by David Kazzie
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s OK.”
“Everyone ready for dinner?”
His voice sounded a bit high, reedy, more than she remembered from their earlier discussions.
“I think Will is still asleep,” she said. “Let me check.”
A quick check of the room confirmed her suspicion and she rejoined Gravy back in the hallway.
“Did you all get some rest?” he asked.
“Yes. Kid is still zonked out. I’d like to let him sleep a bit longer.”
“Of course,” he said. “We have time, I think.”
He lingered in the doorway, and Rachel became aware of an awkwardness between them. It was his school, his building, but she got the sense he was waiting for an invitation.
“Would you like to wait with me?” she asked. “He’ll be up soon.”
“Thank you.”
“Why don’t we move to the next room?”
He nodded.
They each took a bed, sitting across from one another. Rachel placed the lantern on the end table between the two beds and closed the door. A plastic potted plant was perched on the end table next to her. The carpet was threadbare, worn to the concrete in some spots. Gravy sat on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, tapping his fingertips together.
“Thank you again for your hospitality,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your sharing your supplies with us.”
“It’s not a big deal,” he said.
“It is a big deal. Very few people would do what you’ve done. Most would put a bullet in our heads. More efficient.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Well then. You’re very welcome.”
They sat in silence for another few moments. Gravy continued to tap his fingertips together. Rachel was content to sit in silence; she had never been one to make small talk for the sake of filling a void of silence. He was handsome, she saw, stealing glances at his profile. A weariness about him she found warm, almost inviting. Someone who had seen darkness but hadn’t let it drag him down into its depths.
“I have a confession to make,” he said.
Fingertips tapping.
“Oh?”
“You’re the first woman I’ve spoken to in a long time. Since it happened, in fact.”
She did not reply.
“I have to admit, it’s made me very nervous. I feel like I’m doing everything wrong. Like this thing I’m doing with my hands, I don’t even know why I’m doing it. I don’t know if I’ve ever done it before.”
He stopped tapping his fingers together and looked at his hands like they had just sprouted from his wrists.
“Did you have a family? Before?”
“No. Divorced when I was twenty-five. Never remarried. Worked here six years before the plague hit.”
“You’re probably better off,” she said.
“How so?”
“No entanglements. Less to worry about. Less to mess with your head. Everyone’s fucked up now. The things we’ve seen. The things we’ve had to do to stay alive. I doubt anyone has been immune from that.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
She got up and sat next to him on the bed. Her body was turned toward her host, her right leg folded underneath her. What was she doing?
Her eyes caught his in the dim light; his cheeks colored, and he looked away.
“Where are you headed? You and your son?”
“Nowhere in particular,” she said. “Meat for the pot, roof over our heads. Keep plugging away. Like everyone else.”
She waited as he processed that, wondering if he would dig any deeper.
“I hope you find a place to call home,” he said.
“We’ll see.”
There was another silence.
“How do you all pass the time? Keep the crazies away.”
“Every few months we produce a Shakespeare play.”
“Really?”
“This surprises you?”
“Just unexpected.”
“The men look forward to it,” he said. “It’s a little reminder of what we were once capable of. A reminder of something beautiful.”
“When’s the next show?”
“I’m afraid it’s several weeks off still.”
“Which one?”
“Twelfth Night.”
“And is there an audience?”
“No,” he said. “We do it for us.”
Rachel looked down at her hands, trying to picture a stage production at this lonely outpost, these men living and breathing the art of a world long dead. This was what they had forgotten to do at Evergreen. They had become so obsessed with staying alive that they had forgotten to live.
“I wish I could see that.”
He laughed.
“I’m not sure how the men would react to that,” he said gently. “After a decade of playing to an empty house, I think they’d freeze on stage.”
“It’s a nice thing,” she said. “Just knowing about it makes me feel better.”
“Do you believe in God?” he asked.
Miles Chadwick had been the last man to ask her that question, in those last days before her father and Sarah had rescued them from his clutches. Chadwick’s God had passed a harsh judgment on them, had punished them, had used Chadwick himself to deliver that punishment.
“Not anymore. You?”
“More than ever. God is calling us all home, you see. He sent the plague to teach us a lesson. That all this shit we’d been wasting our time on had been just that. A waste. Texting and gourmet olive oils and red-eye flights to Vegas. This world we were left in, that’s what He wanted us to see. The quiet. The beauty. That’s our responsibility. To see the world the way He meant for us to see it.”
This was not terribly dissimilar from what Chadwick had told her thirteen years earlier, but it felt different. A more benevolent viewpoint. Maybe Gravy was right; perhaps God had taken everyone home, the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, the atheists, the Satanists, the Buddhists, all in one fell swoop. The ledger cleared. Everyone square with the house.
He held a fist to his lips; a river of tears slid down each of his cheeks.
The distance between them had been cut by half; she did not know how that had happened. She was close enough to smell his aftershave, close enough to reach up and wipe away the tears from his right cheekbone. She tried to remember if she had ever seen Eddie cry, and she could not.
Then she was swinging a leg over his lap, taking his face into her hands, pressing her lips to his. He kissed her back, timidly at first, and then wrapped his arms around her back and joined her in the crest of it. She kissed him hard, almost violently, needing the touch of someone who wasn’t Eddie, who weren’t the men who’d purchased her at Millicent’s like she was an object, this embrace washing away the disappointment of her years with Eddie, remind her there were men who had not been Eddie Callahan, who had been better than Eddie.
She worked his jeans and briefs off while he did the same with her pants. She pulled her panties to the side and straddled him, sighing as he entered her. She didn’t think about what she was doing or why she was doing it; for this moment, she simply enjoyed the sensation of being close to another human being. She closed her eyes and thought about their Shakespeare play, about sitting in the audience alone, watching these men live and breathe the art of a dead world. Gravy shuddered as she rocked back and forth above him, pressing his face against her chest. He didn’t last long, barely a minute before he finished.
She leaned in and kissed him gently.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said.
“Don’t be,” she said. “That was very nice.”
“Yes.”
She dismounted his lap, feeling a little bit dirty for taking advantage of him as she got dressed. That’s what it had been, really. A little bit yes. As she re-adjusted her clothes, he traced a finger across his lips, perhaps to ensure the ta
ste of her mouth against his was really there.
“Right.”
“Do you think your God will forgive us?” Rachel asked.
“For what?” he asked.
“For doing what we had to do.”
He looked at her with eyes that were bright and full and wet.
“I hope so.”
#
Will was still asleep when she went to check on him a few minutes later.
“Ready, Spoon?” she whispered, shaking him gently by the shoulder.
She repeated the inquiry twice more before she got a response. He yawned loudly and rubbed his eyes.
“Hungry.”
“Well, let’s go take care of that, shall we?”
He nodded, and they stepped outside to join Gravy, who was waiting in the sickly yellow glow of an incandescent lantern. The light threw a rippling shadow against the wall behind him.
“Follow me,” he said, avoiding eye contact with her. She started to regret their dalliance, which served only to depress her even further. It almost made her give up hope, right then as they walked to dinner, that their ability to make new connections had been permanently severed, that their new default setting was a state of war.
There was little chit-chat as they crossed the campus. She expected a guided tour, Oh, this is the Science Building, that’s the Performing Arts Center, but Gravy didn’t say a word. Maybe it was because she had just rocked his world. She felt like an asshole for thinking it.
Pride goeth before the fall, sweetie, remember that one.
She felt bad for thinking it because when you got right down to it, he had been a gentleman, and that was a category of men in woefully short supply these days. This man could have done anything to her and Will. Instead, she had found a group of people clinging to their civility in a world absent it.
There was enough light left in the sky to take in the campus, which was quite lovely. Gravy’s people had maintained the grounds over the years, although certain buildings did look a bit ragged. To their west was the athletic complex, including a football field and an outdoor track-and-field facility. A bit farther north was a larger cluster of buildings, more dormitories and classroom buildings.
“How many students went here?” she asked, breaking a long silence.
“About five hundred,” Gravy replied.
They continued in silence, entering the main quad a few moments later. A bit of a breeze had picked up in the throughway between the buildings, chilling her. She felt naked without her HK, the reassuring weight of it hanging from her shoulder.
“We’re here,” he said, pausing before an old Victorian-style brick building. He seemed distracted again.
“It’s a lovely building,” Rachel said, glancing upward toward the gables.
They climbed the steps slowly. Rachel was looking forward to being indoors; the wind had picked up and the evening had broken chilly, the sky limned with bleak, gray clouds. Gravy held the door open for them, waiting as Rachel and Will entered the foyer before him.
The foyer was dimly lit, the shadows flickering against the wall. The murmur of voices in an unseen room tickled Rachel’s ears. It had a ghostly timbre about it; she felt Will pressing up against her.
“I know, this is a bit of a creepy room,” he said, sensing their discomfort. “It’s the best building for storing food, so we made this our dining room.”
He pointed toward a door to their left.
“It’s through there.”
Gravy led them inside, where Rachel got her first look at the community in full. As the presence of Will and Rachel became apparent, the vigorous chit-chat died from one table to the next, like power grids failing across a stricken city. There were six long wooden tables in the rectangular-shaped room, three on each side, lined up in two rows. The tables were crowded with men, most of them about her age, but a few older ones. Portraits of men long dead lined the walls. There was a door in the center of each wall, but it wasn’t clear where those led. A series of oil lanterns bathed the room in a warm, inviting glow.
“Brothers,” Gravy said after the room fell silent. “These are our special guests.”
He placed a hand on Rachel’s shoulder.
“This is Sister Rachel.”
“Greetings, Sister Rachel,” said the men, almost in unison.
“This is her son. Brother William.”
“Greetings, Brother William,” came the reply.
Gravy led them to three open seats, one at the head of the table nearest them, the two others next to the head. Will sat on the end seat, in between Rachel and Gravy. To Rachel’s right was a thin man with a narrow face and a scraggly beard. She spotted Alec two tables away; she nodded at him, and he returned the gesture. In front of each person was a bowl full of a thick stew. Steam was still curling from the surface of the bowls. It smelled delicious, made her mouth water. Will dug in without waiting.
She smacked his hand.
“Wait,” she hissed at him.
No one else seemed to notice Will’s breach of etiquette, each man bowing his head.
Gravy’s voice filled the chamber.
“Thank you, Lord, for this bounty,” he said.
“Thank you, Lord, for this bounty,” echoed the men.
“We do not ask why You have cast this judgment on the world.”
We do not ask why You have cast this judgment on the world.
“It is not our place to know.”
It is not our place to know.
“We see the beauty in the world, as You intended.”
We see the beauty in the world, as You intended.
“Amen.”
Amen.
The prayer concluded, the men dug into their bowls, the room silent but for the clink of ceramic against silverware, the silver against teeth.
Rachel took a bite of the hot stew. She didn’t know what was in it, a mixture of meat and potatoes. It was salty, very salty, but it was delicious. Perhaps the best thing she’d eaten in years. She kept a wary eye on her Will, who was lost in his meal. The world had slipped away, just a boy and his supper.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” she said to Gravy, who was focused on his bowl, stirring the stew with his spoon. She had thanked him over and over, but for some reason, it didn’t seem like it was enough.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she replied. “For making us leave? You can’t be sorry about that.”
“It’s just that we’re running low on food.”
“I understand,” she said.
“No,” he replied. “I don’t think you do.”
He glanced up and looked around the room. The other men were engaged in chatter and seemed oblivious to the sudden chill at the head of the table. Gravy’s mood was beginning to frighten her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, reaching out and wrapping her fingers around the palm of his hand.
He looked at her, his eyes wide and blank. He looked very far away.
“You have to understand.”
“Understand what?” she asked, pulling her hand away from his.
“I’m sorry. I had no choice.”
The four doors opened simultaneously, and a hush swept across the room. Rachel leaped from her seat, accidentally flipping over the bowl of stew in the process. A dozen heavily armed men and women, dressed in black pants and heavy barn jackets, poured into the room, surrounding all of them.
“Hands on your heads.”
One of the men sitting at a table close to the back door made a move inside his jacket, but a deafening burst from one of the guns blew him off his seat. He landed in a heap on his back, his left leg wrenched under the lip of the table. A ribbon of blood laced the wall behind him.
“Hands on your heads.”
As they complied with the request, Rachel stole a glance at Gravy. There was a resigned look on his face, one that said he wasn’t surprised at all. He stared blankly at their captors, his eyes wide and unblinking.
“Quiet,” barked one of the gunmen.
A burst of commotion near the doorway caught Rachel’s attention. She turned her head toward the sound, where she saw a sight that chilled her to her core.
One last person had entered the room. It was a face Rachel had only seen once before, but it was one she remembered easily.
The woman who had wanted to take Will.
Priya.
28
Rachel’s body turned to stone. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for some answer, some solution, some way out of this mess. Her mouth went dry.
There was no way out of here.
“The woman and the boy,” said Priya.
The two gunmen closest to Rachel approached her and Will and motioned toward Priya with the muzzles of their guns. Rachel took Will’s hand and together they followed the men toward Priya. As they neared the door, Priya motioned them to continue.
Rachel and Priya locked eyes. As Rachel exited the dining room, she could hear the woman’s words to one of her men, as clearly as if she had whispered them into her own ear.
“Kill the rest.”
Rachel held Will close as they followed their captors down a long corridor, trying to cover his ears with her right arm as the room behind her erupted into apocalyptic gunfire. Behind her was Priya, flanked by two women. Over the staccato bursts of the dozen automatic weapons, she could hear screaming, but it was brief. And then it was over.
Will had started to cry, his body heaving and hitching against her, but she kept him moving, unsure if the slightest deviation from Priya’s direction would result in their execution. Then they were outside again, trailed closely by the group that had remained behind to follow Priya’s extermination order. Their work done.
Just like that.
As casually as asking someone for the time, she had ordered the execution of more than thirty people. Her head swam, and she began to salivate. It felt like she was floating, the ground underneath her unmoored. She was sweating and she felt lightheaded.
It was the Citadel all over again.
The ledger had been balanced.
All those women.
All these men.
All dead.
She let go of Will and struggled to keep her balance. Bent over, hands on her knees, the ground swaying. Then her stew came up all at once, a furious rush, and she was pissed at herself because that was good food she was puking, you stupid woman, that’s good food you’re leaving here on the not-so-manicured grounds of the Deephaven School for Boys.