Richard Cox - House of the Rising Sun

But if Seth expected her to walk away while he disappeared into the trees to shoot a man, he was fooling himself. Because this was it. This was the end of a very long scene, and Skylar was going to witness it. She wanted to be propelled into a grand, final act where the horror of this world would be resolved. Where all would be revealed. When Seth and Blaise were almost out of sight, Skylar stepped off the road surface and moved toward the edge of the forest.

The ground under her feet was uneven. The weeds were wispy and grew to hip level. A fine haze hovered in the air, as if immune to gravity. Skylar imagined what the ending might look like, how the final reversal would take shape. She lost her focus and could no longer see the two men. She couldn’t hear them, either. She stopped and listened. Nothing. Seth and Blaise might have disappeared.

Eventually she leaned against a tree, and that’s when she saw the two of them barely twenty feet away. Blaise stood a few yards ahead of Seth, facing away from him. Birds chirped and sang in the trees around her. A string section of cicadas rose like a wall.

“Will you just do it already?” cried Blaise.

“You don’t want to say anything?” answered Seth. “You want me to just shoot?”

“Please just get it over with. I’m about to lose my nerve. You don’t even have to dig a hole. Just cover me well enough that—”

“You boys aren’t a couple of queers, are ya?” yelled a voice.

Skylar whirled around. She couldn’t see anyone, but whoever had yelled sounded like Floyd… which was both unexpected and the perfect complication for this awful scene.

“Oh, God,” said Blaise. “This is no good. No good.”

“Just leave us alone!” yelled Seth in a general direction that made it clear he couldn’t place Floyd’s location, either.

“Can’t do that,” said the voice. “You’re getting ready to shoot your man, are you not?”

“That’s not your business!” yelled Seth.

“It’s my business when my boys are starving. There ain’t no reason why you can’t turn your man over when he’s passed.”

Blaise moaned. He dropped to his knees and then sat down.

“What difference does it make to you?” yelled Floyd, who sounded as if he were closer now, though Skylar hadn’t heard any movement. “Once he’s dead, what does it matter?”

“It matters to him. Can’t you find anything else to eat? It’s too soon for this kind of thing.”

“The stores are empty, and all the ranchers have pulled their livestock indoors. Or they’ve hired armed guards. And there ain’t enough wild game to go around. You need to make a good decision here, or I won’t be asking anymore. Understand?”

Blaise tugged on Seth’s shoelaces.

“Come on, man. Don’t let them do it.”

“I won’t. I won’t.”

“This is the way it’s going to go,” said Floyd. “You take care of your man like you already planned, and then you turn him over to us. In return, we’ll drive your group to Melissa.”

Skylar could see it now. They were rescued. Daylight was already beginning to fade and there was no other way to reach their destination before dark.

“Please,” said Blaise. “Please don’t let them have me.”

Skylar watched as Seth turned back around. He raised the gun from his side and pointed it at Blaise. Pointed it at his face. Skylar took in a hitch of breath, and though she wanted to look away, she didn’t. Because the entire point of coming out here was to witness the reversal, was it not? To solidify her faith? To know for sure this was a film? A fever dream?

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Blaise. “I think I can make it. Let’s keep walking and maybe…”

Seth’s hand shook but he did not lower his weapon. A cold look came over his face, as if he could no longer hear what Blaise was saying. For that matter, neither could Skylar. She watched the weapon shimmy and shiver and she wondered if Seth would—

The sound of the gun was like the slam of a door, sudden and irrevocable. Blaise’s body jerked as if he’d been hit by a baseball bat. Blood and bone burst out of the back of his skull in a fine red spray that made Skylar go weak in the knees. The body toppled over. Its arms jerked and its hands grasped as if reaching for someone. Skylar knelt and threw up. She moaned and wailed and wished she were dead.

Which was a terrible problem because she had never been more afraid to die.

The world couldn’t be a film. Or a dream. It didn’t seem possible that Blaise’s death had been artificial. It had to be real. Which meant she was going to die. Death was the only true reality.

“Is it done?” said Floyd.

“It’s done,” answered Seth.

“Good. I’ll send men over to get the body.”

Skylar heard crunching grass and then Seth was standing over her.

“I told you to follow the others,” he said coldly. “I’m not sure why you wanted to see something like this.”

A little while later, after harsh, whispering negotiation between Natalie and Seth, the seven of them and Floyd climbed into the bed of the pickup. The other men rode up front with Blaise, whose body had been cruelly folded into the passenger seat. A shirt had been wrapped around his head and was dark with blood.

“We ain’t bad men,” said Floyd, casting an eye at the twins. “It’s not like we go after innocent people. But if someone is going to check out anyway, I don’t see the harm.”

“You’re right,” said Seth. He sounded to Skylar like he was reciting someone else’s dialogue. “If they’re checked out already, what’s the harm?”

Skylar stared at the smoky sunset and swallowed her nausea. To distract herself from reality she conjured the echoing choir of Fordlandia, another Jóhannsson orchestral masterpiece, meant to evoke Henry Ford’s failed experiment to create a modern, capitalistic Utopia in the Amazonian jungle of Brazil. Jóhannsson’s intent (she’d read on his Web site) had been to juxtapose the human hunger for technological progress with the magnificence of nature reclaiming itself. It seemed to Skylar that the rise and fall of Fordlândia was analogous to what was happening now, as modern society was quietly but violently shut down by the pulse. She wondered why humans continued to believe they could bend the world to their will when the opposite had always proven true. She wondered how she could have ever deluded herself into believing life was a film.

Floyd went on to explain, in coded language, how he and his men had acquired their other victims. He tried to elaborate about the cooking and cleaning process, but his limited vocabulary fell short of the poetry required to conceal the truth from two young boys. Eventually Floyd gave up and allowed them to suffer the remainder of the ride in peace.

When they reached Milrany, Floyd asked Seth where to turn next.

“We’ll just get out here,” Seth said. “I need to figure out how to explain this to Blaise’s mom.”

“Sure,” said Floyd. “But can I ask you one question?”

“Of course.”

“Where you going with all them guns? Because I know you wasn’t bringing them to anyone’s mom.”

Skylar watched as Seth invented an answer. He smiled like a man who’d forgotten he was human.

“We’re going to start our own republic.”

“In that case,” Floyd said. “Maybe we’ll come by later and see how it’s going. ‘Cause maybe we want to start our own as well.”

They climbed out of the pickup truck. Seth, Thomas, and Larry shouldered bags, and the group began walking northward. Fifteen minutes later, as the sun dipped below the horizon, they knocked on the door to Tim’s house. Larry recited the words Blaise had given them, and the door opened.