“Right,” I said, and then I told him the rest. About Passion’s cutting, and my theory about burdens.
“Yeah,” Marcus said, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t think we want the CAMFers to have something like that. We need to get them back.”
“Agreed,” I said. “I know where Mike Palmer lives, and they’re probably there.”
“Good. First, though, you need time to recover. And I need some sleep,” he glanced down at his watch. “Which reminds me—you’re due for some pain killer.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out the familiar bottle of pills.
I took a good look at him over the edge of the enamel cup after I’d downed my drugs. He did look pretty tapped out. His clothes were wrinkled and dirty. His eyes were bloodshot. And he didn’t smell like pine and wood smoke anymore.
Then again, I didn’t exactly smell like a rose either. I was still wearing the same outfit I’d escaped the hospital in and it was filthy. My boots, which no one had even bothered to take off, were scuffed and caked with dirt. I needed a shower. I needed a change of clothes. I needed to feel human again.
“How did I sleep like this?” I looked at Marcus in horror.
“Didn’t seem to bother you until now,” he shrugged, “but I guess the fact that you’re noticing means you’re feeling better. Maybe this will help,” he said, reaching under the cot and pulling out the bag of clothes from Emma and her mom.
“Oh, thank God!” I’d completely forgotten he’d brought them. “Can I change? Maybe clean up a little?”
“I can bring you some hot water in a plastic tub, but that’s about it. We have a solar shower, but we only set it up when we’re sure we’re not going to have to break camp in a hurry.”
“Some water would be great. And some soap?”
“No problem. I’ll be right back,” he said, standing up and slipping out of the tent.
While I waited, I opened the clothes bag. There were the leather gloves folded neatly on top. I had no recollection of taking them off, but I must have. Or Marcus had taken them off for me. I dug through the bag and chose something to wear.
Marcus came in carrying a steaming pot of water, and I watched, impressed, as he mixed it with cooler water from the jug into a large plastic basin. Then he produced a washcloth, two towels, soap, shampoo, a hairbrush, and some deodorant, though it was obviously man-deodorant.
“I’ll let you get to it,” he said, shyly, and he was gone before I could even say thank you.
I crossed to the tent door, and took a quick peek out. Whatever kind of camp they had out there was shrouded in vague, lumpy darkness. I tied the tent flaps snugly closed and went back to the basin. This was Marcus’s home. His tent. His room, and I’d just kicked him out to take a sponge bath. How would he know when I was done? What if he came back too soon? He couldn’t exactly knock on the door. So, I’d better hurry.
JUST A LITTLE AIR RAID
I woke to a tent filled with the pink-orange light of early morning. The air was chilly against my face, but there were blankets piled on top of me, keeping the rest of me toasty.
I peered over the side of my cot, and there was Marcus lying on the floor next to it. The sunlight and shadow made the scars on his forehead stand out. He was on his back, wrapped in a sleeping bag; his lips slightly parted, his face open and relaxed, making him look like a young boy, innocent and vulnerable. My eyes followed the line of his brown neck down to the dark blue t-shirt he was wearing. He’d changed clothes last night, sometime after I’d cleaned up and fallen asleep on the cot waiting for him to come back. Had he changed in the tent, right there next to me? What was with sleeping in his shirt anyway? Grant slept shirtless, bumbling around Emma’s house on Saturday mornings bare-chested which was always a treat. I had just assumed all guys slept like that. Maybe Marcus was self-conscious about his body (which he totally shouldn’t be). Or maybe he just didn’t want the strange girl sleeping in his tent ogling him in the morning. I ogled him for a few more minutes, then reached my hand out and touched the outside of his sleeping bag saying, “Hey, wake up.”
His eyes opened to slits, blinking at me. Something about him always reminded me of an anime character, as if he were drawn in dark pensive lines.
“Good morning,” I said, smiling.
“Good morning,” he mumbled, rolling on to his side to face me.
“You know, I have no idea what day it is.”
“It’s Monday,” he said, looking at his watch. “6:04 am.”
“That was a rough weekend,” I moaned, lying back in my cot.
“Yes, it was.” He sat up in his sleeping bag and it slouched down to his waist, revealing he’d even slept in his jeans. “How’s your head?”
“Not bad,” I said, pulling my eyes away from him. “Still a bit—”
“Marcus!” someone barked from just outside the tent.
I nearly fell out of my cot, but Marcus stood up and kicked his sleeping bag aside in one fluid motion. “What?” he called, already at the door pulling on his boots. Maybe this kind of thing was exactly why he slept fully clothed.
“We picked up a ‘copter on the radio,” the disembodied voice said, sounding urgent and calm all at the same time.
“Shit!” Marcus said, lacing up his boots like a mad man, “I should have known Fire Chief wouldn’t wait another day to start a search. How soon?”
“Ten minutes tops,” said the voice.
“You know what to do,” Marcus said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
I heard the sound of feet hurrying away.
Marcus turned to me. “You heard that. They’re coming with a helicopter, and we have to camouflage camp before they get here. I need you to stay in this tent. Don’t come out under any circumstances. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Before I could say a word, he was gone.
I sat for a minute, stunned, listening to the sounds outside; muffled voices, the rustle of things being moved, a soft whispering scrape against the side of the tent that made me think of all those scary campfire stories. Suddenly, the light inside the tent went a shade darker, like someone had pulled something over it. A helicopter was coming. The CAMFers were looking for me. And if they found me, they’d find Marcus and his camp and everyone in it.
I stood up and paced to one of the window flaps. It was tied shut. They all were, but I lifted a corner and took a peek through the screen. I couldn’t see a thing though. Someone had placed a large evergreen bough against the window.
“Cover up yer god-damned PSS,” came a voice full of southern drawl from just outside.
I yanked my ghost hand away from the window and took a step back. Then, I crossed to the cot and pulled on my gloves and my boots. The door flaps were untied, swaying in the breeze. Marcus had said not to leave the tent, so instead I stood just inside the door, trying to catch a glimpse of something. I could hear a faint hum in the distance. If the CAMFers were coming with a helicopter and their minus meters, what good was it going to do to cover the tent?
The hum in the distance grew louder. I parted the door flaps a little and peered between them.
A short man wearing a black ski mask emerged from a stand of trees, looked around, then charged straight toward me. He had a gun. Behind him I could see other forms, crouching, silent, military in their movements, and all headed in my direction. I let go of the door flap and stumbled back, glancing around the tent for something, anything, that I could use as a weapon.
Marcus had left me alone, unarmed and defenseless. I grabbed the rock paperweight and the Swiss army knife from the computer table. With one in each hand, I turned to face the oncoming CAMFers.
Ski Mask barreled in through the flaps, and skidded to a halt in front of me. I raised the knife handle between us, fumbling to release the blade.
“You keep it,” Ski Mask said, patting his gun. “I prefer Old Betsy here.”
A second guy charged into the tent, tall and Asian, followed quickly by Marcus. Behind them came someone else dragging the trunk of a small tree, a long gun slung over his back. The last guy pulled the tree halfway into the tent and tied the flaps off around it.
“Everyone huddle,” Marcus ordered over the din of the approaching helicopter.
They all rushed me. Before I even understood what was happening, I found myself crouched in a corner of the tent, surrounded by four musky, panting boys, one with a ski mask and two with guns pointed at the door. My hands were empty. I had no idea what had happened to the rock or the army knife.
Outside, the helicopter’s growl grew louder and louder. The tent sides began to whip and strain like they were being battered by a storm. The helicopter must be close to kick up wind like that.
I glanced to my left and caught Ski Mask smiling at me through his mouth slit. Was he actually enjoying this? Marcus was next to him, directly in front of me. To Marcus’s right was the lanky, Asian guy, and to his right was the tree dragger, blonde, scruffy and wearing a scowl the size of his gun. All four of them were between me and the door.
As I sat there surrounded by their well-armed chivalry, it suddenly dawned on me that these guys—Ski Mask, Asian Guy, and Tree Dragger—had PSS. They were like me, in the flesh, sitting close enough that I could reach out and touch them. I looked at each one, trying to see some glimmer or hint of their PSS, but they just looked like normal guys. Was that how I looked when I wore a glove? I still felt different, even when people didn’t know about my hand. I was different, whether someone knew it or not. And so were these guys. But I had always thought I’d recognize someone with PSS, that I would have an instant connection with them, like finding a long lost twin or something.
The sound of the helicopter began to fade, then came back louder than before. Maybe they were circling, looking for a place to land.
Sweat dripped in my eyes, stinging them. My toes were cramping inside my boots. All the weight of my body was riding on my ankles and it was not comfortable. What if I got a leg cramp?
Idiot. Don’t think about it.
My headache crept back into my temples, sending slivers of pain behind my eyes. I squeezed them shut, but for some reason that made me feel dizzy. I blinked them open and bit back the bile rising in my throat. The last thing I wanted to do was puke all over the back of Marcus’s friends.
The helicopter roared right over our heads. Tree Dragger shifted position, pressing back into my knees, the smell of him wafting up into my nostrils. I could feel the tension in his body, like a mad, coiled spring on the verge of breaking. He was so close that, even over the monster whirl of the helicopter, I heard the soft click as he released the safety on his gun.
He wanted to kill someone. He wanted it bad. I could feel the hate pulsing off of him.
My ankles wobbled, and I thrust my hand out to catch my balance on the most solid thing in front of me.
And my ghost hand went straight into his back.
This was not like the other times with the warning of heat, or my hand melting and stretching away from me. My ghost hand, shaped just like a hand, slipped into him like he was made of thin air. But he didn’t feel like thin air. Reaching into him felt like reaching into a meat grinder. Sharp, cold, metallic, squeezing, sharp-edged hatred gripped my hand.
I tried to pull it back, yanking, panicking.
Tree Dragger did not faint like Passion Wainwright. Instead, he spun around, dragging me with him, my hand still imbedded in his back. He grabbed me, pushing me to the floor of the tent, and sat on top of me, gun in my face, eyes like a mad man’s, screaming, “Let go of me. Let go of me or I’ll kill you!”
As I stared up the barrel of his gun, everything else faded into the background. His yelling. The yelling behind him. The hum of the helicopter behind that. The hands trying to pull him off me. The painful angle of my arm bent up and around him, practically wrenching my shoulder out of its socket. Even the pinch and grind of the hate machine within him that had hold of me. Fear. Darkness. Pain. Death. It all went away, my entire existence converging in the tips of my ghost fingers. I could feel something there, just out of reach, taunting me.
My hand wanted it.
My fingers stretched, reaching for it, grasping something small and smooth, long and thin. I curled my fist around it, and my hand slipped out of Tree Dragger.
He felt it go. He must have, the way he glanced wildly over his shoulder. Then suddenly he was off me, scrambling backwards, his gun still pointed at me.
“Olivia, are you all right?” Marcus moved between us, kneeling over me, blocking my view.
In the background I could hear the others talking Tree Dragger down, superimposed over the sounds of the helicopter receding into the distance, but that hardly seemed to matter anymore. Why was Marcus worried about me? I was the assailant, not the victim.
“I got it,” I said, opening my ghost hand to show him what I’d found.
He stared at the bullet I held in my palm for a moment and said softly, “Put that away,” placing his hand over mine and gently folding my ghost fingers back over it.
“If she ever touches me again,” Tree Dragger said, appearing over Marcus’s shoulder, “I
will
kill her.” His southern accent was thicker than ever. Someone had taken his gun away. Just like I’d taken his bullet. But it hadn’t changed anything. He was still full of killing. “What the fuck was she doing to me?” he demanded.
“Nothing. You’re fine,” Marcus said. “She doesn’t have complete control of her hand yet.”
“Well, she better fucking get control of it, or I’m gonna kill her,” Tree Dragger reiterated.
“No, you’re not,” Marcus snapped, “just like none of us are going to kill you for being trigger happy. Now, get out of here and go break camp. Whoever was in that helicopter will be back. We don’t have time for this.”
“Keep her away from me,” Tree Dragger insisted.
“Go break camp,” Marcus ordered.
Tree Dragger turned and barged from the tent.
“Can you sit up?” Even as he asked, Marcus was helping me do so.
“You didn’t hit your head again, did you?” Asian Guy asked. He was holding Tree Dragger’s gun.
“The safety’s not on,” I told him.