Dragnet Golfcourse Bourbon Jaguar

“He held a piece of glass to the driver’s throat and then escaped in her truck. It was carrying medical supplies for the other inmates,” the Lieutenant said. Hanna watched him stretch his soft body out on the sectional. “We found it abandoned a mile and a half away. He won’t have gone far. He’s too weak; he hasn’t eaten in days. He’ll be around here someplace, looking for a house to break into, get a little food, get moving again.” He looked around lazily. “Is that…  pasta?”

She followed his gaze to the rainbow noodles in glass jars on the sideboard. “Yes.”

“Why’s it … in a jar like that?”

“It’s not for eating. It’s décor.”

“Naturally,” said the Lieutenant, too quickly. “Naturally.”

“Why hasn’t he eaten in days?” asked Gregor, emerging from the kitchen. Hanna gestured towards him, seconding the question.

“Feel free to ask him that yourself if you see him,” said the Lieutenant, and with an effort he heaved himself standing again. “But of course, Mr. and Mrs. Kearns, we’re working around the clock to make sure you don’t see him. We’ve assigned a sentry to each property in the area. Yours will be here shortly, and he will patrol your premises until dawn. We ask that you refrain from leaving the house until we give you the go-ahead.”

“Gregor was going to run out and get a few things for dinner,” said Hanna uneasily.

“It’ll have to wait till morning,” said the Lieutenant. He smiled. “Until then, you’ve got plenty of pasta.” He headed for the door.

#

Hanna stood by the reading window as Gregor loaded the dishwasher. She felt tired and surly; they’d cobbled something together from odds and ends in the fridge, and neither had liked it. 

“He still out there?” called Gregor.

“Yeah,” she said, watching the sentry outside. “There’s another one three houses up, and a third on the corner.”

The sentry was tall and thin, with hunched posture and sullen movements. He held a rifle in his arms and paced between the red maples. 

A burst of sparrows took off from a tree. The sentry flinched and whirled around; his trigger hand dropped to a red metal canister on his hip. Hanna blinked. Her brow furrowed.

“They said one per property,” Gregor said. He came to the window. “Even that seemed low. He’s supposed to cover our whole lot?”

“I think there’s more of them out of sight somewhere.” Hanna leaned into him and closed her eyes. Gregor stroked her arm. “You should have left the plates out,” she smiled. “Imagine, he breaks in here and sees what we ate. I bet he skips us. I bet he robs another house and brings us his leftovers.”

“Sorry. I wonder if they would have let us get delivery.”

“I didn’t mean that. It was fine,” she said, and he exhaled hard through his nose. “Did they ever say what the guy was in prison for?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Hmm.”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what did you mean?”

“I didn’t mean anything,” Hanna said, and straightened up. “There are soldiers patrolling our neighborhood and we’re not allowed to go outside to check the mail. I just thought it would be funny if it was all for, I don’t know, a jaywalker or something. A litterer. Anyway.”

She walked upstairs; Gregor stayed by the window. A minute later she heard the TV turn on in the living room.

Through the night they listened to the sprinklers flickering on and off across the lawn. Every so often they heard footsteps crunching through the grass below the bedroom window, and peered through the blinds in a low panic; each time, they found only a sentry leering up at them from the dark lawn.

When Hanna heard chirping she gave up on sleep. She made coffee, and sat looking out at their garden, the inkberry bushes, the raised beds of daylily and Japanese iris. Far beyond them rose the gray sawtooth ridges of the La Madre Range. Less than an hour’s drive could have put them in those mountains, but they’d never done it. Hanna thought they looked dusty and menacing; she’d hiked in Yellowstone and walked the Franconia Ridge, but those were verdant places. The daylilies belonged to nature, she thought. The Mojave did not.

A sentry streaked across the lawn.

She watched him run until he reached a dark shape she hadn’t noticed in the shadow of the trees. He bent over it quickly, examined it; he jolted backwards and buckled like he might vomit. Hanna stared. He took out his radio and spoke words she couldn’t hear, then pulled a red canister from his belt and whirled in circles, his gaze jerking around erratically. A moment later another sentry arrived, and then another, and as Hanna watched, a dozen of them emerged from hidden places and rushed to the dark shape on her lawn.

An hour later Gregor was up and the Lieutenant was on their doorstep. He told them the sentries would remain, and more were coming. He told them they still couldn’t leave.

#

Gregor watched a bit of potato balance on Specialist Ames’s lower lip. It quivered there a moment, then fell into his crotch. Ames noticed; he wiped it off his pants with a finger and stuck the finger in his mouth. He grinned at Gregor from across the living room. “Never leave a fallen comrade, right, Wimbledon?”

Gregor smiled tightly. Ames met his eyes and stared at him until Gregor dropped his gaze.

Twenty-six soldiers filled their home. They draped themselves over armchairs, tracked dirt on the Persian rugs. One of them had taken each of Hanna’s decorative plates off the wall, licked it, and put it back. Ames had found Gregor’s rackets while scouring the garage for Old Crow, and now there wasn’t one in the twenty-six who remembered Gregor’s name.

At half-past three they’d come downstairs to find the door open, and two privates stacking crates of food by the mail table; at quarter-past the Lieutenant had lurched in to tell them they’d be cooking for his platoon that night. The soldiers had started pouring in at six. In the study they’d stored rifles, a little pile of knives, some loops of wire fastened to metal stakes. A private with dull eyes and lupine features loomed outside the door now, and Hanna was rounding the living room, handing out drinks.

“All day just standing around,” murmured one soldier to another as she passed by. “Too tired to stand up, too bored to sleep. Not surprised Lowell got got.”

“Thought I saw it over by that playground they got there,” said the other, a little sheepishly. “Probably maced half the jungle gym.”

“Lady,” said a soldier named Lemos to Hanna, shoving a glass at her. “Maybe you wanna fill this up again for me.”

She looked at the glass, not at him. “What was in it?”

“Jack, splash of Coke.”

“Just a minute,” she said, and took the glass.

“Jungle gym,” repeated the first, as she walked away. He laughed low and surly. “Kind of a good place to look for it.”

She walked to the kitchen, where Gregor was pouring military-issue nacho cheese over tortilla chips.

“Wimbledon!” called out Ames. “Get over here, we got a question for you.”

“I can take over on that,” Hanna said. His lip curled.

“They’re just drunk. This is still our house, I’m not—”

“Wimbledon! It’s match point, buddy! Get your ass over here.”

“I can just do it, I don’t care,” she said, and he shrugged, shook his head, and handed off the container of cheese.

“Hold on,” called out Lemos. “She can’t be on that, I got a drink coming."

“Wimbledon,” Ames said again, ignoring Lemos. “Wimbledon, buddy, what would you do if you found this guy?”

Hanna glanced out the window. Half a dozen men shuffled and slinked around their property. Twice she’d heard helicopters pass overhead.

She noticed one soldier standing close to the house. He was walking around in slow little circles. His gait was leaden, his shoulders slumped. He was close enough that Hanna could see his rifle trembling in his hands. In his circling he briefly faced the house, and she saw that it was Bering, the soldier who’d found Lowell’s body on the lawn that morning. Lowell was young and green, she’d learned later; he’d had two puncture wounds on either side of his skull, and his brain was leaking out onto the grass, strawberry-bright. The Lieutenant had told them Bering was sent back to base to recuperate. But he was here again now, on patrol once more as the clock neared ten at night.

He looked back at Hanna through the window. His mouth opened, and he seemed to be speaking, but Hanna couldn’t hear him. Then he buckled: he suppressed a cough, then two, and then gave in as a coughing fit came over him.

“I don’t know what that is,” Gregor said to Ames. He rubbed his face with his hand.

“You don’t know what the Stone Cold Stunner is?” Ames yelped. “How are you gonna give this guy the Stone Cold Stunner if you don’t even know what it is?” Other soldiers snickered, hooted.

“I guess I probably just won’t,” Gregor said. A snap was coming into his voice. “I guess I’ll probably just die instead.”

“No, no, no,” said Ames. “This is a safety issue. Up on your feet, Wimbledon. We’re gonna get you trained up.” Gregor shook his head. The soldiers got louder and louder.

Hanna looked over. Ames was pawing at Gregor, trying to stand him up. Lemos was staggering into the kitchen, where she still stood by the chips. “Those look done,” he slurred.

“You know what I’d probably do,” she heard Gregor say. “I’d probably fix the guy a plate of food. Your Lieutenant said he hasn’t eaten in days. You guys don’t feed your prisoners?”

An angry swell rose from the other soldiers. Hanna lost sight of Gregor.

“Jack. Splash of Coke,” drooled Lemos, right next to her, and then she heard something crash in the living room.

She wove around Lemos. She darted into the living room.

Ames and Gregor were on the floor. Ames was scrambling back to a kneeling position. Blood trickled from his mouth. Gregor was on all fours, one hand to his ear, wincing badly. A half-dozen soldiers were poised to descend on him; she got to him first.

“Okay. Okay,” she said, breathless, pulling at him. There were hands on her shoulders, at her throat. There was yelling. She tried to tug him standing. He pushed her off.

“Didn’t even hit me,” he panted, dazed.

“Look at that,” came Ames’s voice. He was jittery now, keyed up. “Maybe he does know how to fight. Get him up. We’re going again. Get him up.”

“Hold on—let’s just—” said Hanna. She looked at Ames, visible behind a few others, his muzzle smeared with blood now. “I can get you something for that,” she said desperately, “let me just get my husband—”

“Prisoners? You think this thing was a prisoner?” said Ames. “You have no idea what we’re—”

“Whoa, whoa—” said the soldiers next to him, and shushed him.

“Just get him to bed—just let us—” said Hanna. Finally she dragged him free of the crowd.

“Oh, I have no idea?” said Gregor suddenly. “Why don’t you come explain it to me, then—”

“Shut up,” said Hanna as she pulled him upstairs.

Behind them soldiers cawed and barked. She and Gregor reached the bedroom.

“I’m fine, he barely touched—”

“I don’t care if you’re fine,” Hanna said. She sat on one end of the bed and put her head in her hands. She heard Gregor move around the room, opening and closing drawers; she didn’t look. He sat down on the bed beside her; she didn’t look then either. He got up and moved to the other end of the bed, as far from her as possible.

Hanna lifted her head and looked outside. One of the sentries was pissing in the flowerbeds. She went to the window and closed the curtains.

Another helicopter passed overhead. From downstairs came a whooping cry, then another crash, then laughter.

#

What woke her was the sound of coughing. It was coming from outside; she went to the window and pulled back the curtain. One of the soldiers was doubled over. He coughed and coughed; now and then he sucked in a deep, desperate breath, and then kept coughing. He tried to straighten up. His head and neck jerked; his chest twitched like he’d been struck. He fell down onto one knee. She watched the others. One stifled a cough, then glanced skyward. She replaced the curtain. It was just past three.

As she turned back to the bed, she realized Gregor wasn’t in it. She went to the door and looked down the hall: the bathroom door was open, and the light was off. 

Sleep left her. She started down the hall.

From the guest room came the heavy breath of soldiers. Another sat on firewatch nearby. He looked at her blankly, his rifle across his lap. She went downstairs.

A soldier laid in his own vomit on the landing. Next to him was an empty bottle of Glenfiddich. The stairs were sticky under her bare feet, and the acid reek of liquor filled the air. Another soldier leaned against the banister, unconscious. A crunching sound began to reach her from the living room. She descended to the ground floor.

Plastic cups and beer cans covered the dinner table. The pieces of a wooden chair were scattered across the floor. Food and shit were smeared on walls, on mirrors. The pantry door had been kicked in. Everywhere were soldiers asleep or unconscious on the floor.

She rounded the corner into the living room, and found Ames.

He sat against the wall, naked, eating the uncooked rainbow pasta straight from the jar. His eyes were red and puffy. In his free hand he lightly held his rifle.

The pasta crackled as he chewed it. Fragments spilled from his mouth into his chest hair.

Hanna wanted to say nothing, and return upstairs. But he had seen her now, and she knew that if she left the room, he would follow her until she told him what she’d come down to say. Already she could see him drawing in his legs to plant beneath him and stand. She had seen this in him when he taunted Gregor earlier, this ravenous, absorptive cruelty; nothing could draw near to him without his trying to consume and possess it. Gregor hadn’t understood him, or else had been too proud to care. Hanna was not proud in that particular way. But she understood that the only way out of Ames was through him. So she spoke.

“I’m looking for my husband,” she said.

“Whole house full of eligible bachelors.” He gestured to the sleeping soldiers. “Pick out something you like.”

“I just want to know where my husband is.” She tried to speak colorlessly. Any emotion, good or bad, would draw his fascination.

“Uh huh,” he said.

“Do you know where he is?”

“Excellent question,” he said. He chewed a noodle. “Excellent question.”

He wanted to frustrate her. She waited.

“Would you say you’re worried about him?” he asked slowly, spitting pasta.

“I just want to know where he is.”

“But are you worried? Are you scared that something might have happened to him?”

“I just want to know where he is.”

“Answer my question.”

“I would just like to know where my husband is.”

“Because you think something bad might have happened to him?”

“I would just like to know.”

“But do you think that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what you think?”

“No.”

 She watched him decide she was boring, beneath his contempt. He stretched his legs out again.

“First thing in the morning, I’ll tell the Lieutenant,” he said dully. “We’ll put our best men on it.”

“I would appreciate that.”

He raised his eyebrows and lowered them. He crunched a piece of pasta.

#

She spent what was left of the night sitting up in bed, watching the street, listening for the opening of a door. It never came. When the house moved again, it was from within, as the soldiers stirred and made their way outside for day patrols. From the second floor she watched the night sentries scatter into neighborhood homes. They walked strangely now, with uneven, juddering gaits, and half-bent postures; they coughed and coughed. A few entered her home. They murmured to each other and sipped water and then fell asleep on the floor. Their skin had a sallow cast.

When she saw the Lieutenant passing by her house she ran outside and demanded to know where her husband was. For only an instant he glanced at Ames, skulking away into a copse of trees, then he took out his radio and began babbling to no one. Meanwhile Hanna breathed the air of her neighborhood again, and in doing so gained clarity.

The air was sweet, with a slick, pebbled texture like birdseed or caviar, and it burned her throat like vodka. She understood now: she looked up at the helicopters crisscrossing the sky, and watched as something like amber snow fell from them in soft billows and dispersed, long invisible by the time it reached the ground.

The Lieutenant hurried away, and a sentry with insect eyes herded her back into the house at riflepoint.

The hours passed, and the shadows of trees and men grew long across the lawn again. The bug-eyed sentry still stood on the steps, his rifle trained on the front door. No soldiers had come in for water or food, and by noon all the night guards who’d slept on her floor had been radioed away to other houses. She was alone.

Over and over she’d watched the Lieutenant come to the bottom of the driveway and peer up at the house, muttering darkly into his phone. She had watched her flowers die, and her grass turn brown and scorched; she had watched the soldiers weaken like the ones the night before. She knew that the poisoned air outside was leaching into her house and her body minute by minute, second by second, and that if by nightfall she were still alive, the Lieutenant’s men would enter her home and take her somewhere faraway and final.

When she realized that she knew these things she walked a slow lap around their home. They had cherished it once, and then it had gradually become ordinary. Its comforts now were mostly negative: it was not the lurid world of sticky subway seats and blaring music, the stink of gasoline and fryer grease, the leers of strangers. They had filled it with objects which inertia and force of habit had made to seem talismanic, and they had sat in its various cushioned places and let pass ten pleasant years of undifferentiated time.

Her husband was dead and alive now, captive and escaped. He was vital to her, a power source, and as he entered an everlasting twilight, the home they’d made together could only follow. The house had become alien to her, its surfaces gummy and ruptured, its protective continuities broken. She took her time, and tried to will herself to hold it dear again. When it had worked as well as it was going to, she sat by the living room windows and watched the street. She was waiting for the changing of the guard.

#

She ran and ran. Within ten seconds her lungs seethed and she tasted bile. Within twenty her lower back began to spasm. Sunset glinted through the trees and blinded her for quarter-seconds at a time.

She craned her neck to look behind her. They had seen her; they were in pursuit. But they moved like broken things. Their bodies lurched and buckled. One fell, and let out a low mewl as his fellow soldiers overtook him. Even exhausted, she could outrun them all, and none still had the strength or stability to aim a weapon.

Soon she was clear of them, trotting raggedly down a paved trail leading through a stretch of parkland. It had gotten dark; she hadn’t noticed. She slowed to a walk. Close by, there was a roundabout, with a military roadblock at each of its entry points. A half-dozen soldiers were lying in the road. The chests of two still heaved faintly up and down; the other four were still.

The trail curved and led into darkness. She followed it.

She didn’t know where she was trying to get to. She didn’t know how far she’d have to go to reach clean air. She was slick with sweat, and the humid night enveloped her. She felt dizzy. She realized abruptly that she was stepping on soil, not pavement, and discovered that the trail was no longer in sight. High grasses swayed around her. She turned and looked: the roundabout was distant now.

From nearby came the call of a single frog. A few gnats flitted around her head as she walked. Farther off, a lone bird sang. There should have been more, she thought, there used to be more.

Something rustled in the grasses. She didn’t register it; she kept walking.

She knew that some ways up ahead the parkland yielded to a golf course, and she thought blurrily that she might make that her destination. The sprinklers, she thought. She might take a drink from the sprinklers, and sit down a while.

The rustling followed her. It was a clumsy, thrashing sound; it wasn’t the sound of an animal. It drew near, and she noticed it, and she turned in stumbling circles trying to locate its source. When she couldn’t, she turned again, and started running. 

Her adrenaline was spent. Her body ached. She ran jaggedly. She ran through the park, and slipped in a brackish puddle. She ran through the tall grasses and between the dark trees. Hanna saw the golf course up ahead, and she couldn’t remember why she’d wanted to get there, but she ran harder and harder, she ran until she no longer knew that she was running. She had just stepped onto the fairway when something closed around her ankle and she fell.

She looked. Around her ankle was a loop of wire, fastened to a metal stake plunged into the ground.

She tried to pull her foot back; it didn’t move. She clawed at the stake, but her fingers could find no purchase on it. From the dark trees the rustling grew nearer.

She took off her shoe and tried to slip her foot through; it wouldn’t go. She tugged at the wire; it sliced her hands.

A shape emerged in the rough, and dragged itself into view. It was a person; it was a soldier; it was Bering.

One of his legs seemed to be stuck at full extension, and the other stuck half-bent. His head lolled at odd angles, and bobbed back and forth as he walked. With each breath he made a bleating sound. His gun hung off of him loosely, and smacked into him as he walked.

She stopped trying to free herself. She watched him approach, and became calm. She was a small part of something predetermined, she thought hazily, the work of millenia. The poisoned air, and the dead frogs floating in the pond, and the body of the man called Bering: these things were folding in on themselves, and she would join them, and when their work was finished the night sky would be free of stars forever. Bering reached her. He looked at the wire around her ankle, and then he spoke.

“Cutter for that,” he said, almost inaudibly. “Get you loose.”

One of his arms bent at the elbow, and his hand swung near the wire cutters on his belt. But his fingers were bent in a contorted shape, like he was playing a chord on a piano, and his hand was bent forward at the wrist. He tried to make his hand close around the cutters, but it wouldn’t, and he couldn’t seem to move his other arm at all. He stared at his hands.

“Cutter for that,” he said again. “Get you loose.”

He reached his hand towards his belt again, and again his fingers knocked into the wire cutters but couldn’t grasp them. He began to cry. His face was nearly frozen; his breathing became more labored, and his lips twisted just a little, and one eye half-shut. Nevertheless his sobbing sounded normal.

Hanna felt a mist lift slowly from her; she was in the world again.

He spoke, but it was unintelligible. He looked at Hanna, as if he might have just asked a question. She stared back, her expression unreadable. He spoke again, again unintelligibly, and then his sobbing buckled him. He screamed and gurgled. His one mobile hand flailed wildly. His bent leg shook. She drew herself up straight.

“Come closer,” she said. “I’ll get the cutters.”

Bering looked at her with his pitiful gargoyle face, and nodded. With a great effort he heaved himself towards her, his little breaths squeaking as he moved, until finally he stood over her. Precisely as she reached out for the cutters, something burst out from the trees and hurtled into him. When she saw his face again it was void and vacant, and he was lying on the fairway grass with blood and brain matter streaming from four punctures in his skull. What stood above her now was not a soldier.

Its feet were long and slanted, with stubby human toes and its heels five inches off the ground. Its knees were bent, and it hunched so far forward that its knuckles hovered halfway down its shins; Hanna wondered if it ran on two legs or four. Its hands were shaped like a human’s, but she could see jagged white spikes bursting through its knuckles, fingertips, and palms, with blood and pus seeping after them. Its mottled skin was tufted here and there by matted fur marked with rosettes. Surgical scars ribboned its entire body, and Hanna saw that they were swollen and red, and some were splitting open, leaking pus into its fur. Its tail had only patches of skin or fur, and along its length Hanna saw bones exposed directly to the air. Its tail whipped gently back and forth, and each time it did, the creature wobbled slightly on its feet. She realized she had her answer: its body was most comfortable on four legs, but it was forcing itself to walk on two.

Its skull was short and deep, with its ears set far back on its head. Hanna registered Bering’s blood on its whiskered muzzle. Its eyes were yellow, and its irises filled the eye outside the pupil. She thought its lips looked human, as did most of its teeth. Its canines, though, did not: fang-shaped and inches long, these were the teeth of a jaguar.

Hanna observed her own disgust at the creature, and watched it pass over her. When it had gone, she regarded the creature again and saw it clearly. It had imperatives inside of it which it likely did not understand, and which produced desires it might have thought its own, if it could think that. It was likely in enormous physical pain, but she doubted that it knew that, or that it could distinguish its pain from the rest of itself. She doubted that it could be bartered with, but she wondered if it could be tricked. She sat very still, and watched it watch her.

“I don’t remember you,” it said. “Were you with them? From before?” 

“No,” she said. “You don’t know me.”

“I can’t tell one from the other,” it said. “I think you’re more like them than you’re like me.”

“I look more like them, but I want what you want,” she said.

“What do I want?” She surveyed its face. It wasn’t being cagey; it was listening.

“They frighten you,” she said.

It paused. “I remember things.”

“You were running from them.”

“So were you.”

“So you see what I mean,” Hanna said, and its head tilted slightly to one side. She wondered if it was capable of being confused.

“If I free you, will you help me?” it asked.        

“If I won’t, will you still free me?” she said, and wondered why she’d said it. But the creature recoiled a little, as if struck. Then it reached down with its damaged, bleeding hands, and slipped a finger between the wire and her ankle. It pulled at the wire until it loosened, then slid the fingers of both hands under the wire, and pulled again. The wire snapped. 

Where its hands had touched her skin, there were soft imprints from the keratin spikes, and a film of blood and pus. She dug her fingers into the fairway ground and pulled up a chunk of dirt and grass. She used it to wipe away what she could, and then rose.

“What help do you need?” she asked.

“I need food and clean water, and a way out of this area.”

“I have a car the soldiers don’t know about, and a fridge full of food,” she said. “I can drive you into the mountains and you’ll be gone.”

“Should I come with you now?”

“No. There are soldiers watching the house. Wait for me by the pond. I’ll come and get you.”

#

She had run out; she walked back. She wanted a shower. She wanted to sleep. She wondered how much of the toxin she’d breathed in. As she crested the hill leading to her house she turned back and looked towards Las Vegas. It gleamed in its usual way. Gregor had wanted to be closer to downtown, but for juvenile reasons, and she had promised him he’d have access to the city’s pleasures from the safe remove of Summerlin West. She felt in some obscure way that she had failed him. She turned away from the city and hoped bitterly that the toxin could be carried on the wind.

As she walked she saw the bodies of soldiers splayed out on lawns and driveways. The soldiers now on patrol were physically unimpacted, but they hardly moved, and if they noticed her passing by, they gave no sign of it.

She heard the helicopters circling, and the distant thrum of Humvees on patrol. New soldiers would arrive, and new ones after that when they were incapacitated. This would continue indefinitely, and only the body of the creature could end it. She reached her home, then passed it.

When Hanna found the Lieutenant he was standing in a shower with all his clothes on, scrubbing his exposed skin raw. They were in a house around the corner from Hanna’s, whose owners she had only known by sight. When she appeared in the doorway he looked at her and for a moment his face brightened as if he’d seen a friend; then he remembered who she was. 

She watched him reach for the tap with an odd, tridactyl grip. For the past thirty minutes she’d felt a tickle in her throat and a disorienting lightness in her chest; her knees and the arches of her feet were beginning to stiffen, as if their component parts were fusing together. He shut off the water. She leaned against the threshold for support.

“Just taking precautions,” he said. “New regiments just arrived. Things really heating up now. He’s sure to, ah—sure to…” He blinked. “Not much longer now.”

“Lieutenant,” she said, “if you caught your prisoner, how quickly would you and your men leave our neighborhood?”

He stared at her. “Within the hour.”

“And you wouldn’t come back.”

“We’d have no reason to,” he said. “What do you know, Mrs. Kearns?”

“Where is my husband?” she asked. He scowled.

“There will be time for—”

“Your hands are seizing up. It’s happening to you too. Don’t tell me what there’ll be time for later.” He blanched. “Where is Gregor?”

When he spoke again, his voice was low and ragged. “I know about these men,” he said. Water dripped from his uniform. “I—we—a deal is struck, and they do—I am able to complete our assignments, and they—when they’re off-duty…” He looked at her pathetically. “I don’t know where your husband is. And I can’t ask. I can’t.”

He gripped the lid of the toilet for stability, and his feet shook as he heaved his sopping body out of the shower. He eased himself onto the toilet and looked up at her.

“If you know something that could be useful to us,” he said, “I would be grateful to hear it.”

She knew she now had all there was for an answer. It did not suffice; it would have to suffice. 

She became aware of a widening indifference towards the Lieutenant and his men. They wanted to go, and she wanted them gone, and then she wanted only to sleep. Already they seemed far away. She had only to speak the words, and they would disappear completely.

“Six blocks from here there is a roundabout, and a park next to it. Within that park there is a small pond. You used to be able to find the pond by the sound of frog calls, but the frogs are dead now. The thing you’re looking for is waiting there,” she said. “Kill it or capture it or do whatever you want and then get out of our neighborhood.”

He nodded, and reached for his radio. Hanna made to leave.

“I’ve been…” he began to say. Hanna looked back at him. He was staring at his hands. “I’ve been assured that the effects are reversible,” he mumbled. “I have that on very good authority.”

The streets were still quiet as she walked home; nothing had begun to happen yet. As she’d turned on the shower she had heard men shouting, and Humvees taking off down the street. The water drowned out everything, and when she shut off the tap, there was quiet again. From their upstairs balcony she watched the helicopters fly into the distance and the Humvees roll away out of sight.

Hanna surveyed the house. It was in better shape than she’d remembered. The cleaners would clean, and she would buy new chairs and turn a few couch cushions to face the other way. It was, in that specific sense, restorable.

She had not expected to return to it; she felt she had said her goodbyes to it, and the house seemed to her now like someone else’s. She wondered if a night of sleep would rejoin her to it; she suspected already that it wouldn’t, and that on waking she would wonder if just one more night would do it, and that many nights might pass this way.

She was a widow now. So far this thought dazed her more than grieved her; the idea of it was enormous and opaque, and she had no place to put it, no way to use it, nothing it could be turned into or exchanged for. The end of his life ended part of hers, and she felt their long continuum of plans begin to darken, year by year.

She tabled all this; she resolved to give Gregor one more night to walk back in the door.

She sat on the bed and closed her eyes. Now, freed from action, her body articulated its damages to her. She ached. She knew that some amount of what she felt was permanent. She had lost faculties she would not regain. She understood this, and it pained her less than she had thought it would; everything pained her less than she had thought it would.

She had already turned the lights out when she realized she was hungry. With an effort she reached her feet again, and made her way downstairs, to see what could be cobbled together.

Evander Lang's stories and poems have appeared in The Pinch, Beaver Mag, Acropolis Journal, and elsewhere, and his screenplays have placed in contests by PAGE International and Screencraft. He's also a reader for Hypertext Magazine and Fractured Lit, and he is perpetually looking for German conversation partners. He lives in Chicagoland with his wonderful wife and incorrigible basset-pitbull mix

Published October 15 2024