by J. Kowallis
“Oh, yeah? And what’s going to happen with you? How will you get out? You’re not a magician!”
I don’t know what to say to her, mostly because I’m not even sure how to get out let alone what The Public is going to do. No one’s said a word to me about their plans. All they’ve wanted me to do is project. To prove I am what I am. Right now, I hope they don’t know I’m projecting.
“I told you, I’m fine. I’m just being . . . questioned. You need to go back. I’m not going to let you come after me.”
Ransley scoffs. “You know that’s out of the question. It doesn’t matter what you say, because I’m still coming. You think I’m going to let go of the only other person who knows what it’s like? The only other person in the world like me? A person who might . . .” her voice trails off.
I run my tongue along the inside of my lip and look at the ground, feeling a hardening in my chest. “There’s no way I can convince you to turn around?”
“Not a chance in hell,” she growls.
Every sound in the forest storm filters around me and I smell the sterilized holding room I’m still sitting in. I’m not sure how long I can stay projected like this. “Fine. I’ll help you however I can, but Ransley . . . you have to . . . .”
My head jerks to the side, slamming up against a tree, cutting off my sentence. No, it’s not a tree. It’s the wall. My concentration’s wrenched all the way back to The Public and my eyes swim in explosions of white and black.
“Welcome back, Roydon.” The voice is deep and smooth. A tone of disgust swims beneath it. “I’d ask you where you went off to, but I know you won’t tell me.”
My eyes gradually focus I start to see the man in front of me. He’s wearing a dark grey pinstripe suit with a crisp blue dress shirt and a gray tie. His darkened gray hair is slicked back and wrinkles crest and dip with each move of his mouth. In his hands, he holds an old police baton.
“How do you Jimmies know my name?” I say, spit flying from my mouth.
The winkles press deeper on his face as he smiles. “I know a little more than your name, Roydon. I’ll tell you what. Since I know your name, it’s only fitting you know mine. I’m Martin Lobb. I brought you here. I know what you’re capable of. Obviously no one was watching you close enough,” he glares over his shoulder toward the blind glass, “or else they would have noticed you slipped away for a moment there.”
My head pounds. “Marty,” I manage a flippant smile. “Can I call you Marty?”
“It’s Martin.”
“Well, Marty, you people are nuts. I don’t know . . .” I wince, a sharp pain traveling behind my eye, “. . . what you’re talking about.”
The man raises his eyebrows. “You don’t?” His bottom lip pulls down. He seems to think to himself and takes a step toward me. “All right.”
Before I can react, his arm with the baton flies out and knocks my head back again. Stabbing pain radiates behind my eyes, but instinctively I jump to my feet, reaching for the baton. Marty slams the broad side of the baton across my forearm with a crack and shock runs through my arm. For a man of his age, whatever that age is, he moves faster than I expected. I hold my arm close to my body and strike him on the side of the face. My fist throbs and the wounds along my knuckles from my fight with Ransley split open.
My hand flies back, ready to blow against his head again, but a horrific mangled cry escapes his throat and his arm descends on me over and over again. My collarbone snaps and pain shoots through my chest. I fall to the ground, cupping my broken arm and trying to shield my neck. The baton wallops my shoulder, my ribs, and my head.
I kick out with my foot, trying to make contact with the maniac’s shins. I miss and he side steps, yelling again while beating into my ribs. Everything is stabbing into my organs. My ribs, my collar bone. The pain is excruciating. When I try to move, my muscles refuse to cooperate and I cause myself more injury than help. The warm river of blood than runs from my head is flowing into the fibers of my shirt and down my chest. My last chance to survive hangs on my power. If I don’t use it, I’ll die. If I do . . . I’ll die.
I push my body to cooperate—even though I’m barely hanging on. My mind stretches, pulling me as it has countless times before. My duplicate grabs Marty from behind, wrenching his neck back and down again between the crook of my elbow and squeeze. I enjoy the purple tint of his skin. The air circulating through his lungs cuts off. The thought of that makes me smile. The door to the holding room opens up and I get a glance of Dr. Folland lifting up a power-gun. He fires and the bullet punctures my leg. My actual body lies on the floor, but I still cry out in pain. I lose focus and my projection disappears.
I grab onto my leg, shot twice in the last twenty-four hours and grit my teeth.
Martin Lobb straightens himself, his nostrils flaring, and brushes his graying hair back. “That’s all I needed, Roydon. I hope you enjoyed it . . .” he coughs and spits a mouthful of his own blood on the floor, “. . . as much as I did.”
―RANSLEY―
I pick up the bag sitting on the floor of the rumbling truck with the scenery passing us slower and slower outside the window. Without even looking at the driver, I grab the handle, ready to jump out, still holding my hunting knife in the other hand.
“Sure you don’t want to go farther?” he asks me through blackened teeth.
“No.” I jump out, slamming the rusted door behind me before jogging carefully through the streets of Neuquén. I don’t know the area well, but it looks worse than Los Ángeles. Who knows what kinds of people live here, and being this close to Public Four, I need to stay low.
It’s early afternoon and I haven’t slept all night. Ever since I saw Roy, I’ve been trying harder to stay out of site, because if Public Four can somehow get it out of Roy where he went . . . I’m screwed. Since there’d been nowhere to camp safely for the night and I’d been walking on the highway for seven hours, the truck that pulled up behind me around two a.m. nearly scared the shit out of me. Once the man had offered the ride, I fought hard to say no. But my body knew I wouldn’t make it much longer on foot. I climbed reluctantly in, immediately pulling out my knife and laying it across my lap, tight in my fingers.
“I can cut ‘em off in two seconds,” I stared him down from behind my sunglasses. My eyes still haven’t healed, and I wasn’t about to take chances. “Take me to Neuquén,” was all I said during the span of eight hours.
Now, here I am. I jog a little further, putting distance between the truck and me, and drop down the closest road, eager to make sure he can’t follow. I need to find somewhere to crash. I can’t go much further like this. My eyes can hardly stay open behind the dark lenses, and my legs are shaking with fatigue.
I come across the first building and peek into the window. Fresh garbage is strewn everywhere with mattresses and clothing. It’s taken already. I move on. The next building is a little smaller, but its roof is collapsed in. Finally, I find a dark hotel, falling apart at the corners, windows blasted in, and chunks of rock and plaster fallen on the street. I walk inside and find the staircase. I only make it to the second floor and look down the hallway. I can tell fires spread through here years ago; most likely during an attack. I pray there’s at least one room decent enough to call mine for the next four hours.
I push in the first door and breathe relief. It looks like no one’s used it in at least a few months. I close the door behind me and lock the deadbolt. It crunches against the burned doorframe, but it should have a decent hold. I pull the sunglasses from the bridge of my nose, set them on the dusty table littered with rat droppings, and drop the bag from my back near the bed and fall onto it. Dust clouds settle back down onto the mattress around me and the tickle of an insect’s legs travel over my arm, but I don’t care. My eyes fall and I’m gone.
―
I wake at the sound of a small crowd outside my window. A street fight. The sun’s gone down. I must have been asleep for at least ten hours. I didn’t expect to slee
p that long, and I wanted to be moving by now. I can’t keep going like this. No matter how fast I get to Roy, if I’m a burn out, I won’t be any good to him. I need to stay here for the night, rest up . . .
My stomach growls at me and I lay a hand on it.
. . . and get something to eat.
I brush my matted hair off my forehead and find simple pleasure in the coolness of the evening air on my sweaty skin. With a sigh, I push myself off the bed that smells horribly of rotten cheese and cat urine, and pick up the bag I left on the floor. After slipping the sunglasses back on, I put the backpack strap over my shoulder and head for the door, unlocking the latch. It grinds against the charcoal and rust. Out in the hallway, I can hear a couple arguing in a room a few feet from me. There’s even the dying sound of a siren in the distance. Someone must be having a little fun with an abandoned police car.
When I get outside, I take a deep breath of fresh air and watch the small crowd thirty feet away. I was right. A fight. I start walking down the street. My pocket’s only got a total of twenty pesos, but doubling or tripling that will be easy.
If I had to guess, there are about fifty people surrounding the two fighters. I have to find the bookie. They usually try to stand out a little more so people know who to go. There he is. About five-foot nada wearing a red scarf around his neck and matching red baseball cap. I scoot through the crowd, carefully watching the fighters. They’re equally matched in size. Not in skill. The one with a birthmark on his face is fairly quick, but he’s also extremely showy. This isn’t a televised sport, idiota.
The second fighter, wearing green sneakers, he’ll be the winner. Though he’s much slower, but his center of gravity rivals a military tank’s. He lands a fist into the Birthmark Entertainer and it sends him flying into the crowd.
“Hey! Twenty on the tank!” I yell at the bookie.
“Qué?” he yells.
“Twenty!” I yell over the crowd. “Green shoes wins!”
He shakes his head and holds out his hand for the pesos. “Gonzales is the favorite to win. Minimum bet is thirty!”
Mierda.
“Fine! Twenty on the second José!”
The bookie laughs. “It’s your funeral!” He takes my pesos and writes down my bet.
I scoot forward to the ring and watch the fight. The show-off is no longer showin’ off. His eyebrow is bleeding profusely. To be honest, I could take either of them. They’re not moving fast enough. Birthmark ducks when Gonzales takes a swipe at him. He pops back up and he’s slugged in the gut.
“Ugh,” I groan. “Come on! Go for his fifth left rib! It’s bruised!”
Of course, he can’t hear me. Birthmark takes another hit to his jaw and he stumbles backwards into me.
“You idiot!” I yell. “Go for his rib on the left side! It’s bruised!”
The fighter looks around at me and then his eyes dart back toward Gonzales. I hear him swear before he takes a foot to the groin.
I groan. I’m gonna lose it all.
Birthmark tries to go for Gonzales’ ribs, but can’t get anywhere close. Again, Gonzales rams Birthmark in the head and the fighter drops to the ground. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
Come on, get up.
Seven. Eight.
“Get UP!”
Nine. Ten.
There is goes. All my money. The crowd cheers, part of them here for the thrill, part of them because they know they’ve won. Only a few of us I notice don’t say a thing. I’m starving. I have to eat something.
“Bookie!” I yell. The man in the red cap turns to me. “Do you have another fighter?”
“Nope, that was it!”
“What about me?”
He raises his eyebrows and smiles. Most of his teeth are gone. “Name?”
I hesitate. “Rodriguez. Elena.”
“Yeah? I never heard of you before.”
“I’ll make it worth your while,” I shout over the crowd.
He stops and stares at me. “Shut up!” he yells, holding his hands in the air. The crowd quiets down, with only a few whispers here and there. “Are you serious?”
I nod. “I want two hundred if I win.”
“Sweetie, you can have me if you win.” Excitedly, he steps into the center where the fighting was. “Listen up! Listen up! We gotta new fighter! A girl! Ten down on Rodriguez! Forty up on Gonzalez!”
―
I limp on my swollen ankle, stuffing the two hundred pesos in my pocket and adjusting my sunglasses. I should have done that from the beginning.
Like everywhere else in this country, every legitimate store is closed. You have to know the right places to go to buy necessities. Most under-market vendors like to stay central in a city, easy access for everyone, but with a clear shot out of town.
I wander around the city, lurking in shadows, looking for the usual tells. I lean up against a brick stucco wall, twiddling my hunting knife in my hands, which I’d managed to hide in my bra during the fight. People sporadically walk in and out of buildings. Most are drugged or drunk. A few children scamper around, but not many. They all have dirt and body fluids caked to their bodies. It’s not the most pleasant sight or smell—reminiscent of the fighter’s knocked-out body I left behind. However, I start to notice a pattern. Every so often, a solitary person enters a building to my right. It’s directly beneath the only streetlight not lit. Fifteen minutes later, the person emerges with a tin bucket. I can’t see what’s in it, but I’m sure it’s not dirt.
My hand pushes me off the wall and I keep my head down to walk across the street. I nick a beer can with my foot and it tinkles and rolls over the broken ground. When I get to the building, I look both ways down the sidewalk and then go in.
It’s dark, but the air smells strongly of mold and ash. A light comes from a room down the hallway and I follow it. It feels like the floor is probably peeling linoleum, covered in something like wet paper towels. The light pours over me from around the doorframe and I look in. A woman stands hunched over a table. Her breasts sag to her navel, pulled down by gravity like taffy, beneath a dirty ragbag dress. She turns around when she hears me and smiles, and cheap bleeding lipstick smears her teeth.
“Hola, señorita. How can I help you?” Her voice sounds like she’s smoked cigars since the age of four.
“I need some food.”
“What can I get you?” She hobbles around the peeling table and ducks behind a dirty curtain.
“What do you have?”
“Oh,” she calls from the back, “depends on what you need.” She won’t tell me. I understand.
“How about a potato?”
I hear her hack and cough, followed by a slimy inhalation. “Got those. Just one?”
“And a loaf of bread? Any meat?” I ask, fingering the knife tucked into my waistband.
“Bread’s a week old, but still good. Got some dried squirrel jerky,” she calls back.
“I’ll take it.”
Her feet shuffle across the floor and she reappears again, pulling the curtain back. In a tin bucket are a loaf of bread in musty cloth and a russet potato with dirt clods clinging to it. “That’s two hundred thirty pesos.”
I feel the hair on the back of my neck curl and I take a deep breath. I can’t believe it. I still don’t have enough. I’m gonna have to do it. These people make more money in a day than I make in two months. “I’m sorry, but did you say two hundred thirty?”
“Si, señorita,” she croaks.
From my back pocket, I pull out the money, sliding it across the table toward her. The moment she reaches for it, I lash out for her wrist, holding her greasy skin tight in my grip. “I’m sorry,” I say, concentrating my power through my fingertips, “I only have two hundred.”
She scowls at me. “Then you don’t get the food.”
“I think I do.”
Her skin begins to heat up under my hand and I press the burn further up her arm. She cries out in pain, clearly pronouncing a man’s name. Her screams ar
e ragged and harsh and she struggles to pull her arm away. Out the corner of my eye, I see movement. With my other hand, I reach in my waistband for the hunting knife and throw it. The end pierces a man in the shoulder, sending him backwards and making him drop the gun in his hand.
I grab for the tin bucket of food and let go of the woman. She curses at me in Spanish and I dash out, stepping on the man’s arm while pulling the knife out before leaving.
Their curses follow behind me, and the wet paper towels stick to my feet the faster I sprint down hallway into the dark streets. I have to get away. The smell of the bread wafts up toward me, and my stomach growls louder. Just need to get back to the hotel.
I pass another undersized street fight, but the crowd is large enough to get lost in. I look between bodies and over heads, trying to make sure the couple hasn’t followed me. I see the man’s head bobbing up and down, trying to look for me. I pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head and duck further into the crowd before drawing between two buildings. The squeeze is so tight I have to scoot sideways to get through. The bucket dangles in my hands, knocking up against the bricks.
By the time I come out the other end, I know I’ve lost them. I hurry for the hotel and find my room. I close the door quietly and listen with my ear pressed to it for a few moments to make sure I’m safe before I step back. There’s no noise. Even the couple fighting earlier have silenced.
My ankle, injured in the fight, pounds heavily. How the hell did I run on it? It’s killing me.
I move to the bed behind me and crash down, taking my sunglasses off at the same time. My fingers work on the knots of my boots and I carefully pull them off. Tenderly, I check the bones. Nothing’s broken, I don’t think. Just a sprain.
I lift my leg up and rest it on the bed before reaching in for the bread first. The crust is hard, but the moment I dig my fingers into it, I hit the soft center. I rip a chunk off and shove it in my mouth. It’s been two days since I left Estevan. Two days since I’ve had regular food, and right now I feel like I’m at a king’s feast. I can taste a little mold on the crust, but I don’t care. I keep eating. The potato gets shoved into my mouth, and I crunch into it. The starchy texture coats my tongue and the insides of my cheeks. My body cheers for me on the inside. I’m glad no one is here right now to watch me. I feel like an animal, and I’m sure I look like one too. Crumbs and peels, chunks and strings of meat fall onto my lap. Each time they do, I lash out with my hand, scoop them up, and lick them off my palm and fingertips.