World After

20

IT’S ALMOST full night by the time I get back to the carnage by the fence. There are people walking in a daze around the victims. Some are hunched over a fallen loved one, others are wandering about crying and looking terrified. A few are digging shallow graves.

My mother has finished her project, although she’s nowhere in sight. The man she dragged now sits on a stack of bodies with his arms stretched out over the fence like a terrified and terrifying scarecrow. She has tied him in place with bits of rope that she probably found on one of the guys who lassoed Paige.

His contorted, screaming lips are emphasized by ruby red lipstick. His button-down shirt is ripped open, exposing his nearly hairless chest. On it, a message written in lipstick says:

The creep factor of my mother’s project is pretty high. Everyone goes out of their way to walk far around it.

As I walk past the bodies, a man bends down to check for the pulse of a woman lying beside me.

“Listen,” I say. “These people might not be dead.”

“This one is.” He moves on to the next one.

“They may seem like they’re dead but they could just be paralyzed. That’s what the stingers do. They paralyze and make you seem dead in every way.”

“Yes, well, not having a heartbeat will do that to you, too.” He shakes his head, drops the wrist of the guy he was checking, and moves to the next victim.

I follow him while soldiers point their rifles up to the sky on the lookout for any signs of another attack. “But you might not be able to feel their heartbeats. I think it slows everything down. I think—”

“Are you a doctor?” he asks without pausing in his work.

“No, but—”

“Well, I am. And I can tell you that if there’s no heartbeat, there’s no chance of a person being alive except for a very unusual situation such as a child falling into a frozen pond. I don’t see any children who fell into a frozen pond here, do you?”

“I know this sounds crazy, but—”

Two men pick up a woman wearily and shuffle over to a shallow grave.

“No!” I cry out. That could have been me. Everybody thought I was dead for a while, and if circumstances had been different, they might have dumped me in a hole and buried me alive while I watched, paralyzed but totally aware.

I run over and stand between the men and the hole. “Don’t do this.”

“Leave us alone.” The older man doesn’t even look at me as he grimly carries the victim.

“She could be alive.”

“My wife is dead.” His voice breaks.

“Listen to me. There’s a chance she’s alive.”

“Can’t you give us some peace?” He glares at me out of the corners of his eyes. “My wife is dead.” Tears stream from his red-rimmed eyes. “And she’ll stay dead.”

“She can probably hear you right now.”

The man’s face turns red, making it painful to look at him. “She’ll never come back. And if she does, then she won’t be our Mary. It’ll be some abomination.” He points to a woman standing alone by a tree. “Like her.”

The woman looks fragile, lost, and alone. Even with the brown scarf wrapped around her head and the gloves on her hands, I recognize the shriveled face of Clara, the woman who climbed out of the ruins of the aerie. She wears a dull-colored coat that whispers her desire not to be noticed. I’m guessing people haven’t exactly been welcoming.

She hugs herself as if clinging to the husband and children she longs to find. All she wanted was to find her family.

Mary’s family drags her paralyzed body into the shallow grave.

“You can’t do this,” I say. “She’s fully aware. She knows she’s being buried alive.”

The younger guy asks, “Dad, do you think—”

“Your mother is dead, Son. She was a decent human being and she’ll have a decent burial.” He picks up his shovel.

I grab his arm.

“Get away from me!” He shakes me off, trembling in fury. “Just because you don’t have the decency to do what’s right for your family doesn’t mean you have any right to stop others from doing what’s right for theirs.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You should have put down your sister humanely and with love before strangers had to step in to try to do it for you.”

The older man takes the shovel full of dirt and throws it onto his wife in the hole.

It lands on her face, covering it.