Strange Exit

by Parker Peevyhouse

  The shed door opened with a squeal and then Lake was gone.

  But she hadn’t marked the door with an X, like when she’d taken him from the sim. She wasn’t leaving.

  He watched the shed door a little longer, doing his best to squelch his anxiety. Then he found a distraction in a bright spot among the gravel: a golden poppy. He leaned down to get a better look. How did the sim know how to make something like this? The buttery orange color, so rare you could use the petals for currency.

  And the smell in the air—wet trees and earth. He could live off it if all food ran out.

  Will it all be waiting for us when we get back?

  Or is the world just a burnt shell of what it used to be?

  The shed door shrieked.

  A stranger stepped out. Taren skittered back, startled. Then he realized the stranger must be Lake. Her expression held the same hardness he’d become familiar with, but her face was different—wider, and framed by darker hair.

  Same glint of anxiety in her eyes.

  A girl had stepped through after Lake, maybe thirteen, following Lake like a compass follows north.

  “Who’s this?” Taren asked.

  “This is my sister, Willow,” Lake said. “She likes trees and cool houses. She’s coming along.”

  The girl followed Lake uncertainly, her awkward steps scattering gravel.

  “Wait,” Taren said, gravel sliding under his feet as he hurried to catch up. “I thought you said your sister—” He broke off and threw an uncertain look at Willow.

  “I think I only go where Lake takes me in the sim,” Willow said. “But I’m not sure. I have a hard time remembering.”

  “What?”

  Lake stopped and turned back to give Taren a cool look. “This is how I stay grounded in the sim. I know Willow isn’t—” She broke off at the sound of Willow’s nervous feet shuffling in the gravel. “If she’s here with me, I know none of this is real.”

  Taren looked away from Lake’s wounded gaze and studied her sister instead. Willow’s green eyes were startling against the fog and muted moss. Hair messy, chin smudged with dirt. None of it was real? She was just part of the computer program?

  And having her around was supposed to make Lake more likely to be able to leave the sim?

  “Is this really a good idea?” he asked.

  “Are Flaming Hot Cheetos really the best thing for your stomach lining?” Lake said, and turned back to the house.

  “Okay … Guess we’re not going to talk about this.”

  Willow hung back. “Like those espresso shots she buys after school are any better,” she muttered to Taren.

  Taren could only stare. She’s not real, and she’s talking to me.

  “Are you coming?” Lake barked, and Willow hurried to catch up.

  Taren followed more slowly, still unsure.

  Lake pulled open the massive glass front door set into the wood paneling. “After you.”

  Taren swallowed his nerves. Inside the house, potted bamboo made graceful lines against reclaimed hardwood. Past the entryway, muted light filled tall windows in a sprawling living room, where half a dozen kids Taren’s age lounged on a sky-blue couch and stood at the wet bar in the corner.

  Taren gave Lake a triumphant smile. “You wanted to find someone to wake up.”

  “Don’t look so smug.” Lake stepped into the house after him and peered in at the scene. “It’s harder when they’re not alone.” But Taren read the relief on her face—he’d found at least one of the pockets that had eluded her.

  “You want me to distract them while you do your thing?” he asked her.

  “My thing?”

  “Carve an X in the door, lure them to an algae brunch.”

  “I told you, it’s not that easy.”

  Taren noted a guy slumped on the couch, and another pouring a drink in the corner. Did she think they’d put up a fight? “You haven’t seen my reach.”

  “Wow,” Willow said, leaning in the doorway with her arms crossed. “Are you always like this at parties?”

  Lake caught Taren’s arm, claiming all his attention. “You can’t throw people through a door to get them out of the sim. The X isn’t magical. Whoever opens a door in the sim chooses where it leads next, and the X helps me envision that the door leads out of the sim. But even so, if a person isn’t prepared to leave the sim, that door won’t take them out of it. None of these people are going to wake from this nightmare when they walk through a door unless they have a sense that they’re leaving this reality for another, however small that sense might be.”

  Taren thought of when he’d left his camp in the tiger yard with Lake. The tin in his fist, a rock in his stomach. He hadn’t understood where he was going, but he’d known he’d never come back.

  “Before I left the sim, we talked about those cough drops I’d been saving.” He shifted his gaze to the entryway wall, because it was a little embarrassing to talk about something as pathetic as eating old medicine. “I was holding the tin when I walked out the door. Was that part of the reason I managed to get out of the sim?”

  “When I’m trying to wake a sleeper”—Lake gestured to the teens lounging in the next room—“I look for an object nearby that shows how they feel about leaving the sim, what they’re hung up on. There’s always something. The sim reflects what’s on our minds.”

  Taren looked at the family photos hanging on the wall without really seeing them. “Is that how it works? You have to find an object, draw an X on the door—”

  “None of this is magic,” Lake cut in. “It’s just what I’ve figured out works for me.”

  Taren summed it up: “A lot of talking, no fighting.”

  “If you can manage that,” Lake said. “But take it slow—”

  A girl perched on the back of the couch called out, “Oh, wow, Taren? Is that Taren?”

  Wait, he knew this girl? He ventured closer and it hit him. “We had a class together. Greek mythology?” He thought her name might be Sharon.

  “Why are you lurking over there?” she said. “I thought you were some guy delivering food or something. Come join us.”

  Now he could see what they were watching on TV: a satellite image of Earth, its surface marbled with red and black. “What is that?” he asked.

  “Firestorms. Impact clouds. You want a glass so you can toast with us?”

  Taren took the glass she pressed into his hand, though he had gone so numb all over that he was sure he’d drop it.

  A boy at the other end of the couch raised his own glass, but Sharon broke in with, “Don’t say, To cannibalism, or something stupid like that. There are so many other things that make the end of the world interesting.”

  Taren glanced at Lake. She was studying the family photos hanging on the wall as if she were browsing a museum on a Saturday afternoon. Okay, weird. She didn’t seem in a rush.

  “To mutually assured destruction,” the boy at the end of the couch said, raising his glass in a toast.

  Sharon rolled her eyes. “That’s so Cold War. What are you, eighty years old?” She turned to Taren. “Got anything better?”

  Roiling clouds on the TV screen now, almost pretty. “To black rain.” He lifted his glass, realized it was empty and so was hers. She pretended to drink and then laughed, her bright face framed by the smoke showing on the giant screen behind her.

  This is crazy. “Sharon,” he said, and hoped that was really her name. No protests from her, so he plowed on. “There’s something I need to explain to you.”

  She lifted her eyebrows, waiting for a punch line.

  “This is going to be hard for you to understand,” he went on, “but you’ve probably had this feeling, right? That something strange is going on here?”

  Her brows lowered. “You mean, because the world has gone to shit and I’m partying in some richie’s house? Yeah, Taren.” She took another drink from her empty glass.

  Taren heard Lake walking up behind him. “Taren, wait.”

>   But he could do this. “I’m trying to tell you.” He watched her swirl imaginary ice around her glass. “This isn’t real. You’re not here. Remember the lottery at school? Remember winning a place on a ship? That’s where you are, where you really are.”

  “What?” The glass slipped from her hand and tumbled onto the couch. Taren thought she might faint.

  “Taren,” Lake said, firmer this time. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back. It took him a moment to realize why: something black was oozing up from between the expensive floorboards, inches from where his foot had been.

  “What is that?” he gasped.

  “Don’t touch it,” Lake said.

  She didn’t need to tell him. Something about the way it oozed, the way it swallowed any light that touched it, the way it pushed a sound deep into his brain, like bones grinding—

  “Back up,” Lake said to Sharon, and the girl scrambled over the back of the couch. “Don’t let anyone go near it.”

  Taren couldn’t stop staring at the black stuff. “I did that, didn’t I?” A sour taste filled his mouth. “How did I do that?”

  Lake pulled Taren back farther, toward the door, where Willow waited. “That tar appears whenever there’s an incongruity,” Lake explained. “Like when someone believes they’re both at a party and not at a party.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You can’t just tell someone they’re in a simulation,” Lake said, dropping her voice low. “It’s too jarring. It breaks their brain, and it breaks the program. Get it now?”

  Taren tried not to resent the frustration in her voice. “You could have told me all that earlier.”

  From the doorway, Willow asked, “You forgot to give him the manual?”

  Lake looked between Willow and Taren, eyes hard with annoyance. “I’ve never taught anyone this stuff before.”

  “If you touch the tar,” Willow told Taren, “it’ll knock you out of the simulation.”

  “Is that bad?” Taren asked.

  “It sends your body into shock,” Lake said. “Sometimes kills you.”

  “Sometimes.”

  Lake stared at him.

  “I mean, as long as we’re holding class here, what’s sometimes?” Taren asked. “One in one hundred? One in ten?”

  Willow said, “Are you a math guy?” Smiled like it was some great joke. “Do geometry next.”

  Taren frowned at her. “I thought figments were supposed to repeat the same couple of lines over and over. Maybe you should try that.”

  “Some of us are a little more advanced than that,” Willow said with a snort. “Haven’t you heard of machine learning?”

  “The more figments interact with people, the more complex they get?” Taren glanced at Lake. “Guess that means you two have interacted a lot.” Why does that make me nervous?

  Lake shrugged, didn’t meet his gaze. “Can you just remember that it takes time to wake people from the sim? You can’t just walk up and make an announcement about the emergency exits.”

  “And if they don’t want to leave the sim?” Taren asked. “What do you do then?”

  Lake toyed with the thread-bracelet on her wrist. “I try again later.”

  And if they still don’t want to leave?

  But Taren decided to drop it. “So what now? We talk to them one by one?” He held his hands up in surrender. “Slowly.”

  “No. We don’t need to wake them one by one.” Her gaze went to the photos hanging on the wall. “If we can figure out whose house this is, we can wake just that one person. Whoever lives here most likely created this pocket of the sim. We wake them up, the pocket closes—gently, like a dream ending. All the other sleepers in the house wake up on the ship.”

  Taren blew out a sharp breath. “Another thing you could have told me sooner.”

  “I didn’t realize you were a jump-right-in kind of guy.” Lake pointed at one of the photos. “You see her anywhere? I’m pretty sure she’s the dreamer we’re looking for, the one who made this place.”

  Taren studied the face—brown eyes, freckles, a smile that could convince you only sunshine had ever fallen on the Earth. “She’s not over there with the rest of them.”

  “Maybe she’s out there,” Willow said from the window. She pointed.

  Lake went to look closer. “Ah, shit.”

  “What?” Taren asked, craning to see. In the distance, he spotted a metal door angled up from the ground.

  “I think she’s in a bunker,” Lake said.

  “And you don’t think she’ll let us in?”

  “Believe it or not, getting in isn’t the biggest problem. They’re usually not even locked.”

  Willow’s breath fogged the window glass. “Never go into your own house, or into any place that makes you feel like you won’t want to get back out again.”

  “Like a bunker,” Taren said.

  Willow beamed. “He’s learning.”

  “So we’re back to waking them one by one,” Taren said.

  Lake eyed the tar oozing over the floor of the other room. “If we try that and we can’t wake them all, we leave them here with the tar.”

  “And risk sending them into shock if they touch it,” Taren said.

  “Yeah.” Lake squinted out at the metal door as if she were assessing a target.

  “So we go down into the bunker together,” Taren said, “and we remind each other that we’re still in the sim. Isn’t that why you brought me into the sim with you? To help?”

  Lake crossed to the doorway and stood half in the wet air and tree-smell that Taren still couldn’t believe was simulated. “No, I go down there to wake the dreamer, you stay up top. If you think I’ve been down too long, you come and get me out.”

  “You want to go down there alone?”

  “Willow’s coming with me.”

  Even worse. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes.”

  Lake and Willow were already walking out the door.

  7

  HAILEY

  Hailey had no way of knowing how long she’d been in the bunker. No signal—cell, Wi-Fi, radio. Ironic, because her dad used to tease her by saying she would die if she ever had to go without any of those things, and here she was, still practicing the fine arts of breathing and eating. When she’d first closed herself in, she’d started the clock that was supposed to count down to when it’d be safe to leave, but it only ever showed 07734, which, if you turned it upside down, spelled hello. A joke her dad had programmed in? She kept the door unlocked for whenever he might join her. He must have gone to find people who didn’t have a place to shelter. She’d told him that they should do that, back when they’d first heard the bad news. At the time, she’d felt like she wouldn’t need the bunker—she’d felt she’d be leaving for somewhere else. Now she couldn’t remember why she’d thought that, but she was happy Dad wanted to help people.

  She spent a lot of time re-watching historical dramas about people living safely in the past, people who would never even hear the phrase nuclear winter. She would eat cereal on the leather lounge chair, feeling sorry for herself and telling the people on-screen, “You have no idea. No idea.” Sometimes she’d watch this one old movie about the end of Mayan civilization, with its stark images and dramatic solar eclipse, and say, “You know what it feels like.” She had one can of ravioli left and then it would be only gluey pea soup from there on out—the end of civilization.

  Even so, it didn’t really surprise her when the inner door of her bunker gave a squeal that meant someone was cranking the wheel to open it. It annoyed her, maybe, because she was trying to play Mario Kart, but it didn’t surprise her when the door opened and two girls walked in. They weren’t the first to have entered her bunker and she already knew what they wanted—the same thing the others had wanted: to take her to the Battery.

  First thing the younger stranger said: “Is that Mario Kart?” As breathlessly as if she’d walked in on Hailey feasting on freshly delivered pizza.

  The olde
r one seemed to be mentally cataloging everything in the bunker: low leather furniture and pendant lights and floor-to-ceiling LED screens pretending to be windows showing views of sunny bluffs.

  “I know,” Hailey said, looking around at the décor her dad had once called luxury apocalypse. “Overkill.”

  The older girl stopped gawking and said, “The door was unlocked. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t come to play Mario Kart.” Hailey muted the game and stood, glad she’d changed out of her pj’s today. “I’ve been spreadsheeting high scores for different vehicles—light karts, medium, heavy.”

  The older girl had a hollow stare, like maybe she hadn’t spent the apocalypse watching Victorian dramas. Or eating ravioli. Or eating much at all.

  “I think the medium-weight karts are edging out the others,” Hailey added, offering an uncertain smile.

  The girl nodded. Probably didn’t have much to say about video games at this strange point in history. “Must be lonely down here.”

  Was that her way of asking if Hailey was alone? “You’d be surprised—I get visitors. They never stay, though. Other bunkers to visit, I guess.” She smiled at her own joke, but the girl didn’t seem to get it.

  “You’re lucky to have a bunker,” she said.

  “My dad had this built before the war even started,” Hailey explained. “Not that he expected nuclear apocalypse. Lots of people in San Francisco were worried about class warfare, so they built bunkers or bought real estate in New Zealand or on Canadian islands. Naturally they spent their money on bunkers instead of on preventing the class warfare.” She squirmed. I’m wearing designer slippers. It was all so stupid.

  “Good news,” the younger girl said. “No class warfare out there.”

  Hailey smiled at her. “Just nuclear fallout?”

  The older girl pointed at the wall. “What happened there?”

  Hailey’s face heated. Between two LED window-screens, a spiderweb of cracks showed where she had bashed a chair against the wall. Something black and sticky oozed from the cracks. When Hailey looked at it, she felt her brain cells grind against one another.

  “Bunker fever?” Hailey gave a nervous laugh. Ugh, I sound like I’m losing it. “You ever feel like you’re stuck in a bad dream?”