Unbreakable

by Will McIntosh

  She blew again. As she drew the hose away from her mouth the breeze coming off the water caught it. The first two feet of the hose puffed open.

  “Anand? Give me a hand?”

  Anand lifted the next section of the hose out of the water. Celia aimed the silver nozzle into the wind until it inflated.

  “Did anyone bring the food?” Beaners asked.

  Silence.

  “I don’t think we need to worry about that,” Anand said. “The odds we’ll die of starvation seem low.”

  Celia still had her phone and Anand’s sketchbook in the plastic bag. That was about it.

  Both of her parents were gone now. Max, when he raised that rifle, and now Janine. It had been six days since she left Record Village. She should have guessed Janine wouldn’t make it that long, but she hadn’t wanted to face that truth. She was facing it now, and it hurt so much.

  Chapter 16

  “How does that damned hat stay on?” Anand asked, his voice hoarse.

  It was true—Beaners was still wearing his little red-with-yellow-stripe derby hat, despite the wind and the waves, despite all the running they’d done. In fact, Celia couldn’t remember ever seeing him take it off. “It’s not attached to you, is it?”

  Beaners gave her an acid look. “No, my hat is not fused to my head. I can take it off if I want.”

  “So take it off,” Anand said.

  “I don’t want to.”

  Celia was tempted to snatch it off his head, but, even though Beaners seemed less like a finger on a trigger than when they’d first met, she didn’t want to risk his wrath.

  “What did you do that made the other clowns so furious, the day I first met you?”

  “I told you, it was a misunderstanding.”

  “Oh, come on,” Anand said. “She saved your life. Don’t you think you owe her a little honesty?”

  Beaners swept his hat from his head, revealing a bald spot the exact circumference of the hat. “Fine. I threw the performance. A knife-thrower named Alexandra was going to give me a ham biscuit.” Beaners put the hat back on. “Guess I was too obvious.”

  “See?” Anand said. “That wasn’t so hard.”

  Beaners splashed water in Anand’s face. Anand wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Damn, that stings.”

  #

  There was no way to sleep. The hose wasn’t buoyant enough to hold any of them up, so they had to kick a little. Not that Celia would have been able to sleep, despite feeling beyond exhausted.

  Memories of Janine competed with a relentless replay of Sander exploding.

  “Hey.” Anand had pulled himself closer. “I just want you to know, even if this is the end of the line, I’m glad I came with you.” He smiled. “We saw some things. We lived. Really lived.”

  “And we’re going to keep on living.” Celia studied his face, but she could barely make it out in the dark. “It sounds like you’re giving up. You’re not giving up on me, are you Anand?”

  He didn’t answer for a long moment. “I’m just being realistic.”

  Celia slapped the water. “Screw realistic. Stuff your head with delusions. We’re going to make it. Hell, we’re destined to make it.” She pointed toward the stars visible through patchy clouds that obscured the moon. “There’s a fat old angel flying overhead making sure we make it. Take it from me, Anand, reality will suck the life out of you. You’ve got to pretend your way through life.”

  Anand pulled himself along the hose. “Is that the secret to breaking world records? I thought you just accepted the suffering.”

  “It’s a little of both. You can’t stare reality right in the face, or you’ll lose hope. But you have to stay within shouting distance. Does that make any sense?”

  Anand stopped inching closer, still a couple of feet away. “Yeah. I get what you’re saying. I guess what I wanted to say is, if you hadn’t had the guts to swim into that pipe, I’d still be in the audience, pretending the clowns’ latest routine was hilarious.”

  “I heard that,” Beaners called.

  Celia’s teeth were chattering. She needed something—something to keep her numb feet kicking.

  She pictured Molly. Even with Janine gone, there were thousands of reasons for her to stay alive, starting with saving Molly from “retirement”. If they drowned, it would be business as usual in Dominion.

  “What’s the plan now, when we reach the real world?” Anand asked. Because there was no reason to find a doctor now, but Anand, kind soul that he was, left that unsaid.

  “Hide. Steal some dry clothes. Maybe take the pictures on my phone to the papers?” Celia lowered her voice. “What about Beaners?”

  Anand closed his eyes. “Have we adopted him? He seems to think we have, but are we really stuck with him for the rest of our lives?”

  “No, you’re right. He’s a grown...clown. He can take care of himself.” She swallowed. “What about us? Do you want to stick together once we’re outside, or...?”

  “I do,” Anand said immediately. He started to say something else, then hesitated. “The truth is, when I was part of the audience, the only thing that kept me going was the chance to visit your town. When you were out there, it was the only time I didn’t have to pretend I was cheering. I know it’s dumb, to have a crush on someone you’ve never even met—”

  “It’s not very realistic, you mean.” A ripple of warmth worked its way down Celia’s spine until it reached her numb feet and kept them kicking.

  “I guess I was filling my head with delusions to keep myself going, just like you. But it turned out, when you showed up in the flesh, that you were exactly the person I’d imagined.” He glanced at her, as if trying to get a sense of how she was reacting. If he was able to see her face at all in the darkness, he was seeing a huge smile. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I guess being freezing cold and near drowning brings out our confessions. We even got one out of Beaners, didn’t we?”

  “We did. But back to what you were saying.” She reached to put her hand on Anand’s, but he was too far away. “Me, too.”

  He looked up. “So there’s an angel taking care of us, right?”

  “A big fat one, yeah. Either that, or a unicorn.” Celia wished she could believe it. Not that there was a unicorn watching over them, but that they were destined to make it.

  “If you’re going to stick a million people, or whatever, on an island and feed and clothe them, for whatever reason, you’d pick an island that’s close to you,” Anand said. “If the mainland was a hundred miles away, building a tunnel would be insanely expensive. You’re much better off if it’s ten miles away.”

  “Makes sense.” It also gave Celia an idea. “I think we should stop treading and start swimming.”

  “Swimming where?” Beaners asked.

  Celia scanned the horizon, picked out the brightest star. “That way. Toward that star.”

  “Well, I still can’t swim, but I’m in full support of the effort in principle.” All of that power, wasted. The damned clown was stronger than all both Celia and Anand put together, if only he could swim.

  “Why can’t you swim?” Celia asked.

  Beaners gave Celia his patented disdainful glare. “When they took the clowns to the beach for picnics, they must have left me behind.”

  “So it’s not that you can’t swim, it’s just that no one ever taught you.” Celia nodded once. “Right. Well, we’re going to teach you now.”

  “Here?” A big swell lifted them; Beaners wasn’t ready for it and his face went under. When he came up, he spit out a jet of sea water.

  “I’d rather teach you on a sunny day in the Bahamas, but here and now is all we’ve got.” She gestured to Anand. “Wrap the hose around your waist a couple of times. You’re going to be the spotter. I’m the coach.”

  Anand got into position.

  “For starters, relax. You’re too stiff.”

  As the sky turned from black to dark gray, Celia taught Beaners to kick, and to stro
ke with his powerful arms. By the time the first streaks of yellow licked the edge of the sky, Beaners was swimming. It wasn’t pretty, or efficient, but he compensated with brute force. They swam in a line connected by the hose, with Beaners in front, partially towing them. For all Celia knew, they were swimming directly away from land (no one had mentioned that possibility, but surely everyone was painfully aware of it), but it still felt good to be moving.

  Chapter 17

  It felt as if someone was stabbing Celia’s arms and legs with needles. There was a burning hot coal lodged in her lower back. How long had they been in the water? It had to be thirty-six hours, at least.

  Thousands of people are depending on you. Molly’s depending on you. She’d repeated the mantra until the words had lost their meaning. Was the sun ever going to come up? She needed something to change. Sunrise would do.

  Up ahead, Beaners let out a high-pitched shriek and doubled over, his face disappearing under water.

  “Beaners?” Celia swam to him and pulled his face out of the water. He was grimacing in pain.

  “My leg. Hurts.”

  Anand caught up to them. “Beaners, is it a cramp?”

  “Think so,” he gasped. He threw his head back, growled in fresh pain. “Now the other one. God!”

  “Get him on his back,” Anand said.

  They rolled him onto his back. Anand struggled to keep him afloat while Celia massaged his knotting calves using one hand, paddling with the other to keep her head above water. It was hard to stay above the swells; she kept going under, coming up coughing.

  Beaners’ spasms wouldn’t let up.

  “Don’t let me go,” he said, gasping. “I got this way pulling your weight. Don’t forget that.”

  “We’re not going to let you drown.” Celia coughed up sea water. The salt burned her throat and nose. She’d made a mistake that was probably going to kill them. Swimming was a great way to move from one place to another, but it burned energy much more quickly than treading water.

  Had the hose deflated? It felt as if it wasn’t helping as much as it had been, although that could be because Celia wasn’t treading water as effortlessly.

  “I pulled you. Please, don’t let me go,” Beaners said. “I swam for a long time.”

  Dawn was breaking. Celia hadn’t even noticed the sky growing lighter.

  “You did,” Anand said. “We know.” Anand seemed to be in better shape than Celia, likely from his days running from monsters, then the long walks with the audience. Staying awake for days, or being encased in ice, didn’t do much for the cardiovascular system.

  Anand swam up beside Celia. “I just got a message from your unicorn-angel.”

  “Oh yeah? What did she say?”

  Anand smiled, waited a beat. “She said, look that way.” He pointed at the horizon.

  Celia turned.

  Skyscrapers. Hundreds of them. It looked as if they were rising right up out of the water. Celia screamed, her voice a hoarse tenor. The buildings were huge, taller than any in the movies, but she didn’t care, because they weren’t on Dominion.

  “I’ll swim for a while,” Anand said. “Just keep that stupid clown’s head above water.”

  “I heard that,” Beaners said.

  Laughing, Anand swam ahead.

  #

  They were strange buildings, each a different color, like crayons set on their ends, some fat, some thin, worn to different heights. One sunset-orange building stood out, twice as tall and three times as wide as the next largest. This wasn’t Manhattan, or Paris, or any city Celia recognized.

  They were close—close enough that she could make out people on the beach, close enough that Celia knew for sure they were going to make it. She couldn’t believe it. After all this time, she was about to step into the real world.

  “If anyone questions us, we were on a little boat that capsized,” Anand said.

  With a clown on board. Hopefully no one was going to question them. Why would anyone question them? This wasn’t Dominion; they were free to do whatever they wanted, to go wherever they wanted.

  A hundred yards ahead, the waves were white-capped breakers rolling to shore, where people were sunbathing, tossing Frisbees, splashing in the surf. There was something strange about them. Celia squinted, trying to put her finger on it. No—they looked perfectly normal. It was like a scene from a movie.

  A huge wave rose behind them, white foam forming at the crest. It lifted Celia and carried her toward the beach before breaking over her, dragging her underwater and pummeling her against the sandy bottom.

  Celia rose to her feet in thigh-high surf, and froze.

  Two young men were standing a dozen feet away, gaping at her. They were at least fifteen feet tall. Everyone on the beach was fifteen feet tall.

  Anand pushed through the water to join Celia. Anand, who was so incredibly tall. He barely reached past their knees.

  “Where’s your owner?” one of the guys asked. He spotted Beaners and laughed. “What the hell? Where did you come from?”

  From a small boat that capsized. A very small boat.

  A giant teenaged girl walked by eating a giant hot dog. She smirked at them as she passed, amused, but also a little disgusted.

  As she waded toward shore, Celia stared up at the huge, huge skyscrapers not far off, and suddenly realized: these people weren’t giants. She was small.

  But there were rulers in Record Village—she was five foot seven. Competition hot dogs were a standard six inches. A mile was five thousand two hundred and eighty feet.

  Unless the rulers there were tiny, too.

  “Just get off the beach, all right?” the guy said when none of them answered. His bathing suit matched his skin color exactly, giving the illusion that he was naked but had no genitals. “You know you’re not supposed to be swimming here.”

  A face appeared in the air, over the guy’s shoulder. It looked at Celia. Two more faces materialized above the first.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Anand said.

  Celia was afraid she’d fall over if she tried to take a step. Her knees were shaking.

  The guy’s friend made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go on. Get out of here.” His bathing suit exactly matched his much darker skin as well. They all had singsong accents that were vaguely familiar.

  A dog barked right behind Celia. She jumped, spun to face a giant Golden Retriever. Except it wasn’t golden—it was black and white striped, like a zebra. Celia came up to its shoulder.

  “Down, Pepper. Down,” a white-haired woman who looked way too young to have white hair scolded. The dog yapped excitedly, its front end dropping to the sand like it wanted to play. With Celia.

  Celia ran, the sand hot under her bare feet. She reached wooden steps that led into a parking lot, each thigh-high, and stopped. Beaners passed her, vaulted onto the first step and kept going.

  Anand hurdled onto the first step, and turned. “Come on.”

  “Do you understand what’s going on?” Celia asked.

  “No. All I know is, we have to get out of here.”

  A fat woman came down the steps carrying a beach chair and a giant paperback book. “Excuse me. Wherever you’re supposed to be, you’d better get back there right now, or I’ll call the police.” She stormed off.

  Beaners was waving frantically from the top of the steps. “Let’s go.”

  Celia climbed. When she and Anand reached the top, they crossed a parking lot, then waited on a sidewalk as monstrous vehicles whizzed by silently. They barely resembled the cars and trucks in movies; there were no black tires on their chrome and silver wheels, the windows were replaced by shiny black screens, most flashing advertisements. Some of the vehicles looked more like robots on wheels. They had wide faces and big headlight eyes darting around.

  A teenage girl’s face materialized out of thin air above them and descended until it was eye-level with Celia. She burst out laughing. “Unbelievable.”

  The face disappeared.r />
  There was a gap in traffic. They made a run for it, across the street, over the knee-high curb. Fifty feet away, a woman was walking an animal Celia had never seen before. It was vaguely monkey-like, walking on all fours, with silky silver- and gold-striped fur and a tail like an oversized cotton ball.

  “We have to find a place to regroup,” Anand said.

  Celia wanted to ask him how he was holding it together in the middle of all this, until she remembered he used to be hunted by eyeless things that burrowed underground.

  They moved in a tight group, pressed close to the buildings. An old man limped past, talking to a disembodied face floating beside him. A woman in a business suit coming the other way walked right through the face as if it wasn’t there.

  A train shot by overhead, on rails that hung suspended in the air between two buildings. The rails seemed far too thin to support the weight of an entire train.

  “There. A park.” Beaners pointed to their left. They hurried into the park. The grass felt cool under Celia’s bare feet. They paused under a towering, gnarled tree.

  “We’re in the future,” Beaners said, wide-eyed. “How did we get to the future?”

  “I think we can assume we’ve always been here,” Anand said. “That would explain you, Beaners, and the slugs that burned right through people in my hometown.”

  They passed a hot dog cart with a red and white striped umbrella. A sunset-orange mechanical torso, head, and arms sprouting from one end of the cart, was preparing a hot dog for a waiting customer.

  “Why are we so small?” Celia asked.

  Anand’s eyes were darting all around, as if he was watching for monsters. “Let’s start with the basics: we need food, water, shelter.”

  Food and a soft drink sounded good to Celia. Thirty-six hours paddling at sea had done wonders for her appetite, and her lips were cracked from salt and sun. She spotted a Burger Barn beyond the park. "There’s food and drink.”

  Anand followed her gaze. “Now all we need is money.”

  “I’ll get us money.” Beaners took off at a brisk, determined clip. “Come on, keep up.”