Girl Minus X

by Anne Stone

  Dany’s still looking at the crowd on the main bridge, so she doesn’t see them coming. Two SUVs. As the first driver slows to a stop, Dany hears the wheels on gravel and turns. The driver is already rolling down her window.

  She’s an older woman, working class. Something about the lines in her face speak to a lifetime of days spent under the sun. “Great minds,” the woman says.

  Eva nods. “I drive stick,” she tells the stranger.

  The older woman narrows her eyes a second and then smiles. “Good for you, honey. You mind if we head over now?”

  Eva nods, a big grin on her face, and Dany shrugs.

  As Dany watches, the first SUV drives onto the track, round the rising arc to the swing bridge. The other follows – though it’s a little slower. The vehicles have their main lights off, but she hears the SUVs rattling their way across the trestles, sees the red lights of their brakes, flashing now and again.

  Her aunt comes striding over to them.

  Norah is shaking her head. Not good, her face is saying, not good at all. “Let’s get a move on,” Norah says.

  Dany looks from her aunt to Eva and nods.

  She isn’t sure Eva can do it – a VW Bug is not an SUV, not by a long shot – but then, Eva doesn’t have a choice. Eva has to get them across, whether the car is capable of crossing or not.

  “You can do this,” Dany tells her. “You can.”

  Eva frowns. “Those SUVs won’t be the only ones crossing,” she says.

  Dany follows her friend’s eyes to the crowd by the main bridge.

  A few have already broken off from the main group and are headed their way. Dany focuses on one of them, a man pulling a red wagon piled high with what must be every last thing in the world he owns. He’s rolling the cart down Columbia Street, heading their way.

  “We gotta book,” Dany says.

  Her aunt nods. “The soldiers, they’re going to notice that sooner than later.”

  Dany takes one last look at the SUVs on the railway bridge.

  Already, the first one has made it to the other side. But the second SUV is moving slower, and is only now approaching the halfway point.

  Getting into the car, Dany’s half-surprised to see Faraday. She’s all but forgotten about him. She hopes that his pills have kicked in, because if they haven’t, Faraday’s about to be in a world of pain.

  Up front, Norah settles Mac onto her lap, and in the back, Dany gets Faraday ready. As ready as he can be. She takes hold of his hand, the one on the good side, and wraps his fingers around the grab bar on the car’s ceiling. A numb expression on his face, her teacher nods and takes hold.

  Already, Eva is easing the old rattletrap onto the sunken tracks.

  Dany glances out.

  They’re in position now, and once they start, the rails will guide them – or so Eva’s theory goes. They’re supposed to be in third gear. Dany knows that. But Eva is scared and she’s moving slow. Too slow. And they’re still in second. The car is crawling on the tracks like a drugged beetle, but the trestles are a hazard. If Eva drives too fast, yes, they’ll damage the car. But if she drives as slow as this, the car will get stuck in the gaps between.

  “Um, I’m not sure if anyone can actually see the rails,” Eva asks. “Because, well, I don’t see –”

  As soon as she says it, they hit the trestles. The rails might not be visible, but they can hear them now, scraping metal from the underside of the car.

  The first violent jolt pins Dany’s seat belt in place, holding her fast.

  Up front, Aunt Norah is sharing her seat belt with Mac. She has her arms around the kid and is using her body as a cushion, trying to lessen the impact of the jolts. She can see that her aunt has given the kid a knotted strip of blanket to bite down on.

  Mac’s scared, but she’ll be okay.

  It’s bad, bad enough, but this is just the start of it. Soon, they hit the spaced wooden trestles of the bridge, and Dany, shocked, feels what amounts to a physical assault. She turns to Faraday. Already, blood is leaking through his duct tape. The patch job is barely holding, but there’s nothing she can do about that now. They’ve hit the trestles. They’re committed.

  Dany is hoping that the noise of the crowd will drown out their passage, but she doesn’t know how long their luck can hold. If the soldiers on the Pattullo Bridge aren’t all deaf, they’ll be gunning for them soon. Still, she hopes the din of the crowd overpowers the noise of their passage. But sound moves in strange ways over water.

  Dany glances up front and stiffens. In the front seat, Mac’s crying, but it’s different. The cries aren’t like anything Dany has ever heard. Mac’s face is bright red, and the sobs coming from her aren’t silent, but fully voiced. The kid’s wailing.

  This is the first time she’s heard Mac’s little kid voice. The first time she’s heard anything from Mac – since before the ministry, since before her mom, on the coldest, longest night of winter, put the two of them in the window well, muttering in tongues. Since before a continental divide opened up in their lives, dividing it into before and after. The sound makes something crack open in her chest.

  Eva, meanwhile, slows down to look at Mac. Dany slips out of her seat belt – there’s no other way – and she leans forward over the console – her head slamming the roof with every thud. “Go, go, go,” Dany yells at Eva. “We’ll get stuck. We’ll founder. Go.”

  Her voice, though she’s yelling, is barely audible over the grinding of metal. But Eva glances at her and, when she looks forward once more, she’s already picking up the pace.

  Dany tastes blood. At some point, she’s bitten the inside of her cheek and her mouth is filling with blood, but she has no choice. For the sake of everyone in the car, she swallows the red stuff down.

  From somewhere below the car – the axle on the rails, she guesses – there comes a terrible grinding of metal. She’s sure, now, that the soldiers on the main vehicle bridge can hear it. They have to hear it. In the darkness, she sees sparks flashing up from either side of the old Bug. The noise is sure to draw the soldiers’ notice, and the sparks will tell them where to aim their guns.

  Up front, the blood has drained from Eva’s hands. Her grip on the steering wheel is so tight that Dany can see every last muscle in Eva’s arms – but she’s doing it – already, they are a third of the way across.

  And then she sees it. There. A ways ahead of them. The flickering red lights of the SUV’s brakes. The car ahead of them has slowed to a crawl. With a sinking feeling, Dany watches as the SUV rolls to a stop.

  The five-ton hunk of metal sits on the tracks like a dead elephant, barring their way.

  “Hold on to your hats,” Eva yells.

  Dany feels the car speed up. “Like hell,” Dany screams. “Stop, stop.” She can hear Norah yelling, too – and Dany’s eyes lock onto the SUV ahead, the one blocking the tracks. The little VW Bug will never move that thing. The front end of the VW will be smashed and them with it.

  But Eva must see it now, because a few feet behind the truck, they roll to a stop. Dany lays a hand on Eva’s shoulder. “You did good,” she says.

  In the newborn silence, a child’s sobs fill the air. Norah undoes her seat belt and cradles the kid close, holding her against her chest, rocking her. And slowly, the child’s terrified crying eases off.

  Only then does Dany remember Faraday. She looks over, half dreading what she’ll see. But Faraday’s still with them. He’s sitting there, staring numbly ahead, blood leaking out from under the duct-tape bandage. Dany is aching and every tooth in her mouth feels like it’s been loosened with a pair of pliers. She can only imagine, then, what he’s feeling.

  Then she sees it. From the corner of her eye. Motion, in the SUV ahead of her. Dany leans forward, one hand on her sister’s shoulder, peering ahead, into the dark. Yes, someone has slipped into the driver�
�s side door – the brake lights flick off, and the SUV is in motion again. It rocks, back and forth on the trestles – finds its traction, and is gone.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 37

  Dany is the first to accept the inevitable.

  Unlike the SUV, their old VW doesn’t have the driving power necessary to get them moving, not now that their wheels have come to a rest between two trestles. They’ll have to push – and that means that whoever pushes the car will have to walk over the terrible gaps between trestles. In the near-total darkness, they’ll have to walk fifty yards, stepping from plank to plank, while suspended hundreds of feet over the Fraser River. At this height, the difference between water and concrete is negligible.

  Still, there’s no point arguing about it.

  Eva finally gives up and shuts off the car. “I think we’re going to have to push,” she says.

  “You better tape him up again,” Aunt Norah says, and Dany glances at her history teacher, taking in the damage. Faraday looks like he’s been shot. Well, like he’s been shot or like he’s wandered into the beam of the Large Hadron Collider.

  Dany slowly peels the fingers of his right hand from the grab bar, and the arm falls slack. She applies two long strips of duct tape to his wound. The patch job isn’t perfect, the bloodied skin makes for a poor seal, but Faraday, like a leaky pipe, will just have to hold.

  Dany opens the back door, letting it swing wide and looks down. Through the gaps between trestles, she can see the dark waters of the Fraser River below.

  Aunt Norah and Eva are out of the car and looking ahead – some fifty yards, that’s all that stands between them and the other side. But the distance is impossible.

  Her kid sister curls up on the front seat – pushing her mask aside so she can get her thumb in her mouth. Dany doesn’t even want to think about what will happen if Mac bolts on this bridge. If one foot, for one second, slips between trestles, the kid will break a leg. She is so tiny, she might even slip through the trestles and fall to the river below. Mac can’t run, she just can’t. Still, for now, at least, Mac seems willing to sit in the car, her eyes intent on her big sister, her thumb socketed in her little mouth.

  And then, in the distance, Dany catches sight of them – back there, behind them. The first people to break away from the crowd are now mounting the arc that rises up to the bridge. Others, more and more now, are breaking away from the mob, headed for the railway bridge. “We have to go,” Dany says. “We have to go now.”

  Dany’s standing there, precariously balanced between two trestles, when she feels a tiny hand reach up and take her own.

  Mac won’t get back into the front seat.

  Refuses, even, to sit on Eva’s lap while she drives.

  While the main mob hasn’t yet hit the bridge, already, those few who were the first to see the opportunity are quickly approaching. Seeing the half-dozen men and women already picking their way across the railway bridge, Dany relents. The kid can stick with her. Faraday, she’ll leave where he is. For now, it’s all on Dany and her aunt. They’ll have to push the car across.

  Eva rocks the gas, and Dany and her aunt lean their weight against the back of the car. The motion is eerily reminiscent of what she and her aunt did together at the hospice – using their weight to inch the unconscious guard forward in the yard. Dany wonders if her aunt is remembering the same thing she is.

  Dany glances back.

  The people behind them are getting closer. So close, she can see faces. The first one is young, a teenage boy. His hair, long and thin, is in need of a wash. Beside him, she sees an older woman. His mother maybe, her grey hair swept up in a messy bun. They look like people, but people aren’t people – not when they can get away with taking what they want. This is the truth that Darling-­Holmes taught her. The primary lesson the institution existed to impart. Because it was there that she learned of the dark things that human beings are capable of.

  And soon, the pair would overtake them.

  Dany puts her shoulder into it, counts out with her aunt, one, two, three, and again, they heave. She’s breathing heavy now – and pushing as hard as she can. But she and Norah might as well be a pair of ants trying to move a lead brick.

  A moment later, the teenaged boy gets his hands on their car.

  She flicks a scowl at the teenager, the one who’s put himself between Dany and her aunt, who’s put his hands on the car. But then the grey-haired woman puts her hands down too, and Dany blinks, taking a moment to understand. Counting down, together, they lean into it and, together, they push.

  The tires catch and Eva in her VW Bug is off and moving.

  Dany looks up from the boy to the older woman, uncomprehending.

  The woman nods at Dany, a sad smile plays on her mouth, and then she moves on down the bridge. By the time Dany thinks to say thank you, it’s too late. The pair are ten feet ahead of her, picking their way down the trestles.

  Dany and her aunt move more slowly.

  The two walk on either side of Mac, each with a death grip on one of Mac’s wrists. With each step, Dany is conscious of the deadly drop, of each terrifying gap between trestles. Glancing behind, Dany makes out the crowd closing in, some fifty feet back. Only now, she isn’t afraid. She doesn’t see a mob. What she sees are people. Here, as at the hospice, what she sees are people still.

  When they hit the bank, Dany looks around for the pair who helped them, but the woman and her son are long gone, vanished into the trees. Still, solid ground has risen up to meet her, and she feels like she’s been returned to the world of solid things.

  From the long grasses on either side of the tracks come the songs of crickets, dozens of tiny cellos that fall silent as they approach.

  “It’s noise,” Aunt Norah says.

  The kid is gripping Dany’s hand, her aunt’s, too. As they walk, Mac propels herself along the railway tracks, held aloft for an instant in time by Dany and her aunt, as if, so long as Norah is there, it will all be okay, and yes, Mac can fly.

  “We can’t hear the music that the crickets are really playing,” her aunt goes on. “It’s on a frequency we can’t hear. So, what we’re really hearing is the noise at the concert, the shuffling of chairs in the concert hall. The sighs, the turning of pages. Your mother told me that. She must’ve read it somewhere.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Dany says, though the word feels strange in her mouth. But why should it? Why shouldn’t all of them, even the crickets and the ants of the world, have a little share in what is beautiful?

  Another rifle shot rings out.

  The world flips, background becomes foreground, and all Dany can hear is the sound of her own breathing, the blood rushing in her veins. Dany tightens her grip on the kid, looks down. Sees that her sister is calm. The kid is looking up at Dany, and waiting. And for that second, for that sliver, she sees the kid the way a stranger might.

  Mac is slight for her age, but then, so is Dany. Maybe they haven’t been fed enough. Maybe they’ve been stunted by their time in ministry care. But this isn’t how a kid should be. The kid shouldn’t be so goddamned calm about all of this. The kid shouldn’t listen so well, because kids aren’t supposed to listen. They’re not little soldiers.

  Ever since her aunt’s parole got revoked, she and her sister have lived like criminals, not kids. And that’s on Dany. All at once, she knows that she’s been lying to herself: She’s not been making sacrifices for the kid. She’s been selfish. For Mac’s own good, no matter what it cost her, she should have taken her somewhere safe.

  She should have taken her to Antoine.

  And for a moment, just a moment, as she stands there in the dark – looking down at Mac, holding her hand – something changes in her.

  She can’t exactly say what and she can’t exactly say how – but she senses that things can’t go back to the way they’ve been. Survival might have b
een her goal, but now, looking at Mac, she wants more. Because Mac deserves more. And maybe, even, so does Dany. But even here, in the quiet aftershock of the rifle’s report, she hears it.

  Not her heartbeat, but the ticking of a tiny clock.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 38

  At the old VW Bug, Eva has the driver’s side door wide open. She is sitting sideways in her seat, long legs visible – the car manual in one hand, flashlight in the other.

  “Hey,” she tells Dany, “Mister Faraday is fifty-eight years overdue for a lube.” She shows the owner’s manual to Dany and grins. “Oh,” Eva adds, “I’ve got more than fifty thousand followers, I mean, at last count – but the interweb, it’s, like, slowly disappearing into the Borg.” Eva tries to sound casual, but her excitement is plain. Yes, it’s the apocalypse. Yes, the world is probably ending, but in terms of social media, Eva’s hit a high point.

  Dany narrows her eyes for a second. She thinks about Eva and her follower count – actually, truly thinks about her answer – before she speaks.

  Eva is proud of herself.

  “That’s good,” Dany says.

  There are trees, all around them, and the slow undulations of tree limbs strikes her as strange and otherworldly, oceanic. The way the wind moves through the trees almost makes Dany feel like she’s underwater. There is the song of the crickets, Mac’s flying steps. And the whole of the world is filled with people, after all.

  “The walk was good, too,” Dany says.

  Eva gives her friend the side-eye.

  “We left the muffler back there,” says Eva, pointing at the river. “At least, I think that was the muffler. The illustration could be clearer.”

  Her aunt gives the girls a look. “We need to go.”

  “There’s a big crowd coming,” Dany says. “Followers, from your page, maybe.”

  “I finally got a chance to check out the transmission specs,” Eva says, getting into the driver’s seat. “Seriously, I have some much better design ideas for these people.”