The Rising(32)

But it didn’t. It cut straight through his head instead and kept right on going, all the way through until the severed arm thudded against the wood floor, forging a nasty gash in the wood.

The ash man separated into two equal halves, each dropping to the floor, landing next to each other without any feeling, emotion or pain, showing in his face. He seemed to fade to black in the room’s flickering light before regaining a measure of his gray tone, which continued to drift in and out. The two halves of him had landed six inches apart, but the ash man seemed not to notice, empty eyes glaring up at Alex.

“You must come with me, Alex,” he managed, the separated sides of his mouth speaking in perfect unison, as if still whole. “You’ve evaded us for this long, but you’re ours again. We won’t stop. We’ll never stop.”

“Go to hell, asshole,” Alex hissed, raising the severed arm overhead again.

“You’re not one of them, Alex,” the ash man said, one side of his mouth lagging slightly behind and flickering toward black more than the other now. “You never belonged with them. You belong to us. And with continued disobedience comes punishment. We must take back what is ours.”

“I don’t have it.”

“They entrusted it to you. It’s why you’re here and why I’ve come to take you back.”

“Back where, exactly?”

“Home, Alex, your real home.”

Alex wanted to lash the severed arm downward again, but was stopped as much as anything by uncertainty over which side of the ash man to pound first. Then he heard a sound like something scratching and scampering across the floor.

“Alex!” Sam cried out.

He swung around to find severed pieces of what the ash man had called drones moving toward Sam en masse, the broken bodies from which they’d been shed lagging a bit behind.

“Punishment, Alex,” the ash man said, his dual voice echoing in a tinny, hollow fashion. “Punishment for disobedience.”

Alex launched himself across the floor, yanking the tire iron from the head of a drone thing en route to Sam. She was back-crawling desperately across the floor from the hard wood of the living room to the tile of the kitchen, kicking at the chunks of plastic, metal, and wire that were converging on her to ward them off.

Alex began slashing and hammering at them as if they were an angry swarm of rodents. Tile cracked, pieces sent flying airborne with each successive thrust and blow. Nothing at all left recognizable when he crushed the last creepy-crawly drone chunk just before it reached Sam.

“Alex…”

He thought it was Sam’s voice, then realized it wasn’t.

“Alex…”

He spun back around. Because it was his mother calling to him, her eyes weak as they struggled to regard him. The ash man was gone, both pieces, leaving behind what looked like a dark shadow where the twin halves of him had landed.

“Alex…”

He rushed to An Chin through the flickering light, half expecting the ash man to reappear at any moment.





32

GOODBYES

“MOM!”

Alex took his mother in his arms. “Lie still. We’ll get help.”

“No,” An cried.

“Yes!” Alex insisted.

Alex cradled his mother’s head, supporting it gently. Her lips quivered. The terror in her eyes bled off, replaced briefly by relief until An suddenly dug her fingers into his arm, the nails biting against his skin.

“Go, please! Before they come back.”

“I’m staying here with you.”

She dug her fingers in deeper. “No. Too late.…” She shook her head. “But not for you.”

“I’m going to the police.”

“No!” she said, the hand holding his arm starting to shake. “Police can’t help you. No one can help you. You must go far away, must disappear like you never were because … you weren’t.”

“What?”

“Trust Meng Po. Meng Po has the answers you seek.”

Jibberish, making no sense.

“Take her. For me. Take Meng Po and never part with her. She will guide you.”

Tears streamed down his face, the flickering lamplight catching his father’s face frozen in agony.

Death coming into his eyes.

Across the room, a still-dazed Sam had managed to get her phone out, desperately trying to reach 911.

“I can’t get a signal!” she wailed. “Like before!”

Alex felt his mother’s hand stretch past him into the air and then toward the kitchen. “Meng Po! Please!”

“Mom, please don’t—”

“Bring her to me!”

“Mom, I’m sorry! What, what I said in the hospital, I didn’t mean it, I…” Alex felt the rest of his words choked off by the clog in his throat.

“I know,” his mother said, in the same reassuring voice he’d known all his life.

She tried to smile, failed.

“You were right,” Alex heard himself say, rewinding time back a day. “I should do that fifth year.…”

“Alex…”

“… get smarter. Go to a better college.”

“Meng Po, Alex. Please.”