Then I smelled menthol and strawberries. A pool of blue mold appeared on the floor. My rekulak’s head emerged, but nothing more. The graft broke, the room dissolved, and I was back in the suite at the Mad River Inn.
There was a black bubble on my other hand now. The Zaditorians crouched on either side of me and helped me stand by lifting the bubbles that I couldn’t budge.
“I can already feel it, Charlie,” Blanche said. “You did so well. Thank you.”
“Now give Em her body back,” I said.
Blanche patted me on the shoulder, then turned and walked out of the suite. I yelled after her, but she didn’t come back. The Zaditorians lifted me by the black bubbles, and I looked at May’s body one last time as they carried me out. I stifled tears. I knew she was gone, that the body on the floor was no longer her, but I felt like I was leaving her, like she would be lonely here without her family.
The Zaditorians dragged me down the hall to the elevator. I yelled for Blanche, yelled for help. No one came. When the Zaditorians carried me past the lobby bar, I saw why. The TV was still playing football, but the men had stopped talking, their bodies slumped over the bar or laying on the floor. I called to them. They didn’t move. They had been regurgitated along with my sister.
Chapter 19
THE ZADITORIANS PUT ME in the backseat of a car, and one sat on either side of me, holding my bubble-hands. A woman I never saw before was in the driver’s seat. I saw her check me out through the rearview mirror, but she didn’t speak. I didn’t ask where we were going. I didn’t care. May and Em were dead because I was too stupid and weak to save them. I thought about suicide, and it kept me from crying.
We drove almost an hour south, past the population center of the county, to where giant redwoods lined the highway so thick and so tall in places they left only a narrow strip of sky visible overhead. We turned east off the highway, then south, then east again onto a narrow and windy road that followed a tributary of the Eel River, the same road Kaliah and I had taken to Arampom. It cut through the side of the mountains. It had no guardrails. There was a steep drop to the muddy and tumultuous waters below, running high and fast with the winter rains. Fallen rocks were strewn across the road in places. I stopped thinking about suicide and committed myself to revenge.
May and Em were dead.
The grief came in waves, as if it knew I could only take so much at a time. My throat ached as I stifled sobs.
We caught up to a line of slow-moving cars. Around one of the bends, I could see a sporty little Honda at the head of the line. I estimated twenty cars were stuck behind it. But no one honked. As we drove, more cars lined up behind us.
The trees were more sparse here, and smaller—second- and third-growth firs and pines. The road climbed away from the river a few miles before descending into a small round valley, where dozens of identical white houses had been built in neat little rows with neat little yards, around a small school with a football field. The river skirted around the southern edge of the valley and cut across the eastern third. On the other side was a mill and what looked like a town center, with a handful of larger commercial buildings. Between the town and the surrounding mountains were pastures and farmland.
Arampom.
When we hit the valley floor, the road straightened out, and we traveled for a mile, past grazing sheep and cows, before the whole line of cars stopped. Two hundred yards ahead and fifty yards in the air, there was something new: a cloud of flying birds, perpendicular to the road and stretched out on either side as far as I could see. Their cries mixed like shards of glass and metal in a blender. Under the cloud was the line of one-room concrete buildings, spaced a hundred yards apart. But now their construction was finished, and there was a person inside each one, or at least in the ones I could see in.
We inched forward slowly. Bird carcasses littered the ground between guard buildings, forming a morbid and grotesque moat. In the moat and in the air above the moat, I identified ravens, buzzards, hawks, owls, quail, sparrows . . . .
A woman standing in the road, eating an apple, was stopping and inspecting each car before letting them pass. When our turn came, my driver powered down the window, and the woman poked her head inside, looked at me, smiled, and said, “Welcome, Charlie. No need to lift the gate for you. Just roll on through.” I’d never seen her before. She went back to her post in the road and waved us forward. As we passed her, fresh scrill surfaced on my skin and swirled for the next forty yards, then went stagnant.
We drove to the school. The parking lot was full. People were filing into the gymnasium. We found a spot across the street, and the Zaditorians awkwardly ushered me out of the car, holding my bubbles. Dry scrill sloughed off me.
As we crossed the street, walking toward the gymnasium, I spotted Kaliah standing in a cluster of five people, chatting. Her hair was held up in pins, and she
