The Only Ones (27 page)

Still, hope remained. Only he couldn’t hear it. Had Kid Godzilla not been running full bore, had the pavement been icy and slick, allowing the machine to glide soundlessly along, then he would have known that inside there had been a hum and a whir and a whistle. Now there was laughing.

Martin’s heart roared when he saw the evidence. The cracks and tiny holes in the shell of the machine had been filled and welded with due diligence, yet light still found its way through. Stiff threads of white sprouted from the base and moved up to the nose, until the entire thing twinkled like a galaxy. Gravity got its hands in and held the machine in place. It didn’t shake or spin or do anything but stay put and shine.

The chain tightened up as Kid Godzilla’s engine gave its all.

“Move, you hunka junk! Move!”

Like a mouth releasing rings of smoke, the machine shot a series of glowing billows into the air. There was goodness for a moment, happiness in Martin, even though he was nearly fifty yards away and his body had folded its cards. To see his creation persevere made him proud like a father might be proud. He didn’t care if he survived, as long as the machine made it. But as it released a final belch of light, the world went dark and the moment was gone.

The front wheels of the truck rose off the road; then it rocketed forward, yanking its massive captive by the chain.

The machine skipped along the surface a couple of bounces; then it crashed into the ground with a mighty wallop.

Howls rose from the fishtailing truck.

Martin tried to scream them down, but nothing came, not a sound.

The curtain fell on his eyes.

B
ubbles of light carbonated the sky. An umbrella of stars. The sea was flat, and the rowboat sliced it and turned the water over with the sound of pages flipped through by thumb.

When the sun came up, there was no fog. On the mainland, seagulls hot-stepped the roofs of cars and houses and lobster trawlers left to rot. Above the door to the Barnacled Butcher, Christmas lights were strung. Martin climbed from the rowboat and hurried down the dock. Inside the butcher shop, the kids of Xibalba were hung up by hooks, their stiff bodies encased in floral shirts. Their eyelids were drawn and they didn’t say a word. There was a scorching stink inside, so Martin escaped to the street.

Down the street, at the library, lived every book Martin had ever read, shelved in the order he had read them. He pulled
Amazing Tales from Beyond, Volume III
down and turned
to “Noah Redux.” He read the passage he had once plagiarized, and then he read the final line of the story:
Fifty years later, the astronaut found the periscope in a tide pool, where it had become home to a dose of crabs
.

A tiger emerged from the shadows of the stacks. There was a lobster in its mouth. It dropped the lobster and lunged at Martin, who dodged and slammed into the shelves. The books were launched into the air. When the books landed, they landed on their spines, stacked up, and built the walls of an intricate maze. The lobster led the way through the maze until the walls of books were walls of trees, and Martin was approaching a campfire.

Kelvin Rice sat by the campfire, a dollhouse in his lap. As he placed a bottle inside, he turned to Martin and said, “Oh God, don’t tell me you’re like him.”

“Like who?”

“Never mind,” he said. Then Kelvin pushed the dollhouse into the fire and Martin watched it crumble into embers.

When he looked up from the flames, Martin was no longer in the woods. He was by a campfire in the Ring of Penance. Keith and Henry were there too, poking at the burning logs with the muzzle of a rifle and the blade of a knife. At Martin’s feet, he found a series of letters written out in pebbles. They were the first initials of the names of all the kids from Xibalba. Without realizing what he was doing, Martin arranged burnt bits of wood into a message.

“You built somethin’ powerful there. More powerful than you know,” Keith said, and he pointed down the mountain
to the river, where the machine was sitting on a barge, shooting rings of light into the sky.

Martin sprung to his feet and sprinted down the mountain. In no time, he was in Chet’s backyard, then in his house, where he found a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence and a scene both gruesome and surreal—Chet crushed beneath a giant peanut in the living room.

Through the living room window, Martin spied a marching band that had taken to the street to play a rouser of a tune. Trumpets and snares and fiddles ablaze. The band consisted entirely of the zombified kids of Xibalba. They looked exactly the same as they had in the butcher shop—floral-shirted, eyelids drawn. Only they were moving now, parading toward town.

Martin left the house and joined them in their march, but they halted when they reached a sign that read ZOMBIES KEEP OUT, NO BRAINS HERE. They would go no farther. Still, Martin soldiered on, and Trent, Tiny Trent, provided him with a sound track in the form of a buzzing kazoo.

Alone in Xibalba, Martin visited the church and the bowling alley and the movie theater. Nothing had burned, but nothing was occupied. Xibalba was a ghost town, no different than the ones he’d encountered when he’d first left his island. It frightened him beyond words, so he decided to find solace in the forest. He proceeded to a trail. He followed it to the mine shaft.

Guarding the mine’s entrance was Felix, clothed in a glimmering jacket made from firefly lightbulbs. “Use the string,” he told Martin. In the middle of Felix’s forehead was a perfectly round hole, and out of the hole came a string. The string was taut and it led straight into the mine. Martin
held the cotton between his thumb and forefinger and he followed it, zigzagging through the tunnel of puddles and stone.

Ahead of him he heard the voice of Darla: “Everyone was gone and if it had been a dream, then I would have known it was a dream and pinched myself awake ’cause it was all so crazy. But I was awake and afraid and alone.”

And he heard the voice of Marjorie: “This was supposed to be the meeting place if we got lost, for me and Daddy and Kitten. All of us, together for once.”

And he heard the voice of Lane: “Thought it would have at least burnt us to a crisp, Captain. But you didn’t have the guts, did you?”

He didn’t see any of them. The string only led him to a glowing door. On the door, there was a message, written in fire:

In Nigel’s living room, Martin sat in the red chair and waited. The dogs and cats and goats and pigs swirled through the room in organic chaos and then dropped to their bellies one by one. When they all were lying down, someone entered the room.

It wasn’t Nigel. It was Martin’s father. He was accompanied by a deer, a live deer. He approached his son cautiously.

“What happened on the Day?” Martin asked him.

“I think you know that,” his father said to him as he stroked the back of the deer.

“I don’t think I do. Why don’t you tell me?”

“You used your machine,” he said matter-of-factly.

“No I didn’t,” Martin said just as the tears started coming. “I was on the island, waiting for you. It was my eleventh birthday, and you were supposed to be home. But you left, just like the rest of them.”

“I left because you used your machine,” his father said again. “Not the one we built. The one you built. And you will keep using it and they will keep coming. There will be more and more of them, until the place becomes a theme park.”

“I don’t understand. I never understand anything you say. Why me? Why us? Why were we left behind? Why were we the only ones?”

“Because it couldn’t have happened any other way,” his father said. Then he leaned in and hugged his son and his chest covered Martin’s eyes and splashed darkness over his world.

Bubbles of light carbonated the sky. An umbrella of stars. The sea was flat, and the rowboat sliced it and turned the water over with the sound of pages flipped through by thumb.…

O
n a nightstand, by his bed, Martin saw little bits of metal—copper handles and thumbtacks and bolts. There was also a line of tiny bottles, nine in all, warped and blistered brown. Next to the nightstand, a series of medical machines beeped. Or they clicked. A couple flickered.

“He’s awake,” Darla squealed.

The rumble of a generator filled the room and tickled Martin’s muscles through the mattress. He couldn’t sit up. He could only lift his head to see Darla bouncing excitedly on her knees in a chair at the foot of the bed.

“Yeehaw!” she hooted. “Martin Maple. Back from the dead!” Wild and loose-limbed, she came at him and kissed him all over the face.

The sheets were tight, and he wished that he could push or kick them loose, but he was far too weak. He turned his head and gave her a cheek to assault. On the floor, he saw
extension cords and wrinkled balloons. Outside was a leafy flutter, but he couldn’t feel any breeze, because the windows were closed.

“Am I …?” he whispered.

“Hospital, room 112,” Darla said, backing away and catching her breath. “Your home for almost three months. Man, is it good to hear your voice. Or to hear it outside of your crazy dream world. You wouldn’t wake up, but you kept mumbling those same questions, over and over again. Hope you found your answers.”

For now, Martin needed only one answer. “How?”

“You got here like we all did,” Darla said. “Trent and his mom. Thank God that kid doesn’t like stuffing. But I mean, really, what kind of weirdo doesn’t like stuffing?”

Martin rubbed his face and pulled together his last waking memories. “That night. He was …?”

“In the machine, bringing his mom back,” Darla replied. “Flipping switches and cranking cranks, like he’s doing right now. Kid pays attention.”

“But Henry and …?”

“They couldn’t even get past the bowling alley, the amateurs,” Darla said, laughing. “Once Trent summoned his mom, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber got all freaked out and ran into the woods. We haven’t seen them since.”

“They’re still … out there?”

“Lots of people are out there,” Darla said. “ ’Cause lots of them can’t handle it. Not our concern. We summon them. Hopefully they learn to deal.”

“Y-you …?” Martin stuttered. “I’m … I’m sorry, but what … what … has been happening?”

“Tons,” Darla said. “Dr. Bethany was lucky enough to
get the combination to Tiberia’s safe before the big girl went all comatose. Then the doc got us all on medicine, got us healthy, and most were up and at ’em in a week or two, saving the world. You, Martin Maple, were a heckuva lot more stubborn.”

“Three months?” Martin shook his head. “But … everyone’s okay?”

“Well,” Darla sighed, “when you’re feeling up to it, I’ll show you around.”

For the next two days, Martin worked hard at recovery, to prove that he was feeling up to it. Dr. Bethany, a small and stern woman, visited him every couple of hours to take his vital signs and ask him questions. She was shocked to find that Martin could stay awake for long stretches and that he had a big enough appetite to eat three full meals a day, considering he’d been fed by a tube and a syringe for the past three months. His body was weak, but his motivation made up for it. He shunned all visitors for fear that they would only encourage him to rest. He needed to get up and see for himself what had happened out there.

Three days after he woke, Martin pleaded with Dr. Bethany to release him for a quick tour of town. She relented but wanted him back in bed in a few hours.

“Not everything at once,” Dr. Bethany advised Darla as the two hoisted Martin into a wheelchair. Darla flashed her the OK, then swept an arm across the nightstand, knocking the little bottles and bits of metal into a shoe box.

“What are those for?” Martin asked.

“Had a scavenger hunt at your old place,” Darla said as she slipped the box onto a shelf beneath the seat of the
wheelchair. “Thought we’d dig up something you could use. Hope you don’t mind, but we also picked your pockets. Found a piece of paper with an address on it. Sorry, but I haven’t had a chance to get to that place yet. You tell me what’s there, and when I’m out that way, I’ll fetch it.”

“Oh,” Martin said. “I don’t really know.”

“One thing at a time, right?” Darla said, and she patted him on the shoulder.

The wheels chirped as she pushed the chair from the room, down the hall, to the back exit where they used to exchange books and notes. Outside, there was a freshly blazed, firmly packed dirt trail, and it was a short trip along the trail to a hilly clearing, where pieces of limestone stuck up from the ground. There were names painted on the stones.

Martin saw Felix’s name, and Chet’s. Also Sigrid’s, and Ryan’s, and Cameron’s, and Wendy’s.

“We moved Chet and Felix here from the regular graveyard,” Darla explained. “But it’s all temporary. Until we get their parents back, and they decide what to do with them.”

“What’s that?” Martin pointed to a shovel that was sticking up from the ground like a tree. Its handle was buried in the dirt and its spoon was pointed into the sky.

“Monument to the Diggers,” Darla said. “We went in the mine, you know? Marjorie insisted that we check it out. No bodies in there, just the stuff they brought with them. Weird, huh?”

Martin nodded. He had thought about that fact a lot, and perhaps he had been thinking about it for the past three months as he dreamt the same dream over and over again. Because he was pretty sure he knew what had happened to them.

“Is Lane still around?” he asked.

“One thing that hasn’t changed,” Darla explained. “She hasn’t left the school since you last saw her. People say they see her sneaking around town at night. Hard to believe, though. She’d block out the moon!”

“You haven’t changed either, have you, Darla?”