Future Home of the Living God(54)

That’s when I do the thing that will send me to hell. I jump down off the bed and grab Orielee’s hands and twist them behind her, fast in my grip. She rolls over, kicking and drumming her feet. I throw myself over her, sideways, to hold her down. Spider Nun keeps twisting with both fists, more, tighter, until Orielee’s eyes and tongue pop out and her face goes purple. Our faces are almost as rigid and horrible as hers. I’m on top, now, so I see her eyes. The wild, penetrating look, her irises pinpointing me, blood seeping into the corners of her lids and bloody tears running down alongside her nose. At last her legs relax and splay open and she is dead.

Spider Nun falls over gasping and gagging for air. I shake a pillow out of its case and pull the case down over Orielee’s head, so there is just her body to contend with. That’s bad enough. I am riveted by Orielee’s Garfield-print scrubs jacket with cartoon panels of Garfield looking at a volcano, Garfield in a jungle, Garfield bored, with a book in his paws, Garfield critical of a houseplant.

The only thing for me to do is treat the fact that Spider Nun spoke as normal, along with the fact that we have killed Orielee. Normal.

“Let’s try and fit her into the closet,” says Spider Nun.

We take all of our things out of the closet, then we try to hoist Orielee in through the double door. We prop her up inside and tie her onto the clothes hooks using another strip of hospital gown. We latch the door tightly. Orielee hadn’t picked up the tray of our samples and put it back on the cart yet. So we do that. We put the cart in the hall outside of the room. We’re both dizzy, so we stagger back to our beds and throw ourselves under the blankets. Half an hour passes. We are numb, buzzing. There is a sick thump, a straining creak, as Orielee’s body settles inside the closet. We hear a nurse come by and say, “Oh, here’s her tray. She must have checked out early. It’s her birthday.” We hear them wheel away the cart. There is silence.

Spider Nun and I turn slowly to look at each other.

“So what’s your name?” I ask her. “I’m tired of calling you Spider Nun.”

“You called me that?” She doesn’t smile, but her voice goes from dazed to amused. “My name’s Tia Jackson.”

“Tia? Jackson?”

“My family has been here for six generations,” she says with hardened indignation, “probably longer than . . . oh, forget it. Ha. I forgot you’re an Indian.”

“Right.”

“Do you feel awful?” she says after a while.

“Not yet. I’m probably still in shock or something.”

“Yeah.”

“How come you never spoke?”

“First law of capture. Never let them know you know their language.”

That seems like very good thinking, and I ask if Tia’s learned anything.

“Well, besides the land bridge theory, which oh my god you went on about forever? I do hear stuff. They don’t kill them, anyway.” She touches her stomach, gently. “The ones born alive so far are more physically adept. They grab things earlier, walk sooner. They are bigger. Nobody knows about speech. Not that many have, you know, spoken so far.”

“I assumed that they studied them,” I said.

“Let’s not go there,” says Tia.

“Did they really kill all of the prisoners?”

“It depended on what they were charged with. Some of them were trained as bounty hunters and sent to find us. One of them found me. Was that your mom who gave us lunch?”

“Yes. Why didn’t you at least talk to me?”

“You could have inadvertently given me away.”

“So are you ready?”

“I am so very ready,” says Tia Jackson. “And you, are you going to tell me what was on that piece of paper you ate?”

I tell her. After a while they bring dinner and we try to choke down everything. They take away the dinner trays. Again we are alone in the room, in the silence. I can’t help looking at the closet, and neither can Tia.

“It was her birthday,” she says.

We spend some time sitting very still, trying not to throw up the food we’ve eaten, food we need to sustain us during our escape.

“We shouldn’t talk about her,” I say at last. “We should talk about other things. What were you before?”

“Designer,” says Tia. “Textile patterns. I get ideas all of the time. I work fast.”

“Married?”

“Yes, but I took my ring off, threw it under a bush. I know exactly where. I’m going back for it. I didn’t want them to have anything.”

“Where did they catch you?”

“Outside my studio.”

“Does your husband know where you are?”

“I don’t know,” says Tia. She shakes her head and turns away from me, more emotional than I’ve ever seen her. “I just don’t know.” Her voice is thin.

“If you go home, it’s the first place they’ll look.”

She just nods, resting her forehead on her clasped hands, on her knees.

“It’s hard now that I can talk to you,” she says. “Before, it wasn’t so real.”

“Pretend like it still isn’t real,” I say.

But the hours drag on, so slow. I read out loud to her from Is That in the Bible? Where did Hebrews wear kilts? What man wore a hat trimmed with blue lace? Who gave soup to an angel? Who went fishing naked? Who ate a mouse behind a tree? Who thought his conscience was in his kidneys? There is a Bible verse to answer each question. First Chronicles 19:4. Hanun does this to David’s servants. Exodus 28:37–38. Aaron wears one. Gideon, Judges 6:19. Peter, John 20:7. Sacred mice are mentioned several places in the Bible. The Psalmist: “Thus my heart was grieved and I was pricked in my reins” (kidneys).