wedging it between his lips.
Smoke leaks from his mouth. Not enough lung capacity to draw a good breath and hold it fast, so he puffs at it quick, quick, slow, before letting it fall. A smoky serpent coils around my wrist as I lift it up again for him to take.
“Will I die?”
I don’t want to lie, but the truth hurts too much to tell.
“No, baby. You’re just sleepy.”
He nods slowly. “I
“We’re all going to die one day.”
“Today. Where is my mama?”
Saliva thickens in my throat. I can see his mother from here, burning and inert.
“With your brothers and sisters.”
“Good.”
There’s no room between the tree and the truck for me to slide in alongside him, put my arm around him, give him comfort, so I reach across and fit his hand in mine. His fingertips are ice chips, but I cannot thaw them with my body heat.
“It’s just a bad dream. When you wake up, this won’t have happened.”
I am a piece of shit, lying to a dying child.
“Do you know songs?”
“Yes.”
“Sing. Please.”
In a light place in my memories, I find the song my mother sang to me, of a maiden in a valley pleading to her love, begging him not to forsake and leave her. And as I sing to the boy, I cry.
Miles down, the plates slow dance again, grinding against each other in the dark. Fire spreads, climbing the tinder-dry trees with the ease of firemen scaling ladders. Up, up it goes, until the canopies are ablaze and night becomes artificial day. What buildings still stand are falling now, crushing their contents with no care for whether they hold people or possessions. Dark heads bob and blur as everyone tries to save themselves. Mothers cry out for their children, husbands for their wives. The land is on the move and she is merciless. My hand tightens on Yanni’s arm. I keep singing.
Flames lick at a truck at the far side of the camp, kissing their way up the metal body like an attentive lover. Higher, higher, until the night explodes. The light stains my vision white as the fireball unfolds like a flower, its petals reaching out… out… out, until it races back to its moment of conception.
My face is dry and tight. The white spots are old celluloid melting until I’m left with a dim picture of the disaster zone. Bodies still and bodies moving.
At the edge of my vision something creeps. When I flick my head around to capture the form, it fades. My body turns cold, stiff. In my heart I know what it is, and if that muscle wasn’t already in my boots, it would be sinking fast through my chest and organs. The Swiss is still alive. He survived all this and now he’s getting away.
But it can’t be. He’s stretched out on a cot, fighting for his life. What I saw was a ghost.
The hand in mine falls slack. My fingers understand before I do.
Yanni’s head sags to his shattered chest. All the singing in the world can’t bring him back. A cold mist seeps into my body. Anger will come in time, but for now I need to remain calm, leave this place behind, keep pushing north.
But first I need to be sure.
Lisa’s ghost follows me to the shack. My earlier vision was just the night and the trauma and my fear playing cruel tricks on my mind, because the Swiss is still here, dormant and benign in his illness. But something has changed. His wound is the neat, pale seam of a long-ago injury when it should be pink rope.
What was new has turned old too quickly. It’s not
This time, when I pick up the pillow, I am resolute. All this death, all this destruction and loss, and still I can say the world is better without this one life in it.
His body tenses as it realizes there is no oxygen to be found in the pillow’s fibers. His fingers curl up, dig into his palms. One moment he’s struggling, then everything fades away. The last switch has been flipped on his life.
Lights out.
The end.
Beneath my boots, the earth gives another shake, rattle, roll. I have to go. There’s no time to make extra- sure the Swiss is gone. A stopped pulse is good enough; I don’t have time for breath and mirrors.
I tell myself I did this for Lisa and the others, but beneath the lie the truth prevails: this wasn’t revenge. This was insurance. The small black stain on my soul is the premium.
I killed a man. I killed a man and I don’t care.
With calm purpose, I slip my arms through the backpack’s straps and cut a path through the dead and the dying. There are enough hands still alive to help those in need. I’m not necessary here. My place is somewhere else.
I wipe the back of my hand across my eyes and try to convince myself it doesn’t come away wet.
I killed a man and I don’t care.
PART THREE
EIGHTEEN
It’s Morris’s doing, I know it is, constantly pairing me with Nick. She’s got this wild idea that love and romance can still flourish in a dying world, as though the dead are some kind of emotional compost. When I confront her about it, she denies everything.
“We all talk to him but he gets to talk to no one. Doesn’t seem right, now, does it?”
I assume the indignant position: palms flat on her desk, leaning inward. It’s behind this pose that I hide my feelings.
“So you’ve assigned me as his—what? Therapist? Jesus, I was a janitor.”
“Domestic engineer.”
“A janitor. And I don’t know a thing about therapy.”
She shrugs one-shouldered. It’s a feminine movement inside a gender-neutral uniform.
“You went to therapy.”
“I’ve flown in a plane, too, but that doesn’t make me a pilot.”
“Just listen to the guy. These are dark, dark times, my friend, and even cavemen need a shoulder to lean on.”
I name the donkey Esmeralda for no good reason. It fits. I don’t know why, but when I speak it, the name slips on the way a favorite sweater does on a chilly day.
She comes willingly, does Esmeralda, for all the quirks of her stubborn species. Maybe she knows where there’s people there’s food. Or maybe she likes the looks of me and wants some company. Or perhaps she just wants to feel like she has purpose.
So we take turns carrying the backpack. Just because history makes her a beast of burden doesn’t mean I desire the same. I do my share. Either way, she plods along behind me at the end of her rope. When she stops, I do the same. Esmeralda is skilled in the art of finding water and food.
