CHAPTER 27
Susan
It wasn’t true. It
absolutely wasn’t. It was a trick, or a practical joke, or a
mistake, or a bad dream, or a secret hidden message that meant
something else, anything else, but did not, did not mean Gautierre was dead.
If Gautierre was
dead, it meant that all the books and movies and stories were
wrong. If he was dead, it meant that anyone could die beneath this
stupid dirty grimy dome. She could, Jenn could, anybody
could.
If he was dead, what
did that leave for her? What did that mean for her?
The other deaths to
date—Glory Seabright, Winona Brandfire, even Jonathan Scales—were
sad, a shame, a bummer, too bad, so sad, but they were—what was the
word?
They were
abstract. They were sad like it was sad
to read about an earthquake in Chile. If Chile was your best
friend’s father. Even with a relationship that close, there was
life to return to: school and work and friends and fun and
Gautierre and none of that because he was dead, it wasn’t abstract
at all, it was extremely real,
extremely concrete and unshakeable: the boy who had risked his life
for her, who thought she was beautiful and smart and cool, the boy
who could have picked anyone, the boy who picked her and thought
she was cooler than Jennifer, that boy was dead; he wasn’t a boy anymore, he was abstract.
She had walked and
walked, running out of the hospital when Jennifer told her the
news, her sick stupid eyes big in her sad long face. She’d said
something about Hank Blacktooth, how Ember killed him for killing
her son and the boy had died a hero and blah-blah-blah and do-si-do
and she’d run away from those sad eyes, run until a stitch in her
side forced her to jog, then to trot, then to walk fast, then just
to walk.
Now she was in a
quiet part of town, deserted and boring, a part she’d never had any
interest in before—not really convenient to anything Winoka needed,
not near the hospital or a gutted drugstore or a water supply.
Sure, before Big Blue came, these were nice apartments, but all
they offered now was the view.
The view of the
willow. The tree beneath which Gautierre, when he wasn’t abstract,
when he wasn’t dead, had fed her Pez and teased her for not
trusting grapes. It was far away from the building, but still
clearly visible, along with some of the random destruction Ember
and her gang had visited upon the far reaches of this
town.
Rudduddudadudduddudadud
The faint, familiar,
clipped whirring sound broke her train of thought. She had fled the
hospital and been so upset about her abstract boyfriend, she’d
barely noticed the thing that was new, the old thing that was new:
the helicopters.
Pre Big Blue: not
such a big deal. They’d occasionally fly over, usually traffic or
news copters circling to get closer to the Twin Cities. Sort of a
“ho, hum, there’s the WTCN traffic chopper, lost its way again”
situation.
But now: more and
more often they could be spotted (and heard) outside the dome. And
they were never news choppers; nope, those were Army Hueys, each
and every one.
She didn’t like to
look at them, even before the abstract thing had happened. They
reminded her of her father, which reminded her that he had done
nothing to contact her and, very likely, nothing to help
her.
And who wanted to be
reminded of that when you were stuck
under a dome and the whole world was apparently adopting a
wait-and-see attitude toward you and all your friends?
How could they watch
and wait? How could they not try to contact them? Heck, holding up
a damn sign to the window would have been something. But no . . .
nothing. They did nothing.
So: under the best of
bad circumstances (to wit: the day of the picnic) it made her feel
weird to hear and see the choppers.
Today, though. Today
that sound was wretched, it was the sound of failure and loss and
fathers who were waiting and seeing instead of caring and
trying.
It was the sound of
people who didn’t give a tin shit that a wonderful weredragon named
Gautierre had been brave and strong, and had gotten his ass handed
to him as a reward.
“Nope. I’m done.
That’s it. I am out. Tilt. Overload.”
She paused. Nature had no reaction to that; there wasn’t even a
lone bird chirping. Winoka was silent around her, and at last she
knew what that meant, what it had always meant: Winoka would be her
tomb. She just wasn’t smart enough to lie down and be
dead.
“At least you’re out,
Gautierre,” she said. Then, “Screw everything.” She forced her feet
to resume their trudge.