Eleven Twenty-Three (44 page)

Three more minutes. With each unanswered
call, I sink further into despair.

“Tara?”

Again, no answer. All I hear from the kitchen
is someone’s breathing, which sounds from here like sudden gusts of
wind through a torn sail. Mitsuko spits out the old t-shirt I
stuffed into her mouth and tries to chew on the inside of her cheek
again. I relinquish half my hold just long enough to scoop up the
fabric and force it back into her throat. She gags and moans. I
tighten my grip on both her wrists and stay firmly behind her. My
left arm aches where her teeth took out a small chunk of
muscle.

“Tara, for Christ’s
sake
—”

There’s some shuffling about in the kitchen,
and a moment later, a pot lid hits the floor. I try to peer around
the corner to see what’s happening on the other side of the bar,
but every time I move, Mitsuko worms her way out of my grasp and I
have to immediately regain my hold of her. I can still hear the
ragged breaths, but it seems like it’s only coming from one person
now.

“Tara, tell me what’s happening in there!
Tell me you’re okay, baby.
Please
.”

Mitsuko uses her leg to jab backward into my
shin. The pain that’s transmitted up to my brain is so fierce that
I loosen my grip and bark incoherent nonsense while choking back
tears. Mitsuko wrestles away from me one final time and bends over
to pick something up from the floor. But I can’t focus on what it
is. I can’t focus on anything but my wrecked shin. I clench my leg,
trying to put pressure on the agonizing pulsations.

Then my right arm jerks involuntarily upward,
toward the ceiling. Something digs into my wrist and I follow the
path of the metal coil with my eyes.

Mitsuko looms over me, the American Belting
attaché case raised above her head.

“Mitsuko,
wait!”
I plead, trying to
protect my head from the oncoming blow. “Tara, I need your
help!”

If she manages a direct hit with the case,
I’ll be knocked unconscious. After that, Mitsuko will have nothing
to stop her from carrying out the rest of eleven twenty-three’s
telepathic orders.

Like the entire spiraled phenomenon that
preceded it—the lost job, our brief sojourn in Suzhou, my father’s
death, the embittered return home, and the churning sequence of
events since the botched funeral Saturday morning—I’m simply
plunging straight from one nightmare into the depths of another
until finally reaching that final night terror, eternity.

I turn toward the floor and use my one free
hand to shield the base of my skull, leaving the rest of my head
exposed. My right arm remains suspended by the metal coil, but
drops to my side when Mitsuko hurls the briefcase. I await the
strike, clinging to consciousness.

The force is not nearly as painful as I
thought it would be. Instead of Mitsuko battering my head in, she
lets the container drop gently against my shoulder blade instead.
It slumps down to the floor, followed quickly by the girl, who
lands on top of me in a heap. I squirm out from under her
motionless body and look at my watch.

11:34.

It’s over.

Without hesitation, I jerk the case out from
under Mitsuko and run toward the kitchen.

Five minutes pass, but I cannot catch my
breath. Everything I try to say comes out in random garbled
exhales, and every time I look at Tara Tennille, my composure dies
and I start crying again.

“Why—why didn’t you—why didn’t you answer
when I called out to you? Do you realize how scared shitless I was
a minute ago?”

“I already told you, I
couldn’t
respond,” she says, out of breath also. “She was on top of me. She
was using the plastic bag on the counter to suffocate me. Sorry,
but I couldn’t
breathe
, Layne.”

“Well, are you okay now?”

“I don’t know…I think so. She was trying to
choke me.
Julie
was trying to choke me.”

“It’s not—it’s not her fault. She didn’t know
what she was doing, Tara. Just like Mitsuko didn’t when she bit
into my left arm like she did. It hurts like a son of a bitch, by
the way.”

“Maybe she
did
know then,” Tara tries
to laugh, massaging her bruised neck. “You know, after what
happened the last couple of times, I thought maybe we’d started to
get a pretty good handle on how to deal with this. Now I know
better.”

“That’s funny. I thought the same thing. I
thought we were adapting, but the forces behind this immediately
undermine every new trick we come up with. In fact—we’re not
adapting to it at all; it’s adapting to
us
. What the hell is
happening here, Tara? What—what are they
doing
to us?”

“I don’t give a shit anymore. Just help me
off this floor.”

I give Tara my hand and hoist her back up. We
stare down at Julie sleeping peacefully at our feet. Her cheek is
swollen, her lips split in three places, her head’s a battered
mess, her skin is completely gray, and her body slightly
transparent, but she’ll live. So will Mitsuko in the other
room.

“What do we do now?” Tara says.

“Put these two on the couch and wait for them
to wake up again.”

“No, no. I mean: what do we do
now
,
Layne? Do we move forward? Do we keep Mitsuko around? Do we not?
How do we do this?”

“We’re going forward,” I say emphatically.
“That’s all there is to it. It’s too late to turn back now, and
that includes with our new partner Mitsuko. We can load up the car
while they’re sleeping.”

“And who’s going to drive it, Layne?” she
sighs. “You know, our caper has a few holes.”

“Then do your best not to fall in one and
let’s begin, shall we? I don’t need to remind you that if we end up
dead, we won’t even receive the minor distinction of being
remembered as the last of the Lilly’s End failures.”

“What will we be remembered as then?” she
asks.

“We won’t be,” I tell her. “Now let’s
get—”

I see something over Tara’s shoulder and
instantly lose my train of thought. I stare out the window in a
trance.

“So are you going to, like, finish that
sentence?” Tara is saying. “Let’s get
what
, Layne?”

In response to her questioning, I point
absently at the front yard, where it’s raining leaflets again.
While Tara scrambles outside to grab one, a commercial for Paxil is
interrupted by another transmission. Immediately after reading it,
I turn off the television and kick the screen as hard as I can.

No more leaflets.

02:44:22 PM

I take a final look at the bloody bed sheets
and oversized bags the girls have rounded up and wadded by the
front door of the house. Out by the street, Mitsuko and Julie peer
down into the trunk of Bill Tennille’s BMW. I join them and survey
the empty tub filled with unopened jugs of poisonous industrial
cleaners and the surgical masks lying in the back seat. When I take
a cursory glance toward the sky I notice that, for the first time
since we arrived home, the air above our heads is clear. There are
no chemtrails today, and I strongly doubt there will be tomorrow,
either.

I’m not much relieved by blue sky.

“All political statements in our tactic
aside, I’m not sure how much good this will do,” Mitsuko says.

“It’s either this or we follow what the flyer
tells us to do,” Tara interjects, stuffing one of the yellow sheets
into Mitsuko’s hand. “Now who’s going to talk him into helping us
tonight?”

I pick up one of the hundreds of leaflets
that dot the ground across Lilly’s End and take another look,
halfway expecting to read something different this time around,
something to incite hope or a second thought about going ahead with
this truly idiotic scheme of mine. I don’t.

TO ALL REMAINING CITIZENS OF LILLY’S END:

FINAL EVACUATION OF THE TOWN WILL COMMENCE ON
WEDNESDAY MORNING, 9:00 AM, IN COURTNEY PARK
. GROUPS ARE
ALLOTTED ONE THIRTY POUND BAG OF PERSONAL ITEMS PER ADULT AND ONE
FIFTEEN POUND HANDBAG FOR CHILDREN UNDER THIRTEEN. BRING ONLY WHAT
IS NECESSARY. MILITARY VEHICLES WILL ARIVE PRIOR TO 9:00 TO BEGIN
LOADING OF PASSENGERS. CITIZENS WILL THEN BE TRANSPORTED TO
MILITARY FACILITIES FOR TREATMENT BY CDC AND FEMA MEDICAL STAFF.
NO OTHER EVACUATIONS ARE SCHEDULED FOR LILLY’S END
.
THEREFORE, FULL COOPERATION AND PROMPT ARRIVAL AT COURTNEY PARK
PRIOR TO 9:00 AM IS NECESSARY FOR THE SAFE REMOVAL OF ALL CITIZENS
FROM THE INFECTED AREA. ANY RESISTANCE TO THE ORDERS OF THE
EVACUATION STAFF WILL BE MET WITH STRICT MILITARY FORCE.

I wad up the flyer and toss it aside.

“I’ll talk to Hajime,” I tell them. “But
you’re coming with me, Tara. Julie and Mitsuko can finish up here
and prepare for tonight.”

In the sky, something is different. Something
has changed, though I cannot figure out what. Behind us, one of the
streetlamps surges with electricity, and the bulb bursts. Sparks
rain down onto the street. Tara goes inside the house and emerges a
moment later to inform us that the power is out.

“You think it’s the whole town?” she
asks.

“They’re shutting this place down. We’re
getting wiped off the map. In ten years they’ll build a suburb over
our ashes and call it Lilly’s Trace or something and no one will be
the wiser.”

“I can’t reiterate enough how much I don’t
think this terrorist angle is going to work,” Mitsuko mentions,
lighting a cigarette. “I mean, why don’t we just have someone throw
a Molotov cocktail into the crowd of people on the perimeter of the
barricade, if we’re attempting to come up with a distraction? It
will cause instant chaos, which is what we’re looking for if this
is going to go smoothly. Besides, these people are going to die
tomorrow morning anyway, right? Why not use them?”

“Jesus Christ, Mitsuko, these people are
already in deep enough shit,” I sneer. “I’m not going to be the one
to throw a
bomb
in their lap at this point. Are you?”

Mitsuko doesn’t answer.

“Look, don’t worry,” I say. “Our current
angle won’t harm anyone and will work just fine. Have faith in the
American mindset on this one.”

“Have faith in anything, for that matter,”
Tara mumbles.

“May I have the briefcase, Layne?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then fuck faith. I’d take the contents of
that case over anyone’s inspiring words or absent gods right now,
believe me.”

“If you think of anything better, by all
means tell us when we get back,” I say, sliding into Tara’s
Cavalier. “But either way, be ready. Don’t screw this up,
Mitsuko.”

“We’ll be ready,” she says. “But when you get
to Hajime’s, please do me a favor. Don’t tell him I’m with you
guys. It will hurt your chances of getting him to cooperate,
believe me.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Good luck, you two,” Julie says. “Just
remember to appeal to his ego and you should be fine.”

Tara and I leave for Hajime’s party.

The rigor mortis has begun setting in on the
freshly deposited corpses dotting the yards and curbsides on the
way. Bristly yellow dogs and beady-eyed vultures nibble away chunks
of meat from the bodies, and on Jenkins, we spot three fat cows
munching lazily from the potted plants in front of Morty’s Beach
Supply. Lilly’s End has inadvertently been handed back over to the
animals.

“What are you going to say to Hajime?” Tara
asks, swerving out of the way of three dead children carelessly
thrown into the road. She runs over the youngest girl’s brains and
I roll up the window to avoid the stench. I tried brains once at a
hotpot restaurant in Zhenjiang. “He probably won’t help us, you
know.”

“I’ll just appeal to that tiny rebellious
voice in the back of his mind. I know it’s still there. At the end
of the day, Hajime likes to start trouble. It will be FATS all over
again.”

“What?”

“We’re going to give Hajime a chance for one
final statement,” I tell her, looking at the road.

“Just make sure it’s the kind of statement
that doesn’t end with his obituary as a post-script, or he’ll never
go for it,” Tara says. “Besides, you were probably right. He won’t
want to leave the party anyway.”

“Come on, Tara,” I say. “Do you really think
that with everything else to contend with right now, that anyone
from the End would even show up for an occasion so pointless and
banal as a party?”

03:18:39 PM

Hajime’s sagging blue house looks like a
grand haunting worthy of a network TV special. Random groups of
ghosts mill around the lawn drinking from red plastic cups full of
foamy keg beer. Ghosts wearing eye patches, others with makeshift
casts holding together shattered arms and gnawed up legs, and still
more with disfigured faces and masticated lips, comprise the party.
I see free-floating t-shirts polka-dotted with red, bags under
every pair of thousand-yard stares, and about two dozen faces
drooped over in resignation toward tomorrow’s—and
history’s—marionette fate. Two of my former female students, Ashley
Orange and Alisha Mimura, flirt openly with guys who look old
enough to be their fathers. The party is full of mostly young
resolute high school and college kids, but I do spot the occasional
widowers and lucky loners in attendance as well, every one of them
anxious to drown out the memory of their lost spouses, children,
and parents with alcohol and drugs, which seem to flow freely
here.

Most of the attendees have eyes like frozen
winter lakes. Nothing registers when Tara and I approach the
throng, and I go ahead and help myself to beer from the keg by the
porch.

“He was a good man,” I overhear one of the
spirits say to a friend with a grossly enlarged right eye that
constantly leaks white pus. “He was a good man, even though the
terrorists got to him and he killed Richard. It’s not his
fault—well sort of, but not really. I only lost control of
myself
that first night. My daughter too. But it’s not his
fault.”