The Participants (10 page)

“I suppose
I'm not getting any older,” she said.

Zack looked every direction as he turned from
route 356 into the plaza's back entrance. None of the cars appeared
occupied as he passed them. His heart beat out a steady rhythm.
Zack drove slowly around the outer perimeter of the parking lot,
then parked close to the entrance of the grocery store.

I'm ten minutes early.
Maybe they're not here yet.
Zack kept the
truck running in case he needed to escape fast. As the minutes
ticked by, he imagined the various ways the Observers could best
him.
Well, they could taze me and drag me
away before anyone objected. They could show up dressed like cops
and shoot me. They could call the real cops on me, then wait for me
to be released from questioning. They could release Lacey in bad
condition and ambush me at the hospital.

At ten o'clock, Zack tensed
when a man approached his truck.
I should
have stopped to buy a weapon. Even a knife would be better than
nothing.
The man unlocked the door of a
car parked next to Zack's borrowed truck, got inside, and drove
away. Zack glanced to the clock. It was a minute past
ten.

Zack twisted around in his
seat, looking in every direction. The only people he saw were
carrying bags of groceries to their vehicles. None of them looked
suspicious. He sank back into his seat and glanced at the clock. It
was five after.
They're not releasing
Lacey. They just wanted me to come back.

He threw the truck into drive. There were
five of them. It was probably safe to assume that one of them would
still be at the farm watching Lacey. The man called Ingrid had
released him without revealing himself. That left only three of
them to worry about.

I don't know the first
thing about espionage
, Zack thought. He
slowly circled the lot a final time and moved to the back entrance,
expecting someone to pull out and block him. His truck returned to
route 356 without incident. Zack watched his rearview mirror as he
drove, but no one followed him.

He decided his course on the fly. He would
return to the trailer park, pack a bag, and get lost. The others
might release Lacey when he didn't return. Zack tried not to
consider the other possibility.

Zack parked beside Lacey's car at their
trailer. His keys were with his phone, somewhere on the hellish
farm of the Observers, which meant he would need to break a window
to get into his own home. He was halfway to his door when a car
parked at the back of his driveway, blocking in both vehicles.

Bridgette stepped out of the car. “Get in
the car, Hess.”

“Get away from me,” he said as she walked
forward.

“It's me – Elza.”

“I don't even know who that is.”

Bridgette reached behind her and pulled out
a tiny handgun. “We really messed you up, didn't we? And here I
thought we wouldn't be able to leave a mark. Doesn't matter what
you remember, Hess. You're getting in my car. Whether I put a hole
in your skull first is your decision.”

“You're going to shoot me in public?” Zack
backed away from her.

“Doesn't look like too many of your
neighbors are home at the moment. Plus, you would be surprised how
many people mistake the sound of a gunshot for something else.”

As he backed up, the heel of his foot struck
the first of two wobbly steps leading up to his trailer's front
door. His best plan was to break down the door and bludgeon
Bridgette to death with a frying pan while taking shots from her
handgun.

Zack bent his knees, preparing to leap for
the door. Bridgette raised her gun, lining the sites up on him. The
front door of his trailer opened.

A form swung out onto the top step, large
handgun cradled in two steady hands, paused, and fired past Zack.
He turned in time to see Bridgette hit the ground, one eye crying a
stream of blood. From behind, he heard the sound of a hammer
cocking. “Grab her body,” said the woman.

Zack swallowed. “Who are you?”

The woman, short, petite, with black hair,
brown eyes, and a distinctive nose, analyzed him briefly before
answering. “I'm a girl with a gun. Now grab her body, Zack
Vernon.”

The way her gun unerringly moved to center
on his face every time he shifted convinced Zack he wouldn't gain
much by arguing. He went to where Bridgette lay and bent down.
There wasn't much of a mess in the front, but his fingers
encountered a disturbing amount of moisture when they slid beneath
the body. He stood with it in his arms. “Where am I taking it?”

“Her car.”

“And then what?”

“Then Kerzon gets what she deserves. I'm
going to dig a hole, put her in a casket, and pile dirt on top.
She's going to spend a few hundred years tearing her nails out on
the walls of her shiny metal box.”

Zack dropped the body.

“Pick her back up.”

Zack bent to retrieve Bridgette, then
stopped. The woman squatted across from him, the muzzle of her
weapon still pointed directly at him. “Pick. Her. Up.”

“You can't bury her alive,” he said. “You
can't do that to someone. No one deserves to be trapped in the dark
forever.”

The tip of the handgun, so steady, sank
towards the ground. “Who are you?”

“Just promise me you won't bury her.”

“Who are you?”

“Zack. I've never been anyone else. I
swear.”

The muzzle shook when she raised her gun.
“Get in the car.”

“You're not going to take the body?”

“No,” she said. “Just get in the car.”

He glanced around the trailer court. No one
had emerged to investigate the sound of gunfire. No one was coming
to help him. There was nowhere to run. Zack got into the passenger
side of the running vehicle. The woman entered from the driver
side.

As she drove around and back towards the
exit, Zack studied the blood on his hands. It would vanish when
Bridgette revived, but for the moment he was covered. “What are you
going to do with me?”

The woman let out a deep breath. “I don't
know.”

“Who are you?”

“I'm using the name Quebec Wallace.”

“Quebec like the province?”

“That's right.”

“Are you Canadian?”

“No,” she said.

“Are you Elza?”

She didn't answer.

“I'm not Hess.”

“Tell me something,
Zack
. Why pull the trick
with that robber?”

“It was an accident,
Quebec
.”

She shook her head. “Let's assume I'm not
stupid. Why did you challenge that man? Were you trying to draw
other Observers?”

“I didn't know I could come back from a
bullet to the brain.”

Quebec watched him from the
corner of her eye as she stopped at a light. “We don't die,
Zack
. Not ever. Not even
when it's the only thing we want. Which is why you don't want the
others to get their hands on you. Back there, Kerzon wasn't
abducting you to bake cookies.”

“I know.”

“You’re lucky I was there.”

Zack glanced to the gun resting in her lap.
“So you’re not going to shoot me?”

“I never promised
that,
Zack
.”

“Quit saying my name like that. You might as
well be using the other one.”

Quebec reached into her purse and tossed him
a set of handcuffs. “Put those on and be quiet. I need to figure
out what I’m going to do.”

She huddled within the pile of furs at the
center of their small tent. Two days ago, the snow had come,
whiting out the sky and covering everything with its coldness on
the same day Hess disappeared, abandoning her in the snow she had
denied existed. Elza still didn’t know why he had left.

Maybe he finally came to
his senses. We shouldn’t be traveling together. The Creator didn’t
send us here to Observe each other.
Elza
shivered deeper in the furs, wondering how cold it could
get.
At least I don’t have to listen to
Hess gloat about the snow.
Outside, the
wind howled its anger.

The tent shook around her, sending down
showers of fine snow. Elza flinched, waiting for the tent to
collapse. Instead, the door flap peeled back to reveal a pale
figure. With wooden motions, Hess crawled into the tent, turned to
refasten the door, and dropped to the ground beside her.

He didn’t abandon
me.
Elza touched his shoulder, then yanked
her hand back. He was as cold as the snow. “Where did you go?” she
asked.

“Got lost in the whiteout,” he said.
“Stupid. Should have stayed closer to tent. Died ten times, at
least. Now I remember why I never returned north.”

“You’re cold,” she accused.

“Do me a favor? Kill me. Rock to my head.
I’ll come back warm.” Hess lay in the same place he had collapsed,
body twitching but not shivering, radiating coldness.

“I can’t kill you,” she said.

“Won’t last.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Elza said. She placed half
of the furs from her pile onto him. “You’ll warm up.”

“Hope not. Dying is less painful.”

She burrowed deep into her furs, feeling the
cold more than ever from the door’s opening and then losing half
her covers. “I guess you were right about snow.”

“Thought being right would feel a little
better,” he said. “Next we can find the sea. Only fair.”

Elza watched him for a time. “We can’t stay
together, Hess. We have a purpose.”

“Sure you want to leave me alone? Might do
something wrong.”

“I know you will. But She didn’t send me
here to watch you.” Elza tested his temperature with a finger. She
couldn’t tell if there was any improvement. “I still don’t
understand why you interfere.”

“I was close to here when the world started.
Just a mountain over.” Hess spoke slowly, voice rasping. “Had a
tribe, a mother, and a sister. Lots of memories that weren’t real.
Started observing. Things seemed fine at first. Men did their work,
women did theirs. Everyone helped out. Sister grew into a woman.
Beautiful. So kind. I loved her as much as I could one of them,
knowing she wasn’t real.

“Best hunter of the tribe decided he wanted
her. Got rid of his old woman. Seemed wrong, but I wasn’t there to
judge. My sister . . . Cora . . . she was scared, but went when he
came for her. Cora stayed with the hunter, with Ron. Cora was a
good woman to her man. She fed him and lay with him and made
clothes for him. Wasn’t enough for Ron. He liked when people feared
him. He fought with the other men. Hurt them for fun. Started
hitting Cora too.

“But I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t there to
judge. I was just an Observer. I stayed in my own tent and watched
the people ruin their lives. After Ron broke Cora’s nose, she
wasn’t so beautiful. He hit her more and harder after that. He was
better when she held his child in her. I hoped it would stay like
that. Cora stopped speaking to anyone except Ron. She wouldn’t even
look at me.

“She had her baby when Ron was out hunting.
Cora was so happy. She held her baby all that day, smiled at
everyone. She thought Ron would be happy, too. But Ron wanted a
son. He took the baby and threw her in the cooking fires.”

Elza watched Hess, reading the rage in his
features. His voice grew stronger suddenly.

“I couldn’t do nothing that time. Ron was
bigger than me and much stronger. When I hit him, he hit back until
I couldn’t stand. Then he held my hand in the fire so it would be
useless for hunting. I tried to push him into the fire later that
night. He was too strong and instead he broke my neck.

“I kept coming back, Elza. I kept trying to
hurt this man. He kept killing me and I kept returning. The other
people were frightened, but Ron didn’t care. He thought it was a
joke that he could kill me so many times. While Ron and I were
fighting, Cora left the camp. They found her body at the bottom of
a cliff. Ron took another woman and I left the tribe.”

Hess met her eyes. “The world is not right,
Elza.”

She placed her hand on his neck, feeling the
returned warmth. “If you were a man, you would be a good one,” she
said.

“But I’m not.”

“No. Instead you’re a terrible
Observer.”

“Do you ever wish you were just a
woman?”

She pulled her hand away from him. “I
wouldn’t like that. The Creator didn’t give me an appealing form.
If my purpose was to find a man, I don’t think I would do well at
it.”

“You might do better than you think.”

“No, Hess. I have tried to play the part of
a woman for a long time. Men only want me when a better woman isn’t
around. I would rather be an Observer than one of them.” She rolled
to her other side, away from him. He was the same as other men,
exclaiming over the beauty of his sister and reminding her
constantly of his last woman, the beautiful Dalana.

The cold didn’t relent as they lay in
silence.

“How long does it stay like this?”

“Three months,” Hess said.

“I don’t like snow. It’s too cold.”

Hess shifted closer to her. “In the north,
you have to share warmth if you want to sleep comfortably.” Elza
didn’t protest as he rearranged the furs around them.

“I never asked to see the snow,” she
said.

Hess slid close until they were touching and
wrapped an arm around her. “Maybe if we hate the snow enough, the
Creator will make the next world without it.”

“Your clothes are wet,” she said. Hess began
to shift around beneath the covers, then tossed his clothes onto
the top of their covers. With fewer layers between them, she could
feel the heat of his body. “Do you really think the Creator cares
about our preferences?”