Getaway

by Zoje Stage

  Everything he desired superseded even her—or Beck’s, or Tilda’s—right to live.

  Beck had advised them the previous night to be ready, to think about what you don’t want to lose. But even then Imogen hadn’t heard the subtext: Be selfish. Finally Imogen realized that she couldn’t save anyone else until she was selfishly, irrevocably committed to saving herself. It was fine to believe she had a purpose for being here—here, now, with Gale. And equally fine to have empathy for his heroic worldview. But it would come to nothing—she would accomplish nothing—until she viewed her journey the way he viewed his, as the only thing that mattered.

  I wasn’t all in before. Gale had seen that—that was the real reason he’d made her his dutiful servant.

  She’d wanted to believe in a goodness in him that wasn’t there. Anne Frank had done that, but believing that people are really good at heart hadn’t kept her from dying at Bergen-Belsen. Imogen often thought of young Anne, and the tragic irony that her physical life had expired but the fragile pages she’d written in pencil lived on. How had Imogen been willing, for so long, to accept the microscopic degrees of Gale’s humanity? Stupid fucking cow. Things had gone so far because she was weak.

  Gale wasn’t wrong when he said she didn’t live in the real world. Even her most recent book was about a woman raped by a ghost, not an actual man. But she was right too: she knew more than she cared to about the real world. He would never shed his demon layer, but Imogen could still slough off the useless parts of herself.

  Feral with energy, she gobbled up the rest of her meal.

  39

  Gale remained composed and relaxed through breakfast. Old Imogen would have seen it as a sign that he was changing, becoming more introspective as he neared his moment of enlightenment. New Imogen didn’t give a shit.

  She studied him: scrawny, in spite of the big meals he’d been eating; skin patchy with the discoloration of sunburn, scars, jailhouse tattoos. The dirty bandage was still on his arm where Beck had sewn him up. He was strong, but fallible, and not immune to pain. Eyes, throat. Those were always good places to jab a man. Balls, of course. You could kill someone with the heel of your hand, rammed upward to force the nose bone into the brain. But it looked like someone had already tried that on Gale, and failed.

  Once there’d been a seventeen-year-old Imogen who kept still, waiting for it to end, afraid to lash out, to make it worse. And once there’d been an Imogen who hid behind a bush at the synagogue, because she was no match for a weapon of war. Now, here, the thing she’d repressed for so long was ready to emerge. One way or another there would be an endgame, a fight to the death. And this time she would not be still, she would not hide.

  Gale yawned. Stretched. “Wanna bring me the dishes? In prison we’d kill for those spoons, make fine shivs.”

  Imogen stacked their bowls and carried them over. Could she shove a spoon, even unsharpened, up his nostril? The spear lay across his lap and she’d have to bend over it to reach his face. Hmm, not yet. The picture of obedience, she set the dishes down beside him and returned to her spot.

  It would have been easy enough for Gale to pour the leftover boiled water onto the dirty dishes. The stoves were off, the meal done, but he didn’t bother washing anything.

  Was this their last meal?

  Her heart rumbled, a roll of thunder that smashed away the tranquil sounds of creek and wind. Fuck him. They couldn’t all die here. Gale didn’t get to play God, wipe away their lives because he’d fucked up one time too many. If he was resigned to his fate, so be it. She couldn’t fault him for not wanting to be executed. She could fault him for thinking a few hours of his life were worth more than the collective decades Beck, Tilda, and Imogen had coming to them.

  Selfish.

  For a minute his placid gaze wandered over each of them in turn. They sat as still as the rocks, hyperaware: it was coming.

  “D’you think I’m going to hell?” He scratched at his unshaven face.

  No one responded right away, but Imogen was pretty sure it wasn’t a rhetorical question. She was also pretty sure that Beck and Tilda didn’t believe in the literal realms of heaven and hell—though they might be rethinking that since meeting Gale, a creature from the underworld.

  “In Judaism—” Imogen stopped short. Though he’d been quick to label them, Gale didn’t seem to hold repugnant beliefs about their differences. But now she feared the limits of his tolerance; the world was becoming more anti-Semitic by the day. He appeared to be waiting for her to continue, so she did. “In Judaism, it’s about what you do with this life, the one you’re living. This is the only life that counts.”

  His fingers turned a pebble over and over and he gazed at it and nodded. “You Jewish then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Figures. You too?” he asked Beck.

  “Only in the most superficial way.”

  “Still. What happens when you cross paths with a Mexican, a lesbian, and a Jew—sounds like the start of a joke.”

  “It’s the reality of living in a world full of people,” Tilda said, with a hearty dose of snark. “Can’t all be white men pretending to be Christian.”

  “S’pose. Can’t help but think it’s some karmic justice.”

  “You believe in that?” Beck said.

  “Maybe. More ’n’ more.” He flipped his pebble around and around and they waited. “So here’s the thing…” And they waited some more. “I accept—I know what I done was wrong. Know I can’t undo it. Can probly only keep making it worse. So I’ve been thinking. And I’ve about made up my mind.” He looked at them. The three captives exchanged glances, on edge, both ready and not ready to hear the pronouncement of their fate. “I’ll let you all go—letcha go tell the world. It’ll take ya what? Two days to hike out?”

  “Yes,” Beck immediately replied.

  Imogen’s eyes widened, shocked by the direction the conversation had taken.

  Gale went on, “So you do that, take yer two days. Tell whatever ya want to whoever—I won’t grudge you that. I’ll keep going, probly off trail—this place, if I wanted to hunker down and disappear…they ain’t gonna poke around in every nook and cranny. Even if you tell them where ya last saw me, I’ll be long gone, you understand? I can live out my time here. Maybe it’s a week, maybe it’s a month, a year…I’m thinking now this was meant to be the plan all along—I started down this path, no way I was gonna stay outta prison fer good. God’s telling me ‘You fucked this to hell, here’s yer minute a heaven. Enjoy it.’”

  Just when Imogen had abandoned all hope for his enlightenment.

  “Okay.” There was a question in Beck’s voice, a What’s the catch? It was too soon to celebrate, the captives all knew there was a catch. Imogen fought the urge to jump up and kick him in the teeth—before Gale could wreck their hope. Again.

  “Yeah, so…What I want in return…Some men want a last meal, but I don’t care if I starve. It’s a better way to go than the needle. I want…I feel awkward ’bout asking, but yer all there is.”

  He hesitated. The silence stretched. And Imogen knew—the thing he wanted and couldn’t voice. The thing all men wanted when language failed them. She almost laughed. After all his shameless behavior, he got sheepish about asking for this? What untrustworthy devil had designed men with insatiable urges and no easy way to satisfy them? But then again, at least he was asking, not taking. It showed a remarkable amount of restraint and civility—or so the old Imogen would’ve thought.

  The new Imogen started the process of armoring herself, a steel plate for each precious organ, a muzzle for the soft voice of her conscience. This was why fate had brought them together. Her moment was almost here.

  “You know before,” Gale said, finding his words. “I said my first choice was Tilda. Most attracted to you.” He looked at Beck next. “I guess yer pretty much outta the question, swinging the wrong way ’n’ such. But, you know, I want you all to have a say—contrary to things I’ve been accused of I ain’t
a rapist. And I’m guessing none a you really want to, but then there’s are you willing to fer the sake of our agreement and then I’ll letcha all go after—”

  “Wait. You want one of us to have sex with you?” Tilda’s expression mingled astonishment with revulsion. Imogen’s only shock now was that it had taken her friend so long to grasp the situation.

  “As an arrangement, I think that’s pretty fair,” he said.

  Imogen stood up. “I’ll do it.”

  She wasn’t sure which was the chicken and which the egg when it came to redemption and revenge. But whatever he really intended, only she had the real-world experience to summon the necessary rage.

  Beck’s and Tilda’s jaws dropped. But Gale only sighed in relief. “Good. Was hoping one a you would see the value of what I was offering, even if I ain’t yer type. But that’s the one thing I want before I say goodbye to everything and walk away. I’m a lover at heart. My whole life has been stops and starts and that’s the most selfish thing I regret when I fuck up again, ’cause I was never a bitch fer anyone. I waited, and when I got out I got my ladies fair and square and never raped no one. And you girls, well, you might not believe in this sorta thing, but I really think, karma and God and all, that this was meant to happen.”

  “God brought us all here so you could have one of us? As your last wish on earth?” Tilda was full-on disgust now.

  But Imogen agreed with him: this was meant to happen. God had brought them together, and she wasn’t going to waste this gift. This time, she was going into it with her eyes wide open—not caught by surprise.

  “Figures it’s you,” Gale said to her, ignoring Tilda. He got up, slapping the dirt from his hands, ready.

  “Imogen don’t, you don’t have to.” Beck held herself in a tight ball.

  “Imogen.” Tilda staggered to her feet. She went to Imogen, faced her, gazed in her eyes. Quietly but firmly she said, “I’ll do it.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. It emphatically wasn’t your fault.” Tilda spoke the identical words Imogen had expressed to her. “I believe you, believed you, it was never about you. I owe you. Let me do—”

  “No.” Imogen gripped Tilda’s fingers, hoping her friend would feel how strong she was, how prepared. The apology meant a lot, and the offer meant everything, but this was Imogen’s journey.

  “Girls fighting over me, this is better than I coulda hoped!” Gale cackled.

  Tilda and Imogen reeled, nuking him with hard blasts of hatred, and he had the common sense to swallow his mirth. Imogen turned back to Tilda, starting to panic with the crush of time: she couldn’t explain—didn’t want to explain—

  Gale’s spear appeared between them, forcing them to take a step back. “Don’t need to talk so close.”

  “Tilda. Thank you. Thank you. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “I’m going to do this.” They were more than a foot apart, but Imogen only now released Tilda’s fingers. “And then we’re all going home.”

  A tear trailed down Tilda’s cheek. She nodded. Imogen didn’t want to see her sister’s face and whatever anguish it held. She stepped closer to Gale as Tilda lowered her head and sank to the ground.

  40

  I have two conditions.”

  Gale looked down his nose at her, a touch amused. He didn’t see that she wasn’t the soft one anymore. “And what’s that?”

  “I’m not into S&M and bondage and whatever. So I’m not going to be tied up like a…” She held up her fettered wrists. “And I’m not going to do it with the threat of a gun at my head. So unless you toss that gun and untie me, this will be rape. Either I do this freely—as a free person—or you make yourself a rapist. That’s on you.”

  It felt good to make demands of him—though it was a gamble and he could refuse. For the first time Imogen was electric with confidence: her empathy might’ve been misplaced, but she understood him, his pride, his inane self-serving logic. She’d crawled into his head and sat there now on a pillow of brains, gazing out the windows of his eyes. He took a moment to ponder.

  “You got an interesting way a thinking. You girls, man…Gladder than you know that we could work this out, ’cause yer all okay. I can’t just…get rid a this.” He took out the pistol, admired how it fit in his hand. “Might need to hunt something. But what if I stash it somewhere?”

  “That’s fair.”

  “Turn yer backs.”

  Imogen turned around. Beck glanced up at her, looking a little relieved, a tiny bit reassured. She didn’t know all the things Imogen had been thinking, and Imogen wasn’t entirely sure what her plan was, but they both recognized that the whole thing would go better with the full use of her hands, and without the gun’s facile threat. Gale moved around twenty or thirty feet behind them. She heard the clatter of shifting rocks. And then he moved again, and more rocks clanged together. She wanted to bark at him to hurry up—prod him with his own spear.

  Finally he came back. “Okay. Now these two. If we’re gonna…go off on our own, don’t want these two getting up to anything.” He pulled the extra lengths of rope from his pocket and bundled them around his fist, eager. “So we’ll tie the two a you up while we…That agreeable?”

  It was so juvenile that he couldn’t say it—yet another thing he didn’t have a name for. He wasn’t capable of calling it what it actually was: only a rapist would consider this arrangement consent.

  He surveyed his options. “Any trees around here?”

  Slate was flat and open, with greenery along the shallow creek, but nothing larger than a shrub. Imogen knew her sister might be thinking that she’d lost her mind. They locked eyes; she wanted Beck to see her toughness, her mettle. Whatever was about to happen, Imogen was going to be okay—they were going to be okay. Beck had her hard face on, the steely look she wore when she was determined. With its bruises and lumps, it was almost a scary face and Imogen imagined her going berserk as soon as Gale slipped from sight, turning into the Incredible Hulk and bursting out of her restraints.

  “You can change your mind,” Beck said to her in a wounded voice. Imogen shook her head. Beck sighed, and gestured with her chin. “A few hundred feet.”

  “So we all agree?” Gale asked.

  No one said anything. Agreeing and accepting weren’t the same thing. Leaving the packs and gear behind—except for the spear and Beck’s mattress pad—they headed upstream, consumed by their own thoughts. Imogen couldn’t risk making further eye contact with Tilda or Beck, lest they telegraph something—pity or fear—that might sabotage her courage. She was actually glad when the little grove of trees, sun-beaten and wizened, came into view: her valor might not last. It was best to proceed before it slipped beneath the water, like a sentence, an idea, that never made it to the page. Every second was making her decision more real.

  “You sit against that tree, you against that one.” He pointed his commands and Beck and Tilda did as they were told. “Wait. I think yer hands should be behind you—or maybe wrapped around the trunk?”

  Beck rotated her upper arm so he could see the bloodstain on her makeshift bandage. “Rather not tear that open. If you latch on to our wrists and then around the tree, we’ll be sufficiently held in place, don’t you think?”

  In Beck’s attempt to lay on the guilt, Imogen wondered if she had a motive beyond discomfort. It was easier to do many things with their hands bound in front. Gale had to know that, and had to be thinking, as she was, that Tilda and Beck would try to wriggle free as soon as they left.

  “Want me to tie them up?” Imogen asked Gale.

  “If ya do it good and tight.”

  After Gale freed her she gave each of her wrists a hard rub and shook out her hands to get the blood flowing. He hovered over her, directing her on how the cord should be knotted around Beck’s existing bindings, and then wrapped multiple times around her waist and the narrow trunk before finally tying it off at the back. Tilda wouldn’t look at her as Imogen tied he
r up, but this time Imogen thought it was because of shame, not annoyance. Once again, Gale periodically yanked on the knots to make sure they were tight enough.

  There was a weird moment after she was done. Beck and Tilda, their hands imprisoned on their laps, their legs stretched out, were so firmly attached to their scraggly trees that Imogen thought only one of Gale’s knives could get them undone. Both wore expectant, nervous expressions. Was Imogen really going to go through with it?

  Was she?

  She didn’t intend to go completely through with it—she’d fight as hard as she could—but what if she couldn’t find a way to overpower him?

  “So…” That was the only goodbye she could come up with.

  “Go far enough away so we can’t hear you, okay?” Beck said to Gale.

  “What, yer sister a screamer?” he replied with an uncomfortable laugh.

  “Just, please…That would make for a really…Not the memory I want.”

  “Well you two look comfy enough. And we probly won’t be long.” Something about the way he tucked Beck’s accordioned eggshell mattress pad under his arm made Imogen fight a wave of nausea. She covered her mouth, close to gagging. His jaunty gesture, as if they were going off for a romantic tryst, made her head throb. Would she have to lie down on that? She blinked, trying to clear her vision—she absolutely could not afford to be wobbly, physically or mentally.

  He held the spear like a walking stick and looked at her. “Ready?”

  Should she have asked him to leave all his weapons behind? He wouldn’t have agreed; he might have denied all her demands. The knife had already killed at least twice. It felt like a third person was coming with them and Imogen hadn’t agreed to the ménage à trois.

  Beck gave her the steeliest gaze, as if trying to infuse her with a reserve of her own strength. “See you soon.” Imogen heard You can do this.

  Imogen’s mouth was too dry to reply. There were no words left. She turned and followed Gale into the void.