South Village (Ash McKenna) (20 page)

I remember suddenly being less afraid of the water and more afraid of him. He’d granted me this freedom and I’d ruined it. He whipped off his glasses and looked down at me. I had no idea what he was going to do, but I was bracing for the worst. Formulating an apology. Before I could speak he said, “C’mon kid, after that you need a cherry ice.”

He reached his hand out to me and pulled me to my feet, and we walked back across the hot sand, up to the bridge. I looked back, at the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, thinking that it had almost killed me.

I’ve done my best to stay out of the water since.

T
here’s a flicker of orange light in the distance. Aesop crosses over to the dunes and climbs to the other side. I follow. We make our way along the road for a little, with the dunes on our left and trees on the right, until we get to where we can smell the smoke.

Aesop stops and holds his hand out flat and lowers it toward the ground, then drops onto his stomach. I follow and we crawl through the brush until we’re overlooking the fire. The road has gone up and the beach has dipped down so we’re pretty high up at this point, and the steep sand looks treacherous. I stay far from the edge.

There’s a clearing in the middle of the skeleton trees, lit harshly in orange. The fire is given life by a pile of driftwood, and Marx is standing next to it, wearing jeans, an open tuxedo vest, and combat boots. Still wearing that stupid bowler hat, too.

There are people sitting in a circle around him. I can see some of their faces, but not all, with the way the light is moving around, and the people who are facing away from me. I see Magda and Gideon. Doesn’t look like Sunny or Moony or Alex or Katashi are there. No Job either, which is surprising, because I thought he and Marx were tight. Katie the Trigger Warning Girl is here. Some of the guests, too. People whose names I don’t know. I’m glad Aesop is here. He’ll know them. I count nine people in total.

With Marx that’s ten. Ten troublesome dickbags.

Marx is stalking around the fire, using his fist to punctuate his words. Looks like we came in a little late.

“Petitions don’t change anything,” he says. “Do you know why? No one cares. Who the fuck cares about signatures on a piece of paper? Give it to your local politician, and what does he think? He already carved up his district. He picked his voters. Someone else gave him the money he needed to get elected. You may as well be handing him toilet paper.”

There are nods from the audience.

“The time for peaceful engagement is over,” he says. “What has that ever solved? These projects go through. They rape the planet. The earth’s temperature rises two more degrees, and we are fucked. We’ll be killing each other for fresh water. And we don’t have a Plan B. There’s no place else to go. But it doesn’t matter to the coal company. They got rich. They can’t see beyond their next Lexus. It doesn’t matter to the worker. They have a job, and they’ve been bred to believe they ought to be thankful for that, even if it’s back-breaking, shit-paying labor. It doesn’t matter to the local government because somewhere, somehow, they’re getting something out of it. Campaign contributions. Poll workers. Fuck, a nice dinner. The government is already protecting them.”

Feels like something is crawling up my leg. I shake it out, try not to think about whatever horrible thing is trying to eat me.

“You saw that when the FBI stormed into our camp and pulled us out,” Marx tells the crowd. “We were taken to a remote location. We were beaten. Interrogated for hours. And then left there, like nothing happened. No recourse. They did it because they wanted to scare us. Because they think we’re weak. Because they’ve been bought and paid for, the same as everyone else.”

He’s embellishing a little. And damn he’s a good speaker. Even despite everything I know, it’s the kind of speech that makes me want to sign up for whatever he’s got planned. I’m still steamed up about Tim and his friends pushing us around like they did.

The fervor dies down. Marx puts his hands on his hips and sighs.

“Some of you may know this,” he says, his voice softer now. “Some of you, maybe not. But I lost both of my parents. These guys were working for a logging company, clearing out forest. They were throwing their cigarettes into the brush. It started a fire. I lost my parents to a company destroying the planet, and the employees who were not only complicit in that action, but careless. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of them. That I don’t wish they were here, and I didn’t have to do these things. But I owe it to them. I owe it to future generations who will be deprived of a peaceful life because of recklessness and malice.”

Christ. How different are we, really? Both of us are carrying the loss of parents. Should I be sympathetic?

Marx says, “We can stand outside with our signs and hope that they listen to us, but really, they’re going to be laughing. That’s all we are to them. A joke. It’s all a big game that they win in the end because it’s rigged. It’s time to do something. Hit them where it hurts. The Soldiers of Gaia are going to strike.”

Trigger Warning Katie raises her hand.

“When is this going down?” she asks.

Marx’s shoulders drop.

“That’s the problem,” he says. “Pete was in contact with the Soldiers. He had the cipher with the time, date, and location. We’re ready to translate it. I just have to get it. That asshole Ash has it.”

“Am I really that much of an asshole?” I whisper to Aesop.

“Yes,” he says. “Shut up.”

“How do we get it from him?” Katie asks.

“I’m working on that,” Marx says. “But as for right now, the thing I need to know is, who’s in? Who’s ready to strike a blow against corporate and government oppressors? Who’s ready to show them that we will not sit down and bear this? We will not accept our world being summarily destroyed to make a quick buck? Who’s with me?”

The girl raises her hand again. Marx smiles, but she says, “What exactly are we talking about here?”

My arm is itchy, like something is crawling on it. I reach up to scratch.

“The time for peace is over,” Marx says. “The time for pretending like we can politely make a difference is over. The Earth Liberation Front failed. They set fire to some Hummers. But people are still buying Hummers. We’re going to make people stop laughing and pay attention. We’re going to use their own tactics against them. Desperate times, my friends. We’re going to…”

Something moves on the edge of my vision. Long and shiny. For second I think it’s another bug, but when I slide back I’m looking into the black glass eyes of a snake.

I jump up and yelp, completely involuntary, and I fall backward, push myself away, hitting Aesop. As I fall back toward the roadway I catch a glimpse of the faces around the fire, turned up and looking at us.

M
y heart slams against the inside of my rib cage. I turn and there are more snakes, five or six, blacker than black, slithering down the sand toward us. They seem to be moving toward me, specifically.

Aesop grabs my shirt and yanks at me. “C’mon!”

He takes off running, up a large slope of grass, perpendicular to the roadway, toward a big beautiful house with no lights on. I follow, feeling nauseous and dizzy. Aesop gets to the house and cuts around it, into the back yard.

He keeps running, off in the general direction of the car, using the yards as cover, sticking to the shadows. The houses mostly seem empty. The yards are all connected, long strips of grass with the occasional change in landscaping or short fences that are easy to hop.

Aesop is faster than me, in better shape, so I pump my legs, try to keep up, struggling to breathe. I’m glad I quit smoking. My lungs have healed up enough I don’t want to immediately die. But every house we pass makes me feel like someone is building more houses, and I’ll never stop running past houses.

I turn and check behind me, expect to see something on my heels chasing me. For a moment I forget why I’m running. My brain feels like a CD that’s skipping. The song starts again. Aesop stops, looks back at me.

“We have to keep moving,” he says.

“They saw us,” I manage to get out between gulps of air.

“It was too dark up on the dune. They were all looking into the fire. They wouldn’t have seen anything but shapes.”

“Do you think they were poisonous?” I ask.

Aesop arches an eyebrow at me. “Were what poisonous? Listen, we have to get going. If they find our footprints they’ll get back to the car. We need to get out of here before that.”

I stand, bend back a little to stretch, and jog after Aesop, struggling to keep up.

“Should have walked in the surf,” Aesop says, barely breathing hard. “There’d be no footprints then. Stupid mistake.”

My muscles are on fire when we get to the car. I run into it, fall forward and splay out onto the trunk. I fling my arms over my head, giving my lungs room to expand, and take deep breaths. Aesop climbs into the driver’s seat and I don’t even bother walking around to the other side, I open the door behind him and crawl across the back seat. Try not to puke.

Before I’ve got the door all the way closed Aesop is tearing out of the spot, popping a U-turn, and we’re speeding down the road, not back the way we came. Someone is in the front seat with Aesop, talking to him. I sit up and check but find it’s only him. He’s navigating by the moonlight. The road is a straight shot and there’s enough light to see that things are clear, but it’s not doing great things for my nerves. My hands are shaking and I can’t seem to get them to stop. I lay back down, look at the ceiling of the car.

“You okay back there?” he asks.

“I don’t believe in jogging. Jogging is bullshit.”

It’s not just my hands. Even though it’s warm in the car I’m shivering.

“What were you talking about before?” he asks. “What was poisonous?”

I go to answer and suddenly can’t think of his name.

Bombay?

No, Aesop.

Christ, I must be tired. When did I sleep last?

“The snakes,” I tell him. “That’s why I yelled. I’m sorry. I’ve never seen snakes out in the wild before and it was a little scary. I mean, I don’t know shit about snakes…”

“Ash. I didn’t see any snakes.”

“Really? There were a whole bunch of them.”

“Oh fuck.”

“What?”

“Ash, how much did you used to drink?”

“A lot?”

“Lie back and get comfortable, okay? Try to relax.”

A
esop stops the car on the road behind camp. Probably too risky to go through the main entrance. That makes sense. He turns off the engine and the ceiling of the car disappears and it’s black. I sit up and look out the window, see shadows moving around us, the outline of faces peeking into the car window. I blink hard, thinking they’ll go away, and they don’t.

Aesop turns to me and says, “We need to go.”

“We can’t get out here,” I tell him. “There are people outside.”

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath.

He gets out of the car and clicks on a flashlight. The shapes retreat behind him. I can still see them. I don’t understand it. Who they are, or why they’re waiting out there in the dark. Aesop opens the door and drops down into a crouch, so he’s looking me in the eyes.

“Do you know what delirium tremens is?” he asks.

“Alcohol withdrawal.”

He nods, slowly. A finger curls out of the darkness, brushes his face, retreats. He doesn’t move, like he didn’t feel it, but I see the hand coming again so I slide across the seat, away from him. From it.

“You have to trust me,” he says. “Can you come with me?”

There’s a flash of movement at the corner of my vision. Shiny black bugs crawl up from the floor onto the seat, and I figure now is a good time to go. I scramble out and stand in the clearing next to the car.

There are whispers out in the forest. Asking me questions I don’t want to answer. Something grabs my hand. I try to get away, sure that it’s the mouth of some terrible insect latching on, but it’s Aesop, his fingers entwined in mine. He points his flashlight into the woods, the circle of blue light like a path of safety we can follow.

“You’re seeing things,” he says. “Hallucinating. I promise you, it’s safe.”

I know it is. I know it’s safe. I’ve walked these woods in the dark, never been stalked, never had bugs crawl up in great waves. There are no people out there. I know that intellectually. But I see them. I hear them.

Aesop walks, holding my hand tight, pulling me after him. I follow the tunnel of light, the world around me coming unglued, dripping down around us. The voices grow louder. Some of them sound familiar, some of them new. Children and men. Songs and poems. Threats and promises.

The two voices I don’t hear are the ones I want to hear. The two faces I don’t see are the ones I always feel watching me. I wish Chell and my dad were here, even if they were judging me. Even if they were upset with me. I need them right now. Maybe they finally got tired of me.

Aesop clicks off the flashlight and I feel myself floating in the black. He leads me through something, a giant spider web that wraps around my body. No, fabric, drawing itself across me like a hand.