Light Years

by Emily Ziff Griffin

  “Yeah. I just … I got a little dizzy. I’m fine.”

  “You sure?”

  I nod. He takes my hand and we begin to walk. My legs buzz and his smell mixes with the nauseating odor of piss and shit. The place feels like an airplane cabin during turbulence. People’s whispers are punctuated by the sounds of coughing, vomiting, and the beeping of machines.

  We move through rows of beds, body after body. Some are frozen in death; others are lifeless even as they continue to breathe. I see everything through a haze of scarlet and tree-bark brown. I strap on my watch over my gown, open the camera, and start recording.

  We pass a sleeping child clutching a stuffed giraffe. We pass a woman whose face is obscured by her long hair caked to her cheeks with sweat.

  A heavyset woman calls out “Sarah!” as we walk by. She looks at me like she knows me. She reaches out her arm. “Water, please!” she begs before burrowing under the thin white blanket that barely covers her large body. She shivers and so do I.

  A loud crash as a nurse upends a tray of instruments. The clatter of metal on the floor halts the colors. I stop the camera and kneel down to help the nurse. Her eyes are swollen and ringed with circles.

  “I haven’t slept. I can’t keep my hands steady,” she explains as we pile her supplies back on the tray. I stand up and grab Kamal’s hand. I start filming again.

  I lock eyes with a man roughly my father’s age. He lies under a white sheet, one shoulder peeking out. His cheeks are hollow and he looks up at me like he’s asking for something. I look away, then back.

  I wonder if somewhere in New Jersey there’s a girl avoiding my dying father’s eyes.

  I gasp for breath as the swirling hues return. Kamal’s hand presses against mine. Our fingers weave together like braided rope.

  “This is worse than I thought,” I whisper. He nods, carefully snapping a photo when no one is looking. We keep going.

  We come upon a tent made from strung-up bed sheets. A cardboard sign above the opening reads CHAPEL scrawled in black marker. Kamal drifts toward it, leading us inside. Several short rows of folding chairs face a trio of upended plastic garbage cans covered with burning candles.

  I take a breath. The sensations ease up. Inside here, it’s like being in the pool. There’s a calm, reverent feeling. Three women sit shrouded in protective gear facing the flickering candles. Their heads are bowed in prayer. A fourth sits off to the side reading a Bible. She looks up at me. Her eyes sparkle in the light.

  Kamal sits down and lowers his chin to his chest. He closes his eyes and begins whispering words I can’t discern. I stop the camera and move closer. I take the seat next to his. He’s speaking Arabic. I don’t understand the words, but the harsh edges of the sounds mix with the softness of their rhythm. They transmit meaning the way music does, through feeling and intention.

  I am lulled by his prayer. The sadness in his voice floods my body as the strength underneath it lifts me up. I gaze at the woman reading the Bible.

  Is her God kind or punishing?

  When Kamal finishes I put my hand on his knee.

  “We should go,” I whisper. He opens his eyes and nods. We stand up.

  The woman with the Bible moves swiftly toward us. “Here,” she murmurs, handing me the book. “Here.”

  “I can’t,” I whisper, handing it back.

  “I’m not sick. It hasn’t been touched by anyone infected,” she assures me.

  “No, it isn’t that,” I say. “I’m not religious.”

  Her eyes dance in the candlelight.

  “Religion and spirit are two very different things,” she says. “You have a spirit. Therefore the Bible is your story. Read it like a childhood favorite and God will find his way to you.”

  I want to believe her, but I don’t. I’ve observed forces and dimensions we can’t fathom represented on the page by math. I know there is more to reality than just our everyday experience. I am evidence of that. But saying the word God like it’s a real thing makes me feel like an idiot. Holding a Bible makes me feel like a phony.

  “Okay,” I say, just wanting to go.

  Kamal and I leave through the hanging sheets. We shuffle back through the sea of beds and arrive at the exit station. We dump our protective clothes into a bin. They give us yet another set of gloves and masks. I pause, holding the Bible over the heap of refuse, ready to drop it.

  “Keep it moving,” a voice calls from behind. Next thing I know, we’re back on the hot pavement outside. The book is still in my hands.

  Kamal glances at my watch. “You get anything?”

  “I feel like my hands were shaking the whole time. Whatever I shot probably looks like shit.”

  “Yeah.” He opens the photos on his phone.

  “But I’m glad I went in,” I add.

  “You’re not afraid of anything, are you?”

  “Actually, I’m afraid of everything.”

  “Liar.”

  I smile and he stops walking.

  “What?”

  “I’m just thinking,” he says.

  “What are you thinking?”

  He pulls up his mask. “I don’t know. It’s not the right time, I guess.” His focus on me is steady, like the sun in a cloudless sky. I pull up my mask and meet his eyes, allowing the pulses of orange and silver that come. “We should go,” he says, replacing his mask.

  My fingers clutch the Bible as we walk, a buoy in unfamiliar water.

  CHAPTER 11

  Ben’s sitting in the car when we get back. His eyes are red and narrow. His jaw is tight.

  “You’re still pissed?” I growl. Kamal and I climb in. Ben avoids my gaze and he says nothing. Phoebe arrives a minute later.

  “Let’s go,” she says brusquely and disappears behind her sunglasses. Kamal puts the car into gear. The engine’s soundlessness amplifies the tension smothering us all.

  I look out the back window as we creep toward the checkpoint. The Walmart is like a murky lake—still and calm on the surface, roiling with putrid decay inside. My throat tightens.

  We exit slowly through the barricades and I glimpse Connors manning his post. I want to call to him to get in the car with us. I want to save him even if he doesn’t think he needs saving. Or maybe I just want my brother to not be angry at me.

  We trade this bleak strip of suburban sprawl for the cow pastures and prairies of rural Ohio. The still-rising tower of black smoke anchors the view to the north. I stare at it through sepia tones until it fades into the distance.

  I check my watch. No messages.

  “Did you find her?” I ask Phoebe.

  She blinks slowly. “I did.”

  “How is she?”

  She smacks her lips and looks out at the wide-open swath of grass holding up an electric summer sky. “Did you get any pictures?” she asks.

  “Yeah. I’ll send you what I got,” I tell her.

  I look at the video I shot. Faces shuffle by in a shaky frame, but the camera lingers where I stopped walking: on the man with hollow cheeks and a pleading stare.

  The footage continues past the point where I looked away. The man mouths something, looking straight into the lens.

  I run it back a few seconds and watch again. I watch his lips.

  It looks like, “I’m sorry.” A clicking sound and a chill up my spine. I turn it off.

  Kamal reaches for the GPS and puts the car into Selfdrive.

  “How far are we?” Ben asks.

  “A day and a half, little less. Depends how much we stop.”

  “We shouldn’t stop at all,” I say. “Unless we have to.”

  I look at Ben and try to think of something I can say to soften his mood. I’m searching for something funny, a story I can tell, but nothing funny comes to mind.

  We pass a clapboard farmhouse with a tractor out front. An old barn and grain silo stand off to the side. Behind them, rows of corn that stretch toward the horizon. Nature is the rule maker here. Survival depends on willingness,
hard work, and the miraculous, unpredictable generosity of the earth itself. I want my life to be like that. I want my love for my father and my willingness to do anything to save him to make a miracle occur.

  The haunting howl of the train whistle breaks my reverie. X-shaped signs on railroad-crossing posts loom ahead of us. Red-and-white barrier bars reach high toward the open sky.

  My eyes are pulled past them to the squiggly whisper of two moving figures up ahead. They are barely visible behind a wall of hot air refracting the light.

  The whistle again, only louder now. It pulls my focus to the right. The snaking train comes charging across the plain.

  The bells ring.

  I shoot back to the crossing. The red lights are flashing. The bars make their smooth descent into place. The two figures are getting closer, now on our side of the tracks. We cruise toward them. Then our speed gently slows.

  A clear look at their faces and a burst of yellow like a punch.

  “Turn around!” I exclaim.

  “What?” The car stops ten or so feet behind the tracks and the train comes ripping past with a jolt.

  The two figures, a man and woman, are now on either side of the car. Their skin is pink with sunburn and their plain clothes are smudged with dirt.

  “Seriously, turn around,” I insist. Kamal fumbles with the controls. I squint through the haze of banana-colored light making it difficult to see.

  The man whips a gun from behind his back. He points it straight at Kamal’s head.

  “Open the window,” he yells, his voice muffled by the thundering train.

  I dig my nails into the seat. I glance at the woman standing by Phoebe’s door. She’s holding a knife. I remember my own knife, only inches from my hands inside my backpack. But this man, he has a gun.

  Kamal brings the window down.

  “I’m going to need each of you to step out of the car, slowly. No fucking around,” the man says.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” murmurs Ben. “I fucking knew it.” Kamal puts his hands up and the man opens his door. The woman opens Phoebe’s and then Ben’s. My stomach drops into my knees. Practically blind, I feel for my pack. We might survive without the car, but we won’t make it without food and water. My door opens with a sound like a soda top popping.

  “Let’s go, get out,” the man with the gun says. But his voice wavers. It has a metallic taste.

  I climb out, slowly, holding my backpack.

  It’s just waves, I think.

  I glance at the train chugging past. Its rhythm dulls the color in my view just enough that when I look back at the man, I can see his eyes clearly. Uneasiness seeps from his pores along with his sweat. The guys in the tunnel were all about the feeling of power. But this man is desperate and afraid. Which means he’s truly dangerous.

  “Get in,” the man calls to the woman with the knife, his gaze never leaving mine.

  Our eyes exchange the light bouncing off each other’s faces. Warmth starts to build in my chest. It quickly becomes a blazing heat that radiates out. It seems to envelope him. Sweat drips down his temples.

  The last of the train’s cars passes. The clacking and grating of the wheels fades into the distance and it’s as if he and I are the only two people on the planet. His hand starts to shake. Tears begin to fall from his eyes. All the while, his gun is pointing at my heart.

  My own eyes well as he begins to weep. Then, the swell of invisible heat holding us together recedes. He lowers the gun and wipes his face with the back of his hand. He looks quickly at Kamal, then scrambles into the driver’s seat, slams the door, and peels out.

  The four of us stand there watching our car get smaller and smaller.

  “What the fuck?” Phoebe exclaims. “You just, like, looked at that guy and he started crying.” She glances down at her hands. “I’m shaking.”

  “People talk about their lives flashing before their eyes and I always thought that was utter bullshit, but it just happened.” Kamal’s voice sounds wild. “I was standing there like, we are all about to die and I saw my whole life like one of those flipbooks.”

  I crumple to the ground.

  “Shit.” Kamal kneels down to face me. “You all right?”

  “I feel weak,” I say.

  “Let’s get out of the road, okay?” He helps me up and leads me over to the grass. I sit back down.

  “You’re hungry. And thirsty,” Ben says, his tone still cold. “And we’ve just been carjacked at gunpoint. I knew this whole trip was a mistake.”

  “Take some deep breaths,” Kamal says, ignoring him. I lift my mask and take in the fresh air, wondering if Ben is right. What if we are going to get ourselves killed out here?

  Kamal picks up my pack. “Nice move grabbing this.” He opens it and fishes out a nutrition bar. “Are you able to walk?” He hands me the bar. “Because we need to keep moving.” I nod and slowly stand.

  He turns to Phoebe. “Can Front Line send us another car or something?”

  She looks at her watch. “No service.” The rest of us check ours.

  I look back at the railroad crossing. “We can follow the tracks,” I say. “When we reach the nearest rail yard we’ll either have service or we can jump a train.”

  The three of them stare at me.

  “What?”

  Kamal laughs. “You’re like some kind of apocalypse Jedi.” I smile and put my mask back on.

  We start walking along the silvery curving lines that stretch out into forever as the sun dips behind a cloud, covering us in shade.

  Ben hangs back a few yards as we find a rhythm. I keep checking my watch: no service.

  “I’m sorry for what I said back there,” Ben says suddenly. “About your sister not being our problem.”

  Phoebe turns. “Thank you. I know this is all hard for you too.”

  Ben nods and we keep walking. “What was it like? To see her?” he asks.

  “Hard,” she replies. “And now I have this image of her in my head. It’s all I can see.”

  “But didn’t you have that anyway? Weren’t you already imagining something awful?” He’s talking about himself. I can tell.

  “Yeah, but what I saw is real. I know it’s real now.”

  “Does that make it worse?” His interest is genuine, and I share it. I have a picture in my head. Our father is lying paralyzed on a cot in New Jersey, shivering, scared, and entirely alone. Would I feel better or worse if I could see him?

  “It’s awful,” she answers. “I don’t know if it’s worse.”

  “Was she able to talk?” I ask.

  “I don’t really want to talk about this actually,” she replies sharply.

  We walk on without speaking. It’s late afternoon when we reach the rail yard. Massive diesel engines buzz as they refuel. A lone worker walks alongside one of the trains making notes on a clipboard. We watch him. He’s just a guy at work. If we didn’t know what was happening, this would look like just another ordinary day.

  “Stay here,” Phoebe says. She charges toward him, stuffing her mask and gloves into the back pocket of her denim shorts.

  We find some shade and watch her delicate fingers pull her bangs aside. Her jewel-like eyes catch the light. Her bra strap falls from her shoulder and lands on the smooth, milky skin of her upper arm. She smiles like, “Oops.”

  The worker’s eyes fall on the pink band of elastic. He cocks his head to the side as she talks. He’s going to tell her whatever she wants to know.

  I look over at Ben and Kamal watching her. I forget for a second that I exist.

  A minute later Phoebe heads back toward us. The worker watches her go. She moves like she can feel his eyes on her—chest high, hips rolling from side to side. I wonder how she learned to be the way she is. How did she become a woman and not just a girl?

  “The train on the fourth track over there is going to California,” she tells us. “It leaves in about an hour and arrives in LA the day after tomorrow.”

  “Amazing,” K
amal gushes. We sneak around the hulking masses of steel and find the westbound train. We walk down until we come to an open boxcar.

  “This looks good,” Phoebe says.

  Kamal hesitates. “So we just jump in there or?”

  I throw my backpack inside. “I guess so.”

  Phoebe climbs in first, then Kamal, then me. The humid air inside envelops us in deep shade and the smell of stale coffee. Ben remains standing on the graveled cement.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “I didn’t say good-bye,” he answers. I search his face, boyish like our dad’s. His eyes are glassy. “I need to see him again.”

  “You will. When this is all over and we go home, you’ll see him. And you won’t have to say good-bye.”

  “C’mon, Lu. We both know that’s not how this is gonna go.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “Well, I do. And look, I get it. We came on this trip because we wanted to do something and we were desperate. But at this point, we’re just being delusional. You saw that place. It’s filled with people just like Dad. I’m sorry, but they’re all going to die, every last one of them. I need to say good-bye, if it’s not already too late. I have to try. I can’t live with myself if I don’t.”

  I look down at the scar on my knee. I think of my father, how he would hold me when I fell. I want to see him too. I want to be next to him on the couch, to hear him playing piano through the closed door.

  “I have to go back,” he says.

  But that’s not the life that’s waiting for us back home.

  “And I have to stay,” I tell him. “I’m not ready to give up.”

  We stare hard at each other, tethered by the intangible bond that exists only between siblings. It’s a bond that begins before birth and in that sense before time, before space, before matter.

  “I’m not a child,” I say evenly, peppermint washing over me.

  “I know,” he says. His eyes brim with tears. “I know.” He turns to Kamal and Phoebe. “You guys have to take care of her. Keep her safe.”

  “Of course,” Kamal murmurs.

  “ ’Cause we made a deal not to die.” He smiles. Silver light flickers across my eyes. God, I love Ben.