Kingdom of the Blind

CHAPTER 17

Armand strained to reach the hand. And the body attached to it.

“What is it?” shouted Myrna.

Pinned behind him, she couldn’t see what he was doing, or why. But she could feel his almost frantic movements.

She tried to open her eyes, but the filth in the air kept forcing them closed. Billy, facing her, also had his eyes screwed shut. And his hands tightly clasped hers.

But Armand kept his eyes open, focused on the hand. Hoping, hoping to see movement as he stretched his arm out toward it.

He leaned as far forward as he could. But couldn’t. Quite. Reach.

“What?” asked Benedict. “What’s happening?”

“There’s someone buried with us. I see a hand.”

Benedict started to cough, and Armand eased up. Realizing he was pressing himself too hard against Benedict. Hurting the living to get to someone who was almost certainly dead.

They heard shouting and digging above them.

Still Armand reached out. In an unconscious imitation of The Creation of Adam. Two fingers, almost touching. But where Michelangelo had depicted the beginning of life, Armand knew this was the end. For someone.

“Who is it?” Armand asked.

Jean-Guy closed the door behind him and sat on the bench of the ambulance.

Armand was the last, by his choice, to be looked at by the medics. Benedict had been taken to the hospital for scans, given the injury to his head. After being checked out, Myrna and Billy were told it would be best to also go to the BMP Hospital, but both refused.

“All I want is to go home,” said Myrna. “Have a bath. See my friends.”

Jean-Guy sat across from Armand, who, despite having his eyes rinsed out several times by the paramedics, blinked against the irritation of the tiny bits of grit still in them.

His face was smeared with grime and sweat and water from the rinsing. But no blood.

Jean-Guy barely dared believe it. Not only was Gamache alive. They all were. Saved by a sturdy doorway.

“And Benedict,” said Armand, coughing a little and using a Kleenex to wipe the filthy saliva from his mouth. “He pulled us into that doorway. And then protected me.”

He could still feel the rubble hitting his arms, his legs. Crushing into him, into them, from all sides. His chest constricting, his breathing difficult.

What he could also feel, though not see, was Benedict. Using his own body to protect Armand.

And he could hear sobbing that died to whimpering.

The boy was terrified. Knowing he was about to die. And yet he’d chosen, as what might have been his last act, to try to save a near stranger, almost certainly at the cost of his own life.

Jean-Guy was nodding, agreeing.

He’d been just about the first one to them. Breaking free of the hands holding him back, he’d scrambled up the pile, slipping and stumbling on the snow and loose debris.

And then he heard them. Calling, crying out for help. Billy, Myrna, Benedict. But the one voice he was frantic to hear was silent. Panic had set in, and he began to dig with his hands. Throwing aside rubble he normally would never be able to shift.

Until the leather of his gloves was ripped away. Until he’d found them.

First Billy, then Myrna, then Benedict. And finally another face turned to him, squinting in the sunlight.

And the voice, rasping. “Jean-Guy, there’s someone else.”

While a rescue team, with dogs, dug out the body, Jean-Guy had helped free the others.

Myrna had some bruising on her legs, and Billy had a sprained ankle. Benedict had the blow to his head, and possibly other injuries from the original collapse and his night in the cold.

And Armand came away virtually unscathed.

Their heavy boots and heavy coats, thick tuques and mitts had, for the most part, protected them. Along with the doorway. And Benedict.

Armand blinked again, trying to bring Jean-Guy, sitting a couple feet from him in the ambulance, into focus. It felt like someone had smeared pebble-infused Vaseline into his eyes. Everything was opaque. The grit near blinding.

Like the others, he refused the offer of the hospital and, like the others, only wanted to go home.

But while Billy and Myrna had been driven back to Three Pines, Armand stayed. Needing to hear about the other one.

“They’ve just uncovered the body,” said Jean-Guy.

He held out a wallet.

Armand opened it and saw the driver’s license but couldn’t read it. He shut his eyes tight to clear his sight, but still the words, the face, were blurred.

He handed it back to Jean-Guy. “Can you read it for me?”

Myrna slipped deeper into the tub, until the hot water was at her chin and the suds were piled so high she couldn’t see over them.

“Oh God,” she whispered as the chill and terror subsided.

What the warm bath couldn’t do, the scent of lavender, the dark chocolate brownie, and the huge glass of red wine did.

Outside her bathroom door, she heard Bach. Concerto for Two Violins. And below that, unintelligible but recognizable, the murmured voice of Clara and very, very softly another sound.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

She closed her eyes.

Billy Williams rarely had baths and had never, ever had a bubble bath.

It wasn’t that he considered them unmanly, he just never considered them.

But Madame Gamache had invited him in, to get clean and warm. And to stay for a meal. He was cold and hungry and about to decline when he smelled the scent of roses and followed her down the hall, limping, to the bedroom and the large bathroom attached. The tub was full, and high with foam from bubbles that smelled like his grandmother’s rose garden.

It was too inviting to decline.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she said. “I’m going over to see how Myrna is doing.”

“Say—” began Billy, then stopped. Considering. “Say hi from me.”

“I will. There’re clean clothes on the bed and stew warming in the oven.”

When Madame Gamache had gone, he stepped into the bath, then sat. Sliding deep into the hot water. Feeling his taut muscles loosen as the water, and suds, rose over his aching body.

On a table beside the bath, he found a beer, his favorite kind. And a huge slice of pie. His favorite kind.

Lemon meringue.

Billy closed his eyes and sighed.

Amelia Choquet stood in the shower. Weak still. Bleary.

She’d wanted to take a bath. Long and hot. But Marc’s bathroom was so disgusting, with a ring of dirt around the tub, stains in the toilet. Hair, both long and stringy and short and curly, clogging the drains. She wanted to spend as little time in there as possible.

She closed her eyes and felt the warm water cascade over her throbbing head. With the cracked, cheap soap, she washed her body and her hair. And for a moment felt almost human. She imagined that when she opened her eyes, she’d be in the clean, bright shower rooms of the academy.

Amelia held on to the fantasy as long as she could. Then opened her eyes and started scrubbing. And scrubbing.

It was then she noticed something written on her left forearm. A new tattoo, among all the others.

She took a closer look. No. It wasn’t a tattoo. It was done in Magic Marker.

David.

That’s all it said. Just, David. And a number: 14.

It wasn’t her writing. Someone else had put it there.

She scrubbed harder. Until her arm was almost raw.

But the name wouldn’t go away.

David. 14.