by Rich Larson
Bo rolled over once she was gone and sat upright. All the other makeshift beds were empty. Sitting in a pool of blankets, he felt the last twenty-four hours crash over him. Sprinting away from the whale-thing, shifting a hole in the wormy wall, wandering the abandoned city. Meeting Violet, and then Wyatt and the others, and then going to find his shoes and the othermother. All of that had been real. The othermother’s singsong voice ran through his head: It’s your sister’s birthday, come home for dinner.
He got to his feet. The lobby of the theater was empty, apart from Bree slouching away toward what had to be bathrooms. He took stock of his surroundings again. The carpet was rough under his bare feet, a faded pattern of black and yellow like a caterpillar he’d seen once on the sidewalk. The off-white walls had been scribbled on with Sharpies and spray-painted in colorful swathes of green and purple. When he stretched a crick out of his neck, he saw a chandelier dangling from the ceiling. The bulbs looked plastic.
Bo could hear people inside the theater auditorium, but he passed the double doors, making his way toward the exit instead. Past the concession stand and the ticket booth, the main door was open, letting in faint morning light filtered through the gray clouds. He stepped outside and the air smelled clean and sharp. On the sidewalk, Wyatt was putting a bike together, working at the seatpost with a small wrench.
“Hey, Bo,” he said. “First sleep go okay?”
“Yeah,” Bo said. “Fine.” He paused, looking around. A second bike, larger, red, was leaned up against the theater wall, but he didn’t see Violet or anyone else. “Where is everybody?” he asked.
“There’s a forage group out getting food and batteries,” Wyatt said. “And a scout group. Violet and Jon should be back soon. I sent them to the wormy wall. See if that hole you tore in it is sealed up yet.” He stood, easing the bike he’d been working on upright. “You have any nightmares?” he asked.
“No,” Bo said quickly. He wasn’t sure, of course. Dreams and nightmares and real life were all blurred lately. But he didn’t want to look soft. He wasn’t one of the kids back in the warehouse, sobbing through the night. He was a Lost Boy.
“Good,” Wyatt said, wiping his hands on a bit of rag. “Violet told me about your sister last night. She was in the same warehouse as you?”
“They split us up,” Bo said.
Wyatt grimaced. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s like herding cattle to them, Bo. They don’t give a shit.” He rolled the bike back and forth, watching the chain for catches. “You’re not the only one who had to leave family behind.”
“You have siblings?” Bo asked.
“No,” Wyatt said. “I don’t. I always wanted a brother, right? But my parents didn’t. Here.” He swung the bike over to Bo. “This is yours.”
Bo wrapped his fingers around the rubber-gripped handlebar. The bike’s aluminum frame was on the large side for him, but the tires had good thick tread still on them and he liked the bright blue-and-silver paint job.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” Wyatt went to the red bike and started tightening its spokes. “You want to get your sister out, right?”
Bo nodded.
“Since they put the wormy wall up, nobody’s escaped,” Wyatt said. “Just you. We don’t go near it anymore.” He looked up from the spoke wrench and gave a white grin. “Maybe if we had a tank, or something. That’s what I always thought.”
“Why aren’t there tanks?” Bo asked. “Tanks and soldiers and planes. And stuff. Where are they all?” He clenched his teeth, trying to dredge up the thought he hadn’t dared speak yet. “Or is it like this everywhere?” he finally said. “The whole world? Did we already lose?”
“Yeah, that’s the big question, Bo,” Wyatt said. “Internet doesn’t work. Phones don’t work. Cars don’t work. Everything’s fucked.”
“Someone could go to the highway,” Bo said, swiveling the handlebars. “Start biking to the next town. Try to find other people. Find out what happened.”
“We’ve tried,” Wyatt said. “It’s not as easy to leave as you’d think. That’s where we’re heading, once Violet’s back.” He twisted the last spoke tight and straightened up, wiping his hands on the rag. His smile was hard for Bo to read. “A little field trip,” he said. “To the end of the world.”
Violet and Jon went as close as they dared to the wormy wall, stashing their bikes with a tangle of drainage pipes and then sneaking around the corner of the crumbling brick apartments nearest to the alien structure. Violet hadn’t been expecting to see anything where Bo said he’d escaped—shifting didn’t leave marks—but she was surprised. The stretch of wormy wall was marked with a long zigzagged wound, stitched shut by interlocking tendrils but still visible to the eye, colored an off-putting pink like raw meat.
“Guess he really did take a chunk out of it,” Violet said.
Jon pushed his thick black hair out of his face and didn’t reply. He rarely did. The bike ride over had been dead quiet, but Jon was built like a brick and quick on his feet, and there weren’t many people Violet would prefer to have along on a trip this close to the warehouses. She trusted Jon. He’d been late to escape, but he was fifteen, putting him third after Violet in seniority. She knew from experience that most fifteen-year-olds with his thick shoulders and thin wisp of moustache, the ones who got their growth early, were idiots drunk off their own testosterone. She didn’t blame them. It was chemistry.
But Jon was gentle, especially with the under-tens, and sometimes at night he talked a foreign language in his sleep in a voice that always sounded on the verge of tears. She wasn’t sure where he was from, with his wide cheekbones and narrow eyes, and he never said. He didn’t have any accent during the day.
Violet returned her attention to the wormy wall. In a spot farther down, the tendrils were starting to whip back and forth, quicker than normal. She nudged Jon’s elbow. They both peered at the wall, and both of them flinched a bit when an othermother’s head popped over the top of it. Violet watched as the rest of the othermother rose slowly over the barrier, conducted along by the tendrils, passed gently down the other side of it like crowd-surfing.
The othermother was stiff as a plank, arms straight at her sides and long legs locked together, and when the tendrils set her down she didn’t move. Violet recognized the cornflower-blue dress. They were already replacing the one Bo had vanished.
“That was quick,” Violet said. “Let’s go before it starts sniffing around.” She made toward the bikes, and this time it was Jon who nudged. Violet turned back to see the wall was in motion again. A second othermother, identical to the first, glided up and over it to stand stock-still beside her twin. Then a third. Then a fourth. For a moment Violet thought they might keep churning over the wall forever, a cartoon assembly line on loop, but after the sixth they stopped.
Six othermothers, lined up like toy soldiers, swaying slightly on their long skeletal legs as a stiff breeze came through. Violet had seen plenty of things in the past four months, but the sight still sent ice down her spine. The othermothers waited without moving, eyes unblinking. Violet and Jon were frozen too, waiting to see what would happen.
On some inaudible cue, all six othermothers came to life at once. Their necks started swiveling, too elastic to be real, and Violet shrank back instinctively, pressing herself flat to the brick. Jon didn’t say anything, but she could feel him tense up. The othermothers started forward, already cooing Bo’s name. It might have been her imagination, but Violet thought the way they walked was slightly different. Longer, more liquid strides. More like predators.
As the first wave stalked past them, the wormy wall began to ripple and wave again. The process started over. Six more othermothers, all of them in cornflower blue, being lowered into place one at a time. Violet had never seen so many. It was fucking scary.
The othermothers were still coming as Violet and Jon slid along the apartment wall, keeping low until they were around the corner. She yanked her bike
off the drainpipe with trembly hands.
“They want him back bad,” Jon said, swinging onto his seat.
When Jon did speak, he had a way of saying what Violet didn’t want to. Even if she was thinking it.
“Tough,” she said, trying to inject her usual bravado. “He’s ours now.”
She kicked off, and then they pedaled hard and fast until the othermothers’ trilling voices faded away.
It was Bo’s first time leaving the city by the west, taking the curving bypass around the industrial park. There were three of them: Wyatt leading, Violet after, and then Bo bringing up the rear. The older kid, Jon, had stayed behind. Him and Violet had had a quick hushed talk with Wyatt while Bo pretended to be focused on hopping up and off the curb. Then Jon had wheeled his bike back into the theater while the rest of them set off.
At first the ride was exhilarating. Bo’d never been able to ride on the road here except in residential areas—too much traffic. But now, following Wyatt’s lead, they swerved back and forth from sidewalk to street, weaving around stalled cars and shambling wasters. The bypass itself was near empty, and the downhill slant meant all three of them picked up good speed. With the bike rattling under him and the airflow slapping back his clothes, Bo felt better than he had in a long time. His mouth kept flexing back into a grin without him meaning it. He could focus on the tarmac, and his feet on the pedals and his grip on the handlebars, and nothing else really mattered.
Eventually the downhill turned uphill, though, and before long, even with the sun hidden by thick dark clouds, he felt a slime of sweat on his back. They had to go down into the ditch to get around an overturned semi, and burrs from the long grass stuck to his socks, scratching his ankles. The burrs, the sweat, and the burn in his legs were distracting enough that Bo didn’t notice the creeping fog for another few minutes.
The pale gray vapor roiled around their moving tires the way car exhaust did in winter, and it was thickening as they pedaled. Mist prickled on Bo’s hot skin and pressed at his eyes. Wyatt and Violet had slowed down; he did the same. The fog bank loomed in front of them, more opaque than any Bo had seen before. It reminded him of stories his mom used to tell about a huge dust storm, during Harmattan season, back in Niger when she was a little girl. How the whole sky was blotted out and she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.
Just before they were swallowed up completely, Wyatt braked to a halt.
“Stop here,” he called. His voice was flat and strange sounding in the fog. Bo rolled even with him. Violet was leaning back on her seat, face blank. She hadn’t said more than a few words to him today. She hadn’t smiled at him either. When Bo remembered her warm hand on his shoulder, how she’d talked to him after he disappeared the othermother, he felt almost tricked. His Parasite squirmed again.
“We can keep walking, can’t we?” Bo said, looking to Wyatt instead. “Won’t get lost if we just follow the road. Is it far?”
“We’re already here,” Wyatt said. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a water bottle, taking a swig before he passed it along to Violet. Violet wiped the top with her sleeve, then she drank too. Bo wasn’t ready for her to toss it to him but he managed to catch it without falling off his bike.
“This is the end of the world?” Bo asked flatly, waiting for some kind of joke. He dismounted.
“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Start walking.”
Bo gripped the water bottle hard. Were they teasing him, or something worse? His heart sped up again, and a million wild thoughts whirled through his head. Maybe Violet had the metal bat in Wyatt’s backpack, and she was going to break his bicycle, and maybe his legs, and leave him out here in the fog. Maybe they’d decided he wasn’t a Lost Boy after all. He looked from Wyatt, who had an intent, almost eager look on his face, to Violet. She cracked half a smile at last.
“It’s alright,” she said. “We’ve all tried it. Just walk, and—”
Wyatt shot her a look. She fell quiet with a shrug, but the smile stayed. Bo tried to mimic the shrug, tried to pretend he didn’t care about whatever game they were playing with him, and slowly turned into the fog. He didn’t hear them leaving behind his back, or whispering, or anything else. They were only watching.
Bo started to walk, wheeling the bike along with him just in case. The fog was so thick he couldn’t see anything but white. He counted out ten steps before he stopped, looking back to see if even a glimpse of Wyatt and Violet was still visible.
They were right behind him, standing with their bikes, pretending they hadn’t snuck along behind his back. Bo gave a hesitant grin, but neither of them laughed at the trick. Wyatt only nodded, brow still furrowed, for him to continue. Bo took another step, and another, but when he turned around again Wyatt and Violet were in the same position. They hadn’t moved, and neither had he.
A strange shiver went down Bo’s back. He dropped the bike and set down the water bottle and started walking backward, keeping them in view the whole time, but the distance between them never changed. He turned and tried to run, lengthening his stride. He pounded away into the fog, sure at any second he would fall into the ditch, or ram up on a stalled car, or something.
“Weird, right?” Wyatt said over his shoulder.
Bo slowed to a stop and turned around, swallowing his spit. “So we can’t get out.”
“No,” Wyatt said. “We’ve tried this way, and we’ve tried going north too.”
Bo stared into the fog. It was like coming to the end of a videogame map, walking out into the ocean forever but really just grinding against the skybox, marching in place against invisible walls. Maybe it was like a game to them. Maybe they wanted to keep everyone inbounds.
“We can’t get through,” Wyatt said. “But maybe you can. With your Parasite.”
Bo put his hand to his stomach, trying to remember how he’d done it the day before, up on the parkade roof. It was blurry. He’d stared at the othermother and wanted it gone, wanted it somewhere else. He’d been scared and sad and furious. Then the static storm had welled up out of him, the Parasite vibrated him head to toe, and the othermother was gone.
“I haven’t gotten to see it yet,” Wyatt said, grinning his white grin. “Show me something, Bo.”
Now he wanted the fog gone. He wanted the invisible walls gone. He wanted to get out, and get help. Help for Lia. His Parasite flexed and he felt a small crackle of static.
“Alright,” Bo said. “I’ll try.”
The ride back was quiet. True to his word, Bo had tried. He’d tried until he was sweaty and shaking and Violet wished Wyatt would just give up and tell him to stop. Nothing had happened, though. The charge in the air had made her hair stand up again, which pissed her off because she’d been having a good hair day, but Bo couldn’t step any farther than the rest of them. Eventually Wyatt had let him give it up.
“It was worth a shot, right?” he’d said, but with disappointment radiating off him.
Bo had nodded, looking tired and frustrated, and then they’d left.
Now, coming up on the overturned semitruck again, Violet wondered if it was impossible to leave the city because there was nothing left outside of it. Maybe it really was the end of the world, and the aliens had destroyed everything except for one tiny soap bubble with all of them drifting around inside of it. Or maybe none of this was real at all, and she had a black clamp sitting on the back of her skull. Violet reached up and ran a hand over her neck. She remembered her hair was a mess.
She started to slow down for the detour into the grassy ditch, and Wyatt did the same. He was still expressionless, cold and polite and detached how he got when he was angry with something. Violet knew it would pass, but she could tell it was making Bo anxious. She was thinking she might need to say something to him when he pumped past her. She caught a flash of his face, teeth clenched and bared.
“Bo!” she shouted. He didn’t slow down. He pedaled harder, zooming along the yellow center line, picking up more speed as the flipped semi loomed
, jackknifed across the road. Bo was tearing toward it like an idiot; if he didn’t brake now he would smash into the box. Violet waited for the rubber squeal, for him to skid, to bail and hit the tarmac. She hoped he wouldn’t break anything. Nobody knew how to do a good splint.
She realized what he was trying to do a split second before the air started to ripple. A tidal wave of distortion jumped forward, with Bo and his bicycle at the crest of it, warping the road and the semi and the sky in a way that ached her eyes. Then the box of the truck was gone, sheared away whole. Bo coasted through the empty space. No handlebars, for good measure.
“Jesus,” Violet said. She looked to Wyatt.
“Next best thing,” Wyatt said. His smile was back in place. “They’re the ones who are going to need to go for help. Not us.”
Bo circled back around, gliding through the gap again. His skinny chest was heaving, but his face was a mix of little-kid elated and grown-up smug. Wyatt slung an arm around his shoulders the way he never did with Violet, shaking his head in disbelief. She felt a small stab of jealousy. But she also thought, for the first time, that maybe Wyatt was right, that maybe a bunch of scared messed-up kids hiding in a movie theater could actually drive the aliens away. Maybe Bo was the key.
7
Pedaling back to the theater, Bo felt like Superman. The first time he’d shifted, it had been an accident. The second time, weeping and angry, up on the parkade with the maimed othermother, it had felt like a fluke. When he’d tried and tried but couldn’t break through the end of the world, he’d been scared that maybe the vanishing was something he couldn’t direct. Maybe the Parasite would never do it again.
Then he’d made the truck trailer disappear. Focusing hard how Violet said, wanting it as bad as he knew how, he’d felt the Parasite like a ball of electricity in his stomach, growing and swelling as he got closer to the crash, and when it all reached a sizzling pitch, he’d released it. The memory of it was still fresh: coasting through the empty space, the air hissing and oddly cold. And then the looks on Violet’s and Wyatt’s faces.