Eleven Twenty-Three (50 page)

What are you hoping for? the tiny evil voice
asks me. You’re placing your life and the lives of everyone you
care about (the ones still left breathing, anyway) on useless text
messages and a deranged notion that somehow you’re that fraction of
a percent.

The helicopter emerges from the northeast,
heading in our direction with its searchlight peering down into the
palmetto field.

“Get down!”

The girls fall to their knees. I collapse to
the ground and breathe in dirt. The chopper floats over us like a
manta ray scoping out prey along the sandbar. Its one unblinking
eye scans the field below. The light passes along less than ten
feet away from us, but the helicopter keeps going.

“Do you think it never had the heat sensors
after all?” Tara asks.

“Not exactly,” I mutter, and get back on my
feet.

We don’t even have time to make sure the
coast is clear before continuing our dash for the woods. Four
foaming hounds tear into the foliage at the edge of the camp and
make their way toward us.

The tree line is less than fifty yards away
now.

I run faster. Tara starts to lag behind but I
grab her by the sleeve and tug her along. Julie throws up but keeps
running.

Twenty-five yards.

The palmettos shudder and quake behind us.
All I hear are the snarls and groans of the dogs.

“I can’t die like this,” Julie chokes, wiping
away the blood and vomit from her face. “Eaten alive by fucking
dogs
? I mean, how did we even end up like this, Layne?”

“I don’t know, Julie. Don’t stop.”

Ten yards.

I glance back just in time to see the bushes
tremble only twenty feet behind us.

We slam through the last of the palmettos and
immediately disappear under the umbrella of a towering oak tree.
None of us hesitate. We keep running into the darkness.

The barking suddenly gets louder when the
hounds emerge from the brush. They’re in the open.

That’s when Julie trips and I realize why she
never saw the ghosts.

It’s because she is one, and one day, she
will haunt this forest.

The moment her right leg hits an upended
root, the volume plummets and everything thereafter unfolds in slow
motion:

Julie flying through the air; Tara feebly
attempting to catch her but succeeding only in being swiped with
Julie’s dissected finger; Julie landing face first in the soggy
mud; turning back only long enough to realize how close the dogs
are; Tara screaming as she clambers up the trunk of a tree; the
snapping of bone on a rock; Julie bellowing in the night, her shin
smashed and her finger endlessly spurting blood; the smell of
trained hunger; readying the briefcase as a shield just as the
first of the four black Dobermans closes in; Julie going silent as
she realizes no one ever heard her anyway; one of the dogs snapping
at Tara, who balances herself on a tree branch about seven feet
from the ground; another hound slamming into me, and we both go
tumbling; using the briefcase as a barrier between my neck and the
beast’s frothy white teeth; one of the dogs snapping into Julie’s
broken shin, the other sinking its fangs into her arm and shaking
its head in a frenzy; my strength giving way as I keep the Doberman
at arm’s length, then elbow length, and then less than six inches’
length; meat sliding away like wet paper on a canvas from Julie’s
leg, leaving the shattered bone exposed and filling the air with
choked vociferations; Tara digging into her shirt for something;
the dog contorting its head from side to side, trying to bite into
my wrists; Julie calling out for her father just as one of the
hounds rips into her cheek; and the sensation of pain as teeth sink
down into my own right hand.

Reality doesn’t return until I hear the first
gunshot.

Then another. And another.

The dog suddenly yelps and lets go of my
hand, which is bleeding profusely. It falls to its side and
whimpers from the hole in its hind quarter.

By the time I glance over at Tara, she’s
already aiming the smoking gun at the two attacking Julie.

Julie manages to pull her head away from the
dog and turn toward me. The right side of her face is missing,
along with her eye, which hangs limply from the socket and
resembles a withered grape. The muscles covering her skull twitch
and contort, sending spurts of blood to the ground. She barely
winces as the Dobermans bury their snouts in her gut and throat. I
can hear them chew on her insides. There’s a brief attempt to plead
for help, but one of the dogs rips out her larynx. When she sucks
in breath, the ragged wound in her neck trembles, and the blood
bubbles up with air.

Tara tries to aim but chokes instead.
Meanwhile, one of the hounds backs away from Julie’s stomach, red
and black intestines dangling from its jaw.

The dog at the foot of the tree stands on its
hind legs with its front paws against the trunk. It emits one final
howl just before Tara sends a bullet down through its skull. The
animal’s jaw falls off and the body collapses into the leaves. Tara
aims the gun toward Julie again, but falters.

I follow her eyes and quickly spot the other
gun. Julie picks it up from the pile of her own entrails and slowly
raises it at the Doberman ripping away chunks from her abdomen. She
aims it in a manner so calm that I almost forget that this girl has
precious seconds remaining before the blood loss sends her into a
coma and she dies.

She shoots the first dog square in the eye,
erasing over half its head. The other bites into her left hand, but
Julie places the Walther PPK against its ear and lets off another
round. It falls at her feet.

For a long time, the only sound in the woods
is that of the last remaining Doberman as it squirms and writhes
about, snapping at the wound in its side. The helicopter’s gone.
The baying and pleading have subsided. Now there is only Tara and
I, watching Julie as she inspects her own blood splashed across the
leaves and her shredded insides strewn along the forest floor.

The Doberman flops around in the dirt. It
whimpers. It pants and weeps. Finally, it lies very still and looks
up at me with black, glassy eyes. The animal’s breathing stops.

The forest is silent again, a cemetery
without headstones.

Tara’s hands shake violently as she attempts
to shimmy down the tree trunk. I carefully approach Julie, who
tries to smile when I get close, but the muscles in her face no
longer function and her mouth goes slack, exposing pink teeth and a
black chasm where she bit her own tongue off during the
struggle.

Julie sighs and inspects her transparent,
failing body. She chokes back a sob and clenches the gun.

“You’re—you’re going to—” I whisper, but feel
sick.

As I get closer, something squishes under my
boot. I look down. It’s a piece of Julie’s throat.

When she sees my horrified reaction, Julie
pulls back the hammer and raises the gun to her temple. She closes
her remaining eye and takes a deep breath.

“
No!”
Tara screams. “Don’t, Julie!
Wait!”

I clench my eyes shut and press both hands
against my ears.

Somewhere in the darkness, a girl named Julie
Hines shoots herself in the head.

07:21
:35 PM

When I close my eyes, I see not stars but
colorless pits and hissing snakes; young terrified boys reading off
random strings of data inside nondescript numbers stations; men in
trench coats staring at me from the ends of long under-lit hotel
corridors; rotting fruit decaying on sun baked fence posts; the
skulls of beasts that never existed as they eat away my soul with
venomous stares and a conjectured past; a yellowing photograph of
Julie that goes red the longer it’s exposed; an ancient Indian
calendar in downtown Lilly’s End, pulverized by frantic townsfolk
seeking an apt solution; snarling dogs that back away into the dark
matter of a gray girl; surveillance cameras that crack digital
grins and whisper ones and zeroes; a graveyard the size of
civilization; and a forest that keeps its secrets buried under
mounds of rotting brown leaves.

Tara and I keep moving.

It’s not because we care about survival
anymore, because we don’t. It’s not because we have to tell the
world our story, either. We continue simply out of sheer inertia:
there’s nothing else left to do. We’ve lost our families. We’ve
lost our friends. We’ve lost our End. All we have now is this
forest.

The breeze slips between the leaves, and
branches crack and wain like the ancient insignificant statues of a
city lost in time. The moon hides behind the clouds, leaving us
enveloped in almost total darkness. When I glance over at the tree
trunks, they take on the shape of barbaric faces that watch us with
unblinking eyes.

Soldiers are taking their places just ahead
of us. Their footsteps gave them away some time ago. They’re also
following from a distance of about thirty yards, and if I listen
carefully, I can hear their hushed divulgences. Tara and I know
what’s happening, and they know we know. They don’t care, and I
guess we don’t either. There’s nowhere to go but forward, and so we
do. We don’t cry or sniffle. We don’t talk about what has happened.
We simply continue our trek through the woods, well aware that this
is what was written. This is our fate.

It’s not until the halogen lamps buzz to life
and the troops reveal themselves on all sides of us that I realize
just how close I came to running right into him.

Less than five feet from us, a man in a gray
business suit, blood red tie, and a black gas mask has been
awaiting our arrival. When he sees us in the light, he unfolds his
arms and places them at his sides, looking slightly lost for words.
In his right hand is a small pistol that he quickly slips into his
coat. When he sees the state we’re in. He folds his arms again and
coughs.

“So now then…you made it,” he says, his voice
muffled by the mask. “I was starting to think I’d have to go back
to Shanghai and start all over again. Imagine my relief to see you
and the case right now, Layne.”

There are soldiers in MOPP gear on every side
of us, their guns raised. Two Japanese men in gas masks and wrinkly
suits observe us with cold black eyes. Mitsuko hugs herself in the
cold, her face dirty and her limbs trembling. The two troops
flanking her glance down at their weapons, ready for anything.

Mr. Scott removes his gas mask and looks Tara
and I over. There’s a long pause before he finally takes in a deep
breath. He smiles.

“It’s déjà vu, seeing you like this right
now,” he says. “We have a truck waiting on the other side of these
woods. Shall we?”

I look around at the lights and soldiers, at
the way Mitsuko is fascinated with the leaves under her feet, and
the apparition of Mr. Scott as he checks his watch. I make eye
contact with Tara, who remains nonplussed by the turn of events.
She wipes away a bloody strand of hair from her face and quietly
breaks into tears.

“Mitsuko,” I mutter. “You want to know
something?”

“Save it, Layne,” she says. “I’m not happy
about this anymore than—”

“You have no spirit.”

She stops speaking and resumes staring at the
leaves.

“I’m sure you’re dying for an explanation to
all that’s happened,” Mr. Scott says. “The briefcase, the deaths at
every eleven twenty-three, the fact that we allowed you to escape
unharmed, the way—”

“’Unharmed?’” I repeat, stunned.
“’
Unharmed?’
Our friends and family are fucking
dead
,
you son of a bitch! Everyone we love is
dead
. We just
watched our friend have her goddamned
face
torn off by dogs
and now you have the audacity to tell us we’re
unharmed
?
We’ve become
monsters
because of you—”

Before I can lunge at him, however, Tara
unleashes a ghastly shriek and charges toward him instead. She
tackles Mr. Scott and forces him to the ground, ripping at his
hair. She brings her fist down on his temple. Mr. Scott doesn’t
fight back, and waits for one of the soldiers to fire off a warning
shot.

The soldier to Mitsuko’s left blasts his
AK-47 into the air, but it has no effect on Tara’s violent rage and
she goes on with her uncoordinated, vicious attack. She repeatedly
punches the place where Mr. Scott’s heart should be, and then
attempts to bite into his shoulder. When I see the clay-faced troop
approaching her with barrel poised, I attempt to wrench Tara away
from the suited man. She resists, and the worst fear overtakes me.
The MOPP places the stinging hot edge of the barrel directly
against Tara’s ear, causing her to squirm free and get back onto
her feet. I grab her by the waist and pull her back, but when I
look down it appears as if I am hugging a hologram. She’s almost
totally transparent now, and I can barely see her. I relinquish my
grip and back away, rubbing my skin to make sure it’s still
there.

“Not now,” I whisper into the apparition’s
ear. “Just wait.”

The soldier withdraws and resumes his
position next to Mitsuko.

Mr. Scott steadies his knee and stands up
again. He brushes the dirt and rotting leaves from his suit, and
then slowly slips the gas mask back onto his face. I notice that
he’s two days unshaven, with bags under his eyes and red cracks
surrounding his pupils. This man hasn’t slept in days, and a small
part of me inexplicably feels deep pity and regret for him, though
I’m not sure why. I wonder to myself if I look similar to him.

“Don’t worry, Tara,” he sighs. “I’m not angry
with you for that little outburst. In fact, I reacted in a very
similar way when they found me a few weeks ago. It took three guys
to pull me off of him, and then they had to beat me to a pulp to
stop me from doing it again. So no hard feelings, okay?”