“Now her,” Andy said to the woman. She grabbed Marta by the arm and pushed her to her knees. Wes stumbled forward.
“No!” he said. “I’m here. I’m—” His chest was heaving now. He couldn’t catch his breath to say the word.
“The golden boy,” Andy said. He smiled. “The guest of honor. Violet, bring him over to our little powwow.”
The woman approached, miner’s light on her forehead a blinding eye. As she dug her fingers into Wes’s shoulder he got a look at her, and it took every bit of what was left of his will for him to keep from gasping.
She could have been twenty or sixty. She could have been of any race. The skin on her face was taut with bands of purple scar tissue, and her neck pulled down, froglike, from a sagging bottom lip. One of her eyes was shriveled to a blind asterisk; the other, bright blue, glinted at him from under a painful-looking hood of puckered flesh. It was the worst suffering he had ever seen in another living person, suffering beyond the realm of what he had understood was possible, and he would have been moved to pity for her if the gleam in her visible eye hadn’t been so full of loathing.
“You think of splitting,” she said into his ear—her breath was nauseatingly sour—“and I’ll kill every person here. Starting with your old girlfriend. You understand me?”
“I understand you,” Wes said.
“Gather round the fire, folks,” Andy said. “I’ve got one more speech to make.”
Part Two
The Shaman
Seven
One of Edie’s clearest early memories of her father was of nighttime, a long car ride home, the blur of yellow streetlights outside her window. They—her father, her mother, Edie—had been somewhere exciting, probably to the beach or Old West Mountain; Edie could reconstruct this now because there were photos of her at about three and four, some with her bottom sunk in the sand and a plastic pail tucked between her knees, others of her riding a ski lift seated next to her mother, both of them grinning and waving to the person behind the camera, her father, who had been seated in a separate chair ahead of them. Her father was almost always behind the camera. Edie’s mother, whose vision was very bad, and corrected to something slightly better than blindness by a combination of laser surgery and heavy lenses, could never take a good photo, and so the only pictures Edie had of her father were out of focus, off-center, or obstructed by a finger or some object in the foreground. In them, her father seemed more ghost than person, a mythological creature, a Bigfoot: large, brown, always in motion.
So what she had were her memories of him, like this early one, the one that began in the car, with the sense of abstract, sleepy joy, blinked out into unconsciousness, and ended when she was briefly awakened to her father unbuckling her from the car seat. He lifted her easily in his strong arms, put his handsome face close to hers, kissed the tip of her nose. “Beddy-bye, baby girl,” he said.
What a pleasure, a luxury, to be carried to bed by someone you loved and trusted, someone with the physical power to move you gently and tenderly, to slide you between cool covers at the exact moment you slid back down into sleep. Edie imagined this with longing as she rushed, heart thumping in the cold darkness, to gather her few personal belongings and help Jesse collapse their tent and its vac system into a package small enough to be stowed in its custom microfiber pack. They were muttering at each other: instructions, curses, corrections. It goes this way. No, goddammit, you’ve got to unfold it and refold it the other direction. Did you unlock the brace before bending it?
“Thirty seconds,” Andy shouted. “If you’re not ready to move when I say move, you leave the shit behind. Leave it behind, and you sleep outside.”
With a final surge of panicked adrenaline Edie was able to see what they were doing wrong, the corner they had neglected to tuck in, and she made the necessary adjustment, then shoved the tent into place and zipped the pack closed with a gasp. She shouldered it quickly because she knew Jesse wouldn’t think to in time, slung the strap of her pack of personal items around her neck, and stood ramrod straight. In another situation, another life, she might have offered a sarcastic salute to punctuate her success. Now, she only dropped her hands to her sides, palms open, and kept as still as she could stand to. Mickey Worthington’s body was still slumped in the shadows of the dwindling campfire, generous bottom resting on his socked heels, his head—what remained of it—cheek-down in a pool of blood. It’s not right, she could hear him wailing. You pay as much as I did, you expect some things.
Andy approached her. “Hands in front of you,” he said. His eyes didn’t meet hers.
She complied. They were shaking; she couldn’t do anything about that.
“Cross your wrists.”
She did, the inside of her right wrist resting on the inside of the left, but he roughly turned her left hand over. “Like that,” he said impatiently, as if she were stupid, and then he looped a neon pink zip tie around her wrists, cinching it so tightly into place that her skin was pinched, even under the protective layer of her microsuit. When he moved on to Jesse she relaxed the weight of her arms, experimenting. Let her hands drop, and the zip tie sank even more painfully into the skin on the back of her left hand. But holding her hands up, she could tell, would quickly put a strain on the muscles in her upper arms and shoulders. She wiggled her hands around, testing for give. There was none.
Jesse’s shoulder brushed hers. “This is fucked,” he said. She could hear the panic in his voice. “What the fuck are they doing? What do they want? Money?”
Edie peered as surreptitiously as she could at the disfigured woman who had shot Mickey. She was difficult to look at, and Edie could only imagine that she didn’t like being looked at, and so Edie dropped her eyes—only to feel them dragged back upward to that unfortunate face, so riveting in its painful contortion. “I don’t think so,” Edie whispered. All the credits in the world couldn’t help this woman, though perhaps a top-notch Atlantic Zone doctor could at least give her some grafts to make her face more pliant, or scrap that face and put on a new one, the way they did with people who were mauled by pit bulls or who walked into helicopter blades. And then, instead of this horror show face, the woman would have a slack moon-face, saggy eyes, bottom lip puckered like a newborn’s. But that seemed unlikely, too. Edie guessed that this woman would rather be a horror show.
“Violet,” Andy said, and the disfigured woman jerked her head around in response. Violet? Had Edie heard that right? Maybe he had said “Violent.” Violet would be a name of almost cruel absurdity, applied to this woman with the gun slung across her chest, face singed of any of its femininity.
“Collect the Stamps,” Andy said. “Check their bags.”
She made her way around the circle of hostages, jamming her hand into holster-pockets and tossing the Stamps into an empty knapsack, then turning each traveler’s knapsack inside out and picking through the contents, leaving some items for the traveler to clumsily repack, tossing others into the sack with the Stamps, and—in a couple of cases—keeping her find. From Wes she stole a peanut butter–flavored power bar. From Anastasia—and this could almost stoke your sympathies, if you weren’t being held at gunpoint by the murderous ghoul—she took a fine gold chain with a letter A charm, slipping it over her head with a little smile playing at her tendinous lips. There was such childlike pleasure in her gestures that Edie wondered if she wasn’t perhaps a little touched, as her mother would have put it.
When the woman reached Edie, though, and started going through her bag, Edie revised her assessment. There was too much adult efficiency in her hands—pristine hands, unburned and even lovely, faintly freckled. The hands of a thirty- or forty-year-old. The hands quaked suddenly, and the bag slipped out of them; on instinct, Edie dropped her own bound hands down and managed to catch it.
“Thanks,” the woman muttered, her blue eye touching Edie’s for a fraction of a second. Then she shoved the pack back
at Edie and moved down the line.
“Now, wait just a minute,” Ken Tanaka said as Violet collected his Stamp. He was trying awkwardly to support his sister without the use of his bound hands, and Wendy, temple swollen and bleeding, looked only half-conscious. “Wait, now, how are we supposed to protect ourselves?” It was the most Edie had heard him say at once in the entire three weeks of their acquaintance.
Violet grunted in an amused way and tossed Ken’s Stamp in with the rest.
“I advise you to stick close to the group,” Andy said. “Behave yourself, and one of us might Stamp you when the time comes.”
Edie found herself watching with interest when Violet approached Marta, wondering if Marta had been stupid enough to pack those diamond earrings.
“Bag,” Violet said through her mangled mouth. Marta handed it over, shaking so much that she seemed to be playing keep-away with Violet, and finally Violet snatched it and turned it upside down. Edie expected something good, given this display: the earrings, or a contraband phone, maybe. But there was nothing of note, nothing even worth stealing: the usual changes of underwear and socks; bug spray; ibuprofen. Violet paused over what looked like a Smokeless, still shrink-wrapped in its Canteen packaging, and seemed to consider taking it, perhaps only on principle. But in the end she left it in the dirt and went on to the next person, and there was something oddly frantic in the expression of relief that crossed Marta’s face. The woman must really like her NicoClean.
—
They were marched out of camp in twos, Andy taking the lead, Violet in the back, the other two armed men roaming up and down the line to shout in the ear of anyone who flagged with exhaustion, or to send a warning poke with the business end of their rifles into the lower back of anyone who—what? Seemed to be thinking of escape? Edie was pretty sure that escape, at this point, was on no one’s mind. Not if the person had any sense. It was pitch-black out—even the stars were obscured now behind a scrim of cloud cover—and they were heading in the opposite direction of the road they’d come in on. Unarmed, unStamped, wrists bound, they’d be completely helpless away from the company of their guards.
Jesse, beside her, huffed with exertion and affront. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered. “I mean, how stupid can they be? I have people. I’ll be missed. This will be all over the news.”
“Not for another three weeks,” Edie said tiredly. It was amazing the effect that an extreme situation—a little out-of-zone travel, a bit of hostage-taking—could have on a relationship. Jesse’s presence was intolerable right now—his voice, reedy with terror and steeled by entitlement; his rank fear-sweat; the way he kept veering into her, as if he had a flat left tire. She took some perverse pleasure in reminding him, “No one’s expecting to hear from us for three more weeks.”
There was nothing for a full moment but the sound of their breathing and the rustling of their boots through the leafy groundcover. Jesse bumped into her shoulder again, and Edie pulled roughly away from him, exhaling with a frustrated whoosh of breath.
“Shit,” Jesse said.
Hours passed. Andy and his men gulped from canteens, their headlamps tilting up toward the sky, spotlighting the canopy of limbs, then dropping down to blind a parched, covetous, staring traveler. Edie learned to stop looking. She retreated within herself and half-closed her eyes. The lamps became a guiding blur. She was in a locomotive of shuffling bodies. The muscles in her calves and shoulders burned—her right shoulder, bearing the weight of the collapsed tent, was a half-numb misery—and her heels erupted with blisters in her stiff new boots. The line stopped three times at the sound of shrieking. The first time it was Tia, who’d tripped and fallen flat on her face, unable to catch herself with her wrists still zip-tied. Violet dragged her roughly to her feet. Sometime later, a Stamp was administered. Another bite was, Andy declared, not a tick. Edie talked herself out of sounding the alarm at various itches, trusting that Andy hadn’t been lying about the unmistakable nature of the miner tick bite, even if he lied about everything else.
He had told her to leave, though, hadn’t he? He had told her to leave, and she’d said something virtuous about wanting to take care of Jesse. Jesse, who was muttering curses under his breath with every step, just loudly enough to touch Edie’s weary ears and no one else’s. The weight of their gear was hanging around her neck, but still he muttered.
She was taking care of him, all right. Good God, it was almost funny.
Sometime during the never-ending march, the light started to change. A soft grayness crept in, defining the shoulders of the person in front of her. Feingold. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, she could read the label on the back of Wes’s microsuit:
SECONDSKINS
“WHEN SECONDS MATTER”
MADE IN INDONESIA
“OK, stop,” Andy called, the first loud noise in hours, startling most of them out of dazes. Edie nearly ran into Wes.
“Listen up,” Andy said. “There’s a firebreak up ahead and two vehicles. I want you in them in five minutes. Go where we point. Find a place to park yourself. There are more asses than seats, so get ready to get friendly with each other and put your crap wherever you can fit it. Questions?”
They all blinked dry, swollen eyes and tried not to attract this new Andy’s notice.
“Great,” Andy said. “Fantastic. If I’d have known that all it would take to shut you whiney fuckers up was a four-hour hike, I’d have done it a lot sooner.”
This was bad, but Edie couldn’t help but feeling a bit of hope at the thought of sitting down. Even if she had to ride the whole way in Jesse’s lap. Because vehicles meant they were leaving the woods. They were going somewhere with fuel. Roads. Roofs. Right?
The vehicles, a car and a van, were ancient-looking, the metal shells barnacled with painted-over rust. One of the men waved Edie and Jesse to the van, on the heels of Wes and Marta. This man was tall and bone-thin, with olive skin and long black hair—it fell to the middle of his back—pushed back from a high forehead. Midforties, maybe. No head cover, no microsuit, just a canvas button-down shirt and pants, navy blue but cut like military fatigues. Despite his lack of precautions, his visible skin was much clearer than Andy’s: a few older-looking Stamp scars on his face and neck, a few more on the backs of his hands. Edie thought she’d heard Andy call him Joe. He was, for no good reason, the one among their captors she’d deemed kindest, most susceptible to pitiable displays, despite the fact that he wielded his weapon with as much casual brutishness as the rest of them. Maybe it was because he talked the least. The big hulk of a guy wearing the bandolier—his name was definitely Randall; Edie knew because she’d heard Andy hiss the name with impatience more than a few times during their endless hike—was a yapper. Body of a Rottweiler, personality of a Yorkshire terrier. He’d be a bully and a coward, both, Edie thought, and if she could get a stolen moment with Jesse, it would be wise to warn him to stay off that one’s radar. Jesse, she imagined, would be exactly the type to push Randall’s buttons.
But Joe, maybe-Joe, was waving Edie and Jesse to the van, and when the travelers had assembled beside it, he slid the side door open, releasing a terrific squeal that made them all flinch. Edie and Jesse, at the back of the group, were the last to board. There were two and a half bench seats, all occupied hip to hip, or hip on hip, the floor space crammed full of packed tents and knapsacks. The interior was rank with body odor and bad breath, and Edie’s optimism about the van dissipated when she scanned the expressions of her fellow travelers, hoping to find a face generous and open enough to impose upon. Can I suffocate you with my body and bags? They were understandably stony, hostile; they’d shifted their anger from their kidnappers to Edie and Jesse, and Edie thought of every ride she’d ever taken on the school bus, every tray of lunch she’d brought to a table in her high school cafeteria, and—inevitably—of the one time she’d flown in a plane. That was back when she and her mother moved from
Gulf to Atlantic Zone, seven months after her father’s death, and they’d only had the money to fly Group Economy, where the seats were first-come, first-served and the storage spaces an unregulated free-for-all, notorious for provoking fistfights among customers trying to sneak in extra carry-ons. But this was worse.
Jesse paused on the step behind Edie. “Aw, no,” he said. “How are we supposed to make this work? There isn’t any room left.”
“Figure it out,” Joe said. “Or stay here. It’s no matter to me.”
Edie cast a desperate look to those who were seated. “You all know we can’t do that. Please don’t make us do that.”
“You better hurry,” Joe said.
There was a pregnant moment—probably seconds, felt like much longer—when no one moved, no face twitched with understanding or even sullen resignation. Then Wes Feingold, seated in one of the narrower nooks toward the back, lifted his hands. “Here,” he said. He exchanged glances with Marta, who nodded a fraction. “We’ll make room here.”
Which was progress, but Edie thought the declaration meant about as much as “I’m going to make this woman disappear” would have. Wes and Marta had maneuvered their packs off their backs and into their laps, an operation not easily reversed because of the zip ties. They were seated next to the Tanakas. Wendy appeared to have already fallen asleep—Edie marveled at the fact that she’d made it this far—and Ken appeared unwilling to shift over even a millimeter. His jaw was a rigid L, his shoulders set as if expecting a blow.
“Please move over,” Marta said to Ken. Her tone of voice was low and polite, but steely. There was something else to it—a command, even a threat. And to Edie’s great surprise—what threat could this petite woman in her fifties really pose?—Ken shifted to the left, adjusting Wendy’s unconscious body so that her weight was centered on one hip and her torso rested heavily against his.
The Salt Line Page 13
