Ceremony of Flies (13 page)
Authors: Kate Jonez
Harvey! I rush through the dead, decayed things and plunge into the salty muck of the sea. As the shriek leaves my throat, he sinks as though my lack of faith deflated him. I’ve never had faith in anything.
I dive in, swim. The salt and the putrid rot in the air burns my lungs. I can’t see him. I see only the spot where he used to be.
I force my arms and legs to move the way I learned in summer camp all those years ago. Back when swimming wasn’t a life-or-death thing.
Where is he! Where is he! I thrash in the water. This is where he should be. The water buoys me and makes me unnaturally light. This is not the way the world works. Where is he? I can’t make myself sink. But Rex was right about one thing; there is a voice in my head. It screams:
Save the boy
!
That is my mission. My only task. The one thing I must accomplish.
Bobbing on the surface, out of my reach, I see a mass of brown seaweed. His hair!
Save the boy! Save him! Save him. The voice swells. A hymn all-encompassing. I concentrate my thrashing, corral it into forward motion with the force of my will.
Finally, I reach him. Plunge my fingers into the mass of his hair and pull his head up. His eyes are staring, not blinking. What is he looking at! What does he see?
I throw my arm around his chest and under his arm.
Save him!
The words chorus in my head.
“Help!” I scream, but I can’t see the riders, or Rex or—the shore! It’s all become a blur of gray-white beach, sky and water. It’s all of a thing.
Harvey isn’t warm—or cool. He’s exactly the same temperature as the water. He’s heavy like a sponge. Like he’s joined the sea in trying to thwart me in my impossible task. I must capture and carry this one amorphous shifting bundle of water drops to safety.
I must save him!
I kick as hard as I’ve ever kicked and pull with my free arm. No matter what I do, it’s not fast enough. Harvey isn’t breathing. I push the thought away. I am breathing—breathing enough for us both. And swimming and pulling him closer toward what must be land. It must be.
The skeletal shape of the boat, the husk of the rusted camper, the neighborhood of collapsed houses wavers into view.
Land.
I thrust a leg down. My foot hits rock and sand.
I heave Harvey up on my shoulder. And run. As much as running is possible through the gelatinous spume and chum. A sharp stone or maybe a broken bottle slices my foot. I’m aware of the pain. Of the salt in the wound, but still I push on.
I am breathing.
“Rex!”
I see him slumped against the shell of the boat. He doesn’t move. He can’t help me. I don’t think I can help him.
Not anymore.
Save the boy! The words ring in my ears. Something strange happens to the way I see. I’m above it all looking down. I see what I have to do!
Baldy is worked up into a frothing frenzy of disjointed bones and lizard-like skin. His barks hit the air as hard as gunshots.
I drop Harvey onto the beach and fall down beside him. One knee lands in a spot free of rotting fish corpses.
One doesn’t.
I pry Harvey’s mouth open. Feel for foreign objects. I remember this. I remember. His tongue is too large for a child. Maybe it was always that way. I never checked. I should have checked. I should have known him better.
His mouth is salty. As salty as the last of the popcorn in an extra-large tub. I’m breathing. He’s breathing. I think he’s breathing. I blow in the air and push it out. That’s breathing. It has to be.
“I must save him,” I yell between breaths. His, mine. He must breathe.
Baldy’s barking ceases.
The hymn floods over me.
Save him. Save him.
The dog looks in my eyes like a human would. He knows I’m the one.
“I’m going to save him.”
Baldy turns away. He scrabbles across the debris-strewn beach and falls on his side close but not touching Rex, like he’s guarding him. Like he’s telling me he’s got my back.
“I’m going to save him,” I say again to the dog.
The rider tilts his head in the affirmative. He understands. He’s the only one left. Where have they gone? The Black, the Red and the White riders. Did they go for help? Even as the idea comes into my head, I know it’s wrong.
I can see the whole picture. They’ve gone to the four corners of the earth to spread their pestilence, plague and discord.
The last rider throws his leg over his bike and revs up the engine. I know what I’m supposed to do.
I am the agent of change.
I must take Harvey where he belongs.
Los Angeles
In 1781, a group of eleven families settled along a river in an area the Spanish were attempting to cultivate as a land route to the Port of Monterrey. Felipe de Neve, governor of Spanish California, named the settlement El Pueblo Sobre el Rio de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula. Almost immediately, the name was shortened.
For most of its existence, Los Angeles was a sleepy, small town on the Pacific Coast. An opportune conflagration of oil, water, railroads, shipping, immigrants and moving pictures exploded to make Los Angeles the third largest metropolitan economy in the world with a population of 13 million, and a GDP higher than the countries of Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Norway and Taiwan.
Although most famous for movie production, Los Angeles is the largest manufacturing center in the western U.S. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are among the busiest in the world. Forty percent of all goods on the planet pass through Los Angeles. The Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Department of Homeland Security warnings indicate that an airborne pathogen passing through the transportation network of Los Angeles would be difficult if not impossible to contain.
15
The air isn’t salty anymore. It’s thin and tinged with smoke and exhaust and it’s blowing by so fast I’m afraid it will steal my breath. I clutch Harvey to my chest. He’s pressed between me and the rider. The bike roars under us. Pistons stroke hard and methodical like industry, progress. The metal is hot on my bare, ravaged feet. The power feels barely contained. We careen from lane to lane as the L.A. skyline twinkles into view. I expect any minute to skid and roll. I brace for the burn of asphalt on my face, the crush and smear of oncoming traffic.
Harvey isn’t as heavy as he was. He’s light, in fact. It’s like the air is sucking away all the moisture he soaked up in the Salton Sea. That’s where we’d been. I saw a billboard. We weren’t in the postapocalyptic world, just in some weird ghost town alongside some messed-up man-made lake. I don’t feel better because of that revelation. I have faith that I was shown a vision of our future. I believe that. I do.
Harvey isn’t heavy anymore. I haven’t been breathing for him since we’ve been riding. I’d like to think he’s doing it for himself. Or that we’re going fast enough...
No.
I know.
I know, but I can’t look at him.
I can’t.
I’ve never been a good person. I see that now. I’m a killer, a liar, a cheat. How could I be so stupid to think I could change? That I could be good just this one time.
I found the boy at a crossroads after killing a man,
two
, in cold blood. The signs were there all along. I never believed in all that shit before. Guess that was stupid.
I’m not just bad. I’m not just criminal. I’m evil.
Fuck.
I’m the agent of evil. I don’t think I’m going to hell, though. I’m pretty sure I’ve brought it to earth.
I have to look at the boy. I have to know what I’ve done.
I feel the panic lapping at me. I let it rush in—wash over me—recede.
Whatever is going to happen is going to happen.
I look.
Harvey isn’t a boy anymore. He’s still in the shape of a boy, more or less. But he’s dry, desiccated. I clutch him to me. I wanted more than anything I’ve ever wanted to save him.
I didn’t.
We, the pale rider and me, slow as we reach the core of the city.
Golden morning light blooms over the spires of office towers and warehouses and shops. Its light flames in their windows. Cars stream above and below us in concrete flues. It’s a Disneyland of labor, constructed, perfected. The vehicles move individually but not in their multitude, like water in a river is water but also a river.
White lights approach; red recede into the pink dawn. This is what the word
multitude
means.
We stop as the river snarls. I must put my feet on the ground.
He dissolves in my arms. His little face, arms, tiny child fingers with perfect little nails crumble. The sensation is worse than the worst nightmare of losing teeth or limbs, or killing kittens by forgetting to feed them. My heart is on the outside, exposed. No one told me a child could cause this pain. I can only hold on. Hold on to nothing. I can’t stop him from coming apart. Dispersing.
A gray cloud of particulate matter—an immense swarm of flies—assault the vivid morning sky of Los Angeles. It is vast, unbounded, immeasurable. This is the essence of the word
disaster
.
Pestilence, War, Famine—Death.
I am done for.
But worse, somehow, that I never would have understood before today—
WE
—
Are done for.
The dark cloud of the boy,
my boy
, descends on L.A.
Whatever is going to happen is going to happen.
About the Author
Kate is a student of all things scary and when she isn’t writing she loves to collect objects for her cabinet of curiosities, research obscure and strange historical figures and photograph weirdness in Southern California where she lives with a very nice man and a little dog who is also very nice but could behave a little bit better.
Links to her novel
Candy House
published by Evil Jester Press and anthologies containing stories of hers can be found on her website:
katejonez.com
.
About the Publisher
DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.
To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at
www.darkfuse.com
.
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