Afterland Read online

  “This is still a free country, isn’t it?”

  A rut of concern forms between Glitter’s eyebrows, tugs her mouth down. “Ma’am, my professional medical advice is that you shouldn’t move him while he’s sick. You want him to die in the back of your car?”

  “Better than here,” Cole says. “Not that it’s any of your business.” And then, the words she’ll regret forever. “Besides, he’s not dying. He’s not even sick.”

  8.

  Billie: Hedgehog Rescue

  The blank. The dark. Something nagging at her. Someone in the car with her. A shape. A voice.

  “Excuse me.” Someone shaking Billie’s shoulder. Shit. Blinking hard. Her vision is swimming. Underwater, no goggles.

  “Excuse me, miss. Miss, are you awake? Can you hear me? Miss?” Every bleated “miss” accompanied by another little shake. She can’t stand it another second.

  “Would you stop that?” Billie sits up and swats the hand away. The daylight is too bright. Where the fuck are her sunglasses? The woman bleating at her looks like a hedgehog, a squinchy face, pointy nose out of place on a hulking rotund frame. She looks simple. Sounds it too, mumbling, bleating.

  “You’ve had an accident. There’s, um, quite a lot of blood, and I think we should get you to a hospital. I don’t know—uh.”

  Billie shoves her aside and leans out the car door to vomit a watery stream that tightens her guts with the effort of pushing it out.

  “You need to get to a hospital. I can drive you. I don’t think you’re in any shape…”

  “San Francisco,” Billie rasps. Her throat is stripped raw. She touches the back of her head gingerly. Matted hair and dried blood, the gut-clench again at rediscovering the piece of her scalp hanging from the side of her head. She pukes again. Dry-heaving this time.

  The car has come off the road, nested among the bushes, nose kissed up against a tree. Could have been worse. Could have smashed right into it at speed, be sitting in a crumpled ruin of a car in a broken body. Arrive alive. Don’t head-wound and drive. Dammit. How long? Trying to get visual cues from the light. But it’s that bright any time of day. Hours? A whole day? She feels clearer, though. Needed the nap.

  “That’s a little out of my way,” says Nervous Nelly, the hulking hedging hedgehog.

  “Help me.” Billie leans on the steering wheel for purchase so she can clamber out the trashed car. The ground swoops out from under her. Tricky. Whose side are you on?

  “Yes, yes, sorry.” Nelly ducks under her arm to support her, gives a little grunt of effort at the transfer of her weight. “You want some water? I keep a bottle in the cab. Don’t worry, it’s not from the tank.”

  “You got a first-aid kit?”

  “No. I don’t. I should. I will. I’ll buy one.”

  “Bandages?”

  “No, sorry. I’ve got some paper napkins. Oh. You’re bleeding.”

  No shit. She can feel the ribbon of warmth trailing down her neck. “It’s fine.”

  “Did someone attack you?”

  “I need to get to San Francisco. It’s an emergency.”

  “Yah,” the woman sucks her teeth, looks apologetic. “That’s not on my route. But the clinic is up the way…”

  Dramarama—the game she and Cole used to play in public places, improvising Jerry Springer scenarios to get a reaction for kicks. Arguing in the supermarket over their nonexistent baby daddy the one had stolen from the other, or riling up the cashier at the movies pretending to be lesbian lovers, or once, faking an undercover arrest for shoplifting, pressing her sister up against the wall, pretend-handcuffing her, which was fine until actual security tried to get involved. Cole chickened out after that, wouldn’t play anymore. Coward. Cunt.

  Lest we forget.

  “A police emergency. You’ll be rewarded for your assistance. Because it’s an emergency,” Billie repeats, because getting words out is like yanking an unwilling octopus out of an underwater cave. It’s the world’s worst hangover. She’s thought that before. When. Yesterday. This morning. In the dark.

  “I would, I really would,” hedgehog girl sucks her teeth. “But I’m on a schedule. Sanitation.”

  “I said, it’s a fucking emergency.” You useless fucking moron, Billie thinks. “You can help me or I’ll arrest you for hindering an investigation.”

  “There’s no need to swear,” Hedgey murmurs.

  Give me fucking strength. The pounding in her head is back. A sullen bass. “I’m sorry. I’m injured. Forgive me. I need your help. You’ll be well paid if you can get me to San Francisco. More than your deliveries are worth. I promise you that.”

  “It’s sanitation. Septic tanks.”

  “So I see,” Billie says. The back of the pickup is loaded with four giant plastic shit canisters. Fuck it. She’s had worse rides. Kyle Smits back in grade eleven, for example. Poor guy. Dead now, like all her former lays.

  “You need a hospital.”

  “Five thousand dollars to take me to San Francisco.” Mrs. Amato will pay that, surely, for her return? Or take it out of her cut. It’s negligible right now.

  “That’s a lot of money, but…”

  “Ten thousand. And the knowledge that you’re acting in the interests of national security.”

  The woman hesitates. It’s a bad habit, she can tell. A lifetime of bad life choices. Think how far you might go if you didn’t hesitate at every opportunity gift-wrapped and presented on a silver fucking platter, Nelly. She’s going to have to push harder.

  “I didn’t want to tell you this.” She lowers her voice. “I don’t want to put you at risk. It’s about a missing boy.”

  “A missing boy?” parrots the hedgehog.

  “The kidnappers are getting away. They ran me off the road. But they don’t know there’s a tracker in their car. Will you help me, Nelly?”

  “My name’s not Nelly.”

  “It’s best if I don’t know your real name. If I don’t tell you any more details. Five thousand dollars and you’ll be a hero.”

  “Didn’t you say ten? You just said.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  “Okay,” the big dummy says. “Okay, I’ll do it. But only if there’s proper medical care there for you.”

  “There will be.” Billie tries on a smile, but her mouth tastes like bile.

  9.

  Miles: Tumbleweed

  “That was a terrible thing to do,” Mom says, gunning out of town like a NASCAR driver, leaving the Bullhead bar behind in the dust. Like they haven’t both been grinning this whole way, high on the thrill of it. “We are never doing that again. We’re going to send money back to her, care of the bar. Or pay it forward. To someone who really needs it.”

  “We really need it.” His heart was beating hard, and his hands were tingling. But it came so easily. Sleight of hand. And as soon as his fingers grazed the notes, plucked them out, it was so…pure. Everything stilled and came into focus, and he could feel the shift in reality, based on a snap decision, that moment of control.

  “We do. And you did so well and I’m really proud of you, but—”

  “It’s not going to be a habit,” he says. But it could be. Add it to his catalog. Drop-down menu, learn new skill: thief.

  “But seriously.” Concern troll over there, brows furrowed. He wishes she wouldn’t. It’s ruining the mood. “Your dad would be so mad at me.”

  “Yeah, well.” He shrugs, irritated. The endless scrublands look the same, as if they’re stuck in a loop in the same side-scrolling landscape of a 2D platformer.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Mom says after a while.

  “Oh no,” he groans, but at least fifty percent playful, so she knows she’s forgiven.

  “We should ditch this car. Switch it up. If we’re going to outlaw, we should do it authentically. What do you think?”

  “Yeah,” he says, sitting up. “Yeah, definitely.”

  “And head for the Mexican border.”

  “Or Canada.”<
br />
  “Or New York, catch a boat back home.”

  “Isn’t that a really long drive?”

  “Yeah.” She shoots him an appraising look. “But it’s an option.”

  “I think Mexico,” he says, settling back into the seat.

  “You want to go over our cover story again?”

  Miles sighs. “We’re from London, which is why our accents are funny because Americans can’t tell the difference. We’re going to Denver, Colorado, definitely not Mexico or Canada or on a boat back to South Africa, because my grandparents used to run a holiday camp just outside the city, and we want to be with our family.”

  “And our name?”

  “Mila Williams and your name is Nicky, and I’m fourteen years old, because that kind of small detail is what’s going to make it more difficult to track us, because they’ll be looking for a twelve-year-old. But Mom, it’s dumb. People are going to be able to see right through that.”

  “Not if you catch them on the wrong memorable details. I’m a tennis coach, for high schools, no one famous, although one of my kids almost qualified for the U.S. team. The resort we’re going to has been in the family for years, your dad’s parents turned it into a corporate team-building getaway, Camp Catalyst, abseiling down cliffs, ziplining into the lake, survival skills. You wouldn’t believe how much those suits-and-ties loved learning how to build a fire and make a shelter.”

  “Wait, is this a real place?”

  “No. But you see what I mean. Throw them with details no one would make up. Like the most popular offering at CC, that’s the affectionate abbreviation for Camp Catalyst, by the way, was the zombie survivor theme camp for ten to thirty adults, including three meals a day. You used to play a kid zombie whenever we went to visit, but now you’re too big for that, and you think its lame.”

  “And there was an alligator in the lake once, only it turned out to be someone’s escaped pet iguana instead.”

  “But the legend lives on, which is why the t-shirts have an alligator on them.”

  “But what if someone googles Camp Catalyst?”

  “Good point. Let’s avoid mentioning any names, apart from ours.”

  “And Dad’s. Professor Eustace Williams Esquire the third.”

  “Eustace?” Mom chokes with laughter. “Where the hell did you get Eustace from?”

  “Who can say where inspiration comes from?” He grins back, wafting one hand through the air to indicate the divine mystery of it all.

  “Hmmm. How about Alistair Williams. Small-town sports journalist. Goes with my tennis coach.”

  “Mom. You don’t know anything about sports.”

  “Yeesh. Good point. Okay. Your dad, Al, was a male nurse back in LA, and I was an organic landscape designer, building vegetable gardens for housing communities.”

  “Wow, Mom. That’s so…wholesome.”

  “But don’t mention extended family, okay? We don’t want to trip ourselves up.” Her mouth twists, like she’s got a bad taste of something, and now would be the time to ask, Miles thinks. What happened with Billie? But he can’t. He’s doesn’t want to know. If it was really bad, she would tell him, right? Or if it wasn’t that bad. Either way, it’s his fault. He knows it is.

  “Mom, why don’t we go to Aunt Tayla and the girls in Chicago?” he blurts out instead, and she relaxes, a little, a sag in her clenched shoulders. “Can’t they help us?”

  “Maybe we will. That’s a good idea. We’ll evaluate our options when we stop, get internet.”

  “But can we?”

  “We’ll see, tiger. I don’t want to—”

  “What?”

  “Put them at risk.”

  And this is another perfect opportunity to ask. For a moment he thinks she’s going to spill anyway and he braces himself, holding on to the door handle so tight he might almost snap it right off.

  “Hey, look,” she says. “It’s our lucky night. Gas station that’s open.”

  It’s lit up like a neon lighthouse against the desert, the blinking sign casting weird shadows across the 18-wheeler trucks parked in the stop down the side with their headlights like dead eyes. It’s impossible to tell how long they’ve been there, standing like empty husks. He wonders if they’ve been looted already, how many of them were carrying anything useful, or if they were all packed with dumb dollar-store crap like giant plastic mallets and knock-off toys.

  He waits in the car while Mom goes inside to put money on the pump, get them some food, because it’s better that people don’t always see them together. A lighter flicks in one of the dark truck cabs, revealing a woman’s face, hand cupped around the cigarette dangling from her lips. It’s weirdly intimate, and Miles looks away. That’s creepier than empty husk trucks, he thinks, that there’s someone waiting, watching in every cab, or in all the windows of all the silent towns they’ve passed out there on the road, where the sky is so big and black and the stars are so cold and bright like God’s LEDs.

  That sense of fierce joy from stealing the money from the wallet has faded away, and he’s thinking about how the desert sand looks soft and silty, and what might be dragging itself on bony elbows through the scrub toward the neon lighthouse. Or waiting to sit up in the window of one of those darkened cabs with its moldy mouth and long white arms.

  Like Cancer Fingers. Who is not real. He understands that. It’s anxiety, like his stomach cramps. It was night terrors, when he was in quarantine at Lewis-McChord with all the tests, and he was only allowed to see Mom during visiting hours and Dad was dead and everyone was dead except him and Jonas and some of the other boys with the miracle variant. Don’t be a dumb kid, he thinks. He knows there’s nothing in the desert. No scrawny scratchy fingers reaching for the door handle of the car to pull him out and drag him away into the dark.

  Mom taps on the window, and Miles almost screams.

  “I found us a ride. C’mon.”

  He helps her bundle up their collection of all their possessions in the world, smaller and smaller every time; the Oakland house to the airport to the army base to Ataraxia: the bag of girl clothes, their last remaining snacks, candles, a flashlight, a set of kitchen knives and the comforter from the bed, all raided from Eagle Creek, and the bottle of off-brand soda and the homemade chicken pies Mom just bought from the convenience store.

  The smell of the food, rich and salty, isn’t enough to distract him from the fact that they seem to be walking toward what is clearly a child-catching white panel van, bristling with aerials and antenna and a satellite dish.

  “It looks like a murder wagon,” Miles complains.

  “Meteorology,” Mom says as if that automatically disqualifies it from also being a serial killer’s van.

  A small woman is filling up the tank, and waves as they approach. She has a streak of violet in her mussy hair, cat-eye glasses, and “Weathergirls NV” embossed in Gothic script on her denim jacket.

  “We can’t just get in her car. You don’t know her. You don’t know anything about her.”

  “Signs and signifiers, tiger, identifying our tribe.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Mom ticks off the list on her fingers. “One: brown. Two: purple hair. Three: meteorologist, and we like scientists. Four: my gut instinct, which I might add, is excellent. And she’s willing to take us all the way to Salt Lake City. She says there’s a commune there with internet and we don’t need to show ID.”

  “Maybe they don’t ask for ID because they’re a bunch of murderers and it makes it easier for them to hide the bodies. And serial killers can dye their hair, you know.”

  “She’s our kind of people, trust me on this. And hey, if she’s not, we’ll keep on trucking. Your dad would approve this plan.”

  “That’s not fair, Mom,” he starts to protest, but the woman is stepping forward, offering her hand, which smells of gasoline.

  “Hi,” she says, “I’m Bhavana. You can call me Vana. And you must be Mila. Your mom’s told me about you.” She’s w
earing a gold pin with a lightning bolt, and he gets it. She does seem like one of Mom’s Joburg friends, the ones always coming for loud dinner parties or board games or horror movie nights they won’t let him stay up for. But you can’t go trusting just anyone who has weird hair.

  “Hop in, make yourself comfortable. Excuse the mess, and if you want to touch any of the equipment, ask first, okay?”

  The back is half gutted, crowded with what must be weather machines, but they look kinda technical and boring, and there are empty cans of diet cola rattling around on the ground. He perches on the bench, rigged sideways, while Mom clambers into the front, gives him a thumbs-up.

  “What a bummer that your car broke down,” Vana says. The van rumbles to life and she pulls out away from the gas station. They’re back on the road. Bye, car, Miles thinks, because apparently this is what their life is now, abandoning things. Abandoning people. Like Ella. Like Billie.

  “You want me to recommend a mechanic? I’m sure we can get you sorted out, if you’re especially attached to that one. I’m heading back to Elko next week, so I could bring you back. Or you could apply for a reclaim in SLC. Tons of paperwork, though. Patty says it’s because the automotive industry is still hoping to make a recovery. Like that’s going to happen!”

  “Who’s Patty?” Mom says.

  “Den mama at Kasproing, a.k.a. my Salt Lake City crash pad. It’s a bunch of anarchists, socialists, off-the-gridders, and other free radicals. Assorted animals too. Dogs mainly, but there are a few uppity cats too, along with chickens and ducks. Good people—you’ll like them.”

  “Are you a storm chaser?” Miles asks.

  “Not much call for that in these parts,” Vana shrugs. “But who knows. Climate change didn’t magically fix itself when half the population died. There’s a weather station in Elko, which makes it the major meteorology base for the area. But it’s not much to speak of, unless you happen to be a fan of specialist weather-tracking equipment. We’re training people.”

  “To learn how to weather?”