by Grant Pies
For the first time since we fled the Golden Dawn, Vesa seemed excited about this plan and what was ahead of us. Doc smirked and nodded without making a sound. Whitman was silent. He didn’t wear a TDA uniform. Instead, he wore a jumpsuit, much like the one I wore in New Alcatraz, but a different color. His model number was spray painted across the right chest pocket of the suit. The paint still wet.
The IDs cost me all the currency I had in my bag. The supplies I had packed myself were now dwindled down to only ammunition and my cell phone. The phone fit in my pocket. The gun tucked into my waistband. The empty bag sat in a ball on the floor of our vehicle. Before we left the crematorium, the old man gripped my hand in his ice-cold fingers. “Good luck to you,” he said. “I’ve supplied hundreds of IDs to hundreds of people. I always wished each one a successful journey wherever they were off to. Some wished to disappear forever and start a new life. If I never saw those people again, that meant I did my job. But some people wanted to go somewhere they shouldn’t. Access places only certain people can access. If I never saw those people again, then that meant I failed them. Be careful. I hope to see you again.” He’d let go of my hand slowly and motioned his bony hand toward the exit.
Six hours into the long drive, Vesa and I sat in the back seat of the SUV. The captive agent was tied and blindfolded behind us in the back storage compartment, Doc slept in the passenger seat, and Whitman drove. He didn’t need to sleep. He only stopped when the car needed fuel. Vesa was half asleep. She slid in the seat and pressed against me, burrowing her head into me chest. I tilted my body, so she could almost lie down, and I watched the few trees on the roadside pass by our windows. The rest of the landscape was darkness. Even if there was anything else to look at, I couldn’t see it. I guessed there was more of the same outside: broken buildings that were abandoned, and dying vegetation.
“You know,” Vesa said quietly, so as to not wake Doc, “I used to just dream up what was out there.” I looked down at my chest to see Vesa’s face. She peered up at me and stretched her hand out across my body. I settled my arm around her like it belonged there. The road hummed underneath us, and the night air rushed around us. “Whenever I looked out a window at night, I would just make up stuff that was out there. It was better than actually seeing what really was there. Sometimes I still do it.”
“I think most people do that,” I whispered. “Most people see things as they wish they were, or how they think they will be in the future. Instead of dealing with how things really are now. But what you guys are doing”—I motioned to her and then Whitman up front—“ that’s more than most people do. You are actively trying to change things.”
“We,” Vesa said and smiled. “What we are doing.” She reached for my arm and squeezed.
For a moment I wished we could all decide to stop and turn around. I wished we could all retreat to a safe place, and just enjoy each other’s company for a while without the fear of capture. It had been so long since I had a group of people I knew I could count on, and who could count on me. I wished I had met Vesa some other way. I quickly realized I was doing what I had just accused most people of doing. Wishing, instead of accepting. Our fates led us to Buckley. That is where we were supposed to end up. That is where we had gone thousands of times before, if you believe that kind of thing.
“If this thing works, the possibilities are endless. Not only can we replace those in power, we can essentially live forever. We can have infinite chances to redo things that didn’t work in our last life. Regret would become an impossibility.” Her eyes lit up. The moonlight drifted through the windows and shone against her face. She smiled so big when she talked about this. I hesitated before speaking. I didn’t want to ruin her optimistic outlook.
“I’m still not sure that’s a good thing. Regret, or the fear of regret is a strong motivator,” I said. “Sometimes regret isn’t only about you and what you didn’t do. Most of the times it’s about who you didn’t do something with or say something to. You living forever won’t fix that. You may live forever, jumping from one mind to the next, but everyone around you will live a normal life. You will still lose people, and you will always have something you wish you told them or did for them. That device will just give you an eternity to think about it.”
Vesa looked away and her smile faded. She shifted her body, so she wasn’t pressed so hard into me.
“You’ve lost people, haven’t you?” she asked me. I nodded my head as my mind wandered to the people I had lost. My dad. My mom. Even the people I only knew for a short time, like Red and Hamilton, had left an everlasting impression on my mind. These were the memories my dad so adamantly claimed would wash away the more I thought about them.
“My mother and father,” I answered as my mind drifted back to the present.
“Were you young when it happened? Or an adult?” Vesa asked.
“It’s hard to say, I suppose. Both. I lost my father when I was a young boy. I lost my mother...” My mind drifted. I grasped for a way to answer the question without lying to Vesa. “I lost my mother twice. Once when I was just born, and again when I was older.”
“My mom left Cooper and I when we were little too.” She said. “She left us with my dad. I know how hard that can be.” I felt her hand tighten against my body. I felt her heart beat against me.
“It’s not like that,” I answered. I hated the thought of characterizing my mother as someone who walked out on me. “She just had no choice,” I told her.
“It’s funny how we all look at our family through the most forgiving light possible. We make excuses for them, or we write off their behavior as a one-time fluke or some anomaly.” Vesa said. “We do that until the hard truth stares us right in the face. We hold onto the belief that our family meant well right up until that moment when we just can’t make any more excuses for them. Until their betrayals or hurtful behavior just starts to outweigh the good. I stopped making excuses for my mom after Dad died. Once I realized Cooper and I were really on our own.”
“My mom was different,” I said. “She really was a good person. Sometimes people in your family just have to make hard choices.” I didn’t see the point in arguing whether my mom was a good person or if I was just in denial. Any further explanation would take too long, and reveal too much to Vesa. Doc shifted in his seat in front of us, and Whitman stared out towards the black highway that stretched in front of the car. Our headlights only illuminated the short space ahead of them, we just had to have faith that the road was really still ahead of us.
“My dad died five years ago,” Vesa continued. “It was the first death of someone close to me, I still don’t know if my mom is alive. It was terrifying, but I can’t imagine what it was like for you as a young child to lose your father.” Vesa looked up at me.
“You would think it would be easier to lose a parent when you’re grown,” I said. “After you’ve gone through life, and realized you can make it on your own. You would think it would be easier, or at least not as scary as when you are a kid.” I thought of my short time with my mom in the warehouse in Phoenix. I focused on the time before she died. The time we had to just sit and talk. If only for a few minutes. Our first real encounter was also our last.
“It’s not?” Vesa asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “It’s no easier. Young or old. It’s no better. No worse. No matter your age, time is always unrelenting in the wake of death. It doesn’t stop for you. It doesn’t pause and wait for you to get better. I am sure you experienced that when your brother was killed.” I told her. “You had no choice but to keep going with your plan. You had no time to adjust. Nothing was paused for you.” Vesa nodded and I guessed her mind drifted away to another time.
“Losing your dad and your brother at the same time would be…hard.” I couldn’t think of a better word. Maybe there just wasn’t a word that could capture such loss.
I looked down at Vesa again. She was looking straight ahead out the front of the car at the endless black ro
ad ahead. The sweet smell of her hair wafted upwards. It was a scent I wouldn’t have expected from a person who had essentially been on the run for the last few days. I immediately worried that I might have smelled like I had been on the run for the last few days.
“It was hard. Our dad died, and then I lost Cooper only a month later. But in that month we became so close. We were close before, but not like that. We needed each other more than ever. In a way, dad’s death pushed us even more to get this device created. He worked endlessly in that month to lay the groundwork for what would become this thing,” Vesa placed her hand on the bag resting in her lap. “I think he believed in this cause more than I did.” Vesa stared off through the window, and watched the darkness fly by.
“He sounds like a wonderful person. Dedicated. Smart too. I hope his work pays off, and this thing can do more good than harm.”
“If in the right hands I don’t see how it couldn’t. Your worried it could hurt people?” Vesa answered and looked away from the window and into my eyes.
“Our entire society has always tried to outrun things like time and death. We use technology as a way around the inevitable conclusions of our universe. We build androids to eliminate our own workload, but we just end up working on fixing the androids. Or developing court system for them. We try to conquer time by building time travel devices. We want to use it for good, but all we end up doing is building prisons instead. I have no reason to believe this device will be any different.”
“So why are you helping us?” Vesa asked.
“Because before this device is used for some other purpose, before it’s used to harm innocent people, you guys are going to use it to take down the Ministry of Science and Wayfield Industries. I just want to see them fall. I want to see them pay for murdering my family. After that, I don’t care what happens.”
CHAPTER 52
5280
NEW ALCATRAZ
“What are we doing, Ransom?” Merit asked. “We don’t know where we are, or how many others are down here. We have to turn around.”
Ransom just shook his head and looked around. The cracked gray walls stretched on forever. Straight? Left? What does it matter? he thought. I’m never getting out of here. He looked down at his blood-soaked hands and let out a deep sigh. Muffled screams from down the dark hall bounced off the walls. High-pitched war cries billowed out from deep in the caverns. The screams reached deep into the three men, grabbing their insides and shaking them until they felt nauseous. The guttural noises were something Ransom had never heard come from human beings, and he imagined these people were somehow less developed than those he had already encountered. Those sounds were too animalistic to come from fully evolved humans, Ransom thought. The feet of the screaming hordes pounded on the solid cement floor like marching armies, but faster. Ransom squinted down each end of the tunnel. He tried to tilt his head and figure out where the voices were coming from.
“This way!” Ransom heard the crazed group scream. They were the first fully formed words that reached Ransom’s ears. The noises were getting closer and closer. Growing louder and louder. The three men took off and stopped looking down at the colored lines. Hallways and tunnels branched off the main walkway. They saw lights dotted down each of the smaller tunnels. The lights bounced up and down and grew bigger and brighter as whomever the light bulbs were strapped to ran towards them. The group of vault dwellers was closing in on the small group of outsiders.
Ransom led the way, turning off from what he considered the main hallway. This tunnel was the same as all the others, only slightly smaller with doors lining the walls every few steps. After he turned off the main hall, Ransom turned randomly down other halls. Sometimes he turned left. Sometimes right. Some tunnels curved. Some forked. A small part of Ransom wished the tunnel didn’t branch off. One less split decision he had to make. One less potential mistake in a long line of miserable mistakes. In the distance, the sound of feet pounding on the ground grew louder and louder. Ash looked behind him, fully expecting the crazed group of people to be on his heels. But there were only lights in the distance. Merit gripped his weapon in his hand and wondered if he would know how to use it if he ever had to. The horde of people seemed to come from all directions. By now, Ransom had lost sight of the blue line. They were lost.
All three of the men breathed heavily, their chests heaving up and down. Merit stopped, and bent over with his hands on his knees. Dried saliva coated the corners of his mouth, and his throat felt rough with each attempted gulp. The screams of the others grew louder and louder, until it sounded like they were only steps away. Ash’s eyes darted around. Ransom gripped the gun in his hands. He pointed it towards the noise, but beyond that he didn’t know what to do with the thing. He felt along the contours of the foreign weapon. It was a tool that had the potential to unleash such great damage. There were buttons and levers strewn along its shaft. It was a puzzle whose solution could put an end to all of this. At least temporarily. For the first time, Ransom wondered if each of the men behind them had similar weapons, and the knowledge to use them.
A group of five men rounded the corner, each with a light bulb strapped to his waist. All but one was shirtless. Where at least a normal layer of fat should have been, the sinews of muscle stretched just beneath their skin. And in many places, the hard, thin bones inside of them were visible. Their skin was the color of a full moon, untouched by the sun, hunched over, and grinding their teeth.
They were driven by something that overcame their hunger. They had no weapons, but they appeared to not need any. Their arms and hands flailed toward Ransom, Merit, and Ash like the gnashing teeth of lions. Behind them, Ransom heard even more people. Soon the group would overtake all of them, and Ransom knew they would not be able to escape twice. He squeezed the barrel of the gun. He looked for any part that might move or release another projectile. He looked at Merit, who also held a rifle. He was shaking the device in frustration. Neither brother could learn the complexity of the weapon in time.
Ransom spun the rifle around just before one of the men reached him. He slammed the butt of the gun flat into his face. The pale man’s head jerked backward, and a loud cracking sound shot from his nose. A different type of screech flew from the man’s mouth now. While Ransom fought off the men with his gun, Merit held his gun and swung it wildly at the crazed group, connecting with the thigh of one man and the stomach of another. But even the heavy metal of the rifles did not slow these men down.
Just as Merit fell to the floor, the gun held flat against his chest, two men pounced on him, scratching at his skin. They wrapped their cadaverous fingers around Merit’s face. What little muscle was left on these men was solely dedicated to squeezing Merit’s head until it cracked open to release whatever oozing viscous liquid leaked out. Ransom kicked the face of one of the men on top of Merit. His heel drove into the man’s jaw until the bottom half of his face twisted a quarter of a turn to the left. A third man leaped onto Ransom’s back, clawing at Ransom’s face and sinking his teeth deep into the muscle connecting Ransom’s shoulder and neck.
Ransom let out a loud scream similar to those of the attacking maniacs. He fell backwards and slammed the man on his back into the hard cement. Upon contact with the floor, the man’s teeth sunk deeper into Ransom, but then quickly released. The man underneath Ransom didn’t move. Ransom stumbled to his feet, swinging his fists wildly at the oncoming people. He couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed that a few more men had arrived. Even more screams wailed in the distance. Ransom kicked and punched as many as he could. He heard fists making contact all around him, and knew neither Merit nor Ash had given up yet.
A powerful fist smashed into Ransom’s jaw. The pain shot through his face and traveled into his skull. His teeth clenched and bit down into his tongue. The taste of blood spilled into his mouth as another person kicked Ransom’s knee from the side. His leg buckled, and he felt something inside his knee shift briefly and then pop back into place. He stumbled backwards a
nd tripped over the man who had jumped onto his back.
Ransom felt one of the men around him quickly fall to the floor. He turned and saw Ash had thrown him down and kicked him in the head. Ash’s large body stepped in front of Ransom, and blocked Ransom’s view of the oncoming group of maniacal men. Ransom looked behind him. Merit fought a single person. Ransom quickly wrapped his arm around the man’s throat, squeezing until the man’s body was limp.
“Thanks,” Merit said and nodded at his brother. The two of them turned to see Ash fighting off three men at once. Another group of men approached from a distance, and let out more screams and battle cries.
“Ash!” Ransom shouted to his friend.
Ash ran towards one person and drove his round shoulder into the man’s chest, pushing the man into the wall. Even from a distance, Ransom heard the man’s ribs crack inside of his body. Ash tossed another malnourished vault dweller to the floor with little effort. He turned and looked at both Merit and Ransom.
“Run!” he shouted back. “Go!”
More men clamored down the halls. The lights strapped around them bobbed up and down. With each person Ash threw to the ground, their bulb shattered, and the room grew slightly darker. Two men lunged at Ash at once. He caught one in mid-air and threw him into the other. Both of their bulbs clanked against their bodies and went out. Another man ran toward Ash, and he kicked his leg straight out into the man’s stomach. Ash clasped his hands together into one large fist and drove them down onto the back of the man’s skull. The man fell to the ground.
“Go,” Ash said again, this time a little annoyed. “I can’t hold them off forever!” Another man landed a punch on Ash’s chest, but his fist seemed to bounce off. Ransom looked at his brother. Merit turned and ran with little hesitation. A second and third man ran and jumped onto Ash’s back, and Ash slung one of them to the ground, shattering the bulb around the man’s waist. The filament inside now useless forever. The others kicked and punched Ash. One of them sunk their teeth deep into his arm. Ash let out a scream. The first one since the attack began.
