The Chaos (16 page)

Ben made a face. “Tasty? Euw.”

I shoved his shoulder. “What, you think I wouldn’t be?” I tried not to think of what kind of rump roast I would have made.

“What language was that?” Ben asked the man.

“Russian.” His face was full of wonder. “You got away from her. You’re a lucky girl.” Then he blushed. “I think she’s kinda racist. She called you a mulatto.”

“Yeah, and she’s an old mother hen.”

The old lady said something that sounded like, “Dacha maya, idti syuda.” Her house shook the egg slime off itself like a dog shaking off water, spraying more cops with goo as it did so. It waddled over to the old lady. On either side of the house, a thick paned window flapped its shutters open. The shutters snapped out and out and out, extending until the wings of the house were fully unfurled. People screamed, cowered.

“Damn,” I muttered, “her dacha can do the wave.”

The house gave a quick flap of its window-wings.
They clacked like the tumbling of large bones. It took a flapping run—its first step crushed a streetcar stop into Lucite smithereens—then leapt into the air. The old lady led the way in her eggshell flying saucer. Airborne, the house tucked its bird legs up under itself and flew after its owner. A few of the cops shot fruit at them.

We watched the eggshell chariot and the flying house disappear into the distance.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said to Ben. Christ. Getting eaten by an old lady and her house wasn’t as scary to me as trying to help some poor guy who’d just had his foot crushed. What kind of loser was I?

“We’ll be right behind you,” Ben replied.

I looked at him. “We?”

He gave a weak laugh. “Royal we. Trying for some humor. Where do you wanna go?”

“Down to the Convention Centre.” I picked up the bike. “Come on. I’ll double you.”

“You’d better not drop me off onto the dirty road, girl.”

He was sounding a little more normal again. He straddled the back of the bike, put his hands on my shoulders. “Ready.”

Something black poked its nose out from behind a car that had wrapped itself around a lamppost. The something was about the size of a big dog, but the three paws that were in view looked almost like hands. As soon as it saw me looking, it shyly pulled its head back behind the car to where I couldn’t see it. I guess if a person could be turned into a cartoon today, they could be turned into anything. “Let’s hurry,” I said to Ben. The blemish on my body was spreading. I didn’t know how much time I had.

“Here you go,” said Ben, handing a couple of water bottles to a scared-looking man who’d been flooded out of his home last night.

“You can wash your hands at one of the sanitation stations over there.” He pointed to where the temporary green carousels of hand sanitizers had been set up.

“Thank you,” said the man.

“Don’t clean your face with that stuff, though,” Ben told him. “It’s murder on your skin.”

The man nodded and wandered dazedly over to where Ben had pointed, picking his way through the crowds of people trying to settle down until God knew when on the flimsy green cots that volunteers like us were setting up as quickly as we could.

The great hall of the Convention Centre was a sight. Hundreds of cots in straggly rows. People’s belongings piled next to the cots. Some people had tried to build teetering privacy walls with the things they’d rescued from their homes. Every so often a pile of coats or something would topple to the
floor. Volunteers kept asking them not to pile their stuff up like that, but there were always new people to tell. There were kids running everywhere. There were adults yelling at their kids who were running everywhere. Kids crying. Adults crying. People yelling at the volunteers. Volunteers yelling at the people. People yelling at each other. Did I mention the crying? People curled up on their cots, quietly or loudly sobbing. People on their cell phones, trying to locate people who had gone missing, or to let their friends and their relatives know they were okay. Volunteers trying to hand out sandwiches. Lines for the Johnny on the Spot portable toilets. The main Convention Centre toilets had all overflowed, and a couple of stalls had become tall, thin clock towers that played the
Sesame Street
theme song over and over. Out of sync. The floor was still wet in spots from the flooding last night. The whole place smelled of unhappy, and the hubbub was deafening.

Gloria used the sleeve of her green hoodie to wipe the sweat off her brow. “If I have to bend over again to pull one more bottled water out of this box, I think my back is just going to break in two!”

I grinned at her. “Good practice for the battle.”

I grabbed two of the bottles from the box underneath the folding cafeteria table we were working at, and handed them to the little boy waiting there. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.”

Maybe it was silly to be thinking about a dance competition now. But maybe the world would get back to normal soon. Maybe if we hung on to our memories of what it used to be just a few short hours ago, we could go back to that place. Not that I’d be taking part in the competition now. Not with my skin the way it was.

Glory stared blankly at me. “Battle?” Then her face cleared.
“Oh! For a second, I had no idea what you were talking about. That seems like a lifetime ago.” She started to bend again.

“Here,” said Punum, “take one of mine.” Wheelchair or no wheelchair, it was like she’d come out of nowhere. Two of the volunteers, Bo Yih and Jim, were with her. Punum had a case of bottled water on her lap. She handed one of the bottles to Gloria.

When I’d gotten to the Convention Centre, I’d apologized to Punum for being such a shit. She’d shrugged. “At least you’re here to help,” she’d said. I didn’t feel forgiven, just . . . tolerated. She and Glory had only met each other hours before, with the other volunteers, but they were carrying on like they were already best friends. Every time I tried to talk to Glory, she’d be all like, “Did you know Punum writes her own lyrics?” or “Punum says . . .” Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Glory beamed at Punum. “Thank you,” she said shyly, as she took the bottle.

“No problem at all.” Hard to tell beneath that deep brown skin, but it looked like Punum was blushing. “I’m your relief,” she said, her cheeks flushing even more. “I mean, we are. Jim and Bo Yih and me. For all of you. Lunch break.” She stuttered to a halt with a goofy grin on her face.

“Yeah,” said Bo Yih. “Go before there’re no more sandwiches.” She and Jim and Punum took our places.

The little boy I’d given the two water bottles to was still standing there. He said to Jim, “Mom says to say she needs milk for my baby sister. The water came into our house and the wall came down and Mom grabbed my sister and my dad grabbed me, but nobody grabbed the milk, and now Emily’s hungry.”

As the three of us walked away, I heard Jim asking, “Where’s your mom, son? The lady in the green dress?
That’s your mom?”

“God,” said Ben, “I can’t even imagine what this is like for little kids.”

I shivered, suddenly chilly. A bedraggled woman carrying a wide-eyed brown tabby in her arms had pushed open one of the big glass doors to the Convention Centre, and a bit of cool air had blown in. Had she brought her dog, too? A black shadow had come in with them. It dashed into a dark corner between some lockers and was gone. The woman looked around, a lost look on her face. I’d seen that look a lot today. I was probably wearing it, too. She saw the bunch of cafeteria-style folding tables laid out end to end. Someone had handwritten
NEED HELP
? in black marker on a big sheet of paper and taped it so that it hung off the front edge of the tables. The woman headed that way. She was limping.

The clock tower toilet stalls bellowed, “SUNNY DAYS . . . ,” one right after the other, like they were singing a round. Ben winced.

Glory said, “This is all so nuts. On the way over here, while my mom’s car was stopped at a red light, I saw a tiny cow with wings. It flew over our car and pooped right on the windshield. Then this little thing that looked like Tinker Bell, only with fangs, flew down, scooped the poop up, and flew around throwing it at people’s heads and laughing an insane little Tinker Bell laugh.”

Ben burst out laughing. He’d stopped acting all weird and suspicious. I was relieved. People get nervous if black guys act too twitchy. There were all these tweets online about mobs beating up anyone who acted funny, like they might be one of the monsters roaming around.

We went over to the closest of the hand sanitizer stations that had been set up all over the main hall of the Convention Centre. Shane, the guy supervising our team of volunteers, had told us
to clean our hands often. “Last thing we want is some kind of infection spreading through this crowd,” he’d said.

Was this thing growing on me contagious? The doctors had said no. But that’s when it’d been just a little spot here and there, a lifetime ago in a world before this one, where things that had been harmless the day before could come alive and kill you today. Man, if I could go back to then and all I had to worry about was a spot or two, that would be so nice. I wouldn’t freak out whenever a new one showed up. I’d just get it lasered away.

Well, I could at least keep my hands clean. I let the cool sanitizer gel glop onto my hands and rubbed them together until it evaporated. It was drying my hands out. Ordinarily, the itchiness of dry hands made me crazy. But here, with blankets to hand out and cots to set up and lost children to help find their families, it really wasn’t bugging me much at all. If I just concentrated on doing the job in front of me, I could keep my mind off everything else, just for a little while. I bet my folks would be home soon. I wouldn’t have to tell them I’d gone with Rich to a bar. They’d find him, wherever he was. My mom would make a few calls, and probably he’d be unconscious in a hospital somewhere, and they’d fix him up, and everything would be fine.

Me, I was looking forward to taking the weight off my feet, even for a few minutes. The blemish had spread to my left foot and leg all the way to my hips. Both my boots were too tight now. The blemish was continuing to move up my body, too. It was almost at my navel. It was making my tight jeans even tighter. I was chafing like you wouldn’t believe. Ah, well. Think about something else. “So what’s with you and Punum?” I asked Glory.

Too casually, she flicked her hair out of her eyes, pulled it back, and refastened her ponytail. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Like hell she didn’t. I knew her too well.

Ben chortled, “You can’t hide anything from me and Scotch! You two are totally flirting with each other.”

“We are not! She’s just, you know, sweet. And she’s really interesting to talk to.”

That stung. “I’m interesting to talk to!”

“Yeah, about some things. Not about everything.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes; one of my trusty comebacks for when I didn’t know what to say. “You don’t even like girls. So don’t play her, okay?”

“Jeez, I won’t! Just leave it alone, already!”

“Wow, okay! Sorry I asked.”

Glory looked contrite. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just tired.”

Ben and I had gotten to the Convention Centre and discovered that Glory and her folks were there volunteering. They’d all been in bed and asleep when the world had gone insane. They hadn’t even felt the tremors much up where they lived. The first thing they’d known about it was when they’d woken up this morning to find that their lawn was now made of cheese. Gloria thought maybe it was Havarti, but her sister Joey was sure it was Edam. Her dad said he was just thankful it wasn’t blue cheese.

I smiled at Glory. “Apology accepted.” I caught a glimpse of a shadow disappearing behind a Johnny on the Spot. Somebody’d better get that lady’s dog into a cage. It could bite someone. “So, Ben.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “My turn now, I see.”

“You feeling better?”

“Yeah,” he said, sticking his hands under a pump, “I’m kinda getting used to it.”

Glory asked, “To everything that’s going on?”

“No. Stuff’s still freaking me out, big-time. I mean, my cousin’s family in Bolton are probably all dead!
No, I’m getting used to Junior here.” With his chin, he pointed to his side. He smiled down at empty air. “Aren’t I, you little brat?”

The skin of my scalp prickled. Glory and I exchanged looks.

“Ben,” I said, “there’s no one there.”

He was rubbing his hands dry. “You’re right,” he replied cheerfully, “there isn’t. Only there kinda is something there. I can sorta glimpse it, only not with my eyes, exactly. It tastes like candlelight and looks like the day after next Tuesday. It’s feeling sad, but sometimes I can make it smile like lemon drops. It’s been following me since the world went crazy.”

Glory was looking at Ben like he’d grown another nose. “You’re creeping me out,” she said.

“Don’t worry, he’s only little, whatever he is. I think he’s scared. I told him he could stick around with me for a while. You guys coming to eat?”

We followed him as he headed for the volunteers’ room. “But shouldn’t you tell someone?” I asked him. “Someone adult?”

He cut his eyes at me. “You the same Scotch who’s always telling me she’s grown-up now, right? I’m gonna deal with this on my own.”

Glory grabbed his arm to stop him. “She’s right! Something could be wrong with you.”

I said, “You might be going crazy.”

Glory said, “Some kind of super poison gas might have gotten released by accident. You might have breathed it in.”

“Or maybe you are going to turn into some kind of monster thing, and there’s a way to stop it.”

Gloria blurted out, “It might be aliens!”

Ben folded his arms and looked at us.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what it is. But poison gas doesn’t make a volcano grow overnight, and that volcano is real. Just ask all these people whose homes are underwater. And Gloria,
don’t even get me started on that ‘aliens’ business.”

I asked him, “How about the thing where you might be going nuts, then?”

Four Horseless Head Men swirled past us, giggling. Ben watched them go, then turned back to me. “Look around you, girl. Everything is nuts. I always carry on like I have an audience watching every move I make, and now”—he blew a kiss at the invisible thing at his side—“I do. Glory’s always going on about how boring her family is, and now they have a lawn made of cheese. And you; I bet you some weird secret desire of yours turned into something real. You going to tell us about it?”