Deep Down (Hallie Michaels)

by Deborah Coates

  “He’s my father.”

  Hallie shifted her shotgun from one hand to the other. “Wait?” she said. “Did you always know? Did you know when Hollowell was … well, when he was alive?”

  Boyd and Lily stared at her like she was babbling, and maybe she was, but— “Is that why you’re still hanging around?” Hallie asked her. “Because you’re waiting for Death to save you?”

  Lily flushed. “I didn’t know until after,” she said. “Until I came here. The dogs told me.”

  “Huh.” Because it was Maker who’d told her. Maybe the dogs had had their own agenda for a while.

  “She said he was her dream. He came to her in dreams,” Hallie said, remembering what Beth had told them.

  “To my mother,” Lily said, “yeah. But who knew what that meant? I’m not even sure my mother did.”

  “What does it mean, though?” Hallie asked. Because Death came to her in dreams too. And he’d better not want to sleep with her.

  “You’re Death’s daughter?” Boyd said, like he was working as hard as he could to catch up.

  “He won’t talk to me,” Lily said, not answering either of them directly. “I go where I hear he’s been and he’s not there. I ask the dogs to take messages, but I don’t know if they really do or not. I used to see him in my dreams once in a while before I died, but not anymore. But I remember him. I remember. And I want to know why. I want to know who I am. I mean, I know I’m dead. I know I died. But it doesn’t change anything.”

  She started to cry. Boyd put his arms around her. Hallie closed her eyes. Then, she said, “Maker says that if you marry Death’s daughter, you live forever.”

  “But I died,” Lily said.

  “So did Hollowell,” Hallie pointed out. “I think if he convinces Beth to marry him or maybe just agree to something, because he’s trying to convince her to come to purgatory to see you—if he convinces her, he must get—what? A second chance? He told me he gets immortality. The other reaper said that he wants to be a real live boy. So, maybe he gets to live again and live forever?”

  Lily just looked at her, like, Yeah, I don’t remember. So frustrating, because no one seemed to remember anything, and Hallie plain didn’t know.

  Maker had said Boyd wouldn’t live forever—because Lily had died, she assumed. Killing Beth to stop Hollowell wasn’t going to be an option. But there had to be an option. There had to—

  A loud explosion rent the still, close air, like too-close thunder. The ground shook.

  “They’re coming,” Maker said.

  “Lily, do you know the way out?” Hallie asked.

  “I didn’t even know there was a way out,” Lily said. “And believe me, I’ve looked.” Her voice sounded to Hallie like a combination of resentment and fear. Because there were unmakers right the hell out there. And because Hallie and Boyd were leaving. And Lily was not.

  Was probably not. Because at this point, who knew what was possible.

  32

  “We’ll need a diversion,” Hallie said. “Something to draw them off so we can get out.”

  “Why can’t we drive?” Boyd said.

  “How would we drive?” Hallie asked. Because they were in hell, right? Not Detroit.

  “My Jeep’s in the garage,” he said.

  Hallie took a half step backwards. “Does it run?” she asked cautiously. Because there was no reason it would. But then again, judging by what she’d seen, there was also no reason it wouldn’t. Except, she thought, as three windows shattered on what remained of the second floor of the house, for the part where it was all falling apart. As Boyd questioned, as he remembered, at some point the Jeep was going to fall apart too.

  Boyd shrugged, just one shoulder, somehow managing to be both tense and irritated.

  “Yeah, okay,” Hallie said. “Let’s try it.” She didn’t expect the Jeep to operate beyond the boundaries of the under, but if it got them to the exit … well, that would be something. Right now, she really wanted Boyd to save them. Wanted him to remember who he was, realize that she was rapidly losing her shit—and not because she couldn’t handle this. She could handle this. She could handle whatever she had to handle. She always had—western South Dakota in winter, Afghanistan in war, her mother dying, Dell dying. But time was running out for her, like her bones were hollowing out, like her breath was too thin.

  Well, suck it up, she told herself, because Boyd wasn’t going to rescue her—or even himself. Not this time. She was the one who knew there was a way out, even if she didn’t know exactly where it was. She was the one who would have to get them there.

  She backed up a step to cover Boyd while he headed toward the garage.

  “Things falling apart,” Maker observed.

  “Yeah.” Hallie scanned the area. “Where the hell is Hollowell? Shouldn’t he be here?”

  “Reapers come, but they don’t stay,” Maker said. “Not in this level.”

  “Because they don’t have power here,” Hallie said, remembering the live grass and branches brought in to make the barrier.

  “Don’t have much power,” Maker agreed.

  “But when we leave—he’ll know Boyd’s leaving?”

  “He’ll know.”

  “And he has no power.”

  “Not much power.”

  And Hallie wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. She hoped it meant she could kill him. She hoped she’d have the chance to find out.

  She heard the garage door rattle open.

  She asked Maker the question that had been lurking in the back of her mind, asked it quick, like she didn’t want Lily or Boyd to hear. “Stopping Hollowell won’t repair the walls between here and the world, will it?”

  Maker tilted its head, neither a yes or a no. “No one knows,” it said.

  “Not even Death?”

  “Death is not—” Maker stopped. “Not really here.”

  Because the lines were too thin.

  “Are people still disappearing?”

  “Still dropping through? Yes.”

  “Damnit.”

  Boyd’s Jeep pulled up in front of them. Hallie was surprised at the relief she felt seeing that Jeep, like there was one normal thing, like if there could be something normal—even if it wasn’t really normal, even if it was just as uncanny as everything else in this place—then maybe they really would get out of here.

  Maybe.

  Boyd got out and went around the front of the Jeep. It was dark enough now that he’d turned on the high beams, lighting his face so it hollowed out his cheekbones and cast his eyes in shadow.

  “How much time do I have?” Hallie asked Maker, knew it would understand what she was asking, glad that someone—something—knew at least.

  “Two hours,” Maker said as it passed her, meaning two hours left before she needed to be out of here, before she would be unmade. Which didn’t seem possible, so little time left, but she wasn’t going to argue. Because everything worked differently here, time probably did too.

  She reached the Jeep, unslung her backpack, took out the last bottle of water, and drank the remaining half in one last glorious rush of cool clean liquid. It was like a cold blast to her system.

  “You told me not to leave South Dakota,” she said to Boyd, who had reached through the open front passenger window to unlock the back door.

  “I did?”

  “When I wanted to go to Iowa with you,” Hallie said, like it was important, like everything hinged on what she told him right now, standing under the fake yard light in his fake front yard in fake Iowa. “You told me something was going to happen when I left South Dakota. Told me you saw it in your dreams. And you were right, I guess. Though it doesn’t really matter. Even if I knew one hundred percent, even if there was nothing I could do to change it—your dream. I’d still come.

  “You should know that,” she said. She didn’t say it because she thought she was going to die, because she didn’t think she was going to die, despite where things were at right now
, but because it was true, whether Boyd ever remembered her again, whether they both made it out or not, whether everything had been predetermined a million years before either of them was born. She’d still have come.

  That was the important thing.

  Boyd frowned. “Are you trying to tell me something?” he asked.

  “If I don’t make it out of here,” she said, “remember that I knew exactly what I was doing.”

  She had her backpack by one strap in her left hand, her shotgun still held in her right. And she still felt as if she couldn’t figure out what to do with her hands, as if she should kiss him or hug him or punch him in the shoulder. Something. Like they weren’t just strangers.

  Because they weren’t just strangers.

  “We’d better—,” she began, but before she could get more than those two words out, there was a loud crack.

  Boyd shouted, “Look out!” even as he was grabbing her by the waist and pulling her sideways. She had to drop her backpack so she could hang on to her shotgun. She hit the ground hard, rolled quickly, and was back on her feet in time to see half the oak tree by the farmhouse collapsing to the ground with a hard thump that raised rough clods of dirt and snapped twigs.

  Hallie coughed. Boyd climbed to his feet, all right, just slower than she’d been, a tear in his jeans across one knee. Lily walked out of a cloud of dust. “That was—”

  A wrenching shriek like wounded animals, and the axles on the Jeep disintegrated. The windows collapsed inward. And the handle fell off the front passenger door, landing on the gravel driveway with a single sharp ring of metal against stone.

  “Run!” Hallie shouted. “We’ll have to run for it.” She herded them, like sheep or soldiers, her hand light on their arms, turning them, pointing the way. She grabbed her backpack from the ground as she passed. “Go!” She urged them forward. “Keep going!”

  They ran.

  Boyd might not remember her. Lily might not remember anything. But they knew trouble and they knew when to move.

  They got as far as the corner of the yard when they saw the unmakers.

  And Travis Hollowell.

  Hollowell in front and the unmakers behind him. Seven of them now, big hulking shapes that seemed to fill all available space.

  Hallie dropped her backpack, raised the shotgun, and fired, hitting Hollowell square in the chest. She ejected the shell and fired again. He staggered and faded. Hallie drew in her breath.

  A flicker, like an old movie reel, and he was back.

  Goddamnit.

  33

  Hallie staggered. The pain from the unmaker’s claw had moved along her arm to her shoulder and down into her chest, spidering out like a slowly expanding web of heavy black emptiness.

  But that was all right. That was the kind of thing that didn’t matter. She pushed it aside. Or down. Somewhere outside what mattered. Because she couldn’t change it. And the unmakers were moving forward.

  The sky was a uniform gray, not like it was cloudy, but like there was nothing but gray, like blue or clouds or sun or night had never existed, not in this place. The grass was gone from the front yard. As far as Hallie could see, the ground around, in front, beyond them was flat and featureless. A cold wind blew across the back of Hallie’s neck. A lifetime of living on a ranch in the West River, and she wanted to give it a direction—the wind out of the west or the north or the south. But there was no direction here, no down to or over from or into or out of. There was only here. Only now.

  She heard a sound, the scrape of a boot, and turned her head to her right to see Boyd coming up beside her.

  “I remember this,” Boyd said. The unmakers were even with Hollowell now, who seemed to be waiting for something. Hallie shot the nearest unmaker twice. It flickered and disappeared. It didn’t return. She had five shells left.

  “You remember me?” And was sorry she said it. Because that didn’t matter either. That she would do this for him had nothing to do with whether he knew her or cared about her back. Except it did. It did matter. If this was the last thing, their last stand, then it would just be nice if he remembered her.

  “This place. Standing here.”

  “Oh.”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” he said to Hallie.

  “I would always have come,” she replied.

  “Hey!” Lily shoved between Hallie and Boyd, would have gone straight past and bang up to Hollowell if Hallie hadn’t grabbed her by the arm. She shouted across the space between them. “I remember you, you son of a bitch!” she said.

  Hollwell grinned. “It’s not too late for you,” he said. “We should talk.”

  “Leave my sister alone,” Lily said. She slapped the prybar in her hand. “I think we can take them,” she said to Hallie and Boyd.

  Hallie didn’t roll her eyes.

  “You can’t stay here for long,” she said to Hollowell, because wasn’t that what Maker had told her? That reapers could come to this place, to the under, but they couldn’t stay.

  Hollowell’s grin didn’t change. “Neither can you.”

  He dropped his hand. The unmakers surged forward. Hallie raised her shotgun, saw Boyd move closer to her, draw Lily a bit behind him, all of them doing the right thing, working together. Not enough, though. It wouldn’t be enough. Right now, her only hope was that it would matter.

  She had time to fire three times before one of the unmakers reached her and hit her a glancing blow that knocked her six feet through the air. She was already rolling when she landed hard on her left shoulder, scrambling to her feet and reaching for her last two shotgun shells.

  Then the universe split open.

  The ground underneath Hallie’s feet rose like the deck of a ship on hundred-foot seas. Hallie stumbled sideways and almost fell. One of the unmakers tripped on a steep uprising of earth and tumbled back the way it had come. A deep crack opened in the ground, another in the fake sky above them, a low rumble like the grinding of a thousand heavy millstones. The cracks appeared to exist in all dimensions at once. Light spilled through—down, up, sideways. It reflected off particles of purgatory dirt, the widening gash in the ground sending more dirt into the surrounding air.

  Boyd reached out quick, grabbed Lily by the back of her shirt, and hauled her away from a splintering crack.

  “What’s happening?” Lily asked. “This is— I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  The fissures widened.

  “Jesus.” And Hallie could see it—in the growing cracks—the world outside. Brown prairie grass and low gray skies, a long horizon, a sparse line of trees in the middle distance. She smelled rain and dry grass like straw and something burning.

  All of it thrusting forward into purgatory, past the unmakers, like a river from its source, a glow like the rising sun behind.

  “What is this?” Boyd asked. He sounded angry and scared and fed up with the whole thing, which might have struck Hallie as funny at any other time, the fed-up part, because he didn’t know the half of it, not even close.

  “The walls,” she said. “The walls are coming down.” Surprised that it was something that could even be said, because it was the same as saying the end of the world, the end of time, the end.

  The gap widened, more fissures spreading out like crackling ice. Hallie could see birds, a circling hawk veer suddenly in flight and then recover.

  34

  Hallie grabbed Boyd’s arm. “We have to get out. Now.”

  He looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language.

  She pointed toward the widening fissures. “Out.”

  Boyd indicated the unmakers, who were standing at the edge of a fissure that had just opened, already working out a way across. “What about—?”

  “If there are no more walls, there’s no world and if there’s no world, then Travis Hollowell doesn’t matter.”

  It had started in the world, had started with Martin and Uku-Weber. So she figured—hoped—it could be fixed there. And that would take care
of Hollowell, right? She wasn’t certain she actually believed that, but there was at least one way to find out.

  And she had to get out—get out now before she was unmade. Though she didn’t say that. Blackness crept in at the edges of her vision and she figured she didn’t have much time left.

  They just had to get past—

  “I’ll take care of Hollowell,” Lily said, looking across the cracked ground at Hollowell and the unmakers; the fissures that had just ripped open were already trying to reseal themselves. “I want to take care of him,” she repeated. “And I can’t.” She looked at the sky where slanting afternoon sun poured through, at the promise of South Dakota prairie visible along the horizon. “I can’t leave here anyway.”

  “You don’t know that,” Boyd said. “You don’t—”

  One of the unmakers took a running start and lunged across the closing fissure. Hallie and Boyd fired simultaneously. The unmaker dropped into the gap, clawing at the broken surface and then, just disappearing. Across the gap, Hollowell had stepped back, seemed almost to be fading. Maybe his time was almost up. Or maybe it was just beginning.

  Hallie had one shell left. “Come on!” she shouted. They could sort the metaphysics out later, when they were out.

  A roar like a thousand thousand thunderclaps filled the air—so loud, it felt like the air itself was vibrating. The light, the glow Hallie’d seen earlier and thought was winter prairie sunlight leaking through, grew brighter and brighter until it became an orange county truck with a snow blade on the front bursting through the widening gap between the outside world and the under. Its entrance caused another rolling shudder across the half-shattered ground beneath their feet, closing one wide fissure and a deep crack in the sky and opening three more. Hallie had time to notice torches burning on the corners of the blade, the truck cab, and the dump bed before she was diving frantically out of the way even as the truck was braking and trying to stop. It pulled up, the snow blade less than a foot from her nose.

  Pabby leaned out the driver’s window. “Need some help?” She grinned.