“Drkkkkkk,” one gutteralized to another.
“Drrkkkkkkkrush,” said a third.
“Drrrkkkkssssiiiiiiii.”
With that, the fifth Mord proxy, now ponderous and slow but still dangerous, began to head up the stairs to the roof where we hid. Through a trail of blood.
*
Half wrapped in Borne, it had made no difference when he’d extended a pseudopod to my ear and talked to me in a surreptitious way while the carnage took place. If it helped him from panicking, if it stopped him from intervening, all the better. I was like a dreamer half asleep who responds when someone talks but is not really awake yet. I was too captured by the carnage, too aware of the vulnerability of my own flesh.
“Not nice not nice,” was still in Borne’s vocabulary as the ferals died. And, less usual, “A waste. What a waste. They wasted it.”
“They’re dying, Borne,” I said as I watched it. “They’re being killed.”
“Not here anymore. Not there, either.”
Where was there? Did I want to know?
“When are they doing this?”
Another strange question. “Now, Borne, they’re doing it now. Right in front of you.” But I had the idea that his gaze was seeing more than mine.
“Why are they doing this, though? Why?”
I didn’t have a good answer for that one. I didn’t at all. Or for why Borne no longer seemed frightened by it all.
But now a Mord proxy was pawing up the stairs to investigate the roof, and the tremors of that passage left no doubt what would happen on the roof. To me. To Borne.
“Borne,” I said, “can you hide us?”
“Hide?! Hide from what?” Something in my urgency had triggered urgency in his reply.
“From the bear.”
“Bear?”
“The thing coming up the stairs!”
“Hide.” At a critical moment, I seemed to have hit a communication glitch. A translation problem.
“Like a rock. Can you pretend to be a rock, with me inside—with room for me to breathe inside?” I already knew he could be a rock. So, why not? We had no other choice.
“You told me not to be a rock,” Borne pointed out.
“Forget that! Forget it! You can be a rock now. Can you be a rock?”
“Yes, I can be a rock!” Borne said, enthusiastic. “I can put you in a rock.”
“And can you stay a rock no matter what happens? Can you stay a rock? Be quiet as a rock?”
The bear bounded up the stairs at a blistering pace now, recovering. The bear would be out on the roof in a moment. Just a moment more.
“I can stay a rock.”
“Can you smell like a rock too? You must smell like a rock.”
“I can!”
“Then do it—now!”
“Yes, Rachel!”
Borne unfurled, uncurled, and rose high and came down like a crashing wave, and me tumbling in the middle of it all, bent over and half crushed by cilia and rubbery flesh.
I could see nothing.
I could do nothing.
I was trapped within Borne, hoping that on the outside he looked like a rock.
*
I did not do well in truly dark places. They reminded me of other times I’d had to hide, as a child, with my parents. Confined. In a pit. In a tunnel. In a closet. Waiting to be discovered, uncovered, given away. Staying silent, still, trying not to breathe, until the danger had passed. My panic in such situations had gotten worse when I reached the city, not better.
The huffing of the bear came close, closer, a rabid snarl of pure animal bloodlust, but still the strangled words behind that, the muffled lunge of language forming: “Drrrkkkkkkk. Drrrrrrk. Drrrrrk.”
I was having trouble breathing, trouble controlling my breath. I was in a situation no human being had ever been in and a situation that human beings had experienced for thousands of years. In one world, I was cocooned inside a living organism that still defied explanation, that was, no matter how I loved it, a mystery to me. In the other world, I was inside a cave trying to hide from a wild animal. The depths of the familiar and the unfamiliar were colliding. Disoriented, I saw again the fox’s strange eye. I saw again the dead astronauts. I saw the odd bit of meat left as a trap for me. I saw Mord’s shuddering flank.
I wanted Wick then. I wanted Wick to be there on the rooftop, to tell me what to do beyond what I had done already. I wanted Wick to make things easy and to make the Mord proxy go away. Surely there was something he would know how to do. Borne was just a child. Borne was just a rock.
A moment more, as the bear circled the Borne-rock, and the claustrophobia would have sent me over the edge. I would’ve cried out, I would’ve begged Borne to release me. It was as if I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
But Borne sensed this, Borne knew what was happening within and without. The space widened and a dull green light came from the flesh walls all around to let me see and a flesh book extended out of the wall and on a shelf that formed I saw a flesh telephone.
The telephone shook like it was ringing. I picked up the receiver.
“Hello,” I whispered.
“This is Borne. This is Borne calling you.”
“I know,” I said. I felt like a child on a pretend phone, having a chat with an imaginary friend.
“You don’t even need to make sound. I’ll hear you if you mouth the words,” Borne told me.
“What is going on outside,” I mouthed, even as Borne lurched a bit from some push off to the left of me.
“The bear is circling me. The bear just pushed me and I rolled a bit like a rock. But only a bit. Because I’m a rock, not Borne.”
“Good. Maybe the bear will go away.”
“Should I be afraid, Rachel?”
“Are you afraid, Borne?”
“I worry the bear might eat part of me.”
“Bears don’t eat rocks.”
“I worry that if I worry too much about the bear eating part of me that I will stop being a rock and then the bear might eat me.”
“You. Must. Be. A. Rock.” I willed Borne with all the force of every secret thought to continue to behave like a rock.
“I am going to end this call,” Borne said. “I think the bear is about to do something else. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Borne,” I mouthed.
Goodbye Borne, and hello Borne all around me.
Borne lurched dangerously and I put out my arms to keep my balance. I was terrified that no matter the illusion, the bear would eat through Borne to the center, to me, and we would both die here, on the rooftop, for Wick to eventually find.