Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy

'Why are you yelling?'

'Oh, sorry. Hey, old fart!' Beth hollers at Rufus. 'Come show us how to work this thing!'

Rufus jogs over, opens the valve, and gives them so much gas that Beth and Andy both lose all motor coordination and collapse in the sand.

Side-by-side, they lie there, staring up into the sky. The first stars and Mercury twinkle in the heavens, throbbing like tiny glowing hearts.

'I feel like I knew you in another life,' Beth says.

'Me, too.'

'I feel so good.'

'Yeah.'

'Oh, God I feel good!'

Beth rolls over on top of Andy.

'I love you.'

She kisses his mouth.

'Oh, God I love you so much I want to.'

'Okay.'

Rubbing against him now.

'Love me, oh, love me right up!'

'But I can’t feel my eyes.'

Then Andy is sitting in the bed of the moving truck. It’s full blown night. Cold and starry. The man who Rufus and Maxine befriended is sitting next to Luther, talking his ear off. Andy catches a fragment of the one-way conversation.

'…don’t know if you’ve ever been out of the country, but when you come back, it’s so difficult to buy into all this capitalist bullshit, especially when you’ve lived six months in a third world country where people don’t even have fuckin’ clean water to drink. Hey, could I get a little more of that?'

Luther helps the world-traveler to another lungful of laughing gas.

Andy leans against the side of the truck as they bump along the dirt road, back toward the village and the House of Kite. Even through the haze of gas, he can see the fate of the world-traveler in Luther’s face, gone absolutely horny for violence. And Luther sees that he can see it and offers the mask to Andy.

Andy takes the mask and lies flat on the truck bed, staring up into the night sky. He breathes deep and long. Beth and Vi have lost consciousness. He isn’t far behind. It briefly dawns on him—the sheer horror of it all—and he wonders what he is becoming.

Then the last lungful of gas hits him, and the euphoria is back, thank God, and the numbness and the all-is- forgiven now and perhaps Rufus is right you are not a bad person you are not really here but now nothing matters and thank you God thank you God and the sky is throbbing again, and the stars twirling then exploding into a thousand flinders of light.

# # #

On a late afternoon toward the end of July, the screams of a woman filled the stone house. You could even hear her from the front yard, standing in the wet, mosquito-ridden heat between the two live oaks. Andy and Beth certainly heard it, locked in their cramped dark cells underneath the house. They’d heard screams down here before, but this time was different. They recognized the young woman’s voice, and even through the antipsychotic fog, both reached the same conclusion: the Kites were killing Violet.

In the candlelight of Vi’s cell, amniotic fluid glistened in the dirt between her legs. Her hands had been balled into fists for more than an hour. Her larynx ached with strain.

Maxine Kite knelt beside her as Rufus leaned against the doorframe smoking a pipe.

'Take me to a hospital!' Vi begged. 'It’s not coming.'

'It is coming,' Maxine said. 'This is just—'

'No it’s not! It hurts so much!'

Another vicious contraction.

She screamed again.

Rufus chuckled.

'Pretend it’s the olden times,' he told Vi between groans. 'Just got to tough it out there, little lady.'

Luther came down the creaking steps and peered over his father’s shoulder.

'Miracle of life, son,' Rufus said.

'What are you going to do with it?'

'With what?'

'Ahhhhhgg!'

'The baby.'

'I don’t know.'

'What does that feel like?' Luther asked Vi.

'Fuck you!' Vi roared.

'Boy, she’s a tad busy right now,' Maxine said.

Vi looked up at the Kites, their faces eerily grotesque in the firelight. This must be hell.

'Get out!' Vi screamed. 'Get out all of you!'

No one left, and the contraction intensified. Lifting her head off the pillow, she grabbed her thighs and groaned for all she was worth.

A bloody head emerged.

When it was out up to its bellybutton, the little boy screamed 'what the fuck?' at the world—a scared, fragile bawling that filled Vi with the purest joy she’d ever known.

She pushed the rest of the baby out.

It lay facedown in the dirt, crying.

'What is that?' Luther asked, pointing at the bloody mass beside the infant.

'It’s the placenta, boy. What feeds the baby.'

'They eat that in some cultures,' Rufus said. 'It’s a delicacy. Mm, boy.'

'Would somebody cut the cord?' Vi asked, crying now. 'I need to hold him.'

'Luther, go fetch a pair of scissors from the kitchen.'

Vi sat up. She reached down, lifted the tiny, wailing creature out of the dirt, and brought him into her chest. She kissed his slimy head and whispered to him.

'What’s today?' Vi asked Maxine.

'I don’t know.'

'Please. I want to know his birthday.'

Luther returned with a pair of scissors. He pushed by his father and told his mother to get out of the way.

'Boy, you let me—'

'I want to do it.'

Maxine relinquished her place beside the young mother, and Luther knelt down.

'Turn him over,' he said.

Vi held her son up under his arms, facing Luther. The infant and the monster stared at each other, the baby’s eyes rolling around in its head, Luther’s black orbs taking in this bloody little miracle.

'Be careful, please,' Vi said.

Luther took hold of the umbilical cord and clipped it a half-inch from the bellybutton. Vi pulled her baby back into her breast.

'What’s its name?' Luther asked.

'Max,' Vi said.

'After my mother?'

'After my husband. I need to nurse him now. Can I have some privacy please? Please.'

Luther got up and walked out of the room. Maxine followed him and Rufus closed and locked the door behind them all.