by Ninie Hammon
At the peak of the festivities in the parking lot, Charlie did a rough head count and figured there were probably fifty people there — on a scale from just arrived and desperately sick all the way through to borrowing E.J.’s phone to summon transportation back home.
It was a rowdy crowd — angry, confused, sick and scared. And mountain people weren’t accustomed to exercising much control over how they expressed themselves.
Women screamed and sobbed. Men yelled and cursed. Everybody demanded to know what was going on and nobody had any answers for them.
By late afternoon, the crowd had thinned out considerably — partly because there were fewer and fewer “incoming,” courtesy of the telephone grapevine, which had first broadcast notice of the Jabberwock, and was now communicating the dire consequence of challenging the beast. And partly because those who came to see the “appearing” were fewer and didn’t tend to stay as long. Maybe it was the stink. Charlie was just about used to it, but still when the breeze blew uphill from the creek it was ghastly.
That many people, that sick … it wasn’t a scene most folks would choose to hang around and examine for very long.
It was early evening when Charlie heard Sam cry out, “Oh, Abby, no!” She turned to see Sam kneeling beside a figure on her hands and knees heaving, blood spewing from her nose, clearly an “incoming.” It was Abby Clayton.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Malachi Tackett looked out over the Dollar Store parking lot as the last rays of the sun fired out over the top of Little Bear Mountain to the west. “Sunset” for mountain people was a gradual thing, a lengthening of shadows in the valleys and hollows as the sun dipped below the horizon out there on the flat.
The sounds of low voices. Someone being violently sick. Somebody else crying and a general moaning sound that seemed to come from everybody and nobody at the same time.
Not a whole lot different from a battlefield. Except nobody here was dying.
And he hadn’t killed any of them.
He wasn’t sure when it’d started, when the outline had formed. Boot Camp? When he shipped out? After the first exchange of gunfire? The first dead body? The first massacre? It was suddenly just there, a black edge, a frame that encased his reality, that surrounded his world from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning until whatever happened that day was done. Like somebody had outlined the life of Malachi Tackett in black Magic Marker. Sometimes the frame closed in on him, somehow got thicker and thicker until the world that existed outside of it was small, a little circle, like looking at reality through a pipe.
And then the pipe would slam shut altogether, and when he opened his eyes he would be somewhere else entirely.
Now the frame was gone.
He didn’t remember when it’d left, either. He’d been too busy to notice, but it was definitely gone.
Oh, everything else was still there, lined up for his inspection like recruits on the parade ground. The paranoia. But it wasn’t paranoia until you came home. Until then, everybody really was trying to kill you.
Or how he worked out in his head how he’d get out of every situation he found himself in. Walking to the mailbox with Mama … how he could leap over that hedge and make a run for the tree.
Or how he could drop the mailman — the guy in a mailman’s uniform — grab his satchel with the bomb inside and throw it over the fence.
So many of the gifts that keep on giving he’d brought home with him from the war were still very much in evidence, thank you very much. But the frame was gone.
The black line did not surround the parking lot of the Dollar General Store in the Middle of Nowhere on that June Saturday night in 1995 and that was a thing of profound mystery and wonder for Lance Corporal— No! Not corporal. Just Malachi. Plain old Malachi Tackett.
He looked out at a world without a frame and was awed by its absence and by … how much less threatening an unframed world was.
The air smelled vaguely of vomit, though the fire brigade had done a yeoman’s job of keeping the parking lot cleared of yuk, under the direction of Pete Rutherford who ruled it with an iron hand, making it clear, to Malachi at least, that the man had served in the military, had directed men there, had certainly sent them into battle to die.
And maybe understood.
He had, after all, talked Malachi back into reality when he believed he was pinned down by … as he crouched behind a bus shelter in a parking lot in rural Kentucky, his mind reverberating inside his skull like a ball in an oil drum.
He’d have a conversation with Pete when … after …
Malachi smiled, knew it was inappropriate but reveled in its inappropriateness. Malachi didn’t give a rat fart about the Jabberwock. It didn’t matter to him what it was. And he was probably the only person — out of the hundreds of people who’d experienced the phenomena in one form or another today — who didn’t care. It seemed to him so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. In a world where hundreds of thousands of innocent people were butchered, hacked apart, their bodies piled up and left to stink by the side of the road … in a world where things like that were such a daily occurrence that nobody even noticed, an impossible phenomenon like the Jabberwock was no big deal at all.
He still felt a little lightheaded, had put nothing back in his stomach since he’d violently expelled its contents hours ago, but he also attributed some of the wooziness to the thing, the event, that started in the shadow of Bald Ridge and propelled him to a parking lot twenty-three miles away in …
How long had it taken?
That was something nobody’d thought to investigate, though he was sure every possible bit of minutia relating to the phenomena would be talked and examined and taken apart and dissected ad nauseam when it was over.
“I feel like I’ve got a hangover,” said Liam Montgomery, who’d stepped up unnoticed beside Malachi.
Malachi jumped. Just jumped, though. Like anybody would. No over-reaction.
“Me, too. Like there’s a …”
“Buzzing behind my eyes.”
“Yeah, like that. Coming off a drunk.”
“I’ve never felt a pain like that needle in my head, though, not ever before in my life, and I’d just about die to keep from ever feeling it again.” Liam seemed very young then, and Malachi though to notice that the deputy was probably five years younger than he was, which made him mid-twenties.
“Meaning you have no desire to step again through the mirror of the Jabber—”
That’s when they both heard Sam cry, “Oh, Abby, no,” heard the poor woman retching violently and knew that Abby Clayton had ridden the bronco a second time.
Sam held Abby Clayton’s head while she heaved and wretched, her body wracked by contractions in her diaphragm as strong as labor pains.
The girl was vomiting blood, too, and Sam had only seen one other person all day who’d done that — Betty Hannaker. She’d been on her way to Walmart to buy a plunger because her toilet was stopped up. And Betty’d only vomited a small amount of blood. Abby was vomiting nothing but blood after she’d expelled her stomach contents.
And her nose was bleeding, too.
If this had been a normal world and this had been anywhere in the same UPS delivery zone as a normal day, Sam would have dialed 911 and had Abby transported immediately to the hospital by ambulance.
She froze for a moment, a cold chill making its way down her back, dripping from one vertebra to the next.
That was a perfect word picture of the state of the world in Nowhere County Kentucky on June 3, 1995.
When you dialed 911, nobody answered.
Malachi came up beside Charlie, nodded to Abby and pointed out the obvious. “She didn’t get a ride home after all.”
She noticed as she spoke to him that his eyes had cleared. The effects of the Jabberwock had mostly worn off for him, but he also seemed more engaged with reality than he’d been before. In fact, he’d seemed to become more “normal” as the nightmare day went o
n.
While Charlie was getting wrapped tighter and tighter, Malachi Tackett was relaxing.
Charlie went to Sam and put her hand on her shoulder and she looked up, glanced pointedly down at Abby and shrugged her shoulders.
“How about I go get a wet cloth for you to—”
At the sound of Charlie’s voice, Abby’s head jerked up, spewing a fine spray of blood over Charlie’s pants and shoes, the ones from the Dollar Store which she’d changed into because her jeans and Italian leather ballet flats had gotten to such a state they were unsalvageable. She’d have to burn them.
“Get away from me!” Abby snarled, coughing blood, her voice ragged.
“I’m sor—”
“Don’t you touch me, you witch.” Her words were garbled because she was forcing sound through vocal cords while her esophagus was responding to a greater imperative to vomit. “You brung it down on us—”
She couldn’t finish then, her throat clogged with vomit and blood and she lowered her head and spewed it on the ground. Charlie backed away, reading a look of sympathy in Sam’s eyes.
A hand on her shoulder patted kindly and she turned to see the benevolent wrinkled face of Pete Rutherford.
“Ain’t no thang, sugar,” he said, his accent comforting in a way she didn’t bother to pick at. “It’s just the Jabberwock.”
Right. Everything that was wrong with her whole world and with the lives of everyone for twenty-five miles in every direction lay at the feet of the impossible phenomena of the Jabberwock.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It got dark, but still people came. Willingly or otherwise, they came.
Charlie had felt fatigue settling around her like a shroud for the past hour or so, a kind of tired unlike any she’d ever felt before. Maybe part of it an aftermath of the Jabberwock, because she still felt “off’ somehow, had ever since she’d sat on the bench of the bus shelter at nine o’clock this morning. Correction, yesterday morning. It was long past midnight now.
Yesterday morning had been a lifetime ago.
Not a metaphorical description of the passage of time.
Literal.
It really had been a lifetime ago, and once she had the chance to consider all the ramifications of that, she would likely go nuttier than a squirrel turd. Squirrel turd? Where did that come from? The acclaimed children’s author C.R.R. Underhill would never have thought a thing like … just let it go.
She was just beginning to consider “what now?” What do you do after a day like this? Tell the gang how much fun you’ve had and let’s do this again sometime real soon, and collect her daughter and go …
Yeah. Go … how? In truth, her mother’s house wasn’t very far away. Maybe a couple of miles as the crow flies, up over Little Bear Mountain and down the other side. The house was snuggled up against the mountain so tight there was hardly any room for a backyard. But Barber’s Mill Road was like all the other small roads in the county, it meandered through the hollows and around the mountains. It went west from her house around the base of Little Bear and connected with Danville Pike a couple of miles west of the Middle of Nowhere.
And she no longer had a car. No, actually, she did have a car — her mother’s that was parked in the driveway where Merrie had tripped over the downed tree limb. A 1991 Honda Legend. Ever-practical Mama.
What Charlie didn’t have anymore was the rental car. The 1995 Chrysler Cirrus she had rented at the Lexington Airport. Well, right now it didn’t seem likely she was going to be returning the car by the deadline. She’d have to pay a late charge. Bummer.
“Maybe it’s time you went home,” said a voice from behind her and she turned to see Sam surveying the ruins around them. Sam had already dispatched Pete, telling him several hours ago to leave if he “wanted to live until Christmas,” which was obviously some kind of private joke.
“You got a little girl to put to bed.”
Merrie McClintock was very likely the only human being in the whole of Nowhere County who’d had a great day. The receptionist in E.J.’s clinic claimed the child as her “assistant,” and Merrie had spent the day with the animals. She’d played with the kittens and the puppies, helped feed the Labrador retriever who’d stayed the night after having an infected toe surgically removed. And with Mrs. Throckmorton, who had brought her cat into the clinic while Sam was still sitting in the waiting room there. The cat, whose name was Mittens, had been scheduled to have hairball surgery this afternoon, but that didn’t happen. Mrs. Throckmorton had stayed on at the clinic, becoming Merrie’s new best friend as the they hung out together. Every time Charlie went to check on her, Raylynn Bennett and Mrs. Throckmorton had waved her away with “she’s fine.” Every time Merrie saw her mother, she’d looked stricken, fearing that Charlie intended to take her away from her private menagerie.
But as evening turned to night, even the little powerhouse ran out of gas. Raylynn had settled her with a blanket and a couple of kittens on the wide bench in the reception area and she’d gone to sleep in seconds.
“What about you?”
“Do I have a little girl to put to bed? No. Or if I do, I don’t remember where I left her.”
“I mean what about you going home. You’re bound to be more tired than I am.”
Malachi stepped up as they were talking.
“Sounds like we’re playing ‘Can you top this,’” he said. “If we are, I’m here to report that I think I had the gold medal winner from the Olympic projectile vomiting team. That guy could—”
He must have seen the looks on their faces and faltered.
“I’m sorry.” He sounded very tired indeed then. “Black humor. It’s a way of coping. And …” There was the suggestion, just the suggestion of a smile then. “If my actions at the bus shelter this morning, defending the bench against all enemies both foreign and domestic, is any indication, I’m no expert when it comes to coping skills.”
Sam did smile; it was wan, but it was genuine. “I’ll be glad to run you home. Rusty’s at a friend’s house and he’s spending the night.”
Rusty must be Sam’s little boy. Charlie didn’t even know Sam had one, and a husband, too, maybe, for that matter. There hadn’t been a whole lot of time for idle chit-chat.
Harry Tungate approached, worry etched in his face alongside the fatigue.
“Anybody seen Abby?” They shook their heads. “She’s gone, and dollars to doughnuts she got somebody to take her to the county line.”
Sam looked stricken. “She can’t! She was so sick. We have to …”
“No telling who she caught a ride with,” said Malachi.
Sam turned to Charlie.
“I need to get you and Merrie home and get back here. Abby’s not going to be in good shape when she shows up.”
Sam waited with Malachi outside E.J.’s office door while Charlie went in to get Merrie. Just standing there with him, not saying anything, should have been awkward, but they were both too tired and wrung out for awkward. They’d battled the Jabberwock today and the dragon took no prisoners.
In the lights the fire department had set up in the parking lot, they could see that the number of people showing up had finally dwindled to a trickle, either because it was so late or because word had spread that riding the Jabberwock was not like riding a rollercoaster, even if the resultant puking your guts up afterward was a similar effect.
“What is the Jabberwock, Malachi?” Sam said, and instantly hated the pathetic, little-girl quality in her voice. She hadn’t planned to say anything.
“I think the general consensus is some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomena blown in by the storm last night.”
“Is that what you think?”
“No.”
That surprised her.
“You don’t? Then what do you think?” He didn’t reply, just looked out past her at the parking lot. “Is it going to go away, vanish just like it appeared?”
He looked at her then, really looked at her for maybe the fir
st time all day. The scrutiny brought instant color to her cheeks that the darkness blessedly covered.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?”
She hadn’t been expecting the question.
“Shows, huh?”
He put his hand on her arm, a companionable gesture.
“Look around. If you’re not scared right now, you are definitely not paying attention.”
“I think—” Sam began, but the door opened and Charlie appeared, carrying a sleeping Merrie, so she stopped talking.
“Don’t worry about waking her up,” Charlie said. “We could drag her behind the car all the way home and it wouldn’t wake her up. And that’s on a day when she actually got to take two naps, which she didn’t today. She could sleep through a nuclear attack.”
Charlie turned to Malachi.
“E.J.’s looking for you to give you a key to the building, doesn’t want to lock away your rifle.”
Malachi had set his rifle inside E.J.’s reception area, behind the front door, when the group was loading up for the trip to the county line where Sam’d gotten her own ride on the Jabberwock.
The three just stood there then. Not knowing what to say and too tired to say it if they’d known. “Tomorrow …” Charlie began, and then fell silent.
“… will bring whatever it brings,” Malachi said. “We’ll deal with it.”