One of Us

by Craig DiLouie

  The world was a big, scary place. The grown-ups were all mean and called her names. The other kids used to tell her lurid stories about Discipline. She’d suffered nightmares of laughing teachers putting her in a dark box with a hungry rat. Big Brothers made the kids stop telling stories. Her Big Brothers were nice.

  Three of them were gone now. The other hairy one who was extra kind. The funny boy with the upside-down face. The big rubber squash that made her smile when he smiled. All gone. Where, nobody would say. That or she couldn’t understand. She missed them. She feared the world had gotten them.

  Big Brother was right, though. Everybody seemed so happy to be out taking a walk. Nobody was sad today except the teachers. It made her feel warm and safe despite the coming darkness. She was free, walking along without anybody bothering her.

  “I don’t know you if can understand this,” Big Brother said. “As we got older, many of us developed capabilities. Things we could do. Like Quasimodo.”

  “Flying,” she said, picturing it.

  She’d laughed and pointed when Quasimodo lunged into the air and circled the Home several times before flying into the sun.

  “That’s right, Mary. Flying. Some of us can do even more. Some are like gods. Like Tiny. You remember Tiny?”

  “Horn-man,” she said.

  “Tiny is a god. I’ll bet he could throw Mr. Gaines’s truck a hundred miles if he wanted.”

  “Weather teacher,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Dead teacher,” she said.

  “What I want to tell you might be big news to you,” Big Brother said. “You want to hear it? It might be a little scary to hear.”

  Mary shuddered. “Don’t like scary.”

  She stumbled, but Big Brother didn’t let her fall. The road was covered in car parts. Oil smell in the warm night air.

  “It might also be exciting to hear,” Big Brother told her. “Like getting cornbread and syrup for breakfast.”

  She smacked her lips as she pictured it. “Syrup.”

  “Mary? I believe you might be a god, too.”

  “Like Tiny.”

  “You’ll find out soon enough. It’ll just come to you. When it happens, don’t be scared. You should be excited.”

  “Syrup.”

  “That’s right. I’ve got to go, Mary. There’s a turn coming up ahead, and I have to take a different road. Something I have to take care of.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Tiny knows what to do. He and the others will watch out for you. Now you remember what I said. Something exciting is going to happen. The way you’re acting and talking. It’s already starting, I can see it.”

  “Don’t go, Big Brother.”

  “I’ll see you soon, Mary.”

  His hand let go of hers. She looked around but couldn’t find him in the throng. The world had gotten him, and she would change. Then she remembered he said it would be scary but also exciting. The world, then syrup.

  The group tramped past a faded Welcome to Huntsville sign. As the children topped the hill, the lights of the town spilled across the vista.

  “So pretty,” she said.

  Searchlights glared along the column. Distant shouts.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  Guns shooting like ones she heard in the woods.

  The children fled the road howling. A bumblebee whizzed past her ear. Flashes of light like fireflies but even brighter. A hazy memory came to her. A photographer arrived at the Home to take pictures of the kids for a magazine. Flashbulb popping.

  She ambled forward, wanting to be in the picture. More banging. Another bee buzzed past her ear. Snapping sound.

  Then she was flying just like Quasimodo. Mary spread her arms and grinned.

  No, she wasn’t flying. A giant arm encircled her body. She was being carried along. Whisked off the road.

  “Football,” she said.

  Her feet touched ground in a cotton field.

  Tiny crouched to look her in the eye. “Brain told me to watch over you and keep you safe while he’s gone. But I can’t if you try and get yourself killed.”

  She giggled. “Carry me again. Again, again.”

  The field rustled around her. The kids crept through the dying cotton, going around the guns. They didn’t want their picture taken.

  “I have to go now,” Tiny said. “You stay here and be quiet and don’t move.”

  Bang, bang, bang.

  Then it all stopped. Dark and quiet. Time had a way of slipping away on her. In the distance, a house crumbled in an avalanche of dust. Mary reached out her hand and put it between her fingers. She smiled as she pinched them shut. Bye, house.

  Bang, bang. Far away now.

  Mary looked around. All alone. No brothers or sisters. This wasn’t exciting at all. She wanted to find Big Brother but had no idea where to look. She felt tired now and thought about sleeping on the warm ground. Instead she started walking toward the lights. They sang to her, those pretty lights, and she wanted to get closer. While the darkness was scary, the lights promised warmth and safety.

  A tree-lined street, clapboard houses. American flags hanging over porches. Mailboxes. Moths weaving around porch lights. A dog barked far away.

  A distant roar as another building collapsed.

  Mary felt eyes watching her. People were looking from their windows. She hunched her shoulders, arms rigid at her sides, head aimed at the ground as it had been for most of her life. She didn’t want the people to see her. She was so ugly. If they took a good look, they might get upset.

  From the corner of her eye, she spied a family standing in a living room window.

  Don’t look at me, she thought.

  They turned around. They were right not to look.

  She wished they could love her the way she loved them.

  I want to be you, she thought.

  Mary smiled as she went on taking her little awkward, uncertain steps. She’d had a clear thought for the first time in her life, and it joyed her.

  I want to be beautiful, she thought. Just like you.

  Syrup feeling, like it ran in her veins.

  Veins that trembled like the world.

  The world rushed into her and poured out in screaming rebirth.

  The family flew out of the house through shattered living room glass, puffing into a red mist in the air she sucked into her wake. Their empty clothes fluttered onto the lawn.

  Windows all along the street exploded outward. Red mist filled the air and swirled around her.

  She ate it all.

  Mary grew. Became luminous. She’d become light, so pretty.

  Her teeth snapped shut.

  Souls and memories and personalities imprinted themselves on the blank slate of her mind, suddenly awake and alive after all these years.

  She felt their love.

  Flashbulb pops at the end of the street. A policeman stood on a lawn, shooting at her with a handgun. Mary turned her blinding visage toward him, her long hair flowing and sparkling around her crown.

  Her change had taken every living person on this street except him, and she was curious why.

  The gun clicked empty as she approached. He fell to his knees with a keening howl. “Goddamn you. Go on and get it over with.”

  Mary read him and discovered his desperation, loss, strength, fear. “You are the sheriff.”

  “I was the one who sinned, not her.”

  “Enoch,” she said. “Elly. Your town. Your wife.”

  “Anne,” he moaned.

  “And your son.”

  He shielded his eyes against her light. “What the hell are you?”

  “Tell me your sins, Sheriff.”

  “You killed her.”

  “Not killed,” she said. “Changed. Anne is with me now. And I understand.”

  “Are you gonna take me, too?”

  She scanned the empty houses lining the street. Shards of glass carpeted the asphalt, reflecting her rainbow colors. “My chang
e is done.”

  “The plague kids are killing people. Can you make it stop?”

  “Nothing can stop it.”

  The sheriff picked up a dress lying on the ground and hugged it balled against his chest. “Where did you take her?”

  “She was a mother,” Mary said.

  “We had a son once.”

  “You have a son,” she said. “The root of your sin.”

  “Not her sin. Mine.”

  “Find your son. Find him and correct your sin. Make things right.”

  His big shoulders quaked as he clutched the dress to his face and cried into it. Mary glimmered past him, floating on the world she once feared.

  She understood everything now, but she was unable to stop it. So much sorrow in the world, she missed her ignorance.

  Forty-Two

  The power died an hour ago. Amy, Jake, and Mama had been watching Dan Rather report on the revolt spreading across the Homes. President Reagan was due to come on the air in fifteen minutes. Then the TV thudded off and the lights went out, plunging them into darkness.

  Now they sat on the couch in the dark with the curtains drawn. Jake kept a tight hold on Amy’s hand. Mama chain-smoked while she sipped her bourbon.

  Amy got up and banged her shin on the coffee table. “Ow, ow.”

  Jake jumped to his feet. “You all right?”

  “Hunky-dory,” she grated, though she was most definitely not hunky-dory, nothing at all about this day was hunky-dory in the least.

  “Where you going?” Mama said. “We have to stay put.”

  “The window,” she said. “I can do that, can’t I?”

  “Just trying to keep us safe. I’ll keep on doing it, if you don’t mind.”

  Amy pulled aside the curtain and peered out. Fireflies glittered in the fields. She wanted to run out there for a while. Get out of this stifling house. All they did was bicker to stretch their nerves.

  Jake joined her. “I wish I could call Pa. I wish I could hear he’s okay.”

  He’d tried several times before the power went out, slamming the phone back in its cradle each time after getting the all-circuits-busy signal.

  “Your daddy is a strong man,” Mama said from the couch. “He’s with his flock. They’d take a bullet for him.”

  As if on cue, distant gunshots echoed from the direction of Huntsville. They flinched at the sound. The darkness seemed to press harder against the house. Amy hated not knowing. Michelle, Troy. Everybody she knew, the whole town.

  Out there, her normal life was dying with them.

  Jake reached for her hand. She pushed his away and said, “I can’t just sit here in the dark anymore. I’ll lose my mind.”

  “Do you have any candles, Mrs. Green?” Jake said.

  “I ain’t lighting a damn candle,” Mama told him.

  “We can light it in the basement and stay low,” he said.

  “I don’t even remember where I keep the damn things.”

  Jake wouldn’t let it go. “You give me your lighter, I can look.”

  Mama took a drag on her Virginia Slim. The ember burned in the dark, revealing her scowl. “The point is a man hasn’t given an order in this house in fourteen years. That ain’t changing now on account—”

  “Hush,” Amy hissed. “Somebody’s coming.”

  They crowded the window to watch the figure approach. A bright light winked at them, growing larger. Somebody running with a flashlight. The figure sprinted across the yard and stomped onto the porch.

  Amy dropped the curtain as the light beam glared across the window.

  Banging on the door.

  “Y’all stay back,” Jake said. “I’ll answer it.”

  “You sit your ass on the sofa,” Mama told him.

  “Let me in,” a voice said. “I know you’re in there.”

  “I think that’s Archie Gaines,” Amy said.

  “What you want?” Mama called out.

  “Creepers are out in the woods. I need a place to hide a bit.”

  Jake moved to the door.

  “Don’t you dare open that,” Mama said.

  “All hell’s breaking loose out there,” Amy said. “People are getting killed. We can’t just turn him away.”

  “It’s the right thing to do, Mrs. Green,” Jake said.

  Mama rose from the couch and went to the door to open it. “Boy, you are getting on my last nerve.”

  Archie stomped into the house, keeping his flashlight aimed at the floor. Amy got a good look at him in the dim light. Hunting clothes, backpack. He carried a twenty-gauge shotgun in his other hand, pointed at the ceiling.

  He was breathing hard, his eyes glazed and wild after everything he’d seen. His movements were jittery and birdlike, like he was ready to burst out of his skin.

  Archie scowled at Jake. “What’s he doing here?”

  “I’m Amy’s boyfriend,” Jake said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Keeping Amy safe.”

  “For God’s sake,” Mama said.

  Archie set down his bulging backpack. “I got plenty of food. And I got a weapon and ammo. You ain’t even armed. What were you gonna do when the creepers busted down the door, preach them Christian love? Invite them in for tea?”

  “Have guns stopped them yet?”

  “Don’t start fighting again,” Amy yelled. “Archie, what’s going on out there?”

  “They tore my daddy up,” the boy said. “Then they killed twenty armed men out in the woods. I made it home and watched the trailer park get overrun tonight. My house flattened like a pancake. Everybody’s dead.”

  “Oh, God,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “But the creepers die like anything else. When they come this way, I’ll be ready.”

  “Not here, you ain’t,” Mama said. “We aim to ride this out by staying quiet.”

  “Ma’am, I’m done with hiding. We’ll nail some boards to barricade the windows. If them sumbitches come, they’ll be sorry they did.”

  “Mrs. Green is right,” Jake said. “We need to stay hid and stay quiet.”

  “How about you do that,” Archie said. “Starting with the quiet part.”

  “You’re gonna get us all killed.”

  “Maybe just you, monster lover. Or you could git while you still can.”

  The barrel of Archie’s shotgun drifted downward to aim at Jake’s guts. Mama’s hand moved to the pocket of her housecoat. Another power struggle, this time the kind where somebody got shot.

  “Archie, look at me,” Amy said.

  His eyes gleamed the way they did at the football field when he tore into Jake like a wild animal. Take away the hunting clothes and gun, and he was just a boy fighting to act like what he thought a man was supposed to be.

  Archie had lost his daddy. After everything he’d seen, maybe his mind.

  “I’m gonna kill them all for what they done,” he said. “I’m gonna keep you safe.”

  “I’m sorry about your daddy,” Amy said.

  She wanted to break through, reach the boy she knew he still was.

  He surprised her by laughing. “Yeah, my daddy was a real saint.”

  “I know he wouldn’t want you pointing guns at people.”

  “My daddy killed Sally Albod and made it look like the creeper boy did it. He shot her by accident and then tore her up so it looked like claws. I watched him do it.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said, her voice fading to a wisp.

  “So don’t tell me you know my daddy,” Archie said.

  The plague boy hadn’t killed Sally. He’d been innocent. Now he was dead. She and Mr. Gaines had set him up to take the fall for two murders and started a war in the bargain.

  “And you don’t know me neither,” he added.

  “Archie—”

  “I love you, Amy Green.”

  He wanted her. Not just longing from a distance. Archie wanted her with him.

  “You love me,” she said, her voice a dull echo.

&
nbsp; “I’m the only one who can protect you. I got food and a gun. I got plans.”

  “Let’s go upstairs and talk,” she said.

  Jake stiffened. Mama put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  Archie stared at her. “You want to go upstairs with me?”

  Amy mounted the stairs without looking back. Moments later, she heard footsteps behind her. Light flickered on the walls, glimpses of framed photographs of her growing up pretending to have a normal life.

  Jake let out a choked sob. “Amy?”

  “Let it go,” Mama said.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Sit down, boy. It’ll be all right.”

  “It’ll be just fine,” Archie called down to him from the stairs. “We’re just gonna talk. You best be good and gone by the time I come back, you hear?”

  Amy heard Archie breathing behind her, excited and scared. She fought back tears as she mounted the stairs on heavy legs. This was not the time for fear. She had to be strong.

  She led him into her room, heard him close and lock the door. He shined the flashlight around. Her eyes roamed with it, trying to see the room as he did. A girl’s room. Pink walls, vanity, stuffed animals on the bed.

  “So this is your place, huh,” he said. “It’s nice and big.”

  “Thanks, Archie. I keep telling Mama I need a new vanity. The one I got is secondhand and all scratched up. One of the legs is busted and held up with books.”

  “Hell, I could fix that for you sometime.”

  “I’ll bet you could,” Amy said. “That’s what friends do. They help each other.”

  Her plan had been to get him alone before he shot Jake or Mama shot him. Now she just had to keep him talking. Archie understood power well. Winning and losing had been beaten into him since birth. Girls, he didn’t know anything about aside from his imagination.

  In that department, he was all bark and no bite. She had some power over him.

  The flashlight settled on her. He licked his lips. “I’d do anything for you. I always thought you was perfect for me.”

  “If you want to court me, you don’t show up at my house pointing guns at people I care about,” Amy said. “You want my affection, you have to earn it.”