There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (108 page)

Bud understands, though, that these are only peripheral pieces to the puzzle. Like the frame encasing the Mona Lisa, the binding of the Bible, what they cleave to is all that matters: Hordes of demons chasing him through the darkened Pines. Faceless denizens, except for the fiery eyes, floating about like fireflies in a storm…the Pines a chaos of gunfire, screams, flames and death…Lizard Lake lit by a blood red moon…empty bullet casings dropping at his feet like copper, clinking rain…a frantic drop into the earth…the Bunker, his Cave, illuminated by a hellish glow…the vault door swinging shut with only
three
inside…
two of them would not make it
…a rusty streak arcing down at him, followed by a sudden searing agony.

A grief too raw for words…

Then darkness. All-encompassing darkness.

             
So that’s it. That’s how it all shakes out—unless he can divert that damn river, that is. He knows this will be the last of his dream/visions he’ll have to suffer through, yet that knowledge brings him no comfort. No sense of relief at all. For he understands now that they weren’t really nightmares after all, though they’d certainly had that dreamlike quality. It wasn’t his tortured psyche attempting to take out the trash, as good old Dr. Ellis had claimed, nor was it Beelzebub’s idea of a rip-roaring good joke.

Josie had been wrong, too! He was no psychic! All this time and he hadn’t realized their single true source:
His mother
. She’d been with him all this time, communicating in the only way left to her:
In his dreams
. Mental apparitions sent by her to forewarn him of the dark days ahead—that’s what they were! Flickers of the future
yet
to be. Yet they were more than that, and he knew it, too. From the moment of her death, she’d been trying to say goodbye to him.
It was the one thing, after all, tying her to this mortal plane
. And what was the best way to say goodbye?
Why, an affirmation of love.

He felt her angelic fingers upon his face, so cool and soft, and then heard, as clear as day, the five words he’d most wanted to hear her say since the Red Eyed Man staggered into his bedroom. The same five words she most longed to utter:
“I love you, Buddy boy...
”

Bud awoke in an instant, his eyes snapping open. Tubby was looking down at him in concern.

              “
Dadgumit
it, Bud! You had me scared silly! I’ve been shaking you for over a minute now! Must’a been some creepshow, huh? You all right?”

             
Feeling his mother’s breath, still warm in his ear, Bud smiled and said:
“Right as rain, Ralph. Right as rain.”

                                          *******

“A drop hits me below the eye, right before the head lands in my lap. I stare down inanely at it. Heavy. Impossibly heavy. Who knew a head could weigh so much? The smell of Noxzema floods my senses and I scream. I scream and I scream and I scream and I scream…”

Josie startled awake from the grip of the nightmare. It was of that first day, so long ago, when Bud told her and Rusty of his recurring dreams. The one with his mother’s murder starting off the gruesome hit parade. She looked around the dying campfire but Buddy boy was long gone. Rusty and Bilbo were still asleep. Tubby was awake and staring at the rising sun, inching its way over the hazy horizon. He sat on the sand, his chin resting on his knees, his arms clamped around his legs, silent and still as a park statue. The 12 gauge lay beside him on a blanket. The sight of the Remington startled Josie even more than Bud’s absence. She jumped to her feet and looked up and down the empty stretch of beach—not a soul in sight in either direction. She felt something in her pocket, and stuck her hand inside. The few remaining shotgun shells.

Bud must’ve put them there last night
. They and the abandoned shotgun spoke volumes. Told Josie where Bud was going, what his
oh, so
noble intentions were, and quite frankly it pissed her off.
That big dumb lummox! He didn’t even say goodbye! Too damned scared to, I bet.

Josie shook her head in disgust. For all his He-Man heroics, Bud Brown could be a real pussy at times.

              She rummaged in her bag, past the finished pages of her novel—wondering why she’d brought the damn thing along—to get to a clean pair of underwear. After retrieving her shampoo, a towel, her favorite shorts, and a clean T-shirt, Josie located a bench of sorts, a stripped palmetto tree, washed ashore, some twenty yards down the beach. She considered the tampons, but her period, thank God, was at an end. She set her things on the log and looked back towards the fire pit. Tubby was still staring out at the horizon, his face impassive. She considered moving further along the beach, until he couldn’t see her, but realized maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Turning her back to the camp, she removed her blue jeans and the t-shirt she was wearing. She then shed her bra and panties, laid them out on the log, and ran naked into the surf, the shampoo bottle held tight in one hand. She felt eyes upon her and could only hope they belonged to Tubby, and not to any nearby Rabids intent on ravaging her. The surf was a little rough for bathing, but good hygiene was only a secondary cause for the morning dip. After squeezing a generous dollop of shampoo into her hair, she tossed the bottle back onto the beach, out of reach of the tide. She got a good lather going and rinsed off the soap, diving under the surface. She anchored herself on the rippled ocean floor, her fingers and toes curling into the sand. Down here the current was less noticeable. It was safe under the sea. She felt herself relax, the tension leaving her body in a cold rush. She looked up at the familiar green roof overhead, the light barely filtering through the murky Atlantic dome. Down here, no Rabids existed. No dead parents roaming obtusely about. No brother’s remains piled high in a kitchen sink. When she was a little girl, her dad had taken her to see
The Little Mermaid
at the Moonlite Drive-In. Just the two of them in his old Fiat Spider convertible, their bare feet propped up on the padded dash; his feet comically huge, hers endearingly tiny. That had been a good night. One of those memories you know is a keeper the moment they’re happening. Something to dust off and replay whenever you needed a giggle or smile. The movie had enchanted her as well. It thrilled her that the heroine, Ariel, had red hair, too! Until that movie came along she’d been embarrassed by the color of her hair. (
“I’d rather be dead, than have red on my head,”
was a taunt, heard often in the halls of the Academy.) She felt an affinity with the little red headed mermaid and fantasized about becoming one herself. It was a little girl daydream, like teatime with her stuffed animals, or building sandcastles at the beach, where she awaited true love’s first kiss, in a lonely sandy chamber. An innocent diversion to fill the long, yet carefree days of childhood. But the daydream turned to something else after her father fell through the emerald ceiling. After her childhood ended so prematurely. Somewhere, under this same dappled roof, Joe Rusty O’Hara yet lived!

He hadn’t drowned! That was a feckin’ lie!
He’d simply metamorphosed into something-of-the-sea.

Kind of like
The Incredible Mr. Limpet—
only more human than icky fish.

After that awful day, Josie liked to come down to the South Side shore whenever she could get a moment alone and run straight into the ocean. She didn’t go there to boogieboard with all the other kids. Or to lie out in the sun. Her sole reason for returning, again and again, was to shatter the emerald ceiling. The name she’d given to the expansive marine roof, from which her father had vanished without a trace. Once below that green roof, she’d stay until her lungs cried out for air. Day by day she’d practice holding her breath, in hopes that someday she wouldn’t
have
to
anymore. That she, too, would evolve into a being of the sea. A beautiful, shapely mermaid. Then, with a dismissive flick of her long, shimmering tailfin, she would leave this island in search of her father. For that fabled
City Under the Sea
, where a life of immortal bliss awaited her…

She’d gotten very good at holding her breath—Ham said she was the strongest swimmer on Moon—but she never did change into that mermaid. Not that it was a waste of time. Those moments spent under the emerald ceiling had been her way of communing with her father—much more so than the times spent by his empty grave in the Pines! She felt so close to him down here. So at peace. She felt so now. Josie’s tears became one with the sea. Salt into salt.
             
Why did you leave me, Daddy? Why didn’t you say goodbye? I miss you so very much…

Shayna had cracked up the Fiat during one of her binges and never bothered getting it fixed. Where it ended up, Josie hadn’t a clue. She had loved that old car and mourned its loss. After her father left them, she used to sit in the Spider, her eyes closed, her bare feet on the dash, and imagine her daddy beside her, smelling of Old Spice and sun block. Laughing uproariously at the antics of that silly old fiddler crab. Like much of her childhood, her mother had stolen that from her as well. But no one could steal her green roof! Underneath the dappled emerald ceiling, Josie’s old fantasy flared to life. She shut her eyes tightly and wished that old wish: Gills to breathe underwater and a shimmering tailfin to take her far, far away. Then she could be with her daddy, always and always…

              Her eyes popped open in the water. Only problem with that fantasy was it didn’t include her Buddy boy. She loved her daddy, would
always
love him, but he was gone. Forever gone. Never to emerge from the emerald ceiling. No
City Under the Sea
. No immortal bliss. Yet even if by some miracle all that was somehow possible, her place was here with Bud. Yes, up above, where dead mothers roamed oblivious; where the remains of beloved little brothers fit neatly into a kitchen sink, where the stink of corruption perfumed the air. Where maggots and blowflies held dominion. Even the Little Mermaid chose true love over her father; chose mortality and pain over immortality and bliss—that’s how it should be, you know.

Little girls grow up to leave their daddies.

Josie pushed off the sandy bottom and swam hard for the surface. She emerged feeling cleaner, stronger, and ready to face the day. Her mind was finally
right
. The self-pity behind her now. She wiped the sea from her face and drew her hair behind her head, wringing the salt water from her thick copper mane. Looking back towards camp, she saw Tubby looking over at her. Not staring, his focus still seemed too disconnected for that, but certainly aware of her now. Josie started to tell him to
kindly turn around please
, to give her some privacy, but there was something so forlorn about the look in his eyes that she didn’t have the heart to scold him. Besides, there was nothing overtly lustful in his gaze.
Want
, maybe, but not lust.

Josie gave him a sympathetic smile and dried herself with the towel she’d brought along. Her nipples, already pebbled from the cold water, stiffened further under the rough texture of the towel. Then again, maybe it was because Ralph was staring at her. Josie glanced sideways over at him. He sat there on the sand, his body slack and seemingly boneless, watching her with that inscrutable look on his face. Josie finished getting dressed and then rolled her dirty things up into the towel.

Tubby knew he should’ve looked away when Josie came out of the sea, looking like an erotic version of that mermaid cartoon, but his focus this time wasn’t of a sexual nature. His penis remained flaccid. His imagination in neutral. Benny Hill, that old
prevert
, was nowhere in sight. After the insanity of the day before, all of the cruelty, it was nice looking at something so beautiful, so unmarred by the ugliness of the manmade virus. He watched her dry off, her heavy breasts swaying, the russet hairs between her long legs glistening like diamonds from the salt water, without feeling shame or lust. Josie meant more to him than that now. No longer did he objectify her. His yearning to own her
heart
far outweighed his desire to possess her body. A small smile creased his lips as Josie sat down beside him.

They sat there, silent for a time.

Tubby inhaled deeply. Strawberries and salt.

“I’m sorry about your family, Joe.”

              She kissed him on his cheek. Wet and cold, and yet impossibly warm. “Thank you, Ralphie. Sorry about yours, too, hon. I guess we’re all the family we’ll ever have from now on, huh? You, Bud, Rusty, and me.” Guilt flashed across Josie’s face. “And Bilbo, too, of course.”

             
Tubby sighed deeply, content to remain seated on this patch of sand for the remainder of his life. If only that were possible. It felt good to imagine that everything was somehow right with the world. The sudsy wash of the waves, the frantic antics of the fiddler crabs, and the cottony clouds rolling slowly by overhead seemed to belie their current wretched circumstances. Surely the sounds of the ocean would have turned more portentous with the loss of their innocence! The clouds black and angry at all the wanton death and destruction. Where was the grieving thunder, the lamenting lightning, and the weeping rain? How could his parents, Rusty’s parents, and Josie’s family be so irretrievably dead, while the gentle waves lapped the shore so serenely? How could the world spin on, so callous and indifferent? He shook his head and sighed again.