More Than This (40 page)

He starts running again, scanning right and left, looking for an opened coffin, but all he sees are innumerable closed ones, polished and clean and humming away with their individual lives being lived inside. The Driver clearly did its job with brutal efficiency.

Seth hazards a look back. It hasn’t followed him yet, but it can only be a matter of seconds. Seth nears the end of this second area and is about to cross into a third. He stops and opens another coffin, pressing its pad expertly now, lifting the lid with ease.

There’s a woman inside.

She’s holding a baby.

The woman is bandaged like everyone else, but the baby is wrapped up tight in a blanket that looks made of blue gel. Tubes run from it to the mother, but her arms are around the infant, holding it close, pressing it to her.

Like any mother and baby.

We’re on the threshold of reproduction and childbirth,
the woman from the Council had said.

Well, they’d clearly managed to cross that threshold before everything went bad. Conception happening through the tubes, mothers giving birth while they were still sleeping, who knew how it exactly worked?

Children were being born.

Hope for the future,
the woman from the Council had said, and here it was.

They’d believed there was a future.

He hears footfalls again.

The Driver is running, somewhere behind him.

Seth takes one last look at the woman and baby and closes their coffin. He opens the next one over. Inside is a chubby teenage boy. Seth yanks out tubes in three or four handfuls, then reaches under the boy’s shoulders to pull him out of the coffin –

The sound of footfalls enters the room, and Seth can see the Driver hurtle through the passageway, running fast.

A jolt of adrenaline gets the boy out and onto the floor. Seth sets him upright against the coffin, tearing out a few more tubes for good measure.

“Sorry,” he says to the boy and takes off running again.

As he passes out of this second room, he turns back –

And sees the Driver stop by the teenage boy.

But not go to him.

It keeps on looking at Seth, obviously conflicted.

There’s a terrifying moment when it looks like it may keep on coming –

But then it goes to the boy to put him back. Seth keeps running, thinking that the Driver must somehow be learning, and that next time this trick of taking someone out may not work, that he’s got to find Regine, he’s got to do it quickly, he’s got to –

And then he hears her scream again.

“Regine!” he shouts.

The sound came from the next room after this one, he’s sure of it, down through the wide passageway at the far end. She’s got to be in there. She’s
got
to be.

He hears the scream again. “No,” he says, sprinting now. “No, no, no, no, no –”

He sails through the passageway. He has no idea now where he is in relation to the surface. This series of rooms seems impossibly big, impossibly
deep.
His mind keeps telling him that it makes no sense. When was it built? Why was it built
here
?

She screams once more.

And he sees her.

Off to his right, down a row, nearly to the far wall. Her coffin is open, and he can see her lying there.

See her struggling.

She wasn’t struggling before.

“Regine!”

Unlike everyone else in the coffins, she’s still half-dressed, the bandages wrapped around her upper body and face, but her jeans and shoes still on, as if getting her memory erased was the most important thing, and why wouldn’t it be?

It’s the one thing that makes all this possible,
Seth thinks.

But she seems to be fighting it, fighting against the bandages over her eyes, fighting the tube in her mouth, a tube doing nothing to stifle her screams –

“I’m coming!” he shouts.

He reaches her and pulls the tube out. It sends her into a spasm of distressed coughing.

“Regine?” he cries. “Regine, can you hear me?”

She screams, terrifyingly loud. Her hands are frantic, slapping at him, not in any coordinated way, just flailing around, striking wildly at the air.

“Can you
hear
me?” he shouts again. She jerks away from him, clearly in terror, and screams as loud as before.

“Oh, shit, Regine,” Seth says, distraught. He looks back across the rows of coffins, down the wide central passageway that links this large room to the one he just came out of and onto who knows how many beyond it the other way. No sign of the Driver yet, but there’s no way it can be far behind.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and with one hand he grabs Regine’s wrists, forcing them down. She’s strong and he can barely hold her there, the force just making her more upset. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, and he slips his free hand around her neck, trying to find the end of the bandages.

“You’ll see me! It’ll all make sense. I promise –”

His hand brushes against the rapidly red-blinking light on her neck –

And in an instant, he’s gone from the world.

“You’re nothing,” the man says. “You’re fat. You’re ugly. And too bloody monstrous for any boy to ever look at you.”

“Lots of boys look at me,” she says, but she’s got fear in her stomach. She can see his fists clenched at his side. She’s big, but he’s bigger, and she knows he’s not afraid to use those fists, like he used them on her mother just now, knocking her once across the kitchen table when the tea was too cold, a knock that sent Regine running up the stairs, him roaring after her.

He’s usually slow when he’s drunk, but she’s taken too long to grab her phone and her money, and when she left her bedroom, there he was, blocking the top of the stairs.

“No boy ever looks at you,” he spits at her. “You slut.”

“Let me pass,” she says, clenching her own fists. “Let me pass or I swear to God . . .”

He smirks. That stupid pink face of his, all lit up with ugly, drunk delight, that lank blond hair that always looks dirty, no matter how often he washes it. “Let you pass or you swear to God you’ll what?”

She says nothing, doesn’t move.

He steps back, gesturing grandly with one hand and bowing in a sarcastic way, giving her leave to go down the stairs. “Go on then,” he says. “Be my guest.”

She breathes through her nose, every nerve awake. She just has to get past him, that’s all. Take a slap or duck a punch or maybe nothing at all, maybe as drunk as he is –

She rushes forward suddenly, surprising him. He jerks back at her momentum, exactly what she was hoping for, and she steps around the banister past him, getting a foot on the top step –

“Ugly bitch!” he shouts –

She feels the punch coming before it even lands, feels the air displace behind her –

She tries to duck, but her positioning is all wrong –

His fist connects –

She falls –

She’s falling –

The hard stairs coming up to meet her too fast, too fast, too fast –

And she screams –

“You’re nothing,” the man says. “You’re fat. You’re ugly. And too bloody monstrous for any boy to ever look at you.”

“Lots of boys look at me,” she says, but she’s got fear in her stomach. She can see his fists clenched at his side. She’s big, but he’s bigger, and she knows he’s not afraid to use those fists, like he used them on her mother just now, knocking her once across the kitchen table when the tea was too cold, a knock that sent Regine running up the stairs, him roaring after her.

He’s usually slow when he’s drunk, but she’s taken too long to grab her phone and her money, and when she left her bedroom, there he was, blocking the top of the stairs.

“No boy ever looks at you,” he spits at her. “You slut.”

“Let me pass,” she says, clenching her own fists. “Let me pass or I swear to God . . .”

He smirks. That stupid pink face of his, all lit up with ugly, drunk delight, that lank blond hair that always looks dirty, no matter how often he washes it. “Let you pass or you swear to God you’ll what?”

She says nothing, doesn’t move.

He steps back, gesturing grandly with one hand and bowing in a sarcastic way, giving her leave to go down the stairs. “Go on then,” he says. “Be my guest.”

She breathes through her nose, every nerve awake. She just has to get past him, that’s all. Take a slap or duck a punch or maybe nothing at all, maybe as drunk as he is –

She rushes forward suddenly, surprising him. He jerks back at her momentum, exactly what she was hoping for, and she steps around the banister past him, getting a foot on the top step –

“Ugly bitch!” he shouts –

She feels the punch coming before it even lands, feels the air displace behind her –

She tries to duck, but her positioning is all wrong –

His fist connects –

She falls –

She’s falling –

The hard stairs coming up to meet her too fast, too fast, too fast –

And she screams –

“You’re nothing,” the man says. “You’re fat. You’re ugly. And too bloody monstrous for any boy to ever look at you.”

“Lots of boys look at me,” she says, but she’s got fear in her stomach. She can see his fists clenched at his side. She’s big, but he’s bigger, and she knows he’s not afraid to use those fists, like he used them on her mother just now, knocking her once across the kitchen table when the tea was too cold, a knock that sent Regine running up the stairs, him roaring after her.

He’s usually slow when he’s drunk, but she’s taken too long to grab her phone and her money, and when she left her bedroom, there he was, blocking the top of the stairs.

“No boy ever looks at you,” he spits at her. “You slut.”

“Let me pass,” she says, clenching her own fists. “Let me pass or I swear to God . . .”

He smirks. That stupid pink face of his, all lit up with ugly, drunk delight, that lank blond hair that always looks dirty, no matter how often he washes it. “Let you pass or you swear to God you’ll –

Seth is suddenly back in the room with the coffins, gasping for breath. Regine’s thrashings have jerked her head away from his hand, breaking their connection.

She screams again.

And no wonder,
Seth thinks with horror. She’s caught in some kind of loop, reliving the moment, reliving the
worst
moment.

She’s dying over and over and over again.

He can still feel her fear, still feel the pain of the punch, the terror of the slipping, the disbelief at the fall –

He’s got to find a way to get her out of there –

“Seth?” she says.

He freezes. Her voice is weak, desperate, afraid. Her head is still bound in the bandages, but she’s stopped struggling.

“Seth, is that you?”

“I’m here,” he says, grabbing her hands so she can feel him. “I’m here, Regine. We’ve got to get you out of here. Now.”

“Where are we? I can’t see. There’s something on my eyes –”

“You’re wrapped up. Here.” He turns her head to grab the seam at the back and starts unwrapping her. “We’re underground. Under the prison.”

“Seth,” she says as he reaches the level of her skin and starts slowly unsticking the bandage from her eyelids. “Seth, I was –”

“I know,” he says. “I saw it. But we’ve got to –”

And then he hears footfalls again. He turns to look. The Driver runs through the entrance to this room.

It sees them.

And it stops.

Stops right there in the central passageway and stares at them with its empty face.

“Oh, no,” Regine whispers. She’s peeled the last of the bandages away and can see what he’s seeing.

Seth looks around them. There’s nowhere to run. They’re backed into a corner, and Seth can tell from Regine’s face that she knows it, too.

“You go,” she says, her voice rough, her eyes filled with water, more vulnerable than he’s ever seen her. “I don’t think I can. I feel so weak. You get out of here.”