Tomorrow and Tomorrow

by Thomas Sweterlitsch

  I don’t bother with the Tyvek, but hourly forecast displays rainfall throughout the night so I dress in rain slacks and the hard shell. Peckish, but I’m not sure where Albion’s packed the pudding and there’s little light to search by, only the overcast moon and the last of the fire sputtering whenever raindrops hit it. Careful down the hill, lighting my way with the flashlight—the only other thing I’ve brought with me is the bouquet Albion picked from our yard.

  I ping Albion: Went for a walk. I’ll be back by breakfast.

  I remember a set of stairs at the mouth of the Armstrong Tunnel that hugged the sharp ascent of the Bluff, topping off at the Boulevard of the Allies—the stairs were concrete and steel, maybe shielded from the blast by the Bluff itself, and when I check on them now, shining my flashlight over the steel rails and cracked concrete, I’m relieved to find the stairs are relatively intact. The moon hangs like a silver smudge as I climb. Sweating by the time I reach the hilltop, but cold in the haze of rain—I’m sure I’ll get sick clambering around out here in the mist, maybe catch pneumonia. Feverish already, shivering. Scorched cars and the ruined faces of houses through what were once the streets of Uptown, splintered wood and sheet metal, tendrils of wire and rubble.

  Burial mounds warp the earth of what was once Oakland—the radioactive scrap of museums, row houses, lecture halls, bulldozed and interred under heaps of chemical sand. Heavy machinery’s parked here, excavators and dump trucks—Oakland must be PEZ Zeolite’s focus right now. Layer in the Archive to gain my bearings and Phipps Conservatory shimmers in a distant field behind the burial mounds, the greenhouse like a Victorian dream of white steel and glass, gardens and lawns. This was Theresa’s, this was hers—I used to come here from campus to visit her in her office, we’d have lunch together in the café. There’s nothing here, now—nothing but the poisoned dunes. The air’s tanged with the stink of burning plastic.

  I follow makeshift roads gouged from the ruins by PEZ Zeolite, threadlike stretches of slippery gravel vaguely milky and luminescent by moonlight. To Shadyside, to Walnut Street where she died. Layering the Archive over this place, boutiques and sidewalk sales, outdoor tables at cafés. Layering, the scent of roasting coffee, of baking bread. Layering, J.Crew and the Gap, United Colors of Benetton, Banana Republic. I find the store where she died, Kards Unlimited, layering in the T-shirts she was looking at, It’s a Neighborly Day in the Beautywood, but she’s not here, not here. Time-search the moment of the blast: light flares over the west and everything blackens, the bodies around me spark to flame, then shrivel to cores of ash, then vanish. In the moment of the blinding flash, Theresa’s reflection appears in the store’s window, just for a heartbeat I see her face. The buildings ignite and vanish. I’m left with ash.

  A breath of ash.

  This is not the Archive, this ash. On hands and knees—crawling through ash made muddy with rain. I grasp at handfuls of ash. This is Theresa. This is her body, my child’s body. This is all she’ll ever be, this ash, this is all I have left of her.

  This ruination in the moonlight looks like shattered marble and lunar dust, broken statuary, shadows.

  I reset the Archive to the moment just before her death, layer in Walnut Street and watch for Theresa’s split-second reflection in the moment of blinding light.

  This time, however, following the flash and her fleeting reflection in the window, Theresa’s here with me as if she’d never been deleted, as if I haven’t lost her. She’s turned away from me, looking into other store windows. There is no fire, there is no ash. The sidewalks swarm with upscale shoppers living lives that were never given to them in life—they should have died, they should have all died in the fire, but there is no fire. Is this some trick of Mook’s? Some other geocached installation of Pittsburgh as if it hadn’t burned? The day is crystalline blue and crisply tinged with fall. Theresa is full-term, and women who pass her on the sidewalk stop and ask when she’s due, tell her she looks beautiful, a glow of health, wish her well. I want to see her, I want to hold her and feel the movements of our child. This can’t be happening—this never happened, this isn’t her. I follow her.

  “Theresa?” I say, but she can’t hear me—she doesn’t turn toward me. She walks down Bellefonte, a side street running off Walnut that terminates at Ellsworth, our apartment. Layering, cool tree shade. Layering, a distant lawn mower and the scent of mown grass. This can’t be. This never existed—the bomb should have detonated five minutes ago, all these places should have burned—but we’re here, we’re here. Everything about this is wrong.

  “Theresa?”

  I run to her, place my hand on her shoulder. She turns to me but she is faceless, just a gray oval where her face should be, featureless, a blank avatar. I recoil. The images end—the Archive crashes, collapses into a point of light, then blinks away, day flips to true night, the desolation of the world as it is. She’s led me home.

  Broken earth, the sky arcing toward dawn—sunrise still an hour or so away, but the horizon bleeds gray into the dome of black and the stars are dim. The Georgian Apartment still stands, much of it, anyway—the western-facing wing collapsed, either in the blast or in the years of dereliction following, but much of the far side of the building survived. The front stairs are nothing now, just a splay of mortar and brick, weeds and soil. I scramble across the front lawn, past where Grecian urns once spilled over with peonies, through the cracked front portal into the lobby. I’m here. The checkerboard tiles singed black, the brass mailboxes lying twisted across the floor. Shattered glass. Burned-out couches. Everything’s glistening from rainwater leaking through gaps in the roof— puddles and wet wood, pungent soot.

  I run upstairs.

  I’m here.

  Theresa, I’m here.

  Room 208.

  I open our door—but there is no Room 208, not any longer. The rear of the Georgian’s collapsed, Room 208 nothing more than a few splintered floorboards and an expanse of air, a twenty-foot drop onto a slide of bricks below. I look out from the cliff that was once our home. There’s nothing left. Nothing.

  I don’t know what I was hoping to find—

  I should never have come here—

  I drop the flowers, watch them fall.

  “Mr. Blaxton?”

  I turn from the emptiness. A man stands in the hallway wearing black fatigues and a gas mask.

  “Are you John Dominic Blaxton?” he asks, his bass voice oddly muffled in his mouth, like he’s speaking through a side of raw beef. Another man stands a few feet behind him—a bear of a man, also in a gas mask. I’m going to die. I’m at their mercy, whatever mercy they’ll show me. Increasingly faint—this apartment will be the last thing I see.

  “What do you want from me?” I ask him.

  A third man has trailed us up the stairs, blocking any exit I’d hope to have. Rory, it has to be—he’s also wearing a gas mask. The one who’s speaking must be Gregor, Waverly’s brother.

  “Waverly knew that once you saw your wife you’d come running here,” he says.

  The bear, Cormac, unsheathes a nightstick and advances swiftly. I flinch, but he strikes me across the side of my head, the blast like a bright light of pain that explodes my ear and breaks my jaw. Ringing, but like I’m hearing underwater—my Adware’s music shuffles, Albion’s Boris Vian jazz sputtering from inside my head, skipping. Error—

  A second strike, this one across my right knee—and I crumple, my leg broken forward. I see bone gore through my skin. My right shin and foot flop like they’re made of cloth, unattached, when a third strike lands across my face. Adware rebooting. iLux. Blood sprays from my mouth. Teeth. Two more strikes, one against each hand—bones snap, fingers shatter. I scream—

  My Adware blacks out again, reboots a second time. iLux.

  “I saw you,” I tell them. “What you did to her. I saw how you killed her—”

  Blood pulses from my mouth
when I speak and I don’t know if they’ve even understood what I said. I’m swimming in blood and darkness, but I concentrate—I can’t black out, not now. Think. This isn’t going to be quick, what they do to me. I need to get out of here. Christ, Christ—

  “Rory, he’s all yours,” says Gregor. A dark, swift shape kneels over me. I see his eyes through the gas mask lenses.

  “An eye for an eye, brother,” he says.

  He pulls a serrated hunter’s knife and I feel the blade slide cleanly into my shoulder, snagging on muscle and bone as he pulls it out. The knife slides into my chest, rips me as it comes out. I can’t breathe, but don’t realize I can’t breathe—I can’t scream, but still try to scream, my breath like a fog of blood. He swipes his blade across my face like he’s a calligrapher writing something sacred into my skin. Pain flares through the right side of my face, a deep pain—like he’s reached into my skull through my eye socket. I wonder at all the blood—is this all mine? It doesn’t seem possible—

  I’m lifted.

  It must be Cormac who lifts me.

  I’m falling—

  They’ve pushed me out, over the ledge. Falling. The apartment recedes from me—

  —

  “Dominic—”

  That voice.

  —

  I recognize that voice. From where? I try to open my eyes, but can’t.

  The camphor scent of coagulant and the cottony rank of blood and gauze, but also the smell of dirt and something like milkweed and grass.

  “You need another dose of morphine,” says that voice.

  —

  Open my eyes—

  Everything’s blurred—no, everything to my left is blurred. Darkness to my right. I’m blind to my right side. It’s like a charcoal cloth covers everything to my right but if I close my left eye the world goes dark. Daylight—I can see well enough to know there’s daylight.

  I lift my head but the movement cramps through my chest, an agonizing soreness, and I collapse back down, panting. Every breath is pain.

  “You’re awake,” he says. That voice.

  Timothy.

  “Where is she?” I ask him.

  “Do you remember what happened?” he asks. “Do you know where we are?”

  I’m here. Theresa, I’m here—

  “You’re at the site of your apartment in Pittsburgh. Three men attacked you,” says Timothy. “Do you remember? You fell. I haven’t moved you—”

  Rory Waverly carving me with a knife.

  “I can’t see very well,” I tell him. “Come over here where I can see you—”

  He blocks the sunlight when he stands near, but I still can’t see him. I hear him kneel. A damp towel touches my face. He wrings water over my eyes and wipes gently with the towel—once I blink away the water, I can see him, but it’s like I’m looking at him through a scrim of steel wool. He’s examining me with those pitying blue eyes. I want to ping Albion, ping Gav, someone who can help me, but the virtual interface I’m so used to seeing isn’t here.

  “You’re very injured,” he says. “I did what I could, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had to practice emergency medicine—not since school. I stopped most of the bleeding. I’m so sorry, Dominic. I didn’t intend for this to happen—”

  “Did you kill her? Did you kill Albion?”

  “She’s safe,” says Timothy. “She’ll be here soon—”

  My body’s numbed from coagulant and painkillers but whenever I move, profound pain ripples through me. Something plastic’s draped over me as a blanket—a tarp, maybe—the corners weighted by bricks. My head’s cushioned by a rain jacket—Timothy’s, it looks like. He’s wearing a T-shirt and khaki hiking pants, but nothing to protect him from the radiation or the rain. His backpack’s nearby, cherry red. What will happen here? Where are the others? Why didn’t they just let me die?

  “Did you kill Twiggy?” I ask. “Why? Why her?”

  “I didn’t kill her,” says Timothy. “My father knew you’d be interested in her—he’d studied your Adware, knew your tastes. He hired her, made sure she’d cross your path by making sure your cousin worked with her. My father paid her to give you hard drugs so that once you were arrested on felony drug charges I could commandeer your case from Simka. We knew we had to get close to you, one way or another, to find out what you knew about the woman’s body you discovered in the Archive—”

  “Hannah,” I tell him. “Her name was Hannah—”

  “My father thought he’d taken care of that mistake years ago, but when you found her in the Archive, he panicked. He wanted to have you killed—he thought killing you would solve these problems from the past. I had to convince him to let you live. I told him that we should figure out how you found Hannah, what you knew—what else you might know about us. I convinced him that you might be able to help us with another problem we were having—”

  “Albion—”

  “The dead don’t stay dead,” he says.

  “Albion wanted to stay dead. She wanted no part of this—”

  “We didn’t know Albion was alive until she disappeared from the Archive—she wanted to disappear, but that’s what exposed her. Albion vanishing was like a dead woman rising to life, and then you found Hannah’s body. My father was haunted by these Lazarus women. He met with his brother and told him he wanted Albion dead. My uncle and cousins remembered Albion. They wanted to kill her, they’ve always wanted her . . . but I couldn’t let them. I can’t let them—”

  The door to Room 208 is at least two stories above us, leading into the scorched hallway—I remember falling, but don’t remember hitting—I’m so numbed I feel like I’m hovering inches above my body, like I haven’t quite finished the fall. I glance around—the flowers I’d brought for Theresa are all around me.

  “Are you going to kill Albion here?” I ask him. “Kill us?”

  Timothy’s incredulous. “I’m saving her,” he says. “I’ve tried to save you. This whole time, I’ve been saving you—”

  “Bullshit,” I tell him. “I saw what you did to Hannah. I saw everything, you sick fuck. I saw everything—”

  “I’ve saved you three times,” he says. “When you found Hannah, I saved you from my father. I saved you a second time after my father’s party—when you quit working for him, you ceased having value to him, but I convinced him that we could still follow you to Albion. I saved you a third time just a few hours ago, when my cousins were scrambling down here to mutilate you, Dominic—”

  “You don’t want me to live,” I tell him. “You’re luring her here because you don’t know where she is—”

  “The first night I met you I told you that I’d been saved—”

  “When you tore out your Adware—”

  “I was Saul on the road to Damascus,” says Timothy. “I lived with the shadow of my father—that Adware, those images that filled my mind, were him. They were him. I slit myself open and tore out my Adware and it was like I was tearing him out from me. I knew I might kill myself but tearing out that Adware was like tearing sin from my soul—”

  “Twiggy didn’t have to die—”

  “No,” says Timothy. “No, she didn’t, but once she served her purpose, my father saw her as a liability. He gave her to his brother and his sons. Killing her was a mercy, by the time they were through with her—”

  “You keep saying ‘my father.’ ‘My father.’ You keep saying, ‘They did this.’ You did this—”

  Timothy’s not listening—something’s caught his attention and he stares out over the ruins into the far yard, intent like a hunter who fears his movements might scare off the prey.

  “She’s here,” he says. “She’s here—”

  “Albion?” I try to scream, but my breath’s frail. “Get out of here. Run—”

  I follow Timothy’s eyes and see her. She s
tands at the base of the slide of bricks. Something formal in the way she stands. She’s come to meet death.

  “Dominic’s up here,” says Timothy. “I promised I was with him—”

  Albion scales the bricks like she’s scaling a slant of a shallow pyramid, picking a circuit that will keep her wide of Timothy.

  “My God,” she says when she draws close to me, “what have you done?”

  “He would be dead if it wasn’t for me,” says Timothy, voice edged with—not quite glee, but something proud, catlike, like he’s gifting his owner the body of a bird.

  Albion doesn’t cry at the sight of my body—she’s blanched white, but studies each of my wounds like she’s cataloging them, keeping tally for some future reckoning. She sits next to me, takes my hand. Having her so close is like a balm—the scent of her hair, the feel of her as she caresses my face. “Poor Dominic,” she whispers as she touches kisses to each one of my eyes, “poor, poor Dominic—”

  “Leave,” I tell her. “They’re coming for you. Run—”

  “How did you find us?” she asks.

  “My father ruined that doctor, Simka,” says Timothy. “Drugs for sex with high school girls, bullshit he knew would hit the streams. My father snared Dominic’s accounts, sent him an e-mail—it was supposed to look like it came from Simka’s lawyer. When Dominic opened the e-mail, my father could track him. We came to New Castle, found your house, but you were already here—”

  “What have you done to him?” she says, her voice like someone grown weary of a long and brutal prank. “Timothy, what have you done to him?”

  “Gregor,” he says. “Rory and Cormac—”

  “Why did they do this?” she asks.

  “They were preparing to do much worse when I stopped them,” says Timothy. “They wanted to open him up, collar to belly—they were going to hang him by the ankles and let him bleed out. I told Gregor that you were the one we wanted, but that you’d run if Dominic was dead. We needed him alive to get you—”