Deuces Down

“That’s what the virus did to me. It left me a permanent sixteen. I suppose I’ll always look this way. My body’s slowly hardening, calcifying. I came here because my mother was one of the Relocated; they knew I might have been infected, but no one was quite sure at first. I know now-and I don’t need the blood test to tell me. It’s moving through the rest of me now, faster and faster. I can’t turn my neck, can’t bend over easily, can’t bend my knees or my elbows all the way. And it’s spreading inside, or so the doctors tell me. Sometime soon…” She continued to smile; she had no choice. But twin tears trickled down the ceramic gloss of her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. It was the same thing he had told her, the man who’d been Moira’s father.

“Don’t be sorry for me,” she said. “Be sorry for her.”

The man glanced back at the cottage. His gaze moved across drystone walls, erected over a century ago. Stones that would still be there long after she was gone. “Your daughter carries the virus too.” There was no question in his voice. Caitlyn nodded in reply.

“Aye. She does. When they came out with the blood test, I had her checked.”

“You said they sterilized the Relocated…”

“They did. Maybe they botched my surgery. Maybe my tubes grew back. Maybe the virus wouldn’t allow it. Who knows? Maybe I should never have left the island.” She took a deep breath, feeling the pain in her chest as muscles resisted expanding. “And maybe I should never have come back here after I did.” Caitlyn lifted her arm and daubed at the tears with the sleeve of her cotton sweater. Her arm moved like a clumsy stick. “Have you ever done something you felt was right, but you knew at the same time was incredibly stupid, something you knew would end up possibly hurting you more than you could bear?”

“Yeah,” Gary answered, his voice no more than a whisper. “I know that feeling real well. Real fucking well.”

Inside the cottage, Moira turned on one of the cassette tapes Caitlyn had bought her at the store in Churchill Bay. Her high, little-girl voice sang along with a bright, cheery children’s tune. “She carries the virus, aye,” Caitlyn said, smiling at the sound. “It’s in her blood, from me and from her father who had a minor ace, and if she’s like almost all who carry it as a latent, it will manifest itself when she hits puberty. When that time comes, I have a 99% chance of watching her either die in agony or becoming horribly disfigured for the rest of her life.” She turned back to Gary, feeling her face still trapped in the eerie smile. “I could have had an abortion. But I was scared, and I was still in love, and I was stupid. I should have had an abortion. Instead, I listened to him, the father who said he’d love me forever and who told me that after all the chance that the virus would get passed on to her was just one in four and that I should have the baby. I promised him I would. I kept my promise. And I found out that for him ‘forever’ was only until he fell in lust with some nat woman he met in the pub. By then I was so big with Moira that it was too late to do anything but carry her to term. Now I have to look at her every day and know that I’ll lose her soon… or worse. I have to look at the eyes of the people here on Rathlin with me, who stare at me and wonder what kind of monster would condemn her child to that.”

Caitlyn took a deep, sobbing breath. “That’s something I wonder myself, every day.”

Someone was pounding on the door. “Caitlyn!” a man’s voice called. “Aye ye in there?”

“I’m here, Duncan,” Caitlyn called back. She saw Moira sitting up her bed alongside. The clock on the nightstand said 7:00 AM and the sun was barely up. “Go on, girl, and let Constable MacE

“What about the black man, mama?” she asked, a bit wide-eyed.

“He’ll have heard Constable MacE

Moira jumped from the bed and padded away. It took Moira several seconds to roll stiffly from the bed and get to her feet. Pulling her nightgown close around her, she walked lock-jointed into the front room. The couch where the stranger had lain the night before was empty, the blanket on the floor. Moira was at the door, holding it open just a crack. “Constable MacE

“I’m coming, Duncan,” Caitlyn called. She patted Moira on the head as she reached her. “Why don’t you stay here, darling? Get yourself some cereal…”

The sunrise had left a damp and heavy morning fog in its wake. Two figures stood in the mist. Duncan MacE

The Melted Man, with ru

The man behind MacE

“I see that you know who I am,” the man said, the voice so low a whisper that Caitlyn had to lean forward to hear it at all. “You don’t seem too surprised. Would that mean you know why I’m here?”

Caitlyn glanced at MacE

“He was halfway across the field, Brigadier,” the man called. “Must’ve slid out the back when he heard us coming. A bit of a hard run, the way he’s sweating, but he stopped when I showed him the gun.”

“Excellent work, Radar,” Flint whispered. He turned back to Caitlyn. One eyebrow raised slowly in question; otherwise, the face remained entirely impassive.

“He’s a friend of mine,” she told the stone giant. “He’s been here a few days now. He told me he was going for a walk around the island. I don’t believe we have a law on Rathlin against that.”

MacE