by Max Barry
“Find a place you can lay him still and barricade yourself in until this is over.”
“Until what is over?” said the girl. He could see she was looking for a reason to give in to complete hysteria, and this could be it. “Until what?”
“He plays footy,” said one of Derek’s friends. Harry didn’t know what possible reason the kid had for volunteering this, then realized he was saying it was a tragedy. Derek played football and now would probably never be the same again. It was the worst thing the kid could imagine.
“He’s got internal bleeding, I think,” said the math teacher. “What do you think, Harry?”
“Is that Beth?”
“Yes,” Harry said. “She’s dead, and I’m sorry, Derek, but nobody can go near the hospital. They’re killing people.”
They began to argue with him. He looked for Emily. He was becoming increasingly nervous about where she was.
“Police!” said the girl. She broke from the group and ran down the road, waving her arms, the sleeves of her dress flapping. A cop car was sailing toward them, its lights dark, covered in dents. “Over here! Help!”
Harry called out to her and there was a hard, flat sound and the girl folded up and lay on the road. The cruiser continued toward them.
“What?” said the kid.
“Go,” Harry said. “Move. Run.”
The girl’s father, the schoolteacher, stared at her with his lips apart. In the streetlight, tiny visible hairs all over his face stood on end. Harry had seen this reaction once before, when a fellow paramedic helped him peel open a wrecked car to find her husband inside. He’d had to wrap her in a space blanket, because she froze. She literally froze. Like she’d fallen into ice. It had been the strangest thing he’d ever seen.
“Jess?” said the kid. He wasn’t calling. It was a question for the group. The cop car drew closer.
“Run,” Harry said, and shoved the schoolteacher. He pulled the other girl, the dark-haired one, by her wrist. There was another flat retort. He was tempted to see who that was, the father or possibly Derek Knochhouse, but it made no difference. The girl screamed and twisted in his grip in a way that meant it could have been either, and then he did turn, and saw the cop with one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting his service revolver on the crook of his arm, his eyes moving between the road and the people he was shooting.
The grocery store woman trilled like a bird and sat heavily. The father was already spread out, arms folded, as if he’d carefully lain down. One of the kids had fled but the other was dragging Derek, the one who’d said he plays footy, and Harry shouted at him to run but of course the kid didn’t. Harry tripped on the curb, which was a handy reminder to keep an eye on where the fuck he was going, losing his grip on the dark-haired girl. She began to walk back toward the cop car, her arms out, in order to accomplish what, Harry didn’t know. He spat a curse and went back for her. Then he saw Emily.
She was walking down the center of the road. He couldn’t see her face because the streetlight was behind her. There was an appeal in her posture, which he first thought was directed at him, then realized wasn’t, because she was angling toward the police cruiser.
The dark-haired girl spun in a half circle. Harry ran by her falling body. He leaped onto the hood of the police cruiser, skid across, and hit the tarmac on the other side. He reached Emily and threw her over his shoulder. He heard the whine of the cop’s power window behind him. The closest shelter was a bakery, a squat weatherboard much too far away. He jagged, to put a degree of difficulty into it for the cop.
“Put me down,” said Emily.
Ten feet from the bakery door, something bit his ear. The glass door shattered. He kept going and crashed through it, tripping and sprawling onto the tiled floor, feeling bullets everywhere, losing Emily. The interior was lit by a refrigerated drinks cabinet. “Em.” He crawled toward her in the corpse light. “Emily.” He found her hand and got to his feet and hauled her up.
“I want to die.”
“No,” he said. He dragged her into the back room. His hip clipped a table; a stack of baking trays clattered to the ground. He found the rear door and discovered it was bolted in several different ways, some of which required keys. He released Emily and shook it. “Fuck,” he said. He abandoned the door for a smaller, metallic one, with a horizontal handle like a refrigerator’s. Chill air spilled around his ankles. He pulled Emily inside and closed the door and groped in darkness for a lock. But there wasn’t one, of course. You didn’t put a lock on the inside of a cool room. The door didn’t even open the right way—that is, in a way he could block. He gripped the handle and planted his feet and cursed. Maybe the cop wouldn’t chase them. There were plenty of other targets. He listened, straining for sound. The door was so thick, the cop could be right outside. He relaxed his muscles, for the moment when he’d need them. There was a snuffling. Emily was crying. “Em,” he said. “Be quiet.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Quiet.”
She kept crying. “I did something really bad.”
“I know. Shut up.” He thought he heard something outside. But it could be anything. It was incredibly cold. Too cold for a permanent hiding place.
“I should have been able to stop it.”
The handle turned in his hands. He resisted. After a moment, the opposing force vanished. He waited in the dark. Something hit the door, hard and sharp. A bullet. Then two more. He held the handle with one hand and flailed in the dark with the other, trying to push Emily down. A sizzling smell reached him. Light bled through three holes in the door. He hadn’t thought a steel-lined refrigerator door would be bulletproof, but the confirmation was still disappointing. He found Emily’s hair and yanked it. She squawked but then he had her wrapped in one arm while he held the handle with the other, hoping the cop would please not shoot off his hand. For a while there was only their breathing. He heard the cop moving around, doing who knew what.
“Does it wear off?” he said. “The word?”
“No.”
“Jesus fuck.”
“Why are you trying to save me?” He ignored this because it was a stupid question. Something outside went: fwick. “I thought you didn’t love me.”
“Quiet.” He saw a flicker. Only a glimmer through the holes in the door, but it was enough to recognize: The cop was setting the bakery on fire.
“I got everything wrong.” In the dark, she cried brokenly.
He could see it in his mind: the cop hanging back, leaning against a door frame, gun aimed at the cool room. The second Harry popped open this door, the cop would shoot him. Maybe the fire wouldn’t catch. Maybe the cop would give up and go away. Or maybe not. Because it wasn’t KILL A BUNCH OF PEOPLE, was it? It wasn’t KILL AS MANY AS IS CONVENIENT.
“There’s something in my eye,” Emily said.
He could hear crackling. The cool room was growing brighter. “Em, I need to open the door.” She had her head in her hands. “Emily. Listen to me. Wait here until I call for you. Understand? Do not move until I call your name.” Was there anything out there he could use as cover? Something he could throw? Yes. Yes, he would hurl a baking tray at the cop, and it would deflect the bullets, and dazzle him with its reflection of the flames, which of course he would have to run through, and then he would disarm the cop with his superior hand-to-hand combat training. “Are you fucking listening to me?” He resisted the urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her.
“Please just leave me, Harry.”
He could feel the heat through the walls. The cop must have moved by now. Retreated to the storefront, at least, maybe right out to the street. The greatest danger now was waiting too long, until there was nowhere to go except into an inferno. He released the handle and pried Emily’s hands from her face. For a moment, he thought he really did see something in her eye, but it was only the dancing reflection of flames. “Em. You are pissing me off. But I will never leave you. Ever. So stop talking. We’re getting out of
here.” He wound his fingers into hers. “Ready?” She stared at him. “Sure you are,” he said. He scooped her up. Her arms around his neck were stiff as poles. He took a breath, watching the door, the flames flickering behind it. He kissed her, because fuck it, he was probably about to die. Then he kicked open the door and the fire roared like a living thing and he ran into it.
• • •
She woke in a bed. No. Wrong. On a stretcher. Something portable. She was in a room full of stretchers and it smelled bad. Burned. Wait. That was her. She was singed. She put her hand to her hair and it felt very wrong.
The room was very bright. Beyond wide windows, sunlight leaped from the chrome of half a dozen muscular vehicles, Humvees and trucks and Jeeps. Beyond those was endless rolling earth. She was encircled by a colorful strip of paper on which were letters and numbers and puppies and dinosaurs and elephants. The walls were lined with posters about Brazil and global warming. Beneath the windows were desks, all pushed together. It was a classroom. She was burned, on a stretcher, in a classroom.
“Oh,” said a woman. “You’re awake.”
Emily didn’t know this woman. Which was odd, because Emily knew everyone in Broken Hill. Also, the woman was wearing fatigues, like a soldier. She came closer and checked Emily’s tubes. Emily had tubes. They ran from the insides of her elbows to plastic bags on a trolley beside the bed.
“How do you feel?” Before she could stop her, the woman peeled up one of Emily’s eyelids with her thumb. “You’re in Menindee. It’s a little town outside Broken Hill.” A patch on her khakis said: NEILAND, J. “We’re using the school as a hospital. Are you in pain?”
Her hands were wrapped in bandages. Like big mittens. There were three other stretcher beds in the room but none were occupied. She tried to sit up. She remembered fire, smoke. Harry carrying her through it. She had passed out. Then she had been flying, skimming across the earth, and bouncing, being held by Harry on a dirt bike. She had seen kangaroos fleeing flames. “Where’s Harry?”
“The man who brought you in?”
“Yes,” said Emily. “Yes, yes.”
“He’s up the hall. They’re working on him.”
“Is he all right?”
“Just relax,” said Neiland.
She almost asked, Are you a dog person or a cat person? Because she really wanted to know if Neiland was telling the truth. “Who else?”
“Who else what?”
“Made it,” she said. “Out.” She was a little freaked out by the empty stretcher beds.
Neiland didn’t answer. Emily felt ice in her heart, a thin sliver, like a stiletto. She put her face in her mitten-hands. Her eye hurt. “I’ll tell them you’re conscious,” said Neiland. “For now, rest.”
Once Neiland had left, Emily climbed off of her stretcher. There were tubes to take care of, which she did with her teeth, because her mitten-hands were useless. She was in a green smock, which flapped at her ankles and admitted a breeze at the back. Beneath this she suspected underpants and bandages. She felt padded. She peered out a glass panel on the classroom door and saw nobody so she opened it. A passing soldier pointed at her and said, “Get back inside,” not slowing, and she said, “Okay,” and closed the door and waited until he was gone. The hallway floor was warm. The adjoining classrooms were empty. Farther down the hall, behind a window almost completely obscured by posters, she saw soldiers wearing face masks around a gurney. On the gurney lay someone wrapped in odd gray packages and bandages. The person’s face wasn’t visible but she could see a forearm, blackened and blistered, and knew it as Harry’s. She covered her mouth.
One of the soldiers in face mask saw her and gestured, and Neiland turned and frowned at her. Emily went to the door and tried to open it with her elbows. Neiland pushed it open. “Back to bed,” Neiland said in a low, no-nonsense voice, almost poet-like, which gave Emily a small start. “Bloody hell, did you remove your drip?”
“Let me sit with him,” Emily said, but without the baritone or the persuasiveness, and Neiland took her arm and marched her down the hall. “Please,” Emily said. But Neiland did not engage. She took Emily back to her classroom and deposited her on the bed. “I want to sit with him.”
“He’ll be okay,” Neiland said. “Stop worrying.”
For some reason this caught Emily unawares and she began to shake. She couldn’t even say thank you.
“You love him?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes.”
“He was half-dead when he made it to the perimeter. Hard to believe he kept going. He wanted to save you very much.” Neiland gently forced her to recline. “Rest. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”
She let herself be forced. “Okay.”
“Everything will be fine,” Neiland said, and sunlight flashed from a car outside the windows. It was a low black sedan, very different from the other vehicles, its windows tinted dark. It pulled alongside a truck and stopped.
She sat up. “How long have I been here?”
“About four hours.”
“I need to see Harry.” The sedan’s door opened and a woman in a suit emerged, pushing back her hair. Emily had seen this woman once before, years ago. Her name was Plath. “Are you a dog person or a cat person?”
“Excuse me?”
“Dogs or cats? Which do you like more?”
“Dogs.” Neiland rose. “Now sleep.”
“What’s your favorite color?”
“Mauve,” said Neiland, one hand on the door, and there was no time for further questions. Emily had spent a grand total of about five minutes with Neiland, and there were twenty-odd segments to which she could feasibly belong, but Emily had spent time piecing together psychographics from first principles and had a strong feeling about fifty-nine.
“Vecto brillia masog vat,” she said. “Come back here.”
Neiland swiveled in mid-step. “Thank you,” Emily said. “Thank you, thank you; take me to Harry.”
• • •
She followed Neiland back to the other classroom and approached the gurney while Neiland invented convenient excuses for why the doctors or medics or whoever these face-masked people were to leave. Neiland had said Harry would be fine, but he was swathed in layers and layers and the only parts she could see were swollen and red. His eyes were beneath soft white circles and she wanted these off. “Wake him up,” she told Neiland. “But please be careful.”
She reached for his fingers, which were poking out from gauze, but of course her hands were encased as well. “Harry, can you hear me? We’re going to get out of here.” Neiland finished pushing fluid into Harry’s drip and Emily set her to unwrapping her mitten-hands. They looked worse than she’d expected: Her fingers were cracked and blackened, the crevices between them oozing pink fluid. She took Harry’s hand and it hurt but it felt better, too. “When he’s awake, help me get him to a car. We don’t want anyone to see us. You have to get us out of here and not let anyone stop us, understand?”
“Yes,” said Neiland.
He made a noise. She peeled one of the white circles from his eyes and then the other. His eyes moved beneath the lids. “Harry, wake up.”
The door opened. She turned. In the doorway stood a soldier she hadn’t seen before, a young guy with a buzz cut. His eyes were focused and intent.
“Oh, shit,” she said. “Vecto brillia masog vat, don’t let the guy near us.”
The soldier ran at them and Neiland moved to intercept. They exchanged flat, wordless blows and fell to the floor and Neiland got him in a headlock and began to wind surgical tubing around his throat. Emily was surprised and impressed by Neiland’s badassery. She returned her attention to Harry. He was swimming somewhere beneath consciousness like he was under glass. “Harry, please wake up. You have to wake up. I can’t get you out of here by myself.”
Neiland and the soldier crashed into a trolley, scattering surgical equipment. The soldier got free of Neiland and his eyes fell on Emily. She abruptly saw that thi
s wasn’t going to work, her whole escape plan; this guy was going to knock out Neiland and throttle her and Harry, or not even that—the noise alone would bring more people than she could handle, people and soldiers and Plath. She felt panic. “Kill him!” she said, because maybe Neiland wasn’t going full throttle. It seemed to make a difference, because Neiland picked herself up and punched the soldier in the throat in a way that dropped him immediately. “Kill everyone who tries to stop us,” Emily said, and something in her mind leaped, and she realized what she’d said.
She felt undone. She felt the realization sinking into her: that she had finally done it, found a way to screw up so badly there was no way back. She had gotten a star in her eye. There were who knew how many people dead in Broken Hill and Yeats had put instructions in her head and she had carried them out. She couldn’t believe, in her core, that she wasn’t responsible. She had killed people and now there was a star in her eye that wanted her to kill more.
“I’m sorry,” she told Harry. She began to cry, partly for herself and partly for Harry, who had tried so hard. Neiland and the soldier grunted and gasped. Emily leaned over and kissed Harry on each eye. “I love you.”
His eyes moved rapidly, as if in REM sleep. She hesitated. “Harry,” she said. She saw a response, a tiny neuroelectrical spark. It reminded her of DC, when she had sought out examples of psychographic segments and tested word fragments on them. Back then she had reverse-engineered entire words.
Harry was immune. But maybe he was only immune to the words she knew about. Maybe he was nothing more than a slightly different kind of machine, a psychographic segment of one, which the organization hadn’t targeted only because they didn’t know about it.
“Ko,” she said. She watched his eyelids. “Ka. Toh.” She knew him very well. She understood which movements were his. “Kik.” A muscle above his lip jumped. She almost gasped. Her mind moved with possibilities, sifting conjugations. “Kik,” she said again, to be sure.