The Echo Room

by Parker Peevyhouse

  Bryn leaned on the handle of the shovel. “Maybe…” She took in the crumbling ridges that crowned the canyon. “Maybe they walled this place off because this is where it all started.”

  “Where what all started?”

  “There’s a theory floating around the internet about a government experiment gone wrong. This site called Dark Window says the experiment is to blame for the failing crops, the cancer clusters—all of it.”

  “What kind of experiment are we talking about?”

  “Some ecological experiment. That’s why people find two-headed frogs in their garden, why farmers can’t keep their crops from shriveling.”

  “Why the trees in the park turned black,” Rett mumbled, thinking of home.

  “So maybe the government walled this place off because the wasteland is proof that they’re to blame.”

  “It’s not just the wasteland they’re hiding. They buried something out here where they know nobody can get to it. But what did they bury?”

  “You’re asking me what people bury in wastelands? And then mark with a skull and crossbones?”

  “Pirate treasure?”

  Bryn gave him a look like, Really?

  He grimaced. “Okay, obviously not. Unless I’m making clever commentary on corporate greed? I mean, are we assuming Scatter sent us out here to steal something for them?”

  “From the government, no less. Any problem with that?”

  “I’m pretty sure the government would have a problem with it. So there’s that to think about.”

  Bryn stabbed her shovel into the dirt, continuing her work. “It’s not like the powers that run this country have ever done anything but screw us both over. Am I right? Ecological disaster, shoddy health care, underfunded facilities—”

  “Do you think it might be meteorites?”

  “What?”

  “The guy in the depot said Scatter had him hunting for meteorites. Maybe the government confiscated them all and buried them.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know. But maybe that means Scatter actually is the rightful owner of what we’re about to dig up.”

  “Honestly, all I care about is getting this job finished.”

  “Yeah. I just wish I knew what I signed up for.”

  “Something tells me you wouldn’t have signed up to do this if you thought it was shady.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She paused to take a drink from her water bottle. “You sure you’re okay using that thing?” She nodded at the flare gun resting in Rett’s lap and took a drink from her water bottle.

  “Can’t be that hard.” Rett coughed against the dirt irritating his throat.

  Bryn tossed him the water bottle. “You couldn’t do it in the depot.”

  Rett glowered at the distant ridge of the ravine as he took a drink. “That was different.”

  “That guy would have hurt you, same as a bug would.”

  “Good to know you don’t have qualms about shooting people. Thanks for the warning. By the way, I think I’ll hold on to the gun from now on.”

  “You’re not upset that he pointed that same gun at you?”

  “I hope you see the irony in what you just said.”

  Bryn went back to shoveling, head down. “You told me before that you would defend yourself if you had to.”

  “Don’t you ever wonder what kind of person you might be if there was no ‘had to’?”

  Bryn paused, leaned on her handle. “You don’t remember anything about me. Do you?”

  Nausea and anxiety roiled in Rett’s stomach. He tried to shift his attention to the images surfacing in his mind. “I remember—” How it felt to be close to her, to hear her say his name. What it was like when she looked at him, angry or scared or otherwise.

  “You remember what?”

  “I remember…” It came to him suddenly: “… that you have a boyfriend.”

  Bryn plucked the shovel out of the dirt. “That’s right.” Sliced into the soft ground. “I’ve been waiting for that to come back to you.”

  Rett didn’t know why she seemed so annoyed by it. He was the one who should be bothered.

  “Any signal yet?” Bryn asked.

  Rett checked the display. “Not yet.” He coughed into his sleeve, trying to clear his lungs of dust. The scrape of the shovel accompanied the sound, along with the patter of rocks falling down a steep slope.

  The sound came again—rocks tumbling. Rett looked up to find a shadow haunting the ridge.

  A bug.

  He raised the gun, his heart beating wildly.

  Just as he fired, Bryn pulled his arm down and the shot went low. A sputter of sparks and a cloud of blue smoke filled a curve of the ravine, sending the bug scuttling back over the ridge.

  “What’re you doing?” Rett cried.

  “Don’t shoot up there!” Bryn answered. “That man said the government is keeping tabs on this place. They’ll see the flare and know we’re here.”

  “I thought you wanted to get found.”

  “Not until we find what we’re looking for.”

  Rett scanned the ridge again. The creature had gone.

  “I think you scared it,” Bryn said.

  “Or proved to it that I can’t aim.”

  “If someone sees that flare and comes after us, we can’t finish this job.”

  “I get it.” Rett grabbed the pack from the dirt and searched inside for another flare. “But if that thing comes after us, we’re not finishing the job, either.” He snapped open the barrel and slid the cartridge inside. “I don’t much feel like starting over again. Or, you know, dying.”

  The shovel rang against dirt and gravel. “Just watch my back,” Bryn said. “If it comes down here, then shoot it.”

  “I have your permission?” Rett asked.

  “Do you want to get paid for this job or don’t you?” Bryn snapped.

  “Yes, I want to get paid,” Rett snapped back.

  “So you remember that at least.”

  Rett dragged his sleeve across the back of his sweaty neck. He thought of his mother, the workhouse. “Yeah, I remember.” His mother had always worked so hard to convince him that he’d be better off on his own, that he shouldn’t worry about her.

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. How could she think that?

  For a minute there was only the chuck of the shovel and the sound of Bryn’s labored breathing as she worked.

  Rett kept his gaze trained on the ridge where he’d seen the bug. “What’re you going to do with the money?”

  A scoop of dirt hit the pile. “Going to meet up with my boyfriend. Share it with him.”

  “He’s waiting for you somewhere?”

  Bryn frowned at the dirt. “I figure, if you get enough money, people will find you.”

  Rett swallowed. His throat was choked with the dust Bryn was making. He wasn’t so sure what she said was true.

  Bryn used her sleeve to wipe sweat from her face. “Do you remember any of the conversations we had before?”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what it is you keep waiting for me to remember?”

  “I’m just trying to point out that you barely know me. Barely remember me, whatever.” She went back to digging.

  “If you’re trying to tell me not to trust you, too late. Although, thanks for letting me hold the gun, then.”

  Thunk. The shovel hit something hard.

  Bryn looked up at Rett, her gaze electric.

  Rett scrambled toward the hole to see what she’d found. Bryn fell to her knees and used the shovel blade to pry a small black box out of the dirt.

  “What is it?” Rett asked.

  “Some electronic thing.”

  “Is that what we’re supposed to find?”

  Bryn jabbed at a small bulb at the corner of the box. “Whatever it is, it’s not turned on.” She turned it over to examine it, and then ran her fingers all over it. “No power switch.” She bent lower over i
t. “Wait. It says something near this little bulb.”

  She held it up for Rett to see the tiny white letters: SIGNAL. “Light’s not on—no signal,” he said. “Just like the GPS units.”

  Bryn frowned, turning the box over and over in her hands. “‘They know when you go digging things up.’”

  “What?”

  “That’s what the man said. That the government would know if we tried to dig up something they buried. But how would they know?”

  “Cameras?” Rett glanced around, but he already knew they’d have seen any cameras.

  “I don’t think this is the thing we’re supposed to find. I think this is the thing that tells them we’re about to find what we’ve been looking for.” She tapped her shovel in the dirt. “I think there’s something else down here.”

  “So this box is what—some kind of alarm? But it’s not working?”

  “How would it work? It’d have to send out a signal, right? So, the minute we dig it up, it picks up signal, and that’s what alerts the government that we’re digging where they don’t want us to dig.”

  “Good thing the satellite’s not working then. No signal.”

  In response, Bryn dropped the box at her feet and brought the shovel down on it, over and over. The metal housing cracked and flew apart to reveal wire innards and circuit boards.

  “Bryn.”

  Bryn went on hammering. Bam bam bam, until the pieces flew apart.

  Rett stared at her while her breath heaved. “Bryn. I think it’s dead.”

  Bryn gave him a brief glance. “The satellites are going to come back online any second. We got here a little faster than last time, but not by much.” She looked down at the splintered device and seemed to register its destruction for the first time.

  Rett gaped at it in horror. “I hope that wasn’t the thing we were supposed to come find.”

  “Trust me, I have a feeling about this.” Bryn held out the shovel. “Here.”

  Rett was about to trade the gun for it when a loud beep sounded from the GPS unit in his other hand.

  Bryn tensed. “Was that—?”

  The display showed the antenna icon, this time with a set of concentric rings. “Signal,” Rett said.

  They both looked down at the electronic components strewn in the dirt. A tiny red light blinked in a nest of wires.

  Bryn hacked at it with the shovel. The light went out.

  Rett chewed his lip. “Think it sent out a signal?”

  “Don’t know.” Bryn stared at it, almost daring it to turn on again while she stood guard with the shovel. “Hope not.”

  “Guess we’d better hurry either way.” Rett scanned the ravine for signs of hungry bugs.

  Bryn was red-faced and sweating. She glared at the busted metal casing with an anger that Rett thought might really be fear. It unnerved him, the way she could bring out that intensity and then lock it away again. Is it locked inside of me somewhere, too? he wondered.

  He handed Bryn the gun and took the shovel. “Go sit in the shade. I’ll keep an eye out for bugs while I dig.”

  Bryn plodded over to the wall of the ravine and sat. Just as Rett took up digging, she said, “He trusted me and I screwed him over. My boyfriend. I told you but I guess you don’t remember.”

  Rett’s muscles locked.

  “No one’s waiting for me when I get out of here,” Bryn went on. “He doesn’t want me to find him.”

  Her words found some hollow place inside of Rett and made it ring.

  He wanted to tell her that she shouldn’t think like that. That things would seem better once they got out of here.

  But he couldn’t.

  What if my mother isn’t waiting for me?

  He waited a moment for his frozen muscles to thaw and then lost himself in his work.

  10:27 A.M.

  Every time Rett stopped digging to rest, doubt crept over him.

  Only a little water was left in the bottle waiting at the edge of the hole he and Bryn had dug. It was the last bottle, too. Nothing left after this except what was in the Mylar pouches, and that would be his last defense against thirst and nausea.

  He snatched up the water bottle and held it to his lips. Bryn watched him from the shaded edge of the ravine. The gun rested on her knee. Her gaze lingered for a moment while Rett drank, and then she looked away. Worried about the water? Rett wondered. Or maybe— He thought of all the glances he’d taken at her when she wasn’t paying attention. Maybe she just likes looking at me.

  He shivered at the thought. Then his gaze went back to the gun. She pointed it at me, he told himself, trying to gauge how he felt about it. She tried to scare me with it.

  But his doubts were eclipsed by the memory of Bryn standing close, her hand brushing his hip as she took the gun from his pocket.

  He shook the thought away. They were dead if they didn’t finish this job. They were almost out of water. Exhausted, alone.

  He tipped the water bottle to drink the last of what was inside. But then he stopped, lowered the bottle. A sound floated to him from the shaded edge of the ravine: Bryn was humming. Rett stood frozen, hypnotized by the tune. It seemed to reach deep into his fractured memory. “What’s that song?” he asked.

  Bryn had her hand draped over one knee now, dangling the flare gun. Rett’s question seemed to snap her out of a dream. “What?”

  “The song you were humming just now.”

  The lyrics floated out from some recess in his mind:

  One lonely lighthouse

  Two in a boat

  Three gulls circle

  Four clouds float.

  “About a lighthouse,” he said to Bryn, “and a boat.”

  Bryn frowned. She started the tune over again, this time mumbling the lyrics. “I think they taught it to us. Scatter.”

  “What for?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Rett probed the dirt with his shovel. He stopped. The tune needled at him. “They taught it to us?” he echoed.

  “Doesn’t make much sense, though,” Bryn said. “A lighthouse and a boat.”

  No, it doesn’t, Rett thought as he went back to digging. Unless it isn’t really meant to be about this place.

  Just then he remembered something Scatter had told him. He froze with the shovel still sticking out of the dirt. “It signals the mechanism,” he said. “The mechanism in our heads.”

  “You said that before. What does it mean?”

  Rett pulled the shovel free and started digging again, trying to remember more. Bryn came over to squint down at him, but she couldn’t seem to remember, either.

  And then—thunk. The shovel hit something.

  Bryn looked at Rett, looked down at the dirt where a gleam of silver showed through. Rett scraped away a swath of dirt with the shovel blade. More silver.

  Rett dropped to his knees and swiped at the dirt with his hands. Bryn knelt next to him and did the same until they had uncovered a metal panel, two feet square. “What is it?” Bryn said.

  “Are those words?” Rett used his fingers to wipe dirt from the grooves in the metal—letters stamped onto the panel’s face.

  “It’s the song.” Bryn gasped. “And there’s more to it.”

  Rett read them aloud:

  “One lonely lighthouse

  Two in a boat

  Three gulls circle

  Four clouds float.”

  He took a breath and read the rest:

  “Five foaming waves fall

  Six stars glow

  Seven fish follow

  Eight steps home.”

  The last word echoed in the stillness: home.

  I want to go home, Rett thought. “The song is supposed to signal the mechanism in our heads,” he said. “We just didn’t have the whole song before.”

  “Is it supposed to—?” Bryn’s question hung in the air, unfinished.

  “Eight steps home,” Rett mumbled. “This song is supposed to help us find our way back.”

  “
But what does it mean? Eight steps—what does that mean?”

  Rett ran a finger down the lines of stamped letters. “It’s a numbered list.” He’d used the list himself to remember what to do: One, change your jumpsuit. Two, find some water. “I think the song is a memory device, something to help us remember how to signal the mechanism.”

  “We signal the mechanism by singing the song—the whole song.”

  Rett shook his head. “By saying the words. Eight words, one right after the other. One from each line—like a passphrase.”

  Rett forgot his thirst, forgot the blisters on his hands and feet, forgot the nausea in his lurching stomach. They could get home. Somehow, eight words from this song would send out a signal, and they would escape this wasteland.

  “We can’t go back yet. We have to know what this thing is first.” Bryn tapped on the metal panel. It loosened in the dirt.

  Rett shuffled his tired feet in the dirt. He wanted to get out of this place, before any more hungry bugs came along, before he collapsed in the dirt from exhaustion. He wanted to make sure the words would really work.

  But if they really were here to do a job, Bryn was right—they had to finish it.

  And then—home. Payday. Money for his mother’s treatment.

  If she still waited for him.

  Bryn pried at an edge of the metal and the whole panel came up like a lid. Underneath lay another metal face inset with a digital display. A list of names took up most of the screen, each followed by a string of numbers and then a tiny icon of an antenna emitting concentric rings.

  Cay, Vanessa 118173558

  Duvall, Tamara 781778128

  Torrez, Andy 817842374

  Ward, Bryn 812419393

  Ward, Rett 123779243

  Stein, Erik 931211466

  Michel, Gwynne 617741717

  Hotchkiss, Charles 648127353

  Reeder, Gayle 968473143

  Loyd, Jason 143785017

  Nguyen, James 873563755

  …

  Bryn traced the list with a trembling finger. Her hand stopped at WARD, BRYN. “Rett…”

  All the blood drained from Rett’s head. “Our names.”

  Bryn moved her finger to the antenna icons next to their names. Theirs each had more concentric rings than any other name.

  “What does it mean?” Rett wondered aloud.

  “We’re giving out some kind of signal,” Bryn breathed. “And this thing is picking it up.”