“You don’t know that!” Shawn’s mother pressed at her temples, tears staining her cheeks. “Oh, Lord in heaven …”
“They don’t know it was him, sis.” Uncle Bennett reached out to touch her with one hand. The hand, resting on her shoulder, rose and fell with each heave as she tried and failed to settle herself.
“My only remaining child,” she said. “Please, please, Lord. Save us!”
“They don’t know,” Uncle Bennett repeated. “They don’t know.”
His mother looked up at Uncle Bennett then. Her face went blank, unreadable. “Where would he get the money for a gun like that, anyway?”
Shawn glanced over at his uncle.
Uncle Bennett took his hand from her shoulder. “There are a lot of people on this island sympathetic to what happened to our family,” he said coolly.
“But not everyone has access to a gun like that.”
“Uncle Ben had nothing to do with it,” Shawn said.
“Shut up, boy,” said his uncle, keeping his eyes on Shawn’s mother.
“No, let him speak,” she said. “Let him do his own lying.”
Uncle Bennett said nothing, but his face turned to stone.
Shawn’s mother leaned in, her voice low. “You think I stupid, eh? You think I don’t know the kind of man you are, the kind of things you do?”
Uncle Bennett leaned in, too, their faces nearly touching. “I know you know. I let you pretend you don’t, because I don’t need you nagging me when I have to get shit done for this family.”
“I shoulda drown your little mother skunt in the tub when you was a baby,” his mother whispered, rage trembling at the edge of each word. “If anything happen to my son, I will kill you.”
Shawn sank deeper into his chair. His mother looked to him like a shark’s fin breaking the surface of the water, the thing to be feared lying underneath.
Uncle Bennett’s expression still didn’t change. “All that God talk before, and now you want to murder your own brother for getting vengeance on the thing that took your youngest?”
“You didn’t take vengeance on anything.”
Uncle Bennett’s composure finally broke, his nose flaring, the vein in his neck looking like a fat earthworm.
Shawn saw his mother smell the blood. “You put my son on the line because you couldn’t do it yourself,” she said. “Because you a coward.”
The house lights went out.
For a moment, no one spoke. A few years back, a power outage wouldn’t have been alarming. Everyone knew that the VI Water and Power Authority was shit. But that was before the Ynaa arrived.
“You got flashlights?” Uncle Bennett asked, breaking the silence. He sounded normal, though Shawn knew better.
Shawn couldn’t see anyone, not even a silhouette. He blinked, trying to peer into the darkness.
“Shawn, go get a flashlight.” his mother said, fear creeping back into her voice.
“Where?” he asked.
“Try under the sink.”
He got up and felt his way to the kitchen. Bumping his side against the edge of the kitchen counter, he swore quietly and moved his hand along the counter’s seam to avoid any further collisions. Once he felt the cool metal of the sink, he stooped down and opened the cabinet. He felt his way to the back, where he found a big industrial lantern they used during WAPA’s once-frequent blackouts and brownouts. Shawn pulled it out, found the big rubber-shrouded switch, and pressed it. Fortunately, the light came on.
“Bring it here,” his mother said. She turned on the light on her phone, providing a second source of illumination.
Shawn rubbed his side bitterly as he made his way back to the living room. “You couldn’t have turned that on a few minutes ago?”
His mother ignored him. “I got no service.”
“Maybe we should make our way to one of the bedrooms,” Uncle Bennett said.
“Mine,” Shawn said.
“I think my room is better,” his mother said.
“But …” Shawn started, not knowing how to say that he had the gun in his room. It was in a duffel bag under his bed. He looked to Uncle Bennett, communicating all he could.
Uncle Bennett nodded slightly. “We should go to the boy’s room.”
His mother squinted at them but didn’t say anything. She got up and began walking to the room. Shawn followed, lantern in hand.
Shawn made his way across the living room before noticing that Uncle Bennett had not gotten up. Then he heard soft choking sounds coming from behind him. Turning to look, he saw Uncle Bennett still sitting on the couch, his hands trembling.
Shawn pointed the lantern at his uncle’s face and stifled a scream. He felt the hairs rise on his neck as a wave of cold ran down his spine.
“What’s wrong?” his mother asked from behind him. He listened to her footsteps come near but still jumped when he felt her hand on his shoulder.
Now she could see what he saw. And she did scream.
Uncle Bennett’s eyes had rolled up into the back of his head, and blood oozed from his eye sockets, his nose, his mouth. He still trembled, though the motions had become spaced out, erratic. Shawn could hear him softly choking.
“Get in the room, Mom,” he said, walking over to his uncle.
“Should we get a neighbor? Is it a stroke?”
“No,” Shawn said to both questions. As he stepped closer, he could feel the ice creeping through him, the slow crawl of fear along his skin. His mother hadn’t moved. He heard no footsteps behind him, only heavy breathing.
Shawn reached out and touched his uncle, and for a moment his uncle seemed to gain some awareness. He tried to speak but couldn’t. He screeched out something, but the paralysis was so severe, he couldn’t move his lips to articulate it. He continued choking softly. Without knowing how, Shawn was certain now. This was not a stroke.
Uncle Bennett croaked out another syllable, and Shawn could guess what it was. He was telling them to run.
The door to the house flew open.
His mother squealed in a vocal expression of both surprise and terror.
Shawn didn’t have time to see what was there. He turned to his mother, pulling her back from the living room, retreating to his bedroom. He pushed her in and followed, closing and locking the door. His mother kept screaming.
“Shut up!” he said more sternly than he had ever talked to his mother in his entire life.
She accepted the order, shrinking back from the door, cowering behind the bed, near the window, as far from the thing outside as she could get.
Shawn rested the lantern on the dresser by the door. He pulled the duffel bag from under the bed and sat down on the mattress, unpacking the rifle and clicking the barrel, stock, and receiver together. It swayed awkwardly on the mattress as he tried to position himself.
When he was ready, he turned on the viewfinder on the tablet, setting it to heat-seeking mode. As he did all this, he tried to keep his nerves in check. Why hadn’t they barged into the room? How many were there? He looked through the viewfinder and could see his uncle through the walls, his body cooling on the couch. The weapon detected no other heat signatures.
His mother cowered quietly, her breath fast and heavy. When he turned to look at her, she was looking at him—for how long, he couldn’t say. He put his finger to his lips and tried to project calm self-possession.
Someone knocked at the door. Shawn snapped his head toward the sound. For a moment, there was no other indication that something was happening. The stress of the situation made him question whether he had even heard the knock. He looked to his mother for confirmation. She wasn’t looking at him anymore, just staring wide-eyed at the door.
“I don’t want to hurt your mother,” said a voice, the words low and thin, spaced farther apart than normal speech. “But mothers are protectiv
e. They end up getting hurt.” Another pause, this time longer. “Come outside.” The voice had an indefinable quality to it. Even after it stopped, it whistled in the air.
“Why?” Shawn asked.
No answer for a moment. His heartbeat ramped up, thumping time.
“I want to snap your neck,” the voice said.
Shawn fired three bullets at the door.
The door splintered, the first bullet hitting something solid with an unmistakable pop. The other two bullets punched through the door and sang in the air. They passed through the open doorway to his mother’s room, on the opposite side of the hall, before shattering the window on the far wall of the house.
His mother hadn’t made a sound. He glanced in her direction and saw her bunched up in the corner, staring terrified at the splintered door.
Shawn wiped sweat from his forehead. He felt the sweat from his armpits trickle down his sides. There were no sounds in the house, but he could hear the wind slipping through the broken window, carrying with it the faint screams of neighbors across the way.
“They killing people!” his mother confirmed, her voice trembling so much, Shawn could hardly decipher the words. “Oh, my God, they killing people!”
My fault. The thought had come up through the horror and panic of the moment. He had avenged his brother thinking it would change things. It had made them unimaginably worse. They were killing people. And they would get away with it, just as they had before.
Shawn heard something thrashing in the hall, and he fired six more shots, screaming as he did so. They rippled through the air, tearing fresh holes in the door. He didn’t hear where they ended up. A couple of minutes passed, with more screams carried on the wind. Shawn felt as though he was going to throw up.
Then he heard it: soft choking coming from behind him once again. Oh, no. He slowly turned to look at his mother. Her mouth hung open, her body strangely stiff and contorted. Her wide eyes were on him. She tried to choke out words, but nothing came. Jagged coughs sputtered from her mouth with a sound like skipping stones.
“For her own protection,” said the voice.
Shawn let one more shot out before his hands tightened up and his whole body seized.
“If you believe you have any control here,” said the voice—slow, soft, and hissing—“then let me educate you.”
Shawn tried to scream but couldn’t. His whole body felt like one giant muscle cramp, on fire with pain. He couldn’t move anything. And now he could hear himself choking, trying desperately to breathe and failing. The sound of it terrified him.
The door creaked open, and out of the dark he saw a creature come inside. He forgot about his struggle for breath, or the hot pain throughout his body, as the creature came slowly toward him. Shawn’s mind screamed at him to flee. The thing was not encumbered by human skin.
The creature eased forward, painfully slowly, the streaks on its cheeks glowing hot. The light from the lantern revealed dark pools for eyes, and five large tentacles on its head, slowly writhing. These, too, were streaked with orange, and they flared up like a fire as the thing drew near. Its body was large with slick, muscled gray-black skin. Shawn couldn’t tell the gender of the thing.
“She was my sister,” said the thing, its voice now so low, so harsh, that Shawn could feel the words resonate in the bones of his spine.
A flash of color streaked across his sight, and he felt coarse hands on his neck, the pain of it adding to the throbbing agony everywhere else.
“I had plans to do this slowly,” said the thing, its layers of sound forming a dark chorus. “But I won’t do that to your mother. I’m not a monster.”
The thing squeezed. Shawn felt the pressure, and then he felt his neck snap. After that, there was nothing.
• • •
Twenty-five thousand. As Derrick waited for Louie to come out of his house, he tried to understand the number, feel it in his bones. It was too big to feel real. He couldn’t quite bring it down to human terms. But the number was human. Twenty-five thousand men and boys on the island. And babies. He had made Patrice drink just in case the Ynaa would snatch the life right out of women’s wombs. Twenty-five thousand dead people. His people. And what had he done to stop any of it? All his lofty hopes and dreams, his naive plans, stacked atop twenty-five thousand men and boys.
Mera was trying to help him save family and friends. There were others, too, who would be saved. She had managed some small alliances among the Ynaa. But what did that mean against a number so large? He tried to feel what it would be like to mourn each of those souls, but his mind rebelled. It couldn’t grasp the number. What would it mean after? How would they grieve something so vast? Enough blood to drown all reason, all understanding.
What could he have done differently? What had he done? Nothing. Nothing at all.
Derrick listened to the quiet outside the SUV. Savan had not been hit yet. He tried to imagine all those people waiting in their homes, not knowing what would come. Just waiting to die. To lose the ones they loved. To stand helpless over seizing, shuddering bodies.
He had taken the back roads so he could get to Savan, had passed over a dozen stalled cars. Many of them had men at the wheel, had little boys in back seats, not understanding what was happening, not knowing enough to understand, not capable of counting that high.
Derrick had passed them all. Driven right past. To get to Louie, he told himself. To save his best friend who he had hung out with only once in the past three months. He knew it for the lie it was. He had passed those people because he couldn’t tell which among them he could trust not to kill him. His forehead throbbed with psychosomatic intensity as he passed each car. The Ynaa hadn’t tried to kill him. His own people had. And they would likely try again.
Sitting in the SUV, he couldn’t blame them. Even now he couldn’t get out to knock on Louie’s door, afraid he would be spotted, recognized. Dread filled him up, made his limbs feel like lead. He couldn’t stop shaking.
The truth was, all that he had done had been for himself. Because he liked feeling important. Because he wanted to touch the stars. He didn’t consider that they would touch back, that so many wouldn’t survive the price. He had chosen a stranger over his own people. He had loved her, and now he had lost everything. They would never understand. He would never have a place there ever again.
He tried again to open the car door, but his head hurt. He was crying and noticed only now that it was difficult to see.
Why hadn’t Louie come out yet? He needed to go get him. He needed to do this one little thing. The neighborhood hadn’t been attacked, but that wouldn’t last. He needed to do something. Why wasn’t he doing something?
Derrick always had trouble with things right in front of him. They never seemed big enough, grand enough. It was strange coming to terms with that, staring at oneself and seeing the ugly truth stare back. Not being able to flinch away from it, to hide. He still wanted to save the world. And still feared being hated for not doing so. He couldn’t get out of his own way.
He had to let go of that, make tonight about something else. Someone else.
Derrick wiped away his tears. He took several long, deep breaths. Then he grabbed the coffee cup resting in the cup holder and opened the door. It was hard at first. His head itched. But then he stepped out of the SUV, the night heat hitting him. A dog barked in the distance. Somewhere far away, he heard gunshots. No more time to wait. Time to go. He willed his feet forward.
He pounded up the steps to Louie’s house and knocked hard on the door.
Louie opened. “What you doing?” he whispered.
“We have to go,” Derrick said.
Louie sighed. “Just come inside.”
“Why?” Derrick asked as he entered. “What going on?”
Louie shut the door but kept his voice low. “My mother is scared. She doesn’t want me to leave
.”
“Okay, let me talk to her.”
“And,” Louie added.
“What? What is it?”
“Can Omari come with us?”
Derrick didn’t know Louie was seeing Omari. But Derrick had abandoned everything because of his fixation on Mera. Of course he didn’t know. “What happened to Sandra?” he asked.
“Dude, we broke up so long,” Louie said.
Derrick nodded. “Is Omari here?”
“Yeah, in the back with Mom.”
Louie led Derrick through the cramped dark hallway of his house to a back room that smelled faintly of mothballs. A few candles lit the small bedroom. Omari sat next to Louie’s mother on the bed. Both of them met Derrick’s eyes as soon as he entered.
“Hey, Mom,” Derrick said.
“Child, me’n see you in so long. What you been up to?” Debra got up and gave Derrick a hug. She smelled like sweat and perfume.
“I just been busy with work,” Derrick said, the words sounding slimy as he spoke them.
Debra’s expression grew dark. The candlelight illuminated the lines of her face. “They killing people, you know. Your boss orders?” The question came out matter-of-fact, but Derrick could see the seriousness in her eyes.
“No,” he said. “She’s trying to help.”
Debra nodded, apparently satisfied. He couldn’t believe it.
“Then keep these boys safe,” she said. “Don’t want nothing happening to them, okay?”
“Yes, Mom.” He tried a smile, but it didn’t feel right. His facial muscles spasmed minutely.
“Should we go now?” Omari asked, piping up for the first time. Derrick knew Omari from his high school days. He’d been a few years ahead of Louie and Derrick, a senior when they were just freshmen. Popular. Not that it mattered now.
Derrick handed Louie the coffee cup in his hand. “You two need to drink this.”
Louie drank right away, then said, “Why you giving me hot sweet tea to drink?”
“It was cold when I left the house,” Derrick said, handing the cup over to Omari.
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