Niko and Jake were on her in a flash and they pulled her off him. She fought and thrashed and bit and punched and I wanted to watch and I wanted to join in and I could feel my blood rising, hard, when I was jerked out of there by a set of hands.
Sahalia, if you can believe it.
“You stay out of there, rage boy,” she told me.
And I would have ripped her head off, but I had had only a little whiff of the stuff, so I forced myself to walk away. I walked off down an aisle and got myself to breathe.
Niko came out, holding a screaming, writhing Chloe.
“It’s the water,” Niko said. “The chemicals are coming in through the water.”
He was starting to blister up.
“I’m okay,” I told him through my teeth. “I can help.” I took Chloe’s hands. She was trying to claw me. She struggled and cried and tried to bite me. But I was much stronger—stronger than I normally am. The whiffs of compound coming off her were sweet to me. And the fury in her was met with my own fury.
Chloe was such an annoying kid anyway, it was a pleasure to restrain her. I’m ashamed to write that, but it is the truth. I held her fat little wrists with a big, mean smile on my face.
Niko was starting to blister again.
“Go get Benadryl,” I told him.
He ran, tripping, down the aisle.
“Be right back,” he shouted.
Sahalia came out with the McKinley twins, who were clearly hallucinating and freaking out. You couldn’t make out their words—they were just clutching each other and screaming.
Max came behind next, sobbing and pressing his hands onto his bleeding scalp.
“The water’s off,” Sahalia huffed.
Jake burst through the doors with Batiste in his arms. Batiste’s head lolled on his shoulders.
“Clear some space,” Jake said. “He’s not breathing.”
Brayden came forward. I hadn’t realized he was not in the bathroom. He’d been somewhere behind us in the aisles.
A coward.
“I know CPR,” Brayden said and he knelt down beside Batiste. But then he looked up, suddenly clammy and afraid. Maybe the compounds were taking effect. I guess I can give him the benefit of the doubt.
“So do I,” Niko said. He moved into Brayden’s space as Brayden gratefully slid aside.
Niko put his mouth over Batiste’s blue lips and huffed into him, like Batiste was a dying campfire. It didn’t take long, thank God. I don’t think Niko could have done it for long.
As it was, Niko started coughing and it was a wet sound.
A couple of long breaths, a couple of gentle but confident pushes on Batiste’s skinny rib cage, and his eyes fluttered. He took a jagged breath. And then another.
I watched Brayden, watching Niko. It was jealousy on his face, mixed with regret. Maybe fear, too. But mostly jealousy.
Meanwhile, Jake wrestled Astrid out of the bathroom.
Her shirt was torn and she was bleeding from the ear.
“I need like rope or something!” Jake shouted. Astrid bucked and screamed. She elbowed Jake in the side of the head and he lost his grip.
She broke away and lurched from him. She slipped, but regained her balance and ran off into one of the dark aisles.
Astrid cast one last look at us and I read horror in her eyes.
* * *
We had five weeping grammar school kids, contaminated to some degree with chemical warfare compounds.
Now, anyway, we knew who was which blood type.
In addition to the beating he’d received from Chloe, Max was also starting to blister up (type A). The McKinley twins were hiding from us—they clearly had the paranoia (type AB). Ulysses was chattering to himself in Spanish, a rapid-fire monologue that made me pretty sure he had the paranoid type—type AB—as well as the twins.
Batiste had type B, the blood type that exhibited no symptoms, as did Alex, Jake, and Sahalia (sterility and reproductive failure—hooray!).
“We have to get them clean,” Brayden said.
“You think?” I sort of shouted at him (type O).
“Screw you,” Brayden said to me.
Ah, I wanted to slaughter him. I really did. I wanted to tear him limb from limb.
Niko looked at me.
“Dean, go,” he said. “This stuff is too strong. It’s affecting you.”
“Yeah, go find Astrid,” Brayden taunted. “You two are perfect for each other.”
* * *
Apparently, I bit him.
I have no memory of it.
I woke up a while later, tied up, and lying facedown on a beanbag.
I struggled to sit up, but couldn’t.
I rolled sort of onto my side.
There I saw Chloe, freshly bathed, wrapped in a towel, eating fun-size Butterfingers one after another like a chain smoker and watching me like I was her soap opera.
* * *
For the record, they washed the kids with bottled spring water in a big kiddy pool. Then they put the contaminated clothes in the pool and covered the whole thing with plastic sheeting. Vicious, psychedelically destructive, blister-inducing water, all sealed up in a kiddy pool. Pretty brilliant, actually.
My brother’s idea.
They pushed the pool into the baby stroller aisle. That aisle was to become known to us later as the Dump.
* * *
“Chloe,” I said as calmly as I could. “Please go tell Alex that I’m okay now and I’d like to be untied.”She shrugged.
“Chloe, go get Alex.”
“Why should I?” she asked me in a snotty voice.
“Because I’m asking you to,” I replied.
She ignored me, eating the chocolate coating off a Butterfinger bit by bit.
“Chloe!” I said.
“What’ll you give me?”
“Are you kidding me?!”
She yawned.
“Go get Alex.”
“I don’t have to do what you say. You’re not the boss of me.”
“I’m asking you. Please.”
“You’re not asking, you’re telling. No one likes a bossy bear, you know.”
If my wrists hadn’t been getting rubbed bloody by the nylon ropes, I probably would have found this conversation amusing.
“Chloe, fair Chloe, princess of all that is good and kind in this world, wouldst thou, couldst thou take a message to my brother yonder?”
She giggled.
“Say please,” she baited.
“Oh, the prettiest of pleases for the prettiest of fair young maidens…”
“Oh-kay…,” she said and dragged herself off toward the other kids.
It was only then that I noticed that Batiste was in his sleeping bag, just beyond where Chloe had been sitting. He was just lying there, staring up at the ceiling.
“Hey, Batiste,” I said. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer.
* * *
Alex hurried over and picked the tight knots apart.
“You bit Brayden on the scalp,” he told me with his eyes twinkling. He whispered, “It was awesome!”
“Where is everyone?” I asked, rubbing life back into my wrists.
“We’re still washing the twins,” he answered.
He turned to go back. I didn’t follow.
“See you when we’re done?” he asked.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
I heard mild snoring from a sleeping bag farther back in the aisle. I guess they had dosed Max to the gills with Benadryl, ’cause he was way conked out. His blisters looked three shades less angry, so it seemed to be working.
I went over to Batiste. He was naked, just wrapped in a towel inside his sleeping bag. He seemed subdued and cold.
“You okay, little guy?” I asked him.
His hands were like ice.
“I’m gonna get you all set up,” I told him.
I went to the boys’ clothing section and got some warm clothes for him. I even picked out a pair of those dumb chenille slipper socks. I figured he deserved something absurdly soft and warm.
“Hey, Batiste,” I said, holding up the clothes. “Check out your new look.”
But Batiste didn’t move a muscle. So I just dressed him, I don’t know, like you would a baby. Once I had all his clothes on, and the dumb socks, I rubbed his back.
Yes, I did. Be assured that I felt as uncomfortable actually doing it as I do writing about it.
But I could feel his skinny ribs relaxing a little so I kept at it.
I took it as a good sign when, a few minutes later, he croaked, “My throat hurts.”
I went and got some children’s Advil and a Popsicle for him. On my way back, I ran into Brayden. He was carrying Henry wrapped up in a towel.
Brayden pointed at me and said, “You’re an a-hole.”
Why that made me feel so happy, I can’t quite say.
* * *
No one seemed to be thinking about dinner and the kids were getting hungry, so I grabbed some freezer foods: dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, frozen green beans, and two bags of Tater Tots.
Then I had to figure out how to actually cook the stuff.
In the Pizza Shack, there were only these industrial toaster ovens and a microwave. There was no stovetop so I didn’t know what to do with the green beans at all. I just put them on one of the pizza trays and put them in an oven. They came out like straws made of charcoal. That’s my best attempt at describing them. Desiccated, black straws of carbon.
The Tater Tots came out exactly perfect.
The chicken nuggets, on the other hand, were cold inside. The little kids didn’t seem to mind. But Jake put some back in the oven for the older kids. And those dino nuggets joined my green beans in charcoal heaven.
We had mostly Tater Tots for dinner.
After everyone had eaten, I brought dinner to Josie and sat with her while she ate.
I had gotten into the habit of chatting with her. “At her” might be more like it.
Our conversations went something like this:
Me: How you doing, Josie?
Josie: _____
Me: Oh, I’m fine, thanks for asking. I mean, I’m a little depressed, what with the end of life as we know it. But I’m holding it together. How about you?