Chapter 9
But it’s not a god.
It’s Wilf.
“BEN!” he yells, so close to my face I wince. “Ben, breathe!”
He pulls me harder and drags me into shallower water. I see my mom behind him. She’s up to her waist, standing against the current and pulling me at the same time. I cough and cough, trying to breathe, while also still trying to look for the god that took Tara–
But I don’t see her anywhere.
She’s gone.
“Ben!” Mom says, taking me into her arms. “Oh, Ben, I thought . . . Oh, my God.”
But I’m pushing her away, full of fight all over again, trying to dive back into the water.
“No!” She yanks my arm hard, not letting go, Wilf neither. I fight against them, but the cold water has sapped my strength.
“She’s gone, Ben!” Mom yells at me. “You can’t save her.”
I don’t believe this. I don’t want to believe this. So I fight harder, even hitting my mom’s hand where she’s holding me, but she still doesn’t let go.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice softer this time. “I wish it wasn’t true. But I am not losing you, too.”
I finally stop fighting, but my heart is thumping. I want more than anything to jump into the water after Tara. I feel like a coward for not doing so. Even though I know Mom is right. Even though I know–
She’s gone.
I’m just panting now, and I start shivering in the water.
Wilf pulls on my arm again, and I go with them, stumbling back up to the riverbank.
It seems to take weeks. It seems to take my whole life, but eventually we get there.
I see Lee there, too, and Jane and Bessie Jaye.
Of course they’d come to help when they saw the city under attack. Of course they would.
I fall over into the mud.
“Get your head down,” Bessie Jaye says. “Get the water out of your lungs.”
“They’re gone,” Jane says, as I cough up half the river. “The gods are gone.”
I look up the hill into the city, which is now more or less just smoke and flames. People run from place to place, trying to put out fires, trying to drag people from under houses, some just shouting out names in a panic.
But I don’t see any gods.
Not anywhere.
“They all went to the river,” Mom says. “They all picked up someone your age, took them to the river, and disappeared. I was panicked for you, and Margery Wingard wouldn’t get off her knees, and I saw Wilf and the others and I screamed for them to come with me .
. .” Her voice breaks and the titanically strong mom I know is gone for a second. “I thought I’d lost you.”
I look at her, my face feeling sad and distraught and just pulled into all kinds of shapes of hopelessness. I sign, They can’t get Max.
“They won’t,” Lee says, reading it in Wilf’s Noise. “We promise you that.”
And that doesn’t feel like a promise they can keep.
“What the hell is going on, Viola?” Bessie Jaye asks.
“I don’t know that yet,” Mom says. “But I think I know what they are.” She takes her scanning device out of a soggy pocket, and she looks at us, her face all defiant now.
And right there, I get it. I see the device she’s holding and I see some readings on it, and in two seconds, I know what they are and what they mean.
The gods.
They’re made of Noise.
Pure Noise, slammed together somehow, and sent out walking.
Somehow, someone has figured out how to attack us with the thing we cured.