“Sweetheart, could your mom and I have a minute? Go see if they need anything upstairs.”
The girl left them alone. Quickly, Sara reviewed the plan. “How many people do you think we can fit in here?” she asked.
“A hundred, anyway. More if we really stuff them in, I guess.”
“Let’s set up a desk at the front door to count heads. No men get in, only women and children.”
“What if they try?”
“Not our problem. The military will handle it.”
Sara examined four more patients—the boy with pneumonia; a woman in her forties who had rushed in with breathing trouble that she feared was a heart attack but was nothing more than panic; two little girls, twins, who had come down with acute diarrhea and fever in the night—then returned to the first floor in time to see a pair of five-tons roar up to the entrance. She stepped outside to meet them.
“Sara Wilson?”
“That’s right.”
The soldier turned back to the first truck in line. “Okay, start unloading.”
Moving in pairs, the soldiers began carting sandbags to the entrance. Simultaneously, a pair of Humvees with .50-caliber machine guns attached to their roofs backed up to the building and took flanking positions on both sides of the door. Sara watched this numbly; the strangeness of all of it was catching up with her.
“Can you show me the other entrances?” the sergeant asked.
Sara led him around to the back and side doors. Soldiers arrived with sheets of plywood and began hammering them into the molding.
“Those won’t keep a drac out,” Sara said. They were standing at the front of the building, where more sheets of plywood were being used to cover the windows.
“They’re not for the dracs.”
Sweet Jesus, she thought.
“Do you have a weapon, ma’am?”
“This is a hospital, Sergeant. We don’t just leave guns lying around.”
He walked to the first truck and returned with a rifle and pistol. He held them out. “Take your pick.”
Everything about his offer went against the grain; a hospital still meant something. Then she thought of Kate.
“All right, the pistol.” She tucked it into her waistband.
“You’ve used one before?” the sergeant said. “I can give you the basics if you want.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
In the stockade, Alicia was gauging the strength of the chains.
The bolt on the wall was negligible—one hard yank should do it—but the shackles were a problem. They were constructed of a hardened alloy of some sort. Probably they had come from Tifty’s bunker; the man had made a science of viral containment. So even if she freed herself from the wall, she’d still be as trussed up as a hog for slaughter.
The thought of sleep enticed her. Not merely to obliterate time but to carry her thoughts away. But her dreams, always the same, were nothing she cared to revisit: the brilliantly lit city dissolving to darkness; the happy cries of life within waning, then gone; the pitiless, disappearing door.
And then there was the other issue: Alicia wasn’t alone.
The feeling was subtle, but she could tell Fanning was still there: a sort of low-grade hum in her brain, more tactile than aural, like a breeze pushing over the surface of her mind. It made her feel angry and sick and tired of everything, ready to be done with it all.
Get out of my head, goddamnit.
Haven’t I done what you asked? Leave me the hell alone.
The promised food did not appear. Peter had forgotten, or else he’d decided that a hungry Alicia was safer than a full one. It could be a tactic to make her pliable:
Food is on the way; wait, no, it isn’t.
In either event, she was perversely glad; part of her still hated it. The moment her jaws sank into flesh, hot blood squirting upon her palate, a chorus of revulsion erupted in her head:
What the hell are you doing?
Yet always she drank her fill until, thoroughly disgusted with herself, she sank back on her heels and let the lassitude engulf her.
The hours moved sluggishly. At last the door opened.
“Surprise.”
Michael stepped into the room. A small metal cage was pressed against his chest.
“Five minutes, Fisher,” the guard said, and slammed the door behind him.
Michael put the cage on the floor and took a seat on the cot, facing her squarely. In the cage was a brown rabbit.
“How’d you get in?” Alicia asked.
“Oh, they know me pretty well around here.”
“You bribed them.”
Michael seemed pleased. “As it happens, a little money changed hands, yes. Even in these troubled times, a man has to think about his family. That, plus nobody else had the stomach to bring you breakfast.” He nodded toward the cage. “Apparently, the little bundle of fur is somebody’s pet. Goes by Otis.”
Alicia allowed herself a good, long look at Michael. The boy she’d known was gone, replaced by a middle-aged man of sinewy hardness, compact and capable. His face had a chiseled look, nothing wasted. Though his eyes still possessed their twinkling, busy alertness, a darker aspect lay within them, more knowing: the eyes of experience, of a man who had seen things in his life.
“You’ve changed, Michael.”
He shrugged carelessly. “This is something I hear a lot.”
“How’ve you been keeping yourself?”
“Oh, you know me.” A cockeyed smile. “Just keeping the lights burning.”
“And Lore?”
“Can’t say that worked out.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“You know how it goes. I got the potted plants, she took the house. For the best, really.” He angled his head at the floor again, where the caged rabbit was anxiously working its cheeks. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
She wanted to, very badly. The intoxicating scent of warm meat, warm life; the swish and throb of the animal’s blood surging through its veins, as if she’d cupped a seashell to her ear: her anticipation was intense.
“It’s not a pretty sight,” she said. “Probably best if I wait.”
For several seconds, they just looked at each other.
“Thanks for standing up for me last night,” Alicia said.
“No thanks necessary. Peter was way out of line.”
She searched his face. “Why don’t you hate me, Michael?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Everybody else seems to.”
“I guess I’m not everybody else then. You could say I don’t have a lot of fans in these parts myself.”
“I hardly believe that.”
“Oh, trust me. I’m lucky I’m not living down the hall.”
A smile, unbidden, rose to her lips; it was good to talk to a friend. “Sounds interesting.”
“That would be one word for it.” He placed the tips of his fingers together, a man making a point. “I always knew you were out there, Lish. Maybe the others gave up on you. But I never did.”
“Thanks, Circuit. That means something. That means a lot.”
He grinned. “Now, seeing as it’s you, I’ll take that nickname as a compliment.”
“Talk to him, Michael.”
“I’ve made my opinion known.”
“What’s he going to do?”
He shrugged. “What Peter always does. Hurl himself at the problem until he bashes his way through it. I love the guy, but he’s a bit of an ox.”
“It won’t work this time.”
“No, it won’t.”
He was watching her intently—though, unlike Peter’s, his gaze held no suspicion. She was a confidante, a co-conspirator, a trusted part of his world. His eyes, his tone of voice, the manner in which his body occupied space: all radiated an undeniable force.
“I’ve thought a lot about you, Lish. For a long time, I believed I was in love with you. Who knows? Maybe I still am. I hope that doesn’t embarrass you.”
Alicia was dumbstruck.
“I see from your expression that this comes as a surprise. Just take it as a compliment, which is how it’s meant. What I’m saying is that you matter a great deal to me, and you always have. When you appeared last night, I realized something. Do you want to know what that was?”
Alicia nodded, still at a loss for words.
“I realized I’d been waiting for you all along. Not just waiting. Expecting.” He paused. “Do you remember the last time we saw each other? It was the day you came to visit me in the hospital.”
“Of course I do.”
“For the longest time I wondered: why me? Why did Alicia pick me, of all people, at just that moment? I would have guessed Peter would be the one. The answer came to me when I thought about something you said. ‘Someday, that boy’s going to save our sorry asses.’ ”
“We were talking about when we were kids.”
“That’s right. But we were talking about a lot more than that.” He leaned forward. “Even then, you knew, Lish. Maybe not knew. But you felt it, the shape of things, just as I did. Just as I do now, sitting here twenty years later talking to you in a jail cell. Now, ‘why’ is another question. I don’t have an answer to that one and I’ve stopped asking. And as for how this is all going to play out, your guess is as good as mine. Given the general direction of the last twenty-four hours, I’m not especially optimistic. But either way, I can’t do this without you.”
The sound of tumblers; the guard appeared in the doorway. “Fisher, I said five minutes. You need to get the hell out of here.”
Michael reached into his shirt pocket and waved a wad of bills over his shoulder, not even bothering to look as the guard snatched it and skulked away.
“God, they’re idiots,” he sighed. “Do they actually think money’s going to be worth anything this time tomorrow?” He reached into his pocket again and removed a folded sheet of paper. “Here, take this.”
Alicia opened it: a map, hastily sketched in Michael’s hand.
“When the time comes, follow the Rosenberg road south. Just beyond the garrison, you’ll come to an old farm with a water tank on your left. Take the road after it and follow it straight east, fifty-two miles.”
Alicia looked up from the paper. Something new was in his eyes: a kind of wildness, almost manic. Beneath Michael’s controlled exterior, his aura of self-possessing strength, was a man aflame with belief.
“Michael, what’s at the end of that road?”
Alone again, Alicia drifted. So, there had been a woman for Michael, after all. His ship, his
Bergensfjord.
We are the exiles,
he had told her in parting.
We are the ones who understand the truth and always have; that is our pain in life.
How well he knew her.
The rabbit was watching her guardedly. His black eyes, unblinking, shone like drops of ink; in their curved surfaces Alicia could see the ghost of her face reflected, a shadow self. She realized her cheeks were wet; why could she not stop crying? She scooted forward to the cage, undid the latch, and reached inside. Soft fur filled her hand. The rabbit made no attempt to escape; he was either tame, a pet as Michael claimed, or too frightened to react. She lifted the animal free and placed him on her lap.
“It’s all right, Otis,” she said. “I’m a friend.” And she stayed that way, stroking the soft fur, for a very long time.
65
Footsteps, and the creak of the opening door: Amy opened her eyes.
Hello, Pim.
The woman halted in the entryway. She was tall, with an oval face and expressive eyes, and wearing a simple cotton dress of blue fabric. Beneath its soft drape, her belly arced with the bulge of her pregnancy.
I’m glad that you’ve come back to see me,
Amy signed.
A look of deep uncertainty, and Pim stepped to her bedside.
May I?
Amy asked.
Pim nodded. Amy cupped her palm against the curving cloth. The force within, being so new, exuded a pure feeling of life—if it were a color, it would be the white of summer clouds—but was also full of questions. Who am I? What am I? Is this the world? Am I everything, or just a part?
Show me the rest,
Amy signed.
Pim sat on the bed, facing away. Amy unfastened the buttons of her dress and drew the fabric aside. The stripes on her back, the burns—they were faded, though not erased. Time had given them a ridged and burrowed quality, like roots running under soil. Amy ran the tips of her fingers along their lengths. In the untouched places Pim’s skin was soft, with a pulsing warmth, but the muscles were hard beneath, as if forged with remembered pain.
Amy buttoned the dress; Pim swiveled on the mattress to face her.
I’ve dreamed about you,
Pim signed.
I feel like I’ve known you all my life.
And I you.
Pim’s eyes were full of inexpressible emotion.
Even when …
Amy took her hands to quiet them.
Yes,
she replied.
Even then.
From the pocket of her dress, Pim withdrew a notebook. It was small but possessed the thickness of stiff parchment paper stitched together.
I brought you this.
Amy accepted it and opened the covers, which were wrapped in soft hide. Here it was, page after page. The drawings. The words. The island with its five stars.
Who else has seen this?
she signed.
Only you.
Not even Caleb?
Pim shook her head. A film of tears coated the surface of her eyes; she appeared completely overcome, beyond words.
How do I know these things?
Amy closed the notebook.
I cannot say.
What does it mean?
I think it means you will live; your baby will live.
A pause, then:
Will you help me?
In the living room, she found paper and a pen. She wrote the note, folded it into thirds, and gave it to Pim, who hurried away. Alone again, Amy went to the bathroom off the hall. Above the washbasin was small round mirror. The changes that had occurred to her person had been felt rather than observed; she had yet to see herself. She stepped to the mirror. The face she beheld did not seem to be her own, and yet it was also the person she had long felt herself to be: a woman with dark hair, a well-sculpted though not overtly angular face, pale unblemished skin, and deep-set eyes. Her hair was as short as a boy’s, showing the curves of her skull, and bristly to the touch, like the end of a broom. The reflection possessed a disquieting ordinariness; she might have been anyone, just another woman in the crowd, yet it was within this face, this body, that all her thoughts and perceptions—her sense of self—resided. The urge to reach out and touch the mirror was strong, and she allowed herself to do so. As her finger made contact with the glass, her reflection responding in kind, a shift occurred.
This is you,
her mind told her.
This is the one true Amy.