Authors: Alex Adams
“Where you going?”
“To see family up past Vólos. Do you know it?”
He scratches his head. Glances over his shoulder. “Yes, is that way.”
“How—”
My head explodes, eardrum stretches to its thin limits. Ivan doesn’t have enough time to register surprise as the slug punches its way through his right eye. He slumps to the ground, perennially helpful and friendly. Forever Russian.
Hands over my ears, I yell at the shooter. “What the fuck is wrong
with you? What? He was only trying to help. What’s your malfunction?”
The Swiss steps around me, nudges Ivan with his boot.
“Walk.”
“Vólos,” Irini reads, although the
first letter looks like a
B
. In the middle of the name someone has pitched a crude tent—an
A
without its supporting bar. There’s no hallelujah chorus to herald the city’s appearance or our arrival. It juts out above the dusty shimmer, a geometric concrete maze.
Take me as I am or leave me
, it says.
I care not
. Perhaps I’m painting the city with my own subjectivity, slopping gobs of doubt on the boxy apartment buildings with their abandoned balconies. My own fears make the city glower. The empty tavernas lining the promenade scoff as if to say,
People, they think they can endure? They who are so small?
The ships and boats sinking in the harbor are reruns of Piraeus. Here they sit a little lower in the water as though they’re exhausted from fighting both gravity and salt. The
Argo
waits on its pillar for Argonauts who will never sail again.
It’s a strange thing to claim kinship with objects crafted from steel, but there’s a heaviness in my bones that’s mirrored in their submission to the sea. Although, in essence, metals are born of the earth and our bodies become earth when we’re finished with them, so perhaps there is some common ancestor. Some people are more resilient than others, some metals as pliable as flesh.
So lost am I in my thoughts that I hear the Swiss’s words, but they don’t register.
“What?”
He prods me with the gun. “I said we are stopping here.”
For supplies, I assume, or maybe for respite. “Right here?”
“No. There.”
My gaze travels the length of his gun all the way to the wasteland of marine vessels. Amidst the sinking ships and loose slips, some boats prevail. Small wooden fishing boats, mostly, painted cheerful colors like you’d see on a postcard.
Wish you were here. Glad you’re not
.
“I don’t understand.”
He moves so he’s standing right in front of us, lifts the weapon, shoots Irini. Blood flows. There’s so much. I can’t tell where it’s coming from, only that she’s a gushing fountain of brilliant scarlet. She falls into my arms and I sink to the ground with her, try to find the hole. There it is, buried an inch below her rib cage. It’s a tiny thing, I think as I press my hand to the wound. So tiny I can’t even shove my finger inside to plug the leak like the little Dutch boy did the dike.
Sounds of things scuttling away from where we are. Still human enough to be scared of the gun. Or animal enough to shy from loud noises.
My jaw is spring-loaded with tension. It’s all I can do not to leap up and tear his throat open with my teeth like some crazed animal. But that’s what he’s done to me: pushed me to the desperate edge as though he wants to measure how much I can lose before my sanity snaps into jagged pieces.
“What more do you want?” It hurts to speak. My teeth ache from the tension. “What else?”
“Your baby.”
Hate fills me until I’m radiating pure loathing. It’s a wonder it doesn’t take corporeal form and slay him.
“So many people caught White Horse. Why couldn’t you have been one of them?”
He looks at me. “I did.”
Surprise hits me like an automobile. “What did it do to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. It changes everyone who doesn’t die from it. What did it do?”
“It made me stronger. Better. I can hold my breath longer. Heal faster.”
If I had it in me, I’d laugh at the delicious irony. “Do you hate your own kind? Is that it? The abomination hates his own.”
No more answers. He just curls those steel-cabled fingers around my forearm and pulls until Irini slips away.
“Go,” she says.
“Come on,” he says to me.
“Why? Why shoot her?”
“Fewer mouths to feed.”
“I hate you.”
“This is not school. Life is not a popularity contest. Power wins.”
He drags me. My boots scrape across the concrete. I sag, make myself deadweight, flail. Anything to inconvenience him. He wants me alive. He needs me alive. That means there’s still some luck left to push.
“I’m going to kill you. First chance I get,” I say.
“I believe you. But you will not get a chance.”
“We’ll see.”
He slaps me. Hot, angry tears fill my eyes. I don’t want them to, but my body has other plans.
“Your friend will be dead soon. Look.” He grabs my chin, makes me look at her. She’s sitting in a crimson pool. Steam rises from the blood in serpentine curls. I have a crazy thought that if I could press that hot concrete to her wound, it would seal her shut.
“Don’t you dare die,” I tell her.
The Swiss laughs. “You cannot save anyone. Not England. Not this creature. Not yourself.”
“Don’t die,” I say over and over, all the way up the gangplank onto an abandoned yacht. In a game of rock, paper, scissors, fiberglass beats metal. Man-made outliving earth-made once again.
One half of the handcuffs encircles my wrist, the other snaps around the rail. My captor unloads Esmeralda’s cargo and stows it belowdecks.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m going home with my child. To build a new Switzerland.”
But not me. He’ll cast me overboard the moment I outlive my purpose. I wonder if he means to let me live long enough to be a wet nurse to my own baby?
Irini isn’t visible from here, so I twist around until I can see her, ignoring the metal biting into my skin.
I’m with you
, I want to tell her.
I don’t want you to die alone. I’m so sorry
.
My face is hot and wet; I can’t tell where the sweat ends and the tears begin.
The Swiss leaves, taking Esmeralda
with him. She tags along dutifully.
“Don’t you hurt her.” My lips are dry and cracked and it hurts to
speak. The skin splits and bleeds the more animated I become. He says nothing, just keeps on leaving. I know he’ll be back, because I have what he wants.
It’s just me and Irini now, or maybe it’s me and Irini’s ghost. Is she still alive? I can’t tell. The sun sears my retinas until I’m seeing in dot matrix. I bow my head, try to shield my face from the relentless rays. My sunburn has sunburn. If I’m not careful, I’ll wind up with an infection. I almost laugh, because on a scale of one to catastrophe, bacteria rates somewhere in the negatives.
I don’t realize I’ve been asleep until the Swiss’s yelling jerks me awake. He’s pacing the promenade, waving his gun, ranting in his own tongue. Using my hand as a shield, I start looking for the source of his anger.
Irini. She’s gone. All that’s left of her is a browning stain. The sun and the thirsty concrete have sucked away the moisture. But there’s no evidence of the woman who bled so they could drink. My body shivers as I contemplate what might have happened. Did something drag her away? If so, how close did I come to being consumed in my sleep? Or did she escape? No, not possible: her injury was fatal. There’s no way. There’s just no way. But a little voice reminds me that the rules of biology are different now. Things exist now that didn’t before.
The Swiss slides the gangplank into place. The boat shakes under his footfalls.
“Where is she?” His veins are like engorged worms under his pink skin.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“How could you not? Were you not right here?” He jabs the air with his finger.
“I … was … asleep.”
“Stupid bitch.”
The boat shakes and heaves again. He returns dragging a bulging tarp. This he stashes down below with the other supplies.
“I’m going to find her,” he says. “If she is not dead already, I am going to kill her properly.”
TWENTY-THREE
H
e returns near sunset with more things. Baby things. Clothes and diapers and cream to prevent tiny cheeks from chafing. Things I haven’t had time to think about because I was so focused on surviving.
He holds up a dress, yellow, sprinkled with white flowers. “What do you think?”
The words stick to the walls of my throat. All I can do is look away.
He brings food. Cold meat
from cans, a combination of pigs’ lips and assholes and whatever other remnants were lying around the processing plant. Cold vegetables, also from cans, with labels I can’t read. Depicted on these slips of sticky paper are families smiling so cheerfully, they can’t be real. Who smiles like that? Nobody I’ve known in this new life. I slurp down the juice after I’m done chewing the chunks. For dessert he has tiny chocolate cakes wrapped in plastic. I eat these greedily, licking the plastic clean when I’m done. I’m a shameless and wanton eater. I don’t care what he thinks of my manners. When all that’s left is the taste of chocolate in my mouth, I ask about Irini.
“Did you find her?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“She was probably eaten by animals. Or worse.”
“Or she escaped.”
“Unlikely. Not with a wound such as that,” he says. “How is my baby?”
“My baby is fine.”
“May I?” He holds out his hand as if to touch me. Suddenly polite.
“Touch us and I’ll cut you.” Cold. Calm. Truthful.
He laughs like I’m kidding.
“I thought for certain your womb was empty, like that stupid girl’s.”
“When are we leaving?”
“Soon,” he says.
“What are you waiting for?”
“My baby.”
I won’t let him take
my baby. I won’t. Never. I’d die first, and that’s what he wants. A plan. I need a plan. I have to get away now before it’s too late and I’m dead and my child is his.
Where are you, Nick? Why won’t you come and save us, you bastard? I came this far for you. Just come the rest of the way for us. Please
.
The thought is unfair but I can’t control it; Nick has no way of knowing we’re here. The thing bobs around in my head like a speech balloon in a comic. It’s not supposed to be this way—for any of us. But as people used to say in the old days, when there were enough of us to create and perpetuate slang: It is what it is. And that’s what I have to work with.
He leaves just after dawn. Gone again to get things for a child that isn’t his. This time he cuffs me to the single leg that holds up a tabletop in this tiny room below the deck. He empties my backpack onto the carpet, picking out anything I might use as a weapon. Good-bye, nail clippers, tweezers, and an old dressmaker’s pin that’s been rusting in a side pocket for maybe ten years. He locks the cabin’s door. I know he’s worried Irini isn’t dead, despite his protests and his faux certainty. Nothing is certain anymore—not even tomorrow. I wouldn’t even put money on the sun setting this evening.
I’m on the floor of a boat surrounded by everything I have in this world: old clothes, maps, and Nick’s letter. What can I do?
The carpet peels away easily enough. I don’t pull up much, just enough to figure out how the table’s attached to the floor. Bolts. They’re on as tight as tight can be.
What do I have? A big fat nothing.
Pain cuts across my back. I change positions, lie back, breathe deep. Junior rolls with me. I stare up at the underside of the table. It’s crafted from cheap fiberboard that flakes when I scrape my fingernail over it. There’s a lot number scrawled on there. Or maybe some secret code meant for someone long dead.
When I see it, I wonder how I didn’t see it sooner. Whether it’s pregnancy or malnutrition or exhaustion, my mind isn’t as sharp as it once was. But I do see it now, I do, and hope unfurls her tiny wings. The tabletop is held in place by four shiny silver screws that run through a T-shaped bracket. Hope goes through its rapid life cycle, dies as quickly as it was born. There’s no way the cuffs will fit over the bracket. It and the table leg are one solid piece.
I am doomed. The Swiss will take my child.
Why don’t you come for us, Nick?
Now is all the time I have left. I can’t die without reading Nick’s letter.
I dreamed of the letter last night
.
Again?
I nod
.
The exact same letter?
Always the same
.
Describe it for me, Zoe
.
It’s just paper. Dirty. Tattered edges
.
How does it make you feel?
Terrified. And curious
.
It’s the jar all over again. I have no hammer so my fingers unwrap my fears.
Baby
,
I have to go. It’s killing me to have to leave you when I’ve only just found you. It’s more than my family: it’s me. I’m sick. It feels like White Horse. I won’t put you at risk. I love you, you know. I hope you feel the same way and I hope you don’t. That would be easier. I’m going to Greece to find my family—or at least I’ll go in that direction and see where it takes me. Live on. Please
.
I love you more than anything in this world
.
Nick
Bang. Out of nowhere a
train comes and knocks my heart and soul right out of my body, leaving a crater where
me
used to be. There’s no way—Nick can’t be dead.
No.
No
.
I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I
won’t
believe it.
There’s not enough heart left in me to conjure up a tear storm. I’m an empty space on the verge of collapsing in on itself like some dead star. I’m a black hole.