by Ike Hamill
Leonard forced himself to lift his feet higher with each step, just to prove that he could. He wanted to believe that he was in control. If he wasn’t, then he would know soon enough.
Chapter Nineteen - Dying
(Leonard)
LEONARD’S FEET SCRAPED ACROSS the dirt for a while before he realized the implication. His eyes were barely open. Part of the time, the only reason he stayed on the trail was because he bounced off of a tree and had to find his bearings again. He was asleep on his feet, a sleepwalking zombie.
“Dirt,” he whispered.
He blinked hard and then forced his eyes open. In the moonlight, he saw a slight hill up ahead. Stumbling and cursing, he climbed, noticing that the snowmobile’s treads had churned the leaves and dirt as it had climbed. When he crested the hill, he fell to his knees in that dirt and looked down at the lake. The icy surface shone in the moonlight. The center of the lake, where the snowmobile had crashed through, was as black as the heavens above. The whole lake looked like a milky iris with a jet black pupil, staring endlessly up at the sky.
Leonard smiled.
He forced himself to hold still for a moment, watching for any signs of life below. This was where Marie had stood, watching as Leonard threw himself into the water on a hopeless mission to save Nelson. Had she known that it was going to happen all along? Was that event another one of her billiard balls, bouncing off the rail in a perfectly predictable manner?
If that were true—if this entire chain of events had been foreseen and then put into action by some near-omniscient consciousness—then his only recourse was to do something completely unpredictable.
Leonard started his feet moving again. He stumbled and picked up speed, then forced himself to slow down as he descended the slope. Tucked into the darkness under the trees on the far side of the lake, Patrice’s little cabin sat. His friend’s grandfather had built the place as a refuge from normal life. It was an oasis away from disappointment. Growing up, a lot of families in town had similar arrangements. They lived in a perfectly nice home, maybe a little too small for everyone. Two parents and three kids were squeezed into a three bedroom place. Or, like Leonard’s family, parents and their four boys living in a ranch that was no bigger than a doublewide. But a lot of them had remote cabins, handed down from grandparents who had seen more of life and death than most people deserved.
Leonard’s family hadn’t kept such a luxury. If his mother had been given a cabin in the woods, she would have sold it for food in the Eighties. With four boys eating everything in sight, her survival had been contingent on buying vegetables that their teenaged bodies couldn’t recognize as food. While he and his brothers ate peanut butter and mustard sandwiches, she had lived on brussels sprouts, broccoli, and artichoke hearts.
Leonard had always been lucky to have Patrice as his friend. Patrice’s family kept a camp and they always had an extra seat available for him at dinner time. It was too soon to mourn Patrice, but Leonard had the feeling that it was inevitable. At his older brother’s funeral, Leonard had shed a few tears. His passing was sad, but it also felt inevitable. His brother had encountered everything first—puberty, high school, driving, marriage, and kids. In a way, it felt perfectly natural that his brother had gone first into the next realm.
But Patrice was more than a brother. He and Leonard had spent so much time together not because they were genetically obligated, but because they enjoyed each other’s company. For a moment, Leonard stopped. He was so close to the salvation of Patrice’s cabin. He desperately needed food, warmth, and sleep if he was going to find a way to survive. The respite ahead didn’t belong to him. It belonged to Patrice. Leonard had left his best friend injured and alone with two possessed people.
He closed his eyes. It was his duty to turn around, march back north, and give his life, if necessary, to defend Patrice.
Leonard heard a whisper in his head.
“Get out, Len.”
Those were the last words that Patrice had said to him. Patrice had fought the alien inside his own hands in order to give Leonard a chance.
Leonard took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and found the dark shape of the cabin in the distance. The only way to honor Patrice’s sacrifice was to keep moving forward.
Circling the lake on the edge of the ice, Leonard shuffled towards his goal. He took off his hood and paused to look and listen.
“If they can do it, I should be able to do it, right?” he whispered. Leonard tried to imagine what it would feel like to share a consciousness with Andrew and Marie. He imagined that he could sense where they were and what they were doing—trying to sense whether or not he was headed into an ambush.
He felt absolutely nothing but alone.
“Shit,” he whispered.
Resorting to logic, instead of mysterious paranormal senses, he decided that an ambush was completely unlikely. They could have driven the SUV down to where Patrice’s truck was wrecked, but the hike from there took hours. It was faster to take the trail on foot, the same way that he had done. If that’s the direction they had chosen, they would have to catch up to him before overtaking him. It was almost certain that the cabin was safe.
Leonard started moving again.
“All this indecision is what’s going to sink me,” he said to himself. “Unpredictable. I need to be unpredictable.”
* * * * * * *
(Leonard)
After closing and locking the door, he barricaded it with the table. Then, he went around and locked all the windows. People didn’t waste good locks on remote cabins. The locks were just symbolic, saying, “No, it’s not okay for you to come in, but if you must, please don’t destroy the place.” They weren’t going to hold anyone out for long.
The fire was dead, but it bounced back quickly when he added some kindling and logs. With the first match, it sprang to life.
They had taken most of the snack food on the last trip. He had to settle for a cold can of franks and beans. While he ate, he loaded the rifles by candlelight. One gun had gone on the trip. That left three hunting rifles—his own, Jake’s, and Andrew’s—and a couple of handguns that he had found in Jake’s bag. There was some dirt clogged in the barrel of Andrew’s rifle, so Leonard set that one aside until the end so he could clean it before loading it.
With food in him and the fire beginning to make the cabin inhabitable, Leonard’s eyes grew heavy immediately. Before he surrendered to sleep, he forced himself to make a plan. Leonard wasn’t the type to stand and fight. His general approach to life was that there were far too many people on the planet for anyone to get too attached to one particular viewpoint or geographic location. Everyone had to give up a little of their sovereignty in order to maintain a little peace and order.
That made the idea of defending the cabin the most unpredictable thing he could think to do. Anyone who knew him would guess that Leonard would pack a quick bag and head south. Maybe, given the fact that he was so tired, Andrew might suspect that Leonard would find a safe place in the woods to hide out. Nobody would guess that he would hole up in the cabin and shoot at anyone who tried to approach, so that’s precisely what he intended to do.
Near each front and side window, he placed a gun. Against the back windows, he tilted up mattresses and wedged bed frames against them. When he was done, he dragged some blankets next to the fire and snuffed the candle. In the dark, he listened and chewed on cookies that he had found in Andrew’s bag.
The sugar gave him a quick burst of energy that faded fast and left him even more tired than before.
Leonard leaned back against the woodbox and let his eyes close.
* * * * * * *
(Leonard)
He snapped awake, his hand squeezing the plastic bag that the cookies had been in. Tossing that to the side, he found one of Jake’s guns. His fingers checked the safety in the dark. The sleep had barely been restful. The hours that he had spent in the dark, he had dreamt only of walking through snow. In his dreams, every coup
le of paces, he tripped on something hidden by the snow. A root or a rock would send him stumbling forward. As soon as he caught his balance, he would trip again.
Leonard wiggled his toes and bent his legs slowly, trying to restore the blood flow. They were numb from the hard boards.
With one hand, he started to press himself up from the floor.
Leonard froze, suddenly remembering that he had woken up for a reason.
There had been a knock on glass.
“Back away from the cabin or I’m going to start shooting,” Leonard called. He blinked and spun in the dark, trying to guess which direction the knock had come from.
His panic started to subside. Leonard began to think that it had been his imagination or just a dream.
A light clicked on outside the porch window.
Leonard raised the gun.
“Hey,” Patrice said.
He took his finger away from the trigger.
Patrice was shining a flashlight up at his own face, like they were sitting around a campfire, telling scary stories. His face was serious—he had come to say something important, apparently.
“Can you help me?” Patrice asked.
“Help you what?”
Leonard was still chewing on Patrice’s question. The good news was that it was a question. Marie and Andrew had been full of imperatives and orders, telling him what to do. The other good news was that Patrice had said, “me,” instead of, “us.” If Patrice was on his own and still thinking for himself, there was a chance that he wasn’t completely lost to the collective fungal consciousness.
The bad news was the hand that held the flashlight. There was no glove on Patrice’s hand and it looked blue.
“Let me in and I’ll explain,” Patrice said.
“No,” Leonard said. “Tell me something only you would know.”
It was a trick. Leonard was trying to buy time so he could figure out if Andrew, Marie, or maybe even Jake was looking through one of the other windows. Also, although he had no doubt that Patrice would be able to access the memories still inside his brain, Leonard thought that he would know if it was really Patrice just by the sound of his voice. Andrew and Jake had spoken in a strange, spaced-out style after they had been taken over. If Patrice showed any of that weird rhythm in his voice, Leonard would know what he was dealing with.
“When we were in ninth grade, and I told you that I was going to tell my parents, you told me to wait. I didn’t even have to say what I was going to tell them. You said, ‘Find a date first, then tell them. Chances are you’ll be away at college before you even find a guy good enough to ask out, so why cause drama before then?’ It was terrible advice, but I was still so glad. You knew who I was and you didn’t care. You told me that, no matter what, nothing was going to change between us.”
Leonard lowered the gun.
It wasn’t Patrice talking—not completely. There were a couple of pauses that shouldn’t have been there. He heard just enough evidence to know that Patrice’s mind had been compromised. But he also knew that he could never pull the trigger. He had been through too much with Patrice. If this was how his life was going to end, he would just have to accept it.
He set the gun down and moved the table out of the way. Even after he unlocked the door, Patrice didn’t come in until Leonard invited him.
“Where are the others?” Leonard asked.
“They’re doing their best with Jake.”
“Drop the act,” Leonard said. “I know that you’re all working towards the same goal. We don’t have to pretend that they’re on some special mission to try to stop Jake.”
“It’s not like that,” Patrice said. “I was wrong before, and you’re wrong too.”
Leonard shook his head, deciding not to believe any of it. The idea of “truth” had been cancelled until further notice. Nothing and nobody could be trusted, including his own thoughts.
“We have to go north again,” Patrice said.
“I’m not going anywhere. I barely slept and I’m still worn out.”
Leonard spun a chair around and sat down hard. He pulled a candle from the windowsill and struck a match.
Patrice swept his flashlight around the cabin. “Grandpa would be pissed. You’ve really wrecked the place.”
“Don’t change the subject. I’m not walking anywhere. If you want me to move, you better infect me with whatever you have because I’m not going if I still have my free will.”
“I have something better than free will,” Patrice said. His hand came up and his other hand pointed the flashlight at it. He was holding keys.
Leonard furrowed his brow, not understanding.
“The nearest vehicle is hours from here,” Leonard said. “I should know. I’ve walked it both ways.”
“Look closer.”
Leonard looked while Patrice extended the keys closer to his face. When he reached out for them, Patrice snatched them back.
“While you slept, I brought the second snowmobile down here. It’s parked up over the hill, where the snow starts. I’m sorry for the walk, but I didn’t want to gum everything up by driving it through the mud.”
Leonard opened his mouth to object—he hadn’t heard any snowmobile. If Patrice was telling the truth, he probably wouldn’t have heard anything. Through the cabin walls, they had barely caught faint sounds of Nelson’s snowmobile until he crested the hill and started down towards the lake. Dead asleep, he had barely registered Patrice’s knocking.
Leaning back in his chair, Leonard let himself relax. Giving in felt good. It felt right. The fight was over and he had lost. Now, he could really sleep.
“You remember my aunt?” Patrice asked.
“No.”
Leonard kept his eyes closed.
* * * * * * *
(Leonard)
“Sure you do,” Patrice said.
Leonard rested his chin on his chest and grunted, “Nope.”
“She moved to New Hampshire with that French Canadian guy named Soucy. Before she left, she and my mom were so tight that they would sit together for an hour, almost every night, having their private conversations.”
“Oh yeah,” Leonard said. A picture popped into his head. The two of them, Leonard and Patrice, had been playing video games late into the night one Saturday and they had taken a break to go get some cookies from the freezer. Patrice’s mom always kept a tub of freezer cookies. She said that freezing did two things—it kept the cookies fresher longer, and it made them slower to eat. As soon as they came into the kitchen, they saw the two women sitting at the round table in the corner. The women stopped talking as soon as they saw the boys, and waited silently until Patrice and Leonard left. When Leonard rounded the corner to the hall, he heard them start talking again in casual whispers.
“Well, when Aunt Jackie took up with that Soucy fellow, they stopped having their conversations in person and started having them over the phone. They stayed just as close until Aunt Jackie moved to New Hampshire. Back then, just crossing the border meant that there was a state to state charge and both Jackie and Mom were penny pinchers.”
Leonard sighed. It was so easy to forget that there was a time when everyone wasn’t constantly connected. The idea seemed strange now.
“After not talking for a while, Aunt Jackie sent a postcard saying that she was coming back for a visit in August. You remember—that was the same year that we got stuck on the Ferris wheel when the power went out at the fair.”
The words painted a picture in Leonard’s mind. He remembered leaning out over the railing of their car to try to see the people who were chasing a pig through the midway. He had leaned way over when the power went out. Surprised by everything going black, Leonard had almost toppled over the railing. Patrice had grabbed his belt, steadying him. They had been trapped on the Ferris wheel for a good twenty minutes while the ride operator shouted up to them every few minutes that the power was coming back on any second.
“We came in late that night, if yo
u remember, and my mom and Jackie were arguing in the living room. Jackie was supporting Dukakis for president and my mom kept calling her a Massachusetts liberal. Jackie kept asking why that was a bad thing. In my house, you didn’t have to explain why being a Massachusetts liberal was a bad thing. Putting those two words together instantly conjured the idea of a weak, ineffectual, pansy who would just let the world roll over them. But my aunt didn’t relent.”
The argument was starting to come back to Leonard. He remembered sitting in the chair nearest the door, waiting for Patrice so they could escape to a deeper part of the house. Patrice wanted to ask something of his mother and that meant that both of them had to wait until his mother and aunt took a breath and paused their argument.
“Mom was just throwing around labels. She wouldn’t talk about the specifics of the platform. Jackie brought up Reagan’s ethics. Mom always thought that he was shady. She said that if Ron knew, then George knew, and that meant that George was just as crooked as Ron. Jackie also talked about how Dukakis would make people stop discriminating against gay people. Even back then, that was something that my mom believed in. Meanwhile, Bush practically said out loud that gay people couldn’t be part of traditional family values. On all the specific points, mom should have favored Dukakis, but she couldn’t get past the label of Massachusetts liberal. Finally, Jackie said that Mom was only Republican because Dad was. Mom got really angry about that.”