“Even if it comes, it won’t matter,” says the first woman, as other voices around her rise in the same worry. “They’re going to kill us! They’re going to –”
“Shut your mouth!” roars a new voice, one right behind his head, one owned by the woman whose arms are around him, holding him tight. “Shut your mouth or I will shut it for you.”
The first woman stops at the fury in this new voice. She begins a long, loud weeping, hardly better than the words before.
“Don’t you listen to her, my little puddle,” the voice behind him says into his ear. “Everything has gone according to plan, and there is nothing to be afraid of. This is a little delay. Only that. We will be starting our new life soon. And what a time that will be.”
He speaks. They are not his words, not his voice, but they are coming from his mouth.
“I’m not afraid, Mama,” he says.
“I know you’re not, puddle.” She kisses the back of his head, and he knows that she’s calming herself, too. He really isn’t afraid, though. She’s gotten them this far. She’ll get them farther still.
“Let Mama hear some of your English,” she whispers. “Let me hear your words, and we will make a new home out of them.”
And he remembers. Remembers being too poor to pay for English lessons but never questioning why his mama brought home videotape after videotape – not downloaded like at school or even on disc, but played on a massive, ancient machine held together by electrical tape – of black-and-white or flamboyantly colored films in English, a language that both leapt forward into wide-open spaces and then looped back to cramp itself up. They would make a game of it, him and his mama, trying to match the English dialogue to the subtitles.
He was smart, his teachers always said, some even saying “freakishly,” and he started picking it up against all odds, practicing it on the few English-speaking tourists who ventured that deep into the country. Even trying his hand at the moldy old English-language novels someone had donated to the local library.
He’s learned enough, he hopes. They are here. They are inside the borders. They have almost reached the end. He really, really hopes he’s learned enough.
“‘To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing,’” he says now to his mama, quoting a film, straining hard to remember, for her, “‘may be like losing your fortune. To lose both means that no one cares.’”
“Good, good, puddle,” his mama says, understanding less than half of it, he knows. “More.”
“‘You were only supposed to bleed open the doors off,’” he says, “‘and blow them away.’”
“Yes, my darling.”
“‘Of all the jukeboxes in every bit of the world –’”
There is a sudden sharp cry from the women around him – and he remembers now that it is all women and a few children like him – as a lock is loudly undone and the massive metal door begins to open, booming with its own weight. The women make sounds of relief when they see that it’s the friendlier of the two men who’ve brought them this far. The one with the kind smile and sad eyes who speaks to them of his own children.
“You see?” says his mother, standing them both up. “A few words and the world changes.”
But the women start to scream as they see that the kind man is holding a gun –
A hand shoves Seth hard in the chest, Regine, her full weight behind it. He tumbles to the mud-covered pavement. She stands next to Tomasz, who’s looking down at him now, too.
“What did you do?” Tomasz says, horrified. “What did you do to me?”
“Co się stało?” Seth says.
In Polish.
“What?” Regine says.
“What?” Tomasz says, coming over to him. “What did you say?”
Seth sits up, shaking his head. He can still smell the fear in the cramped room, still feel the press of the women against him, the terrible, terrible panic that swept through the group when they saw the man’s gun –
“I said –” Seth tries again, in English this time, but he doesn’t get another word out before Tomasz strikes him across the face, hard, the cloth wrapped around his hands cushioning it hardly at all.
“You have no right!” Tomasz says, hitting him again and again. Seth, too stunned to defend himself, can already feel his nose bleeding. “That is private! You have no right to be there!”
“WHOA!” Regine shouts, grabbing Tomasz’s flailing arms. She wraps her big frame around him, straitjacketing him, but he still looks furiously at Seth.
“That was not yours to see!”
“Would someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Regine says, then she sees the back of Tomasz’s neck. “And why is Tommy’s light blinking?”
“I don’t know,” Seth says, pulling himself back up, wiping the blood from his face. “I don’t know what happened. I just touched him and –”
“I am right here!” Tomasz shouts. “Do not speak of me as if I am not present!”
“I’m sorry, Tomasz,” Seth says. “For both things. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean anything by it –”
“It was not yours to see!” Tomasz says again.
“What was it?” Regine asks Seth, still holding Tomasz close.
“I think . . .” Seth says. “I think it may be private.”
At that, Tomasz’s face crumples and he really begins to cry, buckling at the knees and dropping into Regine’s embrace. He speaks long sentences of Polish with his eyes squeezed shut.
“Okay, seriously, what the hell happened?” Regine says to Seth, holding Tomasz to her stomach. “I don’t need to know what you saw, but you touched the back of his neck and then you both just froze. Like you left your bodies.”
“I don’t know,” Seth says.
Regine sighs angrily. “Of course you don’t.”
“Regine –”
“I’m not mad at you,” she says. “I’m mad at this whole stupid place. You say you’re remembering and you just can’t imagine how much I want to know, but all that seems to mean is new pain. That’s all that happens in this life. One shitty, horrible surprise after another –”
“You weren’t a horrible surprise,” Seth says quietly.
“And the weather makes no sense and there’s some immortal freak in a black suit chasing us and . . . What did you say?”
“I said you weren’t a horrible surprise,” Seth says. “Neither of you.” Tomasz is still snuffling into Regine’s shirt, but he turns an eye back to Seth.
Seth wipes his nose. “Listen,” he says, but then stops. He runs a hand over his short hair, his fingers finding the rise at the back of his skull, knowing it’s blinking, not knowing why, despite the mess of it churning in his brain. Not knowing anything at all, in fact, except that he’s here, right this second, with Tomasz and Regine. And it feels like he owes them more than he can ever repay.
“I killed myself,” he says.
He waits to make sure they’re listening. They are. “I walked into the ocean. I broke my shoulder on a rock, and then that same rock crushed my skull, hitting it right where the light is.” He pauses. “But it wasn’t an accident. I did it to myself.”
Regine says nothing, but Tomasz sniffles and says, “We had a little bit guessed.”
“I know,” Seth says. “And that day you found me, that day you stopped me from running into that thing in the van, I . . .” He wavers, but then forces himself. “I was going to do it again. I know Masons Hill. I know where I could throw myself off. And that’s what I was going to do.”
He tastes blood on the back of his throat and spits it out. “And so when I say you weren’t a horrible surprise, I mean it. You were a good surprise, so good it’s why I doubt it’s even true. Even now. And I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry it made me lie to you. I’m sorry it sent me to the prison. And I’m sorry, Tomasz, for seeing what I saw. I didn’t mean to.”
Tomasz sniffles again. “I know this. But still.” He’s wearing the saddest face Seth has ever seen, his mouth curled down, his bottom li
p out, his eyes too old for his young, young face.
“I did not get struck by lightning,” he says.
“We had nothing,” Tomasz continues, looking at his feet. “Remember those years when the world lost all its money? Even online, I guess.”
Seth and Regine both nod, but Tomasz isn’t looking at them anyway.
“We were poor before that,” he says. “And it was worse after. You used to be able to cross borders in Europe, but when all economies fell, you could not anymore. No one wanted anyone else. We were trapped, my mama and me. But she found a way. She found a man who says he can smuggle us in on a ship. Give us passports, documents to say we were there before borders close.” He clenches his little fists. “It costs us everything we have. More than everything, but my mama says it is better life. Makes me learn English, says all will be better.”
His eyes narrow. “But it is not better. Journey is very hard, very long, and the men who help us, well, they do not help us very much at all. One is nicer, but one is very bad. He treats us very badly. He . . . do things. To Mama.”
Tomasz turns his fists up and looks at them. “I am too small to help. And Mama says it is all right, we are almost there, we are almost there. And one day we arrive in England. We are all very excited, day is almost here, we have traveled long and hard road, but here we are, here we are, here we are.” His face has opened up a little in wonder, but it hardens again. “But there is a problem. Money, always wanting more money, always asking more from people who have none.”
He sighs. “But there is no more. And the kinder man comes to where they are keeping us. In big metal container for ship. Like we are pigs or trash. The kinder man comes one night.”
He looks at Seth. In the moonlight, his eyes are filled with tears again, and Seth realizes what he’s asking.
“He shot you,” Seth says simply, finishing the story. “He shot you and your mother and everyone else.”
Tomasz just nods, fat tears running down his cheeks.
“Oh, Tommy,” Regine whispers.
“But I do not know why I am here,” Tomasz says, his voice wet. “I get shot in the back of my head and I wake up here! And this is making no sense. If we have all been sleeping away somewhere, why do I not wake up in Poland? Why can I not find my mother or anyone else?” He appeals to Seth. “I do not recognize this place at all. I wake up and I think the men must be after me still and so I am afraid and I say to Regine when she finds me that I have always been here, that Mama and me have been here for long time, but . . .” He just shrugs.
“Maybe you were here,” Seth says. “Maybe you reached here and they put you in the coffins and . . .”
But it doesn’t make sense.
Or maybe, he thinks, maybe there hadn’t been time to deport anyone anymore. Maybe Tomasz’s mother did get here in the real world just before everything ended, when Tomasz was a baby. And maybe they were arrested and the only thing to do was to put them to sleep, making them think they’d never left Poland. That they were back where they started without ever having made the journey.
But if it was someone with the willpower and courage to make that journey once, they might be the sort of person who would be willing to make it again, wouldn’t they? If they didn’t know they were online, only that they had to get somewhere else, at whatever cost.
Never knowing they had already succeeded and were already here.
It seems almost impossibly cruel.
“Tommy, I’m so sorry,” Regine says.
“Just do not leave me alone,” Tomasz says. “It is all I wish.”
She embraces him again even more tightly.
“What about you?” Seth asks her. “How did you get here?”
“I told you,” she says, not looking at him. “I fell down the stairs.”
“Are you sure?”
She glares at him, not answering, but Tomasz is looking up at her, too, the same question on his face. “It is all right,” Tomasz says. “We are your friends.”
Regine still doesn’t answer, but a flicker of doubt crosses her brow. She takes in a breath, to explain or deny or tell them to piss off, Seth will never know, because somewhere, in the distance, they hear the engine of the van start up all over again.
“Hurry,” Regine whispers back to them as they rush from shadow to shadow.
“How far?” Seth asks when they catch up to her, huddled between two cars at the side of a road.
“We’re close, but there’s a big main road to cross first.”
“The sound is distant,” Tomasz whispers behind them. “It does not know where we are.”
“Has it ever seen where you guys are staying?” Seth asks.
“We do not think so,” Tomasz says. “We have always lost it before we got home, but . . .”
“But what?”
“But it’s not that big a neighborhood,” Regine says. “And your lights are still blinking. In a world this dark, that’s going to be noticeable.”
“If they were broadcasting some signal,” Seth says, “it’d be on us by now, wouldn’t it? So that’s something at least.”
“Something,” Regine says. “Not a lot.”
She leads them in a crouched run through the parked cars, across a small street and up the sidewalk toward an intersection. It’s the main road Regine was talking about, and aside from the usual weeds and mud, it’s a massive open space they’re going to have to cross. They wait between two small white trucks parked at the edge.
“We should be okay,” Tomasz whispers. “The engine is not near.”
“You shot it in the chest at point-blank range and it stood up again,” Regine says. “We don’t know what it might be capable of doing. You think it doesn’t know we rely on the sound of the engine to tell us where it is? You think it might not use that to screw with us?”
Tomasz’s eyes grow wider, and he slips a cloth-covered hand into Seth’s.
“We really aren’t far,” Regine says. “If we can get across –”
She stops, eyes suddenly alert in the moonlight.
“What?” Seth whispers.
“Did you hear something?”
“No, I –”
But he hears it now, too.
Footsteps.
Definitely footsteps.
Far closer than the distant drone of the engine.
The footsteps are slow, quiet, as if they don’t want to be heard. But they’re coming this way.
Tomasz grips Seth’s hand tighter and lets out a very soft, “Ouch,” at the pain from the burns. He doesn’t let go, though.
“Nobody move,” Regine whispers.
The footsteps grow louder, nearer, coming from somewhere on their right, maybe from the sidewalk on the other side of the street, hidden by darkness and the cars parked there. They have a strange quality to them, oddly hesitant, stopping and starting, as if having trouble getting up a good walk.
“Maybe we hurt it,” Regine whispers, and Seth sees her posture change slightly. She would be happy if it was hurt, he realizes. Happy to face it when she stood a chance of beating it.
“Regine –”
She shushes him, pointing silently with her finger. Seth and Tomasz lean forward.
There’s movement in the shadows across the street.
“We should get out of here,” Seth says.
“Not yet,” she says.
“It’s still got weapons –”
“Not yet.”
Seth can feel Tomasz pulling back, readying himself to run. Seth moves back with him, but Regine stays where she is –
“Regine,” Seth hisses through clenched teeth –
“Look,” is all she says.
Angry, tense, ready to flee, Seth leans forward to look out onto the wide street again, where the footsteps take their last movements out of shadow and into moonlight.
Tomasz makes a little gasp beside him.
It’s a deer. Two deer. A doe and her fawn, hesitantly picking their way into the street, ears alert, s
topping every little bit or so to make sure the way is still safe. The fawn steps past its mother and takes a mouthful of wild weeds from the road. It’s impossible to tell their color in the moonlight, but they don’t look skinny or unwell, Seth thinks. There’s certainly enough vegetation around to keep them fed. And if there’s a fawn, then there must be a stag out there somewhere.
Seth, Tomasz, and Regine watch the pair make their way down the street, their hooves clicking on the tarmac. The engine noise is still in the distance, and it’s clear by the flicks of her ears that the doe hears it, but she keeps watch calmly as her fawn feeds itself.
She stops and raises her head higher, sniffing the air.
“She smells us,” Regine whispers. The doe doesn’t bolt, but she turns from them, pushing her fawn away down the road, disappearing into farther darkness until not even the moon can see them.
“Wow,” Tomasz says after they’ve gone. “I mean, WOW!”
“Yeah,” Seth says. “I didn’t expect –”
He stops.
Because he can see Regine wipe two stray tears from her cheeks.
“Regine?”
“Let’s keep going,” she says, and stands to lead them on their way.
They take a long circle to get to the house. The trees are surprisingly thick here in amongst the homes, and the moonlight shines down only in glimpses, as if they’re at the bottom of a steep canyon. The drone of the engine stays far away, and when they reach Regine’s street, there’s no sign of anyone waiting for them.
It’s a nicer neighborhood than Seth’s, he can see that even in the dark. The houses are stand-alones, not in blocks like his, the gardens more spacious, the streets a bit wider. Despite the decent size and niceness of his own house, Seth remembers it was only affordable to his parents because it bordered a prison.
“This is where you grew up?” he asks, already regretting the surprise in his voice.
“Yeah,” Regine says, “and even in online utopiaville, we were still the only black people. So what does that tell you?”
They wait at the corner, behind a better model of derelict car.
“I am not seeing anything,” Tomasz whispers.