"Dunno,” I say, as calm as I can.
"Think we were stupid to try?"
I think about that.
We were smart about it. From the beginning, when Chezley's lab rat friend went to townie confession and told Priest all the things he'd seen scrubbing counters and mopping floors at the government labs behind their fences and lawns. We didn't put anything on paper, kept it all in the family, brought people in slow and didn't at all if we couldn't agree about trusting them. We set up routines. We mapped the patrols, and left on our road trip a full two nights before, met up with Chez's friend just before the New Mexico border, and he went back to work the next night just as slick as you please. Or at least that's what the plan was. We don't figure on knowing how it went on that end unless they throw us in prison and tell us. We'll find out when it's too late. Find out when it's done.
Anyway, nobody plans on going back.
"Yeah, maybe,” I conclude, stirring the debris of instant noodles round and round in its chipped styrofoam cup. “But we got no choice anymore."
"Nuh-uh,” he replies, and I draw my knees up and make up my mind to watch him.
* * * *
A couple hours later Chezley's asleep. Dancer's at the wheel. Maur's hands are tapping morse code signals to himself on the sides of his knees, and I weigh him up the same way I count miles and conclude that he's way too fucking big to stop if he snaps. “Go take a break,” I tell him, and the way he looks up at me just confirms I did right. His eyes are too bright. He looks hunted.
I wonder what he looked like back on his tours in the war. He came home like that, hunted. He sat in the back of the bar and drank alone for two years.
"You can't sit watch alone,” he says, a slow too-casual drawl. He's suspicious. Of me. Alone with the bomb.
The bomb breathes loud in my ear. In and the ground's pulled up. Out and it rains down on everybody's heads. It sounds like an obscene phone caller.
"Send the kid in,” I tell him, not even knowing I was thinking it ‘til I say so. “Let him earn his keep."
"The kid?” he blinks. Maur's forgot he's still there, what with the lack of making noise. We never dropped him off in Provo after all.
"It'll let one of us sleep,” I tell him, and he must buy it, ‘cause after a moment that rabbit-light fades some and he gives the back wall of the trailer a few good ringing slaps so the girls slow us down and come on out.
Maur goes out to talk to them, fussing around with the seam of his pants, and I sit back in the sudden bright light, alone for just a minute. Once the pixels clear out of my vision I catch them arguing on the rutted and unkept asphalt, catch a glimpse of tall grass and blue skies and trees.
For a second I don't know why we're doing this and I just want to go home.
That's right. You can't stop the bomb, says the bomb its-own-self. I put down my book.
"We ain't trying to stop the bomb, we're stopping this bomb.” And that's it. I talked. I talked to it, and now if I ain't sure as hell lost for the rest of the goddamned day.
Made you, made you, the bomb giggles, sparking and shifting against the crating it's in as the wind tilts the trailer back and forth on its tires.
"You sure ‘bout this?” Chez asks from outside, and her eyes are dark-smudged and empty with tired and a little more: she's pissed at herself about the wrong turn. I almost ask her why she didn't wake me up to do the maps except Dancer's behind her, and we've got no time for fights.
"Yup,” I tell her, and try to sound cheerful as she boosts the broken-armed kid inside.
"What's your name?” I ask the kid once the door's closed shut and we're rolling again, the hum of the road rattling in my tailbone no matter where I sit. The bomb hums ‘Hail to the Chief’ between turns of the wheels.
He doesn't say nothing. He looks at me squint-eyed and a little scared, back flat against the trailer wall and knees bent a little, ready to run.
"All right, I'll give you one,” and imagine him whispering Nick. His voice is scratchy, scotch-and-cigarettes which sounds fucking odd and wrong from a little skinny kid's small throat, but that's the way it's gonna be.
"Nick, huh?” and he shifts, watching me like a little mouse. “Read a story with a rat named Nicodemus once. He and the other rats broke out of their lab and dug out a whole town under some farmer's field."
I don't know if that'll make any sense to him. I can't remember how long ago is before towns were unsafe, before the pesticide attacks meant fields couldn't be trusted to give up good food. He might not even know from rats. I'm not good with little kids. I can't think like they do.
"Yeah. You're a lab rat,” I say, staring forward, and he lets out a little breath.
Where you going?
"Washington,” I tell him, then “no, no, the state,” when his eyes go bloodshot scared. He understood. He knows a word. “Not where the government is."
He wraps arms around his knees. He disappears into the flashlight-shadow until I can't see nothing but the tips of his long brown toes. Kids didn't grow up with toes like that in my generation. Ours were all bent from wearing shoes young. Our mamas didn't let us run barefoot.
All went to hell, down and down and down, the bomb sings, and I clear my throat loud.
He knows Washington. Or it's my imagination. Looping up, twisting in on itself, making up things that aren't rightfully there. But if I'm gonna talk to voices in my head the kid'll beat hell out of the bomb.
"Lemme tell you a story,” I say to him, settling back. “Lemme tell you about the rats and running away."
* * * *
We stop to change shift a half hour outside Challis, once my eyes are thick with gunk and my throat dry even after two-three bottles of water. I've got the kid—Nicodemus, Nick—nice and calmed down, even got him to eat a granola bar which he does like a little animal, picking and hiding and nibbling away, and it all goes to hell the second Dancer opens the big trailer door and fixes him with her pissy glare.
"Get him in the sleeper,” she says, already turning around.
"What?"
"I'm coming in back here."
Oh great, Nick says or I think, as she climbs into the trailer and I lever myself onto feet that're half-asleep. Dancer's always halfway to a mood, and the way she stalks up and sits five steps from the bomb with that crap old gun, it looks like she found the other half. “Let's go then,” I say to the kid, and hold out a hand to him. Cautious, moving his eyes back and forth like a wild thing, he takes it and follows.
"What's up her ass?” I ask Chez, when we get around front, and she shakes her head. Her eyes are all red and bad-looking, and I can't tell if it's glare from the road. One thing we forgot to pack: sunglasses.
"Mad about the kid still being here. Doesn't want me to call the papers,” she says back short, and takes little fight-or-flight Nick by the hand, careful. “C'mon,” in a totally different voice, the kind of voice your mama had when you were a littlest kid. “Let's get you a juice box and you can play in the back."
The kid looks kinda dubiously back into the sleeper: Maur's asleep on the bottom bunk, on account of the top bunk not being strong enough to hold up under him. “Who's gonna do maps?” I ask her, before thinking maybe I shouldn't have.
And yeah, her mouth gets tight and small in the long lines of her face. “I'll wake Maur up if I need to,” she says, and I scoot back for a piss and to the trailer before I get in fights with everyone too.
The country's changed. I get a good look at it before climbing back in the stuffy old trailer. It's mountains now for real, the craggy, snow-capped ones all covered with pine you see in the movies, not the soft green things we saw before. There's a little creek running by the roadside, dipping towards us before ducking back into the woods. I stick my hands in it and it runs cold, scrub them and my face for a good minute before going back inside. It makes me feel cleaner. It makes something in my head turn sharper, under all the dark and tired.
"How many miles?” I ask Dancer coming in.<
br />
"Going down to seven hundred,” she says, easing against a beat-up pillow. “Shouldn't be too long now."
Running out of time, whispers the bomb. I don't look at it. Dancer's mouth firms up, and she doesn't look either. I put my hand down on the cold floor to stop it from shaking, because it means she heard. It's not just talking to me. I mean, I knew it wasn't just talking to me. But she heard, and if that's two of us, it can't yank our chains like it is.
"No, we're not,” I say, ballsy like I haven't been since Chezley set the date for our leaving, leaning over me and whispering in my ear like it was a come-on on the crowded Thursday night shift.
"What?” Dancer says, head coming up.
"Running out of time. We're not."
Yes you are, says the bomb.
"Yes we are,” whispers Dancer.
It takes a second for the words to hit my brain. I'm not running fast now; my own engine's failing. But when they do: “You agreed with it,” I say, mouth dry.
"What?"
Huh? mocks the bomb.
But no: “You think it's right.” I catch the little head-twitch that tells me she's lying. The looking away. A person doesn't want to meet your eye when they're trying to feed you a lie.
"I got no fucking idea what you're talking about,” she enunciates, every word sharp and mean, but she glances over to it when she does. She looks over to the bomb.
Two on one, boy, drawls the bomb.
"Shut up -” I holler, and I'm charging toward it when she grabs my arms. “Fucking loudmouthed traitor bitch -” and I fall back, land on the gun.
Squeeze.
The shot goes off, exploding into the wall.
Dancer shrieks and I think I do too except it's all submerged in the rifle bang and the scream of brakes being pumped over and over as the truck fishtails, shudders, slows down with boxes and blankets flying everywhere back and forth.
"Oh Jesus,” Dancer whispers, and I shove the gun away from me, down the dark trailer until it settles like an offering at the foot of the tarp-covered bomb.
"Shit, I didn't mean that, my hand slipped on it, I swear—"
The trailer rumbles again and a stack of boxes topples, lands on my head and arms and legs, and it's all shouting and swearing again until the engine cuts out and we're sitting in the quiet, in the dark.
It's silent, beautiful silent for about five seconds, and then the trailer door comes up and Maur and Chezley come charging in. “What the fuck -” she's gasping, and Maur's hands are up in front of him and ready, thumbs outside the fists like they teach you in the army so you don't break them the first time you throw a punch.
"He shot at me,” Dancer breathes, and she scoots the fuck out of the trailer and onto the gravel of the old, empty road.
I look at Dancer, at Chez, at Maur, at Nicodemus standing just a little behind, looking off into the forest like he's thinking about a cut-and-run. They don't want to talk about the bomb. Even if we all hear it, they're gonna pretend until doomsday that it's not been saying a word, not whispering into the backs of everyone's ears.
"It was a mistake,” I say, head down, and Nicodemus gives me a look that cuts to the centre of my guts. No mistake, he says, scratchy like an old record and kinda sad.
"You're off bomb duty,” Chez says, cool like a little kids’ teacher can be when something's gone terribly wrong. I duck out of the trailer, get my feet on the pitted highway.
"I'm sorry.” Again.
She won't meet my eye.
Made you, made you, whispers the narrow dark.
I crawl over the passenger seat into the sleeper, hands shaky, jerking back the dirty sheets with arms that don't want to do what I say. I don't remember when I last got a nap. When we took the wrong turn, I think. About a day.
I kick my shoes off and wrap up under the sheets, try to pretend that I don't see Maur watching me from the driver's seat, where he's changing the mirrors to his army-trained height. He's looking like I looked at him back in the trailer, at his knee-tapping, finger-jitter SOS. Like I'm gonna snap.
The bomb's getting to me.
You can't stop the bomb comes muffled through the back wall, and I put the pillow over my head, ‘cause it's true.
* * * *
I sleep a long time. Or a long time by this count, with four shifts instead of five, and one less bed for the having on account of Nicodemus being with us. Five-six hours, and by the time I wake up and wash the gunk out of my mouth with tepid water, ask “How many miles?” the sun's falling fast and we're running on asphalt again.
"Four fifty,” Maur's voice comes soft out of the driver's side. “Montana."
I stretch, and everything hurts. I'm tired: my neck and head are just begging to lie themselves back down.
"You need me up?” I croak.
"Uh-huh,” he grunts, and I force myself up to sitting, up to the front, and to the maps.
At mile three-seventy-three, Maur glances at the overhead signs, rusting off their frames. “Truck stop ahead."
"Yeah?” I say, crackly. Startled into talking.
"I wanna stop,” he says quiet, that intent look on his face that large men can do so well, like stone giants knowing nothing's gonna touch them hard enough to hurt.
"You sure?” I ask, just to hedge, because he wouldn't ask if he wasn't totally sure. He just looks at me, doesn't answer. And I pause for a minute, and nod.
"What's going on?” the girls ask when I let them out of the back, trembly-kneed from sitting down too long, from bomb shift, which nobody wants to talk about.
"Truck stop,” I say short. They're still looking at me like I'm gonna snap. “Maur wanted a real stop."
I turn and let them argue it out between themselves, go to double-check the locks. Nicodemus peeks out the sleeper doorway at me; I lean through the rolled-down window.
"Gotta stay here,” I tell Nick, and he looks at me like he might actually understand, huddled up in the blankets on the top bunk of the sleeper. “I'll bring you a chocolate bar, promise."
By the time I'm back the argument's mostly done, and Chez is turning to Dancer; I only catch the last. “—coming?” she says, kinda resigned. Beat.
Dancer shakes her head. “Gotta fill up. And gonna switch our plates,” she says, jerking her head over to the two other trucks in the lot.
"Smart,” Chez says, and follows me inside.
I walk in shaky-legged, and control that reflex that wants to flinch the first time we see other people again. It's not even frightening other people: teenagers working a limp pair of fast-food booths in beige striped uniforms, a drooping pair of children being prodded around by their tired, round-shouldered parents. A couple of fellas in the corner, picking at cardboard-stiff french fries, lingering each time their fingers touch over the tray. But it feels like they're all looking at us, sizing us up against America's Most Wanted and bulletins on the news networks.
"What's wrong?” Chez says, jogs my elbow. I almost hit her out of surprise.
"Been too long from people,” I choke out, and flee for the men's room.
There's a bathroom, a real bathroom, even though the truck stop's falling down and half-deserted. I look at my face in the cloudy mirror and it's pale, a few days’ dirty beard scruffing a chin that was never too good-looking to start with. I look like a refugee. I look like I'm dead.
I wash my hands. I wash my face. The water's cloudy too, and full of grit. Two days, I tell myself. Two days and two nights, and you're already thinking like a criminal.
"Well. There was no going back anyway,” I tell my reflection, and then check guilty-faced for feet under the bathroom stall doors.
I come back out and Chezley's at the door, staring a straight line into a neon-lit, wood-panelled corner. It's Maur, big man huddled small, leaning against the wall with something dark in his hand. Gun, my head tells me first, the part of my head that's been talking too much with the bomb. But no. Worse, maybe.
Phone.
Chezley meets my eye for
an edged moment. And then she opens the door and runs.
She climbs in the truck and the engine lags, rebounds and spits before it starts to life, door slamming behind her, seatbelt left dangling to the side even though we've been so careful all the way through not to get pulled over and ruined for a little thing like traffic tickets. “Go!” she snaps, and I run the rest of the way to the passenger door, yank myself in as the wheels're already moving.
Maur, at the pay phone. Slipping the quarter in and dialing.
The wheels squeak as Chez pulls out of the lot, onto the bumpy ramp and back onto the old highway. She merges fast, edging lane to lane into the fastest one and gunning it for a full half hour, until we're well away from the truck stop and gotta move to make our turn, to duck back off the main road before the state border checkpoint and the inevitable inspection.
Maybe he was just calling his brother. Or his girl, stuck back in Marion with no idea what we were planning, where we were going, why the National Security men have probably shown up at her door. Maybe he just wanted to say goodbye.
I don't know how we're gonna do it with three.
* * * *
We get behind.
Dancer goes over the maps again and again, swearing under her breath without being angry, just tired. Chez goes in with the bomb. We shut her in with the rifle across her legs, her little chin all scrunched up and brave so I know that she hates it, hates it to death. I can't picture Chezley shooting anyone. Dancer takes us back into Idaho with a few calls for water and exits, and otherwise we don't talk until they switch, and Chez runs us into Washington State just as silent and hard.
I can't sleep. All my half-nightmares have patrol lights in them, men bigger than me dressed all in black with sunglass-shade eyes. I sit with the kid when I'm supposed to be sleeping, and show him the old maps and papers.
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #220 Page 11
