We stand here, staring at each other, too shocked to say or do anything at first.
Part of me wants to kill Doom for locking Sarah out like that, but part of me feels he just might have saved our lives. That doesn’t stop us from yelling at him. Nemesis is the first to advance, her fists tightly clenched like she’s ready to punch him out. “You left Sarah out there! You left Dorothy and Cromwell and Linus and you left Sarah out there!”
Doom stands his ground. “You saw what happened to Linus and Dorothy and Cromwell! I just saved you from having to watch Sarah die as well.” He says this with the best big-boy voice he can muster, but a slight waver in his tone gives away how much he must be shaking inside. I watch these two face off and can feel the heat of raw emotion; and while I watch I remember my mom telling me once that it is easier to let yourself feel anger than heartache.
Mom’s eyes are blazing with rage, but she says nothing. She’s taking slow, even breaths in an attempt to calm herself down. I look around and see the rest are in various stages of shock. Mouse and Nadia are sweating and hyperventilating. Houston and Kaboom are looking down hard at the floor as if there’s a solution to be found between their feet. Jesse is sitting on the floor with her knees tucked under her chin and she’s rocking back and forth with unfocused eyes. As I look at the effects of Doom’s actions, I wonder just how much worse it would have been to see Sarah bitten.
Nemesis and Doom are facing each other, their faces just inches apart. To my surprise, it’s Nemesis who’s the first to cave. I can see her shoulders start to heave as her body gives in to a soul-twisting sob. It tears at our minds and hearts as her mournful wail echoes throughout the theater. “She’s just a child!” she groans. “She’s a little girl, and we left her to die.”
That was it for us. Whatever shred of strength we had to cling on to gets drowned in an ocean of grief. We collapse to the floor one by one and disappear behind floods of tears. There are no hugs, no reassuring touches, no leaning on each other. We are adrift in our own worlds, hurting too much to reach out to anyone else. We howl and cry and sob, and as we weep the sounds of shuffling and scuffling outside the doors stop, as if the recently dead are listening in on our collective sorrow.
I feel like I will never be able to lift my head again, but eventually my tears are spent, and all I can picture is the little girl we’ve abandoned. “Little girl lost,” is how I used to think of her, the child who was ten going on fifty after losing her family in a rush to get here. I look over to Jess and see that she’s now lying on the floor on her side, her legs still tightly tucked under her chin, her eyes screwed shut. Mom’s sitting Indian style cradling Jesse’s head in her lap, her own head bowed down low over Jesse’s, her hair partially covering her face like the branches of a weeping willow. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Houston scooting sideways to join them.
I crawl over until I’m close enough to lay my head on Mom’s shoulder. I take one of Jesse’s tense hands in mine, carefully unfolding each finger from her tightly balled-up fist until I can intertwine my fingers with hers. Houston takes the other and does the same, but Jesse’s not holding on to either of our hands; she just goes limp. She’s breathing though, the deep full breaths of a child who’s tumbled down a mineshaft of exhaustion.
I’m ready to give in to that myself. This feels like the disaster fatigue we experienced the first time we survived the dead, right after we reached Ghost’s house. Ah, Ghost. I expect to feel the usual sharp pang of loss at his memory, but I’m all out of feelings. In their place is a trickle of tears and the numb thought of what he’d do if he were here. Would he have shut the door on Dorothy and Mr. Cromwell? On Linus? On Sarah? Could he have figured out something better to do that would have saved us all? I doubt it. I don’t think there are any solutions, and I don’t want to backslide into the same trap others fall into when they give the departed superhuman qualities that didn’t exist when they were alive.
I feel movement all around me and notice that the others are dragging themselves over to our little family group. We’ve cried ourselves out on our own and now there’s a need to be part of something, a need to touch someone just to make sure they’re real and to be accepted in return. One by one they join us, some only resting a hand on one of our arms, some leaning against each other for support. We rest there in a mound of melancholia, well…everyone except Doom. Doom is still at the doors, sitting on the floor, arms wrapped tightly around his legs as he draws them closer and closer into his chest. He observes us with tired red eyes that had been full of tears moments earlier. He looks more like a sad little boy than a young man. There’s no spark left in his dark brown eyes. It’s as if he lost his soul in a bid to save ours. He’s Doom, the anti-hero.
Mom’s hoarse and forced words cut through the gloom. “John,” she says in a low and raspy voice. “Come over here and join us. You’re one of us, and we need to stay together.”
Doom slowly lifts his head, looks at each one of us, and decides to hesitantly creep over and join our group. He comes close, but he doesn’t touch. An uneasy peace settles over our little pile of people. I think we would have settled down to sleep that way if it wasn’t for what happened next.
Someone starts knocking on the theater door.