by Hamill, Ike
It didn’t matter.
He couldn’t let concerns over such things deter him from his task.
All he had to do was head southeast, towards the city.
…Lower Manhattan…
All he had to do was head southeast, to Lower Manhattan. Once he got there, he would understand what to do.
…steal the Prince…
Frank closed his eyes. He wanted to sink into the memory of what it would be like. He could smell the yolk of the hardboiled egg that Luke would produce from his pocket. He took a deep breath and smelled the distant, sweet smell of Luke’s horse barn.
…you have to pay attention if you want to get there in one piece…
Frank’s eyes snapped back open. The Origin had been right. His wheels were starting to creep over towards the center median. At the speed he was going, it wouldn’t take much for him to lose control and plow into one of the abandoned cars.
He put down the window for some fresh air and tried to forget about what was waiting in the future.
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
Tracking down The Prince turned out to be pretty easy. The Origin had been right. The giant dog walked alone through the park. The girl would be around somewhere though, and she was dangerous. He would know her when he saw her. She would be wearing lots of flashy jewelry. And if she had the chance, she would kill him.
In the distance, someone whistled. The sound was high, short, and shrill.
The Prince’s head came up with perked ears. The dog bounded off.
Frank followed carefully.
Sprinting across a street, the dog jumped through the open door of a shopping center. It disappeared into the shadows. Frank studied the exterior of the building. It had several entrances down the length of the block, and lots of windows up the side. He searched each of them with his binoculars, looking for any sign of the girl. She would be watching for enemies. The Origin said that she was very careful and that she was always watching.
To get to the shopping center, Frank would either have to cross an open street or take the pedestrian bridge over to the parking garage. All of his options were out in the open. She would see him for sure. The only thing to do was wait for night.
…it has to be done before tomorrow…
He just had to get it done before tomorrow. That’s when the real target would be returning, if he returned at all.
…he might get caught in the churn…
Frank didn’t know what “the churn” was, but he was terrified by it.
He crept backwards until the corner of a building was between him and the shopping center.
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
“I don’t like this place anymore,” Liam said. He licked the center from his cookie and then crunched into the hard part.
“Prince loves it. If you want to move, you’re going to have to talk to him,” Corinna said.
The dog made up the third in their triangle. He took up most of the space in the tent. He took up most of the space, and provided nearly all of the odors. Prince put his head down on his paws and looked up at Liam with adorable eyes.
“No,” Liam said. “You smell bad when you eat cookies. You already had your dinner.”
“You want to set up the tent somewhere else tomorrow?” Corinna asked. “We haven’t been back to that bath place in a while. They have all those candles.”
“You won’t let me light them.”
“That’s only because you nearly burned the place to the ground.”
Liam frowned and wrinkled his forehead with thought.
“We need more layers,” Liam said.
Corinna sighed.
His face was already starting to twist up. Liam hated when she got frustrated. Sometimes she couldn’t hide it well enough. Their whole night was going to be miserable if she didn’t manage to rein him back in.
“Above us, we have the tent, the fake ceiling, the real ceiling, the floor, the next fake ceiling, the next real ceiling, then the atrium, then the…”
Liam was already shaking his head. “It’s not enough. I want to go back to the parking garage.”
Corinna sighed again. She couldn’t help it this time.
“Liam, I told you—the parking garage doesn’t have good sides. People would be able to see our light. They would be able to hear us. It’s impossible for us to tell if anyone is coming because everything echoes so much. The floors are hard. It’s just not a good place to camp.”
“I like the heavy layers.”
“I know,” she said with another sigh. “I know.”
When he started to cry, he cried all night. Liam was loud, but when Prince joined in, nobody in the tent had any chance of getting sleep. Corinna couldn’t take it. Of course, when she started to get up, he began to ramp up even more.
“Save it, Liam, I have to take him out.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“He stinks. He has to go.”
She unzipped the flap.
“No. It’s dead there.”
“It’s not dead. We’ll be right back. Everything will be fine. Come with us if you don’t believe me.”
Liam shrunk at the idea. He wrapped his arms around his legs with his knees to his chin. He looked like he could squeeze himself so tight that he might disappear.
“Ten minutes. Tops.”
As soon as she was out, Prince jumped from the tent. He really did have to go out.
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
Frank sat on a bench behind a rack of blue dresses. The store had a long glass wall that looked out to the concourse where the dry fountain sat. He was eating cold mac and cheese from a plastic package that had expired. It tasted fine. Luke always said that expiration dates were simply scare tactics. He was right.
Sitting next to him on the bench was a canned ham. Back north, he could have traded it for a box of fresh vegetables. Canned meats were becoming rare and iffy. That combination drove up their popularity.
Back in Maine, Frank hadn’t kept a decent larder when the shit hit the fan. He had socked in a bunch of provisions in the late nineties, just to be disappointed by the Y2K fiasco. Then, he had taken those lessons learned and tried do a little better for the 2012 end of the Mayan calendar.
When the world failed to end a second time, Frank had been a little discouraged. He had stopped trying to put together the perfect stash of food and supplies and then the world had ended anyway. It was Murphy’s Law—a planned-for apocalypse never comes.
Frank glanced at the ham. There was just enough light coming through the windows to highlight the outline of the pull-tab.
…the ham is for The Prince…
Frank went back to his plastic mac and cheese. One corner was a little too hard and not very tasty. It wouldn’t have been his first choice. He took it from the drugstore two floors up. Most of the food had been taken. From what was left on the shelves, he got a sense of the girl. She didn’t like canned meat, peanuts, or anything heavily processed. If she insisted on staying in the city much longer, she would have to re-think some of those positions.
He set down the mac and cheese and unwrapped a candy bar.
…the girl might have to go…
Frank frowned and shook his head. He wasn’t going to kill the girl. Luke wouldn’t like it. A man was a different topic completely. Sometimes, the only way of humanely dealing with a man who was out of control was to put him out of his misery. Men had a deep drive to dominate and conquer. For some, that drive was strong enough to overshadow survival instinct. It wasn’t fair to subjugate a man like that—they had to be put down.
But a girl, especially a young one with so much potential, should always be saved.
…she might be a firm tether…
Frank didn’t know what that was, but he didn’t like the sound of it. He pictured himself walking towards his perfect life, not able to get there. Something was holding him back. It was a firm tether. That could ruin his whole plan.
Luke would hold out a hardboiled egg a
nd they would sit on the rock wall. Luke would understand. If the only thing keeping them from that ideal future was the death of one young woman, Luke would surely forgive Frank, just this once.
Frank finished his candy as he heard the clicking of nails on tile.
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
The dog sprinted by the long row of windows. Frank held perfectly still until he saw the girl.
…her name is Corinna…
She was still sly even though she wasn’t even paying attention.
Frank dropped behind the rack of dresses and retreated. He carried the ham.
The Prince didn’t take long across the street. He did his business on a strip of grass outside the bank and then began to trot back towards the entrance to the concourse.
“Hey, Prince,” Frank said.
The dog stopped and tensed every muscle.
“You like this, right?”
He pulled the tab on the canned ham and peeled back the lid. This was all part of it. The Origin had said so. The dog loved canned ham, and all Frank had to do to reel him in was let him hear the lid peeling back.
His fluffy tail wagged in the starlight.
“You can have it all. I know they don’t let you have it, but I’m going to let you have the entire thing.”
Prince took two steps forward.
Frank set down the can on the sidewalk and retreated a little to bolster the dog’s confidence. The doors to the concourse were still dark. She was still waiting back in the shadows and she wouldn’t see Frank as long as he held back.
…has to be finished before tomorrow…
“I know,” Frank mumbled. The dog stopped and looked at him. “It’s okay, Prince, I was just talking to myself.”
This time the dog wagged hard. Prince came forward, sniffing at the ham. By the time he touched his tongue to the meat, the dog had forgotten all about Frank.
Frank clicked the leash to the dog’s collar.
Something sharp jabbed into Frank’s back.
“Okay, asshole, what the fuck are you doing?” the girl asked.
…the girl might have to go…
“I know,” Frank said.
“What?”
CHAPTER 35: LONG ISLAND
TY SAT ON THE edge of the chair that was pulled up right next to the couch. He held Tim’s small hand between his massive ones. His voice was raw and gravely from talking too much.
“And she spotted one of those dogs that has the line of fur going the wrong way up its back. She said it looked like a female, but she couldn’t be sure. If Dr. Matthew could do his thing, and then Cedric could do his thing, you never know. That could be a whole different line of pups.”
Brad tapped him on the shoulder.
“You’ve been at it for hours. Let me take over for a bit,” Brad said.
Ty looked at him with sad eyes and then nodded. The big man stood and Murphy got up too. They headed towards the door.
“Hey, Tim,” Brad said. He reached for Tim’s hand, hesitated for a moment, and then took it. “I know, we’re not really on hand-holding terms, but I hope you’ll forgive me. Lisa said it helps make a strong connection.”
Tim’s hand was a little too warm, like he had a fever. Brad held it loosely.
“I wanted to tell you about my ex-wife, but I’m afraid to. That’s the memory that those people were trying to get me to dive into, so I’m afraid it might be dangerous. That’s a terrible feeling, you know? It’s awful to think that one of my treasured memories might be a tripwire now.”
Brad tried to put some order to the thoughts in his head. Romie had described it well—the words describing Karen were orbiting a black hole. If he lingered on them too long, even in his head, he could feel something pulling him into its gravity.
He shook away the thought.
“Instead, I’ll tell you about my house in Kingston Depot. I got it as a compromise. It was far enough in the country that we could get horses and chickens, but it was only a few minutes away from a grocery store. Depends on who you ask, I guess. The word boondocks was thrown around more than once. A lot of days, all I wanted was to be left alone. I had all the things I needed, and more than enough to keep me occupied. On a bright, summer morning, I would wake up and instantly think of a dozen things that made me want to leap out of bed. They were projects—some of them involved very hard work—but they brought with them a type of satisfaction that is indescribable. I could finish chopping wood, building a porch, or clearing a patch of land, and then just stand there for twenty minutes, admiring the results.”
Brad took a sip of water.
“It was easy to convince myself that it was all I wanted, you know? But why do we build these things? Why do we set our hands to these tasks? Where did the satisfaction come from? After the casually-dressed government guys showed up, I started to wonder. They made me a prisoner of the castle that I had built, and then I fortified it even farther to block out the entire world. I still had access to most of my domain, but what good was it? That’s when I realized that I wasn’t doing it for myself. I was engaged in all those improvements for the watcher.”
Brad rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. The fingers of his other hand barely touched Tim’s.
“My ex… At one point, I got into yoga. I still practice sometimes, but it’s tougher now to make it a habit. It’s like meditation, and I gained some insight during those long hours of sweating and trying to hold poses. When I saw myself, I saw three people. There was the doer, the thinker, and the watcher. I could only really be the watcher when I was in a deep state of concentration and effort. Then I would see myself as I really am. When I was locked in that house, blocking out the whole world, the watcher went silent. Then, one night after everyone was gone, he came back.”
Brad looked at the floor.
“As the watcher, I saw that all my projects had been destroyed. All the effort I had put into improving the form and function of my house had been demolished. I wasn’t going to retire there. I wasn’t going to grow old in that place and look around with pride at everything I had accomplished.”
Brad squeezed his temples. There was a headache brewing in there.
“Worse than that, I realized that even if nothing had happened, my projects were useless anyway. I wasn’t doing them to enjoy them now, I was working towards some point in the future. My focus was on the wrong part of the process.”
He squeezed Tim’s fingers.
“I think that’s what is happening to you, Tim. By tapping into this strong memory of yours, they’ve convinced you to focus on the past and the future instead of the life you’re living. Whoever this person was to you, it means nothing now. We all have dreams and regrets. They should be nothing compared to engaging in what is right in front of us.”
It might have been his imagination, but it seemed like Tim was really thinking about what he had said. The man had been stretched out on the couch for hours and hours, only talking that one time to Romie. It would be gratifying to see some reaction.
Lisa’s hand landed on Brad’s shoulder.
“I’ll take over,” she said.
CHAPTER 36: VIRGINIA
ROBBY FOUND THE SWITCH for the lights and the effect was glorious. Bright light shot in every direction and the coyote-things scrambled for the shadows.
Robby spun in his seat, trying to get a count of the animals. It was impossible. They darted and circled, staying just out of sight.
Robby rose up to look through the back window.
“Another piece of good news,” he said. Gordie moved alongside him to look. Robby pointed at the gas can strapped to the back of the cab.
He turned his attention back to the controls of the machine. The locomotion part was simple. Levers in front operated the tracks. Their action was mirrored by foot pedals, connected to the base. The joysticks on either side took a bit longer for him to get the hang of. Gordie spun and changed positions to try to keep track of the coyote-things.
“Hold on. We’re g
oing to have to go through the fence.”
Robby adjusted the throttle a little to give more power to the hydraulics.
The excavator squeaked and ground as he drove towards the fence. The tracks churned and spit dirt. Every time Robby stopped, the cabin rocked. Robby pulled close and adjusted the boom until the bucket sat right against the fence.
“Decision time,” he told Gordie. “As soon as I punch through here, the pack is going to be loose in the park again. There’s no going back.”
He pushed the lever—there was no sense in agonizing over the decision. There was no better solution at hand.
The fence poles bent and the chainlink fence rang like chimes as Robby pushed it with the bucket. It stretched and bent before it finally broke through. Robby adjusted the angle of the excavator to be sure the machine wouldn’t get hung up on anything and then he started to roll forward.
It sounded like they were driving a tank. On either side, coyote-things streaked by the excavator before darting into the shadows again.
“Plenty of fuel, but no plan.”
Robby chewed on different ideas as he navigated down the amusement park’s paths. They were made for foot travel, and hadn’t been maintained in years. The excavator’s tracks chewed and ground at the asphalt. Robby saw the damage when he had to turn around. The tall machine wouldn’t fit under the arching bridge. It was just big enough for a pickup truck to squeeze under and the machine they had stolen was twice that high or more.
As they pulled around the koi ponds, pairs of coyote-thing eyes lit up in the distance and then shot away into the dark.
“How far would this thing get us on the highway?”
It wasn’t a matter of distance, it was speed. The coyote-things might track him for miles or they might give up the chase immediately. There was no way of knowing.
