Zig Zag

  And everything else was just fury.

  Pure fury, no before and no after, no development or evolution, something more intense than any human being had ever experienced. There was no will or awareness behind it; that was just what Zig Zag was. His appearance and his essence were one and the same.

  Elisa had never seen anything like it, never imagined anything like it, except in her nightmares, where evil and fear took shape and came to life. Mr. White Eyes. No wonder Jacqueline had called him the Devil. She was incapable of defining, comprehending, or tolerating the almost symbolic air of perversion, the hatred and insanity that emanated from every inch of him, the inhuman cruelty that oozed from his whole being. David was right: he's trapped in a pure sentiment. It destroys, and that's all it does. That's all it can do.

  As for his sickening physical appearance, Elisa knew that it was just a result of the same phenomenon that had created those chasms in the sea and the "leprosy" on the Jerusalem Woman's face. Displaced matter made him look mutilated, tore off his facial features, turned his pupils into gaping white sockets, amputated a forearm and part of his torso as if he'd been chewed up and spit out by a predator. His position— arms and legs askew, slightly bent—was no doubt the one he'd landed in when Ric pushed him onto the rocks.

  As she watched him—and despite feeling she'd lose her mind if she didn't stop watching him—she realized something else, too.

  She thought of Victor. How terribly he'd suffered when he came upon the girl he thought he was in love with (his childhood sweetheart) in his best friend's arms; all the awful things that must have crossed his little boy's mind in just fractions of a second, as his brain sank into unconsciousness. Rage, desire, vengeance, sadism, jealousy, impotence. The world crashing down around him for the first time. Ric wanted to draw from some "innocent" event from the past, but this was what he'd come up with.

  She realized that stripped of all that horror, Zig Zag would be reduced to what he really was, what he had been and what he would have been, if time had not confined him to that one sickening, isolated instant. Now, looking at him up close, she could see his true nature beneath the substantial layers of paralyzed rage.

  Zig Zag was an eleven-year-old boy.

  .0005 seconds.

  Victor ran down the riverbed that summer morning in Ollero. Ric and Kelly had disappeared, but he thought he knew where he'd find them: on that mound of rocks, in a place he and Ric called the Refuge. They'd talked about building a fort there.

  Suddenly, he stopped.

  Where was he running to? What had he just been doing? He vaguely recalled being with Elisa, looking at something. He also recalled Kelly Graham's black hair, and how much she and Elisa looked alike in his mind. And how he'd felt when he found Ric and Kelly, naked, under the pine tree, right where he and Ric had planned to build their fort. And what he felt when he saw her, kneeling before him, touching him (he knew what she was doing: he'd seen it in Ric's magazines), and when Ric said to him, What's wrong? Don't want to play, Vicky? Don't want her to do it to you, Vicky? Ric's look. And, worse, Kelly's. Kelly Graham's look, those catlike eyes.

  All girls, every single one without fail, look like that.

  Those same lips that had so often smiled at him now wrapped around Ric's member. That deserved every insult he could think of and more. Insults (he discovered then) were like a vice. You screamed and shouted yourself hoarse, you cried, you wanted to destroy the world, and that just egged you on, made you want to keep insulting even more. Oh, if the whole world were a girl's body, or Ric's crotch! If rage could last forever! You'd scream until the screaming drained those smiles and those glances, shout forever, until the end of your last day on earth, your mouth open wide, teeth bared...

  But he wasn't in Ollero and he wasn't running anywhere. He was in a big, stuffy, hot room. Where was he? Hell? And why was he {him of all people) in that awful place? It's not fair.

  He was blinded by rage. He wanted to explain to whoever had put him there how unfair it was. True, he'd overstepped the mark. For a fraction of a second, or maybe a little longer—but not long enough to change nature—he'd wished, he'd wanted with every fiber of his being, to eat them alive, screw them, cut off their heads, and fuck their neck holes, as Ric used to say, especially her, her more than him, because she'd betrayed him, it was despicable, she was despicable, and so beautiful, so much like those waxed models in Ric's magazines, who wore black lingerie and knelt before men like little doggies.

  But, come on, that was over twenty years ago, and all it had led to was a big bump on the head, a few hours passed out in the hospital, a scar on his scalp, some worry for his parents, and a happy ending. Ric hadn't left his side the whole time he was there, and when he woke up, Ric had even cried, and begged for forgiveness. And as for Kelly, he'd forgotten all about her. It was just kid's stuff. How old were they? Eleven ... twelve? It's not fair... Life is all wrong if things like that could become, with the passage of time (was that the expression?) such wells of evil. Where was the justice, if nature couldn't forgive? He'd forgiven Kelly, and every other girl in the world. He'd forgiven all women. So there was a little trauma. He'd learned to live with it years ago. He lived alone, and despite his feelings for Elisa, and how he yearned for her, he didn't dare let another woman into his heart. He and Ric had drifted apart. What else did he have to do to atone for his guilt? Did God really think each and every word and thought ever said or considered during a few seconds of rage was that important?

  And in a flash, he realized what the answer was. Yes.

  A pebble tossed into still water makes waves. Wasn't that the root of Original Sin, the first mistake, the Only Mistake? An error made a long time ago, a stain from the beginning that muddies the waters of paradise and drags innocent people down with it. He suspected that very few people had realized that. He was privileged. God was showing him how his mistakes had rippled and transformed the face of the earth.

  Really, far from being in hell, he was in heaven. He'd have to go through purgatory first and get shot in the forehead, but that was going to happen very, very soon: he could see the bullet approaching. And only his death, Victor realized, could stop it all. The key was to die before Blanes, Elisa, and Carter. Die.

  Suddenly, he was overcome with joy. This was a dream come true, and it was his most cherished, intimate dream. Giving his life to save Elisa's.

  That was it.

  What other heaven could he hope for?

  Ric pushed him and he smiled, fell onto the rocks, felt the blow—and then came peace.

  0 seconds.

  The light was blinding. She turned away from the sun, blinking. I'm alive.

  She saw clouds like the smoke of distant fires, the crashing sea, the ground beneath her, her T-shirt covering her. The sharp pain in her thigh became more intense and she noticed a warm liquid seeping through the wound. She was bleeding. She'd die soon. But all of those feelings were proof enough for now that she was still alive. I'm alive.

  Elisa welcomed the blood.

  EPILOGUE

  IT was neither foggy nor dark.

  But in their minds, everything was different.

  They were surrounded by utter devastation. The barracks were a tangle of metal, glass, wood, and plastic, including SUSAN, whose metal frame was so dented and mangled that it looked like an oversized child had tired of playing and smashed her on the ground repeatedly in a tantrum. Outside, it looked like a bomb had gone off; the helicopters were completely wrecked. And though nothing looked too burned, everything smelled like smoke, everything was broken and unusable, as though an enemy army had passed through and laid waste to everything in sight. Luckily, some of the soldiers' provisions were still OK. Mostly cans, and they had no can opener, but there was a way to puncture them and get the lids off. One serious problem was what to do about liquids: they found only two bottles of drinking water. But that afternoon the skies opened up and unleashed an almighty shower, allowing them to collect several buckets of rainwa
ter. They washed, and then decided not to go off anywhere to sleep. Neither of them wanted to admit it, but they were afraid to split up.

  When night fell, it was hard to do anything. They had no electricity, no functioning batteries, and at first they didn't want to start a fire. So they sat outside by the wall of the third barracks and tried fruitlessly to get some rest.

  Once their most basic needs were met, she asked about the dead bodies. They'd found several, both in and outside the station. Harrison and the soldiers could only be identified by their clothes: they were just flat, fabric silhouettes laid out on the ground. But she wanted to know what they'd do with the rest of the bodies. Victor, Blanes, the soldier from the hallway— and there were Jacqueline's remains to consider, too.

  They both agreed they should bury everyone, but disagreed about when it should be done. He wanted to wait (they were absolutely exhausted, was his excuse, and someone would come for all of them the next day); she didn't. That was their first argument. Not a big one, but it sank them into silence.

  Later he asked, "How's the wound?" He sounded contrite.

  She looked at the bandage he'd cobbled together. Her thigh still hurt dreadfully, but she wasn't about to whine. She was sure she'd have scars that lasted the rest of her life, no matter how long—or short—"the rest of her life" was.

  "Fine," she said, despite the agony, changing positions. "Yours?"

  "Oh, just a scratch." He patted the bandage wrapped around his temples.

  For a second, neither of them spoke. Instead, they stared off to sea and into the night. It had stopped raining and the air felt cool and clean.

  "I still don't understand how ... how that thing didn't get us, too," Carter said softly.

  She glanced over at him. Carter looked just like he had that morning, when he turned up with a rifle and the same look of fear on his face that she had on hers, or maybe more. But now she almost laughed, recalling his drawn, pale expression lit by a sun that had hardly moved, one eye closed, the other staring through the rifle's sight, as he hollered and asked her what the hell had just happened.

  Good question.

  She couldn't explain it to him then (she was bleeding, she felt weak); all she could do was say she thought it was all over.

  Carter explained that Harrison missed when he shot him and hadn't even realized it. He'd just laid there motionless on the floor, and when Harrison left he tried to get up. "And then everything seemed to come crashing down. I smelled that burning, acrid smell and went into the control room and saw your friend. He'd been shot, and the old man was just a pile of ashes on the floor. Outside, I found more soldiers who looked vaporized, too. And that's when I went out to the beach and found you."

  Elisa thought she could try to give him an explanation now.

  "He could have killed us," she said. "In fact, he was going to. He extracted the energy he needed from all the machinery and attacked me. I was the next in line, or maybe it was David, but he was already dead, so he came for me. But he was forced to stop to suck more energy from living bodies. It didn't affect you, because you were his next victim after me in the time string. The strange thing is that it didn't affect Victor, either. Maybe we were wrong when we said that the split could kill itself. Regardless, when the attack stopped for that split second, the bullet hit Victor and he was killed."

  "And that thing died with him," Carter nodded. "I get it."

  Elisa looked up at the black sky and felt a weight pressing down on her. She knew she had no chance of getting rid of it, at least not all the way, but she could try.

  "Listen," she said. "You're right. I'm exhausted. But I'm going to bury them now. You don't have to help me."

  "I'm not planning to," Carter replied.

  Still, he stood when she did. But she realized that she was in worse shape than she thought. Her wound was killing her. So she agreed to put off the funerals for a day and they both sank back down onto the sand.

  They'd have to wait until the following day. And meanwhile, she'd pray she was wrong.

  Because as the night wore on, she became increasingly convinced that there was no way for them to survive.

  "DO you know what time it is?"

  "No. My watch has no battery and the others all stopped at ten thirty-one. I told you that already. It's probably four in the morning. Can't you sleep?" Elisa made no reply. After a brief pause, he added, "When I was a kid, I learned to tell time by the sun. But you need a clear sky for that..." He raised an arm toward the clouds, which glowed weakly. "Impossible like this..."

  She stole a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. Sitting on the sand, his back against the barracks wall in the dead of night, Carter almost looked like a ghost, though she knew there was nothing illusory about the way he'd polished off their provisions.

  "What's wrong?" he asked suddenly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Look, believe me, at times people are a lot easier to read than the sky. You're worried about something. And it's not your dead friends. What's up?"

  She pondered her response.

  "I was thinking about how we're going to get out of here. Nothing works, no radios, no transmitters ... We have almost no provisions. That's what I'm worried about. What's so funny?"

  "We're not shipwrecked on some desert island." Carter shook his head and gave another deep, gravelly laugh. "I told you, Harrison was expecting the scientific delegation first thing tomorrow morning. Besides which, at the base they're probably wondering why he and his team haven't responded to any calls. Trust me: they'll be here for us by dawn. If not earlier."

  Tomorrow. Earlier. Elisa stretched out the leg that didn't hurt. The gusts of wind coming in off the sea were starting to feel cold, but nothing in the world could make her go inside and spend the rest of the night in the barracks. If anything, she'd go find something to put on over her sweater or ask Carter to build a fire. But the cold wasn't what was bothering her.

  "I know you don't trust me," Carter said, after a sullen silence. "I don't blame you. If it helps, I don't trust you, either. You think I'm a brute with no brains, but you geniuses, to me ... well, you're totally full of shit, if you don't mind my saying so. And considering all that has happened here, that's a pretty tame version. So I think it's better if we confess all our little secrets and get everything out in the open, don't you? Both of us. I know you suspect something."

  She looked into Carter's eyes and saw his pupils flash in the dark night. She could hear breathing, but it was her own, as though Carter was holding his until she'd spoken.

  "Be honest," he prodded. "You think... you think that thing isn't dead..."

  "No. It's dead." Elisa looked away, up at the sky and the black sea. "Zig Zag was Victor's split, and Victor is dead. I have no doubt about that."

  "Well, then?"

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Come on. After all, you have to tell someone.

  "I just don't know for sure what might have ... happened," she whimpered.

  "Happened... to what?"

  "To everything." She did her best not to cry.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Zig Zag managed to extend the area of his time string an incredible distance: the island, the sea, the sky... I don't know if that entanglement had any effect on the present... None of our watches work, we're in total isolation here ... We have no way of knowing if anything outside has changed. Do you see what I'm getting at?"

  "Wait a second..." Carter shifted his weight, scooting closer to her. "Are you saying that we're living in some other world ... or a different time, or something?" Elisa said nothing. Her eyes were still closed. "Use your common sense, for God's sake. Look at me. Have I changed? I'm no older, no younger. Isn't that enough?"

  For a second, their silence was like the darkness: it filled everything, every shape, every space, every corner; it was all over their faces.

  "I'm a physicist," Elisa said, finally. "The laws of physics are all I know. And the universe abide
s by those laws, not common sense or intuition. My common sense and intuition tell me that I'm on New Nelson, in the year 2015, sitting here with you, and that only twelve or thirteen hours have gone by since Zig Zag's attack. But the problem is that..." She paused and drew another breath. "If things have changed, then the laws of physics might have changed, too. And that means I might no longer understand them. And I need to, because they are the only truth."

  After a long silence, she heard Carter's voice, sounding distant.

  "So you think all this around us now is... is not real? You think I am not real, that I'm going to just disappear? I'm some dream you're having?"

  Elisa didn't respond. She didn't know what to say. Out of the blue, the ex-soldier got up and walked around the corner, behind the barracks. A few moments later he returned, silently, and threw something on the sand in front of her. She looked to see what it was: a windup watch.

  "It stopped," Carter said. "This was your friend's watch, and I remember he told me it was mechanical... But it stopped at ten-oh-one. Maybe he banged it when he fell... Shit..." He walked up to Elisa and spoke right into her ear, his voice a violent whisper. "How do you want me to prove it to you? How can I prove my reality to you, Professor? I can think of a few things that might work... a few things that might not leave you with any doubts. What do you say? Huh?"

  What she heard next petrified her.

  Sobbing.

  She froze, as Carter wept. Listening to him was awful. She knew he must have thought so, too. He surrendered to his tears like a drink he wanted to finish in one gulp. She watched him move off down the sand, a burly shape outlined in the moonlight.

  "I hate you," he murmured between sobs. And then he began to scream. "I hate you! I hate all of you! Fucking scientists! I want to live! Leave me alone!"

  As she watched him wander off down the beach, Elisa finally closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep, as if she'd fainted.

  THE noise that awoke her came from the fence. She saw Carter heading toward the beach, carrying something. Day had broken and it was cold, but she had a blanket over her. The ex-soldier, it seemed, was trying to be nice, and Elisa felt terrible recalling his tears the night before.