Distinct

by Hamill, Ike

  Carrie didn’t turn when she heard the front door of the house begin to swing open. She took another bite of her apple and continued to look up towards the sky.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  “What do you want?” the man asked.

  Carrie finally glanced over to see which one she had gotten. It was the young man—maybe mid-twenties. He was the one named Yuri, or Yanni, or…

  …Yurt. His name is Yurt and if you convince him, then he could convince the others. They trust him…

  He was a bit wary of strangers.

  Carrie nibbled at the core of her apple and then tossed it over the fence into the neighboring yard. It wouldn’t ever grow into its own tree. Beverly said it was a hybrid.

  “I don’t want anything,” Carrie said. “We heard there were some people living around here, so we brought some produce. We have a bunch of gardens south of here.”

  Yurt was still approaching slowly. He was holding something behind his back. It was probably a weapon, but Carrie didn’t care. If she was in any danger, wouldn’t The Origin have made her understand?

  “Why would you bring us food?”

  “We have plenty. A couple of people who live in our community used to work in agriculture. They’re ridiculously good at growing food. We preserve tons of food, put up cans of this and that, and we still have too much. We figured it was better to share than to throw it away.”

  “That’s very generous, I’m sure. We don’t need your food. You can take it away or it will sit there and rot.”

  Carrie shrugged. “I guess it will rot then.”

  “Why did you really come?”

  For the first time, she really gave him a good look. He stood still and accepted her scrutiny with confidence. Carrie folded her arms across her chest and exhaled.

  “There’s a man I know who wants to talk with you.”

  “Why?”

  “He has a real offer for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “That, I’m not allowed to say.”

  “Then my answer is the same. You can rot.”

  …His father was nicknamed Squid. Use it…

  Carrie smiled.

  “You have no reason to believe me, but you would believe Squid?”

  The confidence was shorted out of Yurt’s face in an instant. He didn’t step back, but he was shaken. Carrie felt it with all her senses.

  …Squid always talked about the God’s honest truth…

  “Squid told me to come give you the God’s honest truth,” Carrie said.

  Yurt looked like he wanted to find a place to sit down. His eyes wandered and then locked onto something. Carrie followed his gaze. Abe was talking with a woman over near the boxes of food. The Origin had said that Yurt was the key to the others. Apparently, he had been wrong. The food alone had drawn one of them out of hiding.

  Carrie wondered what else he might be wrong about.

  Yurt was staring at her. She realized that he had asked something when her mind had been wandering.

  “What’s that?”

  “I asked you where Squid is right now,” Yurt said.

  “Oh. Sorry,” she said. “He’s actually just a few houses down.”

  …I will be in the master bedroom of 712 Coleridge…

  She pointed and then turned her hands up. “That way, I think? Which way is Coleridge Street?”

  Yurt pointed.

  Carrie nodded. “That’s right. You’re looking for 712 Coleridge Street. Go to the master bedroom.”

  Yurt eyed her.

  “Or don’t. Whatever. You’re the one asking about Squid.”

  …I’ll be wearing a Stihl hat…

  “He’s wearing a Stihl hat. You can’t miss him,” she said.

  Yurt didn’t waste any more time. He turned in the direction of Coleridge Street and then ran. Carrie wiped her hands on her pants. They were still sticky with apple.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  Yurt had left the door to his house open.

  Carrie stepped inside. Very soon, Yurt would burst into the master bedroom of 712 Coleridge, expecting to find his father in a Stihl hat. Carrie didn’t even know what that meant to Yurt. It didn’t matter. The young man had been hooked in, just like The Origin had said he would. And, while The Origin was busy with him, she would have a few minutes to be truly alone.

  She moved through Yurt’s kitchen. The house was backwards on the lot. It had looked like she was approaching the front of the place, but the door had led into the kitchen. The living room was on the opposite side.

  Yurt was some kind of neat freak. The house was beyond tidy. All the surfaces were perfectly clean. The furniture was tight and white—beautiful, but totally impractical for the apocalypse.

  Carrie sat down on Yurt’s couch and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath—the place even smelled clean—and she let it out slowly.

  She waited for the voice inside her to speak up.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  …It’s too easy to slip into his plan…

  “I’m not slipping into his plan,” Carrie thought. “I’m going along with it so I can stay safe, but I’m not slipping into it.”

  …There’s only one chance to overwhelm him…

  “Before I sign up to overwhelm anyone, I have to know why,” she thought. “It occurs to me that I don’t know if The Origin is evil, or maybe you are.”

  …Don’t say you. I am you. You are us. We are together…

  “Convince me.”

  …As soon as all the tethers are gone, he will be dislodged from this world…

  “Sounds good to me. What’s the problem?”

  …As soon as he’s dislodged, this won’t be real anymore. The tethers are the things that maintain this as the real world. When it is dislodged, this world will cease…

  “Why would he do that? If he ends the world that he’s in, won’t he end too?”

  …He is The Origin. He’s the pivot upon which those possibilities spin. When he’s no longer tethered to this, he will be free to live how he always wanted. He doesn’t care how many people get hurt as long as he goes back to his idea of the perfect world…

  “So all I have to do is stop him from removing all the tethers, right? If he is still tethered, then the world can’t be dislodged and it won’t case to be real.”

  …That’s not what happens…

  Carrie let out a frustrated grunt and threw up her hands. If the voice knew so much, why didn’t it just tell her what to do? She was left with a guessing game, a threat of the entire world ending, and no clear idea of how to proceed.

  “Who are you talking to?” he asked.

  Carrie opened her eyes.

  The Origin was sitting in the chair opposite her.

  CHAPTER 46: NEW YORK CITY

  THE MOTORCYCLE FLEW DOWN the road, moving faster and faster with each passing second. The speed was much too fast for safety. Brad couldn’t help himself. The faster he went, the more easily he outpaced the memories.

  A fissure in the pavement nearly ended his trip. Fortunately, the suspension of the bike let it float over the gap in the road.

  The motorcycle was light and lean—meant for trails and sand pits. He had found it on the back of a trailer. The thing didn’t even have brake lights or turn signals. It had started on the second kick though, and the tank was full of oil and gas.

  Brad slammed on the brakes, letting the rear wheel nearly lock as he wobbled to a stop. He looked back over his shoulder. The fissure wasn’t a random failure in the road. Next to the highway, the buildings had been destroyed—likely by one of the sentient tornadoes. Brad remembered the destruction at the farm upstate. That memory was a gateway to the past. He revved the engine and clicked it back into gear.

  He managed to keep his speed lower for a while, so he could look out for other unexpected obstacles. The signs said he was getting closer to the Williamsburg Bridge. Concrete barriers hemmed him in on either side. An elevated train platform had been toppled.
Brad passed by a series of brick buildings that looked familiar—maybe they had been featured in the opening of some old TV show or something.

  He slammed on the brakes again.

  The elevated train platform was still standing.

  The motorcycle’s two-stroke engine chugged underneath him, waiting for Brad to give it gas again. Brad shut it off.

  The wind was blowing down the city block, trying to push him off the motorcycle. The wind was the undisputed master of the city now. With all the people gone, it could blow where it wanted.

  Brad listened for something else.

  There was a hum on the wind. It was a buzz that made him imagine a vast swarm of bees, just on the other side of one of the buildings. Brad took off his helmet and let the dead motorcycle roll forward to see if the sound would change. It was definitely coming from down the block to his north.

  He expected to see a black mass of bees swarm out from the side of the buildings at any second. Brad stopped again and put his foot up on the peg, ready to kick the motorcycle back to life. He crossed his fingers, hoping that his luck with the engine would hold.

  On his left, the elevated train platform had been wrenched to the side by something. Brad nearly dropped the helmet.

  He looked right, for the bees, and then left again. The platform was still down. He didn’t know whether to doubt what his eyes were telling him right now, or to doubt what he had seen minutes before.

  He fumbled the helmet back on his head and started the motorcycle again. He left a big patch of black rubber on the road as he sped off.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  The bridge surrounded him with metal trusses. Brad dodged back and forth, avoiding the abandoned cars. He glanced down at his gas gauge. The needle bounced and jiggled—still plenty in there.

  The break in the road surface almost took him by surprise.

  Again, he stopped.

  For no reason that he could see, the road deck dropped a couple of feet and then continued on. The transition was almost lost to the shadows from the bridge’s structure. Brad straddled the motorcycle and stared down. Destruction, he had expected. A discontinuity in the height of the road was perplexing, to say the least. He couldn’t see any other reason to distrust the integrity of the bridge. There were no cracks or breaks he could see.

  Brad turned the motorcycle sideways and lowered it down.

  Nothing happened, but Brad still didn’t want to take the step himself. Anything that inexplicably dropped a couple of feet might lower even farther.

  He had to go on. Behind him were the bee sounds and the magical up and down train platform. He didn’t want to go back to that.

  When he stepped down to the lower road surface, he felt the difference. It was in his head and chest—a tingle ran through him and the world seemed to shimmer for a fraction of a second. Brad threw his leg back over the bike and peeled out once again. Whatever was happening with the world back there, he wanted to leave it far behind.

  The Lower East Side was even more claustrophobic than the bridge. In places, the streets were full of abandoned cars. Brad had to jump the curb to navigate on sidewalks, or turn around and abandon roads completely in his effort to travel west. A tornado or two had roamed the neighborhoods before him. Some buildings were toppled and some had simply been erased from the landscape, leaving ragged holes in the ground that looked down into the old subterranean floors.

  Brad didn’t like the way the motorcycle’s engine echoed off the builds. The sound slapped back at him, like the city was annoyed by his passage. He turned the wrong way down a street that looked pretty clear and finally got a glimpse of what he came to see.

  The building was there, but it looked all wrong. The facets of the tower formed skinny, interlocking triangles, and a spire at the top added another twenty-five percent to the building’s height. It wasn’t right, and that’s precisely what Brad had come to confirm. With any luck, it’s what Robby had come to see as well and Brad might find a clue to where Robby had gone next.

  As he stared up at the skyline, Brad’s tire banged into something and he nearly spilled from the bike. He managed to catch his balance and then turn to see a toy gun behind him. It must have been a toy, even thought there were no orange markings on the thing to alert police. The weird space-age design of the thing was right out of a Martian movie.

  Brad put his attention back to the road. He didn’t care to crash when he was so close to his objective.

  The Freedom Tower had no spire.

  Brad shook his head and looked again. The interlocking triangles were there, but he saw no spire.

  It was no use arguing with himself about which version was more wrong—they were all wrong. He tilted his head so the helmet’s visor blocked out the tower and he continued towards it.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  Robby flinched back. The tip of her sword had caught his shoulder and broken the skin. It stung, but the bone had prevented the metal from penetrating too deep. He had gotten lucky. He didn’t intend to let her try again.

  “Don’t,” Robby said.

  “Then stop lying to me,” Corinna said. Her next jab hit nothing but air. Robby ducked out of the way and put a little more distance between them.

  “If what you’re saying is remotely true, then it sounds like Liam is in danger,” Robby said. He ducked another jab. “Instead of wasting time and hurting me, you should be telling me everything you know so we can try to save him.”

  She tilted her head and considered his idea.

  Corinna made up her mind quickly.

  “Nope. Can’t trust you. I’m going to bleed the truth out of you. Already off to a decent start.”

  Robby looked down at his own shoulder. The wound still didn’t hurt much, but she was right. His blood was flowing.

  She raised the blade and firmed-up her stance. Her next attack wasn’t going to be jab, it was going to be a swing. No matter where it hit Robby, it was going to hurt him quite a bit.

  “Corinna,” he said.

  She paused, but not because of him. She paused and turned an ear to the wind. Robby heard it too. There was the whine of a small engine echoing through the streets. The wind shifted and the sound was gone.

  “Something bad is happening here, Corinna,” Robby said. “Or it’s about to happen. We might be able to help each other.”

  “Start walking,” she said. She pointed with one hand and held the blade with the other.

  She was distracted and holding the sword with what appeared to be her weak arm. A thought passed through Robby’s head—if he was ever going to be able to overpower her, it might be now. It was probably worth the risk. Then again, it wouldn’t help at all if he wanted to gain her trust.

  He started walking.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  Brad stopped at the base of the tower and leaned the motorcycle against the wall. He shut off the engine and dropped the helmet to the pavement. There was a spray-painted message scrawled over the plaque.

  It read, “ALL LIES.”

  He was afraid to look up and see what the tower looked like. Every time he caught a glimpse of it, the thing changed.

  “What do you want?” a woman’s voice yelled. Brad saw something move and whipped his head to the side. Whatever it was, the thing darted behind a barrier before Brad could get a good look.

  “I’m looking for someone,” Brad called.

  The motorcycle engine ticked as it cooled. Brad was starting to regret killing the engine. He could have jumped back on and gotten to a safe distance to reassess his options. It wasn’t too late. His brain considered the steps as he pictured jumping back on the bike, starting it, and speeding off.

  When his hand touched the handlebar, she called again.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she said. “Get your hands up and step away from there.”

  “I don’t want any trouble,” Brad called. She sounded young. In such a big, empty city, there was no need for a confrontation between the two
of them. He just had to think of a way to convince her of the same. “I’ll just get on my bike and get out of here.”

  He waited for a response.

  “You come back and I’ll kill you myself,” the woman called.

  Hope sparked in Brad’s chest. He moved towards the motorcycle, eager to get away while it seemed that she endorsed the idea. He had no idea what kind of weapon she might have. For that matter, she might have booby-trapped the area. He would retrace his steps the best he could remember and then figure out what to do.

  His plan changed in an instant.

  Instead of the girl’s voice, Brad heard a bark. He knew that bark.

  He took his hand from the motorcycle.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  She was pressing the sword to Robby’s back. He could feel the pressure of the edge. One slight shift and he would be bleeding from another wound. He kept perfectly silent as she yelled, even as he recognized the voice calling back. Robby was still trying to win her trust. He didn’t want her to feel outnumbered. If she suspected that Robby knew the other mysterious visitor, her defenses would fly back up immediately.

  “You come back and I’ll kill you myself,” Corinna yelled.

  From where he was standing, Robby couldn’t see Brad. Corinna had maneuvered Robby so that he was facing the wall and only she could peek around the corner. Every time Brad yelled, Gordie’s ears perked up. Robby tugged at the leash, hoping the dog would stay silent.

  Gordie barked.

  “Please listen to me,” Robby whispered, trying to make his case before she felt outnumbered. “If that’s one of my neighbors, and I think it is, then he’s down here because something has gone wrong at home. I think I know what the issue is, and I suspect that it might be the problem that you’re having with Liam. If we could just talk about this for a minute…”