The Echo Room

by Parker Peevyhouse

  “Do you think it would have been better if you’d woken up here on your own?” Bryn asked. “All we’ve done is messed things up for each other.”

  The creak in her voice worried him. He touched her arm, wishing he could pull her closer. But she didn’t respond. “That man outside Scatter 3 was on his own,” Rett said. “It didn’t turn out so well for him.”

  Bryn didn’t seem to hear him. She rocked in the dirt next to him, humming her strange tune under her breath so that Rett felt half-hypnotized. He picked up the rock and turned it over and over in his hand. Something told him he knew what they needed to do. He knew how to fix this problem. He could get them out of this. He just had to think.

  And then—

  The thought came to him, the thing he knew they needed to do. One, change your jumpsuit. He thought while Bryn went on humming. Two, find some water. Three, get the—

  “If I could do it over again,” Bryn said, interrupting his thoughts, “I would do it differently.”

  She reached into her pocket but Rett barely registered the movement. He was too busy wondering why she wouldn’t look at him.

  “Differently?” Rett’s heart thumped. “You mean alone?”

  “I’m sorry, Rett.” Bryn lifted her arm and pointed the gun at his chest.

  No, he thought. “Bryn, wait. I have to tell you—”

  Too late. He saw her hand flex as she squeezed the trigger.

  But as she did, she shifted the gun.

  She’s not aiming for me, Rett realized, as the sound of the gunshot exploded in his head and he fell through a long, dark tunnel.

  5

  4:38 A.M.

  Rett emerged in a starlit hollow, panting with shock and confusion. The wrenching pain in his ribs and ankle vanished in an instant.

  Overhead, a green flame rippled across the night sky. Needles of light piercing the darkness. Rett thought he could feel the same effect on his skin, but it was only the cold air prickling his flesh.

  The sensation brought with it a sudden realization: he was outside in the cold and the darkness. Still in the wasteland, but not where he had been a moment ago.

  He jerked in alarm—the gun.

  The crack of the gunshot echoed in his head even now. He brought his hands to his face, to his chest. But he was okay. No terrible burning wounds, no sign at all that he’d been hit by a flare.

  Bryn—the gun—

  He tried to get hold of his thoughts. She pointed the gun at me. But she moved it just before she pulled the trigger.

  And then …

  And then he’d escaped. A tunnel had opened in his mind, a channel he had slipped through. Like reality had gone soft, and he’d forced his way through it.

  But to where?

  And to when?

  How can it be nighttime?

  The sheet of green light overhead flexed like a flag, like the banner of a strange country.

  Rett sank to his knees. The gun, the creature, the daggers of pain—all gone. But he was still lost and confused. And now he was alone.

  He gazed up at the luminous curtain moving over him. An aurora? He wondered if auroras were like shooting stars—if you could wish on them. “I don’t want to be alone,” he murmured. Not a wish, exactly, but the feeling bled from him and he couldn’t help but give voice to it.

  “Rett?” Someone called to him from the direction of a lonely boulder.

  Rett shot to his feet. “Bryn?”

  She and the boulder made a single, shadowy shape until she pushed away from it, her white jumpsuit aglow with starlight. She stepped toward him, and he let out a breath that steamed in the cold air. “Bryn.” He stumbled forward, flooded with relief, and folded his arms around her, testing the shape of her shoulders, the curve of her back, wondering if she could be real. After a moment, she put her arms around him and pressed her face into his shoulder. Her grip startled him. He leaned into it, grateful for an anchor to stop him from freewheeling into confusion and fear.

  She said something into his shoulder, too muffled to make out. He pulled away. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  She only stared back at him, guilt and alarm mingling in her eyes.

  “What happened?” he asked her. “How did we get back here?”

  “The gun.” She looked away.

  Rett remembered a surge of fear, an explosion of sound. “You didn’t shoot me,” he said, his voice wavering along with his conviction.

  “No—I wouldn’t—that’s not what—” Bryn shook her head. “We said every time we got really scared, we felt like we were being pulled away. So I thought maybe we could get away if I used the gun to scare you.”

  Away would be nice, Rett thought. But they were still in the wasteland.

  “I think it’s because of whatever they put in our heads,” Bryn went on. She brushed her fingers over Rett’s scalp. His skin tingled at her touch.

  He tried to sort it all out. Fear, pain, the explosion of noise from the flare gun. A quiet hollow, an endless expanse of stars. This is the place I sensed at the end of the tunnel, Rett thought. I reached for safety, for calm … and I found my way here.

  And somehow, he’d pulled Bryn with him.

  “I think I brought us here,” he said. “I think the mechanism in my head helped me find this place, somehow, and I pulled us both through.”

  He gazed up at the inky sky, the spattering of stars. Like his favorite two-page spread in Shine Fall, a boy under a million midnight suns.

  “I keep wanting to get home—to get back to my mom,” he went on. “But I think this is the closest I can get.”

  Rett found that he had closed his hand around Bryn’s. Her skin was as cold as his. He pressed her hand against his chest to warm it.

  Bryn looked up, her eyes full of uncertainty. “I’m sorry.”

  For what? Rett wondered. For not knowing how to get us home? For shooting a gun at me? For not wanting your hand against my chest?

  A sound interrupted his thoughts: the crunch of gravel.

  “What was that?” Bryn gasped.

  Rett turned, searching for the source of the sound. A humped shadow loomed at the top of a rise. “The depot’s up there. If we can find a way to get in…”

  They scrambled up the incline, shedding cardboard slippers Rett hadn’t realized he was wearing. Where did those come from? he wondered, before fear chased away all thoughts beside, Get to safety.

  He didn’t know how they’d get into Scatter 3, but they could at least climb the rungs up to the roof. And then—

  They reached the top of the incline.

  The depot’s door was ajar.

  Rett jerked to a stop, heart hammering. “How can it be open?” It’d been bolted shut, jammed. And the man’s body …

  It was nowhere to be seen now.

  He exchanged confused looks with Bryn.

  “We’ve done this before,” Bryn said. “Haven’t we.” It wasn’t a question so much as an admission of dread. “We’re starting over, somehow.”

  Rett approached the door warily. The whole structure was battered and weathered. The metal walls, scratched and scarred by sprays of windblown gravel, glowed faintly in the pre-dawn light.

  He touched the open door.

  How is this happening?

  He slipped through the opening. Inside, darkness blinded him. Then, a faint crack, and a green glow filled the narrow space.

  “I stepped on something—a light stick,” Bryn murmured. She leaned to pick it up, and some of the liquid dripped over her hand. Rett was sure he’d seen this image before—her hands, glowing.

  “Hope it’s not toxic,” Bryn said.

  “Probably not unless you drink it. Although we’ve survived worse in Walling’s cafeteria.”

  Bryn tensed. “Do you hear something?”

  Rett tilted his head to one side. Silence muffled everything but his heartbeat in his own ears. “Nothing.” Even so, visions of jointed legs and hooked feet flashed through his mind. A long, wet fang �
��

  He pulled Bryn into the changing room. They stood close in the narrow space, shoulders pressed against each other.

  “If we’ve been through all of this before,” Rett said, “then all of the same things are going to happen again.” He tried to take comfort in the weight of Bryn’s arm against his, but his mind raced with fearful thoughts.

  “We need the flare gun.” Bryn looked up at him. Her eyes glowed eerily in the green light. “We found it in the office last time, near the desk.”

  “And the extra flare.” Rett pulled away from her reluctantly and moved toward the doorway.

  “Wait,” Bryn said, catching his hand. “We know one of the bugs is going to come here to the depot. What if we use the water to kill it instead of a flare? Then we can go up on the roof, shoot the flare up like you said we should do. Hope someone comes to help us. We’d still have one flare left to defend ourselves.”

  Rett could hardly follow her words for the feel of her palm pressed against his. “You want to lure a bug in here?”

  “We’ll be safe inside one of the rooms. That’s what the water is meant for, right? A defense against bugs?”

  Rett wanted to agree, but the tightness in his chest wouldn’t let him.

  Bryn squeezed his hand, trying to reassure him. It only made his chest constrict more. “We’ll go up on the roof and open the skylight,” Bryn said. “When the bug comes, we’ll hide in an upstairs room, push the button—and drown it.”

  “What if we get stuck out there again, like last time?” Rett craned his neck to get a look at the heavy door that still stood ajar. He didn’t want to move to where he’d have to drop her hand.

  “I’ll get the rope from the supply room and tie it to the rungs outside the skylight.” Bryn dropped his hand and slid past him toward the doorway. “Then we’ll have another way in and out of this place in case anything happens to the door again.”

  Rett followed her, already missing the warmth of her hand in his. “But what exactly happened to the door last time?”

  “I don’t know, but we have to hurry before that bug comes.”

  Rett waited, shivering in the cold, while she ducked into the supply room. He thought about her hand in his, her arms around his waist, her head on his shoulder. We’re going to get through this. We’re together now.

  Bryn came back with the same rope and carabiner they had last seen tied to the traitorous sapling.

  “How is this possible?” Rett mumbled. “That rope … everything’s back where we first found it?”

  “We’ll think about it later.” Bryn headed for the heavy door, already knotting the rope like she had last time. “Come on.” She slipped outside.

  Rett started to follow her. But a clatter from the office stopped him in his tracks.

  He slowly turned to look through the open doorway. From this new angle, he could now see another green glow coming through an open partition. Fear plunged into his gut.

  The clattering stopped. A figure eased into view—a crouching man with deep lines in his green-lit face. Before Rett could react, the man moved his hand into view. It held a gun.

  Rett’s whole body went numb. His gaze locked onto the green-gleaming metal. Blackness crept along the edges of his vision and then came the familiar pull that promised to take him through a tunnel to someplace safer.

  But something rooted him in the moment: the gun—it was identical to the one Bryn had pointed at him so recently. Same tube-shaped barrel, same scratched metal. He started to look toward the heavy door she’d gone through. But the next moment, soft thuds came from the roof, and it was all Rett could do not to look up at the skylight and call to Bryn. Don’t alert him to the fact that she’s here.

  The man rose. He kept the gun pointed at Rett’s chest. Flare gun, Rett reminded himself, but that only made him shake with fear at the memory of the flare burning against the bug’s flesh.

  “Who are you?” the man asked gruffly, stepping closer so that his blocky frame towered over Rett. His T-shirt was tattered, jeans ripped at the knees, boots coated in dust. The cap pulled over his eyes was limp with sweat, the symbol of overlapping jagged lines black with grime. Rett imagined him as a corpse sprawled in the dirt outside. It’s the same man, he realized. But how…?

  The man thrust out his light stick and looked over Rett’s jumpsuit while fear churned in Rett’s gut. “You from Scatter?” the man asked. His teeth glowed in the green light.

  “Scatter?” Rett croaked, lost in confusion. His gaze flicked from the gun to the logo on the man’s hat.

  The man pulled on the bill of his cap. “I haven’t worked for Scatter in a long time.” The barrel of the gun drifted downward. He squinted at Rett as if trying to guess his age. “Someone send you here to collect loot?” The man craned his neck to look out through the doorway. He swiped at a patch of ashy skin under his jaw with a calloused finger. A black talon hanging from a cord around his neck swung like a pendulum. When he looked at Rett again, he peered out from under swollen eyelids. His voice dipped low. “They shouldn’t have sent someone so green.”

  Fear rippled through Rett. The man took slow steps toward him, gun aimed now at Rett’s heart.

  “Back up,” the man barked. “Toward the door. You’re gonna tell whoever sent you this place was empty. Will be when I’m finished, anyway.”

  Overhead, the click of a latch sounded. The skylight, Rett thought. He coughed, trying to cover the creak of it opening. Does Bryn see the man? He prayed she did, prayed she wouldn’t call down to Rett and startle the man who held the gun in a shaking hand.

  “Go,” the man growled.

  Rett backed across the main room.

  “They sent you here all alone?” The man stopped to look around the depot, pulling at his grimy cap. His gaze lingered on the open closet. “Or is someone else here?”

  “No,” Rett said quickly.

  The man looked him over again. He pulled at Rett’s sleeve, and Rett flinched away. “Clothes are so nice and clean,” the man said. Rett looked down at the dirt crusted on the cuffs on his pants and sleeves. His jumpsuit was still a lot cleaner than the man’s tattered clothes.

  “How’d you get out here?” The man frowned at Rett’s feet. “What happened to your shoes?”

  “I—I lost them.” He remembered the cardboard slippers that had fallen off his feet as he climbed the slope to the depot. Where had they come from? And who would wear flimsy slippers in a wasteland?

  Gravelly laughter erupted from the man’s throat. “You came all the way out here just to get some new shoes? You know, those bugs don’t care if you’re clean or dirty when they eat you. They ain’t picky.”

  Rett stared at the black talon dangling from the cord around the man’s neck and his alarm surged. The man touched the talon. Something like regret flashed in the man’s eyes. “You seen them?” he asked in a whisper. “You know?”

  Rett recalled the scratch of scythe-like feet on metal, on rock. He shuddered.

  The man slowly nodded, vindicated by Rett’s reaction. “A man couldn’t make up something like that.” He was lost in a fog, but the next moment, it cleared. He gripped Rett’s shoulders with his calloused fingers and shoved him toward the main door. Rett scrambled for some idea of what to do. He could at least lead the man outside, away from where Bryn crouched near the skylight. What then?

  He was within a few feet of the door when the man behind him shuffled to a stop and grunted, “Outside.”

  Rett hesitated. “You’re going to lock me out?”

  “What’s wrong? Scared of the bugs?” The man chuckled. He scratched at the patchy spot under his jaw and his smile vanished. “I’ll let you back inside when I’m finished. What’s in this place is mine. Whatever you came here for—you aren’t going to get it.”

  Rett inched forward. He thought about Bryn and her rope. What good will it be to get back inside the depot from the roof if we don’t have a way to defend ourselves against a gun?

  “Hear wha
t I said?” the man growled. “Out!”

  Rett moved sideways through the door. He couldn’t stop himself from picturing a bloodless corpse sprawled in the dirt. That’s going to be me this time.

  “Wait,” the man said.

  Rett froze just outside the door. The man stood half in, half out of the depot and squinted at Rett. “Have I seen you before?”

  The blue glimmer of coming daybreak revealed nothing to Rett except that the man was even grimier than he’d thought. “I don’t think so.” But I’ve seen you—dead, not ten feet from this spot.

  “I don’t believe you’re here all alone.” His lips were chapped, but a drinking tube dangled over his shoulder from a hydration backpack. Water had dripped from the tube onto his faded T-shirt and the man pressed his free hand to it, as if trying to reclaim the moisture. “No one hikes all the way out here without gear. Someone drove you in.”

  The man craned his neck to see around Rett. Then he edged out through the opening, gun first.

  The next moment, there was a flurry of movement and a heavy thud. The man dropped to the dirt. Bryn stood behind him in the doorway, fire extinguisher in hand.

  She stared in horror at the fallen man, at the dark blood spreading over his scalp and seeping into his wispy hair. The grimy cap lay in the dirt, a few feet from the gun.

  “Is he—?” Bryn’s face was pale.

  Rett put a shaking hand under the man’s jaw, checking for a pulse. “I think he’s just unconscious. Get the gun.”

  Bryn had already picked it up and was now sliding it into the hip pocket of her jumpsuit. “I saw him through the skylight. I used the rope to climb down. I thought he was going to—”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I don’t think the door will close, even from the inside.”

  “It’ll have to. Unless you just want to hope he won’t wake up angry. Help me move him.” The man’s legs were blocking the doorway. Rett gripped the man under the arms, trying to ignore the rank smell of sweat and the blood that was now smeared over his own jumpsuit. He had a gun, Rett reminded himself as he battled a twinge of guilt. Bryn had to do it. He hauled the man a foot or so, grunting with the effort. “Bryn, help me.”