Vicious Memories

Chapter 108

Nobody was in the right state of mind to choose.

Neema's body lay dead and warm on the ground.

Few a few minutes we all looked around for direction, hoping for someone to pull us back from the brink. We'd gotten so used to acting as a cohesive whole that it seemed strange to be this fragmented; eyes flicked to Gabriel, to Arun, to Alice, to me. I wanted to help, but given the revelations about my part in all this it didn't feel right.

"We can't relax," Arun finally said. His bald head gleamed silver and pearl. "There's still more work to do."

His single-minded, pragmatic nature was a blessing. He broke us into teams. A group to gather the dead, a group to tend the wounded, a group to distribute food and water. We decided to leave the Strangers to their own devices. We weren't going to take our vengeance upon them, so it seemed a fine compromise.

An hour passed with barely a word. The moon had shifted by the time we gathered again, smoke and musk from the bonfire billowing toward us from thirty yards away. Rain dripped continuously, beating a march for a fractured army. Everyone looked tired, cautiously hopeful.

The flowers and leaves of the monkeypod tree remained tightly furled upon themselves as Gabriel walked through the crowd to stand over the row of bodies laid out near the trunk. If it could talk, this tree could have told our whole story from start to finish. It had watched over the villagers for nearly two years, stolidly providing a place for them to gather and mourn when they had to, acting as a beacon that let them know they were home as it towered over everything around it. It was almost as much a villager as any of the rest of us, and I wondered if I would miss it, too.

"We're gathered here today," Gabriel said, "to say a final farewell to our friends who will not have the chance to leave this island with the rest of us."

Eight bodies lay softly in the grass before him. There hadn't been enough time to dig graves for all of them, so we'd extracted a promise from Bev that they would be taken care of, buried peacefully in the place where they'd made new and respectable lives for themselves.

"It's a terrible thing," Gabriel continued, "to lose so many friends right before the finish line. Who will speak for them?"

Alice stepped forward, and our fingers separated. My arm swung back to my side heavily. She kissed each dead villager on the forehead as she passed, forced to press her lips to the clean cloth covering Neema's face last of all. My heart was raw as she stood up and began to speak.

"Neema was the most intelligent person on this island. I knew that, you knew that, the sun and stars knew that. it was obvious. She never hesitated to delight us with interesting facts or humorous connections..."

Alice's halo of strength radiated like golden light from a watchtower, as bright as the inner circle of her eyes and as powerful as the moon overhead. She spoke for all eight of the dead, and when she finished she didn't dance but placed a single flower from the ring around the tree in their clasped hands. After she was done there was time for each of us to say personal farewells to the dead. I took my time before each body, searching for things to say about those I didn't know while trying best to articulate my thoughts toward those I did.

When we were done we all came back together at the edge of the tree's sphere of influence, our heels on the line of flowers ringing the graveyard. In the moonlight we searched each other's faces with uncertain eyes.

If ever there was a collective wish strong enough to stop time it would have been ours. Clocks would have fallen off classroom walls, watches would have ceased ticking their anthems, alarms would have gone dark. But time, as it always did, continued to roll on.