The Marbury Lens (27 page)

That sound.

Chewing.

My stomach, twisting, as I looked down at Conner, wondering what he was seeing, what this felt like to him.

“Here,” Ben said. He handed a water bottle to Griffin, and the boy poured it out over his head, bathing the blood away from his face and chest.

“And put these on.” Ben held Griffin’s fatigues and gun belt in the other hand.

I’d been kneeling beside Conner. His breaths were faint, gurgling rasps.

The harvester I’d seen was chewing its way inside Freddie’s skull through the exit wound from my bullet. Another had already slipped inside a fresh, perfect circle just below his sternum. There were maybe a dozen more on the ground, working their way beneath his body.

Chewing.

But none on Conner yet.

I leaned over him, looked right into his eyes.

“Hey. Jack,” he whispered. “It hurts pretty bad.”

“What the fuck, Jack? What the fuck?” Ben said.

He took one step toward me. I put my palm up, warning him back.

“No, Ben. I’ll tell you about it some time.”

“Put him down, Jack,” Griffin said. “Just shoot him in the fucking head.”

I turned and looked at Griffin. “I can’t.”

Conner moved his hand, tried to touch me.

I grabbed on and held it.

Jack doesn’t cry.

Seth had been watching us, back at the edge of the trees where I had taken the shot at Freddie.

“Come on, Jack,” Ben said. “Either do it, or let’s get out of here. We left a lot of shit back there at the river, and I vote we go get it now.”

He raised his hand.

Griffin’s came up, too. “So do I.”

I got up onto my feet. “Well then go ahead and leave me.”

“We can’t do that, Jack. You agreed to always do what we vote on. We all did. You agreed,” Ben said. “Fuck you if you’re going to break that now.”

Fuck you, Jack.

I looked back at Seth. He was so pale and dim.

“Seth,” I said. “Can you help me? One more time? You know what I’m asking. Can you do it?”

Seth vanished, then immediately reappeared between me and the boys.

Two of the harvesters abandoned Freddie Horvath and scuttled across the ground toward Seth. They were after the ghost. He disappeared again, then faintly stood above Conner’s head.

Then Seth spoke. It was the only time I’d ever heard his voice clearly, not in a whisper. I mean, I could hear him in his story, but this was actually audible. Real. The clear and confident-sounding voice of a boy.

“I believe I might not see you again, Jack.” He faded, moved beside me. I could feel him. The harvesters came across the ground toward us. “You love that girl, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I reckon you do.” I could see his mouth twist into a grin. “I understand about this one, Jack. You love him, too, I suspect.”

I looked at Conner.

“You know who I am, don’t you, Seth?” I said.

“Ever since you were born. Well. I just might not see you again, Jack. So, thank you for carrying my story.”

Then I saw that small gray fog, and Seth vanished inside of Conner Kirk.

The harvesters stopped, moved along the ground back toward Freddie, their jointed legs clicking like plastic.

Conner convulsed, doubled forward like he’d been stung. He curled up onto his side, panting, his eyes closed tightly, arms locked across his midsection where Freddie had stabbed him. He stayed there crumpled in pain, breathing fast, like an injured animal.

“Jack.” Ben was impatient.

Griffin pulled on his pants, his guns hanging low, arms folded across his bare chest.

I grabbed Conner’s knee and rolled him over, onto his back. He groaned, eyes still shut tight. I put my hand around his wrist and pulled his arm away from his gut.

“Let me see,” I said.

The bleeding stopped. The gore wounds had closed up to narrow slits, like they’d been glued shut; and that small fish-shaped mark above Conner’s groin had gone dark, faded to nothing more than a pale scar, like some souvenir of a burn, or a birthmark.

His body shook everywhere.

“Con?”

Ben stepped forward. He held a gun in his hand. It was pointed down, and he swung it right up in line with Conner’s face.

I jumped. I tackled Ben around the waist, driving my shoulder into his belly. He grunted, and I felt the wind being knocked out of him as he fell back. The gun swung up into the air and fired as his finger clenched around the trigger. It rang so loud in my ears that for a moment I wondered if I’d been shot.

We hit the ground. I snaked my hand up along Ben’s wrist and pinned his hand against the ground. He was gasping for air, but his lungs didn’t work. I sat on his chest and brought my right hand up into a fist.

Before I could punch him, Griffin launched himself into me, catching my swing on the back of his shoulder and rolling me away from Ben.

He sprang onto his feet like a monkey, ready to jump at me again.

“Cut it the fuck out!” Griffin snapped.

Ben sat up. He’d dropped his gun in the fight, and reached to grab it again.

I stood between the boys and Conner. I swung my rifle behind my back.

“Go ahead, Ben,” I said. I put my arms out. “Go ahead and shoot me, too. I don’t fucking care anymore.”

Ben’s hand shook.

Griffin screamed, “Stop it!”

Cautiously, Ben put his gun away and stood up. He brushed himself off. He never took his eyes from me.

When I turned around, Conner was sitting up, taking deep breaths, his head was lowered between his bent knees, arms folded across his ankles.

He looked up at me. I saw his eyes. It was him, the black and white eyes were gone, and I could clearly see that it was really Conner Kirk who was sitting on the ground, right there in front of us.

“What the fuck is going on, Jack?” he said.

I looked back at Ben and Griffin. Their mouths just kind of hung open like they couldn’t understand what had happened.

“He’s just a kid,” Griffin said. “Just like us.”

“You okay, Con?”

Conner looked down, jolted, shocked when he saw the scalp and dried human fingers that were strung around his hips.

“Fuck!” he said. He tore at the cord around his waist and tossed it away into the dirt. The bugs were immediately on it, chewing. Then he pulled at the necklace, scattering teeth everywhere. He brushed his hands all over his body, like he’d been covered with ants, or was putting out some kind of fire; and when he saw Freddie lying right beside him, Conner crab-crawled back toward the edge of the clearing and sat there, panting, with his knees hugged up to his naked chest.

“What the fuck is this shit?” Conner looked at each of our faces, eyes wide.

He didn’t remember.

“It’s okay, Con. It’s going to be okay,” I said.

I stepped over toward him, but Conner scooted back, like he was afraid of me or something.

I put my hand out to him. “Come on. You’re okay now.”

He stopped backing up and sat there, shaking, out of breath, while I kneeled beside him.

Then I saw the fog, like the mist your breath makes on a cold morning, swirling around Conner, taking form once again: the faintest, gray outline of Seth. And they all saw it, too.

There were harvesters everywhere on the ground now, moving, column after column, into the clearing, picking and chewing away at Freddie Horvath, at the scant coverings Conner had torn away from his own body, the sound of their mechanical clicking, buzzing of wings, chewing, growing louder all the time.

And they were on Seth, too, at the outlines of his shoeless feet; it was as though they were actually holding him down to that spot.

Then the noise started. It was low at first, distant-sounding, but then it grew into a painfully loud, jangling din that sounded like metal being torn apart. I heard screams of pain; and the black bugs held on to Seth; and I could tell the terrible wailing was coming from inside him.

Seth began to pulse and flash, the same way he did when I’d seen the subway through him. All of us could see those same images through him: a spastic kind of movie reel of poorly focused and faded film clips. I saw Seth, a tiny boy, shivering, sitting in the freezing water in a steel trough while Davey and Hannah laughed at him; then I saw Glenbrook, and Freddie Horvath driving his Mercedes by the Steckel Park basketball courts at night; Conner and me fighting in the cold water at Blackpool; I saw us in our hotel room, Conner dressed to go out for the evening, me standing there in my underwear, holding a bottle of beer and staring at the gaping doorway that blasted through the middle of the bed; the dead people inside the train; two bodies hanging beside one another from the branch of a redwood tree; the little wooden horse—
Roll. Tap. Tap. Tap.
And I could see other places, too—places I’d never seen before—a city built entirely upon stone bridges; a dense jungle with flocks of birds so thick it was like standing inside a tornado while they swirled around and around, and I could feel the beating of their wings in the millions; huge mountains covered with ice and snow; endless, storm-tossed black seas. Endless.

Then I heard gunfire.

The boys had begun shooting the harvesters that were ripping Seth apart. The black things spun and flipped into the air, spraying arcs of foamy orange and yellow innards as they disintegrated under the storm of bullets. I swung the rifle around and began firing as well. The images inside the ghost blurred, faded.

Then Seth was gone.

And we all stood frozen in the ringing deafness that followed the firing of our guns.

I looked from Ben, to Griffin, then back to Conner, who had gotten to his feet and was standing, half-hidden, behind the trunk of a pine tree. When my ears stopped buzzing, I heard the chewing of the harvesters again.

“Spot!” Griffin yelled. His little dog came back from where we’d left the horses, hunched down like he was walking on ice. The dog whipped his tail when he saw Griffin, but as soon as the boy bent to touch him, the dog curled his shoulders and tucked his tail between his legs. He smelled the blood on the boy.

“A www,” Griffin said. “It’s okay, boy.”

I walked over to where Seth had been. I noticed something moving on the ground. It glinted and wriggled, like the reflection of the moon at night on a windblown lake.

“Is something there?” Ben said.

“I don’t know.”

I stood back just as I could see what it was Seth had left behind.

“Fuck!” I said. I scooped my hand along the ground blindly and closed my fingers. I tucked it into my pocket.

“What was it?” Griffin asked. The dog sniffed his bare feet.

“Nothing,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.” I sighed, and glanced at Conner. I was sure he’d seen it, too, could tell by the look on his face that he knew I was lying.

It was easy to convince myself I was saving the boys from something they wouldn’t want.

I looked back at Freddie’s body. It was moving by itself, a puppet, twitching on invisible strings, as harvesters crawled inside, just below the skin, chewing.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Is he coming with us?” Ben said. He looked once, warily, over at Conner, who was still standing behind the tree.

I raised my hand. “I vote he comes with us.”

Griffin did the same. “Me too.”

“He would have killed you, Griff,” Ben protested.

“Not him,” Griffin said. “Look at him. He’s just a kid, like us. And if Jack says it’s okay, that’s good enough.”

Ben nodded. “Well, then, let’s get out of here.”

Two discs of glass—perfectly blue, dark as lapis, flawlessly round. Lenses. And when I saw them lying on the ground at the spot where Seth had vanished, I could see tiny images of people and things swirling around on the other side of them, just like I’d seen in Henry’s glasses that first time I noticed him watching me in London.

I kept them hidden. What else could I do? I tried pretending they weren’t there, but the pull was, at times, too much to take. It made me sick in Marbury, too: the same obsessed Jack who’d shake and sweat his cravings on floors and toilets in that other uncertain world.

Conner began seeing it in me, too.

And both of us found ourselves wondering about how we’d get back to Marbury next time. If there was going to be a next time.

Two days later.

Riding north, we came to the shore of an endless lake—maybe it was the sea.

I couldn’t tell which it was. It didn’t matter. Of course it wasn’t endless. There was no horizon in Marbury, no reference for anything, beginnings or endings; only that infinite screen of heat and white fog that constantly got farther and farther away, no matter how desperately we pushed ourselves on toward it.

The dog followed Griffin everywhere. He ran along with the horses, kept his paws just inches from the edge of the water.

And that morning, we walked the horses slowly out across the sand, past the wreckage of a pier. The immense wooden supports jutted up from the beach and broke the surface of the water like irregular teeth, rotten and crooked. Here and there, the posts hoisted random spans of crossbeams and asphalt that formed little islands floating in the colorless sky above the dark chop of the waves. We stopped there, and I tasted the water. It was gritty and piss warm, salty.

“What is this?” Griffin asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “A pier, I think. It was a place where people—” I trailed off, wondering if there was any purpose in telling the boy what piers were.

I glanced over at Conner. It could have been Blackpool at some other time, in some other form.

The additional horse that once belonged to Freddie Horvath carried most of our gear now. And Conner wore an extra set of fatigues Ben had taken from the suitcase of one of the dead soldiers, with the boots that Griffin refused to put on since the first day after we’d abandoned that train. And I gave him my gun belt, too; twin 9-millimeter semiautomatics hanging at his sides.

The boys had grown accustomed to my friend, but it was a cautious acceptance of him. Still, they realized there was something more to us than they knew. At least Henry had prepared them for that in some ways, once he’d seen me in London.

So, that morning, when we came to a point where we could discern the faint silhouette of a walled city that had been built right up against the water’s edge, we stopped our horses on the beach. We tied them inside a shallow canyon notched in the face of the tall gray bluffs that followed the contour of the shore.

There were a few birds here, and they made nests of mud high on the rock walls. I noticed Griffin watching them in wonder as they flew in and out of the dark yawning mouths of their homes; and I thought how lucky it was to be able to experience seeing birds for the first time in your life.

We sat together, quietly, on the beach and watched the distant city for hours.

We waited.

I knew each of us was afraid to commit, out loud, to passing some kind of judgment about whether we were in a good place or not.

“The way I see it,” Ben said, pointing up the shore to the wall of the settlement, “is we can either go that way, or we can turn around and follow the shoreline south. I don’t know how much longer you’re planning on waiting, Jack, but we can’t sit here forever.”

“There might be people there,” Griffin said.

“We might be better off without them,” I answered.

“I’m tired of always running.” Griffin shifted in the sand, where he sat, cross-legged, and looked at Conner. “I suppose Conner’s going to get a vote now, too. That could mess things up. What if we tie? Are we gonna split up?”

Conner shrugged and looked away. “I won’t vote if you don’t want me to, little man.”

Griffin said, “Which way would you vote if you did?”

“Not telling.”

“Okay, then. Don’t vote, in that case. I’ll let you know when you can vote.”

“You can’t be like that, Griff,” I said.

“Sure I can. He’s new. We have to see how he’s going to work out.”

I shook my head, and Ben got to his feet and said, “I think we’re going to have to hold off on the election, anyway. Look down that way, Jack. Someone’s coming.”

Griffin’s dog began barking nervously. Then he ran off, back toward the bluff where we’d left the horses.

Silhouetted in dust, they came; three of them, running toward us awkwardly over the sand from the south. One of them fell down twice, and each time, the others would turn back and scoop up arms or hands, pulling, running; something frantic in their movements.

Our guns were already out before any of us could clearly tell who they were. We spread out across the beach, kneeling or lying down in the sand, watching.

I could hear them before I saw they were people. They grunted and gasped, one of them was crying, a woman, saying, “Papa, are they people? Are they people?”

I looked over at Griffin, lying so flat in the sand he was almost invisible, biting his lip, squinting to aim. Conner got down onto his belly, holding the guns in front of him, level. I could feel his leg against mine, and I knew he was scared.

“What the fuck, Jack?”

“Just hang in there, Con. It’s going to be okay.” I patted his back. “Do what I do.”

Ben was watching us, off to my left.

“Are you people?” a man’s voice called out. They stopped running, fifty feet away, but their gasping breaths sounded like more footfalls on the sand.

The boys waited.

“Answer them,” Griffin whispered.

A man and woman stood at the front. They wore rags, and the man looked as though part of his scalp had been removed, from near his left eyebrow across his skull to the side of his ear. The wound was rough and crusted with dried blood that spattered the torn sleeve of the shirt he wore.

The third one was just a kid, a boy, wearing nothing more than shorts that were so tattered they looked like a skirt. I guessed he was about the same age as Griffin. He stood just beside the woman. His eyes were crazed and hollow, looked like he’d eat us if he could.

I stood up. “We’re people.”

The man’s shoulders heaved, and he almost fell forward in relief. “Thank God,” he said.

His boy stared at the guns we held. I suspected he had no idea what we were capable of doing with them.

Griffin got up next, followed by Ben and Conner.

We must have looked like we were springing up from graves in the sand, I thought.

“What is that place?” I said, pointing at the walls of the city behind me.

The man twitched his chin in the direction I’d pointed. “It’s called Grove.” He looked at me like he couldn’t believe I didn’t know. “Security is not sold for any kind of gold. You know, Grove. We thought you were soldiers from there.”

“No. We’re not from there,” I said.

He looked puzzled, glanced quickly at the woman and boy. “Everyone who came with us is dead. We have to hurry. They’re coming for us. We have to hurry to Grove.”

Then he coughed. It didn’t sound like much, just a quick hiccup, but he fell forward onto his face and I saw that a black arrow had buried itself just below his shoulder blade, and another was sticking straight up from his lower back.

Instantly, more arrows rained quietly down at us, whooshing into the sand. It seemed like there were dozens of them.

“Fuck!” Ben said, but Griffin had already started shooting in the direction of the attack before the word was fully out of the older boy’s mouth.

By then, we could make out the dim shapes of the devils who’d been chasing the refugees across the sand, and we all started shooting. And as the attackers fell, the woman and boy got behind us and crouched, pressing their hands to their ears, moaning and crying.

Griffin screamed. An arrow appeared, as if from nowhere, sticking entirely through his arm. He fell back into the sand.

“Griff!” I shouted, moving across the beach toward him. “Griff!”

He twisted in the sand. Already, his blood was everywhere.

“Oh my God, Griff!” I scooped him up and started running back toward our horses. “Ben! Conner! Get to the horses! Griff’s hurt!”

The hail of arrows thinned as Conner and Ben continued reloading and firing in turns. I tripped, fell forward into the sand. I tried not to land on top of Griffin, and he moaned when I did. The point of the arrow snapped off in the sand beneath him, and I realized that my shirt was covered in the boy’s blood.

“Jack,” he said. “Jack. Am I going to die?”

“No,” I said. “Don’t say that, Griff.”

They were still shooting behind us. I squeezed my hand around the arrow shaft, and gripped Griffin’s bicep with the other. My fingers nearly wrapped the entire circumference of his upper arm, he was so small. I pulled the arrow out quickly and tightened my grasp over the holes, trying to slow down the bleeding.

Griffin screamed, but he never cried.

When I tried to stand up, I realized that I’d fallen because there was an arrow through my calf. I couldn’t move.

“Shit!”

I sat down in the sand next to Griffin, and propped my rifle on my knee. I watched the end of the arrow shaft bob its feathers up and down beside my shaking leg.

The shooting stopped.

Quiet.

I lay back in the warm sand and stared up at the sky.

I could see where the sun was: an indefinite circular blotch that was brighter than the rest of the endless nothing hanging above us. I reached over and put my hand in Griffin’s hair and rubbed his head with my thumb.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Shit.”

“We’re going to be all right, Griff.”

“Goddamn it hurts.”

“Who’s going to doctor us? Ben’ll get scared if he sees us bleeding like we are.”

“If he’s not shot up, too, he’s gonna have to toughen up, I guess. Him or your friend.”

I heard footsteps through the sand, moving in our direction. I moaned when I sat up.

Ben and Conner were coming. Conner had his arm around Ben’s shoulder, and the other boy followed behind like a prisoner. Ben was hurt. When they got closer, I saw an arrow shaft sticking straight out from the right side of Ben’s chest. They stopped, stood over me and Griffin. The boy sat in the sand and watched us blankly, like he was bored. He carried an arrow and drew circles with it between his legs.

“Hell,” Ben said. “Are you two okay?”

“Ben?” I said. I pointed at the arrow in his chest.

“It didn’t go in anything. I can feel it rubbing next to my ribs. I’ll be okay. I don’t think I should sit down, though. Someone’s going to need to help me pull it out. Shit.”

Conner’s face was twisted into a grimace. “What the fuck is this, Jack?”

“I don’t know, Con.” I looked at the arrow sticking through my leg. “Did you get hurt?”

Conner said, “No.”

“How many’d you kill?” Griffin asked.

“All of them.” Ben spit; and looked back at the kid sitting in the sand. “But the woman…”

He didn’t have to finish.

“There’s a med kit with the horses,” Griffin said. He just lay there, facing directly up at the sky, one arm crossed over his bare chest, so he could squeeze the spot where he’d been shot.

Conner started off in the direction of the bluffs.

“Don’t leave without me,” he said. He tried to smile at us.

“And bring my dog, too,” Griffin said.

“Soldiers!” I heard them calling out the word when we rode through the gate into Grove that day, like we had come to save them or something; when we could hardly get ourselves down from the horses, we were so battered.

They were careful at first, keeping back in the shadows or entryways of the buildings, but once the word spread about the boys who had come back from the war, we were surrounded by people, thousands of them, all trying to help us. They brought out food, water; there were instantly doctors and nurses making their way through the press of bodies.

“Henry promised you’d get us here,” Ben said. He was pale and bloody.

Griffin sat straight on his horse, his little arm wrapped tightly around with bandages. His eyes lit up at the sight of all the people there who’d blocked the street and stopped our horses from carrying us any farther.

“There’s girls here, too,” he said.

“Don’t go grabbing any of them now, Griff,” I said.

A struggle broke out around Ben’s horse. I saw Ben raise his foot and kick at a man who’d come to his side. Then another came up and Ben smashed his boot squarely into the man’s mouth. As he spun away from Ben’s horse, I could see him spitting blood and two of his teeth.

“Get the fuck off my guns!” Ben had his gun in his left hand, was waving it at the crowd, who pushed back.

“Jack!” Conner yelled.

“Get the fuck off me!” Ben threatened again.

“Jack!”

I saw Conner striking at reaching hands with his pistol’s butt.

“What the fuck, Jack?” Griffin tried to pull his gun with his good hand.

“Don’t!” I screamed.

“Jack!” Conner again.

I tried to jab my toes into my horse, get him to back up, but the pain sent a jolt through me and I nearly fell. And when I looked down at my bloody pant leg, my vision blurred and I saw a flash of white, a light reflected on sheets of water smearing down a cold pane of glass, the pale yellow of a streetlamp.

Fuck you, Jack.