The Only Ones (26 page)

“It’s my mom,” Trent said. “I’d rather see her now. She’s a doctor, you know? She might be able to help Marjorie. I can probably run the machine myself if you’re too busy. I’ve seen you do it.”

It would be cruel to make Trent wait, and Martin realized his mistake. “Not necessary,” he said. “Let’s meet at the machine around eleven. I should at least say goodbye to Henry first.”

A
s soon as dinner was over, Keith declined the invitation to Darla’s after-party, opting to catch up on sleep in the bowling alley instead. His son was his only concern, and as he left him outside the theater, Keith whispered into Henry’s ear. Henry didn’t whisper back, but he hugged his father and then they shook hands, like they were entering into an agreement.

Envy found a harbor in Martin’s chest as he watched from a distance, but he couldn’t begrudge them their reunion. Was this the way the men on the lobster trawlers had once looked at Martin and his father? Possibly.

When Martin walked through the door to the theater, he was handed a floral-print shirt and a pastel polyester lei. Darla must have raided a party supply store at some point and stockpiled for a luau. Ukulele music filled the room as Cameron strummed cheerfully, and kids gathered around
inflatable palm trees and buttoned up their new shirts to get in the mood.

For the next few hours, the party seized the energy from the dinner and amplified it. Chatting evolved into flirting, and flirting gave way to dancing. No one was particularly good, but it offered them a chance to put their hands on hips and lock eyes and see things they had failed to see in their more than two and a half years together as neighbors.

The boys seemed broader in the shoulders and quicker with compliments than ever. The girls’ faces were starting to sprout cheekbones that evened out their dimples. They didn’t seem the least bit afraid to ask a guy to dance. But Martin turned down their offers and just sat on a wicker sofa and watched. It was the right choice. The food had been so rich at dinner that he could feel it swirling and bubbling as it descended into his intestines. Punishment for indulgence, he figured.

“You can build other machines, can’t you?” Henry asked as he flopped down into the seat next to Martin. “Ya know, types that do the same junk as this one?”

“I suppose so, given time,” Martin said. “I guess we’ll want more, eventually.”

“That’s cool,” Henry said, but he didn’t look at Martin when he said it. He couldn’t take his eyes off Darla, who was dancing in a circle of girls in the middle of the room. “What are you havin’ Darla bring back for you? To put in the machine, I mean.”

“Nothing,” Martin admitted. “I don’t have anything that would work.” It was true. The only gifts his father had given him were gone. And really, what else was there?

“You got this now,” Henry said. Flicking with his thumb
and finger, Henry sailed a folded piece of paper into Martin’s lap.

Martin opened it over his thigh and flattened the creases out with his hands. It was the paper with his father’s address on it.

“How did you …?”

“I took it from that stupid book that burned, and I’ve been holding on to it for, I don’t know, angry reasons,” Henry explained with a shrug.

Martin was speechless. Of course he’d memorized the address, but he’d been certain that the paper had been relegated to ash. It was the paper that meant something. Its potential was huge, and Martin felt the itch to get right up and head straight to the machine. But first—

“I’m sorry, Henry,” he said. “I treated you badly.”

“People do bad things,” Henry said. “I done plenty of bad things.”

“No you haven’t. You acted far better than I did.”

Henry’s eyes were still on Darla when he said, “I used to steal things for Nigel sometimes. Felix thought I was stealin’ something the night of the fire. But I wasn’t. Not that night. That night I was just lookin’. I wanted to learn. Thought maybe there was somethin’ in your personal page that would teach me. That’s why I broke into it.”

“What did you want to learn?” Martin asked.

“You know about her. You know what she’s into and all that. Or you know somethin’ about what it takes to make her love … to make her like a guy.”

Hopping in place and letting her head rock back and forth, Darla might have heard them, but she paid the two boys no mind. She continued to shake and whoo
and whinny. It was only ukulele music, but to her it was bliss.

“Darla likes whatever Darla likes,” Martin said. “That’s all I know.”

“I’m gonna miss her.”

“I’m thinking you’ll miss everybody,” Martin said.

“Maybe,” Henry grunted. “I guess it don’t matter much. I’m taking off in a few minutes, anyway. Promised my dad I wouldn’t stay long.”

“It was … good. Very good to know you, Henry,” Martin said.

“Yeah, well, same to you.”

Without another word, Henry got up from the sofa. He maneuvered through the crowd unnoticed and stopped by a table of snacks, where he munched alone, facing the wall. This probably wasn’t the way Henry had imagined the evening would play out, and Martin decided to flag down Darla, to suggest she shift the focus of the party back to its guest of honor. But as he rose from his seat, he felt the flood and the tension, the twist and the fear.

He needed a toilet.

Plumbing had always been an issue in Xibalba. Rather than figure out a way to make the porcelain toilets work, a boy named Rex had cut holes in the center of armchairs and retrofitted the bottoms with removable buckets. Each kid was responsible for the maintenance and cleaning of his or her own “throne.” After the fire, almost everyone was in need of a new model, and at the suggestion of more than one kid, wheels were added. This meant the toilets were mobile.

Martin kept his toilet in a gazebo behind the library. It
was for the view, but also for the fresh air and the privacy. No one could see him back there and he could look into the woods and up into the mountains, and even in the dead of winter, he could feel completely at peace.

Peace was far off now. Martin couldn’t possibly make it to the library. The best he could do was grab an empty popcorn tub from a closet and hurry up the back stairs of the theater to a hanging iron ladder that led to the roof. On the roof, he hid behind a ventilation duct, set the tub on the tar floor, and thrust his pants to his ankles.

Hovering over the tub, head in hands, Martin surrendered to the convulsions of pain that pillaged his body. The sound and smell were utterly repulsive and allowed nausea to join in. Soon he was vomiting too. It had all come on much faster than he had feared. He was scheduled to meet Trent in thirty minutes, but he couldn’t see that happening now. The only future he could imagine was one in bed.

False finishes kept tricking him. Every moment he thought he was ready to stand, he was forced back down with the rush of sick. Maintaining his balance was near impossible, so he decided to lie on his side and close his eyes. He hummed to himself, hoping the vibrations would soothe his body. All they did was muffle screams from inside the theater and a hoarse voice calling out from the direction of Town Square.

“Martin Maple. Come quick. He’s tying it up. Martin Maple. Martin Maple.”

A strange buzz was in the air, like the desperate call of a dying goose. And tangled in with it all was the rattle of chains. Dizziness made hallucination the main suspect, and Martin hummed even louder to force it all away.

Only after a bout of dry heaves did he have the confidence to think his body was empty and it was safe to get up. Aching, he found his feet, pulled his pants to his waist, and dragged himself—rigid, crustacean-like—to the ladder.

Weak knees were merely the beginning. Climbing down, he lost his ability to grip and fell hard onto the concrete landing below. It injured his ankle enough that he didn’t bother standing up, but even crawling his way down the stairs took every bit of concentration. He could focus on one movement at a time. Right hand forward. Right hand down. Right knee forward. Right knee down. It was two flights of stairs, but it might as well have been twenty.

The screams were dissipating, but odors had muscled into their place. Downstairs, it was a nightmare of the rancid, and as Martin reached the hallway to the lobby, he began to understand why.

Sigrid and Christianna were bent double on the floor, their hands on each other’s cheeks. They were pale-skinned to begin with, but their faces were as white as dead coral now. When he came to their sides, he could see that Sigrid wasn’t moving. Christianna was whispering into her sister’s ear, then mumbling in Norwegian.

“What’s going on?” Martin asked her.

She looked up at him with red eyes. “Sick … dying,” she said. “All of us. Back door is locked. And you cannot get your way past him.”

Under other circumstances, Martin would have stayed with them, but moans from the lobby compelled him to keep moving. If the hall was an omen, it was a subtle one. For in the lobby, Martin found a horror show.

Kids were draped over the wicker furniture or spread out
on the floor like slaughtered animals. Most weren’t moving. The ones who were appeared pained by it, and they didn’t move much. They shifted their weight so they were in more comfortable positions and then they stopped completely.

Henry was the only one who appeared unaffected. He was standing in front of the table of snacks, which had been moved to block the front door. One of the floral-print shirts was wrapped around his mouth and nose like a mask, undoubtedly to block out the foul smells. With one hand, he wielded his knife. With the other, he scooped cups of water from an orange plastic cooler. Martin watched as Henry hurried through the room, setting cups next to the ailing and then returning to his guard post at the door.

Tiberia attempted to get up, and Henry raced over and pushed her back to the ground. Violence wasn’t needed. She was so weak that all he had to do was nudge her, and down she went.

On hands and knees, Martin struggled his way to Darla. She was sitting in a wicker chair, completely upright. In both her hands were cups of water. She held them on her thighs as if they were columns from some ancient temple.

“Are we …? What are we …?” Martin coughed the words out as he grabbed the arm of the chair and pulled his head up to the height of her armpit.

Darla’s face trembled, but she wouldn’t turn to look at him. “I can’t move,” she whispered. “I can’t feel a thing.”

It was then that Henry spotted him. “There you are,” he said, pointing the knife at Martin.

“Henry,” Martin pleaded. “Please help us.”

“I
am
helpin’ you,” Henry said. “Keepin’ you all hydrated. I just need to know where that other kid is.”

“Which other kid?”

“You know, the … little … the …” Henry tapped the wall with the back of the knife and the sound made Martin feel like he was jabbing the knife into his chest.

“Henry stole the … keys to …,” Darla said, but her voice trailed off.

“Probably asleep somewhere,” Henry finally said. “Like you’ll all be in a few. Doesn’t matter anyway. He can’t stop us alone.”

“What do you mean?” Martin asked. “What have you done, Henry?” Nearly everyone in the room was now unconscious, and those who weren’t remained frozen in place, their eyes staring in blank terror.

“Mushrooms,” Henry said. “Just like you told me. Put ’em in the stuffin’ and let everyone chow down. In a few hours, it’s nap time.”

“Mushrooms?” Martin asked. “Which type?”

“All types,” Henry said. “Whatever we could find. It’s called playin’ the odds, dummy. Don’t worry, you’ll all wake up tomorrow and you’ll start building another machine.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Martin mumbled. “You have to know what … each mushroom … does. Some could … could … kill a …” It felt like there were fingers over his mouth and the heel of a hand pushing up against his chin, trying to hold it shut.

Henry brushed him off and faced the crowd. In a voice that sounded more innocent than it should have, he said, “Sorry, guys, but this is the way I gotta say goodbye. That’s my dad out there. My dad. You understand that, right?”

Holding a hand to the side of his face in obvious embarrassment, he shielded his view of Darla, shoved the table to
the side, and went out into the nighttime air, not even bothering to close the door behind him. Martin could hear him for longer than he could see him. The jangle of keys in Henry’s pocket indicated he had taken to a sprint.

Giving up wasn’t an option. Even though his muscles were clenching up and his ankle was swollen, Martin got on his belly and used his elbows to propel himself through the field of fallen bodies. Hacking as he went, he snaked his way through the inflatable palm trees toward the door. Each time he came upon someone, he checked to make sure the kid was still breathing. They all were. He placed his head to their chests and listened to their hearts. The hollow spaces between beats told Martin he didn’t have much time.

It might have taken an hour to reach the exit, or maybe only a few minutes. Martin’s brain was mud, and his eyes worked only well enough for him to see a blur of the door, so that was what he focused on. Prying it open with his elbow, he created enough space to slither through.

Outside, the glossy glaze retreated. Martin was given a single moment of clarity to watch the world’s fate unfold before him. There, in the middle of Town Square, was Kid Godzilla, coughing and spitting and ready to roll. It was sporting a tail made of thick chains, which were braided and attached to the base of the machine. Martin couldn’t see a trailer or even a set of skis below the machine. Still, the truck jolted and the pavement screeched as the machine was dragged behind it. A holler came from the driver’s seat.

“Make sure it’s moving back there, Hanky! This thing weighs more than a busload of nose tackles!”

Henry’s head hatched from the passenger-side window.
“Keep it going, Daddy. It’s working. It’s not too far to the barge. We can make it.”

Sparks fanned out from the bottom of the machine as the convoy surged forward. Martin couldn’t move a muscle, let alone catch up. Stomach down, head tilted sideways, he could only watch as salvation screeched its way out of town.