t keep outsiders away.”
Whatever these people believed themselves to be, they were intent on quietly dying out. It was self-genocide. Tanner’s legs quaked. “And Sato? Why did he lie?”
“He thinks – thinks you were delivered--” Reni choked, swallowed a mouthful of vomit. “Sacrifice” made it past his lips.
Tanner turned to run.
Reni seized his arm. “If you try to leave now they’ll kill you.”
“I don’t fucking care!”
“They’ll save your sons, Tanner.”
“’They’? YOU ARE THEM!!”
Reni snatched up a handful of the gray paste. “The bitter root can hold off the change! Not for long, but long enough. I can get you off the island. But you must wait for sunset, when the others go into their homes.”
It suddenly occurred to Tanner that, if this were all true, Reni couldn’t possibly have studied abroad. He wondered where the people of Pati learned English and where Reni learned medicine. He thought about Hatch’s ring finger, and he went numb. Wanted to tear the man apart, as if it would undo this whole nightmare. He wanted to be on the boat without a second thought toward the mysterious wall. More than anything, he wished he’d just signed the goddamn divorce papers.
* * *
Their faces were alien to him now. Their smiles were evil facades. Tanner hated them all and was absolutely terrified. He hated the ones who had entertained Ray and Kelly. He was terrified at imagining what their thoughts had been. And he wanted them all to know, but could only mirror their false pleasantries while walking at a measured pace to his hut.
“We’re leaving tonight,” he told Em. She nodded. “Doctor’s here?”
“No,” he replied. She probably thought it was a last-ditch effort to win her over. He wouldn’t allow that. “They’re going to kill us,” he stated flatly. “Where are the boys?”
“Asleep in the back - what do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. Now just listen. Reni’s getting us out at sunset. Just a couple of hours.”
“Tanner--”
“If we try anything before then, they’ll know.”
She clutched at him. “What are they going to do?”
“I told you.” Any further detail would send her over the edge. Together, they went into the other room where the boys were splayed out on a mat. It grew quiet outside, and the sunlight withdrew through the slats in the wall. As Reni had said, the islanders were sealing themselves in their homes, tying themselves down in bed - awaiting with dread the terrible change.
Scooping Kelly into his arm, Tanner nudged the older child. “Ray-Ray,” he whispered. “Dad?” The boy mumbled.
“We’re going out to the boat, son. Quietly.”
Main Street was deserted. Only the scattered footprints in the sand hinted at life on Pati. Tanner edged outside with Em at his back, Ray between them. Where was Reni? Did he…no, he hadn’t lied. Tanner’s heart thundered in his ribcage. He could hear it echoing in his skull. Could they?
He led his family down the street, Kelly still fast asleep. Footfalls came from one of the huts. Wood creaked. They froze. Em tightened her grip on Ray’s shoulder.
A door to the left flew open, and Tanner caught a glimpse of the figure within: black hair plastered to skin of a chalk-white pallor; and worst of all, feral eyes shining in the dying light.
It ran at them. Tanner was frozen. The thing was inhuman, a lanky, sweat-soaked male with the pallor of a corpse and burning eyes both hungry and hateful. This thing, this eater, snarled and opened its jaws wide for the meat.
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A blast ripped across the street and knocked the eater back into the hut. Howls erupted from every other home. Lowering an elephant rifle, Reni barked, “Here! NOW!”
Ears ringing from the gunshot, Tanner tugged his family past the rattling huts. They would tear loose of their confines at any moment and would all come looking for him and his.
Into the forest, a blur of scratching branches (each one perhaps the fang or claw of some ravenous pursuer) and nightmare sounds (in the trees, the grass, in every direction). Kelly was awake and sobbing. Reni thrashed at impeding trees with the rifle. Tanner began to pick out frenzied stomps, ragged breaths, coming from everywhere. Tree limbs were being smashed. Something was excited.
Ray stumbled. Em caught his arm without missing a beat and dragged him forward. She only let go when the eater, one that had been alongside them for several yards (Tanner realized in a horror-stricken moment of hindsight), leapt at her.
He turned at the sound of his name. Em’s cheek was open like a second mouth amplifying her scream. And the eater found a handhold inside her mouth, tore and tore and tore with no mind to its audience. She went down under the burrowing thing’s weight.
Reni pushed the rifle into Tanner’s hands. Thinking Reni meant for him to shoot it, he shook his head. Then his eyes met Reni’s and he saw the discolored feral orbs. “You can make it,” he grunted. Then Reni looked at Emily and her murderer. “We’ll stay.”
We’ll stay. And eat.
Tanner pushed the boys in front of him. Their feet may never have touched the ground; then, the beach. He fired into the wall. A great hole opened and he shoved the boys into the water. “Don’t stop!”
As soon as they were in, he unloaded another round into the opposite side. Moonlight, along with a wave of water, poured inside. They were waist-deep in ocean surf with cobweb-coated crossbeams overhead. A lifetime ago, Tanner sat under a boardwalk with Em, and was briefly reminded of that. Then he was torn by guilt. Amaya.
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