Sydney squeezed his hand, bringing him back to the forest. “Let’s go inside,” she said so quietly it was as though she hadn’t opened her mouth at all.
The cloth musta been lined with something, because the floor was completely dry. Who would abandon a thing like this? Which got Linc thinking that whoever it was probably got themselves killed but had maybe, Linc hoped, killed the other person in the process. So that no one would come looking for this bit of haven.
This probably wasn’t what Bishop meant by “spend some time with your girl” but it made him warm to know that he wasn’t alone, being trapped in a forest and having to listen to the angry patter of poisoned rain all around him.
He tried to look at her while pretending not to look at her, tried to casually brush the skin of his hand against hers and see if she was down to fuck right now as much as he was.
She turned to him with heat in her eyes and did that thing where breath seemed to catch in her chest, so that her mouth was partly open and welcoming and just when Linc was about to press his lips against hers, she smirked against him and said, “Wanna hear a poop joke?”
“What?”
“A poop joke.” She said it with that husky voice of hers.
“Sure,” Linc said, hoping Sydney clocked how annoyed he was.
She settled on the dry ground. “Aight. So, there was this time after the war and where I lived there was this hill. We were in a spot by the water at the time, and the hill was kinda steep, and you kinda had to do that hill if you wanted to get anywhere downtown. So one night it had been rainin’ hard. Like, fat-ass raindrops. And just comin’ down like washin’ through everything. And you had to be careful, because electricity was still on in parts of the city, right? So”—she pressed her hand to her chest and cleared her throat—“so, you had to watch out because the poles that got knocked down during the war woulda lit you up if you stepped in any puddles. But the next day, I was walking up the hill. I forgot what I needed to get from town, but there was this line of cars”—she traced the line in the air—“long-ass line and everyone’s honking and shouting and it’s just wild, right? And they’re all stopped behind this one car. It’s broken down and half the drivers are like ‘yo, fam, keep goin’ what the fuck’ and the other half are like ‘nah, go back, go back!’ and that’s when the smell hits me.”
She’d never said this many words in one go to him, or at all, really. And Linc wondered if maybe she was nervous or scared or preparing for something, working up the courage to do something. He wanted to tell her to chill, to not worry, that he’d be gentle with her like all the other times, but he didn’t know how to say all that without sounding mad thirsty, so he said nothing and just listened to her work her throat raw with talking.
“So the driver’s got his foot on the gas and the car is just VRRRRRRM, but it’s not goin’ anywhere, right? Just stuck, and shit’s just flying everywhere and people are screaming and you wanna know what happened?”
“What happened?”
“The storm was so bad the night before that the sewer system just bust wide open and this manhole got popped up into the sky and people’s shit literally came down like rain on the hill.”
“The hill you were walking on?”
“Well, yeah, but I turned around and picked a different hill after that.”
Linc started chuckling, then got mad at himself because the story Sydney told was too involved, too real, too close to where they lived to be a good joke, but then she was giggling, and it didn’t sound like her throat hurt, so Linc let go of his anger and laughed with her.
The sound of rain lessened. In sync, they peered out through the tent opening to see the rainfall replaced by mist.
“We good?” Sydney asked with her eyes, back to being quiet again, and Linc said, “Yeah, I think so.”
He stuck a hand out and held it in the open air for a little bit, then pulled it back and got ready to step out. Sydney squeezed ahead of him. An idea hit just as she passed through the opening. He flipped the knife in his hand, searched with his free hand where the tent cloth had been bolted down, and started hacking away at it. As he’d hoped, the cloth—no matter what was reinforcing it—came away smoothly. Then he rose, holding it over him and wrapped an arm around Sydney’s waist, bringing her into the shelter.
She leaned into him and closed her eyes, letting him lead.
He had no idea where they were but, rather than remain hyperaware of their surroundings, he let his mind wander. He liked to linger on the small bits of herself Sydney gave him and extrapolate, storytell. If she was in a city during the war—maybe it was called The City, where she was from—then maybe she spent most of her days underground. Maybe there was artificial lighting or maybe shit was just tunnels with lightbulbs strung up and maybe it was a maze but you learned it all pretty quickly, learned everything that distinguished tunnels anyone else would say looked exactly the same. Maybe to cross from one part of the city to another and avoid bullets from white militia or the Black folk trying to protect you or anyone in between, you had to scurry through this underground city like a rat. And maybe it did something to her skin and maybe the dust got into your lungs and there was no way to breathe anything like real unfiltered, unvarnished air. Maybe the only time you got to spend above ground was in buildings with roofs or ceilings over your head, anything that could collapse on you and kill you but make you bleed out first. So maybe when she was finally able to come out from underground, she would wander the city aimlessly, just trying to take part in every public space, to imprint herself in the air there. Maybe she would jump onto park benches and run through the craters in parks and maybe it got so that the hill she would walk up and down wasn’t just a piece of earth but a reminder. Like someone high and important was telling her she didn’t have to live underground anymore. Maybe the hill was evidence that the war was over, or, at least, as “over” as a thing like that can get.
And maybe she and her friends who survived the war went to the beach and sat on the rocks and took that water spray to the face and they didn’t care about all the garbage that had collected there because they weren’t underground anymore. And maybe Sydney jumped into the water and waded out but then felt something touch her leg and jumped out. And maybe she shrieked and held herself close while another friend, braver or more reckless, swam out to see what animal it was, then maybe stared at the water for a while before laughing and telling her that it was a piece of shit. A piece of shit had touched her leg because no one had fixed the sewage system during the war and it was all going out to the sea or the lake or whatever body of water this was. And maybe that got everyone laughing except Sydney at first, then maybe Sydney started laughing.
She moved her hand in a circle on his chest. “Whatchu laughin’ at?” she asked sleepily.
He hugged her closer. His way of saying, “Nothing.”
A house came into view. Linc had no idea how long they’d been walking, but the place glowed with the prospect of safety from the irradiated wetness outside, so he hurried the two of them across the expansive front yard with toppled, worn-down stone statues and down the weed-choked gravel pathway to the front porch with its awning overhead. Out of the rain now, he gave Sydney the tent covering, then went to the nearest window. After too brief a glance to surveil the situation inside, he smashed the window with his elbow, cleared away the glass, and hopped through.
A cabinet blocked the front door from opening, so he stuck his head out the window and said, “through here,” and Sydney climbed in.
Once inside, Linc offered to take the cloth cover from Sydney, but she just smiled and wrapped it around her shoulders like a cape, then spun around and let it flare. It looked good on her.
They wandered around, from room to gigantic room. He thought he’d be used to walking through houses like this, places so big on the inside you could cry for help and a person at the other end wouldn’t hear you. You could hide in a place like this. The bathroom with the broken tiled floor had a tub big enough to sleep in, to drown in. There seemed to be three separate living rooms on the floor, though one of them could have been a dining room with all the furniture stolen. Eye scanners and thumb pads sat smashed next to every door. He stepped up the spiral staircase and, knife out, gently nudged doors open. After a while, he lost count of the bedrooms, then he made his way up yet another flight of stairs to what looked like a series of studies and art rooms. Even though dust and soot coated the walls, he could see the squares where pieces of art might have once been. Framed paintings or posters, a spot on a desk where a small statue’s base might have stood. But beyond that, he couldn’t imagine what else would fill a once-carpeted space this size.
The place had grown too quiet, so he went back the way he’d come, on the way passing by a second-floor bathroom. There were still a few floors above him that he’d neglected. But this house looked like it had been here long enough that everything of value was either gone or spoiled.
He sheathed his knife and walked into the bathroom. There was no tub here, but the space where it looked like people showered, you could have a whole picnic inside. Over the sink hung a single mirror shard, a small, sellable thing that hadn’t yet been taken. And he stepped closer to it, close enough that he could recognize his face. He wiped the smudging away with the palm of his hand and could see, for the first time in too long, what he looked like. The pitted, lined skin; the hollow jaw; the grayness of his flesh. The silver sunlight that came through the open window space, he blamed for the ghostliness of his reflection. But he bared his teeth and could see the discoloration. The spaces where some were missing struck him like chastisement. Like he was being berated. But it was the grime that got him. So much of this place, picked apart as it was, seemed so much cleaner than him. This house that no one had taken care of for so long looked like it was in better shape than he was. People had gutted this thing, stripped it of worth and almost entirely of function, and it was still a thing that could inspire awe. It was still a thing that could have a kid like him wandering around, slack-jawed. He sniffed and backed away.
“Dinner is ready, please proceed to the first floor dining room.”
The droid’s voice startled him. He whirled around. His hands found the edge of an exposed pipe, and it came loose with a vicious ripping-and-scattering sound. His mind went empty. He stalked to the droid, who repeated, “Dinner is ready, please proceed to the first floor dining room.” And he raised the pipe and swung. The thing slammed to the ground sideways, its wheels whirring against air. “Dinner is ready, please proceed—” SMASH. “Dinner is ready—” SMASH. “Dinner is—” SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH.
Its once-rounded head was a mess of circuitry by now, but he couldn’t stop. He covered its torso with dents, caved its legs in, swung and swung and swung, and oil splashed up against his cheeks and coated his clothes. He kept swinging, down, down, down, even as his shoulders shook. He wanted this thing gone, wiped from the face of the earth. SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH. He couldn’t stop, so he didn’t. And a part of him knew that this was the best place for his anger, something cold that wouldn’t resist him and wouldn’t look at him afterward with fear, wouldn’t nurse any loathing for him in its heart.
He realized he was kneeling over the thing, his knife to several of the wires in its neck when he paused.
Sydney stood a few doors down in the hallway. The sound. She musta been drawn by the sound.
After a beat, he stood, wiped the oil from the knife onto his pants, then sheathed it.
“The rain,” Sydney said, and Linc knew she was back to keeping her words from him.
He listened for movement outside and heard none. It had stopped. “Yeah, we should get back. Curfew.” As he shouldered past her, he wanted to ask if she’d found anything, just to hear her speak, just to hear her say “nothing,” but he didn’t want to hurt her too.
There was no work the next afternoon. When everyone got to the worksite, there was nothing but bats in the rubble. The drone had eaten everything else. A few of the stackers wandered off back home. Some hitched rides, but the rest stayed. Wyatt made a table out of a bunch of the stones and people fashioned their own seats and someone brought out a deck of shimmering holocards. A holo-deck of cards that scintillated blue and projected pixelated suits and numbers. Sometimes, they malfunctioned and switched or showed the wrong suit or hue and the dealer had to reshuffle.
Jayceon took the deck and made a show of flipping the cards more deftly than his predecessor, his hands a blur. The deck turned into a single blue cube in his hands. Rodney, sitting across from him, stretched his stiff leg out and sighed.
