10.07

He breathed in. The factory reeked of the dead. Dead air and dead dirt and dead messages on the walls, scrawled by the dead for the dead.

Blood from his lungs filled his left atrium, squeezed through his left ventricle, pumped out through his aorta. His veins ran with the reek.

Caitlyn spoke.

“You see anything?”

Dust motes floated in the flashlight beam. He exhaled.

“I see dirt and graffiti.”

The boots moved forward, away from the light and the windows. He followed.

Under their footsteps, the silence stirred.

—————————

The universe contracted into a point, a lighted circle of concrete and dirt. The circle was. He was not.

Then he saw her, saw the long black flashlight in her hand, the graceful gray fall of her cargo pants, their edges sweeping along the floor.

The universe expanded. He existed. She was here with him and their hearts beat together, fleshy and wet, alive.

But his blood was tainted, sickened, poisoned. Death moved through his veins, thumped through his arteries, poured through his valves and eroded his lungs.

He slowed down, turning to dust, turning to dirt, dying, forever a part of the factory. She noticed, stopped.

“Hey, you want to rest for a bit?”

Abandon all hope. Your blood is not your own. You will die and you will be consumed by the silence and there will be nothing left but ashes and dirt.

He spoke.

“If you could eat anything, what would you eat?”

“I’m going to take that as a yes.”

No. Yes. No. Did it matter, here in the dark? If she wanted to stop, if she wanted him to dry up and decompose and become nothing, no thing, he would. He sat on the floor, the cold floor with drifts of dirt, little lines of dirt that went down and up and right and left and curved into letters, notes left by the dead, a warning to stay away, this is our place, we don’t want you here.

She sat down across from him, the flashlight in her lap. Bits of yellow light on gray folds and pockets and seams.

“I’d eat parmesan parmesan.”

“Parmesan parmesan?”

“Yeah, man. Just cheese and sauce. No chicken or eggplant or any of that crap getting in the way. Pure cheese and sauce, layered with more cheese and sauce.”

Cheese in her veins. Blocking the blood, the dead. You shall not pass.

“What about you?”

“I think I would eat the shrivelled hearts of my enemies.”

“Really? Interesting choice of cuisine there.”

“Well, yeah. You know.”

The silence lay in wait around their lighted circle.

He dragged his finger along the concrete, traced diamond shapes into the dirt. There.

One two three four one two three four one two three four.

“So what time does your mother get off work?”

“Three. But she said she was going to do errands this afternoon and she’d be home around five or so.”

“Good. We’ve got some time then. Figure we’ll head towards the boiler room.”

“You know where it is?”

Silence.

He looked up from his dirt diamonds. She was looking at him.

“I read some old articles about the fire at the library. I know where it is.”

Valves opened. Valves closed. Atria filled, ventricles pumped.

Beat.

Beat.

He stood up.

Dirt on his hands. Dirt on his Math Olympics shirt.

Dirt in his veins.

“You ready to move on now?”

He did not answer her. He stepped around her, avoided her circle of light.

“Seth?”

She got up, brushed the dirt off her pants.

“Seth, listen to me.”

One foot in front of the other.

The light swung around, cut into him, cast his shadow on the floor.

“Seth!”

Pressure on his elbow. The dead had come for him. They had come to swallow his breath, gulp his blood, feast on his heart. Take his life for their own.

“Listen! You are not your father!”

He stopped. She dropped his arm.

His elbow burned where she had grabbed him.

“You’re not, and I brought you here because you need to know that. You need to know.”

He turned.

She stood in the shadows, holding the flashlight. He could just make out her white shirt, the sweep of her throat, the outline of her lips.

“I thought you could have, I don’t know, closure or some shit.”

In the dim light her eyes looked black.

“I mean, you’re supposed to be able to handle your bears.”

He gazed at her, took note of how thin her arms were, how fragile she was. How they were alone in the dark, miles from other people.

When he spoke his voice came out rough and full of dirt.

“I told you not to play savior to lost little boys.”

He turned away from her. The dead beckoned. He stepped forward to meet them.

“Damn it, Seth! I didn’t fucking bring you all the way out here for you to fucking run away!”

Something whistled past his ear. Light streamed across the floor. She had thrown the flashlight.

Concrete. Dirt. The edge of a rusted machine. A wall that he had no idea they were so close to. A tree spray painted on the wall. Something in its branches.

The flashlight hit the wall and crashed to the floor. He heard the bulb break.

Darkness. Quick breathing behind him.

“Why the hell did you break the flashlight?”

Rustling, sliding cardboard, and then a pop as she struck a match.

“Matches are much more romantic, don’t you think?”

She strode past him.

“We’ll follow this wall for a while and then we should come to a door that leads out to where the boiler room used to be. And don’t you even think about trying to run off on me again. Bastard.”

He wanted to say that not all bears were created equal, that some bears had drunk Scandinavian wizards riding on them, that he didn’t want to fight these bears.

Instead he said “What’s in the tree? On the wall?”

“Huh?”

“There’s a tree, painted on the wall.”

She held the match up to the wall, moved it slowly across water stains and the remnants of a safety poster. Stay Alert. Hazards Come From All Directions.

She came to the tree. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble. The leaves seemed to shake in a breeze only they could feel.

Then, in the flickering light, he saw what was in the branches.

Caitlyn let out a low whistle.

“Well. That’s a horse of a different color.”

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