Maybe if I was a killer, they wouldn’t be dead.
And that’s a trade I’d make any day.
I’ll be a killer, if that’s what it takes.
Watch me.
The terrain’s getting rougher and steeper as the river starts making canyons again. We rest for a while under a rocky outcropping and eat the last of the food that didn’t get ruined by the fight with Mr Prentiss Jr.
I lay Manchee across my lap. “What was in that pill?”
“It was just a little crumb of a human painkiller,” she says. “I hope it’s not too much.”
I run my hand over his fur. He’s warm and asleep so at least still living.
“Todd–” she says, but I stop her.
“I wanna keep moving as long as we can,” I say. “I know we should sleep but let’s go till we can’t go no more.”
She waits a minute and then she says, “Okay”, and we don’t say nothing more, just finish the last of the food.
The rain keeps up all night as we go and there’s no racket like rainfall in the woods, a billion drops pattering down a billion leaves, the river swelling and roaring, the squish of the mud under our feet. I hear Noise now and again in the distance, probably from woodland creachers but always outta sight, always gone when we get near.
“Is there anything out here that could harm us?” Viola asks me, having to raise her voice over the rain.
“Too many to count,” I say. I gesture to Manchee in her arms. “He awake yet?”
“Not yet,” she says, worry in her voice. “I hope I–”
And that’s how unprepared we are when we step round another rocky outcropping and into the campsite.
We both stop immediately and take in what’s in front of our eyes, all in a flash.
A fire burning.
Freshly caught fish hanging from a spit over it.
A man leaning over a stone, scraping scales from another fish.
That man looking up as we step into his campsite.
In an instant, like knowing Viola was a girl even tho I’d never seen one, I know in the second it takes me to reach for my knife, I know that he’s not a man at all.
He’s a Spackle.
The world stops spinning.
The rain stops falling, the fire stops burning, my heart stops beating.
A Spackle.
There ain’t no more Spackle.
They all died in the wars.
There ain’t no more Spackle.
And here’s one standing right in front of me.
He’s tall and thin like in the vids I remember, white skin, long fingers and arms, the mouth mid-face where it ain’t sposed to be, the ear flaps down by the jaw, eyes blacker than swamp stones, lichen and moss growing where clothes should be.
Alien. As alien as you can be.
Holy crap.
You might as well just crumple up the world I know and throw it away.
“Todd?” Viola says.
“Don’t move,” I say.
Cuz thru the sound of the rain I can hear the Spackle’s Noise.
No words come out clear, just pictures, skewed up strange and with all the wrong colours, but pictures of me and Viola standing in front of him, looking shocked.
Pictures of the knife now outstretched in my hand.
“Todd,” Viola says, a small warning in her voice.
Cuz his Noise has more in it. It’s got feelings, washing up in a buzz.
Feelings of fear.
I feel his fear.
Good.
My Noise turns red.
“Todd,” Viola says again.
“Quit saying my name,” I say.
The Spackle pulls himself slowly upright from where he’s skinning the fish. He’s made his camp underneath another rocky outcropping down the slope of a small hill. A good part of it’s dry and I see bags and a roll of moss that might be a bed.
There’s also something shiny and long resting against the rock.
I can see the Spackle picture it in his Noise.
It’s the spear he’s been using to catch fish in the river.
“Don’t,” I say to him.
I think for a second, but only for a second, how clear I understand all this, how clear I can see him standing in the river, how easy he is to read, even tho it’s all pictures.
But the second passes in a flash.
Cuz I see him thinking about making a leap for the spear.
“Todd?” she says. “Put the knife down.”
And he makes his leap.
I leap at the same time.
(Watch me.)
“No!” I hear Viola scream but my Noise is roaring way too loud for me to hear it as more than a whisper.
Cuz all I’m thinking as I take running steps across the campsite, knife up and ready, bearing down on the Spackle, all skinny knees and elbows as he stumbles heading for his spear, all I’m thinking and sending forward to him in my red, red Noise are images and words and feelings, of all I know, all that’s happened to me, all the times I failed to use the knife, every bit of me screaming–
I’ll show you who’s a killer.
I get to him before he gets to the spear, barrelling into him with my shoulder. We fall to the less muddy dirt with a thud and his arms and legs are all over me, long, like wrestling with a spider, and he’s striking me about the head but they’re little more than slaps really and I realize and I realize and I realize–
I realize he’s weaker than me.
“Todd, stop it!” I hear Viola call.
He scrabbles away from me and I thump him on the side of his head with a fist and he’s so light it topples him over onto a pile of rocks and he looks back up at me and his mouth is making a hissing sound and there’s terror and panic flying outta his Noise.
“STOP IT!” Viola screams. “Can’t you see how scared he is?”
“And well he should be!” I yell back.
Cuz there ain’t no stopping my Noise now.
I step towards him and he tries to crawl away but I grab him by his long white ankle and drag him off the rocks back onto the ground and he’s making this horrible keening sound and I ready my knife.
And Viola must’ve put Manchee down somewhere cuz she grabs my arm and she pulls it back to stop me cutting down the spack and I push into her with my body to shake her off but she won’t let go and we go stumbling away from the Spackle who cowers down by a rock, his hands in front of his face.
“Let go of me!” I yell.
“Please, Todd!” she yells back, pulling and twisting my arm. “Stop this, please!”
I twist my arm around and use my free one to push her away and when I turn the Spackle’s skittered along the ground–