I was terrified for a minute, standing next to P., listening. The room was not merely quiet, it had the silence of death, and not even the reassuring, everyday death of hung meat or slaughtered rabbits, but the recent cessation of intelligent life.
Finally, a whisper: Thank you.
V. had to drag me away from the hole.
The area now is lightly and irregularly guarded. That worries me. The statues scream to each other in the night, I won’t say howl—wolves howl, and they are noble animals—and their screams reliably attract others unless you can shut them up. Same with the smaller sentinels, which at least are reasonably killable, like rats, if you can catch them, and if they don’t… do that thing where they sort of turn sideways and disappear into a shadow cast by a hair-thin bar of invisible light, you know how it is.
We left our cache against the wall, disguised perfunctorily by a little heap of the ever-present rubble. I kept looking back at it, anxiously, as we slunk out. The sun was going down, sending our shadows in blue and black down the golden street. Did it look too obvious? The trees, the survivors I mean, watched us; who do they talk to, when they are not watching us?
Anyway, the bundle has our crude weapons in it, snowshoes, blankets, plastic sheeting, flares, food, wood. No one knows what we would need to run down the river and cross the lake with the children. But we’re going to do our best.
My heart hammers as I write these words. I can see how bad my handwriting’s become. Still, even now, any of us could change our mind. But we can’t do it unless everyone does it.
We might only have five minutes. One wall goes down as the distraction. Blow the second to open the basement. Drag the kids out, get them on sleds or backs, get the snowshoes on. The train: moving. Then the train: exploding. And us, fleeing.
Writing down the plan strikes me as a mistake now. They would make good use of this if they found it. But maybe They will not find it. Maybe I will carry it with me to freedom. Or it will be found on my body, mutilated on the thick glassy ice of the lake when They catch up with us.
No. Better not to think about it. Maybe later I will tear out these pages.
November 27
I picked today to do the inevitable. I don’t know what I was thinking.
I pulled him into the bedroom, shut the door. We have so little time left, I said. I thought you should know.
Before I had even finished the last word, such alarm in his eyes. I don’t know what he thought I was going to say and now, in retrospect, I think: He must have thought I was going to confess that I was pregnant or dying or something. Not that there’s much difference now whether you say I am with child or I am with sickness. Something like that, but he was pre-emptively startled, worried.
Listen, I said. Since this all began, no one’s loved us. Not the way we needed to be loved. And even in the old days, were you ever loved enough? Once upon a time, our parents did; when they were gone, our brothers and sisters and friends gave us support. But did you ever trust them? Fully? No. The full weight could not be put on anyone, it was thought that no one could bear it. Because everything inside us was too heavy. Even before this happened. So maybe you will say that this too is not love, but the mutual acceptance of that weight, each to someone strong enough to carry it. Still, let me call it that. Let me say I love you. I love you.
Once spoken, I wanted to bolt from the room; I thought, Now I must slink away and die of embarrassment. I think I even backed towards the door, ready to murmur apologies. I thought: I will tell him I’m drunk, tell him I’m sick. Tell him I got a brain parasite from forgetting to boil the river water. Tell him the Them got to me.
But I didn’t run. I watched his face crumble instead. Sobered, hurt, he sat on the edge of the table and his curls of many colours caught the candlelight so that he appeared momentarily to be wearing a medieval helmet. He had, I thought, more protection than me.
Oh Eva, he said. No.
Even knowing he would say it, I was destroyed. There was no sweetness in hearing my name in his mouth. I thought of the bomb spinning in the dirt the day we met, which blew up half an hour later. That distant percussion, and dust shaking from the leaves of the trees. I sat down too, on the bed, and let everything wash over me in waves of hot and cold. Even knowing, even knowing.
He said, It’s a different world now. I can’t even look at you and ask myself how I feel.
What, I said carefully, would a reasonable man feel?
He said, You ask me what is reasonable, what I might feel if I were… the truth is, which you know as well as I do, that we cannot answer this any more, that we have not been able to answer this for two years, and that there are no reasonable men left anyway.
Oh, I said. My ears were ringing.
He said, I will tell you what I think is possible to do. But it’s not related to reason. It never will be again.
I said, Feelings aren’t. Usually. Are they.
He said, I’m still coming with you.
I said, That’s good.
He added, And if it comes to it, I will stay behind in the city to let you escape with them across the lake.
No, I said instantly. I couldn’t… no. You’d have to come with us. We’d never…
But he was staring at me, in the candlelight, his sharply delineated features as certain as I’ve ever seen them. Studying my face to see if I would waver.
I said, Fine. If you stay to fight, so will I. The others can run across the lake.
He said, Good.
I said, But only if it comes to it.
Yes. Only if it does.
Later
Oh, for God’s sake. It’s like a bloody soap opera in here. I am still not too tired to laugh, but I am very nearly too tired to write.
K. found me just after midnight, and he was better about it than I was. Quiet, thoughtful. He said, I would like to beg you, one last time, to reconsider this. It’s an unnecessary provocation to Them.
I said, It’s only unnecessary if you think that Them keeping the children locked up in a subterranean dungeon is necessary, Konstantin.
He said, Listen. They’re safe there. From the statues, the… the other things. They’re being guarded. Even fed. They’re protected. What kind of world is it out here, in comparison? It’s… it’s the jungle, it’s anarchy, there are still people out there who would snatch them right out of your arms and roast them alive. And you want to drag them across a frozen lake to questionable safety kilometers away.
Don’t exaggerate, I said.
He said, You know, it might be temporary. Keeping them there. Maybe just to protect them while Their reign is solidified. And your plan, it’s… it’s absolutely reckless, it’s so dangerous. I’ve been saying that since the start.
I said, Yes, you have; and I’ve been saying fuck you.
All the wattage came on in his blue eyes, and behind them was no longer a candleflame but a searchlight. I stared into them, seeing if they had that strange, reflective layer now, like the agents we had seen, but I couldn’t tell. Just blue, and the flickering flame. Some people carry the physical badge, that is toothed and notched and cuts the hands. Some people carry something else.
He approached me slowly, held his hands out, took mine. I shouldn’t have let him; I should have pulled them away, shown him exactly what I thought of him. His intact hands were warm. Mine were cold and wet.
He said, Then let the others go. Stay here. With me. I’m only asking because I care about you. Because I… over the last few months, I realize I’ve come to love you. In another world, another time, we’d be together. I…