The Other Normals (31 page)

“Here! Ophisa! Try me, I’m delicious!”

“Mini Pecker? You dare to taunt me?”
He’s hurt. He turns his singed head my way. I see his burned eyeballs and hanging fangs. I almost feel sorry for him, but then I see Sam, dead to
the world in front of a fridge, and I don’t feel sorry at all.

Ophisa swings his tail at me. It arcs through the room, knocking aside pots and pitchers. It’s so massive that it sends wind in front of it. The spikes at the end are like something from a dinosaur, and I absurdly recall which one—
stegosaurus
—as I dive off the conveyor belt....

And Ophisa’s tail plunges into
HOBART
.

“Yes!”

He hisses and clicks. Now he’s arranged like a giant C—body at the front of the kitchen, tail stuck in the machine, head swaying back and forth, spitting wildly as he’s pulled backward.

“Cheat! Traitor! Boymeat waste!”

“Help me stuff him in here!” I push at the base of his massive tail. Mortin joins me from the other side; Ada comes over despite her injured feet and adds to the effort. Inside
HOBART
, jets of water toss around the knives. Ophisa’s neck might be impervious to knitting needles, but the knives do a good job on his tail, making him shut up (finally) and start screaming, a shrill, desperate keen that splits the steamy room.

“Almost got it! It’s just like sex! Shove him in there!”

“This
isn’t
like sex!” Ada yells. “If you’re ever having sex and you think, ‘Wow, this is like with Ophisa,’ that’s bad sex!”

We push together. Ophisa’s tail fills the machine. He tries to swing his head at us, but his body is in the way. He tries to spit at us, but he seems to be running out of poison—it has burned off on the stove or dripped to the ground, useless.

“Make sure his legs get in!” I hoist the backmost one. It’s like
picking up a giant chicken leg. I see the huge vein for delivering poison and the tender joints where the leg regenerated. I heave it onto my back and, with Ada’s help, shove it into
HOBART
. “Clear back!” Ophisa’s tail and leg catch inside the machinery. His flesh rends as the conveyor belt hiccups.

“Mortin! Bleach!”

Mortin uncaps the huge bottle and pours it into the intake pipe. Ophisa convulses and shrieks and waves his head through the kitchen, crashing into chrome cabinets, hanging utensils, and tubs of oatmeal. Ada has stuffed a second leg into the dishwasher, so now he’s fully stuck, the conveyor belt churning him in, knives and bleach assaulting him.

The chrome shell of the dishwasher bends outward.
Clang!
It distends to accommodate something inside. “Yes!” It happens on the other side. “It’s his legs! He’s getting injured and regenerating!”

Clang!
The new legs that spring from Ophisa’s body surge out against the metal but have nowhere to go. As they grow, they get damaged by bleach, so his body tries to make more, but those get damaged too, keeping the cycle moving … he’s metastasizing limbs. At this rate, he’ll end up firmly trapped in the machine, and we’ll all get out of here—

I remember Sam. He’s still by the fridge, paralyzed or dead. Ophisa slides his dazed head across the kitchen at him. His complicated mouthparts gyrate hungrily in the air. I reach Sam and put my arm under his shoulder. I try to lift him; he’s a lot heavier than he looks. Ophisa’s nightmare head—charred
and wet and hissing—lunges toward us. His mouth, which I finally see under all the eyes and teeth, is open wide, revealing a straight red gullet. I feel like I can see all the way through to another world. There’s no way to move Sam in time. I hold up my hands in a hopeless defense—

And Ophisa’s head jerks forward and crashes to the ground.

The fangs close on his rotten mouth. His body stiffens up. His remaining eyes stare at nothing. His head lies like the stamen of a flower. I look at Mortin and Ada. They have taken one of his regenerating legs, poking out of
HOBART
, and steered its barb into a seam in his body. The leg jabbed him with his own poison. The metal shell of the dishwasher clangs outward. His legs are still growing in there. Mortin shuts off the conveyor belt.

“Is he dead?”

“Not yet.” Mortin points to where Ophisa’s middle legs meet his thorax. “If we stab here, we’ll get his heart. Ada?”

“Peregrine?”

“I don’t want to do it. I’m … I’m burned out.”

“I’m not saying, kill him. I’m saying, say one of your prayers.”

“Oh! Right. Lord, thank you so much for letting us not get killed and eaten, and please rest this creature’s soul, even though he seemed pretty evil, and if Sam’s just paralyzed, I hope we can get him back. Amen.”

“Amen,” Mortin says, and then Ada hands him a barbecue fork.

He sticks it into Ophisa’s body. He turns away and holds his
nose as he works the fork inside the creature, squelching this way and that, moving through paralyzed meat … and then he finds something vital. He shoves the fork all the way in, making it disappear. Brown blood gouts onto the floor. Ophisa’s body sags and collapses. The eyes on his limp head lose their iridescence.

“WHAT ABOUT SAM?” I ASK. HE’S STILL frozen, eyes open, teeth clenched.

“We have to take him back to help him,” Mortin says. “Only a precise set of other-normal herbs will reverse Ophisa’s poison.”

The steam from the dishwasher is clearing out. The side of the kitchen that we entered through is just rubble now, but the clock that was there, which somehow still operates, says 4:23. I can’t believe that no counselors have come to see the commotion. This really
is
a ghetto camp.

“What do we do about this?” I ask.

“By ‘this’ you mean …”

“This!” I point to the rubble.
“This!”
I point to the huge monster carcass.

“Oh. We burn it.”

“We can’t burn down the dining hall!”

“Why? You need a new dining hall anyway. Get Sam out of here. I’ll handle it.”

I’m about to protest—but Ada lifts Sam’s body, and I want to help. We sandwich him between our shoulders and stagger out the back entrance to the kitchen, emerging on the porch
in the warm summer night. The air hits me and I breathe it in more thankfully than I’ve ever breathed anything. I never once stepped out of Mom’s house or Dad’s house and sniffed the air and thought,
I’m glad to be alive
.

“How are your toes?” I ask Ada.

“They’ll live.” She shows them to me. The flesh has been eaten off the tips of each one. Her sparkling nails are now just raw skin.

“But … how can you walk? Aren’t you in serious pain?”

“Aren’t
you
in serious pain where that acid hit your legs?”

“I can’t tell. It’s too exciting.”

“That’s how it works.
Tomorrow
is when we’re gonna hurt.”

Mortin runs out after us. “Go!” He tips Sam back and holds his shoulders as Ada and I each take an ankle. We move as fast as we can down the porch. A blast of heat hits us from behind. I turn to see fat orange flames leaping out of the dining hall.

“Go! Go! Go!”

We stagger over the
WELCOME TO CAMP WASHISKA LAKE!
banner; it lies on the steps in a heap. Ophisa must have knocked it down. As soon as we reach the parking lot, a thunderous boom sounds behind us. We lay Sam down and shield our faces as twisted chrome blows out of the dining hall and into nearby trees.

“And
that
was the furnace,” Mortin says, satisfied. Underneath the building, huddled in the rocks, a shaking figure stands.

“Ryu! You’re still here? Go! It’s all gonna burn!”

He shakes his head. He’s taken the mittens out of his mouth and unraveled the yarn. He twirls it in his fingers.

“I’m serious! Go!”

He shakes his head in small, tight motions.

“He’s gone,” Mortin says. “Some people can’t handle the unexpected.”

WE MOVE INTO THE WOODS, PAST THE rock where Anna and I had our failed kiss. Behind us, the dining hall’s roof caves in; a yawning pit of flame opens up; ash and smoke pour into the sky.

“So you guys are taking Sam back to cure him.... What about me?” I picture myself touching the battery and mushrooms again—and then I realize: “How did you even
get
here? I destroyed the mushroom patch!”

“How long has it been since you did that?”

“A week!”

“Mushrooms grow fast,” Mortin says, “and no, we’re not taking you back. We’ve uncovered a worldwide conspiracy. The Appointees are evil and they’ve got to be deposed in favor of a real government. Maybe not like yours, but …
something
decent. We’re revolutionaries now.”

“So take me! I can help!”

“Of course you can. But we need you here to give a story to the counselors about why Sam’s missing. Say you were out exploring and Ryu attacked you and all of a sudden the building lit on fire and you don’t know where Sam went. Then, when
his family gets called, reassure them that everything’s going to be okay. Otherwise there’s going to be a lot of needless worry. Plus it’d be nice to have a pair of eyes here. I’ve got some suspicions about correspondences at Camp Washiska Lake.”

“Like Dale Blaswell and Officer Tendrile? And the princess and Anna Margolis? And Leidan and my brother?”

“You’re catching on.”

We move through the woods. I spot one of the branches I snapped on my way back from the mushroom patch. Of course it’s hard to notice now, with all the destruction Ophisa has caused. “How am I going to explain this damage?”

Ada answers, “You ever hear of the Tunguska event, Peregrine?”

I shake my head.

“In 1908, over Siberia, an explosion took place in the sky that knocked over eighty million trees. Scientists eventually decided that it was a comet that blew up in the atmosphere.”

“So? Was that it really?”

“Doesn’t matter. After a few years of speculation, a nice scientific consensus emerged. Something boring, nonthreatening. That’s what will happen here. Humans are really good at it. Maybe they’ll say it was a freak lightning storm. A homegrown militia game gone wrong. It’s not your concern.”

“When will you bring Sam back?”

“Let’s get to the battery first.”

We hustle through the woods to the Logo Spermatikoi. When we get there, Leidan Enaw is sitting pretty next to the
princess and Officer Tendrile, who lie bound on the ground. Their tentacles are tied together with extension cords; Tendrile’s severed one bleeds lightly. Their arms are secured with belts; their mouths are gagged with underwear. They struggle weakly.

“How—”

“All from the Lost and Found,” Leidan says. “After Mortin and Ada grabbed some clothes and went to save you, they sent me here to guard the battery. These two showed up an hour later trying to sneak back home. I bashed them with this”—he holds up a baseball bat—“and secured them.” He swings the bat. “Also from the Lost and Found.”

Tendrile moans. He rocks his head back and forth. He spots me.
“Mmmmph!”
He tries to sit up. Leidan pushes him down with the bat. “Looks like he’s got something to say. You want to hear it?”

I genuinely consider the possibility. “No,” I say. “No, I don’t think I need to hear him at all.”

ADA CHECKS ON THE FRESHLY GROWN mushrooms next to the tree. Leidan keeps an eye on Tendrile and the princess, who just stares up, an empty beautiful shell with a nightmare groin. Mortin reaches into his sweatpants and pulls out my Pekker Cland miniature. It’s untouched by Ophisa’s acid; it still looks like me.

“What? How?”

“It was still in your backpack. I got it before I set the fire. This isn’t just a pewter figure anymore, Perry. It’s a
beacon.
You’ll find it quite hard to destroy. It’s become charged with correspondational energy. Its unique importance to you as you went through your journey has given it abilities.”

“Magic?”

“Just keep it on you. It’s tied to you now, and you’re tied to us. If you see it glow, that means we need you.”

I put it in my pocket and realize that this is good-bye.

“What am I going to do without you guys? I have so many questions! How do I handle Dale? How do I handle Anna? How do I handle … everything?”

“You figure it out,” says Ada. “That’s what you do,
Peregrine: you figure things out.”

She starts prepping the battery for transit. I turn Sam over—he’s breathing steadily at least—and remove his backpack. I know he has to be naked to go to the World of the Other Normals. “I’m not taking your clothes off,” I tell his unconscious body. “Mortin can do that. But I am taking one thing.”

I pull out the Polaroid that he took from Dale’s cabin.

“Guys? Picture?”

TWO DAYS LATER, I LIE ON THE FLOOR OF my yurt after lunch and compose a letter to my parents. I haven’t written them … well,
ever
, but when I force myself to sit down and start, I find it flows quickly. No television or phones interrupt my letter. It’s like having their undivided attention for once.

Dear Mom and Dad,