More Than This (33 page)

Tomasz turns his fists up and looks at them. “I am too small to help. And Mama says it is all right, we are almost there, we are almost there. And one day we arrive in England. We are all very excited, day is almost here, we have traveled long and hard road, but here we are, here we are, here we are.” His face has opened up a little in wonder, but it hardens again. “But there is a problem. Money, always wanting more money, always asking more from people who have none.”

He sighs. “But there
is
no more. And the kinder man comes to where they are keeping us. In big metal container for ship. Like we are pigs or trash. The kinder man comes one night.”

He looks at Seth. In the moonlight, his eyes are filled with tears again, and Seth realizes what he’s asking.

“He shot you,” Seth says simply, finishing the story. “He shot you and your mother and everyone else.”

Tomasz just nods, fat tears running down his cheeks.

“Oh, Tommy,” Regine whispers.

“But I do not know why I am
here,
” Tomasz says, his voice wet. “I get shot in the back of my head and I wake up here! And this is making no sense. If we have all been sleeping away somewhere, why do I not wake up in Poland? Why can I not find my mother or anyone else?” He appeals to Seth. “I do not recognize this place at all. I wake up and I think the men must be after me still and so I am afraid and I say to Regine when she finds me that I have always been here, that Mama and me have been here for long time, but . . .” He just shrugs.

“Maybe you
were
here,” Seth says. “Maybe you reached here and they put you in the coffins and . . .”

But it
doesn’t
make sense.

Or maybe, he thinks, maybe there hadn’t been time to deport anyone anymore. Maybe Tomasz’s mother did get here in the real world just before everything ended, when Tomasz was a baby. And maybe they were arrested and the only thing to do was to put them to sleep, making them think they’d never left Poland. That they were back where they started without ever having made the journey.

But if it was someone with the willpower and courage to make that journey once, they might be the sort of person who would be willing to make it again, wouldn’t they? If they didn’t know they were online, only that they had to get somewhere else, at whatever cost.

Never knowing they had already succeeded and were already here.

It seems almost impossibly cruel.

“Tommy, I’m so sorry,” Regine says.

“Just do not leave me alone,” Tomasz says. “It is all I wish.”

She embraces him again even more tightly.

“What about you?” Seth asks her. “How did you get here?”

“I told you,” she says, not looking at him. “I fell down the stairs.”

“Are you sure?”

She glares at him, not answering, but Tomasz is looking up at her, too, the same question on his face. “It is all right,” Tomasz says. “We are your friends.”

Regine still doesn’t answer, but a flicker of doubt crosses her brow. She takes in a breath, to explain or deny or tell them to piss off, Seth will never know, because somewhere, in the distance, they hear the engine of the van start up all over again.

“Hurry,” Regine whispers back to them as they rush from shadow to shadow.

“How far?” Seth asks when they catch up to her, huddled between two cars at the side of a road.

“We’re close, but there’s a big main road to cross first.”

“The sound is distant,” Tomasz whispers behind them. “It does not know where we are.”

“Has it ever seen where you guys are staying?” Seth asks.

“We do not think so,” Tomasz says. “We have always lost it before we got home, but . . .”

“But what?”

“But it’s not that big a neighborhood,” Regine says. “And your lights are still blinking. In a world this dark, that’s going to be noticeable.”

“If they were broadcasting some signal,” Seth says, “it’d be on us by now, wouldn’t it? So that’s something at least.”

“Something,” Regine says. “Not a lot.”

She leads them in a crouched run through the parked cars, across a small street and up the sidewalk toward an intersection. It’s the main road Regine was talking about, and aside from the usual weeds and mud, it’s a massive open space they’re going to have to cross. They wait between two small white trucks parked at the edge.

“We should be okay,” Tomasz whispers. “The engine is not near.”

“You shot it in the chest at point-blank range and it stood up again,” Regine says. “We don’t know
what
it might be capable of doing. You think it doesn’t know we rely on the sound of the engine to tell us where it is? You think it might not use that to screw with us?”

Tomasz’s eyes grow wider, and he slips a cloth-covered hand into Seth’s.

“We really aren’t far,” Regine says. “If we can get across –”

She stops, eyes suddenly alert in the moonlight.

“What?” Seth whispers.

“Did you hear something?”

“No, I –”

But he hears it now, too.

Footsteps.

Definitely footsteps.

Far closer than the distant drone of the engine.

The footsteps are slow, quiet, as if they don’t want to be heard. But they’re coming this way.

Tomasz grips Seth’s hand tighter and lets out a very soft, “Ouch,” at the pain from the burns. He doesn’t let go, though.

“Nobody move,” Regine whispers.

The footsteps grow louder, nearer, coming from somewhere on their right, maybe from the sidewalk on the other side of the street, hidden by darkness and the cars parked there. They have a strange quality to them, oddly hesitant, stopping and starting, as if having trouble getting up a good walk.

“Maybe we hurt it,” Regine whispers, and Seth sees her posture change slightly. She would be happy if it was hurt, he realizes. Happy to face it when she stood a chance of beating it.

“Regine –”

She shushes him, pointing silently with her finger. Seth and Tomasz lean forward.

There’s movement in the shadows across the street.

“We should get out of here,” Seth says.

“Not yet,” she says.

“It’s still got weapons –”

“Not
yet.
”

Seth can feel Tomasz pulling back, readying himself to run. Seth moves back with him, but Regine stays where she is –

“Regine,”
Seth hisses through clenched teeth –

“Look,” is all she says.

Angry, tense, ready to flee, Seth leans forward to look out onto the wide street again, where the footsteps take their last movements out of shadow and into moonlight.

Tomasz makes a little gasp beside him.

It’s a deer.
Two
deer. A doe and her fawn, hesitantly picking their way into the street, ears alert, stopping every little bit or so to make sure the way is still safe. The fawn steps past its mother and takes a mouthful of wild weeds from the road. It’s impossible to tell their color in the moonlight, but they don’t look skinny or unwell, Seth thinks. There’s certainly enough vegetation around to keep them fed. And if there’s a fawn, then there must be a stag out there somewhere.

Seth, Tomasz, and Regine watch the pair make their way down the street, their hooves clicking on the tarmac. The engine noise is still in the distance, and it’s clear by the flicks of her ears that the doe hears it, but she keeps watch calmly as her fawn feeds itself.

She stops and raises her head higher, sniffing the air.

“She smells us,” Regine whispers. The doe doesn’t bolt, but she turns from them, pushing her fawn away down the road, disappearing into farther darkness until not even the moon can see them.

“Wow,” Tomasz says after they’ve gone. “I mean, WOW!”

“Yeah,” Seth says. “I didn’t expect –”

He stops.

Because he can see Regine wipe two stray tears from her cheeks.

“Regine?”

“Let’s keep going,” she says, and stands to lead them on their way.

They take a long circle to get to the house. The trees are surprisingly thick here in amongst the homes, and the moonlight shines down only in glimpses, as if they’re at the bottom of a steep canyon. The drone of the engine stays far away, and when they reach Regine’s street, there’s no sign of anyone waiting for them.

It’s a nicer neighborhood than Seth’s, he can see that even in the dark. The houses are stand-alones, not in blocks like his, the gardens more spacious, the streets a bit wider. Despite the decent size and niceness of his own house, Seth remembers it was only affordable to his parents because it bordered a prison.

“This is where you grew up?” he asks, already regretting the surprise in his voice.

“Yeah,” Regine says, “and even in online utopiaville, we were still the only black people. So what does
that
tell you?”

They wait at the corner, behind a better model of derelict car.

“I am not seeing anything,” Tomasz whispers.

“No,” Regine says. “But how would we know? It can probably wait a lot longer than we can.”

“Any of these houses will do for a rest,” Seth says. “They probably all have empty beds.”

“Yeah,” she says, squinting down the road, “but they’re not my house, are they? I don’t think I’m ready to give up my house.”

“I really don’t doubt that,” Seth says, “but –”

“Oh, for the sake of heaven,” Tomasz says, standing. “My hands are hurting. I want to wash them. It is there or it is not, and if it is there, then it knows where to find us and it can do that anywhere we try to run. Besides, I am feeling cranky and over-tired.”

He marches down the street.

“Tommy!” Regine calls after him, but he keeps on going.

“He’s got a point, you know,” Seth says.

“Doesn’t he always?” Regine grumbles, but she stands and heads after Tomasz. Seth goes, too, and he can see now how right Regine was about the lights. Tomasz’s is shining in the darkness like a beacon.

What
did
happen? he thinks. Why did they link up? Why the sudden immersion into what was clearly the worst thing that had ever happened to Tomasz? It made no sense, but at the very least, it’s calmed down the torrent in his brain for now, all that information still bubbling but temporarily at bay.

He looks at the back of Regine’s neck.
What would happen if I connected to her?
he wonders.

“Tommy, wait,” Regine says as they near the front path of a dark brick house, hidden behind the same shadows of wild plants and mud. Regine looks around carefully, turning in a full circle – the same way Seth does when he’s being watchful, he notices – but there’s still nothing in the darkness that comes after them.

“I think we are fine,” Tomasz says. “For now.”

Regine breathes out a long, low sigh, still scanning the fronts of the neighboring houses. “For now,” she echoes quietly.

“Hold on,” Regine says at the front door. She pushes it open slightly, removing a small scrap of paper. “To make sure no one’s gone in before us. If this had fallen, we’d have known someone was inside.”

She disappears into the house, motioning them to wait.

“We have blacked out the windows,” Tomasz tells Seth, “to keep from being seen.”

After a moment, a light appears from deep within, as if it’s coming from around more than one corner.

“Okay,” Regine says, appearing again. “Get inside, quick.”

Tomasz waits for Seth to pass before bracing the door shut behind them with a chair stuck underneath the handle. They’re in a generous sitting room with a staircase leading up and a second doorway to a kitchen in the back.

Right in the middle of the front room sits a dusty black coffin, surrounded by the sofas and chairs as if it was a coffee table.

“Come, there is food,” Tomasz says, walking past the coffin and leading Seth to the kitchen. The light shines from there, a lantern tucked into a side cabinet that might have been a pantry. There’s a door heading out the back, its seams stuffed with blankets to keep the light from leaking out.

“We sleep upstairs,” Regine says. “There are three bedrooms, but one’s a storage room now. You can share with Tommy, if you want.”

“I usually sneak in to the floor of her room anyway,” Tomasz says in a stage whisper.

Regine lights another lantern. She calls Tomasz over to the sink to unwrap his hands. Once the blood is washed away, they look less bad than feared. A few deep cuts and some burns – which cause Tomasz to hiss every time Regine runs the water over them – but he can flex them a little.