I was in the rec room an instant later. “Marco, I need you.”
He jumped up, alert. “What is it?”
“Listen to Jillian’s lungs. Tell me what you hear.”
The urgency must’ve come across, because both Lark and Marco ran past me though Lark ran down the hall towards Eleanor’s room.
In my room, Marco slid into place next to Jillian, whose face was damp with a sheen of sweat. He placed his head on her chest. “Rales,” he whispered. “Crackling.” He put his ear to Jillian’s slightly open mouth. “Wet. How did I miss it?” He put a hand to her forehead, then yanked the duvet back and began untying her robe. “Dude, she’s burning up. Was she this hot when she went to sleep?”
“No,” I said, pulling off her socks with equal haste. She complained of a headache and…” Oh, no. Oh my God, how did I miss it? Why didn’t I think to check?
“What?” he demanded. “What did she say?”
“Chest pain,” I said. “She complained of chest pain. I think she has pneumonia. We need to move her now.” I moved past Marco and sat on the bed, cradling Jillian. “Sweetheart, you have to wake up,” I said loudly. “We’re taking you to the doctor.” Jillian’s eyelids fluttered, but she couldn’t be roused. “Wake up,” I repeated, shaking her a little. “Jillian, wake up, please. Jillian!”
“She looks like you did when you had Emily’s fever.”
I jerked my head towards the door. Reid stood next to Ember, both of them holding damp rags. Reid handed me the cloths, which I laid on Jillian’s forehead and behind her neck.
“How did they get it down?” I asked, desperately dabbing at her face. The cloths were already warm. Beau had given her a shot of fever reducer, but I had no idea what it was, who made it, or if there was anymore in the house.
“Emergency medicine,” Reid said. “I don’t know what they did.”
“We need to call 911, then,” I said, pulling out my phone.
Marco grabbed it from me. “No, we can’t. Hospitals aren’t safe, as we saw in Baltimore. Beau and Alysia will be looking for us before long. Jill is going to need a long time in whatever hospital we go to.” He steeled himself, then looked at Reid. “Call them. This is what they exist for, isn’t it?”
What? “Who do you mean? What’s going on?”
But Reid was already out the door, dialing his phone. Marco ran out after him, leaving me with Ember.
I held up my hands in a “help me” gesture. “Can someone please explain?”
Ember obviously did some quick thinking. “You know that we can’t admit ourselves to civilian hospitals,” she said slowly. “Though sometimes civilians like Jen drag us into them, and they’re not allowed to deny us medical care. But do you know why we can’t admit ourselves?”
“No,” I said, rubbing my temples. “What does this—”
“Because we’re at our greatest disadvantage when we’re recuperating,” she said, the picture of patience. “A lot of us used to die in hospitals before the laws were changed. Insurance companies were also getting tired of shelling out millions after attacks. Now there’s just one hospital we go to, and it’s the safest building on the planet. Luckily, it’s not very far from here.”
I slowly stood up, the pieces falling together. “You’re talking about the Super hospital in Leesburg.”
Leesburg, Virginia was just an hour and a half west of Annapolis. I’d visited once when my high school’s JROTC battalion had competed against Loudoun County High School’s in a regional competition.
“Yes,” she said, biting her lip. “Reid is on the phone with the police right now. They’re going to call in the medevac helicopter. It’ll probably be here in ten minutes.”
Something about her tone, the way she hesitated when speaking, bothered me. “What’s wrong, then? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Before I answer, tell me that you understand that it’s the only place she can go.”
My heart began to beat double time. “Ember, what the hell is going on?” My voice had grown higher.
“Tell me that you understand. I need to hear you say it.”
“It’s the only place she can go.”
“You know how it’s so fortified?”
“Yeah…”
Ember’s fingers twisted in the hem of her tunic. “Jillian told Beau that the fortifications were secretly for protecting the JM-104. He bought it. That’s where Beau and Alysia are now.”
Item Eighteen
Letters sent between Christina St. James and her daughter Juliana Harris, dated March 1927.
Juliana,
Perhaps I did not make myself plain enough. I am not unsympathetic to a widow’s pain and desperation—I miss your Papa every day—but if you insist on whoring around with that colored man, I will have to take action.
Edward and I have been working with the Richmond city council to set up an official “team,” and we can not have you if you insist on living with Harold. If you don’t care for me anymore, think of the precious children you had with Arthur and how you’d shame them. They wouldn’t be able to hold their head up in public. Furthermore, the only reason the country loves us is because we’re moral. Consider the impact if we acted like the rabble.
Love,
Mama
Reply:
Dear Mama,
I’m already pregnant. If it’s a girl, I’ll call her Christina after you. If it’s a boy, he’ll be Marco, for grandpa. I want to start new family naming traditions. Don’t worry, I won’t “shame” my other children by calling my new children Harris—they’ll be St. James! Oh—two St. James families, one white and one colored. I can’t wait for the heads to spin!
Xoxoxoxo
Juliana
P.S. Take off your white hat, Mama. You can’t stop me.
18
I had fifteen minutes to do this.
The snow-covered dirt opened up in front of us, and a six-foot-long, four-foot-deep grave appeared with no fuss. There was only room for one body, since I truly didn’t care what happened to Will’s remains. He’d polluted my childhood—he wasn’t going to permanently pollute my yard. Even at this somber moment, I still liked the thought of Beau discovering Will’s remains where they lay.
The morning wind blew in strong gusts from the water, unbroken by the trees. The flap of sheet that covered my mother’s dead-eyed stare whipped up, and I found myself looking down into her clouding eyes.
I jostled the heavy corpse in my arms, trying to nudge the sheet back in place, but instead her whole face became exposed. There was a perfect vertical slit between her eyebrows.
“Let me help you,” Reid said, holding his arms out to take the heavy corpse from my arms. “I’ll be very careful.”
I stepped back, my teeth chattering. “No, I need to do it,” I insisted. “I’m her son.”
I had no idea what I was going to do, though. Placing her manually into a hole that deep would be awkward, and hardly dignified.
“You’re shaking,” he said quietly. “What if I just make a platform and lower her down?”
Instead of waiting for an answer, his eyes glowed again and loose dirt from around the grave flew up and formed a plank. The platform floated up to me.
My arms were about to give out. My entire body had been wracked by shivers since I’d stumbled out of my bedroom and towards my mother’s room just minutes before.
I had no time. We had no time. Everything was crashing down at once: Jillian was lethally ill, we were going to the last place on earth we should, and I had mere minutes to lay my mother to rest and make my peace with it.
And I could not do anything about it.
I laid my mother’s body on the plank. She killed a lot of people. It’s not a big loss to you or the world.
Reid put his hand on my shoulder. “Do you want to say anything?” He glanced over my shoulder, then looked back to me, his face infuriatingly calm. Now that he was assured of Ember’s love, he was once again the strong, sturdy hero I’d a
dmired. I hated him for it.
I swore, a terrible lump forming in my throat. “What am I supposed to say? ‘Thanks for torturing my wife? Sorry your baby couldn’t have been mom’s little psychopath’?” My voice grew higher and higher. “Just stick her in the ground. Get this over with. The helicopter will be here soon.”
I simply tucked the sheet back around my mother’s face. She never really loved you. If she had, she wouldn’t have done any of it. It was all fake.
He nodded, and the shrouded body descended into the cold earth, coming to rest without so much as a rustle at the bottom of the grave. With a wave of his hand, dirt fell on the body, concealing it from me.
When the last of the displaced dirt was back in place, he lowered his hand in the air as if pressing down on something, and the loose grave dirt compacted. “If you want, I’ll get some rocks and mark the grave. They’ll also prevent animals from digging up the remains.”
The image of animals digging up my mother was too much.
I fell to my knees, my forehead touching the ground, and let the wretched, humiliating tears fall. To hell with Reid, who would never understand. I didn’t care if he and the entire Baltimore team saw me crying like a baby on a murderer’s grave.
She’d been my mother, and she’d loved me.
She’d loved my lisp when I was five. She’d loved my rotund belly when I was ten. She’d loved me when I was fifteen and had cried after killing my first victim. She’d loved me when I was a high school senior sulking in my room after my father had ripped up my acceptance letter to Old Dominion University. She’d loved me when I’d had trouble making friends in Saint Catherine.
Through all of that, she’d loved me and looked at me with the fondness only a mother can have for her child.
She’d loved me, but she hadn’t loved my choices. And my choices were objectively better than hers. I would have to learn how to reconcile these two thoughts.
Warm hands appeared on my shoulders.
“Go away,” I growled. “Give me a damn minute.”
“I would—”
I jerked my head up. That wasn’t Reid’s voice.
“—but Jill’s been saying your name. I thought you’d like to be near her.” Marco was kneeling next to me. His large, sad eyes conveyed many emotions, all of them kind. “Ember said you were trying to hide this from me, but I can’t figure out why.”
“Ember should mind her own business! I just want to bury my mom and not—not—have to defend why I’m sad, okay? She’s my mom.” I stood up and immediately marched back towards the house. Ice had encrusted around my eyes.
“Ben, wait,” Marco called, running up to my side. “What do you mean, defend why you’re sad?”
I furiously wiped my eyes with my sleeve. “You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.”
“I’m sorry she killed your sisters,” I said, pathetic as anything. He flinched, but I plunged on, “I wish I could go back and fight her off myself. I would in a heartbeat. I wish I could’ve been a better boyfriend so we would’ve left Liberty sooner and maybe stopped the attack. I wish I’d never met you guys, because then Jillian wouldn’t be suffocating to death up there, and Caroline, and Melissa, and Adora would be alive. I wish I’d never been born, or at least been born different, able to be happy here with my family.”
The words flowed out of the fear and anger that was destroying me. I’d dragged them all down.
There was a long silence while he stared at me. Finally, he said, “You wish you’d never met us?”
My thoughts stopped. “I…I…well…you’d be safe if I hadn’t.”
“Ben, we’d be dead.”
I shook my head. “No, you wouldn’t. Any time I saved you after meeting you was because of—”
“Do you have any idea whatsoever how miserable we all were?” His words lashed out like a whip. “What it was like before you came into our lives? No, of course you don’t, because we hate talking about those days. But maybe we should.”
He put his hands on his hips, looking comically like Jillian when she was put out with me. “Maybe we should talk about what it’s like to hear your teammates screaming in other rooms while your leader beats them for made-up infractions. Maybe we should talk about what it’s like to see women you regard as sisters pull their hair out in clumps because of stress. Maybe we should talk about being in pain every single day because of injuries that nobody on the team had the skill to attend to.”
“Marco, I—”
“I think we should talk about actually wanting to study and learn medicine but having no idea how! Maybe we should talk about how I’ve always thought you were cool and kept studying medicine to be more like you! Maybe we should talk about how yeah, sure, we’re all uneducated, but nobody ever held your relatives against you! We all think it’s great that you wanted to be like us and gave up everything! I mean, look at your house, for God’s sake! It’s a mansion! You have a room just for television! And…”
He stepped back, his hands on his head. “Dude, I saw your senior portrait on the wall up there. You were wearing a school uniform. You went to a fancy private school, didn’t you? You could’ve gone anywhere and done anything with your life, but you chose to be with us. You chose us,” he repeated faintly. “And it’s made our lives better. So don’t stand there and tell me that you wish you’d never met m—us, because you have no idea what you’re saying.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I dropped my head. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He stepped back and surveyed me. “And I have never been angry at you because of what your mom did, nor will I ever be. I came out to tell you about Jill, but also to say that I’m sorry you had to do this. I know what it’s like to lose a family. If you have anything nice to say about your mom, I won’t stop you from saying it.”
I closed my eyes and recalled the last time I’d seen her alive, half a year before. I’d stood on the roof of the submerged school and pleaded with my parents to leave Jillian and me in peace. Mom had been so convinced of my loyalty to my family that she’d deluded herself into believing that Jillian had somehow forced me to desert.
I’d always remember my mother’s desperate, plaintive face as she’d pleaded with me to come home, and then with my father to spare my life. I knew without a doubt that if I had taken her offer, my mother would’ve immediately forgiven all the pain I’d caused her. She would’ve embraced me and kissed my cheek—those formerly chubby cheeks that she’d loved so much—and called me her Benny.
Dad was gone. Eleanor was gone. Mom was gone. And now, Jillian was about to be gone, too. The urge to run made my feet itch, though I couldn’t think of a location. I just wanted to get away.
“My family’s disintegrating,” I said faintly, staring up at my bedroom window. “I can’t stop it. What do I do?” I turned back to him. “I can’t heal sickness.”
He gestured at the door. “Right now, you can go inside and hold Jill’s hand. You’re her husband, and that’s what husbands are supposed to do. Just being there for her will be enough for now.”
I was at the bedroom door in less than three seconds. Jillian was awake—sort of. Abby was holding her up in bed and offering her the bottle of water I’d fetched, but Jillian was only half conscious.
Abby turned to me. “Helicopter?”
“In a few minutes,” I said, sitting on the bed and delicately taking Jillian from Abby. “Go get your team together. We’re all going to the hospital.”
After Abby had hurried out of the room, I simply leaned Jillian against my chest and stroked her hair. Abby had industriously undressed Jillian to just her linen pajamas, cooling her off a little bit.
“You’re going to be okay,” I whispered. “This will pass. You’re going to be safe at the hospital. Beau and Alysia can’t get in. You were very smart to send them there. You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”
Jillian began to cough and sputter. Heat poured from her, making sweat bead on her temples
and forehead. When she was done, she gave my hand a tiny squeeze. “Drums,” she said. She tried to pull back to look at me, but her head swayed to the side.
“Easy,” I said, laying her back in the bed. “Don’t stress yourself.”
“Drums,” she repeated, louder. “War drums.”
Was she delirious? I grabbed the cloth and poured water from the bottle on it, then mopped her forehead. “What do you mean, sweetheart?”
Her head dropped to the side and she pointed weakly to the window. “I hear them.”
I paused, then turned around to face the window. I saw them immediately: two tiny helicopters in the sky, approaching rapidly over the water. The sound of the blades were lost to me at this distance, but to my wife’s sensitive ears and fevered imagination…they sounded like the rapid beats of war drums.
A shiver shot down my spine.
Item Nineteen
Excerpt of open letter written by Christina St. James, printed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 9, 1931
Some well-meaning Americans have taken to calling my team “super-heroes,” hearkening back to those mighty men of legend as well as acknowledging that which differentiates us from them. I embrace this term, because like those men, we aspire to the highest moral highs and abjure all vice.
But I also posit this: our enemies, those vagabonds and brigands who have betrayed you all by turning their powers against you instead of using them as God intended, are not mere criminals but villains—corrupt and devoid of moral fiber. Perhaps even “super-villains,” if one prefix deserves another. We solemnly swear and affirm to dedicate our lives to finding and apprehending all such creatures.
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