Chapter 1 #17
“I walked to Ron’s house from the dorms. Nobody answered the door, but it wasn’t shut all the way.
The trunk of his car was loaded with supplies, like he was running them inside.
I didn’t want anything. Just advice. Just something.
Even a vague idea of what I should do. It all just happened so fast. What were people supposed to believe after New York was just…
gone? What were they supposed to think after Boston before that, where a whole damn army couldn’t stop the Scorpions?
It didn’t matter if we threw everything at them; all we could do was delay.
By the time everyone realized that, no one wanted to realize anything.
They just wanted to pretend like nothing was happening or run for the hills. ”
“But not Ron.”
“No. Not Ron. He was taking the rumors seriously before most people had even heard of a Scorpion. I thought he might know something. Anything. I nudged the door open and peeked inside. There was nobody there, and the place looked kind of bare. Most of his things were boxed up. I remember the television was showing helicopter footage of Scorpion nests in Ontario and Quebec, and the Canadian prime minister was screaming about our failure to contain the ‘Macroscorpion menace.’ ”
“Fun times,” Lane said. Tim gave no acknowledgment, save for a slight upward curve of his lips. “Sorry, kid. Go on.”
Tim continued. “I heard water running upstairs, so I yelled up there. Asked if anyone was home. I didn’t hear an answer but… I definitely heard something. It wasn’t quite a word, more like a baby babbling. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I would find.”
“What was it?”
“I went upstairs. The bathroom door was open and I could hear this faint moaning. Eugheugheugheugh. Like that. Soft and weak.”
The impression reminded Lane of a tongueless person trying to speak.
“The first thing I saw was the handgun. This one,” Tim said, pulling his pistol from his waistband.
“It was on the counter next to the sink, and there were two empty bottles of beer.
Then I saw the glass, two more bottles broken on the floor.
The noise was louder. Then I saw an arm, flopping and flailing for a handhold.
Too weak to pull the rest of himself up.
“Ron was lying in the bath, hot shower beating down on his face. Bloody water spilling from the back of his head. There was a crack on the back of the tub—a dent, really—from where his skull had hit it. He must’ve slipped.
I guess he was pretty drunk. Maybe celebrating, maybe coping. I don’t know. I couldn’t ask.
“He was hurt really bad. His eyes were all bugged out darting around, looking everywhere and nowhere and seeing me and not seeing me. Sometimes he would reach out to me, sometimes he’d shrink away, and sometimes I was just a ghost dangling over him.
I watched as his brains leaked out and the shower washed it all away.
That was all I could do. Just stand there and watch. ” Tim rested his head in his hands.
“How long were you there?” Lane asked.
“I don’t know. It couldn’t have been more than five or ten minutes, I don’t think, but it might as well have been an hour. I wanted to run. Get the hell out of there as fast as I could and never come back; fuck his bunker, I’d take my chances out here.
“I would’ve left. I would’ve called 911 and given them the address and left forever and for all of time. But nobody picked up. The local fire stations and police departments went straight to voicemail. Only place to answer the phone was the hospital, but they said…”
“What?”
“They said, ‘You’ve got to bring him in yourself ’cause all the ambulances are in use.
Sorry, little buddy, it’s called triage,’ so I tried, but when I tried he started to slip out the back of himself and I tried to keep it all in, but I couldn’t and he was bleeding and leaking and whimpering and…
and he asked me to. That’s what I tell myself, at least. I tell myself that his eyes were pleading with me.
I tell myself that he was asking me to help him the only way I could.
Asking me the only way he could, Eugheugheugheugh, through a mouth of perfectly fine teeth that was incapable of speech, so I set him back in the tub and the bullet didn’t go through him, Lane, it exploded him, all of him, and I can’t stop seeing him, Lane.
I wake up and tell myself it was the right thing and I’ve never believed it once. ”
“It was.”
“Then why do I still see him?” Tim asked, his gaze locked over Lane’s shoulder, as if staring at someone else behind him. “Why do I still see the ghosts?”
“Did you think they would go away?”
“Wha—?”
“They don’t,” Lane said. “They don’t go away. The ghosts. The devils and the demons. The sins. The things you carry. They never leave you.”
“They have to. I kept the bullet casing, and then I buried it. So they would go away. So we could all rest.”
“It gets easier,” Lane said. “I promise you it does.”
“You said I did the right thing.”
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”
“That’s not all,” Tim said. He told Lane about the waterfall.
About his shortcut through the forest and out into the cornfield.
The youngling he’d killed and the fully grown terrors that followed.
He described the demolition ritual and the two humans, including the child, dredged out from the debris.
“It’s my fault,” the young man finished, tears puddling below him. “I killed them.”
“Now I know you’ve lost it, Timbo, because just about any sane man would be gratitude incarnate right now. And rubbing the deer shit on yourself? Genius!”
“Aren’t you listening to me? I killed them!”
“No. The Scorpions killed them. Just like they killed the person at the top of the falls. Ate them alive from the inside out.”
“Sure, bu—”
“But nothing. You did your best. How the hell could you know?”
“There was one Scorpion I called the Nightwalker,” Tim went on, ignoring Lane’s question, spilling the tale of the massive beast that had nearly captured him.
“I swear to God, I still see it when I close my eyes. Still hear that horrible, grinding screech of pain some mornings. Even the monsters haunt me.”
Lane stroked his chin, thinking of the nickname he’d randomly conjured this morning. What a coincidence, indeed. “A nocturnal Scorpion. I can’t believe it. They aren’t as uniform as we thought.”
Tim said nothing.
“And it held a grudge? All that time, it still chased you?”
Tim let off a nervous laugh. “I guess so. It kept up as long as it could, but with three eyes it couldn’t have gotten that far… right?”
The old man nodded but didn’t look convinced. “Probably got ousted from the pack for starting fights. I heard about that happening on the radio. It’s host to another already, I’m sure.”
“Probably,” Tim replied, “but I still hear it. The ghost.”
“And you always will! You did what this cruel world asked of you. Nothing more. And that’s all right!”
Tim refused to meet Lane’s eyes, and the old soldier was getting a feeling that they were much more alike than he’d originally suspected. He’s been close to his breaking point this whole time. He should have given up long ago. He’s chasing something. Just like me.
Just like me.
“You started in Florida,” Lane said. “Why come all this way?”
“What else was I supposed to do? If I sat still any longer, I would’ve killed myself.”
“You walked north, straight toward Maine, where all this began. Why?”
“I wasn’t going to Maine; I was going to Maryland. I was nearly there when I heard you on the radio and decided… that she was probably dead.”
“She?”
“Her name was Amira. Without my family in New York, she was pretty much the only person who would’ve really cared if I survived or not.”
“Fiancée?”
Tim finally met Lane’s eyes. “No. We had only known each other for a year and a half. But she still asked me to come with her. After New York. Said her house had a storm shelter. That her parents would be happy to have me. I told her that I’d come once everything had settled down. Once it was safe.”
“If you did that,” Lane said, “you’d still be waiting.”
“I shouldn’t have waited at all.”
“You kept yourself alive. That’s more than everyone else can say.”
The old man had stopped prying a few minutes ago, and they’d fallen into a comfortable silence. There was more lightning in the sky, thunder approaching. The breeze had strengthened.
Tim was waiting for Lane to explain how futile his quest was. The chances of any specific individual surviving were infinitesimal. And Amira’s house? On the Chesapeake Bay? He might as well go back to New York and sift through what was left of the Bronx.
But Lane said no such thing as he stood up from the rotting wooden bench. He merely reached down to the small black knapsack he’d placed between his feet, unzipped it, and pulled out a sheaf of manila folders stuffed with loose-leaf paper.
Tim leaned closer for a better look. “What’s all this?”
“It’s my turn,” Lane said, offering him one of the folders. “My story.”
Tim hesitated for a moment, and then took the folder. Lane gave him the gas lantern too.
Taking out the first page, Tim began to read:
The Anthropocene ended on July 5, 2022, when an over-the-road Volvo day-cab hauling a mustard-yellow shipping container swerved onto Interstate 95’s gravel shoulder, swallowing the mile 148 signage under its snarling grille…
“What’s this word?” Tim asked, pointing to the manuscript. “I recognize it, but I can’t remember.”
“Which one?”
“ ‘Anthropocene.’ What’s it mean?”
“Oh, that’s the, uh, era when humans could make an impact on the world,” Lane replied. “The time when we were worth a damn.”
“When did that start?”
“Depending on who you ask, anywhere from the agricultural revolution to the Trinity test.”
Without acknowledging the answer, Tim turned back to the hand-scrawled pages and began to leaf through them. He read slowly at first, but his pace quickly gained momentum. Before long, he was flipping through them as fast as he could.