The Echo Room

by Parker Peevyhouse

  Bryn shifted in her seat. For a moment, Rett thought she was going to refuse him, or tell him she didn’t remember the song. But then the familiar tune came in Bryn’s quiet, clear voice. It echoed in the small space like a spell:

  “One lonely lighthouse

  Two in a boat…”

  That’s us, Rett thought, trying to get through this together.

  “Three gulls circle

  Four clouds float.”

  Even though they were sitting under the overhang of the upper room, Rett could swear he felt a shadow pass overhead as Bryn sang the last lines. He shivered.

  “Nothing happened,” Bryn said. “Maybe we both have to sing it?”

  Rett hunkered over his drawing. “My singing could only ever make things worse, not better.”

  “I’m not asking you to romance me. Just get the words out.”

  Rett kept his face lowered. “Well, that’s a relief. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t know how to romance anyone.”

  “Seriously, whatever you’ve got is fine.” Bryn touched his hand and he almost jumped in surprise. “Okay?”

  “Sure, yeah.” Just let me move my hand first so I can think straight.

  She started singing, and he managed to join in. “One lonely lighthouse…”

  Her voice was like water pouring over him. It cooled the hot pain that throbbed deep in his skull, in his chest. It’s not so lonely in here, actually. In our bizarre lighthouse.

  The song ended, and then the echo of it did. The only change Rett could see was that the light bathing the main area of the shelter had brightened a little, but he attributed that to the sun rising. And while he was ready to believe that Bryn’s singing could command all celestial bodies, he was convinced his own tuneless voice would cancel out any magic she might wield.

  “You’re right,” Bryn said. “We’re probably better off if you don’t sing.” She cracked a smile, and Rett thought, A smile looks good on you.

  “Too late for refunds now,” he said.

  She nodded at the notebook under his hand. “You going to show me?”

  It almost startled Rett to see the pen poised over the paper. He looked down at what he had sketched.

  “What’s wrong?” Bryn asked. She pulled the notebook out from under his shaking hand.

  The open page showed a jointed creature emerging from shadow, bristling with antennae, its jagged mandibles shaded so they threatened to strike from the page.

  The notebook slipped from Bryn’s hands. “I thought you said you weren’t any good at drawing,” she mumbled. The color had drained from her face. “Guess you’ve practiced this one.”

  Rett clutched the edge of the table. “No … I saw it in a dream or something. I don’t know how I…” It was the best thing he’d ever drawn. Well, the most horrifying, but the most skillfully rendered. If he hadn’t seen that very image in his head when he’d first awakened here, he would almost suspect someone else had drawn this picture and slipped it under his hand.

  Bryn started to say something, but it seemed that the last of her strength had drained out of her. She pressed her eyes shut. Her skin looked gray.

  Rett glanced at her injured hand and pressed another pouch of water on her. “Drink this. You need it.”

  She shook her head. “We don’t have much. Better save it.” Her voice trembled.

  Rett yanked open the backpack sitting on the seat between them. No shine of foil inside—not a single water pouch. The six pouches on the couch were all they had. “Drink it anyway. We’ll find more.”

  She relented. Rett pulled the pack open again and squinted at its jumbled contents. He pulled out a black device to inspect it. Swiped at the screen, jabbed at the buttons along the side. Battery must be dead.

  Didn’t I see some power cords in the supply room?

  His heart sped up. The devices didn’t look quite like phones. A two-way radio, maybe? Something.

  “Wait here,” he told Bryn.

  “I’m going to look around a little more,” she said. But her eyes were closed, her head tipped back against the couch.

  “It’s okay. Just rest for a minute.”

  Rett scooped the rest of the devices out of the pack and took them to the supply room. He went to work plugging in power cords from the cabinet, and then it was just a matter of waiting for the devices to charge.

  A metal clang sounded in the other room. “Bryn?” What is she doing?

  He turned to duck under the wall, but before he could, a button set over the cabinet caught his attention. A familiar set of symbols marked it, a segmented blob under a wavy line.

  The water drowns the bugs if they get in. Could that be right?

  “But I don’t need to get rid of bugs,” Rett told the empty room.

  He abandoned the mystery and ducked back into the main room.

  Bryn no longer sat in the lounge. That’s weird. Why is that panel shut over the ladder? “Bryn, are you up there?” And why did you shut me out? “Bryn?”

  No answer.

  A dark thought came over Rett. It made him tremble, made his mouth go dry.

  She said she was going to look around. He bolted for the changing room where he’d stashed the bloody jumpsuit. Did she come this way—did she see it?

  He reached down to yank out the bin under the shelf.

  But he didn’t need to. The stained jumpsuit hung half out of the bin.

  Oh no oh no. Rett raked his fingers over his scalp. She found it and now she thinks—

  What does she think? That I’ve been hiding something all this time? Something terrible?

  Another thought crept into his mind: What if I did do something terrible?

  No no no.

  His feet took him back toward the lounge, but he could only stare up at the panel shut tight over the ladder. He imagined her huddled in the dark room, listening for the sound of his feet on the ladder rungs.

  Listening …

  He whirled toward the open doorway that led into the office. Remembered the click of a drawer closing …

  He crept through the doorway, going hot all over.

  Opened the drawer where he’d left the gun.

  Empty.

  He stumbled back and caught himself against the doorframe. Bryn has the gun. And she thinks I’m dangerous.

  And then another thought occurred to him. What if she’s not up in that room? What if she hid somewhere else, but she closed that panel just to make me think she’s up there?

  The air around him went electric. What do I do? Rett gripped the doorway. It yielded strangely—it was lined with heavy rubber strips.

  What—?

  Images flashed through his mind: the ledge under the skylight, the button with its mysterious symbol, the chalky white water line up near the ceiling, the rubbery strips along the doorway and—yes, under the half-lifted wall to the supply room.

  In an instant, it came to him: The button makes the place fill with water.

  It seals off the doors and floods the middle area.

  Before he realized what he was doing, he found himself in the supply room, ripping the devices from their power cords, wrapping them in a plastic sheet, stuffing them in another backpack along with everything else close at hand—binoculars and rope and a first-aid kit. For what? He didn’t know, didn’t care, just couldn’t stop the impulse. He reached for the button set over the counter.

  Wait. Am I really going to do this? Fill the place with water to keep myself safe from Bryn?

  He remembered her electric smile, her hand reaching for his.

  But the thought of her hiding—with a gun—panicked and weak and afraid—shouldered out all other thoughts.

  He slammed his fist onto the button.

  An alarm blared through the complex, throaty and insistent. Rett watched milky water pour under the half-lifted wall. I was right. The thought held him in thrall for a moment, and then he threw himself back into action.

  He made to duck back under the jammed wall into the ma
in room but stopped to grab the metal pole from the floor. I might need this.

  In the main room, the wall had swung down to seal off the lounge. Water flowed over the floor while Rett watched in shock. This is happening. The room’s going to fill up.

  The wall over the lounge shuddered.

  Bryn. She was pounding on the wall from the other side. So she really was hiding in that upper room.

  And now she was sealed away in the lounge.

  What did I do?

  The water had crept up to his ankles.

  She has a gun, he reminded himself.

  The water rose over his knees.

  He looked up. Is something out there, waiting for me? He peered at the skylight, looking for any sign of movement beyond the glass. But there were only raindrops reflecting light.

  The alarm went on blaring while Rett focused on holding the metal pole over his head and treading water with the backpack weighing him down. Finally, the water rose high enough to where Rett could toss the pole onto the ledge and then pull himself up.

  He lay for a moment with his quads and shoulders aching. Then the alarm quieted. He watched the water for a long moment and decided it had stopped rising.

  Now what? He turned over on his back to look up through the skylight. But a matrix of raindrops blocked any view through the glass. Raindrops … water … His throat was still dry, his head tight with the effect of thirst. If only he could collect the water from the glass, could let the rain fall into his mouth …

  The crank he had spotted earlier was inches from his head. Just a few turns of the crank would open the glass. The rain would fall cold onto his face. Fresh air would drive away the stench of minerals and whatever else tainted the water so it wasn’t safe for drinking. And he could look outside and know, finally, exactly where he was.

  He reached, tentatively. He tried to sense whether anything was out there, waiting for a chance to get inside. The only sound was of rain drumming on the metal roof, a maddening sound that chased away all thought except that of fresh water. Rett turned the crank. In his other hand, he readied the metal pole.

  Pop. The glass lifted half an inch. A gust of wet air blew in and made Rett hungry for more. He went on cranking until the glass lifted away to reveal luminous gray clouds.

  He pulled himself up through the opening.

  A wall of black met him.

  Rett gasped. A gleaming orb of an eye, the serrated edge of a long mandible. He ducked back down, heart hammering. What the hell? Clawed feet scraped over the metal roof. Rett crouched, frozen. This can’t be happening.

  The long hook of the mandible shot through the opening. Rett couldn’t move, couldn’t think. His vision narrowed. He felt a strange pull on his consciousness, but the next moment a voice in his head cried, Fight!

  He snapped back into the moment and hefted the metal pole. His hands were wet and shaking.

  The pole slipped.

  It fell into the water.

  No! Rett watched it vanish, his only weapon gone.

  His attention snapped back to the jagged mandible angling closer. What do I do?

  There’s always something, he told himself.

  He scrambled to slide off his backpack. It was heavy with the weight of the devices, the binoculars. Heavy enough to do damage.

  He swung it as hard as he could.

  Crack. It made contact.

  Then—scratching and scrabbling as the creature retreated beyond his sight.

  Rett’s heart shook violently as he pushed himself up through the skylight again and swung the backpack harder than he thought he had it in him to swing. This time something crunched. The creature fell away from the side of the building. Rett leaned out as far as he could, but the edge of the building cut off his view of the fallen creature. Still, it was gone. His heart went on trying to escape his chest. He gulped cool air. It’s gone, he told himself, and lifted his face to let the rain fall into his mouth.

  He looked out over his surroundings. The landscape was nothing but towering folds of barren rock as far as the eye could see. No, he thought. This can’t be right.

  He couldn’t have done this to himself. Couldn’t have gotten himself stranded out in the middle of a wasteland. Especially when he needed so badly to get to the workhouse that might be closing even at this moment. To get to his mother before it was too late to help her.

  What am I doing here? How did I get here?

  His hand went automatically to the scar over his ear. They put something in our heads.

  A memory hurtled out from some locked-tight place: A room, a medical lab. A woman with a determined grimace. Bryn stirred on a white-sheeted bed nearby. Rett fingered the scar along his bare scalp, listening to a lilting song playing from a scratchy record.

  And then another memory: Rett touching the scar under his cropped hair. The woman’s hard voice: “If you haven’t managed it yet, you never will. There’s only one way left to do this. You’ll have to find it…”

  Rett’s heart beat fast. She brought us out here. The woman in the lab coat. Why?

  The peaks of spires and buttes rose in waves all around. What am I supposed to do?

  He remembered the devices in his pack and scrambled to pull out the plastic-wrapped packet he’d enclosed them in. Maybe they could help him—if they had enough charge to turn on. Maybe he could use them to call for help.

  He wrestled one out of the packet and punched his finger at a button.

  The screen bloomed to life.

  It displayed a jumble of icons that made Rett’s heart race even though he couldn’t decipher them. He jabbed at one of them, which only opened up another screen of cryptic symbols. “What is this thing?” he wondered aloud. Not a phone, not a walkie-talkie. What good is it?

  He tapped another icon and the screen displayed a prompt: ENTER COORDINATES.

  Rett blinked at it. Coordinates.

  This thing has GPS.

  “What coordinates?” he asked the device.

  He shook his head in confusion. I can’t get out of here if I don’t even know where I am. He’d been so sure he was supposed to find something, but the best thing the shelter had to offer were GPS units he didn’t know how to use.

  Isn’t that what GPS is for? Finding things?

  A wave of horror slowly washed over him as he took in the endless wasteland with new eyes. The thing we need to find isn’t inside the shelter.

  It’s out here.

  Out in the bone-colored canyons unspooling in every direction. Out in the lifeless wastes.

  “No. No, I can’t do this,” he mumbled.

  A series of rungs led down over the sloped edge of the building. Down to rocky canyon floors where he could wander forever with no hope of being found.

  And the creature had fallen down there. Rett thought it might be dead—there had been that loud crack when he’d hit it with the backpack. And it was a long fall.

  But he had no desire to go down there and find out if the creature was alive.

  What am I supposed to do? I don’t even know what I’m looking for.

  Inside the building, the milky water was gently sloshing against the metal walls. Rett noticed with alarm that the level had gone down several feet. There was no other choice—he’d have to jump in or be stuck out here.

  He turned to take in the full scope of the white-gray vista. In the distance, a foamy line could only be a river. He could hike to it—it wasn’t far. Get more water. And then …

  Head out into a wasteland. To search for who knew what.

  He turned back to the opening that led into the shelter. The alternative was to go back inside and face Bryn.

  Bryn and her gun.

  The screen on the device in his hand still waited for him to ENTER COORDINATES. I don’t have any coordinates. I don’t know where I’m going.

  “To the river,” he told himself. He’d go there first, drink his fill, and then …

  Then he’d figure out what to do next. At least he didn�
��t need to know any coordinates to get to the river.

  He let the rain fall on his face while he waited a moment for another option to present itself. None did. He started down the rain-slicked rungs.

  I’m leaving Bryn trapped, he thought while he descended. Even when she gets out of the lounge once the water level goes down, she won’t be able to get up to the skylight. There might not be enough of that water to fill the place twice.

  He stopped, clinging to the wet rungs. He’d closed the lid on her.

  Just like the time Garrick had convinced him to crawl into that firewood box. “No one will know you’re here,” he’d told Rett. “I’ll put your pillow under your blanket. Nobody’s going to miss you at bed check. Go see your meteor shower.”

  And then Garrick had closed him in the box.

  Trapped him, same as Rett had trapped Bryn.

  But I have to get away from Bryn. She has a gun.

  Guilt twisted in his gut. Is that why I’m leaving her? he asked himself. Or is it because she knows now that I must have done something bad?

  He ignored the thought. Jumped down from the last rung and landed in ashy dirt. No sign of the creature he’d encountered earlier.

  Didn’t it fall this direction? It should be here …

  He crept around the back of the shelter.

  Not a single mandible in sight.

  Just go, he told himself. Go fast and hope it crawled away to die.

  He gripped the straps of his backpack and picked up his pace, angling toward the river. The ground sloped so that Rett half ran, half slid down it, rocks trickling down after him like tiny scuttling creatures. What about the person whose blood was on my clothes—what happened to them? Are they out here somewhere? Inside the shelter with Bryn?

  Before him, scattered boulders lay like the heads of petrified giants, watching his progress toward the river, toward relief from the painful thirst that intensified with every step now that water was in sight.

  Some nagging thought pulled at him while he hiked, but he refused to listen to it. He already had the missing creature to think of, and his overwhelming thirst, not to mention the guilt that came over him when he thought of Bryn’s electric smile, her hand grazing his …

  Then he finally had to admit it to himself: the smell of sulfur that lingered in his nose was not a ghostly impression of the water he’d floated in inside the shelter. The smell had been getting stronger for the past ten minutes now.