Zig Zag (80 page)

"Fine,"
she said, despite the agony, changing positions. "Yours?"

"Oh,
just a scratch." He patted the bandage wrapped around his
temples.

For
a second, neither of them spoke. Instead, they stared off to sea and
into the night. It had stopped raining and the air felt cool and
clean.

"I
still don't understand how ... how that
thing
didn't
get us, too," Carter said softly.

She
glanced over at him. Carter looked just like he had that morning,
when he turned up with a rifle and the same look of fear on his face
that she had on hers, or maybe more. But now she almost laughed,
recalling his drawn, pale expression lit by a sun that had hardly
moved, one eye closed, the other staring through the rifle's sight,
as he hollered and asked her what the hell had just happened.

Good
question.

She
couldn't explain it to him then (she was bleeding, she felt weak);
all she could do was say she thought it was all over.

Carter
explained that Harrison missed when he shot him and hadn't even
realized it. He'd just laid there motionless on the floor, and when
Harrison left he tried to get up. "And then everything seemed to
come crashing down. I smelled that burning, acrid smell and went into
the control room and saw your friend. He'd been shot, and the old man
was just a pile of ashes on the floor. Outside, I found more soldiers
who looked vaporized, too. And that's when I went out to the beach
and found you."

Elisa
thought she could try to give him an explanation now.

"He
could
have
killed us," she said. "In fact, he was going to. He
extracted the energy he needed from all the machinery and attacked
me. I was the next in line, or maybe it was David, but he was already
dead, so he came for me. But he was forced to stop to suck more
energy from living bodies. It didn't affect you, because you were his
next
victim
after me in the time string. The strange thing is that it didn't
affect Victor, either. Maybe we were wrong when we said that the
split could kill itself. Regardless, when the attack stopped for that
split second, the bullet hit Victor and he was killed."

"And
that
thing
died
with him," Carter nodded. "I get it."

Elisa
looked up at the black sky and felt a weight pressing down on her.
She knew she had no chance of getting rid of it, at least not all the
way, but she could try.

"Listen,"
she said. "You're right. I'm exhausted. But I'm going to bury
them now. You don't have to help me."

"I'm
not planning to," Carter replied.

Still,
he stood when she did. But she realized that she was in worse shape
than she thought. Her wound was killing her. So she agreed to put off
the funerals for a day and they both sank back down onto the sand.

They'd
have to wait until the following day. And meanwhile, she'd pray she
was wrong.

Because
as the night wore on, she became increasingly convinced that there
was no way for them to survive.

"DO
you
know what time it is?"

"No.
My watch has no battery and the others all stopped at ten thirty-one.
I told you that already. It's probably four in the morning. Can't you
sleep?" Elisa made no reply. After a brief pause, he added,
"When I was a kid, I learned to tell time by the sun. But you
need a clear sky for that..." He raised an arm toward the
clouds, which glowed weakly. "Impossible like this..."

She
stole a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. Sitting on the
sand, his back against the barracks wall in the dead of night, Carter
almost looked like a ghost, though she knew there was nothing
illusory about the way he'd polished off their provisions.

"What's
wrong?" he asked suddenly.

"What
do you mean?"

"Look,
believe me, at times people are a lot easier to read than the sky.
You're worried about something. And it's not your dead friends.
What's up?"

She
pondered her response.

"I
was thinking about how we're going to get out of here. Nothing works,
no radios, no transmitters ... We have almost no provisions. That's
what I'm worried about. What's so funny?"

"We're
not shipwrecked on some desert island." Carter shook his head
and gave another deep, gravelly laugh. "I told you, Harrison was
expecting the scientific delegation first thing tomorrow morning.
Besides which, at the base they're probably wondering why he and his
team haven't responded to any calls. Trust me: they'll be here for us
by dawn. If not earlier."

Tomorrow.
Earlier.
Elisa
stretched out the leg that didn't hurt. The gusts of wind coming in
off the sea were starting to feel cold, but nothing in the world
could make her go inside and spend the rest of the night in the
barracks. If anything, she'd go find something to put on over her
sweater or ask Carter to build a fire. But the cold wasn't what was
bothering her.

"I
know you don't trust me," Carter said, after a sullen silence.
"I don't blame you. If it helps, I don't trust you, either. You
think I'm a brute with no brains, but you geniuses, to me ... well,
you're totally full of shit, if you don't mind my saying so. And
considering all that has happened here, that's a pretty tame version.
So I think it's better if we confess all our little secrets and get
everything out in the open, don't you? Both of us. I know you suspect
something."

She
looked into Carter's eyes and saw his pupils flash in the dark night.
She could hear breathing, but it was her own, as though Carter was
holding his until she'd spoken.

"Be
honest," he prodded. "You think... you think that
thing
isn't
dead..."

"No.
It's dead." Elisa looked away, up at the sky and the black sea.
"Zig Zag was Victor's split, and Victor is dead. I have no doubt
about that."

"Well,
then?"

She
took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Come
on. After all, you have to tell someone.

"I
just don't know for sure what might have ... happened," she
whimpered.

"Happened...
to what?"

"To
everything." She did her best not to cry.

"What
are you talking about?"

"Zig
Zag managed to extend the area of his time string an incredible
distance: the island, the sea, the sky... I don't know if that
entanglement had any effect on the present... None of our watches
work, we're in total isolation here ... We have no way of knowing if
anything
outside
has
changed. Do you see what I'm getting at?"

"Wait
a second..." Carter shifted his weight, scooting closer to her.
"Are you saying that we're living in some other world ... or a
different time, or something?" Elisa said nothing. Her eyes were
still closed. "Use your common sense, for God's sake. Look at
me. Have I changed? I'm no older, no younger. Isn't that enough?"

For
a second, their silence was like the darkness: it filled everything,
every shape, every space, every corner; it was all over their faces.

"I'm
a physicist," Elisa said, finally. "The laws of physics are
all I know. And the universe abides by those laws, not common sense
or intuition. My common sense and intuition tell me that I'm on New
Nelson, in the year 2015, sitting here with you, and that only twelve
or thirteen hours have gone by since Zig Zag's attack. But the
problem is that..." She paused and drew another breath. "If
things have changed, then the laws of physics might have changed,
too. And that means I might no longer understand them. And I need to,
because they are the only truth."

After
a long silence, she heard Carter's voice, sounding distant.

"So
you think all this around us now is... is
not
real?
You
think I
am
not real,
that
I'm going to just disappear? I'm some dream you're having?"

Elisa
didn't respond. She didn't know what to say. Out of the blue, the
ex-soldier got up and walked around the corner, behind the barracks.
A few moments later he returned, silently, and threw something on the
sand in front of her. She looked to see what it was: a windup watch.

"It
stopped," Carter said. "This was your friend's watch, and I
remember he told me it was mechanical... But it stopped at
ten-oh-one. Maybe he banged it when he fell... Shit..." He
walked up to Elisa and spoke right into her ear, his voice a violent
whisper. "How do you want me to prove it to you? How can I prove
my reality to you,
Professor?
I
can think of a few things that might work... a few things that might
not leave you with any doubts. What do you say? Huh?"

What
she heard next petrified her.

Sobbing.

She
froze, as Carter wept. Listening to him was awful. She knew he must
have thought so, too. He surrendered to his tears like a drink he
wanted to finish in one gulp. She watched him move off down the sand,
a burly shape outlined in the moonlight.

"I
hate you," he murmured between sobs. And then he began to
scream. "I hate you! I hate all of you! Fucking
scientists!
I
want to
live!
Leave
me alone!"

As
she watched him wander off down the beach, Elisa finally closed her
eyes and fell into a deep sleep, as if she'd fainted.

THE
noise
that awoke her came from the fence. She saw Carter heading toward the
beach, carrying something. Day had broken and it was cold, but she
had a blanket over her. The ex-soldier, it seemed, was trying to be
nice, and Elisa felt terrible recalling his tears the night before.

She
pulled off the blanket and got up, but almost screamed when the pain
in her thigh made it clear that it had woken, too, and was planning
to stay with her as long as necessary. She had no idea how the wound
was going to look today; probably worse. But Elisa didn't want to
look. A sudden dizzy spell forced her to lean against the wall for
support. She was starving, her hunger violent and uncontainable.

Urged
on by this new clarity, she lurched toward the barracks. The sun was
a dot on the horizon and the clouds had drifted southward, revealing
a bright blue sky. But it still must have been very early.