Richard Kadrey - Dead Set

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move. She rolled over and saw a man’s legs. He was sitting on the floor smoking, his back against the carousel’s hollow central core, the spindle room where the ride’s motor was housed. Zoe couldn’t see the man’s face, but she knew him immediately.

Slowly, she rose and limped over to her father. “I wondered if you’d be here.”

“Zoe,” he said. He lowered the cigarette and rubbed his red eyes. “Damn. I hoped you be gone by now.”

She leaned on the pole connected to a pink-and-silver shark. “Nope. Not yet,” she replied. She shrugged and looked out at the boardwalk, a bit more paranoid now after the wolf men’s sudden appearance. She looked at her father. There were fresh scars on his face and hands. He looked even more gaunt than before.

“I’m sorry I ran,” Zoe said.

Her father patted her leg. “You did the right thing.”

“At least we found a way out.”

“You and your friend?” Her father took a puff of his cigarette. In the dark, the red glow lit up his whole face. Worn and weak, he suddenly reminded her a little of Mr. Prosper.

“Yeah. Val-” she started to say, but broke off, reminding herself of her promise not to tell her father about him. She could at least keep her word about that. “He really saved my life. Hecate’s cops or whatever they are-those wolf assholes-they arrested him.”

“I’m sorry, honey. You all right?”

Zoe nodded. She knew it was silly since he was already dead, but it bothered her to see her father smoking. Still, there was something comforting and normal about it all. Having a cigarette at the end of a long, hard day. It’s what regular people did back in the world. The real world. It seemed so far away now. Like Iphigene was the new normal and the other was a dream. Would she ever see the other world again? She felt a sudden, unexpected twinge of homesickness. “I’m okay,” she said. “You know, I thought you were dead back there at the café. Like dead dead. You know what I mean.”

He smiled up at her, a weak, exhausted smile. “It’s not as bad as it looks. I just need to rest for a couple of days and I’ll be fine.”

“Then she can do it to you all over again.” Zoe hugged her coat tightly around herself.

Her father didn’t say anything for a few minutes. “If you know a way out of here, you need to go. The whole city is looking for you. How the hell did you get here?”

“I ran. I really wasn’t thinking about it. It was raining hard. I don’t think anyone noticed me,” she said, looking back toward the boardwalk again. “I guess someone must have seen me before and told the cops, right? But I was so happy to have found a way out. I should have been more careful.”

“You know, if Hecate arrested your friend, he isn’t coming back,” her father said.

Her injured leg made it too hard to stand anymore. She slid down the pole and sat facing her father. “So, I just run off back to Sweet Valley High? I leave him in a dungeon and you to get sucked dry.”

Her father leaned forward and touched the dirty toe of her sneaker. “If Hecate finds you, she’ll kill you.”

Zoe felt herself laugh, but nothing felt funny. “She’ll do worse than that, from what I hear.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Her father finished the cigarette and tossed it away. The glowing tip arced high, making burning red loop-the-loops through the rain out into the sand. “You can’t just sit here, honey. You have to go.”

“Don’t worry. I am,” she said. “But the beach is the way out. I have to wait for low tide.”

“Oh.” Something in his voice surprised her. After he’d told her to go home God only knew how many times, there was a hint of regret in his voice. It made Zoe happy, in a quiet, sad way. She said, “Is it okay if I sit here with you while I wait?”

“That would be nice.”

As she went over to him, he put one arm out and she laid her back against it, leaning against him as he wrapped the arm around her. She held on to his jacket as she had to Valentine’s.

As she sat there quietly in the dark with her father for what would be the last time, the ice inside Zoe began to crack. She’d felt nothing for so long. The numbness was comforting, even though it brought the guilt of not really feeling how she knew she should, how she would feel normally. About her mother, about her brother’s arrest, and this last meeting with her father, doomed to be food for Hecate’s children. And then what? He would just wander away with the dying dead forever?

If leaving was what everyone wanted, why did it feel so bad? The truth was that a part of Zoe wanted to leave Iphigene right then. To run away and forget about it, about everything she’d seen and heard. Even father and Valentine. How could she live with herself knowing she couldn’t save them and that she was partly responsible for the horror that was their lives?

The cracking ice inside her was being replaced with a spongy fear, as if a monster were trying to swim up out of her guts and swallow her whole. She bit her lower lip and breathed hard, trying to drive the monster back into the void. If she allowed the monster to touch her, she knew that she would begin to cry and that she’d never stop. What good was crying now? It was a child’s trick that kept her from having to deal with the hard things. She wouldn’t hide from the hard things anymore. Never again. I owe it to Dad to be here with him now. And to Valentine. My shit, I can deal with later . She hugged her father harder while feeling furious with herself for being so weak and confused.

No crying. Nothing. Just be here.

They sat on the broken carousel without talking, just looking out at the moonlit sand.

Zoe drifted, halfway between sleep and daydreaming. She was on the mountain overlooking the almond grove and the tree fort behind the house in Danville. Black dogs prowled among the trees, sniffing the air. She wasn’t surprised or even particularly scared to see them. They were a part of her world, both in life and now in her dreams. Every now and then one of them would look up to where she was sitting on the mountain. They know I’m here. They’re waiting for me to come down. They’re not in any rush. They can wait forever. Could she? Half buried in snow, a rusty telescope lay at her feet. Emmett’s telescope. The one he used to watch Valentine and me. She picked it up and looked for their tree fort. It took her a while because she didn’t recognize it at first. The fort was falling apart. Half of it lay on the ground in a heap. What was left looked like scrap lumber that a hurricane had blown into the tree a hundred years ago. The wood was black, pulpy, and rotten, the nails rusted and barely holding what was left of the fort together. Unlike the dogs, that sight scared her. It was all being taken away, the good things in her life and now her dreams, too. And when even her dreams were gone, would there be anything left of her? Finally, the dogs started up the mountainside. They aren’t going to wait, after all, she thought. Zoe set down the telescope and clutched her knees to her chest. She watched the dogs come all the way up the hill.

There was a sound. Then something moved, brushing against her leg. Beside her on the carousel, her father sat up. He turned his head, looking as confused as she felt. “No, it can’t be,” he said.

Zoe looked at him, waiting for her head to clear. She’d drifted farther away than she’d meant to and the world was fuzzy around the edges. Her father stood slowly, pulling himself up on a bright yellow sea horse. “Not now,” he said quietly.

She finally heard it. The rain had stopped and the sound was replaced by the soothing white noise of the ocean. Then slowly, as the world came into focus, there was something else, the animal-like wail of a siren that Zoe knew was calling her father to another feeding.