Reapers Are the Angels (13 page)

A blind dark like this, she’s not doing any sneaking up, so she calls out.

Whyn’t you come on out, whoever you are, and we’ll make a midnight constitutional together. Otherwise I might could hack you by accident.

There is no response, and she looks back in the direction of the house. It is hidden behind the trees, but she can see the faint glow of it in the lower part of the sky. She continues up the hill.

Soon she emerges into a clearing at the top, and it’s a divine sight. The infested city is below her, lit primitive by a few meager lights shimmering in the night air. In those pools of light she can see the slugs stumbling densely together, tiny in the distance. The only sound is the rustling of the leaves, a peacefulness incongruous with the thick tableau of horror below.

The clearing must be used frequently. There is a park bench, and a small white-painted iron table with a glass top. On the ground next to the bench are two empty bottles. Dead soldiers, Uncle Jackson used to call them.

I have a gun aimed at your head, says a voice behind her. Don’t turn around.

Temple turns around. It’s James Grierson.

I said
don’t
turn around.

I heard you.

You think I won’t shoot you?

I never seen anybody shoot someone without some reason, good or bad.

I think you’ve got that wrong, little miss. If you haven’t
noticed, reason is something we seem to have a dearth of in this world.

Then I guess you better kill me with that first shot, cause if I make it over there with this blade, I’m gonna mess you up permanent.

He gazes at her down the barrel of the gun, a look of consideration on his face as though he is thinking about whether to cast her in a play rather than shoot her. Then he lowers the gun. In his other hand is a bottle, and he raises it to his mouth and drinks.

It’s a beautiful night, he says. Pitch-black, the beasts of hell lowing in the distance. How about sitting with me and having a drink?

He seems to have lost interest in the gun altogether.

All right then, she says. That’s more neighborly of you.

He sits on the bench and sets his gun on the table, and she sits on the other end of the bench—and they look out over the city, and he hands her the bottle and she drinks from it and hands it back.

That’s good whiskey.

Hirsch bourbon, sixteen year. Only the best.

They drink.

Look yonder, he gestures down toward the city. A plague of slugs descended upon us. A scourge of evil bubbling up from hell.

He laughs, but she can’t tell whether it’s because he’s joking or because he isn’t.

I don’t know about evil, Temple says. Them meatskins are just animals is all. Evil’s a thing of the mind. We humans got the full measure of it ourselves.

Is that right? Are you evil, Sarah Mary?

I ain’t good.

James Grierson looks at her in a hard, penetrating way. His skin is pale and almost glows against the black night. He looks like someone who could slap you or kiss you and you wouldn’t be able to tell which one is coming and it would mean the same thing either way.

You’re a soldier, he says to her. Like me. You’ve done things you’re not proud of. You’ve got a fierce shame in you, little girl. I can see it—burning in your gut like a jet engine. Is that why you move so fast and so hard?

She looks out over the city of slugs. She can feel his eyes on her, and she doesn’t like to think about what they are seeing.

You were in the army?

I was, he says and takes a drink.

For how long?

Two years. I was stationed in Hattiesburg. We were trying to take back the city.

That weren’t no small task.

We had rescue stations set up, radio transmitters. We were working building defensive walls. But they just kept coming.

Slugs, they like to be where the action is, she says.

We thought we were taking a stand. We killed them and burned the remains and the women tended to the bonfire, and you could smell the smoking corpses day and night. We rotated shifts, a barrage of bullets, and then the cleanup crews. And then there would be more after that. They just kept coming. You wouldn’t have thought there were so many dead.

And then what?

It was too much. We ran low on ammo. Everyone was exhausted. A girl fell into the fire and her mother tried to pull her out and both of them died and had to be burned. The worst was the psychology of it. You can’t fight an enemy like that. There’s no way to win.

So you gave up?

We fell back. We spread out to secure locations. They gave us the option to go home, and I took it.

You were gonna take care of your family.

He holds his bottle up to the sky.

The Grierson dynasty holds fast to its glorious history. It closes its eyes to modernity in all its forms.

He leans over to her and points the bottle in her face.

I’ve been around more living dead in that house than I was when I was piling them up in a bonfire two stories high.

He passes the bottle to her and sits back. She drinks.

Your family, they’re just doin what they know how to do is all.

Just like the slugs, right?

I reckon it ain’t the first time the comparison’s been made.

He looks at her again, and she can feel her skin go taut.

Where exactly are you from, Sarah Mary Williams? And don’t tell me Statenville. I’ve been to Statenville, it’s a ghost town.

I’ve been down south for a while. Found myself a nice little place, but the meatskins were fixin to move in. Before that I did a lot of travelin. Alabama, Mississippi, Texas. Once I got as far north as Kansas City.

What about your parents?

What about them?

Where are they?

Beats me. I guess I must of had some. But they either roamed free or got dead before I got any recollection of em.

What about—

He points down toward the house.

Is he really your brother? he asks.

Him? Huh-uh. He’s just a dummy I picked up a ways back. He don’t talk much, but he follows directions real good. Bet he could haul quite a load, big as he is. Would be a good worker to have around if anybody had need of one.

So you don’t have any family at all?

She shrugs and sniffs, wiping her nose on the back of her hand.

Not really. There was a kid once. Malcolm. It could of been he was my brother—but all the papers in the orphanage got burned. And there was Uncle Jackson, but we just called him that. He wasn’t a real uncle or nothing.

What happened to them?

Uncle Jackson, he got bit.

W
HERE IT
happened was up on the ridge where Uncle Jackson liked to hunt rabbits. He was crouched down in a gully taking careful aim when he felt the hands on him, the teeth sinking into the flesh of his forearm. He said he never saw the thing coming at all. That it must’ve been there in the leaves for who knows how long just waiting for some food to come along, like a Venus flytrap or something.

She found him later, met him as he was coming back to the cabin.

You’re gonna have to do something for me, little bit. It’s not gonna be pretty. Are you ready to do it?

She nodded.

He led her to a fallen tree and rolled up his sleeve and put his arm out and told her to tie it tight above the elbow with his belt. She did it. Then he told her to use her gurkha and take it off.

Just one quick stroke. Do you think you can do it?

It’s gonna hurt you bad, ain’t it?

It’s not gonna hurt as much as the alternative, little bit. Now you go on. Thirteen years old, maybe, but you’ve got a hacking arm on you the kind I’ve never seen before. Can you do it?

She nodded.

He put the loose end of the belt in his mouth so he wouldn’t scream when she did it.

She brought the blade down quick and firm like he had taught her before.

Afterward, he couldn’t walk so straight, so she got under his good arm and took him back to the cabin and laid him down on his cot.

What happened to Uncle Jackson’s arm? Malcolm said. He gazed around Temple’s body at the man lying on the bed. He was a worrying kind, Malcolm was, and sometimes you had to make him breathe into a bag when he got stirred up.

He got in an accident.

Was it meatskins?

It’s gonna be okay. Go to the well and bring me back some water.

But where’s his arm?

Go on like I told you.

They heated water on the woodstove and put damp cloths on Uncle Jackson’s forehead and tried to get him to drink. He was fitful for a long time, his head jerking back and forth, his good hand clutching at the space where his other arm should have been.

Eventually he slept, and so did Malcolm. And she sat up and watched the man in the glow of the firelight.

He woke after midnight, but he wasn’t the same. There was a quietness to him as of someone given up.

How you doing, little bit?

I’m all right, she said.

It got me, he said. I can feel it.

But your arm. It could be we got it in time. You might not change.

He shook his head.

I can feel it, he said. It’s in me. Whatever it is, it’s part of me now. You’re gonna have to take Malcolm away from here.

No, she said. You don’t know. You’re sick but it might not be that. You could make it, it might not be that.

Listen to me, little bit. You have to know this, it’s important. When it happens, you can
feel
it. All right? Are you listening? When it happens you’ll know.

But—

Give me that pistol from the table.

She brought the pistol to him. He popped the cartridge.

Now take out all the rounds except one.

It could be—

Come on, little bit. You do what I’m telling you. Just leave one round. You’re gonna need the rest.

She did it.

Now you take the guns and put them in the trunk of the car, and you take Malcolm, and the two of you drive away from here and don’t come back. You got it? You listening to me?

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and shook her head.

Temple, I’m talking to you, he said, his voice coming harsh and sudden and causing her to straighten up. Now you’re gonna do exactly what I tell you, do you understand?

Yes, sir.

I’ll be all right here. I’ll take care of myself before it gets ahold of me.

He gripped the gun to his chest.

Now you’ve got bigger things to think about, little bit. You’ve made a home out of this world somehow—I don’t know how you did it, but you did. And that means you can go anywhere in it. Everyplace is your backyard. You understand me?

Yes, sir.

Never let anyone tell you you don’t belong where you’re at. You’re my girl, and you’re gonna climb high and stand over all of them.

Yes, sir.

Now go on out of here. That’s my girl. I’m gonna remember you. That’s a dead man’s promise. Wherever my mind goes, it’s gonna have you in it.