Across Eternity

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

  I’ve wondered it too, and the conclusion I keep coming back to is one I haven’t wanted to admit to myself. Now I’m forced to. In Coron’s mind, we are all just things, and most of us are useless things at that, taking up resources. Soon he’ll decide to kill those of us who haven’t woken, so it’s not as if he needs a cellar for food storage, or extra space. There’s only one thing he needs here, now.

  “The hole is for us,” I say softly, with a sick kind of certainty. “For all the women they believe haven’t woken. He will kill the rest of us at once and thinks it’s safer to bury everyone here than to risk getting caught. It’s probably the only reason he hasn’t killed us already.”

  She looks at me oddly again. “Your mind works like theirs,” she says. “I don’t mean it as an insult. But you think in terms of strategy, as if people are pieces on a chess board.”

  I want to argue that it doesn’t make me like them, but suddenly I’m not sure. I think of the rage I feel every time Gustave touches me, every time I watch the guards kick a corpse mercilessly, how endless and cruel and cold a piece of me is. Sometimes I feel as if I become more like them than not with each day that passes.

  “They’ve been working on that hole for a while,” I tell her, “so they must be nearly done.”

  “What are you saying?” she asks.

  “That if we’re going to escape, we’d better do it soon.”

  * * *

  Katrin and I begin to plan. I’ve found two more of those pellets floating in my oatmeal and have hidden them in my mattress. We’ll use them to drug our guard once we know when we’re leaving. Katrin tries to persuade me to leave Marie behind, and I refuse.

  “She’s my friend,” I tell her. “I can’t.”

  Katrin looks over at Marie, frowning. “Then you’d better get her off the drugs fast. If she can’t time travel when we leave...”

  She doesn’t continue the thought, but I already know what she was thinking. If Marie can’t time travel, she might wind up buried alive. And even if I can wean Marie off the drugs enough to get her to comply, there are so many ways it could fail. What if they can tell we’re not dead? What if they bag all the corpses before they take them? We might suffocate before we ever get out. What if even that small amount of the drug in our systems makes it impossible to time travel when we get outside?

  The other issue is my aunt. She could, theoretically, travel back in time to stop us. I doubt Monsieur Coron would risk letting her leave the building to do it, but nothing is certain. If we had any other option, I’d be taking it right now.

  The next day I don’t give Marie any of my food. She is unhappy at breakfast, and by dinner time her hands twist, her body begging for something it’s certain it needs.

  I tell her not to eat. She looks at me with vacant eyes and picks up her spoon.

  “I’m getting you out of here,” I whisper. “Do not eat that.” For a moment she hesitates, as if there are still gears working inside her head, listening to me. And then she dips the spoon into her bowl. I have no idea what they’ve given us, but it’s something seriously addictive. I’ve only had a fraction of the dose she’s had and it calls to me too, the oblivion of it. The way it would make me forget, stop aching for a future I no longer have.

  I’m out of options. I push the stew onto her lap after the guard passes. Her mouth opens, as if to cry out, and I shove my bread in her hand. “Eat this instead. Do not say a word, understand me?”

  A guard rushes at us and hits me so hard that I fly off the bench. I remain on the ground, letting him kick me, my eyes still on Marie, praying she remains silent.

  Slowly, still fighting herself, she begins to eat the bread, but the victory is short-lived. That night she begins to thrash in bed as her body withdraws from the drug. “Need,” she whispers. “Please.”

  “Fight it, for me,” I beg. “Just for one day. I’ll give you all my bread.”

  “Need gruel,” she says, too loudly.

  “Be quiet or you’ll get us both killed,” I hiss. “Listen to me. Henri is alone, Marie. Think how devastated he must be. We’ve got to get home to him. Do you understand?”

  After a moment she nods. “You,” she says. “You go.”

  “We both go,” I reply. “Soon. But I need you awake, okay?”

  She flinches. “But tomorrow?”

  She’s asking me for drugs. I’ll deal with the problem when it arises. “Yes, gruel tomorrow. Just get through the night.”

  I give her my bread at both breakfast and dinner. After all these weeks I didn’t have the energy to spare, and by the time the lights go down I’m beginning to worry I might not have the strength to time travel home. God knows I won’t have the strength to help her. I pray most of it’s out of her system by the time we leave.

  Katrin is ill, too ill to be of much help. But I see the look in her eyes as I struggle with Marie—the one that says she’s going to get us all killed. And as Marie becomes increasingly unmanageable, I find I’m beginning to agree.

  We’re just finishing up our evening meal when my aunt walks into the cafeteria. I hear Katrin’s quiet gasp on the other side of the table, and I grab Marie’s arm, punitively hard. If she does anything right now, makes a single sound, she could ruin this.

  My aunt walks over to where we sit and motions, like a queen, for Katrin to rise. “Come. Your services are needed.”

  A guard yanks her from the table and pulls her away. This time, unlike the last, she doesn’t even fight.

  If I could, I’d bury my head in my hands. Selfishly, it’s less about what Katrin’s going to suffer than about what it will do to our plan if she isn’t back soon. This may be our last chance, and it’s only going to work once. As soon as the guards figure out how we escaped, they’ll make sure it can’t happen again. But if Katrin hasn’t returned yet, could I really leave her behind? It was her idea in the first place, and if I’m descended from her the way she claims, leaving without her may mean I cease to exist the moment we go.

  * * *

  Over the next two days I continue weaning Marie off the drug, but it’s far harder for her than it was for me. She twists all night, sweats, retches whenever the guards aren’t looking. Over dinner that second night the guard stands over us both, and we’ve got no choice but to finish what we were served. It takes me a day to pull out of it. Marie starts from scratch, and by the next morning is begging me for the gruel.

  I begin the process of keeping her clean once more, and she’s still half-drugged when Sunday arrives. The guards are more anxious than normal, and over breakfast I hear them bickering about who will drive tonight. This is it, our chance. If we go, I can save Marie but might be signing Katrin’s death warrant, and therefore my own. If we wait, we could all die.

  I spend the entire day worrying, and there are no words for how relieved I am when Katrin is shoved into our room, just after dinner. She’s so pale she’s nearly green, and there’s a fresh bruise along her jaw.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper, as we lie down to sleep.

  “No,” she says. Her voice is flat, empty.

  “We have to leave tonight,” I tell her. “I’m not sure we’ll get another chance.”

  She’s silent, and for a moment I worry she’ll refuse. “Give me the drugs,” she says finally.

  I reach into the hole in my mattress and pass them to her. She rises, walking straight to the guard, who lounges at the desk with his mug of beer, ready for an evening nap. “I need the bathroom,” she says.

  He laughs. “I guess your cot will smell like piss then.”

  She leans toward him, over the desk. “You know he’s going to kill all of you before this is done.” Her hand passes over his mug.

  The guard is one of the short-tempered ones. His hand flies out fast and I can hear it make impact all the way across the room. She falls to the ground. “You think just because you’re his whore you can talk to me like that?” the guard roars. She clutches the sides of the desk to stand and pulls herse
lf up.

  “No,” she says. “I suspected you’d react just as you did.”

  She returns to her cot and we lie still, waiting until we’re certain the guard is passed out.

  “It’s time,” I finally tell Marie as I pull her to her feet.

  “I’m going to be sick,” she whispers, and she falls to the floor and retches. Katrin and I exchange a glance. Her nausea won’t be improved, lying pressed against rotting corpses for several hours. She’s going to give us away.

  I hold her hair back. “Get it all out,” I whisper. “You can’t do this when the guards load us on the truck, okay? They’ll know you’re alive if you do.”

  She nods. After a minute, when nothing more has come up, I pull her to her feet, and tell her the plan, which sounds far simpler than it actually is: hide three corpses, pretend to be dead, and time travel as soon as we’re outside. “Don’t wait for me,” I warn. “Just go. Do you understand?”

  She nods and I squeeze her hand, allowing myself to truly hope for the first time that this might work. In a few hours I might be back with Henri. I want that moment so badly I can feel it in my bones.

  Together, the three of us sneak into the hall. Marie leans on me the entire way, her skin clammy and her hands shaking. Katrin is lagging too, weak and ill from her days with Coron. I can’t allow myself to think about what those days entailed, and I can’t allow myself to feel sympathy. Sympathy won’t get us out of here.

  We pass the hole they are digging, the place they will store the bodies soon. I don’t want to scare Marie but I feel like I have to. She needs to understand how serious this is and right now, she’s too sick and too drug-addled to get it. I point to the hole.

  “You see that?” I whisper. “That’s where the bodies will go after tonight. Under that big slab. Do you understand what that means?”

  She nods and I pray it’s enough. Because if we don’t get out tonight, I’m not sure we ever will.

  I open the infirmary door. The bodies lie in a pile, eyes open, mouths gaping. I wasn’t prepared for the sight or the smell. Marie, though—who hasn’t been conscious over these last few weeks—is far less prepared than me.

  She falls to the floor beside them, dry heaving now that her stomach is empty. Katrin is green as well, but plows forward, grabbing one of the women by the shoulders.

  “Are you sick?” I ask.

  She gives me a tense nod. “Get the feet,” she whispers.

  Even with two of us, the task is far harder than I’d anticipated. It’s over a hundred pounds of dead weight, and I’m so weak from days without food that even propelling myself forward is a struggle at times. I force myself to keep moving, and when we finally drop the body beneath a table at the end of the room, I have an odd, floating sensation that makes me wonder if I’ll survive the journey home. We return to the corpses and grab another, both of us breathing heavily; we manage it, but just as we return for the third, we hear the heavy tread of boots in the hall. My gaze meets theirs. The guards are here early, and we don’t have time to hide the third body.

  Which means one of us has to stay behind.

  I told Henri I would keep Marie safe, and I will. And if Katrin doesn’t survive…odds are I won’t ever be born.

  “Lie down,” I tell them.

  Marie shakes her head. “No, you should go. I’m too weak anyway.”

  “You are not going to be able to time travel in a few weeks. You’re losing your spark, and I am not. I’m still fine. Lie down. Go back to your brother. If I can escape I will. Go to America like we planned and swear on your life that you’ll never return to 1918.”

  She presses something into my hand—her mother’s necklace, the one she found in a pocket when we arrived here. She was certain it would bring us good luck, though I’m not sure it has.

  I turn to Katrin. “Good luck. Hopefully this hasn’t changed your future or mine too much.”

  She gives me the smallest, saddest smile imaginable, and runs her hand over her stomach. “Not to worry,” she says. “Your future is now secure.”

  I blink, not able to understand, at first. And then I do: she is pregnant.

  It all begins to make sense —her recent illness, her quiet. She’s been pregnant since the first time she slept with him and lying about it so she’d be able to escape.

  There’s no time for questions and not even time to process my shock. I dive to the back of the room just as the guards walk in and hold my breath as they begin to lift the bodies on the cart, waiting for someone to notice that two of them are still warm. They don’t, too busy bickering about who will drive and who gets a weapon.

  The bodies are thrown carelessly, as if they are sacks of flour. The door slams as they go.

  And then my shoulders shake and I begin to cry. For Marie and Katrin, my only friends here. And because Katrin has just confirmed one of my worst fears: the terrible piece of me is real. I’m a Coron.

  8

  SARAH

  I wake to find myself being turned out of my bed. The guards are kicking my stomach, my back, my face, demanding to know where Katrin and Marie are. If I’m still here, Katrin must have survived. I hope that means Marie did too.

  I accept the blows, but along with the pain I feel that familiar rage as well—blistering, making my blood heat until it’s reached a boiling point. I’m going to kill you all, I think as they aim their boots into my stomach and back and face. I’m going to kill you all and I’m going to make it so long and so painful you’ll beg me for a quick death.

  And then I’ll say no.

  My body is so bruised and broken that I struggle to get back to my feet when they’re done. The only thing propelling me forward—limping, unable to stand straight, drooling blood down the front of my shift—is knowing that there will be a bullet in my brain if I don’t.

  And a bullet in my brain means I can’t make them pay.

  Outside the room, I discover that Marie and Katrin’s disappearance is not the only upheaval. Several guards and kitchen workers are gone, presumably fired, though they all disappeared without a word. I can only think of one reason why they’d be letting staff go: because there will soon be fewer of us here. They are preparing for the next stage—getting rid of all but the pregnant women.

  There is now only a single cook and she’s furious that she has to do everything on her own. She yells at us, asks the guards why they can’t help, why the cattle can’t serve themselves. I take my food and limp to the table.

  It’s too painful to chew the bread and I worry that my jaw is broken. I sip the gruel instead—I will need the drug just to get through the day. I’m not scared of getting addicted this time. Any haze it causes will be burned through by my rage.

  Now I finally know why it’s there. That thing inside me, first identified by my mother and then Katrin…it’s his. Coron’s. I can think the way he does—shut off emotion and choose self-interest again and again. And as I look at the guards or at my aunt who storms in to yell at the cook, I hate it and yet I’m glad for it too. I may die here, but I’m taking all of them out with me.

  I get through the day and allow myself half the stew at night. I wake so stiff I can barely move and have to use the metal posts of the headboard to pull myself to standing.

  “How do you expect me to feed them all by myself?” the cook demands when we enter the cafeteria. “Tell Miss High and Mighty to get in here and help if she’s going to fire them all.”

  “I’d keep a civil tongue if I were you or she’ll have it removed,” warns the guard. “She’s in a mood, Mademoiselle is. She’s been made to care for the baby. And not happy about it in the least.”

  One of the babies has been born, then. No wonder they’re getting ready to close up shop.

  “I’d trade gladly. Better to watch one babe than to coddle this lot,” she grumbles.

  “I wouldn’t fret if I were you,” he says. “The other two are due any day now, so there will be far less work and soon.”

  I stif
fen. There’s only one thing that can mean: they’re preparing to kill us. Poison or a bullet to the head, perhaps. Maybe they’ll just shove us in the hole and let us rot there. And it will happen without warning, the same way the missing staff just disappeared.

  Which means I need to act now. I need to tell them I’m awake. I know what the result might be, and it doesn’t matter. I want to live.

  That night, when we reach the cafeteria, I see my aunt exchanging words with the cook. My chest is tight. Interrupting an argument isn’t the ideal way to announce myself, but I’m not sure another time is coming.

  “Iris?” I ask. I keep my voice inquisitive, not fearful. The way I might if I ran into her somewhere else—a family reunion, perhaps, or a wedding. “I’m your niece. Vanessa’s daughter.”

  Iris’s mouth falls open. “What did you just say?” she asks. It reminds me of the tone my mother used when I’d said something she didn’t like.

  A guard grabs me by the hair and I feel it all the way to my jaw.

  It was a mistake, but what choice did I have? I want to live. This is the only way to do it.

  “I’m Vanessa’s daughter. Your niece.”

  Her eyes narrow. “My sister doesn’t have children. And she certainly wouldn’t have had any time travelers.”

  “I came here from 1987,” I reply. “And she has—had—three children. My sister and I slept in the same room you and my mother did, the one that looks out on the graveyard. My mother refused to tell us anything about you.”

  She marches out from behind the counter and grabs me by my collar. “Related to me, and yet you are awake. We’re not of the first family, so tell me how that’s possible?”

  “The guards broke my jaw. I haven’t been able to eat much.” The gruel and stew give my voice a hazy, drugged quality. I sound like someone who’s only begun to wake up.

  She regards me with suspicion, reminding me so much of my mother that I want to shrink from her. “Come with me,” she says, pulling me through the cafeteria. “I’m going to enjoy every minute of this.”