Melt (Book 8): Hold

by Pike, JJ

  Alice rocked Fran back and forth, back and forth, her hand cupped over the hole in the back of her head. She didn’t want any more of the dear girl’s brains to fall onto the forest floor. The sniper had taken her out with a single shot.

  Bill was safe.

  Agatha was safe.

  But Fran.

  Dear, dear Fran, who’d given her so much, made her working life so much better than it might otherwise have been, come to her family home and laughed with the Everlee children, dear Fran...

  “Mi querida amiga, ¿estás aquí?” My dear friend, are you here?

  She had no English. In her soul, Alice Everlee was still Alicia Marroquin and Alicia knew only Spanish. The poems of Lorca swam in and out of her blood-drenched vista.

  “Quiero dormir el sueño de las manzanas

  alejarme del tumulto de los cementerios.

  Quiero dormir el sueño de aquel niño

  que quería cortarse el corazón en alta mar.”

  “I want to sleep the sleep of the apples

  Far from the busyness of cemeteries.

  I want to sleep the sleep of that child

  Who would cut his heart out far at sea.”

  Her mind couldn’t make sense of the poem in English, but in Spanish she remembered the ants being flung in her face and the scorpion of dawn, pinching her awake; and the poet being dead and being alive at the same time, but needing all the while to rest; that yawning, craving, hungry need to know the song of the dead while never wanting to hear their blood call out. She had been like Lorca for so many years, longing for the rest of death without Death himself taking her to that place where the shining bones of her family lay.

  She never allowed herself to think of her mamá and papá, dead in the street just like this, their insides on the outside and their blood twisting and flowing and running away from her. They were cold in their graves, but now with Fran staring up at her, her long-dead parents rose and drifted towards her, their shriveled eyes staring from their sockets, their hands reaching out and pinching her shirt like the scorpion in Lorca’s poem. “Come to us, Alicia,” they sang. “Be with us and sleep the sleep of the apples.”

  Alicia looked away from the unearthly specters. She let her eyes roam about the place, hoping for a reprieve. These woods near their cabin were so beautiful. She’d picked this location for its remoteness, but the rolling hills and towering trees and lush undergrowth all added to its splendor. The moss was deep and soft, the tree behind her firm and sturdy, the sky above sang with winds that whipped Fran’s soul home.

  The young woman lying in her arms was almost gone.

  On the ground, beside her young friend’s hand, was a gun. It held the light of a thousand moons; no life of its own; only reflected glory. It subtracted life rather than adding. Who could have put that there?

  She turned to ask Bill, but he had disappeared, body and soul.

  The angels had taken him after all.

  Why could she feel no sorrow? What was in its place? Her beloved had been whisked away and she felt an iceberg floating in her chest where her heart should have been.

  No. Aggie had taken him. The pictures came back frame by frame. Agatha had been there, sobbing and crying and asking questions. Betsy had arrived. Good, kind Betsy. She had given Bill to Agatha and told the girl to take him to safety. The ice began to melt and her heart found its place in her chest once more.

  Bill was safe.

  Aggie was safe.

  But Fran.

  She looked down at the crumpled body and crushed head in her blood-sodden lap. How was it possible?

  Betsy was behind her, still talking. In English. Alicia Marroquin didn’t speak English. Only Spanish. Would Betsy understand her if she opened her mouth and let the sounds of her childhood flood out of her and into the woods?

  “She took her own life, Alice.”

  Betsy had been saying the same words for many minutes. Nonsensical, terrible words that changed the shape of the known universe.

  “She took her own life.” How did one say such a thing in Spanish? No one would take their life. It wasn’t theirs to take. It belonged to a power far greater than theirs.

  And yet.

  The gun in the grass. Fran’s fingertips so close. Her blood seeped through Alice’s mournful fingers and dripped onto the ground. Soon she’d be gone forevermore. The last wisps of her essence clung to the sweet, sweet face that was no longer hers but a modernist mishmash of her features.

  What did Alicia have to say to her friend that could never be said again?

  “Perdóname.” Forgive me. “Perdóname que corrí hacia el bosque.” Forgive me that I ran into the woods. “No te mamá. Si lo hubiera, todos seguiríamos vivos. I didn’t listen to you, Mama. If I had we might all still be alive. “Perdóname por el aquel hombre…”

  The leaden weights that had kept these words buried deep in her chest dripped alongside the ice as her heart found its rythmn.

  “Forgive me for that man. And what he did. And for the girls I never found. Forgive me for believing in hot chocolate and falling into a hole in the sky.”

  Betsy bent over her and picked up Fran’s gun.

  “Is it true?’ said Alice.

  “Which part?” Betsy’s face. So soft. So kind. No judgment. Only love.

  “The part when you said she killed herself? Is it true?”

  Betsy nodded.

  Bill had talked to Fran back when they were at the Lake Placid Lodge. Fran had told him she had “no regrets”. Was that her suicide call? Had she needed to talk to a friend?

  The arms and legs and formless torso in her lap was nothing more than a flesh package, now delivered of its contents.

  Fran was really truly absolutely fully gone.

  Alice looked to Betsy for answers, though she knew Betsy had none. “Why did she do it?”

  Betsy eased herself onto the patch of moss under the tree where Bill had been. She’d been standing all this time with her bad leg and Alice hadn’t paid her any attention. “We can never know why anyone would take this road.” She reached for Alice’s hand, but Alice wasn’t ready to relinquish Fran just yet. She kept her cooling body close in hopes her spirit would feel and know how much she was loved, and believe—even now, when it was too late—that she wasn’t alone in the world.

  “We need to move.” Betsy was on her knees, coaxing Fran out of Alice’s lap.

  “She was like a sister to me.” Alice had never said that to Fran. She’d barely known she thought it until now. “I lost my sister. Again.”

  Betsy nodded. “I know, honey. I’m sorry. It never gets any better.”

  “My mother always said Valentina was la niña de mis ojos. How do you say in English?”

  “The apple of my eye.”

  “It should have been me. But I was the gallina. The hen.” She shook her head. There was another phrase. It was in the book of idioms that Bill had given her. “The chicken. I was the chicken and ran in the other direction.”

  “This was in the uprising? The civil war?”

  Alice nodded.

  “You must have been very little when that happened.”

  Alice looked down at Fran’s slim shoulders and delicate hands and narrow feet. Fran hadn’t run away. She’d stayed and fought like a true hero.

  “‘Lleva a tu hermana, mi niña querida,’ she said. That’s what my mama told me to do. ‘Escónderse como pequeñas tortugas debajo de la casa’.”

  “Take your sister and hide yourselves like tortugas? I don’t know what that means.”

  “Like turtles. She told me to hide my sister. Cover her. Be her shell. Protect her.”

  “Papá y yo las queremos chicas. Recuerda. Los adoramos. Hacemos esto por ti.” Alice had forgotten those words. In the years since their murder, she’d lost her mother’s last words. But they’d been words of love.

  “Your papa and I love you girls. Remember that. We worship you. We do this for you.” Betsy wiped her face, which was streaked with
steady lines of tears.

  Alice slid her hand over the grass and gripped Betsy’s hand.

  “So they knew? Your parents knew?” Betsy swiped at her nose. Crying was so inglorious.

  “Knew what?”

  Betsy squeezed her hand, dug around in her apron pockets, didn’t find a tissue, and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  “What? What are you saying?”

  “My Spanish isn’t up to much. I took a correspondence course, back in the early ’80s. I only used it when Jim and I went to Barcelona that one time. I’m probably wrong.” Betsy continued to sniffle beside her. “She loved you—they both loved you—very, very much.”

  Betsy had told her of the death of their baby many times, but she didn’t recall seeing her cry like this; softly, openly, without bitterness. “You’re crying because we got to say goodbye and you didn’t?”

  “Oh.” Betsy’s mouth stayed open for a few seconds. She patted Alice’s hand and took hers back. “Oh, no. That’s not it. I held Esther for hours. I told her all the things your mother would have told you if she could have had one single second longer with you…” She trailed off, lost to the past, her newborn baby cradled in her arms, death hanging over the two of them like a monstrous joke. Parents weren’t supposed to outlive their children. It wasn’t right. Alice knew she’d die a million times if any of her children went before she did.

  Betsy cleared her throat. “Do you want to know what I heard? What I think your mother was saying in those final moments?”

  If that didn’t make your chest contract at a rate of a million miles per second, nothing would. Alice held her breath. She knew and she didn’t know. Wanted and didn’t want. Felt it and was numb to the meaning. Whatever Betsy had heard was going to be terrible. She’d run when the men were at the door with their big knives. She’d let go of Valentina’s hand. She’d hidden. Her mother would have whipped her until her back peeled off in long, raw strips if she’d lived through the massacre to find her baby Valentina was gone.

  “They knew.”

  Alice hung her head. It was what she’d always feared. The worst thing anyone could possibly do was to let their sister die. She’d let it happen and here was sweet Betsy, who could read between the lines even in a second language she claimed not to know very well; she could hear that her mother had a premonition; told her to hold on to Valentina because she knew—KNEW—her eldest daughter was a coward. She braced herself and took a deep, gulping breath. She was New Alice. She could bear it. This was what she had to face if she was to be truly made anew.

  “They knew they were going to their death.”

  “No. That’s not…” Alice’s world stopped spinning.

  “You’ve been in a war zone. You know what it’s like.”

  She’d thought of her parents as sainted, but simple, figures; villagers; farmers; Mama and Papa. Static, everlasting, godlike. But not grown up people like her and Bill. They were frozen in time, the vision of her youth. They hadn’t grown into real people like, say, Mimi or Betsy or anyone else who was older than her. They were bugs in amber, forever their 20- or 30-something selves who’d scratched out a life in the Guatemalan dirt. She frowned. Not 30-something. They’d never made it to their thirties. How old could her mother have been when she died? She’d had Alicia when she was 19. So, 26. Alice closed her eyes and tried to imagine what a 26-year-old looked like.

  The inky cape that so often covered her mind threatened to draw near and envelop her. She fought back. She’d sworn to be New Alice, who faced these things.

  Her mother had been Fran’s age when she died.

  Would her mother have had less courage than Fran?

  Never.

  And Papa? Barely a year older? He would have taken on the world barefisted to keep his children safe.

  So why had she imagined them as victims rather than warriors? Why hadn’t she heard her mother’s words and understood that they were the words of someone who understood war? This might be our last moment, mi niña. Or this. Or this. Or this.

  “Hacemos esto por ti.” We do this for you.

  She rocked Fran. The young woman had died fighting for a better world and, when that had gone to hell, to prevent the evil from spreading.

  Her mother would have done the same.

  Alice could do no less. She would get her children to safety and then do what needed to be done.

  For the third time, Betsy took Alice’s hand from Fran’s head and placed it in her lap. “I need you to listen to me, Alice. We need to move.”

  “I can’t leave her here.”

  “We’ll come back for her.”

  “But what if the raccoons come? Or the vultures?”

  “There’s a storm coming. I have no idea when exactly, but it’s coming. We can’t sit and mourn. We have to move and mourn.”

  Betsy was right, but the thought of leaving Fran for the scavengers was too much. Someone would have buried Mama and Papa. When the men with machetes had gone the neighbors would have come and made sure that graves were dug and prayers said and the earth blessed before it was thrown in on top of them. They’d be together. In their best clothes. Catalina from next door would have brushed Mama’s beautiful hair and pinned it back the way she liked it. Maybe she’d been buried in her veil. Alice smiled. The longer the veil, the happier the couple. Isn’t that what they believed? Her mother’s veil had been six feet long; long enough for a happy, happy life. She and Valentina had never dared put it on, but they’d seen it in the box of all the good things that Mama kept in her room.

  Fran deserved at least that much: a burial. Some words. A decent end to a remarkable life.

  She tried to tuck her arm under Fran and lift, but the girl—slight as she was—was too heavy.

  “I can’t lift her, but I can drag her.” Alice stood, gripped Fran beneath the arms, and took a couple of steps backwards. It wasn’t too bad. Her back hurt, but that was nothing when she imagined the predators in the woods having their way with her corpse.

  “Where are you going?” Betsy was at her side, her face creased in consternation.

  “To Jo’s place.”

  “No.” Betsy put her hand on Alice’s arm to stay her progress. “We have to go home. Aggie will have a cow if we’re out here much longer. We have to go the other way.”

  “But my team’s out here.” Alice kept dragging Fran. She looked over her shoulder to check the path for roots and lumps and bumps then took four steps. Repeat. And again. It was going to take a while, but she owed Fran this much.

  “Leave her with me,” said Betsy. “Go. Get your team and bring them back this way. We want them with us anyway.”

  “Are you sure?” Alice lay Fran on the ground as gently as she could.

  “I’m sure. But you need to hurry. I’m serious, Alice. Don’t allow your grief to get the better of you. We’ve all wanted to lie down and give up the ghost at one time or another, but we can’t. Not now. Especially not considering...” She pointed at Fran. “We will never know why she did it but, to my way of thinking, we can honor her by not giving in to those impulses.”

  “You won’t leave her?”

  “I won’t leave her.”

  “Not for anything?”

  “Alice…” Betsy had conjured up her stern tone. It made Alice smile. “I need you to hurry. I do not want to be on the wrong side of Aggie Everlee. Now, as my man Jim would say, get.”

  Alice left Betsy guarding Fran’s corpse and ran for Jo’s place. Christine Baxter was at the end of this run. The one woman who could answer her questions was just minutes away. She was awash with chemicals: two parts guilt and one part anticipation.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Alistair held his rifle over his head, the other hand palm open and facing the military convoy, which was close to, but not on, his patch. “Josephine,” he shouted. “You should have called ahead. We’d have rolled out the welcome mat.”

  Jo Morgan—he called her Josephine; Jo was a man’s name; Josephine, on the other
hand, was not—climbed off the driver’s cab of the army vehicle, the bandages in her fists waving behind her like streamers. It was inventive, he had to give her that.

  There were three soldiers, all with weapons drawn, at the front of the truck. Alistair moved slowly. They were young. One of them young enough that he barely needed to shave. They’d be eager to show their superior officers that they had the goods. They’d shoot too soon, just to prove they could. Every step he took, every word out of his mouth, had to be carefully calibrated to keep the peace.

  For now.

  “My name is Alistair Lewk. I’m a friend of Miss Morgan’s.” He looked at her rather than the soldiers. “We’re friends, aren’t we, Josephine?”

  Josephine nodded. “You can lower your weapons, guys. I know Alistair.”

  The soldier closest to Josephine leaned in close and whispered. “We need the general. He’ll know what to do…”

  “Alistair?” Josephine approached, hands up, unarmed, but stopped a few feet short of Alistair’s position. “We’re not headed your way. No one will step foot in Wolfjaw Ridge. We’re going to my place.”

  “With tanks?”

  She laughed. “There are no tanks. They’re army vehicles, for sure, but no tanks.”

  “I see four M35s, three FMTVs, a PLS with a customize mount, two M939s…”

  Josephine smiled. “I hear you. But we’re still not headed your way. And they’re still not tanks. These vehicles are all strictly used to move people and parts from A to B. Nothing more.”

  “May I?” Alistair lowered his rifle so that it was shoulder height, but still held away from his body. Give them no excuses. They’ll shoot if they can.

  “On the ground, I think.” She shot a look at the soldier to her left.

  “I want to apologize for my men’s overzealous response to your incursion,” said Alistair. He put his gun on the ground as Josephine had suggested.

  “We’re not on Wolfjaw prop…”

  Alistair held up a hand, eyes closed, shaking his head. Josephine had interrupted him. No one in Wolfjaw did that. Not even her. He opened his eyes the second she stopped talking and smiled. She needed to think it was a request and not a command. “I know what you’re going to say. You’re not on Wolfjaw property. Things have changed since we last had the pleasure of your company, Josephine. There have been raids, gunfire, even abductions. A couple of days ago we had to fend off a group of over thirty people who wanted the compound for themselves. Desperate times, my friend, call for desperate measures. As a result, we’ve expanded our perimeter to include the road. To do less would be foolish. We can’t have people taking this fork in the road and coming to our gates. We’ve worked too hard and for too long to hand it over to some Johnny-come-lately who’s scared witless because their elected officials haven’t made proper provisions for those who’ve been displaced from their homes. I’m sympathetic, but that doesn’t mean I can allow Wolfjaw to be overrun.”