Strange Exit

by Parker Peevyhouse

  “What about the fire?” Taren said, lifting his gaze to the drifting smoke.

  “Just make sure to tell me when the sky turns red.” Lake ignored Taren’s incredulous look and cracked open the door. Figures sat hunched at a table. She pushed the door open farther and stepped inside, her boots muffled by the ash that carpeted the floor.

  “I never know when to expect a door to take us into a room,” Taren said, edging in behind her, “instead of into another places.”

  “It depends on who’s opening the door,” Lake said, “and what they envision.”

  She looked around. It was really two tables, and four times as many strangers, some of them playing cards at the tables, one leaning over a sale counter, one scanning the shelves that lined every wall. Flakes of ash drifted down between bare roof beams, unnoticed.

  No one looked up when Lake and her crew walked in.

  The teen girl behind the counter called teasingly to one of the cardplayers, “You have a pair. Everyone knows you have a pair when you grimace like that.”

  The boy glared at her and slapped his cards onto the table. The other cardplayers laughed. Their clothes were ripped, their necks black with dirt, faces speckled with ash. They still hadn’t looked up at the newcomers.

  “Mind if we come in?” Lake asked.

  The girl behind the counter gave her a perfunctory smile. “We do credit if your name’s good. Otherwise, we do trades. We don’t take promises.”

  “I’ve sworn off those anyway,” Lake said. She eyed the teens at both tables while she pretended to be interested in the odd offerings teetering on the shelves: wind-up flashlights and pliers and huge cans of food and boxes of infant formula. Something was off here. The girl in the splintered chair was staring at the table instead of at the cards she held. The boy across the room studied a shelf without picking anything up.

  “We’re shopping?” Taren whispered as Lake picked over the shelves. “Do you remember there’s a firestorm heading this way?”

  “I’m getting a feel for the crowd,” Lake murmured.

  Willow leaned in to say, “Is it just me or is everyone here giving off a weird vibe?”

  Taren and Lake turned in time to see a boy at one of the tables lift a tin cup to his lips, ignore the flakes of ash that fell into his drink, and take a swig.

  Something’s definitely wrong here.

  The door opened and a boy in a ratty trucker cap leaned in. “Where do you want me to stack the firewood I collected?” Didn’t seem to notice three strangers standing nearby. But maybe strangers were common around here.

  “Side of the building,” the girl behind the counter said, “where people can see we have it.”

  He disappeared, and Lake couldn’t hold off any longer. “Any idea where we can find the Battery?” she asked the shopkeeper behind the counter.

  But the girl didn’t seem to hear her. Her attention went to a boy who’d been browsing the shelves since Lake had walked in.

  “What are you looking for, Ryan?” the girl called.

  “Got any more boxes of those waterproof matches?”

  Taren lifted his eyebrows and muttered to Lake, “He could just wait five minutes—these roof beams are about to turn into matchsticks.”

  Lake coughed against the ash in her throat. “We need to figure out whose bad mood is manifesting disaster. See if we can head it off.”

  “What do you mean?” Taren asked.

  “We need to figure out who here is the dreamer, the one who created this place. That person is turning this place into a firepit, whether they mean to or not.”

  “Who do you think it is?” Taren asked. “Shopkeeper, maybe?”

  “Could be anyone,” Willow said.

  We don’t have time for this. We need to find out about the Battery and leave. “Hey,” Lake called out to the room, “anyone here know how to get to the Battery?”

  The girl at the counter gave her a blank look, but a boy at a table perked up. Lake turned to him. “You know the place I’m talking about?”

  He held his cards higher, a fence to hide behind, and shook his head.

  What’s going on?

  “Maybe we should just get out of here,” Willow said. “I don’t like this place.” White-gray flakes had gathered in her hair, on her sleeves.

  Lake looked down and saw speckles on her own clothes. Smoke clouded her lungs.

  The door squealed open again. “Where do you want me to stack the firewood I collected?”

  “Side of the building, where people can see we have it.”

  Lake’s gaze snapped to Taren’s.

  “You have a pair,” the girl behind the counter said.

  “Everyone knows you have a pair when you grimace like that,” Lake finished for her.

  Slap of cards hitting the table.

  Laughter.

  “Everyone here’s a figment,” Lake said, her veins turning to ice. How is this possible?

  “Do figments just hang out and go through scenes together even when no one’s here to see it?” Taren asked.

  “We’re here,” Willow said.

  “They were talking before we walked in,” Lake said, fighting the squirming in her stomach. “I heard them.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Taren said. “Programs don’t just run for their own amusement. Do they?”

  Lake looked up again at the fluttering ashfall. “This place is stuck in a loop.”

  “Why? What’s causing it?” Taren’s voice was heavy with dread.

  The girl at the counter said, “Ryan, in the back.”

  “You go back there,” Ryan replied sourly. “Isn’t that supposed to be your job?”

  Lake thought her nerves might split when the door squealed again and Ratty Cap called, “Where do you want me to stack the firewood I collected?”

  “Side of the building,” Lake murmured.

  What’s causing it? Good question.

  She pushed past Ratty Cap and went outside, around to the prime spot for firewood—

  A black clump, like a cluster of mold spores, clung to the white side of the building. Lake crouched to see it better. Not mold. It squirmed and crawled over itself, shifting its shape over and over, like something trying and failing to hold form.

  Lake fell back onto the asphalt, grit pricking her bare legs, same as the horror pricking her chest.

  And what’s in the back of the store, where Ryan doesn’t want to go?

  The boy with the ratty cap came out and walked past her, over to a jumble of thin branches. He froze, staring at the tar, his head twitching from side to side like he couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. Lake slowly got to her feet and backed away.

  The door squealed open again. “Lake,” Taren said from the doorway, “I—I found something.”

  She knew from the dread in his voice. She knew what he’d found. Her knees threatened to buckle.

  She slid past him and walked back into the trading post. Ducked under the counter, found the doorway to the stockroom—

  And almost emptied her stomach.

  Here, the squirming black residue wasn’t a clump of mold or a shifting spot.

  It was a mass the size of a cat, pulsing and flexing inside an open lead box. As it shifted, the box did, the sides bulging out of shape and then flattening again.

  “How did it all get here?” Taren asked, his voice choked with the same disgust Lake felt.

  “Someone’s stockpiling it. That’s the reason for the bad feeling in this place.” She turned back to the doorway. “Where’s Willow?”

  But then she froze.

  Behind Taren, in the stockroom’s doorway, stood the boy who’d hid behind his hand of cards.

  It’s true, Lake thought. The program doesn’t run for itself.

  The boy’s gaze shifted from Taren to Lake. “You were asking about the Battery?”

  Taren turned to face him, took a wary step back, into the room. “You know where it is?”

  The boy tugged
at a sweat-darkened bandana around his neck. “They won’t let you in without someone to vouch for you.”

  “You…” Taren looked uncertain. “You could vouch for us.”

  Lake sensed the tar squirming behind her in its box.

  “Haven’t seen you around here before,” the boy said. He leaned a little to one side, flicked his gaze in the direction of the tar.

  It’s him, he’s the one who’s stockpiling it. Why?

  Ash drifted in the air between them, tinged with red. Lake looked up at the glowing sky. Fire’s coming.

  No time for games.

  She turned sideways so he could have a proper view of the tar. “Do you know what this is?” she asked him.

  “Does anyone,” he said flatly.

  “Do you know what it’ll do?”

  “Snuff you out of existence. Much faster than any firestorm will.”

  “Then why are you stockpiling it?” Taren asked the boy.

  “For protection.” The boy inched into the room and Lake saw now that he held one of the sturdy sticks from outside, a broken bit of branch. A weapon.

  Lake’s stomach twisted. “Protection from what?”

  The makeshift club twitched in the boy’s hand. “There was a girl here with you—your sister?” His expression was as stony as if he were still trying to out-poker a computer program.

  Where is Willow?

  “You have to get rid of this stuff,” Lake said, jabbing her hand in the direction of the tar.

  The broken branch twitched again. “There’s a girl who comes around. Sometimes has a younger sister with her. And wherever she goes, death follows.”

  Lake’s throat tightened.

  “People vanish,” the boy went on. “Just like when a person touches that.” He pointed his club at the box behind Lake.

  Lake looked to Taren. She could tell by his widening eyes that he was starting to grasp what the boy was saying.

  They think I’m their enemy.

  “One day,” the boy went on, “she’ll come for the Battery. She’ll come for every last one of us.” His voice cracked. “She’ll take them. She’ll kill them all.”

  “No,” Lake said. Her insides twisted and squirmed like the tar in the box.

  The boy’s expression shifted at the plea in her voice. He suddenly looked uncertain. His grip loosened on the makeshift club.

  “You have it wrong,” Lake said. How was she supposed to explain it?

  And wasn’t it true?

  I take people away. They never come back.

  I take them to a dying ship where we wait to return to what might be a dead planet.

  Willow appeared in the doorway, her face streaked with ash. She pointed silently at the sky, her expression taut. Lake looked up.

  Thick black smoke.

  In the distance, flames crackled.

  We have to go. Now.

  The boy saw Willow in the doorway, and his eyes went the same color as the sky overhead. “I knew it.” He turned back to Lake. “You are her.”

  Lake looked down at the tar, a thicker mass of it than she’d ever seen. A stockpile, to defend the Battery against her.

  She couldn’t let him deliver it to the Battery.

  But he was her best chance for finding the way there.

  “Yes, I’m the one you’ve been waiting for,” she said. “Take me to the Battery.”

  13

  LAKE

  “Willow, find some rope,” Lake said. “We need it to haul the tar.”

  Willow dashed out of the supply room, and Lake felt better having her far from a nervous guy wielding a jagged tree branch.

  Lake nodded at his branch-club. “That’s no match for this tar. Leave it here.”

  She hoped he wouldn’t call her bluff. No way she’d use the tar on him.

  Taren paced near the door, squinting at the tar and the boy in turn. “Are you sure about this?” he asked Lake.

  No. “We need to get to the Battery.”

  Willow returned with a coil of cord, the kind you’d use for tying camping gear to a car roof. As soon as Lake started wrapping it around the lead box, the boy dropped his weapon. He backed up against the wall and watched the tar roil in the box and finally said, “I’ll probably get a reward for taking you there.”

  “Will you?” Lake pulled the cord taut, left a long lead. She spotted his name stitched on his jacket. “Good for you, Ajay. Can I call you Ajay? It’s stitched on your jacket.”

  He looked down, as if he needed proof. “That doesn’t mean it’s my name.”

  “Okay, but can I call you that?” She was pretty sure he was just being cagey. “How many people are in the Battery?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “We’re just trying to get by. Wait out this mess.” He lifted his gaze to the molten sky.

  Speaking of. Got to get going.

  “So, like, forty people?” Lake tried, eying the doorway, the falling ash, the red-sky tint to Ajay’s skin. “Forty-five, maybe?”

  “We have a whole community, we have rules,” Ajay said, and Lake wondered if she should take that as a yes. “If someone needs more food from the cache, or tools, or whatever—”

  “What cache?”

  “Don’t act like that’s not why you want the Battery.”

  Why I want the Battery?

  They think I want to take the place for myself?

  “What’s he talking about?” Taren asked, and Lake shot him a look that said, You tell me.

  “Is that where all the stuff in this trading post came from?” Lake asked Ajay, wrapping the loose end of cord around her hand. “Some cache you found?”

  Ajay watched Lake’s careful work as if he were wishing she’d make a mistake and touch the tar. “You can’t just come in and take everything for yourself.”

  “I’ve heard something about that—caches,” Taren told Lake. “Tech bros buried them all over the place, for when they left their bunkers and had to start over. You heard about that underground bunker community in the missile silo in Kansas? It’s like, Rich City, capital of New Doom. They have a pool and everything down there.”

  “We’re not in Kansas,” Lake reminded him.

  “Toto,” Willow added. The threat of death always brought out her worst humor.

  “There are bunkers in California, too,” Taren said. “And what’s a millionaire going to do when he has to finally leave it?”

  Open their hidden cache of survival supplies and restart their hegemony, apparently.

  “We have a credit system, we have shops,” Ajay cut in. “If someone needs a job done, we rotate workers, give them credits for their work.”

  I’m not trying to destroy your city. Lake stood and watched the ash piling at her feet. “That sounds nice,” she said, and meant it. “It sounds fair.” Her thoughts piled like ash.

  A whole community, working together. Making a new life for themselves.

  Maybe it wouldn’t all be doom and ash when they returned home. Maybe they could figure out how to start over.

  “Ready for a road trip?” Willow asked Ajay.

  He grudgingly followed Willow and Taren out. Lake dragged the box after.

  The main room was full of the snap and pop of the burning ghost-trees outside. The figments lazed at the tables with their cards.

  “Careful,” Taren said to Lake, watching the lead box slide too close to a cardplayer’s foot.

  “They’re figments, Taren. It doesn’t matter if the tar touches them.” He looked unsure, so Lake added, “They’d disappear, that’s it. They’re not real people, you know?”

  They didn’t even look up when she said it, just went on examining their cards and breathing ash.

  “I’ll help,” Willow said, and darted over to guide the box away from the table.

  “No,” Lake barked, and pushed her away.

  Half a dozen pairs of eyes fell on her. Heat roiled toward her from the flames licking now at the tops of the walls.

  Willow shrank back. “I know how to
be careful around tar,” she told Lake.

  “I don’t need help.” Lake tugged the box, and it knocked into a table leg. She held her breath while she waited for the tar to stop sloshing. “Okay, I don’t want help.”

  Willow pulled her jacket tight around herself. “Aren’t you too late to worry about something bad happening to me?”

  Lake’s vision narrowed. She felt as if the molten sky were already pressing down on her, branding her with pain.

  Someone put a steadying hand on her arm. “You okay?” Taren asked, and Lake realized he had come to stand next to her.

  She took a breath to clear her thoughts. “I’m fine.” She nudged the box with her foot and went on towing. It was easy—nothing was as heavy as her heart these days. She pushed a chair out of her path. “Open the door, Ajay.”

  Ajay balked. “It’s too late. Don’t you see the flames outside?”

  They licked the bare roof beams, their glow making the rough trading post look like a little-visited corner of hell.

  “I don’t burn,” Lake said dryly. “Open the door.”

  Ajay eyed the tar, then the door. He pushed the door open, marveled at what he saw beyond, and stepped through.

  “Hurry, go,” Lake said, and followed Taren and Willow through, dragging the box of tar behind her, sick with the feeling that she was towing her own doom.

  * * *

  They found themselves on a hillside under a cool blue sky. Feathery scrub, sea breeze. Lake guessed they were somewhere in the headlands just north of the city.

  Taren stood before her, reading the clouds like a ship-bound sailor reads land on the horizon. Willow stood with him, jacket hanging off one shoulder, hair dancing in the breeze. Lake’s lungs pumped salt-scrubbed air, her heartbeat as strong as the pound of distant waves against cliffs. Only the rich and lucky survive, she’d told Taren. But this was one of the few times she’d felt lucky since waking on the ship, standing here taking in brilliant sunlight and sculpted clouds. She’d heard once that a single cloud could weigh a million pounds, and she was suddenly struck now with the conviction that she would never earn such a heavy inheritance, that she had neither the strength nor the worthiness to receive such enormous beauty.

  An itching regret fought for her attention. She ignored it a moment longer, in favor of clouds and Willow’s glowing cheeks.