Malorie(24)
But she’s already got her eyes closed, and she’s already getting up, slow, quiet, from under the blanket.
Standing, she turns to the door. No time to listen.
“Get out,” she says. “Whoever you are, get out. I’m armed. All five of us are armed.”
No response. But she can feel the person, can feel the presence some twenty feet away.
“Get out,” she says.
She hears the familiar sound of Tom waking. Olympia whispers something to him.
“Eyes closed,” Malorie tells him. Then, “You’re leaving us no choice.”
“Do it then,” a voice says, a man, from across the shop. “If you’re armed, shoot me.”
At the sound of his voice, Malorie’s mind goes cold. She’s not looking, but is he?
“I’ll shoot you,” Tom says.
“Tom…” Malorie starts, but she stops herself.
“I mean it,” the man says. “Do it. I’m a day away from opening my eyes outside anyway. You’d save me the complications of suicide.”
Malorie believes she recognizes sanity in his voice. But she can’t be sure. And she won’t let herself decide.
“Get out,” she repeats.
“I’ve been living by the side of this road for two years,” he says. “I heard you enter Dabney’s.”
“Tom,” Malorie says, “Olympia, do not speak to this man. Do not open your eyes.”
“I’m not crazy,” the man says. He sounds young, younger than Malorie, older than the teens. “I’m just really not well. But I’ve survived. Like you have.”
“Get out.”
Silence. A scoff? A smile? She doesn’t ask.
“But I don’t want to,” the man says. “I want to make contact. Don’t you?”
“We have enough,” Olympia says.
“Olympia…”
“Do you?” the man asks. “I have nobody. I heard you guys, I came in.”
“While we were sleeping,” Malorie says. “Get out now.”
“Yeah, I waited for you to fall asleep because I didn’t know if you were any more dangerous than you think I am.”
“We’re dangerous,” Malorie says. “Get out.”
Silence. Malorie makes fists of her hands.
“All right,” the man says.
“Now.”
But Malorie knows they won’t be spending the night here now. No matter what this man does, she’s going to instruct the teens to gather their things and they’re going to leave this place. They’ll walk, paranoid, through the dark of night. And even in the new world, a walk at night feels less safe than one during the day.
“Let me leave you with something,” the young man says.
“Don’t open your eyes,” Malorie tells the teens.
“Just some words, okay? I want you three to know that the world isn’t gonna get any better. We gotta start over.”
“You said ‘three,’?” Malorie says. “Your eyes are open.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m not the only one.”
“Close your eyes,” she hisses at the teens.
Her hands in fists, she steels herself. Her parents flash like fire in her mind, names in St. Ignace, taken by the winds of the Straits of Mackinac, blown across Lake Michigan. Lost to her.
Again.
“GET OUT!”
Her voice is almost unrecognizable to herself. She sounds like a woman who has endured years of tension, paranoia, and loss.
And so she is.
The man doesn’t answer. But the door opens and closes.
“Tom?” Malorie asks.
“He’s walking away,” Tom says.
“Olympia?”
“Yes, he’s leaving.”
“He’s walking up the road,” Tom says. Malorie hears disappointment in his voice.
“Which way?”
“The way we came.”
“Get your things,” Malorie says. “We’re continuing. Now.”
She hears the teens packing their things back into their bags. She does the same.
“Tom,” Malorie says, “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Just like you know that guy was unsafe? Just like you knew the census guy couldn’t help us?”
“Tom…”
“Mom,” Tom says, and his voice is closer than she expects it to be. “The census man gave us the names of your parents. You were wrong. That’s all there is to it. You were wrong.”
But Tom is shaken, too. Malorie can hear it. A stranger in the same space as them. A man speaking of suicide and the end of the world.
Malorie waits by the door, her fists gloved now. The teens are ready before she expects them to be.
“Listen,” she says, tightening the fold around her face.
“He went the way we came,” Olympia says.
Malorie breathes in, she holds it, she breathes out.
She opens the door.
“Go. Now.”
Then they’re walking again, too fast, through the dark, hardly any sleep between them. Malorie looks blind over her shoulder, back to where the teens said the man went.
She feels for him. Just like she feels for Ron Handy. Just like she feels for every person involved in all the horrid experiments documented in the papers left by the census man.