by Max Barry
“This word compels everyone,” she said. “Everyone.”
“Yes.”
“So let me ask you something, Eliot. Do you really think Yeats trusts you to bring it back? Because I only met him that one time, but it doesn’t strike me as his style. It seriously doesn’t. You ask me, how this plays out is you make it about halfway back to Adelaide and somebody runs you off the road. Somebody in a black suit and helmet.”
“I will take it to Yeats,” he said, “and Yeats knows that.”
She squinted. “You’re kind of spineless, Eliot. I’m just realizing. You present as badass, but you’re weak as piss. That’s a little local lexicon, if you’re wondering. Holy hell. You would actually take this thing to Yeats and give it up. That’s amazing to me.”
He didn’t respond.
“Fuck Yeats. Fuck him. He’s not here. Do something unexpected for once in your life. You and me, right here, we have power. We have all the power we need.”
“I’m not interested in power.”
She sighed. “This has been a very disappointing conversation, Eliot. I’m not going to lie. I feel like I’ve gone past you.” She began to walk back to the car.
“Stop.”
“Or what?”
He went after her and put one hand on the car door before she could open it. It was more than he’d intended, but it was her final chance, and he wanted her to have it. “There are snipers. At a signal from me, they will drop you. If you attempt to remove any object from your person, or get back in the car, or strike me, they’ll drop you. They’ll drop you if you try to leave Broken Hill regardless of what I do. This is set. This is the reality you have created. The best I can do for you in this reality is to give you an hour before you die. Please take it.”
Her eyes searched his. “You really don’t get it. The basic concept of love. Of valuing something that you feel. You have no comprehension of that at all.” She shook her head. “Let me go, Eliot.”
So that was that. He stepped back, one step and then another, leaving her isolated for the snipers.
“Oh,” she said. “Here we go.”
Her hands plucked at her T-shirt. He closed his eyes and gave the signal, spreading his arms wide.
Nothing happened. No shots. No noise. He opened his eyes and she was there, arms at her side, her hands empty, just watching him.
“I’ve been scouting this town eight days,” she said. “You and your people, you stick out like crazy here. You glow.”
“Vart—” he said, beginning the sequence that would compromise her, and her hands moved in an odd way. He wasn’t sure what she was doing and she threw one hand toward the windshield and it was a magician’s trick, he realized, a dummy move to draw the eye, but his gaze had already shifted and the windshield was no longer obscured by the sun’s reflection. On the dashboard was an object with something black twisting and crawling across its surface and the blackness kicked him somewhere in the core of his brain and everything went still. Something inside him revolted, a long way down.
“Lie down,” she said.
He lay in the dirt. An ant crawled across the sand in front of his eyes.
“You could have helped me, Eliot. I gave you that choice.” Her boots appeared before him. “But you chose Yeats.”
The words rolled by him. They evoked no reaction. He was patient, waiting for the words that would tell him what to do.
“Lie still and don’t talk or move until the sun rises the day after tomorrow. After that, I don’t care what you do.” Her boots crunched toward the car. “You and me are done, Eliot. Next time, I won’t leave you alive.”
The door slammed. The engine turned. The car rolled away.
The ant reached his nose and began to tentatively feel its way up. Eliot lay still. He breathed. He did not talk. He did not move.
• • •
She drove to the homestead in Eliot’s car and killed the engine. The metal ticked as it cooled. She could see Harry’s paramedic van, and the garden, which had gone to crap since she’d last been here. Through the living room window she could see the back of their sofa, the lamp in the shape of a dog, a corner of a table: small proofs of her old life. She looked at these awhile, because there had been times over the past three months when she had wondered if they existed.
She collected her satchel and climbed out into the blazing sun. She felt curiously fragile. Transparent. She ascended the steps and knocked. The thing was, if Harry wasn’t pleased to see her, she was in kind of a tough spot. She was kind of completely fucked. He would be pleased to see her. She knew that. It was just hard to stop thinking about, since the consequences were so horrific. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She knocked again. Harry was here somewhere; she had made sure of that. She waited.
She left the front door to circle the house. The land was wide and empty of dust gyres that might signal he was out on one of the bikes. She peered in the kitchen window but saw only plates and cups. She tried the door and the handle turned. That meant nothing; it was never locked. She went inside.
“Harry?” She touched her satchel for reassurance. She felt tempted to pull out the word, in case there were poets lurking around corners, behind sofas. Crazy. There were no other organization people in Broken Hill. She had watched this town for a week. But still. “Harry?”
The living room looked like she’d left it yesterday. The sofa cushions were bowed: Harry had imprinted himself on one and she thought she could see a hint of herself, the briefer denizen, on the other. She had been here. She had affected things. She touched her forehead, because she was having trouble thinking. All her planning and he wasn’t here. She should have considered what to do about that. But he should be here. An odd thought occurred to her: that he knew she was here, and that was why she couldn’t find him. He didn’t want to see her. “Harry,” she said. She wanted to explain. She had been through a lot. She hadn’t talked to him in three months because that was the only way to keep him safe.
Outside, three kangaroos bounded across the driveway, one after the other. The world felt uncertain. She was afraid. This was going badly, very badly indeed. She was beginning to think that after all her hopping, with the ground growing hotter beneath her feet, she might not make it to Harry after all.
She heard an engine. She ran to the kitchen and saw him bouncing across the earth on a dirt bike. He went right past the window without glancing and she didn’t move because her body was staked to the floor. The tires chewed earth. He kicked the stand and came up the back steps. His eyes met hers.
She opened her mouth to say hello and he disappeared. She blinked. The back door burst open and he came at her like a train. She raised her hands and he crashed into her. She was enveloped by the scent of earth and motor oil. “Mother fuck!” he said. “How are you here?”
“I just am.”
“Em!” He squeezed her until she thought she would pass out. “Jesus, Em!”
“Let me go.”
“No.”
She wound herself around him. “Where were you?”
“Me? Where was I? Where the fuck were you?” Her T-shirt moved. She realized he was undressing her.
“Wait. Wait.”
“I have waited,” he said. And she caved, because he was right, and so had she. He pulled her shirt over her head and threw it onto the counter. He pulled her to him by the waistband of her jeans. His mouth mashed hers. His hand dove into her pants. She knew she should stop him, because they wouldn’t be safe until they were a thousand miles from here, but his fingers found her and she forgot about that.
“I missed you so much,” she said.
• • •
She lay in the curl of his arm, slick and sated. She played with his hair. After a while, she poked him. “Harry.” She scratched his chest. She wished she could do this forever. But she could not. “Harry.”
He opened his eyes. His lips stretched, rubbery. “I thought you were a dream.”
“I have to te
ll you something kind of crazy. And then we need to leave.”
He sat up, smiling. “What?”
“This is hard to explain.” She felt the need to put on some clothes. Her satchel was on the floor somewhere. She had a vague memory of leaving it with her pants. The most powerful weapon in history, she didn’t know exactly where she’d left it. “There are people looking for me. I stole something from them.”
“What did you steal?”
“It’s . . .” she said. “It’s a word.”
“A word?”
“Yes. But not an ordinary word.” She hesitated. “There are words that can persuade people. This one is very persuasive. The people looking for me, they want it back. They’ll kill me for it. Kill both of us.” His expression hadn’t changed. “I wasn’t supposed to come back here. I was supposed to never see you again. But I had to. That’s why I stole the word. And it’s taken me a long time to get here, but I made it. I know how this sounds, but you need to trust me. We need to leave.”
“Are you high?”
“No. No.”
“You stole a magic word?”
“Not . . . actual magic,” she said. “I mean, yes, magic, in the classical sense, but not the way you mean it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Just trust me. Will you trust me?”
“And leave?”
“Yes.”
“For where?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I have to work this afternoon.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Well, it does,” he said. “I’m a paramedic.”
“Harry,” she said. “This thing I stole, it’s probably the most valuable thing in the world. Do you get that?”
“You’re freaking out, Em.”
“I can prove it. Just come with me. When we’re safe, I’ll show you how it works.”
“Look, no one’s leaving, okay? I’m happy you’re home. But you need to calm down.”
She recoiled. “Harry—”
“I haven’t seen you in almost a year. I haven’t heard from you in three months.”
“I was coming home.”
“I didn’t know that!”
“If you love me,” she said, “trust me.”
He threw back the sheets. “I’m going to work.”
She didn’t want to compromise him. She’d never wanted to do that: reach into the essence of who he was and change it. But she had known it might be necessary, and planned accordingly. “Ventrice hasfal collimsin manning. Get dressed and start packing.”
He screwed up his face. “What?”
She blinked. Had she had mixed up his segment? Surely not. She knew him completely. “Ventrice hasfal collimsin manning. Get dressed.”
“You sound fucking crazy.”
She slid off the bed, unnerved. Harry’s personality was unusual. He was close to the edge of his segment. But she couldn’t have misjudged him that badly. She wasn’t new at this. She wasn’t new to him. She ran to the hallway and found her satchel. She withdrew the bareword from it and held it waist-high. She turned and his eyes moved to it and he grimaced. She felt further unsettled, because she hadn’t seen anyone react like that.
“Do everything I say.” She didn’t say ever, because she loved him.
He looked at her. His expression was wrong. He was not compromised. He looked like he’d never seen her before.
“Em,” he said. “I have a shift. Why don’t you chill out until I get back.”
She had the bareword facing the right way, didn’t she? She resisted a tremendous urge to look down. Had it broken? Was it covered somehow? She ran her fingers over its grooves and nausea rose in her brain. It was there. “Harry,” she said. “Harry.”
He scooped up his pants. “Em, you need to get out of my way.”
“Look at this. Do what I tell you.”
He pushed past her.
“Harry!”
He grabbed his work bag from the living room and headed for the front door, buttoning his shirt. She ran to cut him off and thrust out the word. His eyes flicked to it and away. “Em. Please. Get out of the way.”
She lowered the word. She couldn’t believe what was happening. She’d thought she’d planned for everything. Immune? And yet a part of her wasn’t completely surprised. You knew he resisted persuasion. That was why you liked him.
“Em. I’m serious.”
“Don’t you love me?”
“Em.”
“Harry? Don’t you love me? If you love me, come with me. Trust me and come.”
His eyes shifted. The thought bubbled in her brain, breaking into awareness: He didn’t love her. Not like she loved him.
“I’m going to work,” he said.
She raised the word. “Love me!” She knew it was useless but did it anyway. “Love me!”
He pushed her aside. Her back hit the wall and her breath escaped in a rush. He went down the steps and by the time she went after him, he was climbing into the van. She ran and kept running as he shifted into reverse, thinking—what? To throw herself under it? Something. But he shifted gears and the tires tore at the dirt and he drove away, leaving her in the dust, naked, with her stupid, powerless word.
• • •
She gathered her clothes. She found her shirt crumpled under the bed and her underpants in the sheets. She went to the bathroom and sat on the toilet and began to dress herself. She didn’t know what to do. But she couldn’t stay.
She left the house and climbed into her car. She put the satchel with the word on the passenger seat. She put her hands on the wheel. She felt stunned in some important part of her brain, stunned as in estoner, the French root that also meant astonished, a word used to describe sorcery. As if she was acting outside of herself.
She turned the key, put the car into gear. She didn’t look in the rear mirror so she wouldn’t have to see the house disappear. When she reached the place where the road split, the town in one direction, everything else in the other, she turned the car on Broken Hill and drove away. A green sign went by that said ADELAIDE 508 and she couldn’t stop shaking. She slowed down to be sure of staying on the road. She could taste loss in the back of her throat so badly that she could vomit. She couldn’t believe she was driving away.
She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Yeats. She shrieked and braked. The car slewed off the road and was enveloped in dust. There was no one. She had just imagined Yeats for a second. She began to drive again, shaken, but kept glancing in the mirror and the feeling grew that she was forgetting something. Or remembering, rather. She thought she was leaving Broken Hill in terrible danger, and Harry, too, because of Yeats. Because Yeats had planned something.
She swung the car around. The tires slid in loose gravel but then she was pointed back at the town and she felt steadier. The closer she drew, the surer she felt that she was doing the right thing. She could feel the presence of Yeats. He was coalescing. She could almost smell him in the car. Around her were moving parts in a terrible machine, coming to smash Broken Hill flat. She pushed the needle and the car flew along the dirt road.
She wasn’t too late. She could find Harry and warn him. Persuade him. She didn’t know how but she knew it could be done. The first buildings crawled around the mullock wall and she perceived a hammer above them, a great and unspeakable force that was falling, falling. Yeats drinking tea. The image flashed into her mind from nowhere. Yeats with a teacup, looking at her. Fear spiked in her heart. She didn’t know where that had come from.
She blew through the town and left the car halfway up a curb and ran to the emergency room. Harry’s paramedic van wasn’t there but she burst in anyway. The room was familiar and she felt safer. She touched her satchel for reassurance. She went to the reception desk, which was staffed by an older man with thinning hair and glasses. He’d worked there forever, although she didn’t know why; he was permanently irritable. He always made her feel as if she were botheri
ng him. She said, “I need to find Harry.”
He looked down his nose. She was coming off as a little crazy. She looked like a woman who had spent months on a container ship and slept in the desert and left a man catatonic by the side of the road and had sex and been abandoned and was afraid of invisible hammers. “He’s in the field.”
“Where?”
He continued to eye her. “The field.” He gestured nonspecifically.
“Miles,” said a nurse, emerging from the corridor. “We’re still looking for that second defib unit.”
The receptionist turned. Emily leaned across the counter and caught his shirt. “Excuse me,” she said. “It is extremely important that I locate Harry right this second.”
He looked at her and she realized this was familiar to him: girls coming to the desk and saying, Where’s Harry, I need to see him. She was merely the latest. “Please let go of me, Emily.”
“No,” she said. She could feel Yeats coming up behind her. “Tell me where he is.”
“Security,” said the nurse.
Emily reached inside her satchel and as her fingers touched the word’s cold wood she abruptly remembered where she’d seen Yeats drinking tea. It had been in her DC apartment. She had been back awhile, at least a few months, and he had come to her. That was why she’d never felt alone. Because he had been there. He’d sat opposite her and sipped tea and told her things. At the end, before he left, he’d said, Remember none of this until you next leave Broken Hill.
A tall boy came and stood behind her. The security guard. He didn’t grab her right away because they knew each other pretty well. She used to chat with him while waiting for Harry. He played football. But she couldn’t concentrate on him because there were awful memories breaking free in her mind, surfacing in her consciousness like bloated corpses. I wish to establish exactly what it is we have found, Yeats had told her. There are certain forms of testing that one can really only conduct, shall we say, live.
The receptionist slid a pen and paper across the counter. “Leave him a note.” He did not look completely unsympathetic. “I’ll make sure he gets it.”
“You have to get out,” she said. “You all have to get out.” She could use the word; they wouldn’t believe her otherwise. But she could do it: could herd this entire freaking town into the desert. The only question was whether she could save them before Yeats’s hammer fell.