“If you shoved him, you leave.”
London’s face wrinkles up like a bulldog. She clearly doesn’t hear the word no a lot and doesn’t like it. She looks like she wants to talk back to Harlan—not apologize and beg for her job and make good with TJ, but argue and get up in the huge man’s face. Harlan is even less intimidated than TJ was as he stares sadly down at her.
“Go on now, honey. It’s over.”
But London bares her teeth, going full Veruca Salt. She fiddles with one of her rings and holds her hand up to her face, and Chelsea is about to ask Amy what the girl is doing when London’s eyes go completely blank and she lunges at the grill, grabbing the wood and metal spatula and swinging for Harlan.
Chelsea goes cold down to her toes.
This is it.
This is the Violence.
She’s experienced it at least twice, but she’s never seen it like this before.
Never watched it happen, not in real life.
It’s just like on the YouTube videos but more real, more terrifying.
London, the girl, is gone.
Her body is a weapon, and its only aim is to kill Harlan Payne.
She swings at his face with the spatula, slicing sideways like it’s a knife.
She doesn’t make a noise, doesn’t growl or grunt or scream.
She simply attacks.
Harlan gets his hands up in time to fend off the first blow, but the spatula slices into his forearm with the thick thunk of metal on bone and sends blood flicking against the side of the RV. Harlan dances back, uncertain, clearly not wanting to hurt the much smaller girl. His face wasn’t made for confusion.
But then an odd thing happens.
TJ leaps on top of London from the back, throwing her to the ground with his full weight. She’s flat on her belly, the blood-spattered spatula still in her hand, and he’s pressing down on her, legs over her legs and arms over her arms, one hand wrapped around the wrist that holds the weapon. She’s bucking underneath him, every line of her body filled with tense potential and this strange, silent rage, taut and furious as an animal pouncing.
And then an odder thing happens.
Matt throws himself on top of TJ. And then Steve throws himself on top of Matt. And then Chris and Sienna add to the dogpile while Harlan backs up, panting, staring at the deep cut on his arm.
Chelsea doesn’t know what to do, but she has to do something, so she scurries over on hands and knees to pry the spatula out of London’s hand. The girl doesn’t register her, doesn’t even see her; London only has eyes for Harlan, and her pinprick black pupils in the field of green iris are trained on him, unblinking. One of her eyebrows is tragically smudged. She looks like the love child of a zombie and a broken doll.
“Pile on,” Sienna calls. “We need everyone. The more weight and pressure, the better.”
Amy leans onto Sienna, and the teen girl creeps forward and reaches for London’s grasping hand, catching it in both of hers.
“Get her other hand,” the girl says to Chelsea, and Chelsea tosses the blood-covered spatula far away and takes London’s hand, noting the open poison ring flecked with black dots of pepper.
“What is happening?” she asks no one in particular.
Harlan squats down beside the knot of people, one hand over his wound.
“This is how you stop it,” he says, gently. “Restrain them like this for long enough, and they go back to normal. But it takes a lot of weight, a lot of heat, a lot of tightness. There’s power in groups. You didn’t know?”
Chelsea shakes her head.
Harlan snorts softly. “Yeah, they’re not putting it on the news. Can’t sell a thirty-thousand-dollar vaccine if there’s a cheaper alternative, can they? Not that this’ll help you when you’re alone with someone else.” Their eyes meet, and Chelsea feels…seen. Harlan’s gaze goes soft and inward, and Chelsea wonders who he was alone with, who was beside him, dead, when he woke up from the Violence.
Judging by the grief written across his movie-star features, it was someone important.
He stands back up and walks to the RV. “I need a bandage,” he says apologetically.
And he does—blood is running down his arm, and Chelsea can see meat and a thin line of bright yellow fat.
“I’ll sew that up for you once we’re done,” Sienna calls. “Don’t you mess with it!”
Somewhere in the pile, Chris chuckles. “Thank God we have a medic on staff, right?”
There’s another chuckle, and Steve murmurs, “Jesus, you’re bony. It’s like lying on a box spring.”
“Well, your damn beard tickles, so don’t think it’s any fun lower in the pile,” Matt shoots back, but in a friendly way.
“Every single one of you must go on a diet,” TJ says, muffled, from way down on the bottom.
And then they’re all laughing the mad, giddy laugh of people who live in a world this insane. The pile is shuddering, people shifting this way and that and then steadying themselves.
“I did not sign up to play Twister,” Amy calls amid the frenzy, and Chelsea starts laughing, too.
Is this all it takes, to stop the madness? What amounts to a heavy, full-body hug?
“What the fuck?”
Everyone shifts aside as London struggles to get out from under them, cussing and shouting. “Get off me! Freak! What the fuck? What are you people doing? I am going to sue you to the fucking moon.”
Everyone slides off, easing back to standing or sitting in the chairs. Clothes are askew, hair is mussed, faces are red. Finally TJ is revealed, and he takes a deep breath and sits back on his knees as London flips over and sits. She looks utterly disgusted.
“What the fuck?” she says again.
Sienna grabs her hand and holds up the poison ring.
“You peppered up, that’s what. Now get out of here, you little shit. You could’ve killed someone.”
London’s face goes from surprise to cunning to disappointment as she works through what happened. “So I didn’t kill him?”
Harlan stands in the door to the RV holding a wad of bright-red paper towels. In their short acquaintance, Chelsea has seen him look amused, pleasant, charismatic, professional, sympathetic, and haunted.
But now he looks furious, and it’s terrifying. There is nothing scarier to her than an angry man. She shrinks back, heart thumping like a rabbit’s leg as Harlan steps down to the ground like he’s walking into a wrestling ring, staring murder at the crumpled girl on the ground.
“No, you didn’t. Get out. While you still can.”
London stands, her face stricken, and looks from person to person as if hunting for empathy. There is none.
“I am so going to sue your ass.”
Harlan sighs and looms. “Yeah, well, get in line.”
When he takes a step toward her, London scrambles up and runs for the parking lot.
The mask of rage falls off the biggest man Chelsea has ever seen, leaving him smaller, diminished, woeful. Harlan goes to the cooler and gets a beer and slings himself into a lawn chair, which creaks in protest as blood drips down his arm.
“Welcome to the VFR, everybody,” he says, popping the tab.
28.