The world disappears.
Okwembu is struggling to get up, one arm clutching her stomach, gasping for air. I don’t let her get any. I step back, wind up another kick and drive it hard into her ribs.
The kick overbalances me, and I crash to the ground. Right then, it’s as if my muscles just give up on me. The ones in my back constrict, locking in place. I lie next to Okwembu, breathing hard, desperate to get up but unable to do so, fingers clawing at the dirt.
On your feet, says the voice. You’re not finished.
I roll onto my side, coughing. Okwembu tries to push me away, but she’s as weak as I am.
Finally, I struggle up to one knee. Okwembu puts a hand on my leg, trying to pull me down, so I grab her by the front of her shirt and lift her off the ground. My punch snaps her head back. She spits blood and fragments of tooth, cursing now, howling for help.
My second punch shuts her up. My aim is off this time, and I just graze the side of her head. I can’t stop my momentum, and I slide forward, falling on top of her.
For a moment, it’s as if we’re hugging each other, embracing in the dirt. She shoves me off, just managing to get an arm underneath me. I hold on, pulling her with me as I roll onto my back. Then I throw my head forward, smashing my forehead into her face, breaking her nose. She moans, long and low, but refuses to let go.
Is that all? the voice says to me. Is that everything you have? After what she’s done? Pathetic. You can do much better than that. You can show her pain.
My muscles wake up. I shove Okwembu off me, then stagger to my feet. The sky swims in front of me, and hot sweat trickles into my eyes. I barely notice. I’m going to kill her. I know this as sure as I know my own name. I’m going to send her into the next world with broken bones and torn flesh. I’m going to send her there screaming.
I circle her, watching her try to crawl away. She surprised me before, back on the Ramona’s bridge. Almost finished me, too. Not this time. This time, she’s all mine.
I rest my foot on her head. “Prakesh,” I say, pushing down hard. Okwembu’s cheek grinds into the dirt. “Amira,” I say, grinding down, until I can see the dirt entering her mouth, milling around her broken teeth. “Kevin. Yao. Royo.” Harder. “Carver.” I lean into it, putting all my weight on her head. “John Abraham Hale.”
Just before the last name, I lift my foot off her and slam it into her ribs. This time, I swear I feel one of them break. I fall backwards, landing on my ass in the churned-up sand.
“Please,” Okwembu says. The word is mushy, forced through swollen lips.
Enough. Finish it.
I get to my feet again, unsteady, my fine balance shot to pieces. I take one step towards Okwembu. Then another. She’s trying to crawl away again, and I almost laugh. Where are you going? Got somewhere to be?
I flip her over, onto her back. Then I straddle her, my knees pinning her shoulders to the ground.
I don’t know where I find the rock. It’s like I put my hand out and it’s right there, waiting for me. It’s stuck deep into the ground, and it’s too big for one hand anyway. I have to lean over to get it, ripping it out of the earth with both hands. It’s heavy, caked with clods of dirt.
I lift the rock over my head, holding it high. It takes me a second to understand what I’m feeling. It’s not anger now. It’s joy. A kind of terrible joy. I look down at Okwembu, one last time. The disbelief and shock in her eyes only makes the joy burn brighter.
“Will it help?”
Eric is standing in front of me, a few feet away.
I don’t know how long he’s been there, and there’s no one else with him. His arms are folded, his head tilted to one side. The expression on his face is completely blank.
The voice is shouting now, a deafening roar that only I can hear. The rock is heavy in my hands.
“Killing her.” Eric nods towards the thing on the ground. “Will it help?
When I don’t answer, he says, “You know, I had a daughter. We did. Harlan and I.”
As he speaks, he absently pulls the necklace out of his shirt–the bear’s tooth, hanging on a piece of tattered string. He rolls the tooth in his fingers.
I lower the rock, holding it at my chest. I want more than anything to finish this, to drive that rock into Okwembu’s face, but I can’t take my eyes off Eric. It’s then that I realise that I’m crying, tears staining my cheeks.
“She was killed,” Eric says. “Bear. I went and tracked it down myself, put eight bullets through its face.”
He looks at me, a sad smile on her face.
“It didn’t bring my Samantha back. And it didn’t help. I see her when I go to sleep. Asking me why I couldn’t save her.” He says this matter-of-factly, like it barely matters. “It was like I hadn’t just lost her. I’d lost something else, too. I could never get it back no matter how hard I looked.”
“This is different,” I say, forcing each word out.
Eric shrugs. “Maybe.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“I won’t try. But you’ll still see them. Everybody you’ve lost will always be there, whether you do this or not. It won’t change a single thing.”
Seconds go by. Eric watches me, his face still completely blank.
It would be so easy. The work of a single movement.
My arms give out. I let the rock drop to my waist, resting on Okwembu’s chest. I roll it off, and it thumps onto the ground.
The world comes back. Slowly, one piece at a time. Ocean. Sky. The trees, climbing up from the shoreline. Okwembu coughs, blood dribbling down her cheek, staring up at me in disbelief.
I get to my feet, and, with Eric watching, I walk over to one of the trees. It doesn’t have what I’m looking for, so I try a second, then a third. On the fourth tree, I find it: a clump of moss, wispy and threadlike, clinging to the trunk. I tear it off, rolling it in my hands.
I walk back over to Okwembu, and drop it on her chest.
“Old man’s beard,” I say. “It’s a fire starter. You can—” I swallow “—combine it with spruce sap, and it’ll burn forever. And there are lowbush cranberries you can eat. Little red berries, near tree roots. Burdock. Cattail. Ladyfern…”
I trail off, my voice giving out.
There’s something hanging round her neck. A data stick, on a thin lanyard. I reach down and pull, snapping the lanyard in two. Whatever’s on that stick, she doesn’t need it any more. I take a shaky breath, then turn and walk away.
The voice inside me is gone. Like it never existed.
“We can’t leave her here,” Eric says. “She’s injured.”
“She gets some food,” I say. “Medical supplies. Water. Let her take what she needs.” I see him about to protest, and look him right in the eyes. “But she stays here.”
I’ll let Okwembu live. But she’s going to have to survive out here, by herself. She’s never going to manipulate anybody ever again. From now on, everything she gets is going to come from her own two hands.
Eric stares at me for what feels like a whole minute. Then he nods.
I start walking, back towards the others.