Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

"Shit!" said the boy with the knife. "What was that?"

The boy with the flashlight jabbed it in the direction of the road. The beam cut through the trees and landed about ten feet to Serena's left. The boy started panning the light toward her. Serena could only stand there rigid and bent, clutching her middle, holding in her scream.

Run! she thought. And she did run. She broke out of her stance and tore up the dirt road with her arms flailing. She didn't know if the flashlight reached her. She didn't know if the boys saw her. She just ran with the breath hot and harsh in her throat and the hot, harsh tears streaming down her cheeks-ran until she reached the Caddy and grabbed the door, which was not quite shut, and yanked it open and hurled herself inside.

She pulled the door closed quick as she could to kill the toplight. She pulled it shut as quietly as she could. She sat in the backseat staring wildly through the windshield. She could feel her tears. She could hear her hitching, high-pitched sobs.

A second passed-and then she saw the flashlight beam. It was coming out of the swamp, moving toward the road. All the boys were coming up out of the water.

Serena dropped down onto the backseat. Quickly, she swiped the tears from her eyes. She curled up into the position she'd been in when she first came awake. She clutched her hands in front of her mouth. She couldn't stop trembling. She couldn't stop whimpering.

A twig snapped. She could hear the boys approaching the car. She could hear their voices.

She heard one of them say, "If she saw us, dude, we gotta do her. I mean, that's all."

Then they were at the window. She could hear their voices right above her. She knew they were looking down at her through the glass.

"She's still out." That was Jamal.

"I don't know. I heard something."

"So did I."

"Fucking kidding me?" Jamal said. "There's, like, a million fucking creatures and fuck-knows-what out here. It could've been anything. Probably, like, a bird or something."

"Could've been a bird. Kinda sounded like a bird, I thought."

"Listen to this shit," Jamal said. "It was probably just some fucking thing got freaked."

"I don't know. I mean, if she saw something…"

Serena lay curled on her side, listening to them. She was so scared, it seemed impossible she wouldn't tremble or cry and give herself away. With all her will, she made her body another thing from herself, a dead thing. She huddled deep inside her body as if she were hiding in it, as if she were some sort of worm hiding inside a big body-shaped shell. Inside the shell, she was trembling and whimpering and crying, but outside, her body was another thing from her, and lay so still it could've been a corpse. Even her tears had stopped falling.

"Look at her. She's dead to the world," said Jamal. "You saw her. She was so fucking drunk. She'll be passed out for hours."

"I always thought we should just fucking do her, just to be sure."

"Shut the fuck up!" Jamal hissed. "You want her to hear you?"

The other guy's voice dropped to a whisper. "I thought you said she was dead to the world."

"Come here, asshole."

Serena heard footsteps on pebbles and dirt as the boys moved away from the car. They went on speaking in lowered voices. She had to strain to hear them, but she could still make out most of what they were saying.

"We have a plan," said Jamal. "The plan's the plan."

"Yeah, but we were supposed to lose her before we did anything. That was the plan."

"It's still the plan. Only she passed out, that's all. It's the same thing. The plan was only him. He's taken care of. There's a whole story about him so no one will… you know: come around, come looking. People would look for her. The cops would look for her. That's a whole different thing. That's not the plan."

Another boy spoke. "What if the cops, y'know, like, interrogate her-whatever?"

And another boy: "Right. What if she goes to the cops? I mean, if she saw something on TV about this or something…"

There was a pause-as if Jamal was thinking it over, deciding whether the other boys were right or not, whether he should kill her or not. Serena, lying curled on the seat of the car, was startled by a small squeaking noise. After a second, she realized it was coming out of her own mouth. She forced herself back down, deeper away from the surface of her body. She lay in darkness there, waiting for Jamal to decide.

"Nah," Jamal said finally. "It's the same as before. It's the same plan. If she goes to the police, we'll know. She can't go to them without us knowing. We'll take care of her then, if we have to. For now, it's the same as before."

"Except she was here. That's not the same."

"She's dead to the world," said Jamal.

"Not dead enough for me," muttered another boy.

Another boy laughed.

"Fucking clowns!" said Jamal, and he laughed, too. "Get in the car. Let's get the fuck outta here."

There were footsteps again. The doors of the green Cadillac opened, and the boys piled in. Three got in front, and two got in back with Serena. They shoved her legs roughly off the seat to make room.

"Drunken skank. Get out of the way," one of them said.

She groaned as if she'd been asleep and sat up reluctantly.

"Where are we?" she murmured sleepily.

"Nowhere," said the boy next to her. "You're crunked. Just keep sleeping it off."

Serena stole a peek at him through half-closed eyes. It was the boy with the knife, the boy who had cut the white boy's throat. She could feel his haunch against her haunch, his arm against her arm. She could smell the musty boy-smell of him, a sweat smell now, and the dank smell of jeans wet with swampwater.

She laid her head against the window and pretended to go to sleep.

The engine started. The car backed over the dirt road. Serena laid against the door in a misery of fear, smelling the smell of them, feeling the touch of the boy who had cut the white boy's throat.

Somebody turned on the radio. There were drums like the footsteps of a giant running after her and a street-black voice like a machine gun threatening machine-gun violence in rhyme.

They drove with the music blaring all the long way back to the city.

For a long time after Serena finished talking, I couldn't answer a word. I sat at the kitchen table and looked at her-that's all. I tried to appear calm. I kept my hands folded on the tabletop. I kept my expression more or less impassive, maybe a little fatherly, a little stern. I showed her nothing of what was inside me: the smothering awareness of catastrophe, my sense that the walls of catastrophe were closing in on me while my mind scrabbled like a rat looking for the exit.

I kept picturing that boy, the white boy, his throat cut, his blood spewing into the moonlight, his body flopping in the swampwater. This was bad stuff. Big trouble. For her and for me, too. This was going to mean cops and courtrooms and killers with a grudge and maybe even jail time for Serena somewhere down the line. There'd be media, investigations, people digging into my past, people talking about my past in newspapers, on television. Cathy would wonder why I hadn't told her I was coming to see Lauren. The kids would hear that Serena was their half sister. The kids would hear all kinds of things, and my neighbors would hear. I could feel the walls of it closing in, and my mind was scrabbling for a way out. But I sat there, trying to look calm.

"All right," I said after a while. I spoke slowly, carefully, thinking it through. "The first thing we have to do is go talk to your mother."

Serena's eyes went wide, her mouth went wide. An enormous whine broke from her: "Why?"

"Because she's your mother, Serena."

"So what? It's not like she cares about me."