The Salt Line

by Holly Goddard Jones

  And it was where, in a few minutes’ time, Andy was going to watch what happened when Jesse, Anastasia, Wendy, and Lee approached the Wall.

  There was a red plastic outdoor chair propped against the house. Andy moved it over beside the camera, swept some leaves and dirt out of it, and seated himself. Not bad. Comfortable, almost. He couldn’t tip it back—the legs were too flimsy—but he raised his feet and propped them up on the porch railing. He was self-conscious. Aware that he was putting on a performance of some kind—coolness, indifference—which was strange, when he had only himself as audience.

  It took another ten minutes. Then they came into view. They walked side by side, in step. They’d linked their arms to form a line, following Andy’s instructions, following the road.

  When it happened, it happened in a second. One moment they were walking; the next, they were on their backs. Through the little display screen, it was nothing. The rapid crackle of rifle fire, which traveled loud and clear from the Wall over to where Andy sat on the porch, was the most visceral part of the experience, but even that was muted. Nothing that would haunt him at night. He didn’t think so, at least.

  He didn’t move right away. He waited to see them come out, and soon they did. Six people, dressed in gray fatigues, face masks, some kind of sheer micro-netting over their heads. Two stretchers. Two trips.

  Through the camera’s little display screen, it all seemed very small, very far away. Very unreal.

  He turned the camera off. Inside, he woke up the computer with the beautiful display, entered the username and password June had given him, and pulled the camera recording onto his thumb drive with a little beckoning gesture. The display’s prediction/intention hardware was excellent; he got the right file on his first try.

  Part Three

  Vimelea

  Sixteen

  Wes realized that his eyes had passed over the paragraph—again—without processing its content. He went back to the top, shook his head briskly, and widened his eyes.

  Mrs. Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of which her behaviour on returning to her husband’s house after many months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although by no means without liberal motions, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity.

  He didn’t much like novels, never had. He couldn’t easily care about made-up people. (Not that he didn’t have plenty of issues connecting to real-life people, as Sonya would no doubt attest.) And the handful of novels that had managed to interest him over the years—a couple of political thrillers, a sci-fi series Sonya had talked up—hooked him mostly through their incorporation of interesting facts and ideas, so that they pleased Wes no more (and usually less) than a good biography or instruction manual might. But he had, in the last week, already exhausted the meager supply of nonfiction in his shared holding cell: a biography of Benjamin Franklin (now there was a man with whom Wes felt some kinship); an old pop-psychology book called Parenting on the Spectrum, which was a weirdly intriguing look at how autism disorders used to be regarded and treated, an era Wes was grateful to have missed. There was a great book about a series of ritualistic murders, never solved, on the Cumberland Plateau in Restoration-era Tennessee, That Evening Sun Went Down. A very outdated and funny (so funny for being so outdated) guide to Linux. That was it. So then he slogged his way through one of the shorter novels, Ethan Frome, enjoying the smell of the brittle yellow pages more than he did waiting for the obligatory big reveal about Ethan’s accident, and now he had this big book in front of him, the kind of important book he always thought he’d read if he were in jail or on a deserted island or something, and now he was in jail, and he still couldn’t focus on it. What he’d give to have his tablet right now! His tablet and a shower and a canister of fiber and one of his power juices, something to clear out the cement works his goddamn colon had become, not that fiber would fix his anxiety about shitting in a bucket with only a thin sheet separating him from Edie and the others.

  At least there were fewer others to share this cramped space with. In the couple of days before June sent back Wendy, Lee, Anastasia, and Jesse—well, it had gotten bad. Wes came close to hyperventilating more than a few times, so excruciating was the feeling of having so many other hot, smelly bodies competing for space with his own, and even the more easygoing among them—Edie, Berto—were snapping with little to no provocation. If Wes had been a different kind of man, he and Jesse would probably have come to blows at some point. (Wes felt somewhat consoled by the suspicion that Jesse, too—no matter what else he tried to project—was not that sort of man, and was happy enough that Wes hadn’t waved a fist at him.) He didn’t think he was alone in finding Jesse intolerable. From his whining to his weird bursts of cheer, when he’d undoubtedly take that goddamn ukulele out and start picking out a grating kid’s song or folk song or (worse) one of his own songs, Jesse had amplified every annoyance and indignity, to the point that the tension relieved palpably the moment he left, cheerfully abandoning his long-suffering girlfriend—a girlfriend saintly enough to send him back home with not just forgiveness but sex—sex!—sex that Wes, and everyone else, had spent fifteen endless minutes pretending miserably to sleep through.

  Speaking of Edie, she sat in a corner of the room in a shaft of light from one of the opposite windows, reading a book that Wes himself had summarily rejected, a collection of the complete works of Jane Austen. She had her back against the wall, knees drawn up, book spread open across her thighs. She’d been working on the book for several days now, reading almost constantly, and appeared to be halfway through the volume. “I’ve never been much of a reader,” she’d confessed to Wes over one of their now-common bean-and-cornbread suppers. “I work too much now—well, I mean, I did—until Jesse—you know, touring with him and everything, and then this trip.” She looked embarrassed. “And I just took alt-texts in high school, like everybody but the nerds.” The corner of her mouth turned up, and she stabbed at her beans with a tarnished silver spoon. “But I’m kind of enjoying these novels. I didn’t think I would.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” Wes had lied. Then, feeling guilty: “Well. To be honest, I’m not much on fiction. But reading again—that’s been fun. I never have time back home to just sit and read. I mean, unless it’s on my tablet. My feeds, articles, stuff like that. Sitting with an actual book slows the heart a little after . . .” He trailed off, but Edie nodded.

  “All of this.”

  “All of this,” Wes agreed. Before could stop himself, he blurted out, “I’m sorry, Edie. I’m sorry for asking you to go with Tia. Knowing how it all turned out, what could have happened to you—” Goddammit, he was close to crying now, and he swallowed hard against the sensation. “I can’t bear it. I’ve done so much damage, and it doesn’t even matter that I didn’t think I knew any better.” That village of three hundred that June had mentioned. Was that real? Or was that just a cruel manipulation tactic? “Anyway,” he continued, “I just want you to know that I didn’t ask you because I thought you were disposable. Berto and Anastasia wouldn’t do it. I didn’t think Marta could. I’d have gone, but I knew they wanted me, and I thought that taking off would be more harm than good.”

  Edie patted his knee. “I overreacted. I know that’s not what you meant. And a part of me wishes I’d done it. Maybe those two wouldn’t have died. Maybe Tia wouldn’t have. She didn’t have a buddy to Stamp her in time. That’s on me.”

  “No,” Wes said. “It’s not.”

  “Well, I guess we both need to give ourselves a break. For now, anyway.”

  “OK. I’ll save it for my therapist.”

  Edie smiled in that crooked, rueful way she had, revealing one dimple. “You do that. You’ll have plenty of material after this.”

  Embarrassed—Was that weird, mentioning a therapist? Doesn’t everyone have one?—Wes motione
d at her Austen book with his spoon. “So it’s good? You’re liking it?”

  “Maybe it’s just because there’s nothing else to do,” Edie said, and Wes felt her snapping shut against him, drifting back to that secret, inward space that seemed, so much of the time, to be her habit and solace. He’d ended up choosing the Henry James novel to read because the painting of a woman on its cover reminded him of the painted woman on the cover of Edie’s Austen collection, and he’d thought that this might be the book she would want to read next, and then, maybe, they could talk again. She would talk to him, confide in him, again.

  To be fair, there were a few other things to do in the shed, other than read. They’d been given a crude chess board, carved and painted by hand, and Marta and Ken had been playing a long, mostly silent tournament, every now and then switching off with one of the others. (Wes was quite good at chess, but playing it stoked his anxiety, so he usually begged off.) There was a deck of playing cards. Some scrap paper and pencil stubs. With these Wes had found himself staying up late last night, after the others had turned in, and making a list by moonlight:

  Why do I think I like Edie? What is this about REALLY?

  Because she is pretty? That’s shallow . . .

  I hate her boyfriend and want to best him in caveman sort of way? Also shallow, immature.

  We are trapped together in life-threatening situation. Members of group most obviously matched in age. Probably some instinctual/primal urge to plant seed before murdered.

  Lonely?

  Rebounding from Sonya?

  She is nice and smart. But lots of people nice and smart.

  And then, as was typical for him—he wished he had a tablet so he could organize his digressions—he was off on another tangent.

  True? Lots of people nice and smart?

  Or lots of people actually raging lunatics in shithole world?

  Virtuz for nice and smart people and Virtuz tanked.

  Pocketz is for a shithole world.

  What does that make me?

  He knew the list was silly, but he couldn’t stop himself. What someone like Sonya wouldn’t have understood was that he wasn’t as literal-minded as the list suggested; he didn’t actually go around making life decisions or reaching conclusions about the meaning of life based on bullet points. But writing the list, giving physical shape to his thoughts—the act actually unlocked in him something freer, more abstract. It forced him to face what he might otherwise turn away from. Like what he’d written on the back of the scrap of paper:

  Why would she like me back?

  What does it even matter? We’re going to die.

  We’re going to die. The thought kept coming to him like a radio transmission, something his receiver would randomly pick up depending on how he tilted his head or where he moved in their holding cell. He saw it in the pages of the books he tried to read. In the eyes of the rotating crew of Ruby City guards. In a slant of light coming through the windows, in the red-orange leaf that pinwheeled off a tree limb and plastered itself against the glass. He saw it despite everything June had told him, despite the fact that he actually continued to believe most of what she’d told him. But he didn’t see his certainty reflected in his fellow captives. On Monday, the morning after Andy had left with the others, Berto had awakened from a sound sleep, yawned, stretched, cracked his neck with a satisfying grunt. “Knowing Anastasia’s out of here makes all the difference,” he said. “Whatever else happens, I can deal with it. She hadn’t even wanted to do this trip, really. I talked her into it. I couldn’t have lived with myself if they’d hurt her.”

  Berto had glanced apologetically at Edie, seeming to think that his chivalry must reflect badly on Jesse. But Edie was staring off into the distance, lost in her own thoughts.

  “I feel good. I feel hopeful,” Berto said. “As long as you’re here, Feingold. I’m sticking to you like glue.”

  “Stick away,” Wes said with weak humor.

  Wes himself felt good about one thing: that Marta had somehow managed to return her ticket, if only—selfishly—because he would have been so lonely without her company. She had been mum about how she’d pulled it off. All Wes knew was what the others knew: she had whispered something to one of June’s henchmen, been escorted out of the building, and returned maybe fifteen minutes later. When Andy collected the group a couple of hours later, she remained seated—and none of June’s people told her to come along. Wes didn’t even know why she had wanted to stay, if it was out of loyalty to him (a stab of guilt at that), or if she had also felt uneasy about the sudden offer of freedom—or what. He was looking at her instead of The Portrait of a Lady, mulling this over, when she lifted her face from the chess board she was studying, caught his eye, smiled. He waved back.

  Marta, who’d also sneaked in the canister of Quicksilver, was full of surprises, he was finding.

  She said something to Ken, then came stiffly to a stand and stretched. She crossed the room to join Wes.

  “Who won this one?”

  “No one yet,” Marta said. She leaned down, touched her toes. Bobbed a little, then put her palms flat on the plank floor. “I called a break. I needed a rest.”

  “What are the stats so far?” Wes asked.

  Marta stretched out beside him, taking his pack, with an unthinking familiarity, to use as a pillow. “I have eight wins, and he has ten.”

  “Not bad. Isn’t he a doctor or something?”

  “Neurosurgeon.” She lowered her voice. “I could beat him more often if I cared more. He’s a very fierce competitor. He needs to win.”

  “You don’t?”

  She shrugged. “Obviously not.” She put her forearm over her eyes. “Ken reminds me of my husband. My husband is a very good chess player. He taught me to play. And my husband needs to win, like Ken does. So I have a lot of practice losing. I am an excellent loser.”

  “Your husband sounds . . .” Wes searched for a word. “Intense,” he decided.

  Marta nodded from under her arm. “That’s a good word for David. A perfect word.”

  “What does he do?”

  “What does he do, what does he do,” she murmured. She rolled onto her side and propped her head up on her palm. Her eyes met his—and there was a frankness there, an intimacy that almost embarrassed Wes. “Wes, what if I told you that my husband is a very bad man?”

  Wes waited for her to go on, lost. He shook his head slowly.

  “Your would-be business partner. David Perrone?”

  “He’s—your husband?”

  She nodded.

  “What? Wow. Wow.” He rubbed his temples. “Was June telling the truth about him?”

  Marta nodded, a dropping of the chin so measured that he almost missed it. “Probably. I haven’t let myself think much about it over the years. I guess that sounds awful. I don’t know what he’s done. But what June said didn’t surprise me much.”

  He tried to make sense of this, to make it fit with this kind woman, this mother figure, whom he’d come to trust and admire so much. How—why—had she hidden this from him, even after everything that June told them?

  “He owned a garage when I met him. He wasn’t a mechanic himself. But he had business instinct. He always seemed to sense what was in the wind. He’d bought a garage and a few months later the new inspection legislation passed. The money rolled in. Well, it seemed at the time like big money. We got a three-bedroom house on a half-acre lot. He paid cash for it. We both had cars.” She stared at the ceiling, smiling a small smile. “That—” She jabbed at the air. “That was the sweet spot. I didn’t know it then, though. David was always saying, ‘Onward and upward.’ As directions go, that sounded good to me. So I followed him. He had more good instincts. And then we were very wealthy, and I had the boys. It’s easy to live in denial about your world when you have children, Wes. Maybe you’ll see that firsthand
someday.”

  He hadn’t thought much about kids. He shrugged.

  “But I’m giving myself a pass. The truth, Wes, is that my husband’s one of the reasons we’re hostage here. And I guess that makes me responsible, too.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Wes said. “I mean, if you want to lay blame, lay it here.” He tapped his chest. Despite his breezy comment to Edie about saving it up for his therapist, what Wes couldn’t stop thinking about for the last several nights, as he tried to sleep, were all of those lives lost outside Gulf Zone. The crater in the ground. The massacre that happened simply because he had gotten greedy and insecure and come up with a bright idea, a shiny new moneymaking scheme. He hadn’t known, could never have guessed in a million years this outcome, but was that any excuse? He could no longer deny to himself the truth: he’d seen the gaps in the reports his people gave him on Perrone. He could read between the lines. His COO Sandy had made herself indispensable to Wes, in part, by shielding him—from underlings, from petty concerns, from annoying details, from inconvenient truths. If David Perrone were everything Marta and June seemed willing to agree he was, then Sandy knew, or knew enough. And she spared Wes this knowledge. Wes, so full of Virtuz, had gladly let her.

  “I don’t think David was like he is now when we started dating,” Marta said. “In fact, I’m sure of it. Which makes me wonder. About me. Our marriage sure didn’t stop him from changing. For all I know it helped him along his way.”

  “So you told June who you are,” Wes said.

  Marta nodded.

  “Why?” Wes thought about it. “You could have gone home to your sons. You could have warned your husband about what was happening out here.”

  “Could I?” Marta said. “I’m not so sure.” She threw a pointed glance toward Ken, who was still studying the chess board, and lowered her voice. “He isn’t like Berto. He isn’t happy or relieved, I mean. He seems sad. Lost. Like he’s in mourning.”