“You just go upstairs and turn left and then go out the back door. There’s a gate in the fence. You go through there. Okay?”
He touched my arm and then I felt my body get tense and shake.
“Wait ten minutes. And then you can go out there. You understand?”
“Yes,” I said.
The Fat Man got up. His pants were hanging down below his waist so he pulled them back up. He walked up the stairs and did not look back.
chapter thirty-four
I do not know how long I waited, except that every time I tried to count to sixty seconds I would forget how many times I had done it. It took me a long time to stand up. My pants were wet and so I did not want to wear them anymore. The wet was burning my legs. Somewhere in the darkness of the basement, the Grendel was growling.
I closed my eyes and told it to be quiet, to be quiet, and I said it out loud: “BE QUIET.”
I went up the stairs slowly, trying not to make noise.
Toucan was talking to someone in the living room. I walked the way the Fat Man told me, out into the backyard, then started running to the fence where the gate was.
When I got to the gate, I saw AK47’s car. It was parked out front. She had found me.
She had come to save me, and she was inside with Toucan and the Grendels.
I sat down on the ground and held my head and told everything to SHUT UP, all of the bad things that had happened. And I thought of the Viking woman in the grave who had become so legendary that now a thousand years after she was dead, people were still talking about her.
I went to a window and tried to look inside but could only see through a crack in the window. When I put my nose to the glass I could see AK47 in the living room and Toucan with her.
The Fat Man came up behind me and tried to take my arm. “Are you crazy? I told you to get out of here.”
“My friend is inside,” I said, pulling my arm away.
“What do you think is going to happen if he finds out you’re gone?”
“I need to save her. Will you help me?” I said. “You can help me defeat him.”
“You need to get out of here, is what you need to do.” The Fat Man shook his head, said, “Man” again, and started walking away.
My legs still burned with the pee, and my stomach hurt and my face from where I had been hit. Everything had turned out wrong. And I was scared, more scared than I had ever been in my entire life. I remembered being scared of Uncle Richard when he hurt Gert with the beer bottle and yelled at him.
But I was tired of being scared of the Grendels, and of villains like Toucan and Uncle Richard who want to hurt innocent people.
Even without my Viking sword, which was inside somewhere, I decided I would fight and save AK47 and Gert and the World.
Standing up as tall as I could, I whispered, “Skeggǫld, skálmǫld, skildir ro klofnir,” a Viking battle cry, and told Tyr, the Viking god of war, that I needed strength and courage.
* * *
I went into the house, through the back door, and then down the hallway, toward the living room where Toucan and AK47 were arguing. I passed through the kitchen with the empty brown beer bottles and cigarettes in the sink and pot in bags and playing cards spread out on the table.
As I got closer I could hear Toucan and AK47 talking. Then I saw them. AK47 was standing across from Toucan.
She was holding Gert’s gun in her hand.
“Where’s Zelda?” AK47 was yelling.
Toucan did not have his arms up. He was still smoking and said he had no idea where I was.
That was when AK47 saw me and said my name, lowering the gun so that it was not pointing right at Toucan anymore.
That was enough time for him to attack.
Toucan was very fast and before AK47 could protect herself he hit her the way he had hit me, and then he took the gun away from her. My brain started speeding and I picked up the ashtray and threw it at him. It bounced off his arm and fell to the ground.
“Get away from her!” I shouted.
Now he was distracted by me, and AK47 tackled Toucan just like Gert tackled other players in football. She threw herself into his stomach, and the air went out of his mouth and he fell like a tree.
“Go!” AK47 said, crashing on top of Toucan.
It did not take long for Toucan to push her off. He held her down by her wrists and then punched her again and called her a dyke and a slut.
I did not run. My feet had become glue.
AK47 made a sound like an animal that was being squeezed too hard.
“Bitch,” Toucan said, and then hit her again. He pushed AK47’s head into the carpet and then there was blood. He hit her again and then he picked up the ashtray and hit her with that too.
Her eyes closed and her mouth opened at the same time like a fish.
The Grendels were scratching from under the carpet and inside the walls. The whole house was becoming a Grendel.
I saw the Viking sword. It was under the couch. I don’t know how it had got there.
Maybe Odin had put it there for me, to use to save AK47, who was being hit again and again, and then Toucan had the gun and was using it to hit her face. He was hitting and the Grendels were shouting louder, and then I blinked and Toucan had turned into a Grendel who was going to devour AK47 inside of his giant mouth.
The Grendels were the voice of Uncle Richard hitting Gert and yelling, the voice of his fingers on my skin, the voice of Hendo saying I was ugly and stupid and retarded, the voice of the cancer cells in Mom taking over everywhere inside of her body until there was nothing but cancer and death.
The voice of the Grendel said that I was not going to be a hero, that there are no more Vikings anymore, and that AK47 was being hurt and it was my fault. Everything was my fault.
Then I heard the voice of Dr. Laird. He said that it was not my fault. And the voice of Dr. Kepple, saying that sometimes life finds us, and when it does we have to rise to the occasion, even when we are scared.
“You are a hero,” his voice said. And then AK47 tried to punch Toucan, even though she was small and bleeding underneath him, and that was the most heroic thing I ever saw.
I took the Viking sword and yelled a Viking battle cry with the sword in front of me.
I did one of the attacks I had practiced, which is called the slash, and I made the sword cut into his skin on his arm, the one that was holding the gun.
“You’re going to stop,” I shouted, louder than all the Grendels in the world.
His arm was bleeding and he held it up and said, “Motherfucker.”
He started walking toward me and then stopped, as if he had hit a wall in front of him that was invisible. His eyes became very big and wide.
“Ah,” Toucan said, and behind him I saw that AK47 had the gun and had shot Toucan through his back and into his stomach.
I waited for a very long time, not able to move, before taking AK47’s cell phone and calling 9-1-1.
chapter thirty-five
At the police station they asked me lots of questions about what had happened. The police officer who gave me the card was there and asked if I was the one who had put the Viking sword into Toucan’s arm. I was having trouble speaking. Inside me things were exploding, but none of the words wanted to come out. They stayed stuck. Every time I thought something the thought would stick to the words already stuck in me, creating a big ball that got bigger and bigger until I thought I was going to throw up.