Infinite

by Brian Freeman

  This was all wrong.

  This wasn’t how the world was supposed to be.

  “Edgar, I have to go. Can you get back home by yourself?”

  “I can with twenty bucks for a hot dog and a beer.”

  I dove into my wallet and found a twenty-dollar bill, which I pressed into his hand. Then I turned and retraced my steps through the pulsing museum crowd. Their overlapping voices made a deafening noise in my head, like the crash of a waterfall. I stumbled down the grand staircase and made my way out the doors onto the museum steps. Rain continued to flood from the sky, even harder than before, its impact as painful as pellets of hail. The black sky made it practically night. Traffic came and went on Michigan Avenue with lights on, horns honking, spray kicking up from the tires. People huddled under the overhang and ran through the downpour.

  I needed to find Eve Brier.

  Then I saw that she had already found me.

  Eve was waiting at the base of the museum steps. She was dressed all in black like a mourner at a funeral, a black long-sleeve top, black slacks, and black heels. She held a black umbrella over her head, and she wore black lace gloves on her hands. Her face bore a teasing smile, and her glittering eyes latched onto mine. The pedestrians ignored us, as if we were both invisible. Somehow, Eve got brighter and clearer in the midst of the dark day, and the rest of the world blurred into gray shadows.

  I ran down the steps and stood in front of her. I was strung out, breaking into little pieces. The rain poured ferociously over my head, but Eve was completely dry, not a drop of rain on her.

  “This world isn’t real,” I said.

  “No, Dylan, it’s not.”

  “None of it. Nothing I’ve seen. It’s never been real.”

  “No.”

  “Where am I?”

  “You tell me. Where are you?”

  “I don’t know! All I know is that I don’t belong here. I’m supposed to be somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know! Tell me! Tell me the truth! You lied. You said it was over.”

  “I lied because you needed to figure out the truth for yourself.”

  “You put me through hell!” I shouted at Eve. “I watched people die. I’ve had to lose everyone I care about, over and over and over. And for what? So you can play games with me? So you can send me to world after world? I’m done with this. I quit.”

  Her eyes never blinked, not even once. “Quit? When you’re so close?”

  “Close to what?”

  “To what you want more than anything.”

  “Stop with the riddles! Tell me what’s happening!”

  “You don’t need me for that. You already know.”

  “I don’t! I don’t know what’s real anymore!”

  “Where did your worlds split apart, Dylan? Where did it all begin?”

  “Here,” I said. “It happened right here at the Art Institute. I saw that other Dylan in the leather jacket. That’s why I went to your event at the hotel that night. That’s why I found you.”

  Eve shook her head. “No, you were well on your way by the time you came to me. You didn’t have to go looking for the Many Worlds. They’d already found you.”

  I tried to let it come back to me. I pushed on my temples to think, but my brain felt starved of oxygen, unable to process. Then I realized she was right. To get to the beginning, I had to go further back. I had to return to the one place that my mind didn’t want to go.

  “Wait. No. I was in the water. I made it to the surface, and I saw him on the riverbank. Me. That was the first time.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I dove down for Karly, but I couldn’t get to her.”

  “How did you get out of the water?”

  “What?”

  “How did you get out of the water, Dylan?”

  “I don’t—I don’t know. The police asked me that, but I don’t remember.”

  “Why are you here, and Karly isn’t?”

  “I don’t remember!”

  “What do you remember?”

  “Nothing! Nothing at all! I was trying to get to Karly, but I couldn’t find her. That’s when—that’s when everything stopped.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s when everything else began.”

  “Yes.”

  I backed away from Eve, feeling an electric charge travel through my whole body. I looked up at the sky, which poured down a flood of rain over my head. I felt a tightness in my chest again, and I couldn’t breathe. Blackness darkened my eyes. Something briny and dank filled my senses.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “See? You know.”

  I did know. A curtain parted, and I saw through all the illusions. It was as if Eve were a magician, and I finally understood the trick. I knew where I’d been, while my mind passed from world to world to world. I had traveled in a circle so I could go back to the place where my story began.

  “What do you want, Dylan?” Eve asked me. “What do you want more than anything else in life?”

  It was a question that had only one answer. “A second chance.”

  “To do what?”

  “To save Karly.”

  Eve twirled her umbrella with a flourish. “Then you need to hurry.”

  I ran. Yes, I ran. I ran like a madman through the Chicago streets, because I finally knew where I needed to go. I knew where my life was. I knew where I was supposed to be. I heard Karly calling out to me. She’d been calling to me ever since this began, and I hadn’t listened. Her voice was muffled. The sound had to reach me through the thickness of water, because that’s where she was.

  In the river.

  “Come find me. I’m still here.”

  CHAPTER 36

  I had no map to guide me back, but I didn’t need directions. The river drew me with the irresistible pull of a magnet. With each mile I drove, the storm intensified, as if this final world knew I was trying to escape and didn’t want to let go of me. It threw up a maelstrom in my path. Angry branches of lightning shattered the sky, and thunder growled at me in a deep voice to turn back.

  Chicago disappeared like a dream into the fog behind me. So did the suburbs. Soon I was in terra incognita, heading past open fields and deserted towns, where it felt as if I were the only person alive. I started out in daylight, but as the hours passed, night fell. No lights came on, leaving me blind as I headed deeper into the middle of nowhere. The only relief from the swath of darkness came from blinding shock waves that speared like tridents between the clouds. With each orange burst, I saw emptiness around me. Silhouettes of cornstalks in the fields. A few lonely farmhouses, devoid of light. The leafy crowns of oaks and maples. A rippled layer of clouds in the charcoal sky.

  I drove and drove and drove, through flat mile after flat mile. I was a man in a bubble, hearing nothing but the drumbeat of rain and seeing only the cramped silver glow of wet pavement through the headlights in front of me. I lost track of time and distance, but eventually, the heaviness in my chest told me the river was close. I slowed down; I peered at the road ahead. I felt the way a soldier must feel when he’s about to meet the enemy.

  There it was.

  I was back where I started.

  Among the cornfields and trees, the flood monster loomed ahead of me, rolling, tumbling, like a dragon unleashed. I stopped in the middle of the road and got out into the teeth of the storm. The pavement ended just ahead of me, and the wild river began where the bridge should have been. The mud and water had become a kind of lava, whipping debris from the fields and roads in its teeth. I saw a highway sign making cartwheels like a circular saw. An electrical pole, dangling wires. Then an entire tree, its branches grasping for the surface like the crooked fingers of a skeleton.

  I ran to the fringe of the water and followed it off the road into sodden fields. I kicked off my shoes, took off my belt and my shirt, anything that would slow me down. The wind gusted with a roar, nearly pushing me over. Rain stung my eyes, and
another huge branch of lightning turned night to day. Barely a second passed before thunder exploded like a bomb. The storm was right on top of me now, not moving, firing all its weapons at me. I wiped my face and tried to see where I needed to go.

  Where was the car?

  Where was Karly?

  I couldn’t be far, but the river covered everything under a blanket of deep, frenzied rapids that wound over the land in both directions. Debris rolled past me, floating up and down on the waves, as if all the animals on the merry-go-round had been set free. I looked for some clue, something, anything breaching the surface to let me find her. A tire. A fender. The car was near me, trapped under the water along with my wife, but there was nothing to tell me where she was.

  I stood there, needing help. Please!

  That was when the Many Worlds sent me . . . myself.

  Dylan Moran burst from the river right in front of me. We weren’t even ten feet apart. He rose up like a sea creature, covered in mud and slime, spitting out water and gasping for breath. It was déjà vu in reverse. I was him. He was me. This was the moment when it had all started, but now we’d changed places.

  He was in the water, and I was the man on the riverbank.

  When the lightning flashed again, Dylan spotted me across the surging flood. It took a moment for him to register what he was seeing. I knew the feeling, because I’d already been through it. His face twisted with confusion, just the way mine had, because the man on the riverbank couldn’t be real. But I was.

  “Help me!” he shouted. My words.

  The lightning faded to darkness, and he called out again: “My wife is drowning! Help me find her!”

  Then he was gone, diving down into the water. With a kick of his feet, Dylan disappeared, but I knew he wouldn’t find Karly. I’d been where he was, and I’d failed. He would search and search and come up empty. He would swim into nothingness. He would swim into other worlds.

  Saving her was up to me now.

  I waded into the water, where the wild current knocked me sideways. My feet spilled out on the slippery ground beneath me. I landed hard on my back, and the river sucked me into a whirlpool before I even took a breath. In an instant, the rapids spun me downstream in crazy circles. I choked, rising and falling, and finally, I fought back to the surface, where I gagged out water and desperately inhaled. The river swept against me like a speeding truck, but I kicked furiously with my hands and feet to fight the flow and stay where I was.

  The car had to be submerged close by, but I couldn’t see it. Once I was down below, I would be swimming blind. I was running out of time. I only had one last chance.

  I swelled my lungs with a series of deeper breaths. In. Out. In. Out. I forced myself to go slowly, taking in more air each time as I got ready to dive. On the last one, I held my breath with my chest full. For a split second, I bobbed on the surface in the tumult of the storm, and then I shot deep down below the water and was immersed in blackness and silence.

  The river was my enemy. Invisible debris swept from miles of fields shot through the narrows and assaulted me. Tree limbs punched my stomach, trying to drive the pent-up air from my lungs. Sharp objects flayed my skin. My eyes were wide open, but I saw nothing. I cast my arms as wide as a skydiver and felt a strange, slick sensation of speed as the current whipped me along. I didn’t fight it. Wherever the flood had carried the car, I wanted it to carry me, too. Any second, we would collide in the channel, this huge obstacle in my path, like running full speed into a brick wall.

  It happened so fast that I almost sailed right by it.

  I felt myself bumping against the mud and jagged tree roots of the riverbank. One second, there was nothing, and an instant later, cool, slippery metal glided under my fingers. The car was right there, stuck in place against the bank, but I felt the river stripping me away from it. I grasped for any kind of handhold to keep me where I was, scratching at steel and glass, digging into the dirt of the riverbank with my nails.

  Then something banged into my palm. By instinct, I snapped two fingers around it and held on. The river began to carry me away, but my body jerked to a stop. I struggled with my knuckles bent back and the water prying away my fingers. I thrust out my other hand and grabbed whatever had rescued me. With a solid hold, I felt the metal under my hand and recognized what it was. A side-view mirror.

  I was there. I was at the car. The current dragged me sideways like a flag in a strong wind, but I clung to the mirror and used my free hand to thump on the windshield of the car. To alert her. To give her hope. To tell her that I was here. Through the black, dense water, I heard something that made my heart soar.

  Karly thumped back from the other side of the glass.

  I beat on the windshield again—Hold on!—and then urgently, I felt my way along the car door. The glass was unbroken. The window I’d used to escape was on the opposite side, buried in mud. My only hope was to get the door open. With the current fighting me, I stretched out my hand to find the door handle, and I curled my fingers around it.

  I pulled hard. The door swung open a couple of inches, then slammed into an obstruction and refused to move. There was no room for Karly to escape. I yanked repeatedly, trying to get it loose, but the car was trapped against the riverbank, with a wall of dirt and stone blocking the door from opening farther.

  The chassis of the car seesawed as the river assaulted it. A solid shock would set it free. I wedged my foot against the side of the bank and pushed. Again. Again. And again. The car shimmied drunkenly but stayed where it was. I thrust hard with both feet, feeling each effort screaming in my lungs. My chest was on fire, and I was running out of time. My air was almost gone, and I needed to breathe or die. Those were the only two choices.

  My whole body coiled into a tight spring. I bent both knees, levered my feet against the mud, and snapped every muscle, every atom of energy I had, into one last ferocious kick. The car lurched in the water. The frame rose up. Something shifted hard, and the entire vehicle floated free. Almost instantly, the current grabbed hold of it and shot the car downstream. Suddenly unobstructed, the door swung wide open, nearly ripped from my hand. I spun wide and felt the car pulling me behind it, like a rider unsaddled by a horse. The wheels hit the riverbed, and as the frame somersaulted, I heard a groan of metal bending, threatening to tear. I reached out for the interior of the car.

  Karly reached back to me.

  We had one instant together. Just one.

  Our hands met. Her fingers laced with mine. I felt the touch of her skin. As I pulled hard, her body spilled out of the car, and then I released her. Like a rocket, she rose upward toward the surface of the river inches away. Somewhere above me, she broke into the night air, rain on her face, sweet oxygen filling her lungs.

  I let go, too. I had no time left.

  I kicked hard to follow her, but just as my arms broke through the surface, I jerked to a stop and felt my body pulled downward again. I tried to rise, to get free, to float, to swim, but an incredible weight held my leg in its grasp and wouldn’t let go. I pulled hard, but I was caught.

  The seat belt.

  My ankle was trapped in the seat belt. The vast beast of the car dragged me with it downstream. I bent over, trying to free myself, but as the current spun us around, the knot wrapped itself around my leg. I pulled desperately, but I could feel the car and the river laughing at my efforts.

  The air in my lungs began to leach into the water. Bubble after bubble escaped from my nose and mouth. Black clouds descended on my consciousness, and my heart began to beat crazily, an uneven rhythm. Unable to hold it back anymore, my chest gave way. I exhaled with a rush, feeling the last of my oxygen seep away.

  I needed to inhale now. I couldn’t stop myself.

  I took a breath, knowing there was no breath there. I opened my mouth, and my lips formed a last soundless word.

  “Karly . . .”

  Then the river swam hungrily into my lungs.

  CHAPTER 37

  �
�Dylan?”

  “Dylan?”

  “Dylan, are you there? Talk to me.”

  “Dylan, come back. I’m still here.”

  I knew that voice.

  I didn’t know where it came from, but even in the depths of darkness, I could picture the face that went with that voice, like a speck of light at the end of a long, long tunnel. There was a woman waiting for me there, if only I could find her. If only I could find my way out.

  “Dylan, I’m holding your hand. Can you feel me holding your hand?”

  I did feel it. Something warm squeezed my fingers, and the touch felt familiar and good. It brought memories that floated in my head like dreams. There had been times when I would lie in bed in the middle of the night, and the only sensation I felt would be that hand holding mine. As long as I held that hand, life was worth living. With that hand in mine, I wasn’t alone.

  “Dylan?”

  “Dylan, open your eyes.”

  “Dylan, please, open your eyes.”

  “Dylan, come back to me. I’m here.”

  I wanted to do what she said. I would do anything for her. To open my eyes, I had to break free from the darkness, but I didn’t know how to do that. The darkness had held me in its arms for a long time, and it was hard to say goodbye and let go. There was a strange comfort in nothingness. But I also felt an ache, a longing, a need to see the woman who was talking to me, who was holding my hand, who was waiting for me at the end of the tunnel. I felt as if I’d been searching for her forever.

  I knew her name. It was Karly.

  I tried to do what she asked. I tried to let go of where I was and go back to where she was. I began to be aware of my body. Sensations slowly came back to life. I was conscious of being warm. I was aware that it hurt when I breathed. I had muscles I could move and control if I thought hard about how to do so. As Karly squeezed my hand, my fingers squeezed hers back.

  I could hear, smell, touch. I was awake now. My eyelids fluttered.

  Above me, I heard a sharp gasp, an intake of breath.

  I opened my eyes. Closed them. Opened them. Even the dimness made me squint, and I struggled to make sense of what was around me.