The Loudness

by Nick Courage

  I look up from her hands and notice that she’s still staring at me, lips parted. Inhaling, I slowly—very slowly—position my hand next to hers on Julia-the-dog’s stomach. Holding my breath, never breaking eye contact, I inch my fingers through Julia’s fur, toward Freckles’ long white hands. When I finally reach her fingers, they’re strangely cold to the touch, and I exhale sharply as she grips my hand with them, letting the radishes slip from my lap to the floor of the cab.

  In a flash of fur and muscle, Julia flips against the cracking plastic dashboard and wiggles to the floor, barking sharply at the radishes rolling between my legs before taking one in her jaws and crunching wetly. Freckles laughs, reaching for the rest of the radishes—brushing briefly against my knees on her way down—as Julia growls territorially, settling her muscle-bound torso on top of them.

  “Julia,” Carel reprimands from the side of his mouth, eyes finally on the road ahead. “Julia, sharing!”

  Julia barks twice in protest, but—after a sharp look from Carel—retreats beneath the dash where she resentfully gnaws on her bitter, half-eaten dinner. Meanwhile, Freckles picks one of the recovered radishes from the floor for herself and hands the rest to me, her fingers lingering coolly on mine.

  The moment ebbs away as Julia growls and slobbers at our feet. Freckles pulls away, rubbing her radish halfway clean on her jeans and then taking a crisp bite, wiping the soil from her lips with the back of her hand.

  We kissed, I think. She kissed me, and I . . .

  “Is good raw,” Carel says, interrupting. “Usually, I cook into pie. Goat cheese, walnuts. Flake crust.” He takes another generous bite, and then, through a mouthful of radish: “Is nice this way, too. Healthy.”

  The first thing I notice when I take my first bite is the dirt, grits of minerals and sand catching in my gums and crunching between my teeth. Then the spiciness kicks in, so strong that my tongue swells. Coughing uncontrollably—the spice tickling the back of my constricting throat—it’s all I can do not to spit the radish out half-chewed. Carel claps me on the back, laughing so heartily the seat shakes.

  “Is maybe better cooked,” he admits, as I blink the redness from my eyes and cough my throat clear. Freckles doesn’t seem to mind the spice, though, because she picks another radish from my lap and takes a bite.

  Julia-the-dog doesn’t seem to mind either, so I toss the rest of mine between her paws.

  “How many days are we going to be on the road, do you think?” I ask. He looks at me, expressionless, and for the first time since I got into the cab of the truck, I remember that I’m sharing it with an incredibly thick-necked and intimidatingly tattooed man. Shrinking uneasily back into the hot plastic seat, I turn my attention back to the road ahead. We’re still following the river, which is increasingly visible through the thinning pines: a strip of silvery black winding next to the highway, escorting us out of the Zone. Only, it’s flowing in the opposite direction, back down toward the dam. “A few days, we’d be in Canada,” Carel finally says, mouth full of radish. “The City: before morning.”

  My empty stomach tightens. “That soon?”

  Carel swallows and nods. “Maybe before,” he says, gesturing at the black road ahead. In the twenty minutes since we woke up, night has started falling in earnest, and the highway’s truly desolate. Carel hasn’t turned on the headlights yet, if they even work, so we’re careening north by the remnant light of a sun that’s already set and the ghostly glow of early stars. “Not much traffic.”

  Freckles shifts beside me, in my blind spot, and I turn instinctively, flinching at the sharp pain running down my neck. “I slept weird,” I say, over my shoulder, by way of explanation.

  “What’s it like?” Freckles asks Carel, casually kneading my shoulder blades with the palms of her hands. I flinch again, this time not with pain, but surprise at how casual she is about rubbing my back. I wonder if this means she thinks we’re boyfriend and girlfriend now or if we are boyfriend and girlfriend. She works a knuckle down my spine, and that hurts—but I don’t want to stop her. Instead, I clench my teeth and lean back into the pain. “The City, I mean . . . have you been?”

  “Is the same everywhere,” Carel answers, not looking away from the darkening road. “Worse there.”

  I finger the worn scrap of paper in my pocket; Conor’s brother’s address. He was so much older than us, and left when we were so young, that I only really half-remember him—he looked a lot like Conor, but skinnier, with a wry twist to his smile. I wonder if we’ll recognize each other . . . if Conor’s gotten word to him somehow; if he’ll even want to see us.

  “Everywhere is bad,” Carel continues, “except Other Side and Green Zone, a few other places. Too many people. Too many problems. Fait comme des rats,” he mutters, his head shaking sadly. “Trapped.”

  This is the most I’ve heard from Carel since I met him, and hearing him talk reminds me for the second time since we left the Other Side of what Rachel told us about his time in jail. It’s hard to make out his expression in the dark, but he looks strangely more sinister without his super-villain mustache. The indecipherable web of tattoos wrapping around his neck—and down into the thick curls of chest hair spilling out of his shirt—don’t make him seem any less scary.

  “Did you . . .” I ask hesitantly. “Did you really blow up a mountain?”

  Carel whips his head away from the road, toward me, and I cringe back into Freckles’ terrible massage. The truck starts to slow, decelerating until we’re stopped in the center of the highway. Carel maintains heavy-lidded eye contact with me the entire time. His face is mainly hidden in shadow, but I can tell he’s not happy.

  “Who told you I blow up the mountain?” he says, turning off the truck.

  His voice is gruff, and—as Freckles stops rubbing my back—it occurs to me that I’ve just gotten on the wrong side of a very dangerous man; an ex-convict, even.

  Maybe an escaped convict . . .

  Like Freckles, I freeze.

  Carel is obviously waiting for an answer, but I can’t make myself give him one. My heart’s in my throat, buzzing faintly with a fear I don’t want to acknowledge. Admitting it makes it real: we’re in the middle of nowhere with a stranger. And I . . .

  I agreed to be his hostage.

  It’s just Carel.

  I try to visualize him making us breakfast at Food Eats, joking with Tom and Rachel, insisting on seat belts. They wouldn’t put us in a truck with a crazy person, I tell myself, but—as hard as I try to believe it—I’m not convinced. Carel’s heavy frame is tense in the driver’s seat, as still as the tall grasses lining the highway. It’s a windless night, and now that we’re not driving, the air outside the truck feels as hot and stale as the air inside. The ratcheted drone of dwindling late-summer cicadas whirs in a never-ending crescendo, making the heat even more unbearable.

  As the silence stretches on, the cicadas fill the night until their hypnotic chirping seems to be all there is to the world. Mom showed me one once—not the cicada itself, but the empty shell it left behind when it molted. It didn’t look like any bug I’d ever seen . . . it was too big, too unbelievable. I scan the trees on either side of us, but it’s too dark to make anything out, and there doesn’t seem to be any movement. No herons or sparrows or bats; no fireflies. It’s too hot for them, I think. It’s just us out here. Me, Freckles, Crazy Carel, and the terrible, throbbing song of a thousand overgrown crickets.

  I take a deep, centering breath as Freckles surreptitiously knuckles my side, nudging me out of my reveries and back into the front seat of the parked truck. I know she wants me to speak up—to break the silence—but I hold my own, gripping the plastic seat beneath my sweating knees as she continues to poke with increasing intensity.

  “I never blew mountain up,” Carel finally says, contemplating the night through the driver’s-side window. “I stopped mountain blowing up. Big difference between.”

  “Oh,” Freckles says, with apparent relief, as she starts mas
saging my shoulder again. “That’s good, right?”

  “Well, we maybe blew up some things,” Carel says, turning back to us. “But not mountain.”

  Freckles stops massaging me again. “Blew up some things?” Her voice is so shrill that Julia-the-dog jerks up from her dozing and growls.

  “Listen,” I say, finally finding my shaky voice. “It doesn’t matter about the mountain thing. Whoever blew up whatever, it just . . . doesn’t matter. We’ll get to the City, get Mouse and my parents back, and get back to the Green. That’s the plan, right?”

  Carel sighs deeply and flips the key in the ignition. We start rolling down the center of the highway again, hovering over the faded yellow lines. Almost as an afterthought, he switches on the headlights. Only one of them works, but there’s not much to see anyway; just the road ahead and the menacing shadows of crooked pines. Tracking their broken, black silhouettes against the slightly-less-black sky, I try to convince myself that whatever Carel did doesn’t really matter, that we’re all here now and there’s nothing we can do to change that. Julia’s back to snoring on the floor; Freckles is gently pinching my side again, and I’m—

  I’m terrified.

  “Does matter,” Carel says loudly, shaking his head and slapping the heel of his hand on the steering wheel for emphasis. “Government wants to blow up mountain for coal, for gas.” He holds two beefy fingers up to my face and, shaking, smacks them back onto the drifting wheel. “They want power. That’s why they shut down Other Side. That’s why they take girl and parents.” The truck slows, then lurches forward as Carel bounces his foot on the gas pedal.

  I hold my breath and shrink as far as I can into my suffocating hoodie, but Freckles—more curious than concerned—leans over me so she’s face-to-face with Carel.

  No . . . no, no, no, no . . . I furrow my brows, projecting wordlessly. Sit down, sit down.

  But Freckles doesn’t share my concerns about being trapped in a truck in the middle of nowhere with an angry ex-con. “So the federales were going to blow up your mountain,” she asks softly, her elbows distractingly propped against my legs, which are slick with sweat beneath Tom’s baggy black jeans. It’s strange how she touches me, like it’s no big deal. I wonder what would happen if I reached out and pulled gently on one of the golden brown waves that’s fallen from behind her ear. Of course, I can’t—my arms are pinned again. But even if I could, I don’t really think I could.

  “So they could get coal,” Carel explains, spitting out the word as if he’s been sucking on ashes. “Everything else is gone, no more fuel . . . just coal. Dirty coal.” He shakes his head, genuinely angry. The shaved spot where his mustache once lived is stark white against his flushed pink cheeks, which would be funny at any other time. Right now, though, it just seems like a joke at our expense. A reminder that the fun part of Carel is no longer with us, if it ever really was.

  “Dirty water, dirty air, sick people, ruined mountains,” he says with a raspy finality, his voice more sad than angry. Freckles sighs and collapses back into her seat, resting her head on my shoulder and snuggling sadly in. Except for the ratcheting chassis of the truck and Julia’s continued snoring, we continue driving through the darkness in silence. The pines continue to thin, exposing the black wetness of the river to our right and empty expanses of grassland to our left.

  Carel rolls down his window, letting the hot night air rip through the cab, and Freckles hunkers down further into my shoulder.

  Julia snores dryly at my feet, kicking her paws against my legs every once in a while as if she’s dreaming about running, while Freckles breathes heavily, her arm settled comfortably across my empty stomach. I’m exhausted, but so wired by hunger that I feel like I have a better chance of fainting than falling asleep. I want to move, to stretch my aching neck and forage in Tom’s boxes for something—anything—to eat.

  Even radishes.

  It’s almost unbearably hot with Freckles wedged against me, and I’ve been sweating so much beneath my hoodie that my mouth feels chalky and cracked, but her hand is nested like a porcelain bird on my overheated chest, and the last thing I want to do is disturb it. One wrong move and she might lift her arm and turn toward the window—so I hold my breath and keep my eyes on the road, scanning the horizon for some sign of relief.

  There’s nothing out there, though.

  We’ve finally veered away from the river and the trees, and—outside of an ambiguous blue glow in the distance—there don’t seem to be any other landmarks. Just broken asphalt, weakly lit by our one working headlight and the waning quarter moon. I close my eyes and try to sleep, telling myself that if I can just make it until morning, we’ll have breakfast and everything will be okay again.

  I still can’t sleep, though.

  It’s too hot and loud, too impossible to relax. Instead, I concentrate on the weight of Freckles’ hand on my chest, how it rises and falls with my every breath. When she finally shifts after what feels like hours, I open my eyes, hoping to see the first pink tendrils of tomorrow on the horizon, but it’s still night, and will be for a while. Freckles buries herself deeper into my side, sleeping so deeply that I’m racked with a desperate, exhausted jealousy.

  Something has changed, though.

  Nose wrinkling into a pre-sneeze, I inexplicably start choking. I can’t place the smell, but all of a sudden it’s filled the truck completely: a sharp, chemical stench I taste in the back of my mouth, in the roots of my molars. I look to Carel for explanation, horrified, but he just grits his teeth and steps on the gas.

  Freckles, coughing, stirs groggily awake. Our eyes meet for a brief moment—mine watering in advance of another sneeze, hers bewildered—before she heaves toward the passenger side window and frantically rolls it down.

  “It’s just as bad out here,” she shouts, hanging her head out the window. I can hear her ragged gagging over the foul, roaring crosswind and say a quiet thanks to Carel for not making us a real dinner tonight. As hungry as I’ve been, there’s no way I’d be able to hold it down. Julia, wakened by the excitement, joins Freckles at the window and snaps unhappily at the noxious night air.

  Outside, sterile blue floodlights shine across seemingly endless concrete fields. It’s the most electricity I’ve seen in one place since before the Powerdown . . . and it doesn’t even look like there’s anyone around to use it. I squint past the glow of the lights, nervously checking for the federales that must be there somewhere, hiding.

  Waiting for us.

  But it’s just highlighted emptiness.

  Carel nods toward a line of pulsating blue in the distance. “Refinery,” he says, as if that was all the explanation we needed for the sickening smell. “Not in Kansas anymore.”

  Freckles drops back into her seat and, looking whiter than usual, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I hope the City isn’t this bad,” she groans, slouching down next to Julia-the-dog, who’s still hanging out of the window, nose pointed querulously toward the refinery. “I don’t think I can take much more of this.”

  “Is worse,” Carel says, eyes still on the road. “Smells better, though,” he adds, looking at us and smiling for the first time I can remember since our narrow escape from the federales. I’d just assumed his default expression was a scowl, that the mustache hid it. Now that I see him smile, I realize that he’s just been glowering this entire trip.

  “You . . . were happy there,” I say, nervous about making him angry again, but encouraged by his smile. “On the Other Side. You always seemed so happy.”

  Carel locks his small brown eyes with mine as he guns the accelerator, shooting us blindly through the toxic cement wasteland. “Of course,” he says, his smile fading into a gentler version of the scowl we’ve grown used to. “No cities, no people, no violence.”

  “There’s nothing here either,” Freckles mumbles petulantly. She’s doubled over against the door, hiding her face in her hood and sounding completely miserable. Julia, unable to place the stench, starts
whining inconsolably, echoing Freckles’ sentiment.

  “City is here and violence is here,” Carel says, raising his voice over the ripping wind and keening dog as he points with heavy emphasis at the concrete on either side of the roadway. “And here,” he says, pointing at the road itself. “No more trees, and the river . . . dirty from this refinery. And others, many others. Bad to drink, even in the Green.”

  Carel’s shouted indignation mixes with Julia’s whimpers and the cross-wind until all three jumble incoherently together. Light-headed, I drop my face between my knees to stop the world from swimming. The awful chemical smell is still strong, and my chest heaves reflexively against it. “Poisoning land—biggest violence,” Carel yells over the tumult. “Hurts everyone.”

  Unable to anchor myself against the sick, I scramble over Freckles toward the window, where I hang my head next to Julia’s. Carel keeps talking inside the truck, but I can barely hear him out here. The wind whips across my face and through my hair, and I try to spit the sickness out through chapped lips, but my mouth is completely dry. I inhale deeply instead, watching the ground rush darkly beneath me as Julia whines nervously at my side.

  Finally, mostly sure that I’m not going to puke out of the window, I drop back next to Freckles, who looks like I feel. “The dam,” Carel is saying. “Also no good. Wanted to blow up, but—is okay, for making Green Zone and Other Side . . .” He gestures vaguely with his thick, hairy hands for a moment, tapping the steering wheel in frustration.

  “Self-reliant,” Freckles says. She doesn’t sound so good, like she’s about to lose her radishes. As if on cue, the incessant buzzing of the cicadas seems to have stopped. “We were supposed to be self-reliant.”