She glared at him. He felt, reflexively, for the bump on his head. It was mostly healed now.
“I’m not here to bring you in,” he said. “That would be absurd, at this point.”
“OK,” she said, and then she gave him a look that invited him to explain himself. She didn’t put down the knife.
“I don’t quite know how to—” He stopped himself, tried again. “I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. So I followed you.”
That wasn’t quite an explanation, but he was getting there.
“What about your partner?” Myrra asked.
“Simpson went back home to be with his family,” Tobias said.
“Don’t you have family? Friends?”
Tobias shrugged and then felt surprised at his own casual gesture.
“No,” he said, laughing a little at himself, because he could either do that or cry, and he didn’t want to cry just yet. “I’ve led such a stupid, focused, isolated life that now, at the end of it, the person I know best is the person I’ve been investigating.”
Myrra stared at him with what he hoped was some understanding.
Cut to the chase, he thought.
“I was wondering if I could come with you, wherever you’re going.”
The expression on Myrra’s face changed from suspicion to something else. Pity? He hoped not. Empathy? Maybe. She tilted her head a little and looked up, as if she was considering an argument.
“OK,” she said.
“Really?” Tobias asked. He sounded like a kid at Christmas. He realized he was feeling each new emotion with more intensity than usual, as if the events of the past two days had stripped away all his psychological filters. Maybe this was how it felt to approach death. Or maybe it was just how it felt to be grieving.
“You seem sincere,” she said. “And I can tell when you lie.”
She hitched Charlotte up higher on her hip and went to get her pack.
“I have a car, if that helps.” He pointed back the way he’d come. She immediately turned and walked past him, headed in that direction.
“You should have led with that,” she called over her shoulder. “I would have followed you anywhere to get out of this wind.”
As if the wind were pleased at the mention, another gust of green sand kicked up behind Myrra, splashing at her back. The color blossomed around her on all sides, it looked like a halo, an aura, surrounding her body. She was radiating green, threatening and alive at the same time.
32
MYRRA & TOBIAS
This was a mistake. She should have known better than to make decisions when she was desperate. Desperate didn’t even cover it: she was dehydrated, half-starved, and sleep deprived, and up until twenty minutes ago she’d been sure that Charlotte was suffocating under a mound of sand. Her nerves were sharp as razor wire.
Tobias was only a few feet away, in the driver’s seat. Charlotte was too far out of arm’s reach, strapped into the back seat. This car had locks. Just two days ago, he’d put her in handcuffs. He looked over at her, one hand on the steering wheel and one hand on the ignition; there was blue sand embedded in the rims of his glasses. When he turned the key over, the electric motor hummed, just audible under the ignition.
“Seat belt?” Tobias asked.
“No,” Myrra responded. She didn’t want to be any more strapped in than she already was.
Silence filled the car. She didn’t know what to say to him. What did he expect this arrangement to be? Was he expecting sex? A picture of Sem popped into her mind, a whiskey glass in his hand, a look of anticipation on his face. Or Jake, taking the time to teach her, but always with a hand on the small of her back. And more, many more, before that. She’d used that tool when she had to; she didn’t want to use it anymore. Myrra didn’t want any more turmoil. She just wanted to feel safe.
And Charlotte. She wanted Charlotte to be safe.
“Where are we headed?” Tobias asked, both hands now on the steering wheel. He looked at her with an open expression. Open and transparent.
Myrra sighed. Her plan to save Charlotte was an outlandish one. Hard to buy into, hard to believe. She considered lying to him. It would be easy. She’d doled out lies to everyone her whole life, especially in the last few weeks. But as easy as they tasted, those same falsehoods were turning slightly poisonous on her tongue, one after the other like too much whiskey. She was getting a hangover from all this lying.
Ironically, the person she’d lied to the least was Tobias. She remembered the look on his face after the gravity cut out. He believed her now. And she needed to trust someone. This wasn’t working alone.
“Are you OK?” Tobias asked. She must have looked tense.
“I’m fine. I’m thinking.”
Tobias watched her, worried. “If you don’t want me here, that’s fine—I understand.” His face fell as he said it, but he turned off the ignition and moved his hand to the door handle. “You can keep the car. I owe you that much.”
Myrra reached out and laid a hand on his arm to stop him. “That’s not it. I just—I have a plan. But it might be crazy. It might be completely pointless… I’m just worried you won’t believe me.”
Tobias let out a rueful laugh and shook his head. His hand fell away from the door. “I’m not allowed to not believe you anymore.”
So Myrra started to explain, and, to her utter surprise, Tobias listened.
“I’m not sure I fully understand what escape is,” Tobias said after she laid it out. He took great pains to keep his tone trusting and optimistic.
“I don’t really know what escape is either,” Myrra said. “All I know is what I got from Rachel—it’s a program for the rich. And it’s some sort of apocalypse avoidance.”
“Wait—” A memory fluttered in Tobias’s head. “I think I saw something about this, in Marcus Carlyle’s correspondence history…” He reached for his bag, now tucked next to Charlotte in the back seat. Charlotte waved and grabbed for his wrists. He found his tablet and began rifling through the downloaded documents, noting with slight despair that his battery was down to 10 percent. They wouldn’t be able to lean on technology much longer.
He found the folder with Marcus’s correspondence. The “Escape Protocol” email was near the top, having been sent to his inbox shortly after he died. Myrra peered over his shoulder, reading with great interest. Phrases jumped out to Tobias that had previously seemed mundane—life-planning program, limited-capacity offer, discretion.
“‘Escape’ could mean nothing… but look at this message. This sounds like something, right?” Myrra said, turning to him. Her face was full of fear and hope. He desperately wanted to be the one to keep that hope alive. But…
“It does sound like something…” he started.
“Like maybe they have a shuttle, or some kind of hypersleep program—”
Hypersleep? He’d never heard of that working outside of science fiction, but he stopped himself from arguing. A shuttle or smaller craft seemed plausible. Especially paired with the phrase limited capacity. It made sense that Marcus Carlyle might be among the chosen few.
“The problem is, even if some sort of shuttle did exist, we would never be let on board. Are you trying to hijack it, force your way into whatever this is?” Tobias cringed at the thought. After seeing all the panic in Kittimer, after Barnes, after everything, he didn’t want to face more conflict.
“No—” Myrra said, reaching out to touch his arm again in a comforting gesture, almost as if she’d read his mind. “No, you misunderstand. I don’t think we can save ourselves. I think we might be able to save Charlotte.”
Oh.
Tobias settled into this thought. It should have upset him, being presented with a chance to keep living only to have it yanked away. Instead it energized him. He was so incredibly tired, wading through thick murky grief. The thought of trying to fight for his own life, on top of everything else, frankly exhausted him. But fighting for Charlotte’s life seemed easier, purer, someho
w.
Myrra was still talking. “And I just think, if any sort of escape vehicle exists, it’s bound to be in the hull, right? It’s the only way out, to get to the edge of the world. So that’s why I think we have to keep going through the desert…”
Tobias interrupted with one more question. “And you think they’d be willing to take Charlotte?”
“If they offered a spot to Marcus, right? They ought to take Charlotte. She’s a Carlyle.”
“Maybe.”
It was still a thin premise. The logic was thin all the way through. But it made a kind of sense.
Myrra was staring resolutely out the windshield, her eyes a little glassy but focused. Sand was collecting on top of the windshield wipers.
“Imogene was a terrible mother, but she tried. I think her best act of motherhood might have been not taking Charlotte with her when she jumped.” Myrra sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “She left her with me for protection. I’m supposed to protect her. That’s what parents are supposed to do.”
There was a long silence as Myrra continued to stare through the glass, unblinking. Tobias knew there was more to this, could feel the layers of raw emotion stacked up, providing the foundations of Myrra’s logic. He knew Myrra’s file inside and out. Her mother had been gone by the time Myrra was five. Her father never even met her.
“That sounds nice, what you want to give to Charlotte. Protection.” Tobias looked down at the palms of his hands, contemplating his fingerprints, all the tiny strands of genetic material. “My parents were pretty terrible too. I don’t know if you could say they tried. Barnes”—his voice cracked a little at the mention of the name. “My adopted father, Barnes, he wasn’t perfect either, but with him I felt safe. He did his best. All we can do is our best, I guess.”
Myrra finally blinked and looked at him.
“When did he die?” she asked. The past tense must have tipped her off.
“He died a few hours after they announced on the news that it was the end of the world,” he said, as if that weren’t a completely ridiculous sentence. It felt so empty to say it.
She took his hand. Her skin felt dry but warm. “I’m sorry.”
Their plan was a doomed one, Tobias was almost certain. But it felt right, to break the chain of hurt that David and Ingrid had passed down, to salve the wounds that Barnes’s death had left behind, to chase protection for another, to focus on something outside of himself. All they could do was their best.
“I like your plan,” Tobias said to Myrra, still holding her rough, cracked hand. “I think we should go for it.”
Myrra smiled, and Tobias felt a little lighter. It was small, but it was something.
Tobias turned the ignition, and the engine whirred to life again. They drove slowly onward, over the flat road when it was wide enough, and sometimes over the sides of the dunes when it narrowed. Myrra worried once or twice that the car’s tires would get stuck, but they kept on. Charlotte fell asleep to the sound of the motor after thirty minutes.
“How much longer do you think the car will go?” Myrra asked. Tobias jumped at the break in the quiet.
“I think it’s got another day in it,” he said. “Hopefully we can reach the wall by then, but if not, we’ll be pretty close.”
“Do you know anything about the wall, do you know if there’s a way we can get into the hull from there?”
“Yeah, there should be. Engineers built in access doors.” He gave her a strange look. “You didn’t know that?”
“Not everyone gets to go to school to learn this stuff.” She didn’t like his tone. And she was sick of feeling stupid, sick of having to ask people how the world worked.
“How much school did they give you?” Tobias asked, a little hesitant.
“I got lessons one day a week until I was eight.”
“They’re supposed to keep you in school till you’re sixteen, aren’t they?” Tobias ventured.
“They don’t really check. And anyway, I think it’s easier for them if they keep us stupid.” It was freeing to talk about this stuff openly, to let the anger in. Tobias didn’t speak right away. Myrra hoped he was stewing in guilt.
“I’m sorry that’s the way it was,” he said. It sounded genuine enough. He kept his eyes on the road—what was visible beyond all that sand. “I don’t know if you’ve heard how it usually goes when workers break contract. This was my first case in the field, but Simpson told me how in his experience they usually catch folks in about twenty-four to forty-eight hours. You had us on the run for weeks. So I don’t know if it’s any consolation, but even without the geography lessons, I’d say you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”
Myrra smiled. It was a smile fueled by anger and the satisfaction of disrupting people’s expectations. She found a button on the side of the seat and reclined a few inches.
“What kinds of schools did you go to? How high did you go—all the way up?” she asked, knowing it would poke at his guilt.
“I got through university, if that’s what you mean.” He raised his eyebrows and half smiled. “But actually, I didn’t have any regular schooling till I was about eleven. I had to take a ton of tests just to qualify for public, once Barnes tried to enroll me.”
“So what happened to your birth parents? How did you end up with Barnes?” she asked, not caring to sugarcoat the question. She had a feeling Tobias would appreciate the directness.
Tobias didn’t know how to begin. To explain his parents, he’d have to explain his upbringing. He wasn’t sure Myrra really wanted to hear it. Nobody was really sincere when asking personal questions. When someone asked you how you were doing, they were looking for a fifteen-second answer at most. He stole a glance at her. She seemed genuinely interested. She gave him a little shrug in response, as if to say, We have time.
In the end he let it all out. Tobias kept his composure and kept his eyes on the road, but he let loose his burden like a bucket dumping out water. And in talking he realized, possibly for the first time, how distant he felt from the rest of the world. He’d acclimated to loneliness from a young age, like a fish surviving in the shallowest of puddles, and as he grew, he’d enforced that loneliness in his adult life, refashioned his perspective on it as if it were some kind of strength of character.
Myrra stayed quiet except for an occasional mm-hmm of agreement or quick, soft “I’m sorry.” He couldn’t be sure, but it felt as if some of the tension was unwinding out of her. It hadn’t been his intention to tell his sob story as a way to get her trust. Her life had been infinitely harder. More than anything, he didn’t want her to feel as if he were trying to manipulate the situation. But if trust was the one silver lining to all this, he would take it.
The car hit a bump in the road, jostling Charlotte awake. She was crying before she even opened her eyes.
“Sorry,” Tobias said as Myrra climbed into the back seat to comfort her.
“It’s fine,” Myrra responded. “She always wakes up like this.”
He watched her in the rearview mirror. Myrra puffed up her cheeks, brought her face close to Charlotte’s, and then dipped her head down and blew her cheeks out on Charlotte’s belly. Charlotte hiccupped. Myrra blew another puff of air over her belly button, and this time Charlotte relented and giggled.
“Hello, little girl!” Myrra tickled her sides. “Hello!”
Myrra settled herself into the seat next to Charlotte and started up a round of peekaboo. She caught Tobias’s eye in the rearview, and he shifted his eyes back to the road.
“You haven’t spent much time around children, have you?”
Tobias shook his head. He was embarrassed but couldn’t quite tell why.
The sky started acting strange. Myrra was leaning her cheek against the window, looking straight up, following a single cloud with her eyes. She noticed the color of the sky behind the cloud steadily change. Shade by shade it shifted from light blue to greenish blue to yellow to orange in the span of five minut
es. According to the clock in the car, it was around three in the afternoon.
“Do you see—?” Myrra didn’t finish the sentence. She couldn’t think of an easy way to describe it.
She could tell that Tobias hadn’t noticed; he was too busy concentrating on the road. Myrra gestured up at the sky through the window—it grew darker before their eyes, the colors dimming into a deeper orange, rosy along the edges of the horizon, like a ripe peach. It was a sped-up sunset.
“What’s going on?” Tobias asked, though Myrra didn’t know if he expected her to give an answer. He stopped the car and got out to get a better look. Myrra followed him.
“Do you suppose certain things are just glitching now, now that the world’s breaking down?” Tobias asked.
“Could be,” Myrra said. The sky was a deep violet now, as sensuous as one of Imogene’s velvet cushions—stars winked on in the dark expanse. “Or, if there’s someone who usually programs this stuff, maybe they just decided to fuck off and now the system’s going haywire.”
Myrra stared straight up and counted the stars as they appeared. She turned to look at Tobias beside her: his mouth was wide open, his eyes big as saucers. Myrra laughed.
“What?” Tobias asked.
“You’re so serious,” she said.
“These are serious times,” Tobias replied.
“Serious and absurd.”
A glaring orange light caught Myrra full in the face. Behind them, like a band coming back for an encore, the sun started to rise.
They stopped for the night, though night was a relative concept now. The sun had risen and set five times in the last five hours. Tobias pinched blankets and shirts in the cracks between the windows and the doors to get it as dark as possible. Even with the improvised shades, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep.
Myrra read to Charlotte in the back of the car. “‘All around the sun was shining and the bell was ringing and the woods were thinning and the green was shining.’” Charlotte’s eyes were drooping. Her little head sank down into the pile of scarves Myrra had set up for her as a pillow.
The World Gives Way: A Novel Page 30