In the last image Abram has, Perry is still a boy. Soft cheeks and little white teeth, smiling just before the attack. Abram wonders what that boy became before he died. Did he ever grow out of that rose-twirling romanticism? Did seeing his family peeled away piece by piece finally make a man out of him?
Abram tells himself it doesn’t matter. What matters is the present, where he has a job to do.
In this all-important present, Abram is a thirty-one-year-old man gunning a rusty motorcycle down a forgotten stretch of highway. He is no longer anyone’s brother or son or husband. He is no longer an employee or a soldier, a colleague or a friend or anything to anyone—with one exception.
He is a father.
Despite all the death and pain that fill the pages of his book, he is still a father, and his daughter has never needed him more. His last image of her fits neatly over his last image of Perry: soft cheeks and little white teeth, smiling at him through the window of Axiom’s transport bus, happy to see her father even as he fails to fight off the guard, fails to stop the bus, fails over and over until she’s gone.
Abram holds the image close like a beloved photo. He runs it through his mind, caressing its sharp edges and savoring the sting of the cuts. He deserves the pain. He needs it. It will keep him moving.
The sound of an approaching vehicle scatters his musings. He swerves off the highway and hides the motorcycle in the underbrush, and as the noise resolves into the rumble of a big diesel engine, he entertains wild thoughts. It’s the bus. It’s her. In a few seconds I’ll see her face in the window and this time I’ll do what it takes.
He sees a flash of yellow as it passes. A glimpse of chrome and stripes.
It’s not the bus.
He steps out onto the road to watch it go. A garish 1970s motorhome, bristling with antennas and solar panels and fuel barrels marked “Do Not Steal.”
It’s them. It has to be.
How did he become the chaperone to that gang of overgrown children? How did they drag him into their suicide cult and why did it take him so long to get out? The bullet wounds in his arm and shoulder still throb, and he doesn’t doubt the girl would have kept shooting if he pushed her to it, but that’s no excuse. He had plenty of chances to snatch the gun, crack her skull, and go his way. But he stayed.
Did their fantasy infect him? Did he enjoy the sugary taste of their dream? For one indulgent moment, maybe he did. But as he watches the RV trundle away, big and bright and begging for abuse, he tightens his jaw.
No more dreaming. Abram will stay awake.
He heads back to the motorcycle, an old scout bike he salvaged from the wreckage of Fort Hamilton. Most would have considered it scrap metal. Abram got it running in two hours. He unearthed the tools and fuel from a bomb-blasted mechanic shop, crawling like a rat through the briar of twisted sheet metal. He is hard, he is resourceful, and he needs no help to do his job. He will do it alone like he always has. He will find the bus. He will take back his daughter.
And after that?
It’s a question he hadn’t expected to hear in his head, but the answer is clear enough: after that doesn’t matter. He is a man with both boots on the ground, and what matters is the next step. Watching the steps ahead is a good way to fall on your face.
And not watching them is a good way to get lost.
He stops. The thought is so loud it almost sounds external, like someone is whispering to him from the shadows. But he can’t place a position or even a number—is it one voice or many? His hands squeeze around imaginary weapons as he growls reassurances under his breath.
“I do what it takes to survive. I fight to protect my family. And that’s all there is to this.”
There’s more.
He whirls around, teeth gritted, fists clenched. But the road is empty. The city is silent.
He is alone.
I
MY SLEEP is a womb. I float in warm darkness and it nourishes me, feeding amniotic nectar into my fetal form. Unmade by the day before, broken into simple cells, I am growing a new body in this silent oblivion.
This is rest. This is what rest feels like.
I get perhaps four hours to savor it, and then a hand is shaking me and I’m gasping musty air and looking up at a bearded giant who appears to be throttling me.
“Hey,” M whispers, giving my shoulder one last shake. “Get up.”
I blink reality back into my head, a rush of information reminding me where and who I am.
“Need to talk,” M says. “Please.”
I’ve never heard earnestness like this from him. As I push the blankets off of me, I realize I’ve presented a clear view of Julie’s half-naked backside, but M doesn’t even look. And now I’m very concerned.
I throw on my clothes and tip-toe past the other two women. Nora’s clothes—all of them—hang from ceiling hooks above Tomsen, who seems to have uncoiled a little, accepting Nora’s persistent spooning in exchange for the body heat. It’s unseasonably cold. Outside, a layer of frost covers the fields, turning the old furrows into snowcapped peaks that glisten in the morning light. I glimpse a few strawberries among the weeds and think of a Beatles reference that Julie would have enjoyed once, back when all I had to do to impress her was to know literally anything.
“Okay,” I say, throwing up my palms. “What?”
M glances over his shoulder, a gesture that looks ridiculous in this empty field. He lowers his voice until it’s barely audible. “Do you remember a boy?”
I wait for him to elaborate.
“Before the airport. That long walk. Little black kid?”
The airport itself is a fog, and before that is nothing. A gray void of abstract symbols and formless sensations, like the dreams of animals. I give him an emphatic shrug that says of course not.
He digs his fingers into his forehead. “Keep having…thoughts. Dreams. I think maybe…” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Maybe I did something bad.”
“You did,” I say with a bewildered frown. “Lots of things. We all did.”
“No. Something worse.” He looks at the ground. “Something to Nora.”
“Like…what?” I ask cautiously.
He scrunches up his face, rubbing his shiny scalp. “Don’t know. A boy…a house… It’s just pieces.”
So M’s voyage through the past isn’t such a pleasure cruise after all. There was a time when I might have taken some ugly satisfaction from this, and I’m ashamed to remember it. There is nothing satisfying about the anguish on my friend’s face.
“Does she know?”
He shrugs. “Must not. But if she finds out…remembers…”
I clap a hand on his shoulder. I feel like I should offer him a word of wisdom, some gem that I’ve mined from my own past, but I have yet to pull the tarp off the results of that dig. It may be nothing but dirt and bones.
“She knows who you are now,” I hear myself telling him. “Whatever it is…she’ll forgive.”
I have no idea if this is true. I may be talking to myself more than to him. But it seems to take the edge off his fear, and he nods.
We both turn at the muffled sound of Nora’s voice in the RV. Then Julie’s, sharp with annoyance. I step back inside and M follows with a reluctance that almost looks like shyness. I hope no one notices the change.
“Fuck off,” Julie groans into her pillow. Nora is pulling on her ankle, trying to drag her out of bed. Only their years of friendship give Nora immunity to Julie’s morning wrath. Anyone else would die for this.