The choppers bear down. I have to finish what I started with Teacup or I’ll join her where she lies.
I sight along the barrel of my pistol into the pale, angelic face at my feet, my victim, my cross.
And the roar of the Black Hawks’ approach makes my thoughts seem like the tiny squeaking whimpers of a dying rodent.
It’s like the rats, isn’t it, Cup? Just like the rats.
THE OLD HOTEL swarmed with vermin. The cold had killed off the cockroaches, but other pests survived, especially bedbugs and carpet beetles. And they were hungry. Within a day, all of us were covered with bites. The basement belonged to the flies, where corpses had been brought during the plague. By the time we checked in, most of the flies had died off. So many dead flies that their black husks crunched beneath our feet when we went down there the first day. That was also the last day we went into the basement.
The entire building reeked of rot, and I told Zombie that opening the windows would help dissipate the smell and kill off some of the bugs. He said he’d rather get bit and gag than freeze to death. As he smiled to drench you in his irresistible charm. Relax, Ringer. It’s just another day in the alien wild.
The bugs and the smell didn’t bother Teacup. It was the rats that drove her crazy. They had chewed their way into the walls, and at night their gnawing and scratching kept her (and therefore me) awake. She tossed and turned, whined and bitched and generally obsessed, because practically any other thoughts about our situation ended up in a bad place. In a vain attempt to distract her, I began teaching her chess, using a towel for a board and coins for the pieces.
“Chess is a stupid game for stupid people,” she informed me.
“No, it’s very democratic,” I said. “Smart people play, too.”
Teacup rolled her eyes. “You want to play just so you can beat me.”
“No, I want to because I miss playing it.”
Her mouth dropped open. “That’s what you miss?”
I spread the towel on the bed and positioned the coins. “Don’t decide how you feel about something before you try it.” I was around her age when I began. The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father’s study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.
“Pennies are pawns,” I told her. “Nickels are rooks, dimes are knights and bishops, quarters are kings and queens.”
She shook her head. Ringer is an idiot. “How can dimes and quarters be both?”
“Heads: knights and kings. Tails: bishops and queens.”
The coolness of the ivory. The way the felt-covered bases slid over the polished wood, like whispered thunder crashing. My father’s face bent over the board, lean and unshaven, red-eyed and purse-lipped, encrusted with shadows. The sickly sweet smell of alcohol and fingers that thrummed like hummingbirds’ wings.
It’s called the game of kings, Marika. Would you like to learn how to play?
“It’s the game of kings,” I said to Teacup.
“Well, I’m not a king.” She crossed her arms. So over me. “I like checkers.”
“Then you’ll love chess. Chess is checkers on steroids.”
My father tapping his chipped nails on the tabletop. The rats scratching inside the walls.
“Here’s how the bishop moves, Teacup.”
This is how the knight moves, Marika.
She jammed a stale piece of gum into her mouth and chewed angrily as the dry shards crumbled. Minty breath. Whiskey breath. Scratch, scratch, tap, tap.
“Give it a chance,” I begged her. “You’ll love it. I promise.”
She grabbed the corner of the towel. “Here’s what I feel.” I saw it coming, but still flinched when she flung the towel and the coins exploded into the air. A nickel popped her in the forehead and she didn’t even blink.
“Ha!” Teacup shouted. “I guess that’s checkmate, bitch!”
Reacting without thinking, I slapped her. “Don’t ever call me that. Ever.”
The cold made the slap more painful. Her bottom lip poked out, her eyes welled up, but she didn’t cry.
“I hate you,” she said.
“I don’t care.”
“No, I hate you, Ringer. I hate your fucking guts.”
“Cussing doesn’t make you grown-up, you know.”
“Then I guess I’m a baby. Shit, shit, shit! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She started to touch her cheek. She stopped herself. “I don’t have to listen to you. You aren’t my mother or my sister or anybody.”
“Then why have you been latched on to me like a pilot fish since we left camp?”
Now a tear did fall, a single drop that trailed down her scarlet cheek. She was so pale and thin, her skin as luminescent as one of my father’s chess pieces. I was surprised the slap hadn’t shattered her into a thousand bits. I didn’t know what to say or how to unsay what had been said, so I said nothing. Instead, I laid a hand on her knee. She pushed my hand away.
“I want my gun back,” she said.
“Why do you want your gun back?”
“So I can shoot you.”
“Then you’re definitely not getting your gun back.”
“Can I have it back to shoot all the rats?”
I sighed. “We don’t have enough bullets.”
“Then we poison them.”
“With what?”
She threw up her hands. “Okay, so we set the hotel on fire and burn them all up!”
“That’s a great idea, only we happen to be living here, too.”
“Then they’re gonna win. Against us. A bunch of rats.”
I shook my head. I didn’t follow her. “Win—how?”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. Ringer the moron. “Listen to them! They’re eating it. And pretty soon we won’t be living here because there won’t be any here to live in!”
“That’s not winning,” I pointed out. “They wouldn’t have a home, either.”
“They’re rats, Ringer. They can’t think that far ahead.”
Not just the rats, I thought that night after she finally fell asleep next to me. I listened to them inside the walls, chewing, scratching, screeching. Eventually, with the help of weather, insects, and time, the old hotel would collapse. In another hundred years, only the foundation would remain. In a thousand, nothing at all. Here or anywhere. It would be as if we had never existed. Who needs the kind of bombs used at Camp Haven when they can turn the elements themselves against us?
Teacup was pressed tight against me. Even under mounds of covers, the cold squeezed hard. Winter: a wave they didn’t have to engineer. The cold would kill off thousands more.
Nothing that happens is insignificant, Marika, my father told me during one of my chess lessons. Every move matters. Mastery is in understanding how much each time, every time.
It nagged at me. The problem of rats. Not Teacup’s problem. Not the problem with rats. The problem of rats.
I SEE THE CHOPPERS closing in through the leafless branches clothed in white, three black dots against the gray. I have seconds.