The Trap (34 page)

And it is like before, and it is vastly different from before.

It is the emptiness that is most different. Instead of train cars packed with Mission village girls, the train is now hauntingly empty, bereft of any internal movement or sound. Even in our
otherwise empty car, Sissy and I sit perfectly still, the only movement being Sissy’s hand stroking David’s hair.

And it is strangely quiet. No sound but the faint rattle of the moving train. No screams, no wails, nothing from above or around or behind us. The train picks up speed and the doors to each car
automatically close, yet still no other sound pierces the darkness of the tunnel.

Sissy takes my hand in hers. We grasp tightly, not with fear, for there’s none left in us. It’s all been wrung out.

Five miles from the Palace, we emerge out of the tunnel. The train will be in view of the Palace for only a few minutes before disappearing behind low-slung hills. We stare in silence at the
Palace, so small in the distance, as it is overrun like a crumb swarmed by ants. Only the initial wave of the millions-strong horde had earlier reached the Palace. But now the slower yet immensely
larger and denser waves pour over it. The obelisk tower begins to wobble, then sway. Just before we round the hills and the Palace is cut off from view, the obelisk tower topples like a matchstick
snapped.

F
OR HALF THE
night, the world is ours alone. The train cuts through a desert that is as expansive and empty as the starlit skies above. The
duskers do not give chase as we thought they would. Not initially. Perhaps the pandemonium at the Palace is too distracting and they have not detected the faint scent trailing us. Even hours later,
the silver-glazed landscape is a motionless vacuum.

But in the hour when the moon begins to dim and the sky lightens to gray, we hear it. A rasping sound, like the rib cage of night rattling across the desert plains. The train by that point,
especially with so little cargo, is traveling at a fast clip, so the sound of the duskers’ approach gains on us only gradually.

The rasp festers into a deep rumble, and an hour later we see the first sign of not only their approach but also their sheer size. A wall of dust, almost as tall as that which rose out of the
metropolis hours ago, lifts darkly from the land. Disjointed shouts cannonball out of the dark haze. Sissy and I sit against the bars of the train car and gaze dispassionately at the chasing winds.
It is not that we are unafraid. We aren’t.

It’s only that trapped here in our only vehicle of escape there is little we can do. If they come, they come. If they reach us, they eat us. It’s that simple. They’ll cling to
the caged walls, the swiftest few at first, then by the hundreds. Their aggregate mass will derail the train, and then their cumulative weight will crumple the cages inward. And then they will have
at us, and perhaps by then we will be mercifully already dead, our bodies crushed under their weight. But there is nothing to do to avoid this end, or to delay it, or even to expedite it. If they
come, they come. And so we lean back against the bars, my arm over Sissy’s shoulders, holding hands, David’s head cradled in Sissy’s lap. We don’t speak.

An hour passes and their approach has grown thunderous. Many thousands are racing on the tracks themselves, and the train car glides along less smoothly, juddering from side to side. They are
drawing close.

Dawn catches everyone by surprise. As if we have forgotten the natural and unbreakable sequence of time, the inevitability of the moon’s death and the sun’s rise. Only when the dark
sky becomes glazed over with a pearly gray do Sissy and I stand up, pillowing David’s head with my shoes.

The front edge of the horde is about a mile away. But they’ve stopped gaining on us. The duskers’ disintegration in those first timid dawn rays is barely perceptible at first, their
pace dropping off only a notch. Muscles less robust, lungs just a little less stout. But as the darkness cedes to gray, and the gray to violet, their bodies begin to drastically wilt, their energy
flagging even more. Still they press forward, our odor egging them on, the sight of the fleeing train taunting them.

The moon fades; the awakening sun burns crimson the edges of the horizon.

And when the rim of the sun breaks through and splashes its rays over the land, there is a collective scream from the moiling masses. The sky rips open. More light, the color of blood, gushes
out. A critical threshold is suddenly, viciously passed; they begin to melt. Within the half hour, a lake, a mile wide, yellow and sticky, shapes itself in the desert, at first chunky and moving,
then, a half hour later, liquid and still.

Sissy and I lie down on the floor of the train car. She places her head on my shoulder, wraps herself against my side. The rising sun casts long shadows of the bars slantways across our
bodies.

I feel something wet trail down my chest. Sissy’s tears. She doesn’t shake or sob, but the tears continue to flow for many minutes. Later, after her tears have dried under the sun, I
will see the residue of salt crusted on my chest, thick and jagged like a scar.

We gaze up, through the bars of the train, at the sky. A fatigue that feels heavy as death settles on us. By the time the sky deepens into the pure cobalt blue of the afternoon, we have been
asleep for hours. The train cuts through the vast desert, unseen and unwitnessed, toward the eastern mountains etched in the far distance.

O
N THE THIRD
day of the journey, David dies.

He held out longer than we expected. But his death still shakes us hard, Sissy especially. We had done what little we could on the train, cupping him with our bodies during the cold nights, or
wringing our damp clothes for a few drops of water into his parched mouth. But it is not enough. The cruel irony, that his death, after days and nights submerged in a watery prison, would be caused
by dehydration.

In those first few days on the train, Sissy hummed to him the same lullabies she sang when he was a baby. She brushed his hair back, over and over, the way she used to comfort him whenever he
sobbed as a toddler, after he’d stubbed his toe, or scraped his knee.

He never really came to. There were only a few moments of lucidity, when his eyes opened but for a few seconds. He’d stare with unresponsive and glazed eyes, at the desert, and, later, at
the brown blur of forests. But never at us. Then he’d close his eyes and not open them again for hours.

Nightmares raged behind those closed eyelids. He shouted, random, nonsensical words. Sometimes he whimpered. Or begged. Sissy could only cradle his head during those fraught moments, her face
racked with grief, her hand trying to stroke away his dreams, away her guilt. When he flailed his arms, lashing out into the night, she did not dodge out of the way but let his hand smack into her
face. Her penance to pay.

He spoke to us but once. On the morning of the third day. We were leaning against each other, bracing against the cold wind of the lower mountains. David was lying across our laps, his head in
the crook of Sissy’s elbow. The dawn sun was lilting orange rays on our skin, and the whole world was lent a softness, despite the cold.

David’s eyes opened, and for the first time he met my gaze, then Sissy’s. His eyes were weak but clear.

“You came back for me,” he whispered.

Then he closed his eyes, his eyelids falling heavily and with a sigh. A single tear fell down his face.

His eyes never opened again.

W
E KNOW WE
are nearing the Mission. There are telltale signs. Splotches of encrusted yellow dotting the rails, like desiccated bird
droppings, then larger sheets dangling off nearby tree branches like hung laundry. The remains of the duskers who’d attacked the Mission nights ago. The train slows; an hour later we round a
bend in the mountain, and the bridge to the Mission, still lowered, comes into view.

It is daytime and our earlier fear, that we might arrive in the dark hours of night, hand-delivered into the lap of whatever hardy duskers might still be roving about, is put to rest. So, too,
is the apprehension over the duskers. None have survived.

The cobblestone streets are empty. Everywhere we look, windows and doors to the empty cottages have been smashed apart and left gaping like stunned eyes and shocked mouths. Sunbeams shaft into
them. We enter the nearest one, and go from room to room, piling on layer after layer of clothing over our shivering rib cages and concaved stomachs.

Even the Vastnarium, where we feared some duskers might be holding out, is empty. The back wall has been smashed down and ground to powder, probably from the outward pressure of a panicked horde
seeking shelter from the sun. Inside, layers of desiccated yellow, a foot high on the floor, an inch thick off the walls.

Evidence of their mass demise is everywhere in the Mission: on the meadows, at the farm, along the fortress wall, everywhere there are desiccated crusts of yellow. And there is not a human bone
to be found anywhere, not a strand of human hair, not a stain of human blood. Everything devoured, licked up, wiped from existence.

Death has run roughshod through this blighted village, no respecter of species. Nothing moves in this village; nothing sounds. No shuffling girls, no morning chimes, no singing choirs, no
midnight screams. There is only the sound of cold wind fluting between the ribs of this ghost-town carcass.

At the laundry deck by the stream, we cup our shaking hands into the ice-cold water, drink in gulp after gulp. We raid the kitchen, gorging ourselves on the nibbles of food we find scattered
amidst the carnage. Pickles in cast-off jars, cucumbers snapped in half, trampled-on loaves of bread. We can’t get enough; if it’s edible, it’s in our mouths.

Afterward, still unable to stop shivering, we sit before the fireplace of a nearby cottage. The fire is soothing; the combination of food, water, warmth, and a comfortable sofa conspire to lull
us toward sleep. But Sissy’s hand in mine tightens with realization.

“David,” she says. “We can’t leave him out there like that.”

We head back outside, trudge to the train station, shovels in hand. He is in exactly the same position we left him, lying in the empty train car, only seemingly lonelier. A stab of guilt digs
and twists in both of us. We’d wanted to carry him with us when we first arrived, but we were too weak at the time. Now, we dig a grave. Sissy chooses a spot next to the train tracks, in the
vicinity where Jacob had leaped out of the train, where he had met his unspeakable demise. The boys would have liked this, to be buried next to each other, if not in fact, then at least in
spirit.

After we shovel the last pile of dirt, we stand silently. Thin wind whistles through the bare branches of the forest.

Sissy’s lips tremble. “I’m sorry, David. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”

And she turns to me, buries her face into my jacket, and screams right into my heart.

W
E WALK ALONG
the fortress wall, scanning the landscape. Nightfall has begun, and the bleeding dusk skies sag under the weight of fresh
darkness.

“How long,” Sissy asks, “before they come?”

We stare down the steep mountain slope, past the rocky outcropping, and into the dense forest canopy. The Vast stretches beneath us in the far distance, a threadbare, endless carpet.

“A lot of them perished in the desert,” I say. “Maybe over a million. But there are millions more. And they will come. Give them three consecutive days of heavy rain and cloud
cover and they’ll make it here more or less intact. It depends on the weather.” I stare somberly at the darkening horizon. “And even if it doesn’t rain for weeks, if we have
sunshine every day, still they will come. They’ll build more dome boats, or repair the broken ones. Or they’ll build a dome train. Whatever the case, we don’t have more than a
fortnight.”

We walk down the length of the fortress wall, our minds preoccupied. “We find two working hang gliders,” Sissy says after a while. “Clair mentioned there might be some operable
ones. Then we fly east.” She stares a long time, her face turned away from me, eastward. When she speaks, her voice is filled with self-recrimination. “You were right, Gene. We should
have all listened. Back when we had a chance. We should have all kept heading east with you. If I hadn’t been so obtuse, we’d all still be alive.”

“Don’t say that.”

“But it’s true.”

“Maybe it’s not.”

She turns to look at me. “What do you mean, Gene?”

“We don’t know what’s east, do we?” I say. “We don’t know anything.”

“We know enough. We know your father wanted us to go there.”

I stuff my hands into my coat pockets. “And what do we really know about him?” And now it’s my turn to look east, into the gaping black nothingness. “We don’t know
why he abandoned the Origin plan. We don’t know why he left here mere weeks before we were to arrive.” I shake my head. “What caused him to abandon his dream? And desert me for
good this time?”

Sissy stares at the cottages across the meadows, crouched in the shadows. “It was something here. Had to be. Something spooked him. Something changed him.” Her eyes light on the
isolated shadow of a building set close to the forest edge. The laboratory where he spent all his time. When we were last here, we searched it from top to bottom, but it never gave up any of its
secrets.

But she only keeps staring at it, her eyebrows knit together in deep thought.

“What happened to him?” I ask. “How could he change so drastically?”

The questions unfurl above us like rising smoke, unanswered.

It doesn’t take much time to find the operable hang gliders. Sissy comes up with a methodology that is as efficient as it is effective: inspect the hang gliders for
dust. Any hang glider relatively free of dust must have been used fairly recently by Clair. Using a few GlowBurns we find scattered about, we work up and down the corridor, inspecting the hang
gliders—virtually all covered in thick layers of dust—hung on the walls. After less than half an hour, we find two hang gliders relatively free of dust. We leave them by the door where
tomorrow we’ll give them a closer inspection under sunlight.