Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

Afterwards, I felt… nothing. Utter numbness. It was way, way too much to process. Too big. I felt it later, sure, when the government got its hooks into me. When the therapists and counsellors they sent my way forced the emotion to the surface, the way a diver will pry an oyster off a rock.

I’m expecting to feel the same way this time. That’s my first reaction, when I stare down at Paul’s white face, with its horrible blank eyes. I’m almost ready for it – ready for my brain to shut down, my body to go on autopilot. Blue screen of death. Please refer to your dealer warranty. Which means I am utterly and totally unprepared for what happens next.

A phantom fist socks me in the gut. It’s an actual, physical sensation: a sick ache deep in my stomach that blooms through my body like ink in water. I hug myself, bent over, a dry retch crawling its way up my throat. I’m looking at Paul as it happens, and it’s followed by an urge to look away: an urge so powerful, so everywhere , that I nearly fall over trying to obey it. I clutch at my stomach, eyes squeezed shut, taking deep breaths that come and go without giving me any air at all. I’m shaking, trembling, like I’m a hundred years old. It’s got nothing to do with the rain, or the chilly night air.

Annie’s shaking too, hunched on the edge of the hole, head down. Dead still. The kid , I think. We should go after him . Oh, yeah. OK. Let’s go hunt the boy who just buried Paul alive.

“Will somebody respond?” In my ear, Reggie sounds like she’s this close to losing her shit. “Teagan, Paul, anyb—tell me what’s happening out—”

She goes away, comes back, the signal fading in and out.

After a while, I stop retching. The shakes are still there, though. I have to interlace my fingers to get them to simmer down. Is it lighter in the sky now? Or is it just my imagination?

My blue-screened brain reboots into recovery mode. I lift the car doors again, thinking I can use them to at least get Paul out of the ground. Only: what then? Carry him back to the stadium? That’s the sensible thing to do… they’ll have a morgue, or a tent to keep the dead in. Right?

Only: how do we get him back there? I can’t float him in on the suicide doors, not without causing a panic. He’s too heavy for me to carry by myself. And there is no way – at all, ever – that I’m asking Annie to carry him. It would be the worst kind of betrayal.

Call an ambulance . I am so fucking out of it that I find myself reaching for my useless phone. In the hole, Paul stares at nothing.

I can’t leave him down there. Nope. Nuh-uh. No sir no ma’am no way.

Except… what the fuck else choice do we have?

I sink to my knees next to Annie, a hand on her shoulder. Another phantom punch to my gut, this one almost as bad as the first. It takes a second for my own words to make sense. “I can’t carry him out of here with my PK.”

She makes a sound that is halfway between a groan and a snarl.

“I mean, I can, I could put him on one of the doors, but it’s not… I don’t want to…”

I don’t want to leave him. Not like this. But the only alternative is carrying him back to the stadium ourselves, and even the thought of doing that… carrying him like a sack of grain across that endless parking lot…

And I can’t ask Annie to bury him.

I can’t tell her that we have to put him under the dirt, right after we got him out. I won’t .

The shakes and the ache in my gut have given way to something else: lucidity. Control. My mind is suddenly agonisingly clear. It won’t let me check out, no matter how desperate I am to do it. We can get a message to the people at the stadium. The National Guard, the doctors, emergency workers. Whoever is in charge. We’ll have to come up with a story – tell them he fell into a hole, something like that. Or that the ground collapsed. They won’t question it – why would they? They have so much on their plates, they won’t even have time to. And they can come get him, pull him out…

I tell Annie this, but all she does is shake her head. Doesn’t stop. Just keeps rocking, sitting on the ground with her arms around her knees.

“Annie, please. We have to.”

Long minutes go by while I talk to her. I can’t believe how calm I sound. Slowly, very slowly, I make her understand. Or at least, not try and stop me.

We start walking. My arm around Annie. I try not to picture Paul’s body, down in the dirt.

I’m sorry, man. I’m so fucking sorry .

The kid knew what he was doing. He knew he was about to kill someone.

And he liked it.

The next thing I know, we’re heading back across the parking lot to the stadium. I can’t even remember us walking away from the gra—from where it happened.

“We’re coming in,” I say, keying my comms.

A long fuzz of static. “Teagan? Is that you? What the—out there? Paul and Annie aren’t answer—out of range?”

In the end, all I can think to say is, “Annie’s with me.”

“Did their—damaged?” Her voice is very distant now, almost inaudible.

“We’ll meet you at the medical tent.”

No answer. The only thing I get back is static.

It takes a while to get into the stadium. There are even more people now, crowds bottlenecking the entry tunnels, streaming in from everywhere. A dirty, heaving mass of exhausted faces and slow, shuffling bodies. We have to stand in line, despite the black slashes on the backs of our hands.

You know that whole thing about grief, where you can’t understand how the world can keep ticking along after someone you love has died? I get it now. Everybody’s standing around, not doing much, and they don’t know that Paul is dead. They have no idea, and if they did, they wouldn’t even care. The crowd is huge, like we’re trying to get into a Beyoncé show. But it’s quiet, dull, and even the soldiers checking us off don’t give us more than a passing glance. Annie is crying again, silent tears making tracks down her dirt-smeared cheeks

Inside. Same tents, same mud. Reggie comes back in my comms, goes away again, static swallowing her. In the huge crush of bodies, every one of them radiating exhaustion and hopelessness, Annie and I get separated.

It happens almost without me noticing. I’m just concentrating on shuffling forward, trying not to get muscled out of the way, and a few seconds later she’s just gone.

She was right behind me. She was right fucking here. I push though the crowd, shouting her name, squeezing between tents and bouncing off people like a pinball.

It takes me a long minute to find her, sagged against the wall of one of the tents. Staring at nothing. Face grey, mud caked on her legs on arms. When I take her hand, she doesn’t resist, just lets me lead her. It’s like she’s gone deep inside herself.

OK. Where the fuck is the medical tent? Or… shit, is there more than one? I really don’t feel like leading Annie on a little hike right now, but at least the thought gets me moving again. I start walking, arm around Annie’s waist, heading in what I think is the right direction.

We stumble down between the tents. Every so often, I’ll call out for Reggie or Africa on the comms, raising my voice over the crowd.

It’s not long before we’re lost. I feel like the tent should be over by third base, but I must have gotten turned around somewhere.

“Come on, A-Team,” I mutter to Annie, changing our direction. It’s like trying to do a three-point turn in an eighteen-wheeler. “Long way to go. We just need to—”

The ground beneath me gives way, plunging my right foot into a calf-high sinkhole of brown water. Freezing mud floods my shoe, trickling between my toes.