Black River Falls (11 page)

Greer glanced nervously over her shoulder at me. I mentally urged him to stay strong. “Absolutely! I would wait a reasonable amount of time and then go when all interested parties agreed that it was perfectly safe.”

“Liar.”

She turned and ran on down the trail. Greer came up alongside me.

“Former Navy SEAL slash teen librarian,” he said. “That's what I'm putting my money on. You're one day late returning a book and she punches you in the face.”

Greer laughed, but I didn't join him.

“Hey, don't worry about it. I'll go with her and make sure she stays out of trouble.”

“No,” I said. “I brought her up here. It's my problem.”

“Card—”

“I said I'll go.”

By the time I got down to Greer's camp, the girl had passed through the cabins and was at the trailhead that led off the mountain. When she saw me coming, she pressed on, picking up speed. A familiar heat moved up through my stomach as I thought about being back on the streets of Black River. I grabbed hold of the knife to steady myself.

“You all right, man?”

Greer appeared beside me, stuffing some clothes into a backpack.

“You don't need to come. I can handle this.”

His eyes narrowed. “Dude, do you really not understand how this works by now?”

“How what works?”

“If you're going to do something stupid, then so am I.”

“Greer—”

He jogged past me, swinging the backpack onto his shoulders.

“Come on, birdman! Let's get stupid!”

Once we got down the mountain, I took the lead, with Greer in the back and the girl between us. My hand hovered by the hilt of the knife as I checked every overgrown yard and vacant house we passed—for infected, for Marvins, for Guard. I felt an edge of panic gathering from being back in town again, but I pushed it away as best I could and focused on what I was doing.

After we crossed the bridge, I led them down Harding Street to keep us away from the center of town for as long as possible. We'd be at the sculpture garden in ten or fifteen minutes and then back on Lucy's Promise a half hour after that. Easy. We just had to keep moving.

We came to the end of Harding and turned onto Warren. The boughs of the red maples on either side of the street met above us, making it feel as if we were in this shady tunnel. I felt something inside of me ease a little and I let my pace slacken. Soon the girl had drawn close, as close as I could let her anyway. The clothes I'd seen Greer stuffing into his backpack had been for her. She had her hair tucked up under a Yankees cap and she'd traded her old button-down for a hooded sweatshirt. She hadn't said a word since we'd started out, just plowed forward with her head down.

“You all right?”

She nodded, but didn't look at me. Her lips were pressed tight, like a hairline crack in a block of marble.

“You know what I was thinking? What do me and Greer know, right? I mean, seriously. Two guys with a stack of yearbooks and a test they made up one day when they were bored? It's not exactly scientific. Like, there were a few home-schooled kids in Black River. They wouldn't be in the yearbooks at all.”

She glanced over at me, clearly unconvinced.

“Okay, fine, maybe it's a long shot, but your family is here somewhere. We'll find them. Did I ever tell you that me and Greer were world-famous private detectives before the outbreak?”

The corners of her mouth lifted, faintly. “I just keep wondering what it will be like when we find them,” she said. “I mean, if I was standing in a room with my mom and dad, if they were right there in front of me . . .”

“They might seem familiar,” I said. “Sometimes things from an infected person's old life feel that way. Certain people. Certain situations. Kind of like déjà vu, I guess.”

“But when I see them will I
feel
anything? Will I still . . .”

She trailed off, but it didn't matter. I knew how the question was going to end.
Will I still love them?

Warren Street hitched to the left. We followed it past the empty playground outside Kinderbrook Elementary. Part of me wanted to tell her that love conquered all, even this, but then I saw Mom standing in that alleyway, sunlight streaming over her shoulders, and I couldn't do it. I shook my head. The girl didn't so much as break her stride, but I could see in the way she went back to studying the cracks in the pavement that it was a blow.

“But they'll love
you,
” I said, dipping down to try to catch her eye. “And, you know, with enough time together, you'll love them again too.”

Our eyes met and she smiled. A real one this time. It sent a wave of heat through my chest. Her hand was swinging beside her as she walked. It took everything in me not to reach out and take it.

Greer shouted from behind us. “Yo! Guys! Heads up!”

A truck was rolling into the intersection down the street. It was one of the big Marvin ones like we'd seen earlier, but with a dark canvas top covering the back. We ducked off the road and around the side of a nearby house as the vehicle slowed to a stop on the other side of the intersection. I heard voices beneath the engine's rumble, and then a flap opened in the back. A bundle the size of a large trash bag spilled out onto the roadway, and then the truck belched a cloud of exhaust and was gone.

Greer just shook his head. “Here one day, and they're already littering. No respect.”

“It's not trash,” the girl said.

“What?”

The bundle shifted and began to unfold. It was a man—gray-haired, wearing a long, dark coat. He moaned as he sat up, clutching the shoulder they'd dropped him on.

“Is that Freeman?”

Greer was right. Freeman Wayne—the town librarian. The same man I'd seen taken away by the Marvins at the ration drop.

“Come on,” I said. “We better keep mov—”

Before I could finish, Greer darted out from behind the house and into the street.

“Looks like you got yourself into a bit of trouble there,” he said to Freeman. “What'd you do? Refuse to renew somebody's copy of
Encyclopedia Brown
?”

The girl looked back at me, and then she joined Greer. The two of them helped Freeman onto the curb, and Greer handed him a bottle of water from his pack. The spire of St. Stephen's rose just beyond the houses across from us. We were five minutes from the sculpture garden, maybe less.
Damn it.
I looked both ways for more Marvins, then crossed the road.

Freeman Wayne was well over six feet tall and scrawny, with a beaklike nose and a rat's nest of white hair. Gray stubble ran from his jawline to the edge of his cheekbones. Despite the heat, he wore a dingy white button-down shirt and black pants, the knees shiny from wear, under the coat. I'd have bet anything that if Black River had any homeless people before the outbreak, Freeman was one of them.

He finished the bottle of water Greer had given him, then wiped his lips with his sleeve.

“Kept talking to me about papers,” he said. “I told them this was America and I wouldn't show them my papers even if I had them. Then they asked my name. I told them it was Freeman Wayne, but they kept asking, so I said it was Josef K.”

He made a spasmodic kind of gulp that I guessed was a laugh, then reached inside his coat and started hunting around for something. He exhausted nearly every pocket before he pulled out a piece of construction paper cut to the size of a business card. “Black River Municipal Library” was scrawled at the top of it. Freeman held it out to Greer.

“Letter of transit,” he said. “Whatever you need, you come see me. I have the entire universe and all of time trapped within four walls.”

“I already have a library card. Remember? Greer Larson?”

Freeman squinted up at him and then bowed with a flourish as he turned to the girl.

“For you then, Penthesilea.”

She blushed a little and took the card. “Uh . . . thanks.”

Greer clapped his hands together. “Well then! This has been great, but if you're feeling better, we'll just get—”

“You're the man in the iron mask.”

Freeman was staring right at me. He had these intense eyes, small and ocean blue, beneath snowy eyebrows.

“You look after the children on the mountain,” he said. “You and that other one. Layton. Belson.”

“Larson,” Greer said, raising his hand. “I'm
right
here, Free.”

“My name's Cardinal.”

Freeman's eyes narrowed to slits, looking at me, through me. “You must be very careful.”

“I'm sorry?”

“To not have become one of us. All this time. Surrounded by the children of Lethe. You must be very careful.”

“I keep my distance.”

He looked at my mask and my gloves; then his eyes slipped down to my waist, where my hand gripped the knife. I snatched it away. He smiled.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose you must.”

Greer stepped down off the curb. “So! Like I was saying, we have to—”

“Do any of you know how new planets are discovered?”

Freeman waited for an answer. Greer looked from me to the girl. We both shrugged.

“We, uh, don't know. Some kind of telescope maybe?”

The librarian let out a grunt of disgust, then he reached into his coat again and whipped out a nub of chalk.

“Planets that are too distant to be viewed directly are sometimes detected by looking at the way light bends around them.”

He leaned over the asphalt and drew a stick figure with a slash of a line growing out of its chest.

“It's the same with us. We, like light, attempt to move through life in a straight line, unchanged, but we encounter massive objects along the way.”

He drew several lumpy masses in front of the stick figure and labeled them:
SICKNESS. DEATH. LOVE.
The line growing from the figure's chest was forced to zigzag around them.

“Each event bends our life into a new trajectory. It bends who we
are.
So if you look closely, you can perceive distant events in a person's life by observing the ways in which they've bent themselves around them. The ways in which they've been deformed. It's like looking back in time. But it's also like looking into the future.”

He finished, and the three of us just stood there slack-jawed. What did you say to that? Did you applaud? Was it brilliant or was it insane? Freeman saved us the trouble of deciding. He whipped another library card out of his pocket and held it out to me.

“Letter of transit.”

I took the card. Greer and the girl helped Freeman up, and he strolled away without another word.

Greer watched him go, then turned back to us. “Who the hell are the children of Lethe?”

The girl laughed. “Who the hell is Penthesilea?”

I wondered—
Who the hell is Freeman Wayne?

The backpack was right where she said it would be, sitting beside a pink crocodile in the middle of the sculpture garden. The park's iron gate squeaked as Greer opened it. I expected the girl to run to the bag and start tearing through it, but she hung back near the fence, staring at it, her arms crossed tight over her chest.

“You want me to . . .”

She nodded. Greer knelt by the bag and unzipped it. I watched from the other side of the fence as he tossed out a pair of socks, a pair of jeans, a plain gray T-shirt. Next came an empty bottle of water and a couple energy bar wrappers. He looked discouraged until he saw another pocket on the front of the bag and opened it.

“Well, well, well. Lookee here, boys and girls!”

I let myself into the garden. “What is it?”

“We've got ourselves a driver's license!”

The girl jumped away from the fence. “Seriously?”

Greer pulled an orange wallet out of her backpack, then, with a grand, Freeman-like bow, turned to her and produced a plastic card. “Please allow me to reunite you with you.
Marianne.
”

The girl snatched the ID out of Greer's hand. He turned to me, grinning.

“Damn, Card, are we good or what? We'll have her back to her folks by the end of the day.”

I nodded, but the truth was, I didn't feel like celebrating. It was stupid. This had been the plan. We figure out who she is and get her off the mountain; then things go back to normal. I should have been relieved—I
wanted
to be relieved—but when I thought of her being gone, I don't know, it was like all the air had rushed out of me.

“Hey! You okay? What's wrong?”

I thought Greer was talking to me, but when I looked up, I saw that the girl was at the fence, head down, with her back to us. The ID was clamped in her hands. When she moved to return it to Greer, I saw that she was crying.

“What?” he said as he scanned the license again. “You don't like the name? I think Marianne is nice. We could call you Mari if you want.”

No response. Greer looked at me, helpless, and handed the card over. It was a New York driver's license all right and it was definitely her in the picture, green hair and all, but there was something about it, something I couldn't put my finger on. And then it hit me all at once.

“It's fake,” I said.

Greer plucked the card out of my hand. “What? No way. How do you know?”

I started to answer, but the girl interrupted me.

“Marianne Dashwood.”

Her back was pressed up against the fence, and she was clutching at the key around her neck. Her eyes were puffy and red. Greer looked to me, confused.

“She's a character in a book called
Sense and Sensibility,
” I said.

“Well, maybe her parents just—”

“The address isn't real either,” I explained. “Eighteen eleven Austen Street? Jane Austen wrote
Sense and Sensibility.
”