by Jesse Karp
"I was home alone. My parents were away for the weekend," she said, her voice suddenly shaky. Mal felt his heart beating in his chest at her hurt. "When I called them ... I don't know how this is going to sound."
"Nothing could be stranger than what's happening to us, Laura," Remak said. "And it could be important."
"I called them," Laura said, nodding, as her voice grew smaller, "and they didn't know who I was." She stopped, either for a reaction or to collect herself. "Had, like, no memory of me at all. I went to confront them, and they still didn't recognize me; didn't even recognize themselves in old home movies."
Mal barely knew what to make of that. He could see how painful it was for Laura, but there were times when he had wished his mother would forget him.
"What do your parents do, exactly?" Remak wondered.
"My father works for an architectural firm. My mother doesn't work anymore, but she used to teach graduate art history."
"Go on," Remak encouraged her. He clearly preferred listening to speaking.
"I went to my school, to speak to friends, but they didn't know me there, either. I wasn't even in the school records." She angrily swept a tear from her cheek. Mal tried to put himself in her position. How many people in school even knew his name? Right now, how many cared that he was gone?
"I know all about identity theft," Laura went on, "but what the hell is this? I went back home and two Homeland Security agents were waiting for me. They wanted to arrest me. No, that's not all. They pulled a gun on me. I wasn't doing anything at all. Nothing threatening, that's for sure. The agent pulled a gun, and then they shot me up with something." She rubbed at her arm again. "And I woke up here, just like the rest of you." Her eyes cast about, searching for an explanation. "But why a forest? Why here?"
"The real question is," Brath said, "did anyone mention what was going on to anyone else, anyone who might come looking for us?" Brath's ice-chip eyes were losing interest with this process.
"Just him." Mike put his thumb toward Remak.
"My mother and her husband know my brother is missing," Mal said. "But that's all."
"People know where I was dispatched," Remak said, "but I hadn't reported anything yet. I hadn't found anything yet."
"Just my parents." Laura said it as if it were a joke. "I don't think they're going to come looking for me."
"No," Isabel said. "I didn't have a chance."
Brath, his eyes suddenly dull with lack of interest, pulled his gun from behind his back and shot Isabel in the head.
The force flung her backwards, and Laura, standing just beside her, stumbled backwards, too, from shock or survival instinct.
"Jesus!" someone shouted.
"Oh, my God!" another voice cried.
Mal hadn't been hit by the bullet, but his head split apart. What was Brath doing? This was beyond even the worst of what had happened so far. Mal's arms and legs were paralyzed from the shock.
Brath turned the automatic on Laura, who, through plain bad luck, happened to be next in line. Mal wanted to move, needed to move, to protect her, to stop Brath. Suddenly, Mike was in front of her, between her and the gun, throwing his arms around her, tackling her to the ground, and covering her with his body.
The gun didn't go off again. His mind nearly spinning off its axis, Mal saw Remak chopping down at Brath's wrist with stiff fingers. The gun sprang free, but Brath struck Remak in the face, sending him backwards, and this struck Mal into full awareness. He moved in toward Brath, who dodged away and went for his gun.
Suddenly Mal's eye was drawn beyond Brath to Laura as she pushed at Mike's chest, trying to get out from under him. Mike rolled off her, his face an incongruous mask of bitter shame in the midst of this frenzy. She scrabbled away without even looking back at him and snatched the gun off the ground just as Brath made a grab for it.
She had the gun and scrabbled backwards on her knees as he loomed over her. Mal caught up to Brath, grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around, and looked into his face, trying to see something, anything he could recognize.
"Hit him!" Mike nearly screamed it.
Brath threw a punch into Mal's gut, and it smacked home with a muffled thump. Mal buckled and coughed, but threw up his elbow to fend off Brath's follow-up strike, then swung his own fist around. It cracked off Brath's head with a report like a rifle shot, and Brath's knees buckled. Mal put another pile-driver fist into the same spot and caught Brath by the shoulders to let him down to the ground gently.
Remak ran over and saw that Brath was out. Then he turned, and Mal followed him to Isabel, lying in final repose. The bullet had hit her in the forehead, just a few inches over her left eye. Her eyes weren't wide in terror; her jaw wasn't slack with shock. Her face had the neutral expression of someone involved in a conversation. She hadn't even had time to look shocked.
It took Remak less than a second to determine that she was dead. He stood up and turned away from her without closing her eyelids. Wasn't that what you were supposed to do? Remak just left her eyes, defiant in life, calm in death, gazing at the void of sky. Mal stared at the eyes, thinking he should close them. But he couldn't look at her a second longer, let alone touch her.
"Is everyone okay?" Laura's back was to the body and her voice was a little bit desperate.
She got nods all around.
"You moved very fast," Mal heard himself say, from a million miles away. "You stopped him."
"I couldn't figure out why they let him keep the gun," Remak said. "Five bullets in it, five of us. And he didn't check his cell when he woke up. I made sure I was next to him." He looked down at Isabel. "But I didn't stop him fast enough."
"Thank you," Laura said, and Mike looked up, because he was still on the ground next to the body. He blinked dumbly back up at her. "Thank you for doing that," Laura went on, keeping her eyes very stiffly on Mike and not what was beside him. The gun was hanging in her hand, too heavy, too big.
Mike got to his feet, went away from the body.
"What the living hell was that about?" he said directly to Mal. "Why did he do that?"
"I don't know. Brath would never ... I mean, if he was working with whoever is doing this to begin with, why wouldn't he have just shot me as soon as I came to him for help? For that matter, if we're supposed to be dead, why didn't they just kill us while we were unconscious?"
"They wanted to know if we'd spoken to others," Laura said hollowly. "That was what Brath asked right before he did that. Once they knew we hadn't spoken to anyone, he could..."
"So they can hear us out here?" Mal asked.
"I can't see into those trees," Remak said, shrugging. "A directional mike. Why not?"
"Brath wouldn't..." Mal couldn't seem to complete a sentence. "Wouldn't murder people like this. Wouldn't lie to ... He's my friend."
"The evidence is hard to debate, Mal," Remak said. "Maybe your friend wasn't exactly who you thought he was."
"He would have to be someone else entirely," Mal said. "Is that what you're saying? This isn't really Brath? It is him. I know him as well as I know anyone in the world."
"I don't know," Remak said.
"I know." Mike stepped forward. "At least I know what we should do next: make sure he doesn't wake up and try again." He turned to Laura and stuck his hand out. "Give me the gun."
Her face went sick, brow creased, lips and jaw looking as if she were going to lose her lunch. She started breathing in a weird way, deep and slow.
"Give it to me." He reached his hand toward the gun, and she reflexively pulled it back.
"No one's killing anybody," Mal said.
"Too late." Mike pointed at Isabel, without taking his eyes off the gun.
"Here." Laura shook her head, holding the gun out to Remak by the end of the grip, her arm straining to hold it as far away from her body as possible.
Remak accepted the gun and checked the clip. He carefully extracted Brath's belt from around the unconscious body. He exchanged his own belt with it and att
ached the gun to the magnetic strip in back, then divested himself of his own, empty shoulder holster.
"There were five bullets," Mike suggested, "and there were five of us, not including him. Maybe once he shot us all, someone was going to come get him."
"That's possible, I suppose," Remak allowed, considering it like a shiny little diamond that might be fake, "but what good does it do us?"
"Maybe if you just fire all the bullets, that will do the trick. Or maybe if you kill him instead"—Mike pointed at Brath—"that would bring someone."
"No," Mal said with a dangerous quiet.
"So what, then? Stay here and die of old age?"
"We have to get out of here," Mal said. He looked off the cliff at the squat mountain across the granite plain. It had a dense forest on top of it just like this one, sticking up like a bad hairpiece.
Remak walked to the edge and looked across.
"It's hard to tell how far it is to the base of that other mountain," Mal said. "There's not much on the ground to judge by." The ground didn't have any trees on it. It was just an expanse of cracked gray rock. It was so featureless, it was hard to tell even how far down it was.
"What about them?" Laura asked, pointing at the two fallen bodies without looking at them.
"We're going to have to leave them," Remak said.
Mal was staring at Brath, searching for some way to protest, but the sense of it was irrefutable. What would happen when Brath woke up? What if he attacked them again? What if he attacked them while they were climbing? He let it go with a sorry nod.
"Don't you think we should..."Laura searched and gave up. "I mean, should we just leave her here?"
They all looked uncomfortably at one another. Finally, it was Remak who said it.
"I don't think we're equipped to give her a burial, and time may be a factor. We need to be reasonable about this. How is a burial going to help her, and how is it going to help us?"
Again, they looked at one another desperately. It could take them hours to dig a hole here, if that was even possible in this hard, dry earth without a shovel.
"How are we going to get down from here?" Laura finally said, giving them all permission to move on.
"Well," Mal said, "there's an outcropping not too far down the way here, and there are others below that. I don't think it's a very tall mountain."
He glanced at the others and, seeing no reason to drag it out any further, lowered himself to the ground, swung his feet over, and started down.
Mal held the edge, and the scars on his knuckles whitened under the strain. Remak knelt down to grab his wrist if it should be necessary. Mal looked below him and let go. He sailed down along the rock face for two seconds and landed hard on his feet, grabbing out at the uneven jags to prevent himself from tipping backwards and falling. The outcropping was uncomfortably small.
Mike came next, grudgingly accepting help from Remak on top and Mal below.
"You next," Remak said to Laura.
"Go ahead," she told him. He stood and watched her as she forced herself to look at Isabel.
"All right," he said. "You come right behind me."
She nodded, and he went. Mike pressed against the wall, clearing the way. Mal raised his arms to help, but Remak didn't need it. With his athletic build he managed to climb down most of the way, dropping only the last foot or two.
Laura was last. She hovered at the edge, then lowered herself slowly. Mal told her he was ready, she could let go anytime. She held on a moment longer, as though committing Isabel's face to memory. What else could she do for her, the poor girl?
When Laura set foot on the outcropping below, her eyes were wet.
THE JOURNEY
IT WAS SLOW GOING DOWN the mountainside. Some of the irregularities in its face required them to make short drops, just a foot or two below dangling feet; others demanded some climbing before a person could drop to the next outcropping safely. At one point there was no outcropping beneath them, forcing them to make a fairly hair-raising fifteen-foot lateral traverse before they came to a position with a clear route down.
Mal, able to hold on a little longer and drop a little farther than the rest of them, always went first. On occasion they could see his face as he moved along the rock or landed hard below and his expression became briefly fierce, as if the rock were his enemy and he was not merely moving across it but engaged in combat with it.
Laura thought she would be the slowest among them, though, as it turned out, Mike proved to be the one with the hardest time negotiating the descent and the one who kept demanding they wait an extra few minutes before they move on. This clearly did not please him, and he remained sullen and quiet for most of the journey, except to grunt at a hard impact or shout in anger or fear once or twice as he felt that his hand or foot might be slipping. Laura, for her part, had gone to the climbing wall at the mall for what felt like every weekend of her twelfth and thirteenth years and was not completely out of her depth. On top of it, Mal seemed to be watching her more intently, keeping a steadying hand on her just a little bit longer.
Gradually, the wall became a slope. At first it was too steep to go down without using both hands and feet. Her hands were aching beyond reason, stiff and abraded and uncooperative. Mike winced when he flexed his fingers, and even Remak massaged his hands intermittently. Only Mal, whose hands had suffered the same rigors, worse in some cases for testing out the routes, seemed indifferent to the damage they'd sustained.
She could not, even in the midst of all this, stop herself from stealing glances at Mal, which she only hoped were not as obviously admiring as they felt. He was slim at the waist and broad across the shoulders and the chest, his torso a V of rising power. He was solid, too, as if right under his flesh he were made of metal. His face was almost a boy's still. The features were young, almost innocent, but the face had been slugged pretty good, judging by the bruise around the left eye. Actually, it looked as if it had taken more than its fair share of slugging, and not just from fists, either. It looked weighed on, the eyes always bracing for the worst. Scars cut across the bridge of his nose, cheekbone, and chin. His dark eyes lit for an instant when he caught Laura looking at him once.
He was not, however, quite enough to make her forget what was happening. Luckily, just when the pain of grabbing and pressing and rubbing up against rock was no longer tolerable, when Laura felt as if she was going to let tears come out with an angry scream, the grade of the slope softened further. It was now possible to walk, taking careful measure of one's balance, slowly down the mountain.
And so, the pain in her hands receded just as her calves began to burn. When they came to relatively even ground, it felt as if they'd been going for hours upon hours, yet the sky was still cloudless and too low, white and gray with no sign whatsoever of the sun's position, but still dropping a tired, gloomy light on them all.
"Hey," Laura said, her voice tired and rough, "what time is it?"
Mal instinctively looked at the watch on the wide leather band around his wrist.
"Broken." Mal held up his wrist and shrugged.
"Ten fifty-five a.m.," Remak said after consulting his own little digital wrist machinery.
"That means"—Laura looked back up the mountain—"if we've been descending for about two hours, it was only, like, eight-thirty when we woke up."
"It's light out. Sort of," Mal said. "Anyway, the light hasn't changed at all. Or the weather."
"It should be cooler than this in the mountains," Remak said, scanning the environment with disapproval. "In the morning, at this time of year, there ought to be a strong wind. If we're anywhere near New York anymore."
It was true. Laura was sweating and hot from the climb, as they all were, but there was no relief here from the elements, no more wind here than there was in a room with no doors or windows. She'd been in the mountains before, camping with her parents, and it was always too cold and too windy for her mother's comfort.
Her mother.
; "Why did they put us here, exactly?" Mike demanded. "In a goddamned wilderness?"
Remak shook his head with a bewildered expression that seemed to please Mike.
"There has to be something special about it that would make it desirable for them," Remak conjectured. "It's well removed from where we were. Our bodies would be harder to find intentionally, I suppose, though we could be stumbled upon by hikers. The distance hardly seems convenient. So why go through the trouble to put us here, specifically?" He looked around at the flat gray expanse for an answer.
They had tacitly agreed to take a rest here, finding seats on the bumps of the rocky ground.
"Did you say your watch was broken?" Laura asked Mal.
"Yeah." Mal nodded, looking as if it was one more burden he could hardly bear. "Just taking after my mirror and my bag."
Laura felt her face go agog at his answer.
"Me, too," she said. "All sorts of things have been breaking on me, and for no reason. My cell, a cup I made when I was a kid. It's been happening all week. What about you two?"
"No." Mike shook his head as if to say how stupid this all was. "Wait. Yes. My key ring came apart, too, before I opened my door and he was there." He turned a sour face on Remak.
"A doorknob broke off, though I was with Mike when it happened," Remak said. "When did you notice the first thing break?" he asked Mal.
"My mirror, the night I got home from the gym. It was fine when I left, broken when I got back."
"What happened in between?"
"Nothing that could have broken it." He stopped, but went on again before Remak pressed him further. "But Tommy called me that night, asking for my help, while I was gone."
"You?" Remak looked at Laura.
"Um, a few hours before I called my parents." She thought on it briefly. "Actually, they were supposed to call me much earlier, so I guess it happened right after they..." She searched for another word, couldn't find one, and finally surrendered to it. "Forgot me."
"Anything since we woke up here?" Remak said, beginning to check himself.
Everyone gave him- or herself the once-over, then answered with shaking heads.
