He looked over at Karen, but she didn’t meet his gaze as she put her hand up.
“I’m in,” Vaughn said. “Like my old man used to say, in for a penny, in for a pounding.”
“Lisa?”
“Shit, yeah.”
“Peter?”
And suddenly I’m thinking about Shanelle, and wondering what she’s doing right now. It’s stupid early, so she’s probably still asleep at her folks’ place, maybe even planning to sleep in extra late because of all the emotions of the last few days, and when she does get up, she’ll come downstairs and her folks will have breakfast waiting for her, and all I can think of, the only thought I can focus on, is that I’d like to have breakfast, right now, I’d like to have eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and orange juice, the kind with lots of pulp, just so I could taste it and have those few minutes and all I have to do is say no, shake my head just enough so they can see me do it, just stand up and walk off the bus, such a small thing, that’s all, just stand up and put one foot in front of the other just for a minute, one minute so I can get something to eat, something to taste, something to—
“Peter?” Dylan asked again.
“Yeah,” I said. My voice wavered, so I tightened it up. “I’m good. Let’s do it.”
“Okay,” he said, then repeated it softly and with finality, like he was letting go of a part of himself, and maybe he was. “Okay.”
And I was the first to see the look in Karen’s eyes as he got behind the wheel.
* * *
Hi, I’m Audio Recorder!
Tap the icon to start recording.
PETER ROUTH: As expected, trouble in paradise.
KAREN: You can’t do this.
DYLAN: Karen…
KAREN: Get out from behind the wheel, okay?
DYLAN: I signed up to do a job.
KAREN: Bullshit. Somebody else can drive, we already agreed—
DYLAN: I didn’t.
KAREN: Dylan, if you go with us and this goes wrong—
DYLAN: Where you go, I go.
LISA: Except right now we’re not going anywhere, so can we save the drama for your mama?
KAREN: I know what you’re doing. You know I don’t want anything to happen to you, so you’re trying to pressure me into changing my mind.
DYLAN: I didn’t know changing your mind was an option.
LISA: The gas pedal’s that long flat thing by your right foot.
KAREN: Damn it, Lisa.
DYLAN: They want to go, you want to go, so let’s go.
KAREN: You’ll get arrested with the rest of us, or worse. If something happens—
DYLAN: What happened is that I love you. You can’t ask me to just walk away from that.
KAREN: That’s exactly what I’m saying, Dylan. This isn’t fair.
LISA: What’s not fair is wasting time when we’re supposed to be on the road before dawn, and making us listen to your bullshit. At least take it the fuck outside.
KAREN: Why are you being such a bitch?
LISA: Genetics. Deal with it.
DYLAN: She’s right, let’s talk about this outside.
KAREN: Fine, whatever, thanks for your support, Lisa.
LISA: You’re welcome!
PETER ROUTH: Nicely done.
LISA: I have my moments.
VAUGHN: What are you guys—
LISA: How far are they from the door?
PETER ROUTH: Standing by the luggage bin.
LISA: Okay, here goes.
PETER: Buckle up!
END RECORDING
* * *
PeterWilliamRouth
Welcome to Utah.
We’re thirty miles in. Passing Thompson Springs. Lisa’s still driving as Theo monitors the police scanner and Vaughn tracks the GPS for exits in case we need to get off fast. So far, so good.
Fifty miles.
Sixty.
We debate getting off on an exchange going north from the 70 to Green River so we can tuck in out of sight to see if any police units show up on the freeway looking for us, but there’s no way to know what we’ll run into if we drive into a small town and get bottlenecked. The smart thing is to keep going while we’re on a roll, so we do.
Eighty. Still clear. Starting to think we have an actual chance.
Ninety.
Shit.
* * *
Hi, I’m Audio Recorder!
Tap the icon to start recording.
PETER ROUTH: Where? I can’t see them.
LISA: Right behind us. Just came off the on-ramp.
VAUGHN: No need to panic yet. Theo, can you hear them on the scanner?
THEO: Just a— Yes. They’re running our plates.
LISA: Fuck!
PETER ROUTH: What’s the nearest exit?
VAUGHN: Only city’s Salina. Thirty miles. Before then it’s all just access roads and fireroads.
THEO: They’ve ID’d us. Here they come.
(UNRECOGNIZABLE SOUND)
LISA: Shit!
PETER ROUTH: We’ve got to get off the freeway, try to lose them.
LISA: Where?
VAUGHN: I don’t know!
THEO: They’re requesting backup.
VAUGHN: Hang on, checking the map.
LISA: They’re right on my ass!
VAUGHN: Fireroad one forty-one. Half a mile. But the on-ramp only comes off the freeway going east.
LISA: How am I supposed to get to the other side, we’ve got guard rails.
THEO: Only at the curves. On the straightaways there’s just the wire barrier and we should be able to—
LISA: Okay, I see it! Hang on!
(UNRECOGNIZABLE SOUND)
LISA: Which way?
PETER ROUTH: There! Make a right! Over there!
LISA: Jesus, could they make this road any smaller.
VAUGHN: It goes all the way up the mountain to Kinneys Peak, then forks off into a bunch of smaller roads on the way down the other side. If we can get far enough ahead, we can lose them.
LISA: Okay, got it.
VAUGHN: What are they saying?
THEO: Can’t get a signal, canyon, too many trees.
LISA: Christ, this is steep, wheels keep slipping, bus wasn’t made for this.
PETER ROUTH: Keep going.
LISA: Not a lot of choice, Peter.
THEO: Caught a little. They’re sending cars up the fireroad on the other side.
VAUGHN: The sixteen.
THEO: They’re trying to get to the top and box us in. If they get there first—
LISA: Going as fast as I can in this heap.
THEO: I know.
PETER ROUTH: Shit, that’s a drop.
LISA: Yeah, it is. Theo.
THEO: Yeah.
LISA: Tell me about it.
THEO: About what?
LISA: The silver city.
THEO: What?
LISA: You said it was somewhere right around here, right?
THEO: I don’t…
LISA: Theo?
THEO: Yeah… yes, it is. There’s a secret entrance, right near the top of the peak.
PETER ROUTH: Okay… okay…
LISA: You know where it is, so just tell me when to turn.
THEO: Okay, I will, I…
PETER ROUTH: I’ll take the scanner.
VAUGHN: Shanelle, if you’re hearing this, I love you.
LISA: Keep talking, Theo. Tell me about it.
THEO: The silver city is old, so old that no one knows who built it, or why, or when.
PETER ROUTH: They’re getting into position to cut us off.
VAUGHN: Is it beautiful, Theo?
THEO: More beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen.
PETER ROUTH: They’re up ahead laying down spike strips.
LISA: How far?
PETER ROUTH: I don’t know.
THEO: And the sunsets… the sunsets are…
VAUGHN: There! Police cars! Up ahead!
LISA: Theo? Where do I turn? Where’s the entra
nce?
PETER ROUTH: Fuck you! Fuck you! You lose!
LISA: Theo!
THEO: There, it’s there. Do you see it?
LISA: Yeah. Yeah, I see it. It’s everything you said it was, Theo. It’s beautiful.
VAUGHN: God. God, forgive me, I’m sorry, Carolyn.
THEO: Here! Turn here! Right here!
LISA: Here we go!
(UNRECOGNIZABLE SOUND)
(UNRECOGNIZABLE SOUND)
(UNRECOGNIZABLE SOUND)
END RECORDING
* * *
Karen_Ortiz
The news called it an accident. The police said the bus was driving erratically, and when the police tried to stop them, they made a run for it, going up into the hills before losing control and going off the fireroad. Easier that way. Cleaner. It absolves the police and the AG of guilt and leaves out the reason why they were in Utah in the first place and why they were trying to get away from the police. They think that covering up the truth will guarantee that no one else gets any ideas about doing the same thing. After all, none of them survived the crash, so there’s no one to challenge the official story.
Except there is. It’s all right here, in the cloud server.
And in five minutes, everyone’s going to know the truth of who we were, what we did, and what really happened. Vaughn, Peter, Theo, Lisa, Zeke, Tyler… they were beautiful and I miss them and they earned the right to have their stories told.
But uploading the file to the internet also carries some risks.
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” Dylan asked last night. We’d gotten a ride back into Denver with a trucker who dropped us off at the Airport Marriott. “Putting all this online will seriously piss off the Utah AG. He could come after you.”
“Fine, let him.”
“So you’re totally cool with letting this out into the wild?”
“I am, and not just because I want people to know what happened. It’s because of something Theo wrote.”
I opened the archive and pulled out the quote. “ ‘The first way people kill themselves is a kind of spontaneous combustion. It comes out of rage or shock or sudden deep depression and catches you by surprise, and before you even realize you’re doing it, you’re reaching for the gun or the knife or the pills. It’s as if something inside you gets too sad or too angry to survive anymore and it explodes, taking you with it. I think it happens most often to the very people who don’t think they could ever kill themselves, because they’re not paying attention when their switch gets flipped in the middle of something awful.’
“Theo’s right. The reason so many people are vulnerable to suicide is because they think it could never happen to them, so they don’t know what to look for, what feelings could lead to making that decision. But the archive is full of all of us talking about why we decided to check out early, the whole thought process is right there, so anybody reading this will know exactly what it feels like to make that choice from the inside out. For some people maybe it’ll be like a flu vaccine, giving them a little piece of the real thing so it immunizes them, so they’ll know what that impulse feels like when it comes, and maybe they won’t be as vulnerable because now they can recognize that feeling for what it is instead of being ambushed by it. And maybe they won’t make that jump, or at least they’ll know enough to wait and think about it some more.
“That’s why out of everyone on the bus, I feel the worst for Peter. None of us knew he was having doubts. If we had, we would’ve done everything we could to talk him out of it, because nobody should’ve been there who wasn’t sure that this was what they wanted to do.”
“Wouldn’t have worked,” Dylan said. “You know how he was. Push him left and he’ll go right every time.”
“I know, but seeing his last entries, I think that if they’d just been able to keep going, sooner or later he would have gotten off the bus. You can see him starting to question whether or not he’s really doing the right thing. But when the police came after them, it forced his hand. They pushed left and he jumped right. And now that I know what was in his heart, I wish he hadn’t.
“People need to understand that,” I said. “They need to see not just what led to our decisions, but that it’s possible to turn back, as Shanelle did, instead of getting so walled up behind their decision that they don’t see the possibility of backing off, as with Peter. They need to see that there’s always a choice. So I need to get this out there, to tell the truth. Our truth.”
Dylan nodded quietly, then said, “It’s your story, so it’s your call. I’ll back your play.”
So I guess we’re doing this.
And in case the Utah AG or someone else decides to come after us, I’ve changed a few names and email addresses for safety. I’m not Karen, Dylan’s not Dylan, and Shanelle’s not Shanelle. As Theo said, if anyone wants to come looking for us, why make it easy, right? Mark is still Mark, but he expected that. I’ve researched a bunch of sites where I can upload the material, and narrowed it down to the ones where it has the best chance of being noticed. It’s kind of like throwing a message in a bottle into the sea. This is who we were, and what we did right, and what we did wrong, and why, and what we think it all means. But really, it’s down to you to figure it out.
As I write this, Dylan’s off getting some coffee and doughnuts while we wait for our plane. Through the window the blue demon horse stares up at the sky like he might gallop into the clouds at any second. Seeing him reminds me of the party in Vaughn’s penthouse, and I smile at the memory.
The night before Lisa drove the others off the planet, Dylan said that as long as there’s even the possibility of being happy for five minutes today, or the next day, or the one after that, then it’s worth hanging on. He thinks it’s like vitamins, that just five minutes of happiness per day is the minimum basic requirement we need to go on living. I don’t know if I agree with that, but I’m going to try it, even if that means going back to war with the Spider.
All I do know for sure is that for these five minutes, I’m happy being with Dylan. I want to see if love is big enough and bad enough to beat the Spider.
If not, if I still can’t take it and decide I want out, there’s always another cliff waiting for me. Dylan promised he won’t try to stop me because he knows I’ll just do it without him, and he’d rather be there when it happens than let me go alone.
I can always do this tomorrow if today is not enough.
And today, right now, this moment is coffee, and doughnuts, and Dylan, and a plane flight to someplace I’ve never been before.
What happens after that? I don’t know.
Does anyone?
UPLOAD FILE TO PUBLIC SERVER? Y/N
Y
BEGIN TRANSFER? Y/N
Y
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not exist without the assistance and guidance of: Ed Schlesinger, editor at Simon & Schuster, who stepped up when it mattered, along with his team of Editorial Jedi, including Maggie Loughran, Jennifer Bergstrom, Jennifer Long, Aimee Bell, Alison Callahan, Sally Marvin, and Eliza Hanson; also, my tireless agents, Emma Parry and Martin Spencer; my attorney Kevin Kelly, who has been looking after me for over twenty years; and my assistant and guardian angel, Stephanie Walters. My thanks and appreciation to all of you, and to the friends and First Readers whose observations kept me honest.
Together We Will Go is an examination of the intense feelings that often underlie suicidal ideation and depression. If you sometimes find yourself experiencing similar feelings, and wish to speak with someone who understands, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
More in Literary Fiction
A Man Called Ove
The Woman in Cabin 10
Ordinary Grace
The Lake House
Manhattan Beach
The Japanese Lover
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J. MICHAEL STRACZVYNSKI has written hundreds
of hours of television, major motion pictures, and graphic novels. He is the widely acclaimed creator of Babylon 5, cocreator of Netflix’s Senses8, and writer for Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, which earned him a nomination for a British Academy Award for Best Screenplay (BAFTA). His work has appeared frequently on the New York Times bestseller list, and his extensive list of awards includes the Hugo Award, the Ray Bradbury Award, the Eisner Award, and the GLAAD Media Award. He lives in California.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/J-Michael-Straczynski
SimonandSchuster.com
ScoutPressBooks.com
@ScoutPressBooks
We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
Scout Press
An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Synthetic Worlds, Ltd.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Scout Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
Together We Will Go Page 27