“And so,” I finish, “Wesley and the princess Buttercup were married.”
A little girl with a fox-like face and bright red fur asks, “Did they live happily ever after?”
“Well,” I tell her. “That’s a whole ‘nother story.”
“Oh,” she says.
A little boy yells, “Tell it!”
“I’m sorry, guys,” I say, “but I think your parents want you back.”
“Awww,” they chorus. I shrug my shoulders and try to look innocent. I’d go on telling ‘em stories for the rest of the afternoon, but we have to get going, and Helen insists on getting a decent price. I’d argue with her, but it’s almost all we have to live on at this point.
“You better get going...”
“Will you come back and tell us another story, Uncle Mikey?”
“Maybe someday,” I tell them. “Right now, we’re going to see my brother in the Carolinas.”
“The Resistance?” An adult voice. I look up into the eyes of an overgrown alley cat.
Pretty, in a take-no-prisoners sort of way. Sexy, almost.
“Yeah.” No harm in saying that much.
“Raphael, right?”
“You--”
“Stay right there,” she says, and disappears in a flash of grey fur.
I’m still staring after her when Helen touches my shoulder. “Not a bad haul,” she says. “We should have enough gas to get us in the right state, and we’ve got some more food and fresh water...”
“That woman knew my brother,” I tell her.
“Which one?”
”Raph.”
“Maybe she recognized the voice... you sound a lot alike.” She picks up our signboard and folds it back up, and I walk to the back of the van and open the door for her.
“I don’t think so... not from the way she said it...”
“So what do you think?”
“I... I don’t know.” I fold up the director’s chair and put it in the van next to the sign.
“So is she coming back?”
“She told me to wait here.”
“You think that’s safe?”
“Aw, you can take ‘em.” I stand up and put my arm around her waist, and she brushes the curved edge of her claws against my neck. Feels good.
“So you’re going to wait.” It isn’t a question.
I nod.
“Mike...”
“I know I’ll see him when we get there. But...”
“This better not be a setup.”
“Look, if you really don’t--”
“No. He’s your brother. We’ll stay.” She sighs and puts her arms around me. “What are you going to do if any of your little friends have actually seen the movie?”
“What, The Princess Bride?” I grin. “I’ll tell them all about the brave Inigo Montoya’s adventures as the Dread Pirate Roberts... besides, I hardly ever tell ‘em that one.”
“You’ve been telling it more lately.”
“I’m runnin’ out of new ones.”
“It’s not like you,” she says softly. She’s been worried about me, I see it in her eyes, in the way she takes in a breath and considers before says anything to me.
“I’m getting tired, that’s all.”
“You worried?”
“About what?”
“About your brothers. About what’ll happen when you do find Raphael. About what you might find out...”
“Nah.”
She pushes me back a little, looks into my eyes. “You sure?”
Hard to lie to her when she’s looking right at me. “Maybe a little.”
She looks up, suddenly. “Shit,” she says. “Look at the sky... we gotta get in the van.” Wasn't enough to flood half the country and kill three-quarters of the population; stupid bombs have destroyed the weather. Can't even see stuff coming anymore; every storm blows outa nowhere. This is a nasty one; serious rain.
She asks, "You wanna get some sleep?"
"We might as well," I tell her, and we stretch out on the floor.
A crash of lightning wakes me up; I look out the window. Still looks like we're on dry ground; couldn't do much about it even if we were.
Helen stirs a little, and I lie back down beside her to soothe her. Sometimes I think I should ask her to marry me, but I know she's as apprehensive as I am.
We've both lost too many people; her daughters, my brothers, my wife...
Please, she said. Don't cry, Mike, at least it's not hurting any more...
Sara, oh God...
She was my angel. I'll never find anyone that sweet again, that kind or forgiving...she cried so hard when Rapture died and Rapture'd treated her like shit...
Those eyes. Those big beautiful eyes...
We were only married two years when she started getting sick. I thought we were clear after the radiation sickness and the plagues died down, but then the cancer started...and it started all over again, people getting sick, people dying...
I'll be all right, she'd say. It's nothing.
But after a while she didn't bother pretending any more. Even if we'd had the old hospitals they couldn't have done anything with her, she was so different... even her internal organs were off. They couldn't tell what was normal, how could they tell what was wrong?
Helen rolls over and smiles at me in her sleep. Her hand reaches out and scratches against my plastron.
I think sometimes I should love her more.
I think something inside me stops me from getting too close to her, from letting her mean too much to me. Something that remembers how much it hurt when Sara died, and doesn’t want to ever hurt that much again.
Some nights, Helen gets scared, starts shaking and clawing out in her sleep... I don't even think she remembers it in the mornings, never tells me if she does.
I pull her close to me, bury my hands and my face in her fur, taking comfort in her warmth, the soft rhythm of her breathing.
Noises... someone outside the van. Helen snarls and starts to rise, but I hold her back.
“It was him,” the cat-girl’s voice insists.
“Sure.” Raphael sounds as cynical as ever... as always.
“Look, how many mutant turtles could there be telling stories and calling themselves Mikey?”
“Alex,” he growls, “if you’re wrong about this...”
Helen tries to hold me back, but I’m already flying out the window... hit him hard and maybe-- he’s down--
“Alex,” he says again, “you are gonna be in such--”
He pulls a sai out, but I catch his legs before he can do anything and send him sprawling into the mud.
He looks up and I catch enough breath to start laughing. “I’m still faster--”
“Mike! You-- you--” He spits mud out of his mouth and I laugh even harder.
He leaps at me, but I’ve already seen it coming and manage to duck the attack. But then I’m mired in the mud, which makes it easy for him to spin around and...
Damn, this mud is cold--
“You’re still faster--” he spits out. I get up and leap at him; he uses it to his advantage, slams my face into the side of the van. “But I’m still better.”
I can hear Alex’s voice: “Are they always like this?”
“You got me,” Helen says.
“Aw, no,” I say, as Raph grabs for my head again and I dive to the ground to avoid him. “Sometimes we’re worse.”
A wash in the river and half a bottle of homemade beer later, I’m trying to explain how Helen and I met.
“I came back to the farmhouse, figured I’d try to find you guys--”
“But he found me,” Helen says. “And the creeps who were trying to get a free meal.”
I used the key, unlocked the back door. How was I supposed to know there was anyone staying there?
“I know you got meat,” a male voice said. “I can smell it.”
“Look,” a woman’s voice, “I’ve only got enough for myself. You’re just going to have to stay somewhere else. Look, you’re not very far from Northampton, I’m sure you’ll find someone there, you could work for them...”
“Lady,” the man answered, “work is not what we want.”
I move closer to the kitchen, finally caught sight of the four of them. One human, one... well, he used to be human, a mutant cat of some sort, and her. Weasel was my first thought. I got my chucks ready, figured I’d stay to the back, wait until she needed me.
"Pretty," the unrecognizable mutant said. The tall guy, the one that was still human, nodded.
“You better leave,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” the human snarled, and grabbed at her.
She was a blur, slashing out with those claws, ripping him open--
The cat reached out for her, and she kicked him away, hard.
The third one was already shuffling for the door, and once the cat took a good look at what was left of his friend-- mostly hamburger-- he was gone too.
It was impressive.
And I realized I had to say something. “You’re a hell of a fighter.”
She spun toward me, claws out, and I realized sneaking up on her had been a mistake. Fighting her would be messy; I knew I could take her, but not without hurting us both. "Please, I don't want to fight, I can explain..."
"Make it quick." She lifted a hand to her face, started cleaning the blood from her claws, her eyes never leaving me.
"I didn't want to panic them, I was afraid they might... hurt you...” I look over at the body. “Sounds pretty silly now...”
She frowned suspiciously. "You wanted to take me down..."
"No, no, please...do you, do you have a name?"
"Not that I'm going to tell you." She looked down at her claws, realized what she'd been doing, pulled her hand away from her mouth with a start. And I realized she was more afraid of herself than she was of me.
She pulled herself together. "What are you doing here, then? Just passing through?" Last time I heard sarcasm that thick was when I was still living with Raph.
"I... I used to live here. I was hoping that I could find one of my brothers..."
She frowns. "Brothers?"
"Yeah... I thought maybe one of them had come back here..."
"What's your name?"
"Mike."
"Michaelangelo," she said softly. "The writer."
"Yeah... how..."
"I...I'm sorry." The menace disappeared from her face. "I read... I read your journal, and your poems, and... I thought you were probably dead, so many people..."
She looked down again at her claws, still glistening with blood. "I used to be a vegetarian, for God's sake..."
It’s only later, after Helen and Alex both asleep, that I tell Raph what happened that night.
"Hey," she said, and I could see her standing in the doorway. "Mike?"
"Everything okay?"
"Well..."
"C'mon in," I said. I sat up and turned the bedside lamp on.
"I... I don't know as I should... I probably stink, and..."
"No, no, c'mon..." She smelled kinda musky, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
Not unpleasant at all...
"There... Mike, I used to be human. I used to be a normal human woman, with normal-- normal..." Her hands kept moving, along the folds of her bathrobe, smoothing the fur back on the sides of her face...
"What's wrong?"
"I... I've lived out here alone. For a long time. And..." She walked in, sat on the side of the bed. "There haven't been many... any people here, really, I mean, I go into town for a couple hours, but..."
She put a hand on either side of her neck, rubbed back and forth.
"I think... I think having so many... males here, for so long... I think..."
I touched her arm, and before I had a chance to think, her mouth was on mine and I was pulling her into bed...
I don't think we said another word to each other that night.
“In heat,” Raph says. “I’d heard that it happened sometimes...”
“Alex doesn’t--”
“No,” he says. “Alex doesn’t do that. Good thing.”
“Why?”
“We haven’t exactly had a busy... social life, if you get the idea.” He hasn’t touched the beer tonight; something he’s not telling me.
“Go on.”
“I’ve been takin’ care of April. I can’t leave her alone, Mike, it’s like it’s not even her any more. I can hardly recognize her. I think she’ll be okay with Don, it’s the only reason I dared leave her this time... Christ, we hadn’t had sex until this weekend, hardly even had a chance to fool around...” He shakes his head. “April’s such a damn mess.”
I put my arm around his shoulders.
“I mean, I understand it,” he says after a long time. “We don’t know where Casey is, we don’t know where Shadow is, her daughter’s gone, some bastards raped her... we’re probably lucky she’s still alive.”
“We’re lucky we’re all alive.”
“Yeah... Mike?”
“Yeah?”
“You think Splinter...”
“I don’t know, Raph. I mean, I feel like I’d know, but... but I don’t know.”
“We’ve talked about it some... Leo’s convinced he’s alive, but...”
“But he’s Leo.”
“Exactly.” He smiles, half-snickers. “He’s gonna shit his shell when he sees you... geez...”
“Feel like I’m late to the party.”
“You got here,” he says. “That’s what counts.”
Helen’s awake when I come back in. She reaches out to me, and I pull her into my arms, let her nestle her muzzle by my neck. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she says softly.
“You’re worried.”
“A little.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I was talking to Alex... she says your friend April’s in pretty rough shape.”
“And?”
“And... what if... Mike, you know what trauma does to people, does to their minds... what if she’s wrong?”
“What do you mean, what if she’s wrong?”
“What if there isn’t a baby, Mike? What if the whole thing is just...”
“You don’t know April.”
“You don’t either, Mike, not any more, not from what Alex said.”
“So what do you want me to do? Just abandon her? Abandon my brothers?”
“Mike, don’t get upset, I just... I don’t know.” She turns in my arms, pulls my face back so she can see it better in the faint moonlight. “It just worries me.”
“Helen, Christian is out there. And he wants us dead. That’s no secret.”
“I know... I know.” She shakes her head. “I’ll be fine, Mike. Forget I said anything.”
“Helen--”
But she’s already turned her back to me.
We’re still laughing over the look on Leo’s face when we get to Raph’s apartment.
“I told you he’d shit--”
“He should be used to it by now--”
“I think he thought you’d have been here by now...” Raph pulls the key out of his pocket, hasn’t finished turning it in the lock when the door opens.
“Raph, get in here--”
“Don, what--”
“She hasn’t said anything since you left. Nothing. We can’t get her to eat, can’t get her to move--”
“She in her room?”
Don must nod, because the next thing I know Raph’s gone.
“Mike?” Don looks almost as stunned as Leo did.
“Hey--” I throw my arms around him. Still feels weird hugging all that metal.
“Mike, Mike, geez, come in, hey, who’s this?”
“This is Helen, and Alex is back there somewhere--”
Don lets go of me, shakes Helen’s hand, drags us all into the apartment. “Nice to meet ya, Helen, where the hell have you been?”
“Chicago.”
“I shoulda known. Sara?”
“Yeah.”
”You guys--”
”We got married. She died. Cancer--”
“Aw, Mike,” he says, stopping long enough to really look at me. “I’m so sorry--”
And then the wailing starts. Shrieking, really, it doesn’t even sound human.
“Nice neighbors,” Helen says wryly.
“Not the neighbors,” Don tells her.
She frowns. “That’s April?”
He nods. “Only sound she’s made since he left--”
“Don?” Alex, her hand on the door.
“Alex, please--”
“Tell him I’m sorry, Don.”
“Alex...”
She shakes her head.
I can make out Raph’s voice now over the screaming. “Come on, April, it’s okay, you’re safe, we’re here... come on, it’s all right...”
“I can’t live like this,” Alex says, and she’s gone.
--end chapter four--
On to Chapter Five |
