Passenger (41 page)

And Griffin said, “What? We need to
what
, Jack?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. Change the fucking channel or something.”

Ben stood up. “Fuck this place, Jack. So, where’d you leave the goddamned remote?”

Ben had every right to be as angry as he sounded.

Ethan cleared his throat, obviously confused. “How can I go back there?”

I kept my eyes on Ben. He started off, up the trail to the ridge.

I stood up. “You can’t go back, Ethan.”

Griffin got up, shaking his head. “Everything’s fucked out of shape, Jack.”

“Let’s get Ben,” I said. Then I figured there was nothing else I could do, and added, “Come on, Ethan.”

The Odds watched us with untrusting eyes as we crossed the clearing and followed Ben up to the ridge where Henry was waiting for me.

thirty

“We need to leave before something else happens,” I said.

When I saw Henry’s eyes, the slate haze of the Marbury night made him seem so old and tired.

And for just an instant, he looked like the old preacher, and it scared me.

I believed in that moment that Jack had jumped across again, landed on another string; and I realized this was how my brain worked now—that from now on I would always wonder, or doubt, what not-world I’d quietly fallen into.

“Something else always happens,” Henry said. “It’s the only thing we know for certain, isn’t it?”

The other boys stood away from us. They waited, shifting their feet impatiently at the top of the trail. I knew how bad Ben and Griffin wanted to leave, and Ethan, he was helplessly tied to us now.

Just another string in our knot.

“I’m afraid the Odds will fight us if we take horses. You can make it be okay.”

Henry took a deep breath. He thought about it, but I already knew he wouldn’t refuse. It had to happen.

He said, “One day soon, I expect to have another beer with you at The Prince of Wales.”

“I’ll buy.”

“Will we be real friends, I wonder?”

“I don’t know.”

“I suppose we’re always certain of that, too, aren’t we? The not-knowing, I mean.”

I nodded. “Will you come down with us?”

“You will be back. I’ll tell them that.”

“What if we don’t?”

Henry smiled. “It has to be, doesn’t it? You know what still has to happen, Jack.”

Then Henry touched my side, just above my hip, with the point of his index finger. “You know. This. In. Out.”

He raised his eyebrow as though asking if I remembered the arrow. The first time I’d set my feet down in Marbury.

I said, “It doesn’t have to happen, Henry. This isn’t the world. This is not the same place.”

Henry waved his arm across the air between us, like he was painting the scenery with the sweep of his fingers. “Then what is it, Jack? Of course this is the world.”

I shook my head. “This might be the only way for me and the boys to get back home.”

“You know, Jack, everything we do, no matter how ordinary and insignificant the action, continually reinvents our future.”

I thought about seeing Ben and Griffin in photographs, and inside a fucking barrel hidden in Freddie Horvath’s garage.

“Maybe it’s all my fault. Maybe I’ll never go anywhere that’s close to being home again. But I have to try. For them.” I pointed to Ben and Griffin. “And everything’s already been rearranged behind me, so it doesn’t much matter what you do now, Henry. Scratch your head, don’t scratch it, throw a rock off this wall, whatever. All things have been accomplished. That’s what the preacher always says, so it doesn’t matter. I saw … I saw…”

“What?” Henry said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Henry said, “I suppose I’ll see you again.”

“In a better place.”

Henry patted my shoulder and walked around me toward the waiting boys. “What could possibly be better than this?”

*   *   *

Five of us rode out from the encampment that night.

Ben, Griffin, Ethan, me, and Frankie.

Frankie refused to let us go without him, despite Henry’s assurance that we would come back before morning. Frankie considered the horses, like most of the things transported on the caravan, to be his property. He argued that it was he who’d orchestrated the theft of the horses from the Rangers’ holding pens, and he was the most capable rider of all the boys.

“I want to see for myself what that rider out there is trying to do,” Frankie said. “If I have to, I’ll kill him myself.”

And I told him, “I think we’re all going to die out there.”

That was all we said about it.

With or without us, Henry decided, the Odds would all be leaving in the morning. They had rested long enough, and he was certain the Hunters were coming soon.

Stubbornly, Frankie led the way, as though he’d already calculated exactly the course we’d have to follow to intercept Conner’s path. He’d chosen out the fittest horses and forced us to ride hard to keep up with him.

As we rode, I kept thinking about what Henry said to me before we left, how he seemed resigned to things that had already been determined, and from time to time I slipped my hand up inside my shirt so I could rub the spot near my belly where I’d been shot with a Hunter’s arrow in some other world, at some other time.

This had to work.

Conner was waiting for me.

I had to believe we would get home, that I would see Nickie again, that everything would be put in its place, made whole. And Ben and Griffin would not be harmed.

Earlier, when we’d seen Conner passing across the desert, it was obvious that he was in no particular hurry to get to the settlement. He moved so slowly, and even at such distance I could see by the slump to Conner’s shoulders and the angle of his downturned head that he was tired, possibly even asleep while his horse plodded forward.

Above us, the Marbury sky bled a constant shower of light. It looked like blazing powder that sprinkled like dusty embers in constant, undulating flows.

The hole had grown larger again.

Ben rode closest to me. “What are you going to do when we find him?”

I passed a hand over the one pocket I hadn’t cut out of my jeans so I could feel the contour of the broken lens in there. And I wondered if, unnoticed, it may have turned into something else, black and knotted.

I exhaled. “I don’t know, Ben.”

“Make sure that asshole Frankie doesn’t fuck things up.”

“You mean worse than Jack already did?”

“Wasn’t your fault. We all did it.”

*   *   *

It was Ethan who saw him first.

Frankie overestimated. He rode past Conner by a good quarter-mile, so if the St. Atticus kid hadn’t been paying attention, who knows how far off course Frankie might have taken us?

Ethan stopped his horse and turned to face the distant rider.

He pointed to the faint figure, hundreds of yards from us. “He’s over there.”

There was no way of knowing if Conner could see us or not. He rode with his head pillowed against the horse’s neck.

I glanced back to get an idea of how far Frankie had gone, but I couldn’t even see the kid at all. Still, I knew I needed to hurry.

“The three of you wait here for me.”

Griffin argued, “You have to let us come, too.”

“What if he doesn’t remember you, Griff? What if it isn’t really Conner out there?”

Griffin bit his lower lip, didn’t say anything.

So I answered for him. “You’ll know in a minute what needs to happen. Just watch me. And keep an eye out for Frankie, too.”

Then I kicked my horse into a trot.

Of course it was him.

I knew it before I’d seen him. I knew Conner would be here before we ever left the camp that night; I could feel it.

And part of me knew, too, how when I found him, Conner would be sick.

It was supposed to happen, right?

All things accomplished.

So there I was, caught halfway between Ben and Griffin, the friends who I wished I might save, and Conner, the friend I hoped might save me.

And all I could do was worry, desperately, if this not-world was real, like Henry swore it was; if, maybe, there wouldn’t be any way out for us this time. At least, not all of us together, whole again, going home.

I stopped a hundred feet away from him.

He didn’t see me.

“Con?”

He moved his head, just a little, and the horse quivered.

“Con? I made it. Just like we said we would. You okay?”

I nudged my horse forward.

His horse spun around in a tight clockwise circle, and I saw that where Conner rested his face, all down the horse’s side had been smeared wet with blood.

Conner coughed, his body rattling like he was broken inside, then he spit a black blob that elongated in a glistening cord from his mouth. He lifted a rifle in the air with one hand, but I could tell he wasn’t nearly strong enough to hold it steady. He dropped it onto the ground beneath the horse.

Then he raised his eyes enough that he could see me.

“Jack?”

I jumped down and ran across the dusty ash to where my friend lay slumped on top of his horse.

“Jack?” he said again.

I grabbed the neck of Conner’s shirt and slid him from the horse’s back. He turned over in my arms, but I caught him. I couldn’t believe how light he felt, how empty. I helped him down onto the ground so I could lay him flat.

He kept his eyes on me the whole time, unblinking, as though he weren’t sure if it was all some kind of weird dream. His mouth hung open, crusted with dried blood.

One of his eyes was dark. It had turned almost entirely black, so I could barely see the circle of his pupil.

The bug.

I put the flat of my hand on his chest. “It’s time we get the hell out of here, Conner.”

This is how it was supposed to happen, right?

“How long we been here, Jack?”

I shook my head.

“Where is it?” I said.

“Huh?”

I pushed my hand into Conner’s pocket.

“The lens. Where’s the lens?”

The glove I had sacked around my palm snagged on his pocket and pulled Conner’s pants down past his hips. And there it was, the little burning mark, the red blaze of the crossed loop, the exact shape and place where I’d seen it on my friend before, the first time we’d found each other in Marbury.

Conner raised his hands, attempted to push me away. “What the fuck are you doing?”

I tried to jam my hand down into his pocket again.

It had to be there.

“It’s okay, Con.” I patted his chest. “It’s me. What did you do with the lens?”

Then there was shouting, curses, that came from across the empty desert where I’d left the boys.

I turned my head to look.

At the horizon, where the blank ground rose up and vanished seamlessly into the folding haze of the night, I made out the shapes of the boys and their horses. Frankie had returned, and behind them all hovered a flickering line of red embers.

Hunters were coming.

And at that moment I heard the
whish
from a volley of arrows as they cut through the sky, followed by the panicked cries of Ben and Griffin when they called my name.

“Fuck!”

I hesitated, tried to think of what to do.

“Hang on, Con,” I said. “I’m coming back.”

He coughed an answer.

I picked up Conner’s rifle. It felt heavy. I braced the butt against my hip and pulled back the cocking slide so I could see if it was loaded.

An unspent cartridge ejected from the breech.

So I leapt onto my horse and rode to where the boys were coming under attack, toward the winking line of red brands. The Hunters were a small group, a patrol team; maybe ten of them, looking for food.

Us.

“Get on the ground!” I screamed. “Get down now! I have a gun!”

I was afraid I might shoot one of the boys, so I probably waited too long before I pulled off the first burst of fire.

My horse suddenly reared back. He’d been hit by an arrow above the right foreleg. I toppled down from the animal and hit my face hard into the ground as the horse snorted, terrified, and circled away from me.

The other four horses, riderless, thundered past.

One of them had an arrow in his head.

I spit. My mouth was full of ash and blood, and an open gash burned above my eye. I raised my head, stinging, then stood up and began shooting into the line.

More arrows came. They all fell short, dying impotently in the crust of salt ash.

One by one, the red brands of the Hunters collapsed and fell, too.

The rain of arrows stopped.

One of the attackers tried to run back to where he’d come from, but I could see him and kept firing until he finally collapsed, crumpling into the flat of the desert.

When I stopped shooting, I felt myself being swallowed up in an eternal silence.

My ears rang.

I breathed.

I whispered, “Ben? Griff? You guys okay?”

Nothing.

A black figure rose up, slowly, cautiously, from the flat of the ground.

Then others.

“Jack?” It was Griffin.

“Is anyone hurt?” I called back.

“Jack? Where are you?”

I could see the kid moving around, bent forward, as though he were scanning the ground around him.

“We’re all okay,” Ben said.

I shut my eyes and exhaled.

“Stay there,” I said.

“Jack—” It was Frankie.

“Give me one minute,” I said. “Ben. Griff. Just one fucking minute, okay?”

And Griffin said, “It better be good, Jack.”

thirty-one

Conner was gone.

“Conner!”

I kicked the ground, sending a spray of salt and ash upward in a dusty gray cloud around my feet.

Maybe I’d gotten disoriented,
I thought. Maybe he was still lying right where I’d left him. He had to be there.

I began moving back and forth, sweeping the ground with my eyes and feet.

“Con!”

“Jack!” Frankie shouted my name from the distant blank gray of the Marbury night.

I knew he’d be coming this way, too; I could feel it. There was no way to stop him. So I didn’t answer him, hoping Frankie and the others might not see where I was standing.