Strange Exit

by Parker Peevyhouse

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  Copyright Page

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  For my sister, Gwynne, for bravely reading everything I’ve written since I could hold a pencil

  1

  LAKE

  The San Francisco Zoo: gates rusted open, weeds bursting through cracks in the asphalt, trees like many-armed scarecrows, broken and stunted. Lake figured she was the only person to set foot in the place in years. Not counting the boy in the tiger exhibit.

  Lake peered in at him through a curtain of dirt over the viewing glass. She guessed he was around her age, seventeen. He sat on a log, hunched over something she couldn’t see. No tiger in sight. Was it wandering the abandoned zoo, looking for snacks like Lake was looking for people to rescue? Lake shivered. Hope not. Because that would mean she and the tiger were looking for the same thing.

  Lake scanned the ash-gray landscape, the shattered dead trees. Checked the other big cat exhibits. Went and listened at the cracked-open doors of the Lion House. No sign of anyone other than the boy in the tiger yard.

  How was she going to get him out? She could go stand at the glass that shielded the exhibit and shout across the moat. But she’d long ago discovered that barriers made everyone more feral, no matter which side they were on.

  She could scrape herself up climbing over the fake rocks that ringed the exhibit. Kind of a hot day for something that dangerous. That left the door at the back of the exhibit, which would mean going through the Lion House. Couldn’t still be lions in there after so many years, right? They’d either be dead or roaming free—not lying in wait. But that was the kind of thing people said right before they broke into a lion house and got mauled.

  She pulled at the back of her shirt, which was starting to stick. She was spending too much time here. There were other people holed up in other parts of the city, groups of them who needed her to tell them that it was time to come out. He was only one person.

  But he was stuck, same as the others were.

  Lake patted the flank of a bronze lion sculpture that lay toppled on the steps. “Wish me luck.” The sculpture was green with verdigris, nested in pooled dirt. Real lucky.

  Something tawny emerged from between the doors of the Lion House. Lake almost toppled over the felled sculpture in her rush to back away.

  It was only a dog, a yellow Lab speckled with dirt. Lake’s heart battered her rib cage for another minute, then quit being dramatic. “Hey, there.” Lake eased forward and held out her hand. The dog panted. It wasn’t half as skinny as Lake would have expected it to be. “Someone’s been taking care of you.”

  The dog thumped its tail but wouldn’t come closer. “Come here. Please?” Lake said. “It’s been a rough day. Month.”

  Wandering empty neighborhoods and now an empty zoo.

  “Promise I’m friendly.” Lake stepped forward, but the dog turned and vanished through the doors.

  You always rush it, Lake told herself. With people, too.

  She stepped toward the doors, envisioning great cats crouching in the darkness. But then, the dog didn’t seem to sense danger.

  She pushed into the darkness, smelled mildew but no fetid breath. Heard the dog trotting off. “Wait, buddy. Wait for me.”

  Her eyes adjusted to the low light, and she went after a tawny blur that she hoped was the Lab, past rusted barriers, through open doors with their locks thrown back. Sunlight streamed through the doorway to the tiger yard. Lake went through and then closed the door behind her, even though it protested with a rusty squeal. She needed it shut, for later.

  The light stung her eyes. Before her, a weird Eden: stunted trees, yellow-green grass struggling up through dirt, a thorny bush clawing its way out of the moat. The boy was wrestling the bush now, hacking at a green branch with a hunting knife. The dog supervised from the scant shade of a broken stump.

  The boy stopped mid-hack to look Lake over, head to boots, eyes sharp like he expected her to have a weapon. Which she didn’t. Well, except desperation, which was still no match for a hunting knife.

  He didn’t seem surprised to see her. Lake took that as a good sign. He must know that he didn’t belong in this place. He must know someone would come to take him away.

  He didn’t say anything. His hand shook.

  “Your dog invited me in,” Lake finally said, trying not to stare at the knife. “He said something about lemonade.”

  No smile from the boy. No one appreciated humor anymore.

  He wiped sweat from his brow with his free hand, which was still shaking. “You’re wasting your time here.”

  Probably. But what’s new?

  He was half a foot taller than Lake. And, you know, had a knife. Seemed distraught. Lake inched backward. “You live here?” She looked around at the new grass, and the gray dirt that must have once been completely covered in greenery, before nuclear winter. The exhibit was so much bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. “I’ve always wanted to go inside a tiger pen.”

  “Most people don’t. That’s why I came here. Safer.” He went back to struggling with the bush.

  “Safe from what?”

  “People who might want to rob me. Beat me up. Ask me lots of questions while I’m busy.”

  Lake smiled. “That last bit was a joke, wasn’t it? What a relief. I was afraid those didn’t exist anymore.”

  He turned to look at her again, eyes half-lost in overgrown hair. He frowned like he didn’t know what to make of her.

  Lake pulled her shirt away from her sweaty back again. How long have I been here now?

  Don’t rush it.

  “No tigers around?” she asked.

  “Just its bones.” He gave her an uncertain look. “I buried them.”

  Lake’s stomach shrank. She glanced at the grass-studded dirt. At the boy again, his troubled gaze. He’d bothered to hold a funeral for a tiger—there was something promising in that. “Nice of you.”

  He shrugged. “Every time I looked at those bones, they made me think of…”

  They both knew. “Death. The war.”

  Impact fires and nuclear winter.

  “Didn’t you hear? That’s all over now.” Lake looked up at the gray-blue sky. “The sun’s out, the actual sun. Grass is growing. And all tigers are buried.”

  He gave her a brief smile. She felt it like warmth from the sun overhead.

  “There must be better places to camp out than a tiger yard,” Lake said. “Seems lonely here.” For one thing. The smell of mud and sulfur wafted from the swampy moat.

  The boy nodded at the dog. “I’ve got him, at least. Found him wandering.”

  Lake moved toward the dog, and this time it let her put a hand on its head. So nice to feel fur and floppy ears, to see its pink tongue. She
missed dogs.

  “You ever think of leaving?” She took a step toward the boy. He stood straighter, his collarbone jutting, like he didn’t want her to come closer.

  I’m rushing it.

  A folded blanket lay on a log nearby, along with a metal cup and a pocket-tin. Lake nudged open the tin. Inside lay two cherry-red cough drops. “Are you saving these?”

  The boy eyed them like he might pounce on her if she took one. Lake couldn’t think of anything she wanted less. She’d only been curious.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “What for?” Lake asked.

  “My birthday.”

  “One for you, and one for the dog?”

  The boy shrugged. “One for me and one for … whoever might come along.”

  Lake’s heart sped up. This could work. She could do this.

  “Just been waiting for someone to wander into your tiger yard?” she asked.

  He turned to the bush, wielding his knife. “First I went to my house, to look for my parents.” The branch he’d been working at finally separated from the bush, like a leg at a joint. He tossed the thorny mass into the moat. “They weren’t there.”

  A bruising pain blossomed in Lake’s chest. “I searched my own house, once. It was horrible inside. Everything covered in a layer of dust like a new hide.”

  The boy nodded. “All the food in my house was expired. Only the cough drops seemed any good. Weird what lasts and what doesn’t.”

  Weird wasn’t the word Lake would have used.

  “I searched for my sister.” She toyed with the bracelet on her wrist, a knotted blue thread. “Searched almost the whole city. But…”

  The boy turned to her, looked like he’d just been punched. The knife fell to the dirt. “You didn’t find her?”

  “I found plenty of other people. You, for example.”

  The boy stared at the knife in the dirt.

  Is this working?

  Under Lake’s fingers, notches in the lid of the tin said the boy had been counting the days he’d been waiting for someone to come along. “I always thought it was sad, seeing tigers locked up in zoos.”

  “Why? One tiger in a zoo probably saves a hundred in the wild. Anyway, zoos usually get the wounded ones. The ones that can’t survive on their own.” He pressed his hands together, and his fingers came away blood-streaked from the thorn-pricks on his palm.

  “I think sometimes they let them back into the wild,” Lake said. “When they’re ready.” Are you ready?

  He looked down at his blood-spotted hands. “My birthday was two days ago.”

  That pain in her chest again, hollowing her out. One day, there’d be a hole where her heart was now.

  Maybe she should stop coming to places like this.

  But then—who else would?

  She held out the tin to the boy. “Sorry I’m late.”

  She watched his face while he stared at the tin. Watched his expression change.

  He took the tin from her.

  I didn’t rush it. That was a relief.

  He turned away, and Lake felt a small burst of panic, but then she saw what he was doing. The branch he had cut off had revealed a cluster of deep red berries. The first fruit Lake had seen in ages. She went weak all over.

  The boy twisted off the cluster and turned back to her.

  “Berries so wild they have to be locked in a pen?” She smiled at the strangeness of it.

  He smiled back. “Berries instead of tigers. Not a bad trade.”

  Lake pulled off a berry and ate it, and it was so tart she could have cried. The best berry she’d ever eaten.

  The boy ate one too, plucking it with his red-stained fingers. Lake picked up the hunting knife from the dirt while he chewed. She strode to the back of the yard before he could protest.

  She used the knife to scratch an X in the door there. Then she opened the door and held it for the boy like she was inviting him into the Land of the Lion House. Still holding the knife, which felt creepy, so she dropped it into the dirt.

  The boy studied her a long moment like he knew the door would lead to somewhere other than the Lion House. “What happens when I walk through?”

  “You stop living alone in a tiger yard.”

  He gave her a searching look. Blood and berry juice stained his hands and his jeans where he’d tried to wipe his hands clean. Like evidence of a pact they’d made.

  He’ll walk through.

  He looked like he wanted to ask another question, so Lake smiled, waiting. “I’m sorry you didn’t find your sister,” he said.

  Lake’s smile faltered.

  The boy walked through the door.

  Lake stood alone in the yard, picturing Willow’s crooked smile. Then she gave the place one last glance, blew a kiss to the dog, and stepped through.

  The next moment, she was lying in a bed, staring up at a metal ceiling.

  She gave herself a minute to come to her senses. Dull gleam of steel, stale smell of recycled air, hum of generators. You were in the simulation. Now you’re out.

  And then the next realization hit her, same as it always did: No Willow.

  But she had saved that boy. Relief ballooned inside her. He’d had a knife and was camped in a tiger yard, and she’d still convinced him to leave with her.

  She wished she could have brought the dog through too, but it wasn’t real, just a figment of the simulation.

  She slipped her head out of the nest of wires and nodes, easing her temples past the touch-points. The plastic shell lifted and she pushed her legs over the side of the bed. Fumbled for the lock on the steel panel that opened the tiny room.

  Beyond: rows and rows of more steel pods in a vast warehouse lit by flickering lights. Lake found her way through the maze to the warehouse’s wide doorway, registering the hiss of air vents and the rumble of labored machinery that kept the ship running.

  She stepped out into the smell of dirty clothes, farmed algae, desperation. Welcome home.

  2

  LAKE

  Lake followed the arrows her fellow passengers had scratched into the ship’s walls. Most of the ship’s hallways led to locked doors, pitch-black rooms, groaning machinery, barricades of smashed supply crates. Some led to dorms or toilets, or to makeshift workshops strewn with broken bots, or to banks of red-flashing panels Lake had long ago given up trying to decipher. The arrows passengers left for one another were the only way to stay oriented.

  Lake’s stomach was begging for food, but she couldn’t stop herself from doing this—searching. Willow’s not here, she told herself. She’s not on the ship.

  She had to prove it to herself every time she woke up.

  Somewhere in these hallways, the boy she had rescued from the simulation must be stumbling along, weak from stasis. Someone had probably already found him and was taking him to get food and water. Lake would check on him later.

  She ended up at a locked door and then decided to go back and scratch a mark to warn others about the dead end. She used a screw from a dissembled bot to do it. A girl heading out of a dorm room shot Lake a suspicious look. “Someone should make a map,” Lake said lightly, but the girl hurried past. Everyone on the ship acted like they were still coming out of the fog of sleep, still trying to shake some bad dream.

  Lake’s stomach grumbled again. Okay, I get it. Time for the eatery.

  At the end of the next hallway, the eatery buzzed with skittish energy, as always. It was the place most passengers hung out, hungry or not. Lake wouldn’t call it crowded, exactly, considering it was meant to service a few hundred more people than had managed to get on board. But even with its tall view-screens and high ceiling it felt cramped, full of nerves and hunger and grumbling voices.

  Lake kept her head down when she walked in, avoiding huddles of passengers who’d staked out their usual tables, where they played poker with makeshift cards, or went through all the same arguments over how to fix wheezing air vents and divvy up protein bars. Might have been a differ
ent scene if the passengers hadn’t all been underage—but that was something Lake tried not to think about too much, the whole pied piper situation.

  Scrawled all over the walls of the eatery were names of passengers lost to the simulation. Lake had been checking the names off one by one. Ninety-seven check marks. Only fifty-three left to go. Fifty-two, now.

  And where were they all? It used to be easy to find people in the sim, even if it was hard to get them out. Now, she was more likely to find empty landscapes. Where in the sim could fifty-two people be hiding?

  The eatery’s overhead lights flickered.

  Meanwhile, the ship’s getting worse every day.

  “Where are you coming from?” a boy barked at her as she tried to edge past his table.

  Kyle. He’d been in Lake’s government class back home, where she’d barely noticed him. Now, she couldn’t avoid him—he liked to stand on tables and bark orders at people, as if studying power structures qualified him to create his own. He glared at her, arms crossed so he could show off his muscles in his ship-issue shirt.

  “Catching up on my sleep,” she said.

  He caught her arm as she tried again to walk past. “You didn’t go back into the sim?”

  It was all she could do not to yank free. Eager as she was to escape his sweat-and-algae smell, she couldn’t afford to fight Kyle. He was known for shoving people into the private dining rooms that ringed the eatery and served as makeshift holding cells. “Always out, never in,” she said, the stupid motto everyone kept repeating. “Otherwise, we all just keep getting stuck.” She forced a smile.

  Kyle squinted at her.

  Dummy—how do you think you got out of the sim? If I hadn’t gone back in and found you barricaded in a school closet …

  He was still gripping her arm, trying to decide if she was hiding something.

  “Got anything to eat?” she asked, still smiling.

  He let go of her arm like it was burning hot. “Sorry. Check the other tables.”

  Worked every time.

  Lake found a chair at a mostly empty table and reached into the food box there. Empty. Her stomach complained.