children ran along the side of the road, and Athena switched on the siren, put the headlights on low. She glanced up uneasily. If this storm came on as hard as they sometimes did out here, there’d be no choice but to pull over.
“Christ, that siren’s really on its way out. Turn it off, honey—we’re clear.” Doris climbed up front. “Listen, are you meeting Barry-boy to night? I only ask because…”
As the first fat drops splattered against the windshield, Athena switched on the wipers, and the blades began a halting, squeaky movement, pushing sharp grit. Rain glittered in the headlights.
Lightning, a single bolt, speared the ground. Line squalls swept the woods, their noise drowning out the snapping of thin trees that splintered in the lashing winds.
Deep within the woods, a broad shallow marsh heaved and shuddered like a miniature sea, and long-bladed grasses flattened under a wind that churned thick water into brown waves with caps of foam. The waves licked and bit at a peninsula of firm soil that reached to the center of the marsh, eating away clumps of grass.
But here the earth supported more than grass: a dozen dwarf firs surrounded a dark, squat box of a hut. Soft and pulpy, pocked with wormholes, the windowless timber walls stood firm against the assaulting wind, and the attacking rain bounced off the clapboard roof.
Reflected lightning shimmered in the water. Through the marsh there struggled a hunching form. Slushing, half-submerged, its quavering body blurred by the moving shafts of rain, it towed a limp burden, something that bobbed easily though water but had to be wrestled over humps of harsh grass.
Reaching the shack, the crude shape disappeared down a burrow under the wall, and for a long moment its discarded burden—the headless, limbless corpse of a child—seeped red. Thick fluid mingled with the rain. Then the torso jerked. It moved again. Then it disappeared down the hole, while the muddy walls of the burrow gave off a sucking sound—deep and obscene.
Rain beat on the walls of the shack.
Over the woods, an airplane boomed, invisible, the snarl muted, fading through the white haze of the sky. The hikers looked around in stunned disorientation. The pines, here unmixed with any other species, grew to an even height of four feet. “This makes me feel exactly like a giant!” Sandra’s voice went shrill.
“It’s as though we’re the first ones on an alien planet.” Alan sounded awe-struck.
“Are you people crazy?” Jenny had just about decided she hated backpacking. “I am not walking through this!” Everything seemed backward—the trees reached only to her shoulders, but some of the ragged weeds stretched above her head. Just trying to maintain perspective gave her a headache. She sighed loudly. This was only their second day out, but the frictions inherent in the group had already begun to spark and smolder, and the summer day stretched long ahead of them. “Couldn’t we rest for a while? This might be fun if it wasn’t so much like a forced march.” The playful whine in Jenny’s voice went sour as she tried to brush grit off her neck. She’d also about had it with these group vacations—the mountains last year had been bad enough, but Casey kept insisting it was a tradition. Now here they were in this awful place. “Something’s bitten me! Look how it’s swollen up already.” She ignored the look the others exchanged. “Aren’t you tired, Amelia?” Jenny peered at her daughter. “Don’t you want to rest?”
The child shuffled her feet.
“She’s all right.” Casey smiled at the little girl. “Aren’t you, babe?” He adored Amelia, although she was Jenny’s by an ex-husband.
“Man, this is nothing,” Sandra put in, trying to keep the peace. Before Jenny could contradict her, she added, “I could walk like this for hours yet.”
Trying to sound downright jaunty, Alan voiced his (strained) agreement.
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Jenny snapped.
“I notice she never asks Amelia if she’s tired unless she wants to rest herself,” Sandra whispered. Shiny with perspiration, she pushed stray blonde hair out of her eyes. The two couples had been friends for years, but Jenny’s temperament had always been a problem. Sandra put up with her for the sake of the guys, who’d been close since college.
Sweat glistened even in the black hairs of Alan’s mustache. He started to say something to Sandra, then noticed Jenny glaring at them, that martyred look on her face again. “You! Case! Wait up, will you?”
Reluctantly, Casey stopped and stood with his back to the rest of the group.
Waiting, he stared at the stunted pines, at trunks that writhed and twisted in serpentine knots. When the others had almost reached him, he started walking again, his boots silently crushing the mat of needles and twigs.
Amelia picked up one of the pine twigs, but when she tried to snap it, the stick bent like rubber. She dropped it and hurried to catch up to the others as they stepped one at a time over a black fallen tree.
“Then why does she stay?” Sitting in the car, Steve slurped beer from the can while sweat trickled down the sides of his face. He winced—his headache renewed its series of stabbing attacks. He was just tired, he told himself, rubbing at blood-veined eyes. He didn’t sleep so well anymore. Running a hand through his hair—and suddenly remembering how badly he needed a haircut—he tried again to organize his thoughts.
If not for the puffy weariness around his eyes and the beginnings of a slight paunch, Officer Steven Donnelly would still have resembled a recruiting poster: the evenly formed features, the blue eyes, the blond crewcut. But even his hair was scruffy now. And his crumpled shirt, like all his shirts, sported the faint outlines of ancient coffee stains. “Why?” he repeated. “I mean, if she hates it so much.”
Ignoring the question, his partner exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke that filled the car. “Yes sir, Athena’s got it all out over my wife.”
Another twinge of pain shot through Steve’s head. Not listening, he felt nauseated, and beer dribbled down the front of his uniform. No, he didn’t sleep so well anymore, not since…He winced, trying not to complete the thought, and he tossed the beer can and watched it skid, rolling lightly over the sand. There hadn’t been enough time, he thought. His eyes, always pale and watery, brimmed now, and turning from his partner, he gazed into the parched woods.
Just off a dirt road, their car rested in shadows. Letters on the side of the vehicle proclaimed TRIBOROUGH POLICE in red on white. Triborough was an independent operation—just two cars—serving the Marston-Chamong- Hobbston area. Duties were simple enough: patrol the little towns, don’t disturb property owners, hustle out undesirable transients—mostly kids traveling to and from the shore—and stay alert for the invasions of African- americans and Hispanics that their boss, Barry’s father-in-law, assured them was coming.
Barry’s yawn slowly molded itself into a smirk. “I had a rough night last night.” He flicked his cigarette out the window. “Athena wanted me to—”
“I got to take a piss. You should check in with Frank.” Steve started to get out the passenger side but banged his head. Hard. The pain staggered him. Knees buckling, he feared he might black out and leaned heavily on the car.
“You all right?”
He mumbled a reply. Face averted, he moved unsteadily away, recoiling from the blinding heat, a heat that seemed to melt the lines of thought, send them blurring one into the next, blotting into memory.
“Watch out for snakes,” Barry called after him, laughing.
Swaying on his big feet, he stumbled, and a sober corner of his mind churned with self-loathing. He needed to walk, to find some air, to find…He knew Barry was watching him stagger. Only the middle of the day, and the worst part was that he badly wanted another drink. As he stumbled farther into the trees, he could still hear Barry’s laughter.
He’d loved Barry once. Really loved the guy. Looked up to him, seeing his faults but rakishly grinning at them.
