by Alex Nast
The engine starts, and the truck lurches ahead. I know that Felix could betray us and I make plans in my head to get away, feel the knife in my boot pressing against my ankle in the familiar spot. I found it, in Victor's little room. I felt incomplete without it. I try not to hope, but maybe this is really going to work. Maybe.
If I get caught again, I will kill myself. I will make myself a corpse, just like Felix's wife. Useless, wasted flesh. I won't be anyone's meat puppet. Fuck Dorian. Fuck the towers. Fuck this whole city and the corrupt system that props it up. I won't be a part of it, alive or dead.
We drive long enough that I lose track of the time, and almost fall asleep once from the lulling hum of the truck on the nicer roads. But then it gets bumpy as we get further out and the metal truck bed just hurts.
And then we stop. I can hear muted voices beyond the tarp. I hear Felix's voice. Can't make out the words. Whatever it is, his tone is annoyed. Angry.
Not good.
More words exchanged. Angry. Insistent.
A truck door, Felix's door. He's getting out. It doesn't sound like he betrayed us, but who knows. If he did we don't stand a chance. I want to look over at Maz and Oliver, to see if they hear what I'm hearing, but my nose is pressed up against the tarp and I can't move or it will be very obvious that the dead bodies in the back of the truck are not quite dead.
I listen, following the footsteps as they come around to the back of the truck.
We should have made a plan for this. But Felix seemed so confident and we were all so tired. Stupid.
My heart pounds as I lay perfectly still, not sure what else to do. If it's a checkpoint these guys will be military. They will have guns. If they suspect anything they will fill us with bullets before we have a chance to sit up. They'll get shit for killing us. For killing me. But it'll hardly matter to us. We'll be dead.
I listen as they stop at the back of the truck.
"They're just bodies," Felix says, maybe a little too loudly. For our benefit then. He hasn't betrayed us. "I've been through this checkpoint a hundred times before. I know you know who I am."
"Just open it," another voice says, annoyed. "New orders, everything gets inspected before it leaves the city. Bosses are looking for that 9.96."
"And what, she's in the back of my truck? Come on."
"Fucking open it," a third voice says, losing patience.
The tarp is flung aside, and I lay there, perfectly still, not breathing, keeping my chest still, staring unblinking up at the sky. We were smart enough to wrap scarves before we got in. Small miracles.
There's no sound from Maz or Oliver. They're playing dead too. I just pray that Felix can keep it together. If he starts crying at the sight of his dead wife the situation is going to go sideways fast.
"What did I tell you? Dead bodies."
"How'd those three die?"
I knew it, I fucking knew it. We should have left the blood and the stench on.
"How should I know?" Felix says. "All I do is bury them."
There's a moment of silence. They must be looking us over. Considering. Maybe they'll put a bullet in each of us, just to be sure. No, bullets are worth too much money. They wouldn't do that would they? My mind is racing, adrenaline pumping. I'm too amped up, going to need to breath soon.
"Get up there and stick a knife in them," the impatient voice says.
There's no way we're going to live through this.
"I get paid to bury them respectfully," Felix says. "If my customers find out I'm sticking knives in their dead relatives my reputation is ruined."
Smart, but I know it's only delaying the inevitable.
"Take their scarves off then," the impatient one says. "If they're ugly it doesn't matter if they're dead or not."
Felix huffs. "Who's doing this inspection? If you want to look at them get up there and do it yourself."
The other voice laughs, "he's got you there Gurst."
"You know what kind of hell we'll catch if we're the ones that let them through?" The impatient one sounds angry now.
"So get up there and pull their scarves then."
I feel the truck sink a little as someone climbs up on to the tail. "Fucking lazy ass..." the impatient one mutters.
I hear his boot by my foot. Feel the vibrations through the metal. Every sense is on fire, every muscle tensed for movement.
His other boot lands between my legs, then another boot up near my shoulder. He must hear my heart beating. How could he not? My lungs are burning. If he pulls my scarf it's all over. We'll be shot. I'm sure of it. We're going to be shot. At least I'll die here, my body punctured and bleeding and useless.
I can see him, my eyes staring up dead and supposedly lifeless. He bends down, suspicious. He slips one finger underneath the edge of my scarf and pulls it down with one finger, trying to make out my face in the dim light from the single bulb on the building beside us.
I see his eyes go wide, reaching for his gun. I take a deep breath as I go for the knife on my belt, my burning lungs filling with air. My knife comes up as his gun swings across his chest. The moment happens in slow motion.
I bury the blade up in to his thigh and grab the barrel of his gun at the same moment, my muscles straining to keep it pointed away from me.
He screams, blood running down my hand and the muzzle of his rifle flashes and there is a terrible pain in my ears and I can't hear anything, just a horrible ringing. My instinct is to cover my ears, save them, but I keep my hand on the barrel of the gun. I pull my knife out and stab up again, higher in to his groin, again and again, blood dripping down on to my face.
The muzzle of his gun flashes again and again and again, my ears registering just a thud with each flash, my hand burning on the barrel but I keep it there, fighting with him, wriggling to keep away from the bullets thumping down in to the truck beside me. All the while my knife going in and out, the dripping blood turning in to a stream, the fabric of his pants staining dark red.
The moment seems to stretch on forever. He stumbles back finally, to get away from my knife and I finally lose my grip on the barrel of his gun.
This is it, he's going to shoot me. He'll be dead soon. The amount of holes I put in him, he'll never survive. But he's about to kill me all the same.
I've lost track of everyone else. My whole world narrowed down to the barrel of his gun and the blade of my knife, but now I see Maz, flying at the soldier who'd been trying to shoot me. Oliver is vaulting over the side of the truck, the other guard nowhere to be seen. Felix focused on something on the ground, a snarl of rage on his young, innocent face.
The guard I stabbed tries to bring his rifle around to point at Maz but she's on him before he can get the long rifle focused on her. I'm sitting up, trying to get there to help but she's faster than me. Her knife finds his throat and she draws it across. The claw shape of her knife doesn't just slice though, it shreds, and his whole throat comes apart.
He doesn't even try to hold his hands to his throat. That's what they all do when I stab my knife in. They try to hold the blood in, hold it all together. Kind of like Victor's wife did. But there's nothing left of the guard's throat to hold together.
Maz looks at me. I can see her lips moving but I hear nothing.
I shake my head at her. Is she trying to say something? The pain in my ears is dull and throbbing.
"I can't hear you," I say, but I can't hear myself say it. The gun damaged my ears. I've never even seen a gun fired up close. Could they really be that loud?
Maz comes crawling across the bed of the truck and kneels in front of me.
'Are you okay?' she mouths the words slowly to me.
I nod, "I'm okay," I say, but I still don't hear the words.
She nods and pushes a hand in to my chest. She's telling me to lie down. I push her hand away and look down towards the end of the truck. Oliver is wiping blood off of a knife. Felix is saying something, walking quickly around to the driver's side of the truck.
Is the other guard dead? I thought he would have killed us all. Maybe Felix killed him. I never thought Felix had it in him. I didn't think he had a chance to save his daughter. Or kill Victor. His family's deaths seem to have set him loose. Inside every human being is a vengeful killer, waiting to be set free.
Or maybe Oliver came through with another knife to the eye. I watch Oliver heave the body of the second soldier in to the back of the truck, in a heap on top of the other one at our feet. He doesn't look squeamish this time. More dead bodies. Our story is becoming more and more believable by the second. A couple more checkpoints and we'll just be able to cover ourselves in dead soldier bodies.
Maz pushes on my chest again and I fall back against the cool steel of the truck bed. Oliver hops back in to the bed of the truck and throws the tarp back over us, and the world goes black again. All I hear is a ringing sound. The world is black and soundless. All I can feel is the motion of the truck beneath me, and the blood of the guard drying on my face.
I got my wish. I'm covered in blood again. Are there more checkpoints? I never asked. Maybe I'll never know now. Maybe I'm deaf. Would Dorian want a deaf body? Maybe they can fix that in the Towers. Probably they can fix it. It's a thought that's gone through my head more than once. Damage myself, do something that can't be fixed. But self-harm is easier said than done, and I was always too much of a coward to do anything drastic enough to not be wanted anymore. Acid burns on the face. Supposedly that does it. But maybe deaf will be enough. Oliver or Maz might know.
I put my scarf back up over my face and clutch my knife. Every time the truck stops, for even a moment, I ready myself, waiting for the tarp to be flung back, waiting to be shot.
Waiting in my dark and soundless world to die.
Then I see the tarp moving above me and panic for a half second, thinking that one of the guards must not actually be dead. He's faked it, is coming back to life to kill us all and I almost lunge with my knife. But when I look over the guards are still motionless. The fabric of the tarp is pushed up further over.
It must be Oliver.
He rolls across the dead bodies, across me to the other side, and lays down. I want to ask him what the hell he's doing, making it obvious that someone is alive back here, but I can't hear anything so it's not like we can have a conversation about it. So I just let it go.
He settles in, then I feel his hand grasping on to mine. He entwines his fingers in mine and holds my hand. That skin on skin contact again. I haven't felt that since my Mom left, and she was my Mom. It's a bit different with Oliver. It feels electrifying, and transgressive somehow. And it makes me feel safe.
I start to relax, and when he squeezes my hand I squeeze back. I'm still worried about my ears, about other checkpoints, about Maz. But maybe I can survive this. Maybe.
15
We go for another half-hour before the truck finally stops again. The ringing has faded, or maybe I can't hear that anymore either, and the the lack of sleep over the last couple days, the darkness, the lulling motion of the truck and the safety of Oliver right beside me... my eyelids start to droop. I know I need to stay awake, but I can't keep them open.
But the second the truck stops and the engine dies I'm back. I white knuckle the hilt of my knife. This time I'm not going to bother waiting for them to inspect us. I'm launching myself out of the back of the truck. I can't hear anything anyway, so I won't know if there's a bullet coming for me.
The tarp is flung back and I'm in a crouch, ready to jump by the time that I see it's only Felix. Oliver has his hand on my arm, holding me back. New Seattle is behind Felix in the distance.
We made it.
I sit back on my butt and slide the knife away. I can't believe we actually did it.
The light is just starting to come back in to the world, the sun rising somewhere behind us. There are a few dead and dying trees around the truck, and a couple of what must pass for plants. Victims of the dust clouds. We're going North though. To where plants are still green. Supposedly.
And heaps of soil around the truck. Hundreds of them. A graveyard.
This is where Felix comes to bury his bodies.
"Juno!" Oliver sounds like he's yelling at me, but his voice is faint. I look at him, wondering what he wants. Not deaf then. I'm too tired to be excited though.
He grabs my head, twisting it back and forth, looking at my ears, and I try to get him off of me but he just grips me more firmly.
"Can you hear me?" He mouths the words as well as shouts them but I can hear him.
"Barely," I say back.
"Stay here," he says. He hops out of the truck and Felix hands him a shovel, and the two of them walk a little ways away and start digging. Felix's wife. Her grave. I realize that I don't even know her name. I never bothered to learn it. I need to do that. Later.
I take a long look at Oliver, wondering what that little private moment in the truck meant, with our fingers intertwined. I'm drawn to him, but I don't trust it. Maybe he was just trying to keep me calm. Maybe he wants me to trust him. Them. Or maybe it's just my score he's interested in, like the strange, surreal thing that he can't look away from.
Felix, Maz... if I never saw them again I wouldn't lose any sleep. But I don't want to leave Oliver behind. Maybe it's the smart thing to do though. And I've actually escaped the city. I have to keep thinking with my head. Hand holding in the back of the truck can't be the thing that I base my decisions on. That's stupid.
I lay back down in the bed of the truck, surrounded by dead bodies, and think about my next move. The Free City... could it actually be real? Oliver convinced me that he knew, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe he lied. Probably he lied. It's what I would do.
And do I even really need them? I do better on my own. It might not be horrible though, to have them along. Just to watch my back. I know how to survive in the city, but we're not in the city anymore.
I'll find a way though. I always do. I'm a survivor. I fall asleep to that thought there in the back of the truck.
When I wake, it's a gentle hand on my shoulder. The sun has only just come up, so I can't have been asleep for long. Felix's wife is gone from beside me though. I slept right through them putting her in the ground. Maybe they tried to wake me and I slept through it. I avoid Felix's eyes, wondering if he's pissed that I didn't even bother to wake up for the burying of his wife.
Maz motions for me to get out of the truck. I follow, groggy from sleep, trying to adjust to a world without sound. No wait, that's not quite true. I can hear something. Faint sounds. Boots scraping, a cough. Barely there, but the world is starting to come back.
I notice that Maz and Oliver have the guns from the soldiers. I should have thought of that. I could really use one of those. I still have my own gun, tucked away in the belt of my pants. Still no bullets though.
There is a mound of ground fresher than all the rest. But just one, and the soldier's bodies are gone too. Did Felix bury them with his wife? It seems disrespectful. I look around more, and then see what they've done with them, and I understand.
The bodies have both been propped up in the cab of the truck. One in the driver's seat, the other in the passenger's seat. Felix goes around to the side of the truck, a lighter in his hand, and light a rag on fire that's been placed in the gas intake.
He lights it and we all step back quickly.
It takes awhile, but eventually there's an explosion, and the truck catches fire in earnest, the two bodies in the front seat burn and they don't move. I'm not sure what this is supposed to accomplish. Felix's truck burning with the two missing guards sitting in the front seat. When someone from the Towers gets out here it won't fool them for long. They will put it together. They will come for us. And we might have used the truck for something more useful.
I wasn't consulted though. They let me sleep. So they have their own plan I guess. That's fine with me. I have my own plan too I suppose. Part of me wonders if Felix is with Maz and Oliver now. If they've all joined togethe
r and left me out. I don't really want to know.
I make sure my knives are where I left them. I adjust my scarf so that it sits comfortably on my face. There are less Body Hunters out here than in the city. Even fewer now that everyone is looking for me in the city. But my face will still attract all the wrong attention. Maybe when I get to the Free City though... maybe.
I take one last look at all of them. I might say goodbye, but I'd barely be able to hear their responses. And I don't want to draw it out anyway. Don't want them thinking that I'm fishing to be part of whatever plan they have. I want to be, but I'm not going to beg. Easier to just go.
So I turn on my heel, putting the heat of the burning truck on my back, heading north. Somewhere out there is the Free City, and I'm going to find it.
Oliver is the first to catch up. He doesn't try to stop me, only falls in to step beside me. Then Maz.
I look over my shoulder and Felix is limping along behind.
I stop, looking at them.
"You thought you could just walk off and abandon us?" Oliver says, hinting at a smile.
At least that's what it sounds like. I can barely hear him, and I don't trust my ears anymore.
"I don't..." I'm not sure what to say.
"Besides you don't know where the hell you're going," Oliver says. "And we do."
"Where is it?" I've wanted to ask the question since Oliver hinted at knowing something about the Free City.
"Oh we have no idea where it is," Oliver says. He starts walking, and now it's me that has to hurry to catch up.
"I don't understand," I say, looking at him, then Maz.
"We don't know where it is, but we don't really need to know where it is. We know what it's called. What it's really called."
"Not Free City?"
Oliver laughs, "no." He looks at me, intent, "it's called Juneau. At least it used to be called that."
"Don't mess with me," I say, pulling at his sleeve to bring him to a stop, "what's it really called?"