Steal the Stars

by Mac Rogers

  “It crossed a gajillion light-years of space.” The whoosh-buzz of the bag seal punctuated that conclusion.

  “Right. If it got all the way to Earth, why can’t we drive it down the street? Maybe start opening up the towel racks next.” We’d gotten several different kinds—this was going to take some experimenting.

  “Right.”

  “Plus, it’s light, like balsa wood. And I know this isn’t scientific—Lloyd would give me so much shit—but what if it’s also delicate like balsa wood? And that got me thinking about babies.”

  A laugh burst out of me. I couldn’t help it.

  “So babies,” you went on, and somehow I could hear you blushing, “human babies, right, not like a lot of kinds of animals, but human babies are born not ready to live yet. They can’t walk, they’re defenseless, they’re fragile. They’re balsa wood.”

  “Okay.” I was still laughing.

  “Shut up and hand me the drill.” I did. You gave it two quick test whirs. “So we swaddle them. So they can’t move too much. Makes them steady and safe.”

  “So you think the Harp—”

  “Is dangerous and fragile. So maybe they made it like a baby, like it freaks out of it doesn’t feel safe, if it’s bouncing around. Remember the pins locking it into the base in the engine room?”

  Holy shit. “I do.”

  “So hand me the paper-towel rods and then climb in here with the Harp.”

  * * *

  THE WHOLE process took another forty excruciating minutes. We crouched in the sweltering darkness, the only real light coming from my crappy burner cell phone. I held the Harp upright while you fed towel rods through the holes at its base and drilled them into the floor of the box. We’d purchased a variety of rods and the thickest wooden ones seemed to work the best: once they were secured to the floor, the Harp barely even wiggled.

  Next, we bungeed the Turndown box to the walls of the back of the van to keep it from sliding around. And since Moss looked comfortable enough where he was, we bungeed him to the wall too.

  The ordeal was long and uncomfortable and involved enough that I didn’t realize until it was almost time to crawl out: we’d just been in a coffin together. That vision I’d had the night Grant lit a fuse under our asses, of you and I snuggled together in a death embrace, had come true. And yet somehow we’d escaped. Somehow we’d been sliced out of the darkness. It remained to be seen whether we’d be allowed to flop away to safety or speared as bait … but I felt a glimmer of hope.

  My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and God, you looked amazing. The urge to devour you was countermanded by the urge to collapse weeping and relieved into your arms. I settled for neither.

  “Let’s give it a try,” I said. “If you can stop thinking about babies for a few minutes.”

  * * *

  FIRST WE drove around the parking lot, like a preteen practicing behind the wheel for the very first time, like we had priceless crystalware balancing on the roof. It seemed steady enough. But the real test was distance. It was time to hit the road again—and fast. For two people on the run, we were almost exactly where we’d started.

  There was only one problem.

  “Matt?” I said as I eased us toward the parking lot exit. “Just realized something.”

  “What?”

  “If we’re wrong and the Harp starts going again…?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s not in the bag now.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. Fuck. Can we put the bag, like, over it?”

  “Won’t work. We can’t seal it.”

  “Okayyyy…”

  “Here goes nothing.” I gulped and pointed us toward a freeway. I saw out of the corner of my eye that you were clutching your knees like we were making a particularly hairy turn. “Good news is, at least, we won’t have to worry about the hundred-hour thingie again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I reminded you about what had been learned while I’d been away: that the Harp’s internal clock seemed to reset itself after every Power-Up. Since we’d just used it (on Patty on Lloyd on everyone we’d ever—), we’d have four entire days before having to worry about it acting up again. Assuming there’s no Power-Up now as we’re driving, we’ll have handed the damned thing over and be home free by then.

  “But Dak?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Who are we handing it off to? I don’t have to beat any more lie detectors, so I think it’s time you actually told me what the plan is.”

  You had me there. I took a deep breath.

  “We’re hitting a spot on the US side of the Tex-Mex border, about two hundred clicks south of El Paso. Someone will be waiting there in a beat-up-looking fruit van. We load Moss and the Harp into that, cross into Mexico; they’ll take us to a mobile lab.”

  “Whose mobile lab?”

  “The Chinese.” I let that sit for a moment. “They’ll check out Moss and the Harp. If they’re happy, we get fifty million US and asylum for life.”

  “We’re … wait…”

  “We’ll be rich, we’ll be safe, and we’ll be together.”

  “We’re giving Moss to the Chinese? We’re giving the Harp to the Chinese?”

  “As opposed to who? The totally awesome and responsible people we just stole it from?” I took a breath. “Drive time should be about eighteen hours, so we’ll probably need to break for the night. We should be prepared to move the box with your whole Harp setup to another van. Probably smart to switch up vehicles a few times.”

  “Um … yeah, I guess, probably…” You sounded dazed. You’d just been hit with a fist of your own.

  “Of course, we gotta see if it works first, so—”

  “And we can’t … like we can’t … No, of course we can’t…”

  “What?”

  “Like, go by my house or—?”

  “Your house.”

  “Right, no, I know it’s stupid, obviously we’re not—”

  “You know how many people they’ll have camped outside your—”

  “I know we’re not going to my house!”

  “Yeah, we’re not.”

  We should have driven in silence. That’s where it should’ve ended, with an awkward, hurt silence that was apologized for later. But I couldn’t let it go. I was suddenly furious.

  “I mean, what the fuck, Matt, why—you know how this—you’re in the game, you’re trained, you’re—”

  “Right, except, in the game, you get the briefing before the thing, not in the middle!”

  “This was the only way it would work! This was the only way you could beat the—”

  “I get all that. I’m not stupid.”

  “Then why are you talking about—”

  “I have shit there, Dak! I have stuff, pictures, memories, family things, I’m a fucking human being with a past, okay? I don’t know about you!”

  I don’t know about you.

  Okay. That hurt. “We agreed. We had a plan.”

  “The last time I knew the plan we were selling Moss to 9Source and going to Costa Rica or whatever—”

  “They can get us in Costa Rica! Sierra can get us in Costa Rica, they can get us in Switzerland, they can get us in … think of a place, they can get to us there. But they can’t get to us in China.”

  “Right, and that too, that too. This is all old news to you, you’ve been setting it up for days, but I’m in the first five minutes of knowing I’ll be living in China for the rest of my life.”

  “Right, with me—together!”

  “I mean, do you know anything about China? Do you know any Chinese, beyond tactical shit we all got in training?” It was spilling out, all of it, realizations pummeling the both of us, fist after fist. “Do you know how to live in China, do you know how to go to the store?”

  “I know how to live anywhere with fifty million dollars! Do you know what I had to do to put all this together—”

  “I’m not shitt
ing on your plan, Dak, I just need a minute to—I’m leaving everything, like everything, and I’m—what if someone woke you up this morning and said, ‘Put a shirt on, put some shoes on, we’re going to China forever,’ what would you do?”

  “If it was you? If it was you saying this? I’d put my fucking shirt and shoes on!”

  “Fine. You know what, let’s just drive and I’ll—”

  “I’m sorry my plan to make us rich and happy forever didn’t include stopping off to get all your lacrosse trophies and letters from ex-girlfriends!”

  “I’m done talking, Dak. You’re right. I’m wrong. So just…”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t think of every single thing!” The fight had gone out of me. I must have sounded more desperate than angry. I must have sounded like I meant it.

  The thing was, I did mean it. He wasn’t wrong. Tactically, it was a horrible idea, but of course a person wants to take their stuff when they go. Why didn’t you think of that, you stupid bitch? Another, colder voice answered: But you did think of that. You decided to forget. So he’d have nothing to cling to but you.

  I shuddered, despite the heat.

  We didn’t speak again for close to four hours. Too many questions, too many doubts swirling around, curling into one final realization, one final punch aimed right at my heart. The blow made a specific sound upon contact. It sounded like your voice, echoing between my ears: I don’t know about you!

  Once again you were right. We don’t know each other at all.

  When you broke the silence, the sun was hanging low in the sky, slapping a coat of yellow and blue paint across the darkening clouds.

  “Dak.”

  “What.”

  “It hasn’t made a peep.”

  The Harp had been silent this entire time.

  We weren’t dead. We weren’t screwed. At least on this front, we weren’t screwed.

  “That was a really great idea, Salem,” I said. “I never would have thought of it. You saved our lives.”

  “Guess we’re both good planners.” And was that the faintest hint of smile on your lips?

  “Guess so.”

  “Find somewhere safe.”

  “What?”

  “Find somewhere safe.”

  * * *

  I FOUND some crap-ass little town where almost everything was closed and boarded up and I parked behind some store-shaped fossil with broken windows. Not the most romantic of locations, but whatever. I would’ve parked in hell for this.

  When I came, I cried so loudly and hoarsely I thought my throat was going to turn inside out. It was the sort of noise a person makes trying to lift up the car that had just pinned down their child.

  “Damn.” Now it was your turn to catch your breath.

  “Sorry.”

  “Hey, I’m not complaining, just … I mean it was just a week, you didn’t get out of prison.”

  “Felt like a month. Thought about it like twenty times a day. Like I’m a goddamn high school sophomore or something.”

  “Like I said, not complaining, just … don’t be disappointed if that’s all I can do for the night.”

  “What, the whole hot-windowless-van-with-dead-alien-watching thing doesn’t turn you on?”

  You turned around. There was Moss, disinterested as ever. I’d forgotten about him for a while too. But there he’d been.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything,” I whispered. You turned back to me.

  “It’s…” It wasn’t fine. None of this was fine. But it was forgiven, I could see that much.

  “It’s a lot.”

  “Yeah. But here we are.”

  You took my hand in yours. I kissed it. And then I told you everything.

  I started from the moment Grant left my apartment, and the jolt of despair that switched my whole brain on to fight back. Then Myrtle Beach, D.C., Lisa, Zhang, Nikki, Haydon, the letter, Lauren, shaking Grant’s hand. In some ways it was weird filling you in—you had been so on my mind it felt like you had always been right there with me the entire time. I told you that, too. And though his back was to us through the mesh partition, it was as if Moss were listening with you. Like I was explaining myself to both of you.

  When I finished, you squeezed my hand.

  “Miles to go,” you whispered, with a distant, unreadable smile.

  * * *

  WE PULLED over again as the sun was setting a few hours later. We hadn’t quite crossed over into full desert … but almost.

  The clouds trundled thick and pendulous across the Technicolor sky. They rolled toward us with the promise of ill fortune, but with no judgment that comes with otherwise ominous things. “This is ours,” they seemed to say, overtaking everything above the sloping, mountainous horizon. They were a tiger’s roiling lip, a snake’s upraised head, a churning ocean—any number of things that could be our doom or pass us by unscathed. They owed us no warning. Theirs was a language unconcerned with foreshadows or narrative promises. They simply took ownership of all that our eyes could see and what was theirs had no choice but to bow in supplication.

  And behind that sky was blackness, emptiness, punched through with jagged holes of tiny light. It was always there, that blackness, waiting for us, no matter how bright the day might be.

  I wanted to continue justifying myself to you. I wanted to say, “This is what they did to us, they hammered into us that not only should we be willing to die for the objective, we should be willing to make others die too; and so, they have this coming.” I wanted to assure you that I was using all my instincts, all my skills, just this one more time, then never again, then I’d be off the clock for good. I’m not a warrior anymore. My tour’s over. It’s just life now. It’s just life until it isn’t anymore, for as long as that takes. I’ve earned that, you’ve earned that.

  But I didn’t speak. And the sky didn’t care.

  We are inheritors of a grand lineage of fruitlessness. Our entire species, toiling under this very sky. Since our first days, we unrolled doomed and laughable plans: stealing a sheep, robbing a bank, confessing a love, raising a family. The sky rumbled on, full of ruination and havoc, but honest and pure in its ambivalence. I felt small and comforted by my smallness. I had made myself at least somewhat bigger by joining with you. As long as I had your hand to hold on to.

  You had about forty-eight hours left to live. And if I’d know that in this moment I would’ve thought: of course.

  23

  “STUPID QUESTION: you can steal a car, right?”

  “Of course. Another van, right?”

  We’d driven all night, napping in shifts. Now, the next morning, we were pulling into a small desert town—not as small and dead as the one we’d pulled into the day before. Everything seemed to be made out of dust and clay.

  I nodded. “Or a truck, as long as it’s not with, like, a big company. I’m gonna grab us a new burner in case we need it to make contact.” I’d ditched the last one as we pulled out of the previous town. “Plus,” I couldn’t help but grin ever so slightly, “I wanna take a look-see.”

  “At what?”

  “At whether or not Sierra’s made us famous.”

  And I threw my arms around you and kissed you—blissfully not caring if anyone could see.

  * * *

  THERE WAS a gas station at the edge of town, the ghost of a tiger or a lion on the sign. I tried to remember what the name for that brand of gas was—it had been long enough since the oil reserves had been consolidated under one corporate identity that the brands I’d grown up with had all started to fade from memory just as effectively as they had from signage.

  The phones were kept behind the counter with the headache medicine and condoms and lottery tickets. While the clerk rang me up, I scanned the racks next to the counter. A few shitty magazines, a couple paperback books, and a few self-published pamphlets. Ghost Tours! one of them shouted. Murder Maps: Trace the Path of the Copycat Killer of Arroyo! read another one, under a hand-drawn image of a person
wearing a blood-soaked pillowcase. Jesus. What a delightful place to live.

  “Hold on a sec,” I told the guy after he read me what I owed for the phone. I grabbed some waters and then quickly gathered up a load of snacks off the shelves. Energy bars. A few sprigs of beef jerky in case you liked that.

  Patty’s okay, I found myself thinking. I’m sure of it. Hell, I could even imagine her being the only person tough enough to take a full blast and shake it—

  No one could do that and you know it.

  I did.

  I tried to force the thought of her out of my mind and settled up in cash.

  Outside, I worked on getting the phone out of its clear plastic shell—those things are a nightmare even for someone with combat training. Then I stuffed the phone in my pocket.

  Next up I found the local FedEx Post—the sort of place I could imagine for a town like this was the hub for information. I was right. They had computer bays at the front for the public.

  “Can I pay for computer time in cash?” I asked the dazed employee at the front desk.

  He told me there was a thing to put my card into by the computer. I showed him a wad of cash and asked him if there were any other methods of logging on.

  ROLLING BROWN OUTS CONFUSE HUMBOLDT COUNTY RESIDENTS

  Bizarre Series of Power Outages Temporarily Shut Down All Devices

  By Jenna Bix

  BEATRICE—Walton Riggins has dealt with power outages before. Ever since Johnston-Stearns took over the power supply to this area, he says, service has been spotty. “But I’ve never seen something like this: my flashlights, my watch, even the dang phone my daughter bought me for my birthday! All of it, dead! And not just me!”

  Mr. Riggins’s neighbors reportedly experienced a similar phenomenon, as well. Service restored itself within about ten minutes, they say, but until that time, “It was like living in the Stone Age again!”

  When asked if this phenomenon was perhaps the result of the rising temperatures, a representative from Johnston-Stearns declined to comment.

  We met back up by our van just outside of town. Something about the dry, warm air, the gravel crunching under my feet, made me feel like maybe we’d actually get through this. Like we were already on another planet.