Just Get Home, page 17
First letter. Long vowel. Ahhh.
The carrier name appeared on the screen of the phone. Like magic.
And a single reception bar.
Dessa called Hailey first. There was a busy signal before the call dropped.
She tried Joe. His voice mail came on the line. “I’m not available right now.”
The question was why he was not available right now. They had been speaking when the quake struck, but since then... Dessa took a deep breath. “Um... I know I don’t usually leave these things. But I think tonight...” She stopped herself. Another breath, another thought. “I need you to be alive, Joe. I need you to be alive and to be with Olivia. I don’t...” She wasn’t sure of the words she needed to say to him, she had avoided saying them for so long. The words were atrophied. Weak from disuse. They failed to find their way to her tongue.
She heard Beegie returning and she quickly hung up. Joe would understand. She didn’t want to record a goodbye.
“It’s weird peeing outside,” Beegie said as she pulled herself up to the level of the street. Dessa held out her hand to help Beegie get upright. She winced as Dessa pulled her up the embankment, reminding Dessa of the particular nature of Beegie’s trauma.
“You got a picture of your baby on that thing?” she asked as she dusted off her knees.
Dessa nodded. Called up an album of pictures of Ollie. She handed the phone over and Beegie began to scroll through. “Aww, she’s cute.”
She stopped at a picture of Ollie with Joe. “This is her daddy?”
“Yup.”
“Not bad. She looks like you though.” She handed back the phone. Dessa took it. Afforded herself one last look at Joe and Ollie before clicking it off.
“Is there anywhere we could get something to eat? I just saw a pinecone that looked good.”
Dessa nodded. She knew just the place.
* * *
The roof of the carousel threw the bodies of the painted horses into shadow. From the vantage of the picnic table, their muscular forms floated, suspended at different heights, though it was impossible to make out the poles that held them.
Dessa pried the wrapper off yet another melting bar of ice cream, the paper slowly releasing the softened cookie sandwich. Beegie licked her thumb. A pile of wrapper carcasses on the table in front of her.
They had been lucky. Whoever had chained up the small retractable metal shutter. Dessa had been able to pull the shutter up just enough to squeeze through across the counter. The freezers she found inside the small building were off, hundreds of dollars’ worth of SpongeBob and Spiderman Popsicles melting within. She had grabbed the least melted of these and passed them to Beegie. The inventory was a total loss for the owner anyway...whatever she and Beegie ate would not have to be cleaned up tomorrow.
Dessa led them to the same picnic table where she sat with Ollie when they came to ride the carousel. She found herself eating bar after bar of the same chocolate-chocolate Häagen-Dasz bar she’d buy for herself. The forces of habit. It would have felt strange to have sat anywhere else. Though it was possible the familiarity of the view of the carousel and the taste of the ice cream made the moment even stranger. Parallel sensations. An inverse moment. Night for day. This larger child licking her hands in place of her own small one doing the same.
A scraping sound pulled Dessa from her thoughts. “What was that?”
Images of predators flew through her head. Plausible scenarios. Someone had seen them go into the park and followed them. Or someone had hidden here and was waiting out the chaos. Opportunists.
Beegie swung the flashlight out over the ice cream stand then the surrounding bushes. The beam pushed farther up the path toward the carousel, its light diffusing to almost nothing at the foot of the ride.
“Go back!” Dessa pointed just off of the path.
There was a milky shape on the grass. Two dark spots blinked at them.
“Is that a goat?” Beegie laughed.
The animal took a tentative step in their direction. It watched them, head cocked. Confused by the light and their voices, but not running away. It stepped forward, its hooves making a clapping sound as it stepped onto the pavement.
Dessa squinted. “Actually, I think it’s a urial.”
“What’s a urial?”
“Just...a goat. They have them at the zoo.”
In fact, Dessa was sure it was a urial. The high-climbing goats were a favorite of Ollie’s. She would insist upon being taken out of her stroller and held so she could watch their bow-bellied forms perch impossibly on the small ledges of their enclosure.
“They have goats at the zoo? Like a real zoo or like a petting zoo?”
“The real one.”
“Where’s that?”
“Just down the road a little. I take Ollie there all the time.”
“I’ve never been.” Beegie was watching the goat. Fascinated.
Dessa thought about how sad this was. Beegie’s house wasn’t even five miles from the zoo. It wasn’t right.
“You should come with us some time.”
Beegie looked at her, features bland and passive. Unreadable in response to this spontaneous invitation. It made Dessa uncomfortable, like she had crossed a boundary she hadn’t realized was there until she was over it.
The goat bleated.
The sound broke the strange moment. Dessa was glad to have an excuse to look away.
“You’re a long way from home, little one.” Dessa grabbed an ice cream sandwich and lobbed it gently toward the feet of the animal. The urial leaned down toward the treat and licked it.
“I shouldn’t have done that. She’ll probably get diarrhea now.”
Beegie chuckled at that. Her face relaxed again. That strange studied passivity gone as quickly as it had appeared. She smiled and looked at Dessa.
“Your boy called you Odessa.”
“My boy?”
“Asshole with the camera.”
“Zach is not my boy.” Dessa wanted to be clear on that.
“But still he called you Oh-Dessa...with an o.”
Dessa sighed. “That’s my name.”
“Weird name.”
“Okay, Beegie.”
The girl laughed at this. Her grin making Dessa feel like she had won a prize.
“Odessa was my mom’s name. And her mom’s name. And probably hers before that. I don’t remember when I realized that we all had the same name, but I remember being really angry about it. So when I went into kindergarten, apparently I refused to answer to anything but Dessa. I would just ignore the teacher until she dropped the o. I wouldn’t write it at the top of my papers. Nothing.”
“How’d your mom feel about that?”
“Angry. She was the only one who kept calling me Odessa after I was five... Well, her and Zach, who thought it was cute to push my buttons... What’s really funny about it is that it’s pretty much what Odessa means.”
“What’s that?”
“Full of wrath...so basically my mom named me Pissed Off Reilly. I was just living up to my potential.”
Beegie cracked up.
“Okay, your turn... Is Beegie short for something?”
The girl shrugged. “It took my mom a while to give me a name, so people just called me Baby Girl.”
Dessa remembered Beegie’s foster mother. Let me tell you about Baby Girl. The name clicked into place.
“Baby Girl... Bee. Gee.”
She nodded. “It’s better than the name my mom said she would have given me though.”
“What’s that?”
“LaNinja...it means ‘the ninja.’” Beegie karate chopped the air, “I’m still waiting to live up to my potential.”
Dessa laughed as Beegie executed a number of hi-ya moves. She looked like any normal goofy teenager, her hands flying through the air, teeth shining in the moonlight. The girl was such a strange combination of too much experience and too little.
Dessa sighed. “We should go,” she said and instinctively began collecting wrappers. She crunched them into a soggy pile and headed for the trash can.
“Hey, where’s our friend?”
Beegie stood, the flashlight in her hand. She shone a pool of light on the ice cream bar Dessa had gifted the urial. It lay abandoned, melting where she had thrown it.
“Here, little goatie, goatie.” Beegie swung the light out over the grass. “Maybe he wasn’t in the mood for ice cream.”
Finally the beam found it. About forty feet away.
The goat’s body lay on the grass, bright red gashes across the white of its coat. It took Dessa a moment to realize that the creature’s throat and belly had been ripped open, blurring the curve of its body under the red.
“Dessa?” Beegie squeaked.
A low feline rumble emerged from the darkness of the carousel. They were not alone.
25
It didn’t sound real. The cat sound. Like a purr but not. A low clicky, click rumble echoing inside a giant furry chest. To Beegie it was like a sound effect, something you heard on a TV show or at the beginning of a rap song about how hard the singer was.
But no beats were about to start. This wasn’t the radio.
And it wasn’t Capricious Nature that took those bites out of the goat.
Dessa was still. “Beegie, don’t move.”
No shit, she thought. But it was like her body wouldn’t listen because suddenly it was shaking. Quivering like it was cold even though she wasn’t. The flashlight trembled in her hand, making the blood on the dead animal’s coat flash and jump.
Shaking with fear. Beegie’d always thought it was just a figure of speech. Something people said.
But here she was doing it.
The rumbling stopped. But it was followed by a series of smaller sounds coming from the darkness of the merry-go-round. Footsteps. Soft pads with tiny clicks buried within.
Claws.
Beegie angled the flashlight toward the source. Desperate to give a shape to the sound.
“Don’t.” Dessa’s voice stopped the motion of her hand. The end of the beam shook at the foot of the ride, exaggerating the small involuntary motion of Beegie’s grip.
Dessa continued, her tone one of enforced calm, “Have you ever seen a cat play with a mouse?”
Beegie nodded. This wasn’t a YouTube compilation of kittens sticking their rumps in the air and pouncing on laser dots on the ground, but she understood. Waiting and watching was part of the game. Stalking.
And it would be over the second whatever it was that was making the sound knew that they knew it was there.
The low rumble started again.
A sound lodged itself in the back of her throat. Riding on the shaking exhalations of her breath. Involuntary squeaks. Like the mouse that she was.
“Listen to me.” Dessa’s voice was firm. Beegie fixed her eyes on her shape by the trash can. The falling moon struck half of her face, her eyes unreadable black pools. “Slowly walk toward the ice cream stand. Do not run.”
“It’s...it’s gonna eat me.” The words came out. The mouse in the back of her throat speaking the words before they even made their way into her brain. Her thighs twitched, begging to move...anywhere as long as it was away.
“If you run, it will chase you.”
Everything that was her was shaking. Lips, body, feet, breath, voice. She felt sure that if she moved...if she let herself move even an inch...that her feet would decide their speed on their own. The mouse inside her would run no matter what she wanted.
“Just walk. Like you don’t know it’s there.”
“I don’t think I can.”
The ice cream shack seemed impossibly far away. Even more impossible was that to get there she would have to turn her back on the carousel. That did not seem like a good idea.
“What’s your favorite number?”
Beegie turned back to Dessa. What?
“Mine’s the number one. Don’t you think it’s funny that people don’t usually pick it as their favorite?”
The form of Dessa’s body was moving. Slow but deliberate. Working her way toward the small building. “You would think more people would. Since it’s...you know...number one. But they don’t... So, what’s yours?”
Why the hell was she talking about numbers?
A creaking sound emerged from the ride. Her eyes picked up a movement in the darkness between the hovering legs of the wooden creatures.
“Jesus!”
“A number, Beegie.” Dessa’s voice was insistent. Like this was the most important thing in the world.
Beegie forced the word past the fear.
“E...eight.”
“Now take a step and tell me why.”
Her brain cast wide to find a reason. Why had she said eight? Simply to say something... Or was it—
“The loops... I like to make the loops.”
The press of the pencil between her fingertips. Rows of eights. Stacked circles on top of each other. Like reflections in a lake of themselves.
Her feet were moving finally. Slow jerky steps, each one pulling her closer to the dark gray bulk of the shack. Dessa had reached it and was wrapping her hand around the handle of the retractable shutter.
“I like the loops too. Like infinity, right?”
She was almost halfway there. “Yeah. Circle of life.”
The shutter screeched as Dessa pushed it upward. An ugly protest.
In answer, the creature in the carousel growled.
Beegie froze again...all thoughts of numbers erased by the sound.
Closer to Dessa, she could now see how hard the woman was working to keep her voice calm. Her face was pale, dark lines drawn on the outside of her nose and mouth. Dessa cupped her hand toward her. Gently, “Come on.”
It was then that her eyes slipped from Beegie’s face to the merry-go-round, growing wide.
Beegie turned.
A distinct feline shape dropped down from the platform of the ride. Impossibly large.
“Run. Now. Run.” Dessa was no longer trying to hide the panic in her voice.
And then Beegie was flying. Feet biting into the ground.
The flashlight clattered against the lip of the serving bar as she reached it. Dessa was already pulling herself inside, her head and shoulders wedged under the retractable grate.
Beegie pulled herself up, hand reaching across and finding the other edge of the counter. She levered herself, dropping her arms down and using gravity to fall forward. She hit the rubber mats of the floor with the top of her head and her body curled after, feet hitting the opposite wall as she fell.
“Beegie!”
Dessa was stuck, the door caught somehow on the fabric of her dress.
The soles of Beegie’s sneakers squealed against the wall as she twisted her body upward. Dessa was flailing, trying desperately to pull herself free, but she couldn’t reach. The door flexed, rattling as Beegie’s palms connected with its corrugated surface. She gripped the bottom edge and pushed up hard.
Dessa screamed with effort, her arms straining. The door bounced as its connection finally snapped. The contraption moaned, sliding a few inches downward as her body fell to the floor.
Beneath the sound of their relieved panting, Beegie heard a strange scratching. Like rock against pavement.
And then the whole building shook. Beegie jumped as the door inches from her flexed, metal popping. Something pierced the space next to her, punching its way inside through the remaining opening. She screamed and fell back as the paw swiped at the space where she had been, the wind from its motion kissing her face.
The creature pulled away and suddenly the shutter was alive, its slats beating out a rhythmic screech as it dragged its claws across the grooves. Again and again, the door shook, its metal popping and resisting. Threatening to give way.
Beegie felt a warm presence against her arm. Dessa’s hand. She must have fallen on top of her. She could feel the older woman’s chest moving against her back, the way she was trying to gain control of her breaths. They were drawn out. Long and shallow.
A paw swiped out into the space above them. Trying again to extract them. Beegie felt Dessa’s breath stop, then begin again as the beast resumed dragging its claws down the length of the window. If it was hitting the shutter, at least it wasn’t actively trying to slice into them.
She tried to time her breaths to Dessa’s. To start when the older woman started so their chests would rise at the same time.
Eyes closed, she imagined Dessa’s breath as a road she was riding. Rising and falling onto the gentle slopes made by waves of air.
A frustrated yowl broke her concentration. Beegie didn’t know how long it had been but suddenly the rattling stopped. Beneath her Dessa moved, her chest moving away from its contact with Beegie’s shoulder.
A chuff sounded outside the shack. Followed by that rumbling purr, moving away from the window. Dessa leaped to her feet. The metal gate whined quietly as she pulled it closed, dropping the small space into even more darkness.
Beegie’s eyes turned, seeking out the remaining glow. Under the side door, a shadow cut through the bleeding light.
Sniffing. Then a loud snort.
The shadow moved away, leaving the blue light to fan across the floor unobstructed.
Beegie whispered, “Is it gone?”
They listened.
A quiet thump, thump...and then—
The roof of the shack flexed.
“Oh my God.”
It was above them. Whatever it was. Huge and deadly. Hungry. A rain of dust scattered down from the cheap plaster ceiling as the thing walked in a circle. Small scrapes against the flashing of the roof, followed by the sound of something heavy being set down on one end of the shack...and then the other.
They waited.
A hollow shooshing sound reverberated through the shack’s interior. Amplified by the metal of its walls.
