Strange Exit

by Parker Peevyhouse

  “You said to hide,” Willow told Lake. She thought she could remember that, or at least that Lake had hidden something. Willow knew more about hiding than most. She’d dug holes in her sim-yard, buried treasure inside. And she could hide herself, too, like she hid in the computer system whenever Lake left the sim.

  The important thing was to survive.

  Lake leaned down to make herself level with Willow, in the way Willow hated. “What are you talking about, Will?”

  But Lake wouldn’t understand. Willow knew that she herself had hidden things, and buried things. Lake was still pretending she hadn’t done the same.

  She gave Willow a pained smile, and then picked up something from the ground. “Look, it’s the fruit we ate. Remember?” She brushed it off on her wet shirt and handed it to Willow, as if Willow were nothing but a child to be cheered up after a bad day.

  Crackling footsteps sounded in the trees all around them.

  Willow wasn’t the only one good at hiding.

  28

  EDEN

  Once, others had chosen who would survive. They chose who boarded ships, who sheltered in bunkers.

  Once, others chose. Now, Eden did.

  She chose who sheltered in the Battery, a safe place to hide. Everyone there had understood it wouldn’t be their final home. They were all waiting—for what, they didn’t always know. Eden knew. She’d had visions of a lost world, a place never tainted by ash and smoke.

  Now, they claimed it.

  They had found the shelters already waiting for them under the trees, as if reality had bent to Eden’s will once again. While the others moved into the camp, Eden worked to dig a hole for the lead box now almost empty of tar. She had ordered her soldiers to destroy the slope that led down from the entrance to this world—so that her people would feel safe. But she’d heard rumors that the danger they thought they had escaped was already here waiting for them.

  And now she knew the rumors were true: a girl emerged from the trees, surrounded by Eden’s soldiers.

  The Angel of Death.

  She looked different from the last time Eden had seen her—but her sister looked the same.

  Eden straightened as they approached. The lead box set into the hole at her feet felt to her like a yawning pit, a grave. She would be rid of the tar soon, and the past would be buried.

  “Destroyer,” Eden pronounced, and she saw the Angel flinch. “You brought death to the Battery. But we have the tar now.”

  She motioned to her soldiers, and they came one by one to scrape their weapons into the box of tar half-buried in the dirt at Eden’s feet. When their sticks and metal struts rose from the box, tar clung to each like a spear-tip.

  “This is the last of the tar,” Eden told the Angel. “With it, I destroy death.”

  The Angel moved in front of her sister, shielding her. “I came to tell you—please just let me tell you first. Or do you already know? You’ve been to this place before.”

  The shelters had been waiting for them when they arrived. But then, Eden had found the Battery to be much the same way. It had unfolded itself to her as she entered. She had dreamed of it as a shelter-city, full of food and blankets and clothes, and it had become one.

  And yet, she had seen this place long before she’d come to it. She knew the sounds these trees made in the wind, she knew the cinnamon smell of unfurling bark.

  “Do you remember?” the Angel asked, and she lifted her hand.

  Eden’s soldiers surged toward her, but Eden called, “Wait.”

  In the Angel’s outstretched hand sat a small globe of fruit.

  Eden touched the locket around her neck, a tiny gold globe.

  The sweet tang of fruit came back to her—not just the smell, but the taste. She had tasted this fruit. She had eaten it in a snug shelter that glowed with afternoon light. She had shared it at a makeshift table laid out in the middle of camp. Its juice had stained her clothes, had watered the dirt, had brought the birds down from the trees.

  How could it be? She had lived here before.

  Her soldiers knew it too. They stared at the fruit in the Angel’s hand and lifted their gazes to the trees and looked to Eden like newborn creatures blinking against the light.

  Yes, we lived here. We were happy here. And then …

  “We all lived here together,” Lake said, echoing Eden’s thoughts. “These shelters were ours. But a creature attacked and chased us out.” She tensed suddenly, her gaze locked on something behind Eden.

  Eden turned. The shelter behind her glowed softly in the light filtering through the canopy. Except for one dark spot along its side.

  A vision came to Eden, an image of the future: her soldiers clashing with a shadowy enemy, slashing with their tar-tipped weapons, destroying the shelters. Issuing death into an unspoiled world.

  Only it wasn’t a vision of the future.

  It was a memory of the past.

  Eden stepped toward the shelter and pulled back the ruined bark covering. It was as if she were splitting open a piece of rotten fruit: inside, a great mass of tar roiled.

  They had lived here once. Not soldiers, or queens. Ordinary people. Destroyed by conflict.

  “Drop your weapons,” she said, not a command but a quiet plea. The sticks and struts fell to the dirt.

  Eden backed from the shelter as the images played again through her head. She pressed her hands to her mouth, stifling a cry that was building in her throat.

  Behind her, the Angel said, “A terrible creature…”

  But they both knew: it had not been a creature that had ruined this place.

  Her soldiers gathered close around her to see the roiling tar. Now came noises from the trees that made Eden turn in confusion. Who’s out there?

  A dozen figures crept out from behind the trunks. Somehow, they all had the same face.

  They picked up the weapons Eden’s soldiers had dropped.

  The same face, and each one angry.

  29

  TAREN

  The sleepers scattered. Taren moved forward, and the figments of himself moved with him. Misery was a cold cloak weighting his river-wet shoulders.

  “Tell yourself they’re figments if it helps,” he said to his figments as he watched the sleepers stream from the shelters and flee into the woods. “Tell yourself they won’t survive if we don’t wake them.”

  He knew he was really telling himself.

  “Do you want to survive?” he asked.

  The figments were restless, eager to attack.

  The question was only for himself.

  They surged forward, and Taren couldn’t tell if he was surging with them or watching them attack. He felt he’d been split into pieces, and none of the pieces were his any longer.

  Shouts of frightened sleepers rang through the air, but Taren heard them as if through a tunnel. At the corners of his vision, he saw figments swinging their weapons, saw sleepers fall to the dirt. A sleeper darted out from a shelter, and Taren followed on instinct.

  The sleeper saw him, stumbled, fell. Taren lurched toward him.

  The boy turned, still on the ground, and gaped up at the tar clinging to the stick Taren held over him. He was skinny, small, Willow’s age. Just a kid. Taren’s arm locked in place. It refused to lower the weapon he held.

  Do you want to survive? The rock-and-dirt voice of the crater.

  Do you want to survive? Taren’s own voice, echoing in his head.

  Taren searched himself for an answer. I did survive. I got on the ship.

  He didn’t know if he could do more.

  A blur of movement caught his attention, made him turn. A figment stalked toward him, eyeing the boy on the ground. It so unsettled Taren to see his face on the figment that for a moment he could only stare.

  The figment pointed his weapon toward the boy on the ground, ready to paint him with tar.

  The movement jolted Taren out of his stupor. Where he had been unsure, he was now certain. He couldn’t let thi
s boy die suffocated by confusion and fear. “No,” he said to the figment, “wait.”

  The figment ignored him. It lunged.

  Taren lunged too. He jammed his stick into the figment’s gut, and then watched the twin of himself stumble back and collapse into the dirt.

  The tar began to spread, seeping into the figment’s shirt, crawling over the arms clutched over the figment’s stomach, moving up its chest, its neck. Taren gaped in horror. He felt as if he were looking in a mirror, watching himself die. He dropped his weapon.

  Two other figments stopped what they were doing, sensing a threat. They came to watch their fallen twin writhe in the dirt while the tar swallowed it. Then they looked up at Taren, the offender. Threat to their survival.

  They stalked toward him.

  “Wait,” he said. “Stop.”

  He backed away from them. But a third figment closed in, a fourth.

  They pointed their weapons toward him.

  One of them spoke: “Tell yourself they’re figments.” Repeating what Taren had said earlier.

  Fear knifed through Taren. He held out his hands, but he knew they were no shield against tar.

  “Tell yourself they won’t survive,” another figment said.

  “Unless we wake them,” Taren finished.

  They closed in, and Taren could only hope that after, he would wake.

  30

  LAKE

  The cries and shouts of sleepers followed Lake through the trees, and the crash of the figments slashing through shelters. “Where are we going?” Willow gasped as she ran.

  Away.

  Fast.

  But the sleepers …

  Lake stopped and pulled Willow behind a tree. They looked back to see the army of figments chasing sleepers from the shelters, and slashing sleepers with their tar-tipped spears.

  Lake couldn’t stop staring at the figments, each with Taren’s face. She didn’t know if one of them had been Taren himself. Was he hunting sleepers with the rest of them?

  He’d lost himself to the sim. She should have never brought him back with her.

  He’d been alone too long in that tiger yard. If she had rescued him sooner, would everything have been different? Or if she had gotten the sleepers off the ship long ago? She’d chosen to work slowly, to wake the sleepers one by one where she had to. Even when she felt time running short.

  I made my choices.

  Taren made his.

  “We have to get the sleepers to follow us,” Lake told Willow. “We have to get them out of here.”

  She couldn’t tear her gaze from the camp, where the figments painted sleepers with tar.

  I’ve seen this before.

  Long ago, when she’d lived in this pocket of the sim—chaos and fear had erupted then, too. It had started when people kept vanishing from camp. Awakening from the sim, Lake realized now. Fear had spread like a shadow, confusion like a cloud. And then—

  Tar bubbling through the bark of the trees, shouts piercing the air.

  Lake and Willow had escaped through the forest. They’d looked back at camp like they were doing now, taking in a last glimpse of the fray. Lake had been close enough to see their faces.

  And one of those faces—

  She could see it now, so clear in her memory. The face of a boy holding a spear tipped in tar.

  No. It’s not true—

  “Lake?” Willow said, breaking through her thoughts. “Lake, we have to go,” Willow pleaded.

  Lake nodded, fought back the nausea that threatened to overtake her. Her gaze roved the trees, searching for sleepers who’d managed to escape. She had to find a way to lead them out of here, out of the sim.

  She spotted Eden, flanked by two of her soldiers. “Hey!” Lake called.

  Eden spotted her, motioned to her soldiers.

  “We’ll take them toward the waterfall,” Lake told Willow. “We’ll cut a door in the rock.”

  Eden’s soldiers scrambled to gather the sleepers running from camp. But now the figments were following, chasing them through the trees. Lake pushed away all thoughts of anything but escape, and pulled Willow into a run.

  They came to the waterfall now, but the figments were so close behind that Lake could see their flashing eyes when she looked back. There was no time to cut a doorway. They had to hide.

  “Cross the river,” she called. “Into the darkness. It’s our only chance to evade them.”

  One of Eden’s guards pulled off the goggles slung around his neck and handed them to her. “Infrared. They’ll help you see in the dark.”

  “What will you use?” Lake asked him.

  “I’ll follow you,” he said. “We all will. We’ll form a chain once we get across the river.”

  Lake nodded. She turned and dove into the water and came out on the opposite bank, into deep gloom.

  “Willow?”

  “Here.”

  Lake put on the goggles, and Willow became an orange flame in her infrared vision.

  And something else caught Lake’s attention, a fainter glow from up on the rocky slope. The outline of a doorway in the darkness.

  How?

  Someone had carved a door there. Taren? Was that how he’d gotten here to the lost world?

  It didn’t matter—it was a way out.

  More flaming silhouettes were emerging from the river, sleepers desperate to hide. “Follow my voice,” Lake called. “Take each other’s hands.”

  They found her in the darkness and she helped them up the rocky slope, nudging them in the right direction as they passed her. She saw the figments emerge from the river too, the tar on their spears glowing in the infrared vision her goggles lent her. They paced at the edge of the darkness, but they had lost sight of their prey.

  Some of the other sleepers wore goggles like Lake’s and they helped her lead the way to the door. But when Lake finally stepped close to it, she saw that it wasn’t a doorway—at least, not any longer. The pocket on the other side must have closed, because the doorway had filled in. Tar still showed along the arc that had once formed the top of the doorway, but below was only a dark, solid wall.

  I can make another doorway. Lake lifted her tar-covered hand. It ached, constricted by the tightening grip of the tar. She ignored the pain. Envisioned the ship.

  She traced the arc of a doorway. Traced an X through the wall.

  The darkness crumbled.

  “It’s time to leave,” Lake said to the sleepers who blinked in the light shining through the opening cracks.

  “Back to the Battery?” Eden asked.

  “No.” To the ship. And then—“Someplace new.”

  Eden shuffled closer to the doorway. She reached hesitantly to touch the widening cracks in the disintegrating wall. Darkness seemed to fall away under her touch as pieces of the wall dropped. The other sleepers pushed forward, as if sensing escape at last. The air went electric with anticipation.

  Lake quailed. She backed from the doorway. Because even though escape would halt the spread of poison now spreading down her entire left side, and even though it would allow her to finally leave a broken ship and find a home—

  It also meant leaving Willow.

  “You can’t go,” Willow said, clutching for her in the dark. “You’re leaving me.”

  Lake smelled smoke, felt fire in her veins. A great weight seemed to be hurtling down from above and threatening to press her deep underground. “I never wanted to leave,” she said. “I never wanted to leave you behind.”

  Willow pawed at her arm. “I’m here, and you’re leaving me.”

  “But you’re not here.” Lake choked back her despair. “Willow’s not really here. I left her back on Earth.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  Lake pulled out of Willow’s grip. She knew what was happening. She was falling deep into the sim’s delusion, following Willow past the point of escape.

  “I’m inside the sim,” Willow said. “I got on the ship. Don’t you remember? You didn’t le
ave me behind.”

  Lake bit her lip. If only, if only. “That’s not true. You’re a figment. You appear, you disappear.”

  “I’m a figment. But the real Willow is here. She’s here in the sim.”

  In the distance, an eerie cry rose. The call of the creature hiding in the darkness.

  But there is no creature. The captain was wrong—it wasn’t a creature who drove us from this place. We did that ourselves. The ruined shelter had been proof of that.

  The cry rose again. But this time, Lake realized it wasn’t a creature calling to her. It was a voice.

  And it sounded like Willow’s.

  31

  LAKE

  The voice called again, a cry carried by the wind. Willow’s voice.

  And yet Willow stood here before her, silent in the darkness.

  Lake knew what was happening: the sim didn’t want to let her go. It had her in its claws, and it was digging in.

  But she had to follow the voice. Because what if it was true—what if Willow really had gotten onto the ship? What if Willow’s figment was standing here in front of Lake, and the real Willow was calling to her from somewhere in the distance?

  You know Willow didn’t get on the ship. The sim is tricking you.

  Lake had been in the sim too long. Or returned too many times. The sim knew and it was playing with her mind.

  But she still had to go.

  “Wait here, Will,” Lake said.

  The figment of Willow turned to watch as Lake passed, even in the pitch darkness.

  Lake stumbled over rocks, made her way to a pebbled shore where the crash of waves all but drowned out the voice still calling from the distance: Laaaaake. A long, eerie cry, pulling at the very core of her heart.

  Willow. The real Willow. She’s calling for help.

  “Willow!” Lake called into the wind.

  The voice rose again, carried on an icy blast of ocean air. Through her goggles, Lake could see a fiery silhouette far in the distance.