“Yeah, well,” Matthew said, rubbing his swollen, stubby tongue with his fingers. “It’s been a rough week.”
Kelly laughed again, sounding just like he did in the old days. Matthew wanted it to be the old days. He wanted to be back in college, sorting through their clothes in the communal laundry room, heading out to a party at an off-campus apartment they’d heard about through a friend or a neon-colored flyer.
“I’m married now,” Matthew said, realizing his dead friend probably wasn’t aware.
“I know,” Kelly said, “and I’m happy for you. I always knew you and Diane were going to go the distance.”
Matthew waited, debating how much Kelly would want to know about his life. His mind drifted to his family. He tried to remember them. Diane. Little Kelly, the baby. His child. They’re lost, he thought. He drifted, his scalp tingling. White spots beat against his eyes like falling stars crashing silently by the hundreds, thousands... blinding light.
Kelly pinched him again – harder this time - and it brought him back.
“I have a son” he said, trying to swallow, his throat too swollen, too dry. “We named him after you. I think I’m dying, buddy. I feel like glass. Like really thin glass...”
Kelly’s smile faltered. He caressed the side of Matthew’s face.
“They’re all with me now, Matthew,” he said quietly, his eyes wide and watery as black lakes. “I can take you to them.”
Matthew’s mind began to buzz loudly, his skin began to itch, his blood cold as ice. He thought the thumping of his heart was slowing down, an erratic drum beating his blood out and away into the sacrificial earth, which drank greedily.
“Your mom and dad, they’re here, too.” Kelly shuffled closer. “They want to meet you. They’re really sorry, Matthew, and they said they love you. How great is that?”
Matthew couldn’t process, he tried to understand but nothing was coming to the surface. “You can save me,” was all he could think to say, his eyes leaking.
Kelly nodded. “Say the word, Matthew. Say the word and I’ll take you away from all this. I’ll bring you to Diane, to your son, your folks.” He paused. “I’m there too, bud. I’m there, too. God, even Stanley is there.”
“That old man?” Matthew said, and they both laughed. Laughed like they had as kids, when they’d lain in a backyard tent and talked all night, trading handheld video games, looking at comic books with flashlights. Carefree, Matthew thought. Nothing in the world but us. It was heaven.
Kelly broke through his memories. “They’re coming, Matthew. We’re almost out of time.”
Matthew was startled, shaken by the urgency in Kelly’s voice. He barely noticed that Kelly had slid a heavy hand beneath his shirt, was burrowing into his belly with wiggling fingers. “Who... who’s coming?” he asked.
Dee. What about Dee? he thought, but didn’t know if Kelly could save her. “There’s a woman here...” he said.
Kelly’s face fell. He heard movement from where Dee lay. A wild, scrambling sound, like she was suddenly fighting through the rubble to reach him. Matthew debated reaching out for her.
“Matthew,” Kelly hissed.
Dee was speaking, saying something in haughty, choked sounds, a language Matthew did not recognize. He heard her grunting, cursing, writhing. She was breaking through.
Matthew turned away, reached out and found Kelly’s warm hand waiting for him.
Something heavy crawled up his legs. He shifted his weight, tried to turn and see, but he’d lost control of his muscles, and could only lie there, flipping his head side to side. “What the fuck is that!” he screamed, bile surging to his throat.
“Relax, relax,” Kelly said, caressing his head. “It’s your son. It’s little Kelly. He’s here.” Kelly looked down where Matthew could not see, where it felt like a hundred small hands were pawing at his legs and back, reaching for him, tugging at him incessantly. A thousand desperate fingers ripping him away.
“He wants to be with you,” Kelly said. “It’s really quite adorable.”
Matthew smiled at this, relieved. His son. He was here. Little Kelly was here. A miracle.
Kelly moved his face closer, tilting Matthew’s chin to look at him. Matthew looked.
“Kelly?” Matthew croaked, his head flat against the concrete block that served as his death-bed pillow.
Kelly’s eyes were bursting supernovas.
Something long, cold and wet slithered around Matthew’s neck and squeezed, the tail of the thing flicking against his dry lips and crusted facial hair.
“Yeah, buddy?” the thing called Kelly said, his face exploding into light.
The hands raced across his body, patting him, pinching him, slipping inside his clothes to reach flesh. His throat was being squeezed more and more tightly. A second cold scaly tendril slid down his collar and moved across his chest like wet midnight. His guts were a flurry of movement, a voracious bubbling dance of tiny bodies fighting to be inside him. He wanted to reach for Dee’s hand one last time, devoured by an incredible regret that he could not help her. But his hand would not move, the control of his body snipped from the commands of his mind as neatly as a cut string. “Kelly,” he breathed, followed by a drooled trickle of ashen blood.
“Save me.”
9
JIM WAS THE first one to see the hand.
The search dogs had been barking like it was the end of the world, but the team knew at this point they weren’t looking for survivors. They were looking for bodies. Still, it was important to keep protocol and not rush things. No point in anyone getting hurt trying to free a corpse. That, and if anyone was still breathing in all that mess, Jim thought, dropping his cigarette as he watched the crane wheel into position, its bent metal arm swinging a hook the size of a small child, they’d likely prefer it the other way ‘round.
The engineers had found an especially ugly slab of concrete – a structural pillar, one of them had announced with a grimace – lying atop a pile of what used to be a small office building. The building had stood two doors down from the bank Jim went to when cashing his checks on a Friday. He’d walked by the building at least once a week for the last three years and never took notice of it, not until it was reduced to a pile of ruins by the second-worst earthquake in California history.
Thousands dead, all across Los Angeles and the Valley region. Highways had twisted and collapsed, buildings fallen in on themselves, explosions, fires, death everywhere. Jim and his team had been told to focus on assisting Burbank Police and Fire with the clearing and salvaging, and they’d been doing it around the clock going on almost four days straight. Jim hadn’t seen his family in all that time, sleeping on work sites, the giant sulfur work lights replacing the moon outside the smeared windows of run-down construction trailers. The purr of diesel generators were a constant white noise that had an effect similar to ocean waves when you were tired enough, at least that’s what he told himself.
