Boundless (Unearthly, #3)(92)

The man in the black uniform gives a wide berth to Samjeeza and asks him no questions, I notice.

At the third stop, Samjeeza moves toward the door. He glances at me, a signal, and steps out. Christian and I stand up and push through the gray people, and each time I brush hard enough against one of them I receive a jolt of some raw and ugly feeling: hate, lost love, resentment, infidelity, murder. Then we’re standing on the platform, and I can breathe again. I try to look discreetly for Samjeeza, and I find him a few feet away. Already he looks different here; his humanness is fading. He’s larger and more menacing by the moment, the blackness of his coat a stark contrast to the gray of those around him.

Where are we? Christian asks in my mind. This looks familiar.

I turn around.

It’s Mountain View, I recognize immediately. The structure of the buildings is largely the same, only there’s a cold, thick mist passing between the buildings, and no color to be seen, like we’ve stepped onto the set of a horror movie inside a black-and-white television.

Look at them, Christian says with an inner shudder of revulsion.

The gray people are walking all around us, heads down, some with black tears flowing down their faces, some scratching at themselves violently, their arms and necks raw with the marks of their fingernails, some muttering as if they’re talking to someone, but no one speaks to anyone else. They are adrift in their own oceans of solitude, all the while pressed in from every side by others just like them, but they never look up.

He’s on the move, I say to Christian as Samjeeza starts to walk, down what would be Castro Street on earth. We wait for a few seconds before we follow. I slip my hand in Christian’s under the edge of his jacket, thankful for the warmth of his fingers, the smell of his cologne that I can only faintly detect in this congested mixture of what I identify as car exhaust and burned-out fire and the reek of mildew.

Hell stinks.

The street is empty of cars, no one driving, but the mass of people on the sidewalk never ventures onto the road. They part around Samjeeza as he walks among them, sometimes moaning as he passes by. A black sedan is idling at the corner. As we approach, the driver gets out and crosses to open the door for Samjeeza. He is something other than the gray people, something like the man in the black uniform was, and indeed he wears a kind of uniform himself, a fitted black suit and a chauffeur hat with a curved, shiny brim.

Don’t stare, Christian warns me. Keep your head down.

I bite my lip when I see that the driver does not have any eyes or mouth, just a smooth expanse of skin from nose to chin, a pair of slight indentations in his face where his eye sockets should be. Even so, he appears to look at us when we stop behind Samjeeza, and without words he seems to ask a question:

Where?

“I am taking these two to be marked for Asael,” Samjeeza says. He puts a finger to his lips, and the message to us is clear: This man can’t speak, but he can hear. Be quiet.

The driver nods once.

I feel Christian’s wave of anxiety at Asael’s name like a new surge of adrenaline hitting my system. This could be a trap. We are walking right into it.

Technically we’re being driven right into it, I say to try to lighten the moment, but he doesn’t have time to respond before Samjeeza puts a hand in the middle of Christian’s back and shoves him into the backseat, and I follow. Samjeeza slides in beside me, his shoulder touching mine now, and he likes it, this light, tantalizing contact, my human smell, the way my lips are slightly parted in terror. He likes how a strand of my hair has come undone from my ponytail, slipping out of my hoodie, how in this colorless world it shines pure white.

I press closer to Christian, who waits until Samjeeza closes the door of the car before putting his arm around me, drawing my head into his shoulder, away from Sam.

Ah, so protective, Sam says into our minds. Who are you, again? I thought she was in love with someone else.

Christian clenches his teeth but doesn’t respond.

We pass through the hell version of downtown Mountain View quickly, past Church and Mercy Streets, city hall, where there is a line of the gray people waiting outside; past the shops and restaurants, some boarded up but others open, people slouched one to a table over bowls of indistinguishable food. We reach what would be El Camino Real, the main street that connects all these little cities between San Francisco and San Jose, and turn south. Still there are no other cars on the road.

Does hell surprise you? Samjeeza asks silently. His inner voice has a bite to it, a burn, like the aftertaste of something bitter.

I guess I didn’t think there would be restaurants and stores.

It is a reflection of earth, he says. What’s true on earth is more or less true in this place.

So all these people are trapped here? I gesture out the window at the throngs of gray people pushing along the streets, always on their way somewhere, it seems, but at the same time aimless, without any true direction.

Not trapped, but kept. Most of them do not realize they’re in hell. They have died, and gravitated to this place because that is where they have willed themselves. They could leave at any time they choose, but they will never choose to.

Why not?

Because they will not let go of what it is that brought them here to begin with.

We pull into a parking lot, and the car squeaks to a stop.

Remember what I told you, Samjeeza says. Don’t speak to anyone but your friend, and only when I tell you to do so.