The Anomaly(66)

“Right. But you’ve forgotten that whoever designed this game didn’t give us any props, Nolan.”

“Fuck.” I stuck my head in my hands. My brain felt as if it were splitting down the middle. “If only that light hadn’t run out when we were there before. At least we’d know if there was anything worth trying to get to.”

“‘If only’ a lot of things,” Ken said. “And none of them are any bloody use to us now.”

There was a groaning sound. We watched as Molly moved out of shadow into the dim glow around Gemma, and put her arm around her. There was the sound of dry retching, a rasping croak in Gemma’s throat, and then another louder moan.

“She’s getting worse.”

“Yeah,” Ken said. “The first mouthful of water came straight back up, so we stopped. She’s going to have to let the bug pass through her system, however dire that makes her feel, and however long it takes. Right now, even if we did find a way out, I don’t think she could move.”

I lit one of the ever-dwindling supply of cigarettes and we passed its red glow back and forth in silence. Toward the end I looked at Ken. He met my gaze and held it.

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” he said as we finally looked away, “but I ran into Kristy a few weeks back.”

“Okay.”

“She was sitting outside the Peet’s on Third. By herself. I said hi. We chatted. I asked if you two had talked recently. She shook her head. Said: ‘It’s over.’”

“Gee,” I said. “Thanks, Ken. Fuck’s sake. Why would you even tell me that?”

“Because she said it the same way you do.”

“Which is?”

“Like it’s not over.”

I stared at him, unsure whether to be angry or very sad.

“We’re dead when we’re dead, Nolan,” he said, reaching over to pat me on the cheek. “And not before.”



We sat in silence for a while after that. Generally you get a reliable sense of the passage of time, but my mind was working so much more slowly than usual. I couldn’t be sure how long it had been before there was a sudden noise—a groaning cry, much louder than the ones before. Louder, and more urgent.

Pierre and Molly were leaning over Gemma by the time Ken and I got over there. Gemma was on her knees, bent double, arms wrapped tight around her waist.

She made a dire croaking sound, the noise of someone whose stomach is in spastic revolt but has nothing else to give.

“This isn’t getting better,” Molly said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with her.”

“She has to be getting out the other side by now,” I said. “She’s empty. The water she drank this morning is long gone from her system. Maybe this is just a final—”

The croaking sound came again, morphing this time into a harsh, jabbering belch. It had extraordinary force and didn’t sound like it was the tail end of anything.

I crouched next to her. Put my arm around her back. The heat coming off her skin was intense. She was making a continual low moaning sound, and seemed to be trying to screw herself up as tightly as possible, as if every muscle in her back and limbs was contracting.

“Gemma,” I said, “it’s going to be okay.”

She belched again, a long, rasping bark, releasing an appalling smell.

She jerked her head up. Her cheeks and forehead were soaking with sweat, hair matted. “Oh,” she said.

It wasn’t to me, or about me. At first I wasn’t sure she even knew I was there. But then she said my name, twice. Her voice sounded like an old woman’s.

“Gemma, let it out.” I remembered that I’d already said those words to someone, at a point earlier in the day. “Try not to cramp. Let it out.”

I went to pry her hands away from her abdomen, only then realizing how incredibly swollen it was—bulging so much it was straining the buttons on her shirt.

“The gas is putting her gut muscles in spasm,” I said. “She’s got to get it out.” Gemma was strong enough to pull her hand back, returning it to her stomach. I had a flash memory of being a child, in bed, with gut pain—and how nothing but the feel of my mother’s cool hand on my stomach had seemed to help.

So I put my hand on her belly, as gently as I could. She screamed. Her head was right next to mine and the scream was so loud I thought my eardrum would burst.

“Sorry,” I said. I pulled my hand away but she screamed again. And again. It wasn’t me that had made her scream. It was something else.

I looked up at the others but saw only blank faces. None of them knew what to do about this, either, how to relieve this pain. None of us had children, and so we didn’t even know how to pretend we could make it better. When it came to this kind of thing we were all still children ourselves.

She opened her mouth to scream again but another of the barking belches came out instead. The smell was even worse than before. The noise tailed off into the most dreadful sound I’ve ever heard from a human being, an animal mewl of agony.

She toppled over, knocking the light away and flipping it over, making everything dark.

I reached for her, feeling her burning skin against mine again. Found the light and turned it. Gemma was on her side now, face screwed up tightly. She was hyperventilating.