Demolition Love

30. BODYBAG

  We run. We pass a few D-towners sprawled at uncomfortable angles, as though they fell asleep on their feet and crumpled to the ground. I can’t help but stoop to touch the neck of each, but they all have strong, slow pulses. My heart squeeze-squeeze-squeezes, trying to keep up with the rhythm in my ear.

  Lawson heads for the square, but I tap his wrist and shake my head.

  “Arena.” My voice sounds far away.

  The GeeGee have gone out of their way to knock us out, so something big is going down. The worst things that happen in D-town always happen there.

  My injuries don’t slow me—this must be an effect of the earbud, something I’ll pay for later—but Lawson’s body is stronger, and he gains several meters on me by the time we reach the Arena’s sub-ground entrance. He shoots into the dugout ahead of me and stops, suspended for a moment on the balls of his toes.

  He sprints out of sight and then I reach the dugout. I too stumble to a stop, feeling like someone’s rammed a metal rod through my solar plexus. Because Tab hangs like an effigy at the base of the seats, and that one’s been, has been… I wrench my gaze away, unwilling to dwell on the injuries to decide how each must have been inflicted. I look to the other bodies that hang there: Tanner, the Love Child femme Lawson made out with, the logic in-between, and Gina; all the kids from the alley, everyone but Dart.

  Bloody shit. The GeeGee crucified their own kids. And Tab. Why Tab?

  Cold understanding creeps in. The GeeGee means to blame this on us. The press will report that the D-town gangs brutally murdered not only the GeeGee kids who came to help them but also a defenseless, “mentally handicapped” child. There will be pictures of the bodies. The citizens will scream for the end of D-town, and the government will finally have its excuse to make us all disappear.

  D-town has just been well and truly demonized.

  I stand there and watch Lawson break. He becomes almost like the bodies hanging before us, a shell. Their shells are empty, though, while he is a container for anger. He turns back the way he came.

  “Lawson, no.”

  “Cut her down,” he orders as he strides away.

  I waver for a moment, then chase after him. Indignity can’t harm the dead, but the same can’t be said for the living, and whatever he is about to do can’t be good.

  I find him in the street with a knife in his hand, bending over a fallen Love Child. That’s the problem with anarchists. No self-control. Lawson doesn’t even try to hide the knife, even though the guy at his feet can hardly fight back in his sleep.

  “What are you doing?” I screech.

  Lawson looks down at the Love Child. The guy’s layered, colorful clothes give the impression of a rag doll. His beaded dreadlocks lie splayed across the cement, forming a starburst pattern around his head, bright with blood.

  “Law?” I take a slow step forward. What did you do?

  He holds up the knife like he expects to have to defend himself. From me.

  I reach out. “You can’t bring Tab back this way.”

  “Blood fertilizes the ground,” he whispers. “New things grow.” It sounds…familiar. Something a Witch might say.

  Or a GeeGee.

  One more step and my hand closes around the blade. If he moves now, he’ll make me bleed. Hopefully he’s not too far gone to care.

  “No,” I whisper. “Not here. Blood contaminates everything.”

  He tilts his head, then looks at our hands. “Mine.”

  Knife. Mine. Right, grief turns humans into cavemen. Well, I may not be a fighter, but I’ve been hit enough to know which spots give the most bang for the smack. I ball my free hand, wind up, and slam my fist into the divot at the center of Lawson’s ribs. His eyes widen with shock as he doubles over. His fingers release and the knife drops into my hand.

  I move quickly, switching my grip to the handle and throwing the knife with all my might so it sails through a broken window a couple stories up. Then I grab Lawson’s ear and rip out the earbud. I drop and stomp on it, crunching it under my heel against a ridge of cement. By the time I do the same with mine, Lawson is straightening.

  “You…hit…me,” he splutters.

  “Don’t get all proud,” I mutter, suddenly exhausted. Everything is quiet, now. “I was protecting you.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” He looks down at the guy at his feet and jerks like I’ve hit him again. He rests his hands on his knees and lets his head hang. “He was already dead, don’t worry. Did you get her down?”

  Now that he says that, I see more clearly. The Love Child’s blood is already congealing.

  I swallow and shake my head. “I was too worried about you, but we can go do that now, if you want.”

  We lay Tab’s body on the dugout bench, and Lawson folds that one’s hands and closes the eyelids. Then he paces away and braces against the wall.

  His right hand pulls back and slams into the crumbling wall. Crack. Tiny fragments of cement fall to land around his feet. He lowers his hand to the thigh of his jeans, muscles still tense, arm shaking, blood dripping from split knuckles.

  “Did that help?” I ask, my voice violating the silence.

  “No. …a little.”

  I guess that’s why people beat me. The round-faced A, he lost both his parents, just like me. Loss is something we have in common. I walk over and reach out to rub Lawson’s back, but he flinches.

  “Hey.” I move closer and slip my arms around his waist.

  He steps forward, to pull away, but I hold tight and let him pull me along, and he gives in.

  “I can’t do this,” he mumbles.

  “You can. You have no choice.”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “Shh, no. What is it you always tell me? You can’t blame the victim, right? The GeeGee did this. They put us all out cold, snuck in and took your sibling, and—”

  He shoves me away and I gasp as his hands hit my bruised stomach.

  “D-towners did this!” he shouts. With Tab’s blood all over him, and his damaged hand, he looks deranged.

  “Lawson, no. Think about it. Look at the display. When has D-town ever cared about the display?”

  “Don’t give me your ‘all people are essentially good’ speech. Not today. I can’t handle it.” He starts to scrub at his jeans, then flinches and goes still.

  He’s obviously injured his hand, but fat chance he’ll let me look at it now. He’s too on edge. I’ll have to calm him down, first.

  “My what?” I try to keep my tone light. “Come on, now. When have I ever given a speech like that? I don’t even believe that.”

  He glares, chest heaving, but at least he’s not yelling. We don’t need to draw attention. Who knows if the press has already been here or if they’re on their way with guards for backup. We need to get the bodies down and take Tab and go.

  “This isn’t D-town style,” I reason. “We’ve seen too much death. We don’t want to see more of it. You know that. The As don’t even kill the Bees, and even with the bad blood between the Witches and Cross Bearers we’ve never had a war. This is staged, Lawson.”

  So much for my soothing tone. Lawson begins to hyperventilate.

  “She wouldn’t,” he gasps. “She wouldn’t.”

  “Tab wouldn’t what, baby?”

  Lawson’s face crumples and he takes a step forward to half-fall into my arms. “She wouldn’t even be here if not for me,” he tells my neck, and then he’s sobbing, holding me too tightly.

  But I don’t care about my injuries as I ease us backward to the bench. He stumbles with me. The backs of my legs hit wood, and I fall onto the bench and pull his head onto my lap. I stroke his back.

  “The press will be here soon,” I whisper after a while.

  “Hmm?” he asks.

  But it’s so comfy here on this bench. Surely, we can afford to rest for just a little longer, while Lawson grieves for his sibling. There must be enough time for that.

&nb
sp; I slump over Lawson’s back.

  Dad, dressed in black, crouches in front of me on a different street, long ago. The skin of his face and hands, darker than mine, blends with his clothes and the night as he pulls back the Velcro tab on my small shoe and smoothes it closed again.

  “Stay here, Aidan,” he whispers, coaxing me into the space between the fender and bumper of two parked cars.

  The bumper is yellow, a bright enough color to see at night, and I’m not scared. I’m a big kid. I do this all the time. I crawl into the shelter, and Dad takes my hand and places into it his watch. He presses the button that makes the watch face light up.

  “We’ll be back when the long hand is here.” He points to the eight.

  I nod vigorously and Dad strides away. I listen to the tick-tick of the watch until Mom’s high-heels click-clack-click down the street after him. Her bright hair is covered, but her face stands out like a pale orb floating through the night. She doesn’t stop to talk to me, but that’s okay; she’s pretending not to know I’m here.

  Click-clack-click-clack. Click-clack-click-clack. Stop.

  “No,” someone whispers. Whispers are difficult to tell apart, but I think that one is Dad’s.

  “We have to do something. The demonstrations aren’t getting anywhere.”

  “There’s a line. I won’t cross it.”

  “I respect that, but I will.” The speaker—Mom, I think—pauses. “I’m doing this for Aidan.”

  “The ends don’t justify the means, Sheila. We can do this the right way, the moral way.”

  “We’re losing, Eshan. Which house is it?”

  “The white one.”

  The dream jumps ahead. The long hand has passed the eight and points at the five. Too-sweet smoke makes my eyes and nose water. Usually, if Mom and Dad don’t come back, I’m to call Pete, but Dad didn’t remind me of that tonight, so they must be coming back for sure. I hunker in my hiding spot, while flames flicker on the metal bodies of the cars. Doors slam, and people shout, and a small child cries.

  A pair of bare, grownup feet walks toward me across the faded lawn. I tense, pressing the watch against my stomach, trying to hide its ticking. The feet stop at the edge of the grass, and I press my lips together, breathing through my nose like Mom taught me. My eyes feel so wide I’m terrified they’ll fall right out on the ground and catch the stranger’s notice.

  A man and woman start shouting. Not Mom and Dad; these voices are unfamiliar. The roaring in my ears makes it hard to hear but it sounds like the woman is worried about the people who live in the burning house. The man is sure they weren’t home. Finally, the feet on the grass walk back the way they came and I roll onto my stomach. I wiggle along under the car until I see the base of the burning house. The paint is white.

  It smells bad under here, and I’m afraid the car will fall and crush me.

  A siren starts up, first far away, then closer and closer. I wriggle my right arm and, only hitting my head once, get the watch up to my face and press the light button. The long hand is back between the ten and eleven. I shake the watch, then hold it to my ear. Tick, tick, tick.

  My heart hammers against the asphalt. My parents are late. They’re in trouble; I know it. I have to do something! I scoot back and come out between the cars. I peer up at the people gathered but I have no idea which of them are enemies. Maybe they all are.

  White, blue, and red light whirls close and I cower by the tires of the car. The police are not safe. I must not let them find me, must not tell them who my parents are or why we’re here.

  More lights, more sirens. Men in yellow suits arrive. They unwind hoses from a truck and spray water at the house. A few must go inside because soon they come back out carrying two limp forms. They lay the bodies into black bags on stretchers. Zippp. The bags close.

  An angry muttering passes among the neighbors.

  “That’s not Sam and Jenny.”

  “Does anybody know who they are?”

  “FOLMs. Seen them on the wanted board. Guess justice caught up with them.”

  The sky grows lighter. I cannot be here when the sun comes up; people will see me. When will my parents get here?

  The cars and trucks with the swirling lights drive off.

  “Nail bombs sure are a bitch,” someone says.

  The grownups fade away, leaving me alone again. I check the watch. The long hand is back on the eight. I step from between the cars and look at the smoldering remains of the house.

  “Mom? Dad?” My voice seems so small. The next cry rips out of me. “Mommy!”

  I stiffen, expecting an army of grownups to avalanche out of the houses, across the lawns, and grab me.

  Nothing changes.

  There are tears on my face. I scrub them away.