by Jesse Karp
"The best we can do is wait," Mal said. "And watch as much of the area as possible."
"And supposing"—Mike again—"a door does open and people do come in and they all have machine guns?"
"We make a stand here," Mal said with no budge in his voice. "It's that or wander back and forth until we starve to death. You can go back and wait until the danger is past."
Mike glared back at him.
"I'll stay," he said.
And they waited.
They each stood, their backs to one another, facing either forest or the opening to the empty gray-white sky.
Laura watched the others from the corners of her eyes.
Mal flexed his arms and hands, cords of muscle and vein running down them, working the ache out.
Mike heard his stomach rumble, hoping the others hadn't heard it.
Remak, the automatic loose in his relaxed hand, spared brief glances at the time.
"I had a dream," Laura said. "My parents were fighting, like, really, really fighting. Like they would have killed each other if I weren't standing between them. And their yelling stopped, and instead of words, black stuff came out of their mouths and their eyes. Just a little at first, like they were crying, and then lots of it, like a flood of black vomit." Laura's voice slowed as her breathing became deep and long and even. "The black stuff came out like a tidal wave. I was ... drowning in it. My parents were, too. It was, like, alive; squirming, trying to push its way into my mouth and nose."
"Did you die?" Mal asked, his voice almost inaudible.
"No." Laura looked up at him as if from far, far away. "No. I swam away, managed to break the surface. But I had to leave my parents behind. Underneath." She drew breath in and let it out in an aching sigh.
"When did you dream this?" Remak said, his body half turned away from his quadrant. "Right before we woke up here?"
"No," she said. "On the train. Yesterday. I mean, whatever day Homeland Security came to my house."
"In your dream," Remak said, "was swimming away hard?"
"Not the swimming itself. But"—her eyes flickered toward Mal for no reason—"leaving my parents behind. Not hard, exactly, but sad. So, so sad. I would never have done that, really. But I did in the dream." She winced, and found she didn't want the attention she was getting. "You had a dream, too, didn't you?"
"Yes," Remak said. "Right before I woke up here. I dreamed that I was in a hallway, guarding a door. A man I didn't recognize came up and wanted to get by. He was very insistent at first, and then, when I wouldn't let him by, he became physical."
"But you kept him out."
"Yes. It was my duty."
"We all had dreams," Laura decided, looking at Mike and Mal.
Mal nodded.
"I was in an apartment," he said. "Something was trying to smash down the door. I wouldn't let it through, though."
"Was it hard to keep it out?" Remak asked.
"Yes. It felt like the hardest thing I've ever done, maybe."
"When did you dream it?"
"A while ago. The night after I went into the building with the doors."
Laura looked at Mike.
"I was in a long, dark hallway," he said. "It was in a school, I guess, but it went on forever. There were kids there. The hallway was thick with them. They were . . having trouble, shouting. Screaming, really. Something was tearing them apart. Eating them. I could hear it from far down the hall, beneath their screams, the sound of them being torn apart. I felt responsible. It was my job to do something about it. I pushed my way toward the thing. I couldn't see it, but I could ... I could feel it." The dream was pulling him back toward it. He stopped himself abruptly.
"And?" Remak encouraged.
"I did my job. I stopped it."
"How?"
"I just did. Isn't that enough for you, you pushy son of a bitch?"
"But you dreamed it right before you woke up here, right?" Remak said.
"Yeah. When I woke up from it, I was here."
"She dreamed, too," Laura said, forcing herself to look down at Isabel. "I'm sure of it. But I wonder," she said to Remak. "Did Brath?"
Mal, waiting with interest for Remak's response to her theoretical question, was the first to see something. He happened to be looking in the right direction, out toward the plain at the gray-white sky. Which was not the plain and the gray-white sky all of a sudden. There wasn't even a cliff anymore, but instead more forest, greener, more alive. Mal hadn't done anything, hadn't even blinked. Just as when Annie had showed him the building. It just came into his head like a lost memory, suddenly returning for no reason, as if the building before and the forest now had always been there and he had simply forgotten to see them.
He opened his mouth to speak but caught his words when he saw Brath coming from between the trunks and branches into the little clearing.
Mal didn't hesitate this time. He was on top of Brath immediately, and before a look of surprise had even crossed Brath's razor features, he had already suffered two blows to the head from Mal's malletlike fist.
Laura saw it happen, saw the sudden burst of determination and anger flash across Mal's grave features. In that one moment, she would have sworn he hated Brath, Brath's betrayal, more than anything in the world.
Remak was at Mal's side, standing over Brath's body, but Mike was caught, staring dumbly at that sudden absence of sky and the sudden presence of more forest.
"I'm not sure this is a tesseract at all," Remak said slowly, looking at the forest suspiciously through the lenses of his glasses.
"What difference does it make?" Mal asked him. "Isn't this the way out? And we'd better use it."
"Wait," Remak said. "Leave your cells here. We can be traced through them," he said to Mike's unwilling and uncompromising expression. "But in here they'll just be dead signals." Remak dropped his own where he stood.
"Mine was broken," Laura said. "It's back at home."
Mal flung his back into the forest behind them, and wasn't sorry to see it go.
Mike, sneering, looked as if he was considered winging his own cell directly at Remak. Instead, he let it fall to the dead grass.
"Let's get going," Mal said impatiently.
Remak nodded and moved into the brush. Mike, without his characteristic hesitation, followed, disappearing quickly into the green. Laura spared another look at Isabel and moved away, and Mal came directly behind her.
They moved through forest, not quite impenetrable, but still difficult going. Poked and scratched, torn and bedraggled, more than they had been from their climbing and hiking, they emerged after ten minutes onto a gentle slope that headed toward rolling hills alive with grass. It was warm here and there was wind, and the sun was in a sky magnificently blue.
They were at the top of a slope, and down from there they could see intermittent houses and, farther off to their right, a collection of buildings that resembled a town.
"Are we still in New York State?" Mal asked.
"I think so, judging by all these sugar maples." Remak was squinting at the trees.
"Someone there will know," Laura said, staring down at the town. "Or there'll be a sign nearby."
"So," Mike said, several steps ahead, "what are we waiting for?"
"We need to know what we're going to do," Remak said.
"Get the hell out of here and go back home." It was obvious, to Mike, at least.
"We need to find out who did this," Remak said. "Who can do this."
"Screw that," Mike said.
"Mike," Laura said, with a concern that disarmed him momentarily, "do you think we can just catch a bus and go home, that whoever did this is just going to leave us alone?"
"I don't bother them, they don't bother me."
"All right. Bye," Mal said, turning to the others. Mike bent his lips but didn't move on. He didn't particularly care for this new trend of being called out.
"I need to go speak to my people," Remak said.
"The CIA," Mike supplied, a
nd was ignored.
"Will they know what this is all about?" Laura asked.
"They know something," Remak told her. "And they'll certainly be interested in what I have to tell them."
"I still need to find Tommy," Mal said, touching his back pocket with the photograph. "I might be able to track Annie down."
"I need to know what's going on, too," Laura said. "What kind of a life I can have back."
"If they're hunting us," Mal said, "then splitting up makes their search harder. I'll go with Laura."
"You're kidding," Mike deadpanned. "Really?"
"If anything"—Remak mixed it around in his mind—"they wouldn't expect us to want you two on your own. This could work."
Laura looked at Mal's calm face. He was no older than she was, but they spoke to him as an adult, trusted him to do something like this. She was still somewhere in between to them, still saw expressions of pleasant surprise when adults heard her say something perceptive or wise. But she could see what they saw in Mal, too: the quiet, unconscious confidence that came with having survived whatever disaster his life had been up to now.
"We meet in Manhattan," Remak said. "Someplace anonymous and crowded. The big movie theater on Broadway and Thirteenth." He glanced down at his watch. "It's eleven forty-five. We meet there at this time, two days from now, no matter what."
He got nods from Mal and Laura.
"Don't use credit cards or bank cards or cells for anything. They're just pins in a map that can tell them where we are," Remak said. "Go. And take care."
Mal looked at Laura and got a nod, and they took off.
Mike watched them for just a moment, then started away as well.
"Wait," Remak said. "You need to stick with me."
"So, let's get the hell away from here, already."
Remak was watching the figures of Mal and Laura recede.
"Wait here," he said, and inexplicably started to turn back into the forest.
"What are you talking about? We have to go."
"We will in one minute. Wait here."
"Maybe," Mike muttered as Remak disappeared back into the dense forest toward the clearing that held only Isabel's body and Brath's unconscious form.
A minute later, Mike heard it echo sibilantly from out of the forest. The sound would never have reached Mal and Laura, let alone the houses far beyond. But there was no mistaking it from where Mike was: the crackling hiss of the gun that had ended Isabel's life, a sound he'd never forget.
Moments later, Remak reappeared, and without looking at Mike or slowing his pace, he hurried down the slope himself.
Mike, his hands suddenly trembling and his legs weak, followed.
THE FIGHTER
AN OLD MAN WAS WALKING along a dirt path running parallel to the side of a paved road. He made little effort to hide his suspicion when two teenagers appeared from out of the field and asked him what town they were coming into.
"East Woodman," he told them in a cracked voice.
"In New York," Mal said, trying to sound as though he already knew it and was just mentioning it casually.
The man nodded.
"Somewhere we could catch a bus, sir?" Laura asked.
The man lifted a dry, bony finger and pointed back down the road the way he had come, at the row of eight or nine buildings that was the center of town.
"General store," he said.
Laura smiled and thanked him, and she led Mal off in that direction.
East Woodman didn't have a main street; East Woodman was a main street. A garage, a bar, and the general store were interspersed with two houses and two trailers. Past the properties, back in the field, the figures of Remak and Mike were no longer apparent. They were making another approach, or Remak had browbeaten Mike into hiking on to the next town, wherever that was. The mountain they had come down from was only partially visible, swallowed up by thickening forest. Of the tesseract, or whatever that prison was, there was no sign at all.
In the general store, they were informed that a bus stopped out front, destined—eventually—for Port Authority, New York City, every Monday and Thursday, which was tomorrow, at around 1:30.
Laura paid forty-eight dollars for their tickets from the one hundred seventy-five dollars that remained of her emergency money. Mal made an embarrassed attempt to contribute the twelve dollars he had in his pocket only to have Laura wave it away.
"Is there someplace to stay in town?" Laura asked the proprietor sweetly, knowing how this must look.
"Ways down Route Ten," the woman behind the counter said with neither reprimand nor approval. "That way." She pointed for them.
They spent another seven dollars for sandwiches and drinks, which they wolfed and guzzled, seated on the stoop in front of the store, just beside its rusting air pump.
Laura took her wallet out, pulled cash and the hard photo of her parents hugging her in the snow. She looked at the scene and was struck hollow by the idea that, if she died, no one would remember that these people ever loved one another and the love would be forgotten, as though it had never even existed in the first place.
"You look happy," Mal said, looking over her shoulder at the picture. "All of you."
"I lost my past, Mal. That's where I come from. Without that, without them, I don't know where I'm going."
Mal looked down at his boots for some time. When he looked up, he stared straight into her eyes.
"I think you make your own future, Laura. And once you have, no one can take it away from you, either."
She looked at Mal, her bright blue eyes shining with sorrow and fear, and something else, too.
"What do you think is happening to us, Mal?"
"I think there's a secret machinery that makes the world work that we're not supposed to see, and we saw it. And now we're paying the price."
As she looked back at him, her face got hard, determined not to back down from the idea.
"But we're going to go back and get your brother out of it," she said. "And my parents, too."
She put her hand on his shoulder softly. Then she pushed herself up and walked over to the garbage can sitting by the door and took her wallet, filled with plastic cards that connected her to the world and maybe the secret machinery behind it, and tossed it in with the trash.
They hiked along Route Ten, not keen for more walking, but energized enough by the food in their bellies.
Three miles farther on was a dusty motel, squatting alone amidst an expanse of highway and grassy field.
Laura laid out another seventy-eight dollars for a single room.
"Single rooms only got one bed," the gawky counter man, little more than a teenager himself, said with a lascivious tone.
Mal was about to suggest separate rooms, but Laura cut him off.
"That's fine," she said with finality, holding her hand impatiently out for the key.
The room was tiny, but it had a shower, of which Laura gratefully availed herself. When Mal had finished, too, she was sitting on the side of the bed in her loose sweater. Both of them were nicked and scratched from top to bottom.
Mal would have been pleased to sleep on the sofa or in the tub, had the room contained either of those. But other than the bed, there was only a small table and a seat. Laura saw him eyeing the floor and spoke up.
"Mal, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, but this is all the money we have, and I don't think I could handle sleeping alone in a strange place tonight. I think we can sleep in the same bed after everything we've been through."
He nodded slowly then he lowered himself into the bed, at first with clear discomfort and then with a gushing breath of great relief.
Laura, amused at how such a large person could compress himself into the merest quarter of an already small bed, set herself down along the other side.
The room was dark and silent but for the hum of the air outside and the occasional thrum of a passing car.
"So," he said, staring at the ceiling. "You're a Mets fan?"
"It's nice to have a family that loves you," Mal said. "It makes you strong."
She wasn't sure if Mal was telling her or asking her. She rolled over so she was on her side and she curled her legs up to her chest and put her hands between her cheek and the pillow.
"What's Tommy like?" she asked. He could feel her bright blue eyes on the side of his face like a strobe light, studying his scars.
"God, I barely know him," he said with quiet disgust. "I left home early and I ... I never went back for him."
"You know him, Mal," she said with absolute certainty. "He's your brother. What's he like?"
"He was always angry, itching for a fight," he said after a short time. "But once he started them, he fell apart. When he was young, he'd let go at my father, because he knew my father would sit and take it. But he'd never even look the wrong way at Sharon, my mother. When he got older, he was a skinny kid, never got my dad's build. He'd pick fights with bigger kids, and half the time, I ended up finishing them."
"An older brother who had to hide behind his younger brother." Laura said it as if she could feel the shame of it. And hearing it in Laura's voice, Mal tasted that shame himself for the first time.
"God, it made him so angry," he said.
"Not at you," Laura consoled.
"Definitely at me. Much angrier at me than at the kids who wanted to beat him."
"No, Mal," she said with a gentle smile that brooked no argument. "Angry at himself. Furious."
Mal's chest went hollow at the idea. He had been carrying around Tommy's anger for such a long, long time. It was moments before he could speak again.
"My father always said that, in a fight, you have to use your anger. If it uses you, you crash and burn."
"It's kinda the same with life, I think."
"It was for Tommy. And for Sharon."
"Your parents didn't get along," Laura said.