The Participants (14 page)

“I am a good worker.” He looked at her and
smiled. The vacuous pride in his eyes revealed to Elza that this
man was a good-natured, proud, hard-working man and nothing more.
His eyes slid past her to the old woman. “Hello, grandmother. Do
you see how fast I am getting?”

She moved to help some of
the other women.
I definitely will not
settle in this village. I need somewhere small. Somewhere quiet. A
place where I can take a break from shallow men. Somewhere I can be
alone.

“
Quebec! Get down!” His warning came just in
time. Quebec threw herself back just as Erik fired. The shot
missed.

Quebec rushed forward once
more, cradling her gun with an insane intensity.
What is she doing here? She can't expect to win
against all five of them.
The answer was
obvious.
She thinks I'm Hess. She will do
anything to save me.

“Get out of here!” he shouted. “Quebec,
leave!”

Erik fired. Quebec swore and shifted her
weight off of one leg. She hobbled forward, hands steady on her
weapon. From the house, Bridgette emerged with Drake at her side.
Both of them were armed.

No.
Zack struggled against his bonds.
No.
All around, the shadows began to
grow.
No!
Helpless rage and frustration boiled higher. This was his
fault. He landed on the national news. He returned to his trailer.
He told Quebec where the farm was. He gave her a reason to come
here. Anything that happened to her would be his fault.

The shadows pooled together, emerging from
the corners of the barn and from beneath objects to coalesce into
the darkness. “Go away, Quebec! Run!” His throat burned from the
force of his shout.

Drake shot at Quebec,
hitting her in the side. Erik squeezed off another shot, striking
the gun from Quebec's hands, leaving her defenseless, enemies on
all sides.
No!
The darkness boiled, climbing the walls, consuming the
ceiling, dripping over everything.

He stopped breathing. In broad daylight, the
darkness rose up to claim Zack. It surrounded him, strangling him
with the numb terror that lurked wherever light wasn’t.

Zack struggled to escape,
to return to the light. He knew it still shone somewhere.
Not again!
The voice
thundered in his mind. On its echoes came another.
I don’t want to live!

Zack silenced the voices. He could sense the
light out there, knew the way back existed if only he could find
it. He had to escape the darkness, leave it behind and forget it
ever existed. Return to the state of least pain.

The darkness boiled about him. Zack pushed
back at it, forcing everything to stop. He remembered how he had
done it before. How he could do it again. Make it all go away.
Forget everything.

The force of his will
pushed at the darkness, forcing it to the corners of his mind. The
darkness fought back, struggling to resist its banishment.
How could you forget me?
Her voice rose from the depths and struck him. His struggle
ceased, the darkness and his terror abandoning their battle as one,
leaving a sudden peace in their wake.

She needs
me
. Things stirred within the depths,
eager to rise. Zack knew part of what was there. A night stretching
to infinity, filled with terror and self-hatred. But there was
more. So much more.
I have to. She needs
me.

Zack embraced the darkness.

She ran the entire way from her village to the
somewhat larger village the locals called a city, drenching her
wool dress with sweat and bruising her bare feet on stones hidden
within the hard-packed dirt. Her race began in the Taro fields the
moment she heard the news and ended when she reached the guest
pavilion at the outskirts of the settlement. Her top concern had
been that the visitor would leave before she arrived, but judging
by the crowd, this was not the case.

Elza straightened her dress as she studied
the people assembled to wish the stranger good travel. The group
was disproportionately female. They had come from miles away to see
a man with pale skin claiming to search the entire world for a
lover from a previous life, each wearing her best dress, no doubt
secretly hoping the stranger would recognize his true love in
her.

The stranger was easy to spot. His skin was
even paler than Elza's had been in the previous world and
contrasted with the dark hues of everyone else. Elza seized the
elbow of a woman she knew. “What is the stranger's name?”

The woman smiled. “We have taken to calling
him Mister White, but he gives his proper name as Wren.”

Elza's lips compressed to a determined line.
Names meant nothing. Among these people, she answered to Tessa, the
name of a village on the other side of the mountains. Observers had
to change identities often to prevent others from noticing they did
not age or retain injuries.

“What is the name of the woman he searches
for?” Elza asked.

The woman chuckled. “Mister White! Come here
now and meet a beautiful young woman! She would like to know about
your search! And maybe ask you to be her man!”

Mister White turned at the shouting and
approached. He was plain in his looks, remarkable only because of
his uncommon coloration. But the way he studied every face and
every gesture confirmed to her in an instant that this man was an
Observer. Unaccountably, Elza found she couldn’t speak.

She stared as the man spread his hands wide
and nodded his head in the local manner of greeting. “Greetings,
friends. I don't have time to tell stories now. The world is very
large and I can't stay any place more than a few days. All I can
tell you is that I am searching for a woman.”

The village woman threw her arm around
Elza's neck. “Tessa here is a woman. She came here three summers
ago and hasn't picked a man yet, though many have let her know they
would say yes.”

Mister White bowed deeply towards Elza. “My
apologies, Tessa. You are very beautiful, but I already have a
woman.”

“What's her name?” she squeezed the question
through the tightness at her throat.

“Her name,” Mister White said, “is Elza.
Tell everyone you know a man walks the world looking for Elza.”
Mister White – Hess – returned to his preparations, rolling up his
bedding and packing his bags.

Embedded within Elza was the certainty that
she existed for a single purpose: to observe creation on behalf of
the Creator. The core of her identity rested upon that fact.
Nothing mattered but her sacred duty. Nothing could be allowed to
interfere with her work. The days she had spent with Hess would
always live within her dreams, but they had been a mistake she
could never repeat. Her existence had a purpose far nobler than
that of a mortal woman languishing in the arms of a lover. She was
an Observer.

Elza dabbed at her eyes as each of the
village elders bowed to Hess, treating him like a man on a sacred
mission, never realizing Hess had turned his back on his true
purpose. She walked with the others as they escorted Hess to the
turn in the road, where by tradition people would part. Hess never
looked back as he passed the turn.

The women congregated before the collection
of thatch huts they called a city, joking with one another that
eventually some pretty face would catch Mister White. The one who
had spoken on her behalf earlier patted her shoulder. “Don't be sad
to see him go, Tessa. He's no different than any other man. Some
day, he will realize his woman does not exist and forget about
her.”

Elza jerked away from the hand on her
shoulder. “What do you know of men?” she snapped. “What do you know
about anything?”

The woman's shocked expression clouded with
anger. “I know more than a girl without a man. You think you are
special, girl. Some day you will settle with a normal man and
realize different.”

Hess grew smaller with distance and the
women began to disperse.

Elza ignored the woman at her side, studying
the dwindling form of her man and recalling all the times she had
wondered where he was . . . wondered in what way he was violating
the sacred command of the Observers. Now she knew the answer to
that question. He had been seeking her.

Letting him find her would only encourage
his obsession. Their dalliance would taint the work of two
Observers, depriving the Creator of precious input into the
experience of Her world. The only solution was to remain hidden.
Hess would eventually tire of his search and resume his duties.
Given enough time, it might even be as the woman claimed. Hess
might forget her.

Her feet moved before she could restrain
them. In a moment, Elza was running again. The abuse to her feet
had healed and her form in this world was light and swift. She
caught up to Hess in moments.

He spoke without looking at her. “Go home,
woman.”

Elza clasped her hands together. “I just
need to know one thing. Please.”

Hess stopped walking. “What?”

“Do you love her?”

For a moment, it seemed he
wouldn't speak. “
I couldn't hate
everything He made.” He pointed back to the village. “Go home.
Choose a man and be happy with your life.”

Elza stared back towards the village, where
the people went about their daily activities. That was where she
belonged, among the subjects, among the participants of this world.
She turned again to see Hess striding away from her.

This was where it should end. She had all
the answers she had ever sought from Hess. She knew how he had
spent his time in this world. She knew that those days together had
meant as much to him as they had to her. She knew he loved her.
Anything more would be a dereliction of duty.

“Wait,” she called. He continued walking.
“Hess, wait!”

He froze at his name, then turned to face
her. Elza took his hands in hers and pressed them to her face.
Though every feature was changed, the way he looked at her remained
the same. And that was all that mattered. She kissed his hands. “If
you would walk the world for me, then I would go with you. I cannot
believe She would disapprove of that.”

It was like waking from a dream. Only the
nightmare was real. Hess twisted to look at his bindings. The cuffs
were of professional quality and would require time and effort to
break or pick. But the chair was something else. While solid in
appearance, the thick rungs of the ladder-back were held in their
tongue-and-groove placement by wood glue more than
anything.

Hess seized the slat with both hands behind
his back and simultaneously twisted and drove back on one side. The
glue snapped and the rung came free along one side, wood
splintering along the edge. Hess seized the rung in both hands and
pulled it out from the opposite side.

He stood quickly, brought
his cuffed hands below his glutes, sat and lifted both legs, and
brought his hands up the front of his body, still bearing the
splintered rung from the chair. He launched forward into a run,
crashing into Erik and slamming his makeshift spear into her
throat, severing one of her carotid arteries and piercing her
trachea. His hands, still bound together, seized the gun from her
hands. He glanced at the weapon. It said
Glock
along the side and beneath
that
9mm
. The
Creator tended to recycle things from one world to the next.
Ammunition types were much like languages and measurement systems
in that they never varied much.

Hess raised the gun and fired off three
rounds rapidly into the back of Drake, who squatted over the downed
Elza. Bridgette – no, Kerzon – raised her weapon and fired at him.
Hess fired his last round, missed, and felt the trigger go soft
under his finger.

At that moment, the
entirety of creation began to scream its destruction in a terrible
duet, high screech and deep rumble announcing the end of the
world.
No!
Hess
ran from the barn, pointing the empty Glock at Kerzon, driving her
back.

Invisible to all but them, the force binding
Observers to the world evaporated, torn aside to reveal another
direction available to them. The sky was open. Kerzon puffed out of
existence. Hess crashed to his knees beside Elza. Her eyes met his.
Broken and bleeding, she recognized him and smiled. “Find me fast,”
she said.

“You have to
w
ait,” he said. “We can't leave
yet.”

To the side, Drake vanished.

“I'm sorry, Hess,” Ingrid shouted. “The
situation escalated too far. I want them to think the Creator
objected to the fighting.”

Hess picked up Elza's dropped Ruger Security
Six, stood, and aimed at Ingrid, hoping there was an unfired round
inside it. “You are no friend of mine, Ingrid. You led the others
against us last Iteration.”

“I am not Ingrid.”

He pulled back the hammer of the gun. While
it was a double-action revolver, Hess knew cocking the pistol would
create a shorter trigger pull and increase his marksmanship by a
small amount. At the twenty yards between him and Ingrid, he could
put a piece of lead directly between her eyes provided Elza had
maintained her weapon as he’d taught her. Provided there was a live
round left to fire. “You convinced a lot of people that you were
Ingrid.”

“I know enough to play the part.”