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“Yeah,” I nodded, glad that he’d managed to follow my disjointed train of logic. “She’s all et up with guilt, as my aunt would say. She said that they blame her for everything. Maybe it wasn’t just whiny self-flagellation; maybe the fire really was her fault. ”
“How?” Nick slipped his back down the glass and it squeaked where his shirt was still damp. When he was sitting next to me, Christ, and Jamie, he added, “If the fire was in 1919, she would’ve been just a kid. ”
Jamie piped up then, leaning on the glass instead of sitting to join us. “Kids do stupid destructive things all the time without meaning to. ”
“True,” I said. “But how many kids ever do things that stupid? I mean, stupid enough to burn down buildings and kill people?”
Nick looked at me like I’d just beamed down from a pyramid-shaped spacecraft. “Do you even watch the news at all? Ever? Even sometimes, just because I’m on it? That sort of thing happens all the time. ”
“I do watch the news sometimes, sure. But never just because youre on it,” I clarified, even though it was practically a bald-faced lie. “I’ve got the Internet, too. Fascinating stuff, real life. ”
“Fascinating and fucked up,” Nick said. “More fucked up than you’d ever believe, the stuff that happens every day. ”
“Today? Sure. But eighty years ago, a little girl burned down a church full of people? Or maybe,” I thought out loud, “maybe she did something that got the church burned down. She wouldn’t need to have struck the match to feel awful about it. Especially not if . . . ”
“What?” Jamie asked. He was still eyeing Christ like a mother hen, but Christ didn’t do anything except sit there and pant.
“Nick, you said—you said you saw a girl. Didn’t you? A little girl, maybe, what—ten or twelve years old? That’s how old Caroline would’ve been, give or take. What if that little girl was a friend of hers?”
Nick bobbed his head slowly, thinking right along with me. “I see where you’re going with this, and I like it. The church burns down and her little friend dies. If she thought it was all her fault—whether it was or not—that could easily be the sort of trauma that would oh, say, make her batshit insane. ”
“Thus the ensuing institutionalization. ”
“Who? What? Who’s Caroline?” Jamie wanted to know.
Nick tried to fill him in the long way. “Well, about eighty years ago, we think—”
“She’s the Lady in White,” I said, giving him the shorthand that would let him fill in the rest.
“For real? In here? You went looking for her?”
“It was this guy’s idea,” I said, jacking my thumb over at Nick. “And yes, we went looking for her, and yes, we found her. Furthermore, we think she has something to do with what-ever’s going on down at the river. ”
“What’s going on down at the river?” Jamie asked.
Christ snorted, but didn’t offer any information on the matter.
“You mean you don’t know?” Everyone seemed to know—even Dave, stuck high on top of Signal Mountain, well out of the reach of any dead, grasping hands.
“Why would I? Becca and me went up the hill back to her place, just like we told you. We found him on the way. I sent her on up, then dragged this asshole from pillar to post, trying to find a shelter that would take him. But they’re disassembling the shelters and moving people out, pushing back farther into the city—away from the river. I figured it was because the water’s still rising. ”
“Oh, it’s still rising,” Christ said without looking up. “But that’s not the problem. It’s just the catalyst for the problem. That’s what I think, anyway. ”
“Just this once, let’s pretend that what you think might be helpful,” Jamie said. He was joking more than not, but it still sounded harsh. I guess we all sounded harsh, by then. We were all so worn out.
“All right, let’s do,” Christ obliged. His voice dropped to its usual timbre of skepticism and cattiness, and even though it was defensive, it was him—not the tattered little guy who could hardly breathe who had been there a moment ago.
“I know what I saw,” he told us. “They’re zombies, of a kind. They’re dead, and they move, and they kill—but they aren’t totally mindless. They want something, and whatever it is, they can’t have it. So they kill. They kill everyone they can reach. ”
“Don’t you think that’s a little alarmist?” My caution came out like flippancy, but it wasn’t.
“Alarmist? Alarmist? Take a look around, for my sake, would you? Look at this place—look at this city. It’s as bad as it can possibly get, isn’t it? But that’s what a tragedy is!”
“What? Settle down, Christ. ” Jamie put a hand on his shoulder as if it would hold him down.
“It’s when you think things have gotten as bad as they can possibly get . . . but you’re only halfway there. That’s what a tragedy is. That’s what this is. So the city’s flooded, and that’s bad. That’s really fucking bad, but before TVA came along it used to happen all the time. ”
“Not like this. ” Nick said it with a certainty that implied he’d looked it up. Maybe he’d been doing some research in his free time.
