Ben Winters - World of Trouble

“I peed,” she says suddenly.

“Hey, that’s great,” I say. “Good for you.” Like I’m talking to a baby, just saying words. “That means you’re getting better.” Trying to keep calm; keep her calm. “I put you in here, okay? You were asleep. But you’re safe. You’re fine. You’re going to be just fine .”

It’s not true—she knows it’s not true—everything is not going to be just fine—it’s not so. Of course not. She’s deathly pale, shivering violently, her face a piteous mixture of fear and wonder.

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure,” I say. “I’m trying to find out.”

“Where am I?” She licks her dry lips and looks around. I don’t know where to start. You’re in the police station. You’re in the Muskingum River Watershed. You’re on Earth . I don’t know how much she knows. I wonder what I look like. I wish I had shaved. I wish I were smaller. I smell like dirt and fire.

“You’re upstairs,” I say finally.

“Where are the others?”

The back of my neck tingles. The others. Tick and Astronaut and the black girl and the kid with the bright blue sneakers.

“I don’t know where they are.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Henry Palace.”

“Henry,” she whispers, and then, “Palace,” and she looks at me, her eyes widening as they travel over my face.

“Henry, Henry,” she says, and then she stares right at me, right into my eyes. “Do you have a sister?”

It’s the same as the last time: I chased the dog and Cortez me, the three of us chasing toward the girl’s body in the clearing, but now it’s just me chasing Lily, which is not her name, cracking branches and brush beneath me, my flat feet thumping on the soil, brambles tearing at my pant legs like vengeful spirits trying to catch me and make me fall. Same as last time—same route—down a westward slope away from the police station, along the line of the small creek—but then Lily breaks left and I follow her, she crosses a small swinging rope bridge, and I follow and follow.

Hide-and-seek. Cutting through the woods. It’s raining. My heart is galloping in my chest, leaping out ahead of me.

This is fine, I think crazily, this long moment of just running. The part before we get there, wherever we’re going. My pulse is an ocean roar in my ears. The sun is a pale yellow circle through a thickness of rain clouds. Let’s just run forever. Because I can feel it, oh man I can feel it—I know what’s coming.

Lily stops abruptly at a low line of bushes, and her back stiffens, her head turns slightly to the left and then down, her whole body flinching as she sees whatever it is that she is seeing. I know what it is, though, I already know. Tightness in my chest like someone has tied it off with a belt. A burning in my lungs from running. I already know.

I move in slow motion. Past Lily’s stationary form, through a low layer of brush into a little meadow, an opening in the trees.

There’s a body in the center of the clearing. I stumble forward over tree roots, tripping over my stupid feet. I pitch forward, right myself, and then crouch, panting, beside the body.

It’s her, I know it’s her. She’s facedown but it’s her.

Lily is at the perimeter behind me, moaning. I turn over the body and it’s just her , I don’t get even an instant of uncertainty, not the slightest momentary reprieve: the face is immediately and unquestionably Nico’s face. Jeans, long-sleeve T-shirt, tan sandals like the ones Lily is wearing. She fought back, too, before she was slain: bruising below the eye, scratches on her cheeks and forehead, a thin rusted trickle of blood under her nose. Bar fight wounds, nothing serious, except then you look down just a little bit and there’s her throat—torn open, ugly, pink and red and black—but I go ahead and I ignore all of that, I do, I go ahead and I take her pulse—it’s ridiculous, she’s cold and waxen, but I place two fingers on the soft hollow area just below the lower jawbone, just above the brutal red line of her wound, I put my fingers in place and watch a minute go by on the Casio and there’s no pulse because she’s dead.

Her face tilts gently to one side, and her eyes are closed, as if in sleep. She’s at peace, they would say that, people always say things like that, but it’s an inaccurate statement—thoughts are thundering around in my head, grief is choking its way up my throat—she’s not at peace, she’s dead, she was at peace when she was laughing at something clever someone said, she was at peace when she was smoking a cigarette, listening to Sonic Youth. She liked all that ’80s and ’90s stuff, the college-radio acts. Hüsker Dü, the Pixies. That smart-ass Replacements song about the flight attendant.

There’s dirt on her cheeks. I wipe it away with my thumb. A few strands of hair are matted across her forehead like delicate fractures. Her whole life, Nico was so pretty and always trying to pretend she wasn’t. So pretty, and so annoyed about it.

I look up at the sky, up at the wavering gray sun and then past it, imagining I can see 2011GV 1in its current location. It’s close now, a couple million miles now, our nearest neighbor. They say that for the last couple of nights you’ll be able to see it with the naked eye, a new star, a gold pin in the black heavens. They say that just before impact the sky will brighten ferociously, like the sun has burst from its own skin, and then we will feel it, even on the far side of the Earth we will feel it, the whole world will quaver from the blow. They say that sufficient debris will be ejected from the impact site to fill Earth’s atmosphere in a matter of hours.

I stand up, stumble away, and then I grab my forehead with both hands and slowly claw my fingers down my face: dig into my eyes, gouge my cheeks, burrow my fingers through my ridiculous policeman’s mustache, disfigure my lips and my mouth, tear angry furrows into my chin. Birds are chattering to each other in a nearby tree. Lily, the girl, whatever her name is, she’s still on the outskirts of the clearing, sobbing wordlessly, a dissonant ghostly moan.

Go on now, Detective , urges Detective Culverson, comforting but firm. Go on and get to work .

I turn back around and step close again, give myself a push and look at the body like any other body, the crime scene like any other crime scene.

Her throat is cut, the same as Lily’s. Her face is covered with scratches and slight bruising, the same as Lily’s. And her hair: a hunk is missing from the back, from just above the nape of the neck. She’s had bad haircuts in recent years—punkish, short, choppy—so it’s hard to tell. But I think it was hacked off. I shake my head, run my hand through my own short hair. I demand a summary of findings and it comes back in the voice of Dr. Alice Fenton, chief medical examiner of the state of New Hampshire, another old acquaintance: We have a Caucasian female, twenty-one years old, signs of struggle including incised wounds to the fingers, palms, and forearms; cause of death is massive blood loss from traumatic laceration to the structures of the throat, inflicted with a knife or other sharp object wielded by a determined assailant .

I bite my lip. I look at her face, her closed eyes. What else?

This clearing is smaller than the one where we found the first victim, the one who survived. The ravine where we found her was neat and circular, encircled by pines. This place is rougher around its edges, smaller and more irregular, surrounded not by forest trees but low ugly bushes, rough with pricklers and brambles.

The same evidentiary challenges, here, though, the same unuseful ground, thick with mud. Footprinting a lost cause.