by Bob Proehl
“I’m not taking it off,” Emmeline says.
“At some point you’re going to have to,” Kimani says. “You decide when that is. Not that girl in the hallway. Not anybody else. You’ll know when you’re ready.”
“I’m not going to,” Emmeline says.
Kimani nods, understanding that the point is not worth arguing. “If you do,” she says, “you’re going to feel the pull back into the Hive. Like you did that first time. Do you remember?”
Emmeline nods, thinking of hands that reached up from the ground and held her down, thinking of an obsidian cage.
“Honey, you cannot go in there,” Kimani says. “If you do, they’ll see you, so go only if you are absolutely desperate. If there is no other choice, you go in there and you call for me and I will come gather you up.”
She pulls Emmeline in and holds on to her desperately, the way you grip something you’re about to lose.
The girl doesn’t say a word as they make their way out of town, but at least she isn’t crying anymore. Carrie’s not sure how she’ll comfort Emmeline, and she wishes she’d been informed that the weapon she was picking up was a teenager. Hidden by Carrie’s ability, they leave the hotel and head back to the culvert Carrie used to enter the city. They don’t see the Faction agents Carrie spotted on the commons, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone. Carrie would feel better if she could see them. Knowing where they are means they aren’t coming up behind.
Emmeline enters the water treatment facility with no complaint but balks when it’s time to descend into the pipe.
“That’s a sewer,” she says, the first words she’s spoken since they left Kimani’s room.
“It’s not a live sewer,” Carrie says. “If it was a live sewer, you’d know all about it.” She makes her way down the ladder without looking back. The implication is clear: I’m going, so you can either come with me or take your shitty chances here. When Carrie’s reached the bottom and Emmeline has yet to begin her climb down, Carrie thinks she may have miscalculated and sent the girl running back to Kimani. One leg extends over the edge above, a sneaker pads onto the ladder rung, and Carrie marks this in her head as the beginning of the journey.
When Emmeline gets to the bottom, Carrie cautions her to stay close and lights their way with the iPod, an artifact Emmeline seems not to recognize. The walk through the dark is easier knowing how long it will take. With the moon high and full, light spills into the far end of the tunnel after a few minutes’ walk.
Carrie motions for Emmeline to wait and steps out of the culvert, invisible. She scans the top of the wall for lookouts. Seeing none, she signals for Emmeline to join her. The girl doesn’t move. She stands in the open mouth of the culvert, dwarfed by her rucksack, the wall, and the full moon suspended above them like a searchlight.
“Come on,” Carrie says. “Car’s south of here, an hour or two’s hike.”
“It’s dark,” Emmeline says, as if Carrie doesn’t notice. She talks like a teenager even though she’s spent most of her teenage years in isolation. How does that happen? Quirks and habits of being an American teenager genetically encoded, like oncogenes waiting for a trigger, and the trigger is time. Carrie thinks of her brother at this age, before he and her father left Deerfield and came west. The way he stated the obvious as if she was unaware of it and refuted the obvious if she stated it. He needed to be the sole arbiter of reality. Carrie smiles at Emmeline.
“Moon’s full,” Carrie says, pointing up. “There’s plenty of light. Too much.”
With a huff, Emmeline comes out of the culvert and follows Carrie, back to being silent. Carrie hides them both with her ability, which isn’t easy. Emmeline keeps lagging behind, falling outside the umbra of Carrie’s invisibility so Carrie needs to let her catch up. She considers asking Emmeline to walk out front, but if she lets Emmeline set their pace, they’ll never get to the car. When they’re far enough that Carrie can look back and not see the wall, she relaxes. They’re translucent, ghosts in the woods. Carrie whistles “Moonlight Mile” by the Rolling Stones, flat and tuneless.
“My dad liked that song,” Emmeline says. It’s the cruelest thing a kid can say to someone who thinks of themselves as young. It knocks Carrie back a generation, into the kingdom of the obsolete and uncool. “How much farther are we going?” Emmeline asks.
“Till we get there,” says Carrie.
“Jesus, you are totally a dad,” Emmeline says.
Carrie looks back at her and wonders how Kimani handled her for so long. A stranger could mistake Kimani and Emmeline for mother and daughter, but the bond between them was different. They hadn’t chosen each other any more than a parent chooses their child, but they came to each other at a point in their lives when they understood what they needed and what they were able to give. The last time Carrie saw her mother, she was in a hospital bed. Carrie looked down at her, thinking, We never got it right, you and I.
Emmeline huffs and grunts, an unnecessary show of travail. She’s lost her mother, too, Carrie thinks. She resolves to be gentler, knowing this won’t last through more than one angry question or smarmy remark.
Unlike coming through the culvert, the walk back to the car is out of proportion with the walk to it. Doubt tickles the back of Carrie’s neck, a nagging sense she’s lost her way. Nothing is familiar, even things she noted on the way into Boulder.
“It’s big out here,” Emmeline says. Her voice is a shock in the white noise of night sounds. “In town all you can see is mountains on either side. Like you’re in a bowl.”
Carrie doesn’t respond, checking the bark of a tree for a chalk mark she’s sure she left.
“I remember you from Bishop,” Emmeline says.
Carrie keeps searching, running her finger along pieces of bark. “I remember you, too,” she says.
“You were gone before the fight,” Emmeline says.
“I was in one of the camps,” Carrie says. “Were you there?”
“I got sent away before it happened,” Emmeline says. “I feel like that’s the last thing I remember from the real world.”
Carrie spots the chalk mark on a tree, and it looks nothing like she remembered it. The car is hidden in underbrush nearby, bits of blue peeking out from the green.
“Finally,” Emmeline says. They throw their packs into the trunk and get in, but when Carrie tries the keys, the Kia sputters and dies. She keeps trying, but the engine sounds are weaker each time. Cursing, she gets out of the car and paces an angry circle around it.
“Let me try,” Emmeline says, hanging off the open passenger side door.
“It doesn’t matter who tries,” Carrie snaps. “The car is fucking dead.” She hurls the keys into a copse of paper birch. Each tree looks like Bryce, arms crossed, chiding her. What’re you going to do now, kid?
“You kind of suck at this,” Emmeline says. Carrie ignores her and pops the hood. She looks for obvious signs of tampering: a cut hose or a wire pulled out of its proper place. That there aren’t any doesn’t mean anything. Carrie knows ways to kill a car without leaving a trace. It’s as likely the Kia died a natural death, and either way where they’re at is more important than how they came to be there.
“We should sleep,” Carrie says. “There’s a clear patch we passed a little ways back.”
“And then what?” Emmeline says.
“Then we go back,” Carrie says. “But let’s get something to eat in us and at least a half night’s sleep.”
The terrain is rocky and the tree cover isn’t as heavy as Carrie might like, but she can’t push the girl any further. She watches Emmeline eat granola bars while she checks the blade tucked in the back of her belt and the other at her ankle.
“Your nose,” Emmeline says, pointing.
Carrie’s hand goes to her nostril and comes away bloody. “It’s nothing.”
“It
’s fucking blood,” says Emmeline.
“It happens,” Carrie says. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Does it hurt?” Emmeline asks.
“Fuck yes,” says Carrie.
Emmeline pauses, about to say something sympathetic. Instead, she chucks her apple core up and into the woods. Carrie winces at the noise it makes falling through the branches and crashing to earth. Emmeline curls up like a cat and falls asleep on the rocky bed of stones and roots.
Carrie cleans the blood from her nose with the hem of her black shirt. She thinks of how few changes of clothes she has and decides it would be best if one of her three shirts wasn’t crusted with blood. She remembers a creek farther back. Pausing to be sure the girl’s asleep, she heads through the woods.
She hears someone moving, coming from the east, the way they came. It could be a coincidence. There aren’t many recreational hikers in this forest, especially at night. She centers her ability, making herself entirely invisible. Even the sounds she makes are imperceptible. She barely exists. It hurts, an all-body ache along with the dull throb in her brain.
Carrie moves toward the sound, taking a wide circle away from their makeshift camp. In a clearing, she sees Martin Scholl hovering a few inches above a crag that gives him the advantage of higher ground. His toes point downward, his legs trailing.
Her ability negates the need for stealth. The spy Miquel imagined she’d grow up to be would sneak behind Martin and press herself against his back with her blade at his throat. Carrie doesn’t need to do any of that. She pulls the knife out of her belt, holding it so the blade rests against her forearm. She sprints across the open space of the clearing. The moon is ahead of her, but she casts no shadow. The night is dead quiet, but her feet make no sound in the dry, crisp grass. Standing in front of Martin, her eyes at the level of his knees, she stabs her knife into his foot, sliding it smoothly through the flesh between the slotted bones. Martin yelps and crashes onto the ground, falling splayed at Carrie’s feet. He clutches his foot and wails like a cat in heat as he rolls on the ground. Still invisible, she straddles him and cuts his throat. His cries drown in red gurgling noises. As the blood hits her, hot and coppery, it disappears like drops of water on a hot skillet.
“Fuck,” Carrie says. “Fuck, I’m sorry, fuck.” Behind the apology, an unpleasant thrill seethes, an affirmation of every ugly urge that’s welled up in her since she left fighting behind. It fills her lungs like a former smoker’s first drag in years. The guilt and the rush crash together in the pit of her stomach, and Carrie doubles over, retching up all the culinary oddities she forced down at the restaurant.
As she collects herself, she hears a voice calling Martin’s name. She wipes the blade on Martin’s sleeve, leaving a red slash. Out of habit and instinct, Carrie hides behind the rock to wait for her.
Thandi enters the clearing, wearing her own face, younger than Carrie. She was a Pulser and a pacifist who took to the violence of the Faction’s work with zeal once she let herself go. She sees Martin’s body and rushes to it, lifting an arm to check for a pulse and then dropping it dispassionately. “I can feel you, bitch,” she says loudly, as if Carrie’s in the trees somewhere. “I know you think you’re the ultimate ninja badass because you killed Marty, but here’s the news. Marty got winded opening a bag of chips. You’re not half as hard as you think you are. You never were.”
She steps around the rock to where Carrie can see her. She looks like Carrie seen through a smeared lens: her shoulder-length brown hair, Carrie’s mother’s nose that doesn’t match up with Carrie’s cheekbones. Carrie’s drawn to her, like noticing something off about her reflection and leaning in to examine it. They approach each other around the crag, Thandi who looks like Carrie and Carrie who doesn’t look like anything.
“I’m going to kill the kid while wearing your face,” Thandi says. She’s shouting; she can’t see Carrie right in front of her own face. “Her last thought’s going to be like Why are you doing this? I trusted you!” Carrie’s closer, but Thandi’s features are blurred, her imitation of Carrie out of focus. Carrie comes near enough to touch her, to lay a hand on her own face. She squints, trying to make Thandi’s imitation of her face distinct. She presses the knife in below Thandi’s sternum and shoves it up.
Thandi’s rendition of Carrie registers the shock of the wound, then flutters like a swarm of moths and resettles into the girl’s real face. She was prettier than me, Carrie thinks fleetingly, the shallowness of the thought more striking to her than its content. Thandi’s hands go to the handle of the knife, wrapping around it as if she’s cradling a tiny animal to her chest. As she slumps to the ground, Carrie eases back up into the visible world, bringing all the blood with her.
When she wakes, Emmeline’s body feels less rested than disjointed and bruised. Sleep was a bad idea; it made things worse.
“Why’d you change your shirt?” she asks Carrie. The other one had the name of a band Emmeline had at least heard of.
“Black gets too hot in the sun,” Carrie says, checking their bags to be sure they aren’t leaving anything behind.
“This shirt’s black, too,” Emmeline says. Carrie ignores her, slinging her sack over her shoulder like she’s Santa Claus and starting toward the city.
Sneaking back into Boulder as the sun comes up draws a line under what a bad plan all this is. What’s worse is that Carrie won’t let Emmeline go home.
“We can stay with Kimani until you figure out what the fuck you’re doing,” Emmeline says. “Which could be forever.” She’s flirting with the edge of Carrie’s patience; her mood is worse coming back than it was going out, which Emmeline wouldn’t have thought possible. She wants to pick a fight. If she can get Carrie to hate her, maybe Carrie will let her go.
“She won’t be there,” Carrie says, talking down to Emmeline like she’s some idiot kid. “Kimani said they see her when she moves. If she wants to keep you safe, the best thing she can do is jump out of here and hope they follow her. The door won’t be where it was.”
It’s not a theory Emmeline can discount, so she shuts up and lets Carrie lead her through downtown. Passersby look right through them, and a few times Emmeline has to jump to get out of someone’s way. There’s no thrill to being invisible, no promise of mischief. It makes Emmeline feel less connected to the world, not much of a change from how she already feels. They end up at Avista Adventist Hospital, which looks like a modern airport grafted onto a 1970s office building.
“Let’s find someplace to put you,” Carrie says.
“I’ll stay with you,” says Emmeline.
Carrie grips her temples. “I need to go in there and be seen,” she says. “I can’t hide you while I do that. I need a break.” She tells Emmeline to hide behind a medical waste dumpster while she goes in. After what seems like an hour inhaling the smell of shit and blood and rot, Carrie comes back with another white lady, this one a few years older than Carrie but not as old as Kimani. She introduces herself as Alyssa. “This is my sister, Esther,” Carrie says. Emmeline starts to correct her, but Carrie gives her a glare that shuts her up.
“You two are sisters?” Alyssa asks.
“Half sisters,” Emmeline says. “Different dads.”
“Sure, great,” Alyssa says. Carrie extends her ability to cover all three, and Alyssa gasps as everything around them takes on the opalescent quality it does when you’re looking out from inside invisibility.
“Stay quiet,” Carrie says.
Their path takes them back the way they came, but when Emmeline asks where Alyssa is taking them, Carrie shushes her. Frustratingly, Emmeline’s response at being shushed is to silently seethe at Carrie, which gives Carrie what she wants anyway. They end up at a hospice facility downtown, a modest brick building with only a small sign to mark it. Malcolm, the nurse who runs the facility, buzzes them in when he sees Alyssa but stops when Carrie fades
herself and Emmeline back up into visibility.
“This is a sacred space,” he says.
“You’re empty,” says Alyssa. “It’s a few nights.”
“I don’t want them in here,” he says. He must have been in college when the war started. He probably imagined a whole life that never happened and thought its loss entitled him to bitterness, as if it hadn’t happened to everyone else.
“They are the ones supplying us with antibiotics and painkillers,” Alyssa says. “They are half the reason your hospice isn’t full up with the dying, and I’m the other half.” She gives him a shove to the side, and Emmeline falls slightly in love.
Carrie takes a room, and Emmeline takes the one next door to it. The walls are decorated with a pantheon of religious icons. White Jesus and Black Jesus. Buddha and Ganesh. Beautiful scrolls of Arabic script. There’s a peace about the room, a deep calm that makes Emmeline think of her mother. She imagines hundreds of souls leaving the world from this room, wearing away at the border between here and whatever’s next the way drops of water erode a rock over a thousand years. It’s a beautiful idea constructed of things Emmeline can’t bring herself to believe.
Alyssa makes a call from the phone at the nurse’s desk. Emmeline watches through the doorway, mesmerized. It’s been years since she’s seen anyone use a landline outside of the old movies Kimani likes. When she’s done, Alyssa convenes them in Emmeline’s room.
“I’m working on getting you a car,” Alyssa says, sitting in the armchair next to the bed. “Might take a day or two. The bus lines run on the electric grid. There aren’t many working cars in town, much less gasoline. We could get you an electric. How far are you headed?”
Emmeline looks at Carrie, hoping to get some glimmer of a plan.
“Far,” Carrie says.
“The settlement in Wichita’s within range of a charge if their grid is up and running,” she says.
“It’s got to be gas,” Carrie says. “Lots of it.”
