These Lifeless Things Page 11

  A. tells me that he can get the train going again. Really, I said. And then paused: Really. Can he? My God, it’s like the clouds part, and a single ray of sun shines upon us. If anyone is still wavering, maybe this will push them to one side of the fence or the other. I said, Are you sure?

  He shrugged. I was a chemical engineer, he said. Not mechanical. But they did not exactly make it for geniuses to run.

  I laughed a little, uncertainly.

  I said, The sentinels will all attack the train when it gets running, you know that.

  He said, pleased, Yes, of course they will.

  I couldn’t think of what else to say. This is our last chance to change our minds. We need the river and the lake to be frozen absolutely solid, I just... and now he comes to me, he says this. I had no words. Even now, I have no words.

  The dusky whisper in the dark: My name is Olga.

  She didn’t say: Don’t leave us.

  I STUDY MY own hand, hoping to see a map like Eva’s. Supposedly they’re all different, these lines on our palms, but the reality is, everyone’s looks virtually the same.

  Couldn’t she have given me a street name? I exhaust myself trudging back and forth along the river and the train tracks till I find the train at last, farther along, much farther, than I would have expected to find it. Catching my breath, I photograph it and throw a pilfered drone into the sky for better images, hearing the click in my shoulders. I am dehydrated, I should have taken more water with me. Nothing seems to matter now.

  Because there it died, the monstrous locomotive, which must have been ancient even then (our people, Eva said, throw nothing away), still surrounded by the scattered biscuits of coal even now, exploded into a tangle of pipes like tentacles or branches, rusted bright red, covered in claw marks and bubbled with peeled, burned paint.

  It’s my last moment of happiness. Darian and Winnie find me, and drag me back to the pod for water and cooling packs. “Heat exhaustion,” Winnie says. “Couldn’t you have stayed in the shade?”

  “It’s our last day.”

  “We still have half of tomorrow.”

  “Our last full day,” I repeat, and stare up at her, kaleidoscoped from the water beaded on my eyelashes; the cold pack burns my neck, and I fight away from it, trying to sit up on my cot. “Why were you in my files?”

  Winnie blinks; Darian glares.

  “I wasn’t,” he says, when it seems clear that Winnie will say nothing.

  “You were,” I tell him.

  “She’s delirious.”

  “Don’t lie!” I shout, and sit up, and swat the cold pack against the wall. “Why do you even bother? I set up my station so I could see when other people log in—”

  “We all log into each other’s workstations all the time, Emerson.”

  “—and I added a tracer to my files to see if any of them were being accessed,” I snarl, and reach to seize a fistful of his shirt. He bats my hand effortlessly away. “Or changed. Or deleted. And you, not Winnie, not Victor, did all of the above. With the files about the journal I found. The journal that tells the story of the end of this city. The train. The seminary. The tunnel. Even that SOS sign we saw before we came here. Well, joke’s on you, pal. Those were fake files you modified. Meant for you to find them. I hid the real ones far down in my private directory.”

  Winnie does not gasp; but her breath catches. Darian slowly turns purple. Outside, shyly, in the gravel, Victor’s shoes scuffle as he waits to come in; I think he probably won’t.

  “I’ve got a record,” I pant at last. “I’ve got proof. Isn’t that what you’re always looking for? Hard evidence? Something you could make into a graph? Because you don’t want to think They’re gods, do you? That’s what bothers you, isn’t it?”

  “You should get some rest,” he says, and tugs Winnie out of my room. As they leave, he says, “She really got some sun out there, didn’t she?”

  I am furious, I want to chase after him, but I slowly pick up my cold pack again and lie down on the cot, and put it on my chest.

  You come back here, I want to scream. I want there to be a fight, a showdown. I want there to be a winner and a loser; I want the others to see that you are wrong and I am right, and that you have been sabotaging my research from the start. I bet if I checked your files I’d find that armoury, wouldn’t I. I bet I’d see a yes to all the no’s you gave me.

  But life isn’t like that, and the next day I’m silent as we pack up and board the hover to go home.

  November 25

  We risked one last visit, scoping, measuring, pacing everything out, and as always, P. shoved a packet of food through the fist-sized hole in the concrete—cooked potatoes, mostly, wrapped in cabbage. I wish we could have done better. Found something sweet for them. But it’s either the last of the cold garden, or slop from a goddamned can again, till next spring.

  I was terrified for a minute, standing next to P., listening. The room was not merely quiet, it had the silence of death, and not even the reassuring, everyday death of hung meat or slaughtered rabbits, but the recent cessation of intelligent life.

  Finally, a whisper: Thank you.

  V. had to drag me away from the hole.

  The area now is lightly and irregularly guarded. That worries me. The statues scream to each other in the night, I won’t say howl—wolves howl, and they are noble animals—and their screams reliably attract others unless you can shut them up. Same with the smaller sentinels, which at least are reasonably killable, like rats, if you can catch them, and if they don’t... do that thing where they sort of turn sideways and disappear into a shadow cast by a hair-thin bar of invisible light, you know how it is.

  We left our cache against the wall, disguised perfunctorily by a little heap of the ever-present rubble. I kept looking back at it, anxiously, as we slunk out. The sun was going down, sending our shadows in blue and black down the golden street. Did it look too obvious? The trees, the survivors I mean, watched us; who do they talk to, when they are not watching us?

  Anyway, the bundle has our crude weapons in it, snowshoes, blankets, plastic sheeting, flares, food, wood. No one knows what we would need to run down the river and cross the lake with the children. But we’re going to do our best.

  My heart hammers as I write these words. I can see how bad my handwriting’s become. Still, even now, any of us could change our mind. But we can’t do it unless everyone does it.

  We might only have five minutes. One wall goes down as the distraction. Blow the second to open the basement. Drag the kids out, get them on sleds or backs, get the snowshoes on. The train: moving. Then the train: exploding. And us, fleeing.

  Writing down the plan strikes me as a mistake now. They would make good use of this if they found it. But maybe They will not find it. Maybe I will carry it with me to freedom. Or it will be found on my body, mutilated on the thick glassy ice of the lake when They catch up with us.

  No. Better not to think about it. Maybe later I will tear out these pages.

  November 27

  I picked today to do the inevitable. I don’t know what I was thinking.

  I pulled him into the bedroom, shut the door. We have so little time left, I said. I thought you should know.

  Before I had even finished the last word, such alarm in his eyes. I don’t know what he thought I was going to say and now, in retrospect, I think: He must have thought I was going to confess that I was pregnant or dying or something. Not that there’s much difference now whether you say I am with child or I am with sickness. Something like that, but he was pre-emptively startled, worried.

  Listen, I said. Since this all began, no one’s loved us. Not the way we needed to be loved. And even in the old days, were you ever loved enough? Once upon a time, our parents did; when they were gone, our brothers and sisters and friends gave us support. But did you ever trust them? Fully? No. The full weight could not be put on anyone, it was thought that no one could bear it. Because everything inside us was too heavy. Eve
n before this happened. So maybe you will say that this too is not love, but the mutual acceptance of that weight, each to someone strong enough to carry it. Still, let me call it that. Let me say I love you. I love you.

  Once spoken, I wanted to bolt from the room; I thought, Now I must slink away and die of embarrassment. I think I even backed towards the door, ready to murmur apologies. I thought: I will tell him I’m drunk, tell him I’m sick. Tell him I got a brain parasite from forgetting to boil the river water. Tell him the Them got to me.

  But I didn’t run. I watched his face crumble instead. Sobered, hurt, he sat on the edge of the table and his curls of many colours caught the candlelight so that he appeared momentarily to be wearing a medieval helmet. He had, I thought, more protection than me.

  Oh Eva, he said. No.

  Even knowing he would say it, I was destroyed. There was no sweetness in hearing my name in his mouth. I thought of the bomb spinning in the dirt the day we met, which blew up half an hour later. That distant percussion, and dust shaking from the leaves of the trees. I sat down too, on the bed, and let everything wash over me in waves of hot and cold. Even knowing, even knowing.

  He said, It’s a different world now. I can’t even look at you and ask myself how I feel.

  What, I said carefully, would a reasonable man feel?

  He said, You ask me what is reasonable, what I might feel if I were... the truth is, which you know as well as I do, that we cannot answer this any more, that we have not been able to answer this for two years, and that there are no reasonable men left anyway.

  Oh, I said. My ears were ringing.

  He said, I will tell you what I think is possible to do. But it’s not related to reason. It never will be again.

  I said, Feelings aren’t. Usually. Are they.

  He said, I’m still coming with you.

  I said, That’s good.

  He added, And if it comes to it, I will stay behind in the city to let you escape with them across the lake.

  No, I said instantly. I couldn’t... no. You’d have to come with us. We’d never...

  But he was staring at me, in the candlelight, his sharply delineated features as certain as I’ve ever seen them. Studying my face to see if I would waver.

  I said, Fine. If you stay to fight, so will I. The others can run across the lake.

  He said, Good.

  I said, But only if it comes to it.

  Yes. Only if it does.

  Later

  Oh, for God’s sake. It’s like a bloody soap opera in here. I am still not too tired to laugh, but I am very nearly too tired to write.

  K. found me just after midnight, and he was better about it than I was. Quiet, thoughtful. He said, I would like to beg you, one last time, to reconsider this. It’s an unnecessary provocation to Them.

  I said, It’s only unnecessary if you think that Them keeping the children locked up in a subterranean dungeon is necessary, Konstantin.

  He said, Listen. They’re safe there. From the statues, the... the other things. They’re being guarded. Even fed. They’re protected. What kind of world is it out here, in comparison? It’s... it’s the jungle, it’s anarchy, there are still people out there who would snatch them right out of your arms and roast them alive. And you want to drag them across a frozen lake to questionable safety kilometers away.

  Don’t exaggerate, I said.

  He said, You know, it might be temporary. Keeping them there. Maybe just to protect them while Their reign is solidified. And your plan, it’s... it’s absolutely reckless, it’s so dangerous. I’ve been saying that since the start.

  I said, Yes, you have; and I’ve been saying fuck you.

  All the wattage came on in his blue eyes, and behind them was no longer a candleflame but a searchlight. I stared into them, seeing if they had that strange, reflective layer now, like the agents we had seen, but I couldn’t tell. Just blue, and the flickering flame. Some people carry the physical badge, that is toothed and notched and cuts the hands. Some people carry something else.

  He approached me slowly, held his hands out, took mine. I shouldn’t have let him; I should have pulled them away, shown him exactly what I thought of him. His intact hands were warm. Mine were cold and wet.

  He said, Then let the others go. Stay here. With me. I’m only asking because I care about you. Because I... over the last few months, I realize I’ve come to love you. In another world, another time, we’d be together. I...

  I said nothing. I think I even felt nothing, not even the little leap of joy or hope I’d feel when someone says the word now. I was so tired. You cannot say ‘love’ any more, you just cannot. I wanted to say: Oh, you’d say anything. I know which side you’re on now.

  But I was thinking instead: He knows everything about the plan. If I take my eyes off him he’ll be off to his bosses, those great shimmering walls of evil that have come to infest our planet, and They will say: Well done my good and faithful servant, or whatever it is They say. Look at him, he’s not even looking at me. He’s looking right through my head to the wall.

  I said, I’ll think about it, and I let him raise my hands to his lips. His mouth, too, was warm.

  When he left I wanted to run around like a headless chicken. We’ve been betrayed, or we’re about to be, or are we? We don’t have time. Call off the plan! No, move it up! Forget the ice. We’ll figure something out. A backup train. A rowboat. A wagon. Our people throw nothing away, once we get to the outskirts, near the wall, I’m sure we’ll...

  ...I had to physically sit down and sit on my hands for a while, which wasn’t a bad thing. They eventually warmed up beneath my thighs. I had to remind myself to breathe. Breathe, dammit! And V. asleep in the other room. For God’s sake.

  I keep thinking: It would have been better if we had fought. Really fought. If I could have clocked him even once, if I could have justified him going to Them, and saying: She will betray you, look what she did to my face. But instead we are in this uneasy limbo, which I hate more, and the sky screams and chimes, and we are running out of time.

  But it is much faster to betray than to build. O, that a man can smile, and smile, and smile, and still be a villain!

  November 29

  The ice must be almost ready. After breakfast, when the sun is fully up, V. and I will go down and check.

  K. is done for me, he’s done. I said, directly, quietly, Are you going to turn us in?

  And he looked back at me, and then looked away, and he said: No.

  That was all I needed to hear, as damning as if he had taken out a badge and thrown it onto the floor between us. I didn’t even say: So I was right. I didn’t say: I saved your life, you bastard.

  I thought, exhaustedly: Did I? Or was it all a play, a sham? Did I fall for it because of something so broken and hungry inside me that I cannot even give it a name?

  Still I refuse to give it a name. Still I refuse to say to anyone: Forgive me. I was jealous, I wasn’t paying attention. I missed things, so many things, and I let so many things slide past me that I should have caught. I let myself be distracted.

  And K. did not. God, I am almost jealous of that too. What a world.

  I said, my voice wavering, Can you at least tell me what They want to accomplish here?

  He sagged. We both knew exactly what kind of conversation we were having. He said, slowly, They don’t tell us, you know. Not in words, not really. It’s more like... the nightmares that everyone has. When They are done with one world, They find another, and if there is a way They can avoid doing Their own work on the ground, They use the existing life forms. Here, that’s us. Their learning curve seems... clumsy. They carry a time with Them that isn’t the same as ours. But...

  I said, But you’ll be spared.

  He said, Yes. And you too, if you...

  No, I said. Why wouldn’t you turn us in? Tell Them everything? Won’t They punish you after this?

  He said, I don’t know. Yes, probably.

  They already k
now that we’re up to something, I said.

  Yes.

  So you don’t need to turn us in at all. It’s already been done.

  Yes.

  I turned away from him; I thought: Don’t let yourself be distracted. It’s almost done. None of this will matter in... what, a day and a half, two days? None of this will matter. Especially why we did what we did.

  He said, You and him...

  Him who?

  Valentin.

  I said, What about him?

  And he looked at me with the flame of his eyes flickering behind the blue, turning it into glass, and I thought, I was a fool, I really was, in five or six different ways, to not see this coming, and he said, Nothing. Never mind.

  Every family, they say, gets one saint. I wonder who ours is.

  November 30

  I wish I could so much as... picture a future that includes V. and me, together, alive. We don’t end up together. We can’t and we don’t. Even if, one day, it was love, we could never split our love and loyalty like that. We would never be able to forget these days and the things that were said. Perhaps for other people in the long, long history of war and love, it has happened that way, but not now. And no one else can know.

  I fear the things I don’t know, not the things I do. I’m afraid of so much and I’ve never been responsible for so much. I’m so afraid. I’m worried I’ll freeze at the moment I can least afford it, and no one will be able to help me. But I am determined to stay and fight, if anyone needs to.

  The enemy is not each other and the enemy is not love. It’s not wanting to be loved, either. It’s so important, I wish I hadn’t figured it out so late, but there’s no one I can tell any more. Only this paper, only this book, almost full, and so wrinkled and battered: that’s not the enemy. That’s the ally. The only one we’ve got. It will not help us win the day. Nothing will. But it will fight at our side.