I hold up wrists, take pulses, listen at chests. There is no sign of life in anybody. I’m in a wax museum.
Close to the door is a seated man, bearded chin resting on his thick barrel chest. Little Man. Remember? It’s funny because he’s so big. Ha-ha. Another corpse, a man I’ve heard no description of, shirtless with a muscle-man build and a scar on his cheek and a surfer’s blond hair. Next to him, jutting out from under the table, are two feminine bare feet, crossed demurely, slim ankle over slim ankle. For some reason I think this is more likely to be Sailor than the girl at the table, or maybe it’s someone else entirely, maybe it’s one of the four girls—four if I’m doing the math right, four of Atlee Miller’s estimated eight girls and six men—whose code names I never got. Whoever she is, she drank hers out of a thermos, the thermos is cupped in her lap with no top on, and I shine the headlamp down into it and catch a glimpse of the last few drops of dark liquid.
I go back to the table. The girl who is half eased away from Delighted, I’ve seen her face. I met her. Nico’s friend. She was flying the helicopter.
I look at it again, the poison, shine my light into the cups and glasses and thermoses, confirming that they all drank the same draft, whatever it is. I will never know what it is. We’re past all that now. Send it to the lab, boys! It was something bad for you. They all drank it and died.
There’s even a note. It’s on the wall, black and green graffiti letters on the concrete: ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT.
There are more bodies. A girl curled up over here like a sleeping cat, a dreadlocked blonde next to her, arms and legs splayed out at crazy angles. A woman of early middle age, arms crossed, cross-legged against the wall like she’s doing yoga. What’s funny is that I keep expecting to find Nico among this room full of suicides, even though I already found her, I found her in the woods, she’s already dead.
The last body lies on the ground, in the back corner, facedown. A man, a generation older than the rest. Thick dark hair. Dark brown eyes. Glasses, one lens cracked where his face hit the concrete when he slid off a folding chair. I stoop and shine the light right into his eyes. Astronaut. Mouth open, tongue sticking out, eyes wide open and staring at the door.
I reach down to check the famous belt but it’s not on, so I get down on all fours and crawl around for a minute, trying to find it, and my hand comes down on the cold flat flesh of his hand, Astronaut’s, and I lurch up out of my crouch and race for the door because this is a crime scene, for God’s sake, I trip over Sailor’s extended feet, or whoever’s feet those are, and reach the hallway just in time to bend forward and vomit on the ground. Nothing in my stomach: black strings of coffee-colored bile, pooling at my feet in the light of the headlamp.
I straighten up and rub at my face with my shirtsleeve and try to think this through. Dead in that room are six women—Valentine, Sailor, and four more—and five men, Tick, Astronaut, Little Man, Delighted, and the stranger with the surfer hair.
This is what Nico was escaping from. This was the backup plan that sent the wave of atavistic revulsion shuddering down Jean’s face.