All Good Children Page 16

  “Okay, what we are looking at here is a swarm of roughly four hundred Over,” the anchorwoman’s steady voiceover cuts back in. “They are flying low over Kyoto, the people are in a panic, seeking shelter indoors. There have been a number of accidents, car accidents, injuries reported as a result of a rush to vacate the streets. We’re getting reports now that the Over have not, in fact, attacked anyone, they are…they are simply gathering, gathering in flight above downtown Kyoto. No official word from any Liaisons at this time as to—”

  In a blink, the spiral becomes a column, a sharp-nosed dive of Over ten strong down to the streets. The cameraman isn’t quick enough to track them; when the lens finds them, they are already ripping into two dozen pedestrians, whose own cameras are flung from their necks, their faces twisted in screams, blood spilling like rain to the streets

  “The Over appear to be attacking, they are attacking, in waves of ten, of ten at a time—”

  Then the camera drops to the ground, the image flashing into gray static for a brief second when it hits pavement. Feet race by, darkness descends, screams go unheard. The camera is crushed.

  Back to the anchorwoman. She swallows hard. “We’ve lost…we’ve lost visual.”

  The text on the news ribbon changes: BREAKING NEWS: 400 OVER LEAD MASSACRE IN DOWNTOWN KYOTO, HUNDREDS INJURED, NUMBER OF DEAD UNCONFIRMED; NO LIAISON CONTACT.

  “Why are they doing this?” Omalis doesn’t realize she’s spoken out loud until she feels Marla’s reassuring hand at the back of her neck, fingers pinching her taut skin, trying to keep her steady, keep her here.

  “It’s okay, baby,” Marla says.

  “It’s happening again.”

  “No….”

  On screen, the anchorwoman straightens up. “A Liaison has made contact. We’re setting up live feed now. We’re speaking with…with Henry Matsumoto. Liaison Matsumoto has an official statement from the Over. We’re going to him now.”

  Matsumoto sits in a straight-backed chair, a plain blue backdrop behind him. Shot from the shoulders up, he is dressed in a bright beige suit and brown tie, hair greased back, glasses horn-rimmed and perched on the end of his pointed nose. His eyes look directly into the camera, into the eyes of the world watching him; he does not read from a TelePrompTer. The words come straight from the Over, from Matsumoto’s own head.

  “Citizens,” he begins, his monotone disconcerting if it weren’t so expected. The English translation of his words runs across the bottom of the screen. “Be assured the events you have just witnessed are not the beginning of another war. In fact, if you will simply learn from your mistakes, they can act as an end to this tiresome hostility between yourselves and the Over.

  “Last night, two Liaisons were attacked by a mob of students and mentors at Camp Seven-Sixty-Eight in Kyoto. Yuki Katzen and Randall Clark were making their weekly visit when an organized group, armed with weapons supplied to them from their mentors, overpowered and murdered the unarmed Liaisons. This type of unprovoked violence against the Over will not go ignored.

  “These students and mentors, young men and women like most of you watching today, have been detained and will shortly join the Feed Program. But their punishment is your lesson: The Over have the power; you—all of you—have the choice. One misguided decision and all of you suffer.

  “Citizens, is this what you want? Is this the world of blood and fear in which you wish to live? Have you forgotten your responsibilities in this contract? The Over have not forgotten theirs. Every day, there can be massacre. Every day, there can be blood and war and death. Every day, all of these things can be yours. Or, you can have peace. When you strike against the Over, you only kill yourselves.

  “The incident in Kyoto today is a lesson. Please, Citizens, learn it.”

  Matsumoto’s face dissolves back into the anchorwoman, whose blank eyes blink once—her humanity betraying her—as she readdresses the camera. “Thank you, Liaison Matsumoto. We now have additional reports coming in from Kyoto. The Over have dispersed; medical personnel are now onsite. A complete list of injured and dead cannot be provided at this time, but the damage is extreme. We’ll have more cameras on the scene and be able to give you additional information within the hour.”

  The ticker tape scrolls by: MURDER OF TWO LIAISONS LEADS TO MASSACRE IN KYOTO. OVER’S PLEA: “UPHOLD OUR CONTRACT, UPHOLD PEACE.”

  The screen goes black. Marla has switched off the news because Omalis is on the floor, on her knees, and her eyes are closed and she is swearing softly, swearing, saying shit shit fuck shit.

  Marla kneels down beside her, hand returning to the back of Omalis’s neck.

  “You see,” she says. “An isolated incident. Scare tactics. All dictators throughout history have done this.” She’s trying so hard to be reassuring, but Omalis hears the tears Marla hides. Marla cares about those people—all those people the Over wasted in zero seconds flat, them and their families too who’ve lost them, and those students and mentors who will go to their graves blaming themselves for all the blood and loss. Omalis knows how much Marla cares; her own blood runs hot with envy.

  “I have to go.” Omalis tries to rise but Marla keeps her kneeling.

  “No, don’t go anywhere. Stay here. Talk to me.”

  “I have to report in. There’s going to be…pandemonium.”

  “Let someone else deal with it.”

  “It’s my job to deal with it.”

  “Fuck them,” Marla nearly shouts. Her voice is filled with venom, so close to rage that Omalis pays attention. “What if I need you? What if it’s pandemonium in here?” She slaps a hand over her heart and her voice softens. “Can’t you deal with that first?”

  Omalis leans into Marla, lets Marla hold her, awkwardly, there on the carpet, both kneeling, shoulders angled sharply. Then she pushes her brusquely away.

  “No.”

  She gets up.

  “Heaven, wait.”

  Omalis waits. Not because of anything Marla has said, but because of the way she has said it. Her tone reverberates through her, through Omalis’s bones, pleading but demanding as well. Irresistible. Like her mother’s, so long ago. Wait, Heaven. Do this thing for us. Do this one thing. You can save us. I know you’re frightened, baby.

  Omalis’s headache blooms with the memory, and she shakes it away before it can burst. She reaches out to Marla, now standing, and pulls her hard. She smashes their faces together, kissing hard enough to bruise, digging fingers deep into Marla’s hair, feeling Marla’s tears wet their mouths and still not letting go. Her mother in her head lying, It won’t hurt, baby, I promise it won’t even hurt. She kisses harder, biting.

  Marla plants her hands heavily against Omalis’s chest and pushes, whipping her head back to tear their mouths apart. “Stop!”

  Omalis wipes her mouth and spits red-tinged saliva onto the carpet. Her blood or Marla’s, it still tastes sweet. She says, “Now I’ll be late.”

  Absurdly, Marla begins counting. The numbers sing in Omalis’s head, searing themselves over scar tissue beside her mother’s face: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, all good children go to Heaven, when they die their sin’s forgiven, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

  Heaven loses sight of Marla. She is back under those floorboards, sight—and all other senses—consumed only with fear, with apprehension. Marla leaves her there for a moment while she walks to the sink to rinse her mouth and scream into a dishtowel before beginning their session.

  In the living room, Heaven stands exactly where Marla left her, tottering there, drool gleaming on her chin, eyes half-closed. Marla steers her to the couch and tries to make her comfortable. She makes a few false starts when she first opens her mouth to speak, afraid some emotion might sneak out. She swallows hard, sits on the coffee table, resting elbows on knees, snaps her finger in front of Omalis’s face and begins.

  “Heaven, do you know where you are?”

  Heaven’s head sweeps the room, but her eyes, though open, exi
st in another time and see nothing. Her voice, tired and thick, says, “With you.”

  Marla resists an impulse to hold Heaven’s hand. “How do you feel?”

  “Afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Guilt.”

  At the beginning of every session, Marla asks how Heaven feels. Her answer is invariably different. Heaven is afraid of many things: Shame, Pain, Marla, Love, Complacency, Forgiveness. “Guilt” has made the list on several occasions. Not once, not ever, has Heaven responded with “the Over.”

  “Don’t be afraid. You’re not afraid, you’re…you’re proud, and calm. Proud to be useful, calm because you know it will all work out. Do you feel proud and calm?”

  Heaven remains a blank, unreadable slate, but she says, “Yes, proud and calm.”

  “I need to see Jordan again.”

  “Yes. She’s ready.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes. She’s strong. Smart. Ready to die, not ready to be killed.”

  “All right.” Marla got this sense herself, in her brief meeting with Jordan. Though the girl was undoubtedly frightened, she was brave, curious but cautious. “How can I see her again, privately?”

  “The medical tents are private.”

  “It’s too risky to try the same thing twice. Is there anything else? Some other place easily accessed?” Although Marla has infiltrated a few camps over the years, each operates slightly differently within their layout and their security measures. She needs to be certain of privacy.

  “Yes. Detention Row. Small, box-like barred cabins. Isolated. Irregularly patrolled. No one likes to do it.” Heaven startles Marla by emitting a child-like sigh. “It’s boring.”

  Marla smiles, pinches her knees to keep from reaching out. “Okay. Okay. How can you get Jordan there?”

  “She likes to fight.”

  “Yes…”

  “Fighters go to Detention Row.”

  “Would it be possible… Could you get her to fight you?”

  “I’m feeling afraid again.”

  “Nothing extreme, no fear. Just…” She brings her fingers to her own swollen mouth. “A bruise. One shot at you.”

  “Why would she hit me? She likes me.”

  “You’ll have to provoke her. What can you use against her?”

  “She likes me.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “The way you like me.”

  This gives Marla pause. Finally, she asks, “What?”

  “She’s shy about it, but she’s obvious. Blushing, overly interested in my personal life, excited to see me. She doesn’t want to like me.”

  “All right. Okay. We can use this. You can use this. I have to think. Does she like anyone else?”

  “Yes. Taylor Reed. Sixteen. One of seven sisters to be selected for the camps. History of depression, history of passive resistance. Slated for Breed.”

  “She and Jordan are friends?”

  “Yes. Always together.”

  “How does Taylor feel about Jordan?”

  “Don’t know. Jordan is shy.”

  “So…if you were to let Jordan know that you’re aware of her crush on Taylor, would it embarrass her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that would make her angry?”

  “Jordan translates almost every emotion into anger.”

  “Angry enough?”

  “I can make her angry enough.”

  Marla’s mind says, Of course you can, but she forces her mouth to say, “Good. Here is what you will do.”

  OMALIS SITS UP IN HER car. Her neck creaks a bit and she feels the waning (perhaps waxing) throbs of a headache behind her eyes. She looks at the passenger seat and finds it empty; no tequila bottle, no jacket, no mysterious syringe. Remembering the syringe recalls images of the day’s massacre, causes Omalis to imagine the two Liaisons whose murder ignited the Over’s hostility, whose murder was plotted and planned and carried out with no regard for consequence. If someone is plotting against Omalis, she only hopes they’ll get it done already, and try to make it look like an accident.

  A horn blares behind her. In the rearview mirror she watches a silver SUV continue backing out in front of a compact sedan, ignoring its mechanical cries for attention. The sedan pulls indignantly into the vacated space. Omalis looks forward. She’s at the office.

  She barely remembers driving here. She presses at her eyes with her thumb and forefinger and gets out of the car. Her mind screams numbers at her: two one five, two one five, two one five. She struggles, but she can’t unpack it.

  The building is innocuous. It is surrounded by dozens of other innocuous buildings, a couple of fast food places, and three coffee shops. There’s no sign or indication of what type of business might go on inside, but only the people who should be there ever go in. Something about the energy of the place, something about the whispers from inside. If someone did wander in, the doorman would kindly validate their parking and send them away, smiling.

  Today, the doorman is Jameson Peters, a late-fifties man who only owns three pairs of pants—the tan and black slacks he interchanges for work, and the basketball shorts he wears at any other time. Every six months or so he has to buy new slacks up a pants size, but the basketball shorts have an elastic waistband; he hasn’t replaced those in two years. He also wears suspenders and one of seven short-sleeved collared shirts. He goes through shirts faster than he goes through pants; the sweat stains eventually find a point even the Tide can’t wash away.

  Usually, Jameson Peters is all smiles, not only for the occasional wanderer, but for the Liaisons, who are in and out of the building at all hours, their moods unpredictable but mostly subdued. Jameson Peters likes to try to make them laugh, even if it’s only a pity laugh to get him off their backs. It may not be in his job description, but Peters likes to go that extra mile; his position finds him within hundreds of yards of the Over and he’s upped his anxiety meds twice in six years; he can only imagine how the Liaisons must feel. So he cracks a smile, he cracks a joke, and on his way home, he cracks open a plastic can of strawberry icing and eats it straight from the container, his tongue as a spoon.

  This is the back story Omalis has invented for Jameson Peters. She does not even know if his first name is Jameson; his name tag only reads Peters. She has only ever said hello to him, and goodnight.

  Today, Peters’s growing jowls pull at the sides of his face. His eyes barely find Omalis.

  “Afternoon, Peters,” Omalis nods at him as she passes.

  “I don’t know anymore,” he says, addressing his black loafers. “I just don’t know anymore.”

  Omalis wants to tell him it will be okay, wants to pat his meaty shoulder with her slender hand and break out the platitudes and affirmations, but she lies enough in one day as it is. She strides past him as he closes the door behind her.

  The building ostensibly has ten stories but the elevator only goes from the ground floor to the top. The lobby today teems with Omalis’s coworkers, some she’s seen before, others she only vaguely recognizes, and still more whose paths she’s never crossed. There is a waiting area on the top floor, outside of the briefing room, but it must be full to capacity. Whenever there is a crisis—and in all her years, there has not been one like this—the Liaison offices are always backlogged.

  “We’re by appointment only today,” Dillon Snyder strides over from the water cooler to tell her. He’s young and lanky, his suits invariably an inch too short, as if his mother still picks them out and sends them, and he is too generous to tell her he’s grown. “Mine’s not until four, but I thought I’d pop in and see what kind of information I could get. Seems I wasn’t the only one with that idea. You heard anything?”

  Omalis regards his close-cropped blond hair, the remains of teenage acne he attempts to hide behind a light layer of beige makeup, the pinhole in his left nostril that hasn’t closed up since he removed the ring. She resists the urge to roll her eyes at his eagerness, and simply walks away.
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br />   On the wall hangs a clock the size of a basketball backboard. The time is two-oh-five. The numbers in Omalis’s head ebb into a soft simmer. Not two-one-five, but two-fifteen. The time of her appointment.

  Omalis belongs to the largest generation of Liaisons—those recruited during the war—but there was an entire generation before her, small and less conspicuous, and although sanctioned by the world’s governments, far less protected from the world’s people. They were recruited when people actually thought of it as “recruitment,” as a choice; when siding with the Over seemed avoidable, even with Australia gone from the earth. Sure, the continent was still there, but its nuclear mass was abandoned to the Over, who, far from having been eradicated by the bombs, instead thrived there, long enough to multiply, long enough to “recruit,” long enough to plot and plan and launch what would become the War. Although there have been other wars, past and present, between nations, between states, between cities, between cultures, this is the only war anyone talks about when they talk about war. That first generation of Liaisons is long gone; dead or retired in seclusion. Omalis and her cohorts, then, are the oldest line, but there are new, younger arrivals all the time. Most of the older generation behave cordially to the newest arrivals, many take a flock or two under their wings, show them the ropes, lick their wounds. That kind of thing is not to Omalis’s tastes. She prefers to keep to herself. Before Marla, she had a small group of coworkers who, if not friends, were at best acquaintances, but since Marla, Omalis has backed away from, as she sees it, unnecessary cavorting.

  Today, however, it is near impossible to avoid talking to someone, because everyone is talking. Even the ones Omalis used to admire for their stoicism and envy for their cloud of evident self-hatred, even they are huddled in corners and running from group to group, soaking up the chatter and spilling it for someone else.

  Omalis goes as briskly as she can to the elevators and presses the glowing up arrow.

  “Have you been called up?” Angela Capelli asks from her shoulder in a conspiratorial whisper that almost makes Omalis laugh. When Omalis chooses to ignore her, Capelli can’t contain herself. “We’re by appointment only today,” she goes on. “Everyone is, because of the overflow. I mean, it makes sense; there’s going to be a lot of fallout from this. A lot of fallout. Have you heard anything? I heard the Over are going to stage a public execution of the attackers. Can you imagine! I’m sure nothing as lewd as a hanging, oh dear no, but something, you know, to show what they can do.”