“God damn it, Malcolm,” shouted Gabe, hanging onto the back of Vick’s shirt. “Take a walk!”
Malcolm put his hands up, backing away. Why’d you do that? he asked himself. He’s a shit, but he didn’t do anything to you. “All right, all right.” It was hard to tear his eyes away from the sight of John, muscles bulging in his big, thick arms and sweat standing out on his broad forehead, wrestling Vick back in a bear hug.
Vick’s eyes narrowed to dark slits. “You’re dead, bitch,” he snarled. “Just wait until your girlfriends aren’t around.”
Gabe let go of the other boy as though he’d been burned, his face a mask of rage, and suddenly John was on his ass in the dirt and Vick was storming toward where Malcolm stood fantasizing about a fist crashing into his jaw, about a man’s hand holding his head in place, about the night he’d kissed Artie Merman at Logan Corder’s sleepover birthday party. Another boy had seen them, it turned out, and when Malcolm got home his mother was waiting in the kitchen with soap and a soaked washcloth tied with knots.
“Malcolm,” John shouted. “Go.”
Malcolm ran. He was fast. He’d always been fast, and Vick wasn’t much of a runner. After a few minutes of sliding down slopes of loose, sandy soil and hoofing it over broad stretches of sun-heated rock, the sound of the other boy’s labored breathing started fading. By the time Malcolm made it to the thin belt of dead pines he’d glimpsed from the truck bed when they’d driven out, there was no sign of Vick at all. Malcolm stumbled to a halt, looking back over his shoulder at the slopes and plateaus and crooked slabs of rock calved from the mountainside rising back up toward the dig. Scrub brush grew sparsely from the red and tan soil. He sucked in deep, shuddering breaths until his heart stopped pounding.
Why’d you do that? he wondered, wiping sweat from his throat with the sleeve of his work shirt. It was like a heat rose up in him sometimes, an urge to slide the right jab like a needle into any opening, an ache in his mouth that only running it could satisfy. It was so easy with other boys. Most of them lost it the second you mentioned their mothers, which he thought was kind of a pussy move. He wouldn’t care if someone went after his mother. They could fuck her for all he cared. He wiped his face on his sleeve, sniffing.
Something wet touched his palm. He yelped, spinning around as his mind conjured visions of Pastor Eddie erupting from the tree line to cut him in half with a sword or some kind of wet, dripping monster like the thing in Alien rearing up over him. He staggered back a step. It was the dog. She sat on her haunches, feather-duster tail sweeping back and forth in the dirt as she panted, grinning at him. Behind her the dead pines leaned drunkenly over a carpet of dry needles, most of them bare-branched and stripped of their bark.
“Jesus,” he breathed, crouching down to give her his hand to sniff. “You scared the shit out of me, girl.”
She licked his knuckles and stared up at him with soulful eyes. He wondered what kind of dog she was, with her long muzzle and silky, tangled cream-and-brown coat.
“I don’t have anything for you,” he told her, scratching her behind the ears. “How’d you wind up out here?”
The dog yawned, stood, shook herself, and trotted back into the woods. I should go back to the site, he thought. Apologize. See if John’s okay. Instead he found himself heading in among the dead gray teeth of the pines, the spicy scent of layered needles filling his nostrils as he followed the dog’s wagging tail across dry creek beds and over fallen trees scrawled all over where beetles had eaten pathways into the pith of their trunks. They passed the stripped and fleshless carcass of what he thought must be a deer, the dog pausing to sniff at its ribs and the scraps of leathery hide still clinging to them, and twice Malcolm heard rustling as though something small were fleeing through the sparse and dying undergrowth. Mice, maybe, if there were mice out here. He didn’t know what lived in the desert.
I don’t even know what state I’m in.
The dog turned uphill, the shadows deepening as the trees thickened. Malcolm ducked under an arch where two fallen trunks supported each other over a dry gulch. It looked as though water had cut the ground here, but it must have been a long, long time ago. His lips were dry and cracked, and as he scrambled up the stony incline after his guide, he realized just how hot he was, his shirt sticking to his back, sweat stinging his eyes. What if Corey and Garth come back for us while I’m out here? he thought, watching the dog’s hindquarters as she flitted nimbly up the slope ahead of him. What if I can’t find the way back?
The trees thinned out as they got higher, the stone faces of the little cut in the hillside closing in until Malcolm had to turn sideways to follow his guide. “Whaddya got up here, girl?” he puffed, sidling through the narrow gap. The edges of the cut met overhead, forming a small tunnel. Dead roots and nubs of rock caught at his clothes. Loose soil sifted down onto his face. Probably she was leading him to a dead gopher or something, just in case he was hungry. He forced his way onward, dirt pouring down on him now as he scraped against the stone, hardly able to see, and then he was stumbling over open ground and ahead of him was total blackness.
A rectangular doorway gaped in a concrete facade set back at the end of the short tunnel, which he now saw was shored up by sun-bleached beams. The dog, with one last quizzical look back at him, trotted through it and disappeared into the gloom. For a moment he quailed. He was still, to his shame, afraid of the dark. He hated so much as to open the basement door at home. Hated to creep down the hall to use the bathroom in the night. He always felt as though something in that dark was going to grab him, was going to croon his name as it wrapped itself around his legs and dragged him screaming out of the reality he knew.
But the dog had brought him here, and he was curious. Burning with it. He couldn’t pass it up. He swallowed, set his jaw, and followed her in.
Nadine hated crying. She’d hated it ever since she could remember, ever since she’d seen her older half sister, Tiffany, sobbing through the keyhole of the bathroom door and felt a hot, compulsive stab of loathing, a certainty that she would never look that weak. But she had. In front of everyone in camp she’d cried and screamed and begged like Tiffy with one of her boyfriends. Don’t say that, don’t do that, you’re hurting me.
The clatter of dishes shifting in the sink as Celine scrubbed nearly made her jump out of her skin, which made her tear up again out of frustration, which made her furious. Fucking pussy, she thought, pushing her little pile of chopped peppers to the left of her cutting board with her knife. Pussy. Pussy. She set the knife down and pinched the skin on the inside of her wrist, twisting it between thumb and forefinger until her eyes dried and the kitchen swam back into focus. Get it together.
Her head hurt. All of her hurt, from her bruised legs to her scabbed and lacerated ass, but her head hurt the worst. When she closed her eyes she saw a point of white light burning in the dark, a pinhole flare so bright it felt as though she were staring into the sun, and stray thoughts kept interrupting her inner monologue like pedestrians bolting into traffic. For an hour in the morning she’d kept thinking What are you, running for office? until she wanted to claw through her ears to get at whatever part of her brain was repeating the stupid phrase.
“… died when she was, like, a toddler or something,” Celine was saying to Jo, who dried and racked dishes with mechanical efficiency as the other girl babbled. “And they started this whole place to give kids in trouble a home and I just think it’s totally inspirational to turn something so sad into this amazing opportunity, because honestly we’re so lucky to be here. Marianne says sometimes they take on graduates as counselors, and I’m going to apply as soon as I’m old enough.”
“Yeah,” said Jo.
From upstairs came the creak of bedsprings and a woman’s high, thin scream of pain. The ceiling shook, flakes of plaster spinning through the air like a giant’s dandruff. They’d been doing it on and off all morning, ever since Pastor Eddie sauntered through the kitchen with his dry, papery voice and his big, soft hands, saying Somethin’ smells good, girls as he squeezed their shoulders, and then on into the living room and up the stairs to fuck his matchstick wife. Nadine imagined Mrs. Glover clinging to the headboard with her skeletal hands, inner thighs raw like chicken skin, teeth clenched as her husband thrust himself into her, fucking and fucking until finally she started to tear open.
What are you, running for office?
She hit herself in the head with the heel of her hand hard enough that the others on kitchen duty stopped what they were doing. Celine and Jo looked at her strangely. Nadine flashed them a tight, split-lipped grin. Celine was the kind of cunt who was only tough when you were curled in a ball and pissing yourself from sheer exhaustion at her feet. She and Dana hadn’t dared come near her since the beating.
Try it, thought Nadine, a real urge to hurt someone bubbling up in the pit of her stomach. To break her knuckles on the soggy hamburger mess of a ruined face. Give me a reason and I’ll choke you with your French braid you sniveling cuntbreath American Girl doll bitch.
The ceiling kept shaking. A flake of plaster fell into the soapy water standing in the sink. It floated tranquilly over the submerged cups and dishes, the shimmering drifts of flatware. Nadine turned back to her pile of unchopped peppers. Suddenly she didn’t want to beat on Celine, or anyone for that matter. She wanted to cry again. She wanted her mother. Her vision swam as she set her palm against the knife’s back and cut into the next pepper, splitting it neatly in half. Halve the halves, gut the seeds, walk and rock the knife along each section until she had six neat slices for each quarter. The rhythm of the kitchen blending with the creak and thump above.
Does Shelby like having her dick sucked? she wondered, shifting cut sections aside to make room for the next vegetable. Penises unsettled her, wrinkled and soft and so horribly vulnerable, but the thought of Shelby’s in her mouth only made her feel curious. I’ll ask her. I’ll go over there tonight the way she came to me—for a moment, before she tamped the feelings down and set a lid over them, she felt an overwhelming surge of emotion at the memory of the other girl crawling into her bed, of that tender little hand on hers.
“Are you okay?”
She didn’t notice she’d cut the tip off her left index finger until she was on the floor, her head in Felix’s lap as he gripped her injured hand, wrapped in a dishcloth, to keep pressure on the throbbing digit. Celine sat white-faced on the floor in front of the sink, staring at the red bloom in the center of the cloth and the dark droplets staining Felix’s jeans. And then Cheryl was there, crouching low, her face close to Nadine’s, and the smell of hydrogen peroxide bloomed sharp and harsh and chemical. The cloth peeled back. Stinging. I’m crying, Nadine realized, tears of pain leaking down her cheeks. There was snot on her upper lip. They can see me. They can see me.
She could smell her mother’s perfume, always covering the stink of flop sweat, always hugging her after, holding her so smotheringly close, saying He didn’t mean it, you just need to give him a little time, and the oil and sawdust smell of her father as he sank huge and heavy onto the edge of her bed, hands clasped between his knees, and heaved out another tired apology while his big, sad, hungry eyes gnawed at her until she said It’s okay, Dad, and sometimes he’d put a hand on her shoulder and sometimes he’d say No, it’s not and then the tears would start and she’d sit there, her hand numb in his, and think I’ll never cry. I’ll never be like that.
“Watch what you’re fucking doing,” said Cheryl, and for a moment all Nadine’s self-pitying thoughts withdrew like a crowd from the sight of a drawn gun. Something was wrong with Cheryl’s face. For an instant, just the briefest of split seconds, she had seen something flex under the counselor’s flawless skin. She thought of thin, smiling Candace dragging her toward the pastor’s camp chair.
It wasn’t her. She’s been replaced.
Cheryl’s eyes narrowed. Her fingers tightened on Nadine’s calf. Nadine forced herself not to scream, not to start kicking and fighting. She did her best to look merely frightened. It wasn’t hard. A moment passed, then Cheryl rose and left. Felix helped Nadine to a sitting position, asking if she was okay, if she needed anything, but she couldn’t answer.
What the hell is she?
The first thing Malcolm noticed as his eyes adjusted to the dark of the bunker’s entryway, lit only by the tunnel mouth behind him, was the sedimentary layer of dark, shredded plastic packaging strewn over the cool concrete. He crouched down to get a closer look, the dog panting somewhere ahead so that her breaths echoed from the walls, as though a dozen dogs were all around him. He found one scrap still largely intact and picked it up between his thumb and forefinger, wrinkling his nose at the earthy chemical smell emanating from its greasy interior. It was about the size of a softcover and in plain, faded typeface it read:
MEAL, READY-TO-EAT, INDIVIDUAL
MENU NO. 12
SCALLOPED POTATOES WITH HAM
He let the bag slip through his fingers and flutter back to the floor. “Holy Red Scare, Batman,” he muttered to himself, standing. He’d heard about places like this. His dad had told him that a bunch of wackos built themselves bomb shelters back before the Wall came down. Sometimes, Don said, their families didn’t even know about the bunkers right under their feet. That had kept Malcolm up at night for weeks, until his mother caught him digging in the garden at three a.m. and he’d broken down in tears, unable to explain what he was doing.
