The World Gives Way: A Novel Read online

  “I’m here,” he said. “Is Ingrid there too?”

  “Toby?” Ingrid’s voice, a little more overlaid with static than David’s.

  “How—how are you?” Tobias asked. The question felt entirely casual and wrong, but what else was there to say, really? Too much could be said that was honest, but also hurtful.

  “It’s been awful…” Ingrid said. “I’ve wasted away in here. It’s good you can’t see me.”

  “Nonsense, you still light up a room,” David said, and Ingrid sighed in response. David always knew just what to say.

  Tobias heard a screech and felt his body shift and slam into the door of the car. Simpson had swerved to avoid a truck that had desperately wedged itself into the traffic. He’d hung up with Ruth and now his concentration was completely focused on the road. Maybe they’d survive the drive at least, Tobias thought.

  “Sorry—” Simpson called back to Tobias. “Everyone’s crazy out here—”

  Tobias waved at Simpson’s face in the rearview mirror and righted his body. David was chattering away in his earpiece, dimly muffled by static.

  “Not much to say,” David said. “Prison isn’t pleasant. The mattresses are lumpy and the sheets scratch. But we get by. These years would have been nicer, maybe, if our son had visited from time to time.”

  David spoke lightly, but Tobias felt the stab of his words nonetheless.

  “David, not now, not when we’ve finally got him on the phone—”

  “You’re right, dear, you’re right,” David said, glossing over all. “Toby, how are you? How have the years been for you?”

  There was still an edge to what he said, an edge that Tobias desperately wished to smooth out. Ingrid seemed about the same, frailer, but still herself. But this David was harsher than he remembered, quicker to the fight. He supposed seventeen years in prison would do that to a man.

  He stared out the car window as Simpson sped forward ten meters, hopping up on the sidewalk and knocking over a souvenir cart as he went. Wooden prayer beads flew off their red string bracelets and scattered across the pavement.

  “I’m sorry, I—” How to phrase his intentions? He barely knew them himself. “I just wanted to call you, see how you were, given everything that’s going on—”

  He noticed he kept hearing vague phrases like that: what’s going on, the terrible news, times like these. How had the agent put it on the phone—“in the wake of what’s happened”? It was an awful lot of words for apocalypse, but no one wanted to say it outright.

  “You’re not telling me you believe what they’re spewing on the news, are you?” David said.

  Another ill-timed stop by Simpson sent Tobias flying off the seat and onto the car floor. Tobias struggled to sit up again, and only after he was properly upright again did the absurdity of his father’s words sink in.

  “You don’t?”

  An awkward pause hung in the air around his question.

  “Of course not. The world won’t break apart,” David said. “I’m not a fool.”

  “You don’t understand, Toby.” Ingrid’s voice came into the mix, sounding so much more distant than David’s, the occasional syllable dropping away midsentence. The static was getting worse. “They tell us all sorts of things in here that aren’t true, mostly to keep the prisoners in line. We didn’t know it before, but now, being in here as long as we have, it’s easier to see just how much the government lies to us.”

  There was a version of what she was saying that was true. Tobias was sure the government had lied plenty of times over the course of his life. But there were so many other reasons to believe it.

  “But the sheer number of quakes—I’ve watched cities crumble to the ground. I’ve felt my body rise up into the air. I was in Palmer, when it—” The trauma of memory came back to him, and he couldn’t finish the sentence. And Myrra, he thought, as a final reason. I believe Myrra.

  The car bumped back over the curb again. Simpson stole a look back at him, must have heard the distress in his voice. “Who are you talking to?”

  Tobias shook his head. He couldn’t explain right now. Simpson turned back around, jerked the steering wheel just in time to avoid a panicked woman running across the road.

  “I’m not saying that disturbing things haven’t happened—” David cut in. “But the government’s using these disasters, exaggerating them in the media to keep us all in line. That’s what they do.”

  “You were in Palmer, Tobias? I hope you didn’t get hurt…” Ingrid cut in. Was her line on a delay?

  “I’m fine, Ingrid.”

  Of course he should have expected that there would be people out there who would deny all this; wherever there was bad news, there were always people willing to forcibly turn away from it. He just hadn’t expected that his mother and father would be in their numbers.

  He thought of a million arguments to convince them of the truth of it. But there simply wasn’t time. He could hear the crackling on the line, not just on Ingrid’s side now but on David’s too. The network was going to go down soon.

  “I never thought you’d grow up to be so gullible, Toby,” David said.

  “It got him on the phone, anyway—” his mother chimed in.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t talked to you before now,” he said, only half meaning it. He was aware that the apology would never be reciprocated on their end.

  There was a short silence, and then David spoke.

  “We appreciate the apology,” he said, his voice sounding far away. As expected, no apologies were offered in return. Tobias felt suddenly very tired.

  “Anyways, whether the world is ending or not—”

  “Oh, don’t be a rube, son—” David argued.

  “—I just wanted to call and talk to you again.” He almost threw in an I love you, but he knew that it would also be a half-truth. He loved his parents in that chemical way that was without choice or logic. But he hated them too. He did not love them as he loved Barnes.

  Ingrid broke in. “Will you visit? I’d love to see how you’ve grown up. Though again—you’ll have to pardon my appearance these days.”

  “Nonsense,” David said again. “You look beautiful.”

  It was like a record repeating.

  “Sure, I’d love to visit.” He knew he would never visit, never see them again. There had been a moment, in some unspoken corner of his mind, when he’d entertained the idea of being with them at the end, feeling the closeness he’d never felt as a child, feeling at home in this world. But he was sure now that his place was not with them.

  “Our Toby, all grown up. Do you look like me, or do you look like your mother?” David asked. Static was eating at the fiber of his voice, like ants overwhelming a plate of food.

  “I look like you.”

  David shouted, celebrating his genetic prowess.

  Ingrid laughed. “Oh, Toby, when you come, could you bring us some chocolate—”

  Her voice cut off midsentence. The call had dropped. Tobias jumped at the sudden silence, the way one would normally jump at a loud noise. He tried the line again but couldn’t get the agent back. Couldn’t get any signal at all.

  That, he thought, was the last conversation I will have with my parents. He had hoped it would bring him comfort, or at least a sense of closure. It brought none. The world owes me nothing, he thought, certainly not a perfect ending. He hurt for his mother and father, for the shock and confusion they would feel at the end. Wouldn’t it have been better for them to acknowledge the truth, to be able to talk to their son about something real for once? There was no connection there, none at all. But maybe it was better to pretend. They wouldn’t see death coming, and it would come fast. Tobias pictured it: the prison would go dark, and then they would go dark. In a blink.

  Maybe they would be all right. It helped him to imagine it so.

  “Who was that on the phone?” Simpson asked again.

  “No one,” Tobias said. Simpson looked doubtful, but let it go. />
  He should have known better than to chase comfort with people he barely knew anymore, family or no. Barnes knew him. But he was gone. He leaned forward and put his head between his knees. He could fall asleep for a million years.

  “Everything still good with your family?” Tobias asked. He half expected Simpson to tell him that they were dead too, considering how abruptly Barnes had been torn away.

  “Ruth seems calmer. The kids are playing a board game. They’re staying inside until we can get there. They’ve got plenty of food.” Everything was still fine on Simpson’s side. Tobias felt happy and jealous all at once.

  “I grabbed a map…” Simpson brandished a folded plastic brochure. Tobias climbed into the front seat again and took a look.

  “It’ll be important to take back roads once we get out of Kittimer. No major cities. We’ll curve around the Palmer Sea, avoid Troy. It’s less direct, but I think ultimately it’ll still be the fastest way home…”

  Simpson continued to explain the game plan as they drove. They were about halfway down the mountain now, inching toward one of the bridges between peaks. Tobias let him talk and didn’t pay attention. He was thinking about Myrra. She felt like the most natural thing to think about—it was almost like working with muscle memory. He’d been concentrating on her so much over the past few weeks.

  Where was Myrra likely to go, now that she was free from the chase? Forward. She wouldn’t want to stay in Kittimer; after this she would want to keep moving. And she wouldn’t want to go back to the Palmer Sea. Where did that leave her? He worried for her, and especially for Charlotte, even though he knew he shouldn’t. Myrra was a survivor, and anyway, everyone was dying soon.

  It was a horrible thing to think, a casual toss-off: everyone was dying soon.

  He thought of their last conversation. They understood one another. He looked at Simpson, staring ahead with a viselike grip on the steering wheel. He was trying to remember Simpson’s kids’ names, but he couldn’t think of them. What an ass he’d been.

  They were nearly to the bridge. He thought of Imogene Carlyle. Tobias hoped they wouldn’t see anyone trying to jump.

  Even yesterday (such a short time ago), when everything had still been calm and everyone had still been alive, there had been so few people whom he really knew, who really knew him. Tobias had always wanted a small life, he had contented himself with the idea that it was the quality of his connections, not the quantity, that mattered. Now Barnes was gone, and there was no one who knew him. Simpson cared, but he had a whole other life that took precedence. Myrra Dal, somehow, was the next-closest person.

  The bridge opened up before them, and the car crept over the soft slope of it. Tobias marveled at the landscape that unfolded around them. He scanned every zigzagging road going down the mountain face. The roads themselves looked like flowing rivers with all the people who walked down each path. The lines of each street grew finer and finer the farther they descended, the people shrinking to minuscule dots. On one side, off in the distance, past the bodies of people walking alongside their car, he saw the Palmer Sea glittering in the afternoon light. On the other side, past the mountains, he saw the cresting sandy hills of the Border Desert, colors moving in waves from blue to green. It looked for all the world like a twin sea to Palmer, a sea of sand. It stretched far out into the distance, past the horizon, past comprehension.

  Tobias sat up in his seat and craned his neck to get a better look. He’d never come this way through Kittimer and never had a chance to see the desert in person.

  “Wow,” Tobias said. Even Simpson tore his eyes from the road to have a look.

  The car stopped again. Traffic had bottlenecked on the bridge.

  “Hey—there’s somebody down there…” Simpson said, squinting through the window at the blue waves of sand.

  “Where?” Tobias squinted along with him.

  “Down there on the road, just past the base of the mountains.” Simpson pointed, and Tobias’s eyes followed.

  Out near the base of a mountain, so far down that it barely looked like a trickle of water weaving between the dunes, Tobias spotted the road. A vehicle was moving down its path, so far away that all he could really see was a glint of metal reflecting the sun, moving away from the mountains and toward the horizon.

  “Who would be stupid enough to drive out into that? There’s nothing out there.”

  “There must be something,” Tobias replied.

  And then it hit him like a jolt.

  “It’s Myrra,” he said. He knew it deep, in the soles of his feet. It was Myrra. He didn’t know what she was chasing, but he knew she’d found something to chase.

  “You can’t know that,” Simpson said. But even he sounded unsure. “Oh—” he said, and resumed his grip on the wheel. Traffic was moving again, mind-bendingly slowly, but it was moving.

  Tobias could not take his eyes off the tiny speck of light in the distance. He followed it until it was barely visible, until it disappeared into the hills past the bounds of his vision, and even then he kept his eyes glued to the spot where it had disappeared.

  He thought about the stone of the bridge, worn smooth by a thousand tires and shoes that had passed over its surface. This bridge will stay the same when everyone is dead, Tobias thought. A ruin in space. If the world were to break apart right now, this is where our bodies would rise, mine and Simpson’s, up into the atmosphere, a car for a tomb.

  He reached out and grabbed the handle of the car door. Unlocked it.

  “Don’t unlock the door, Bendel. Someone could break in,” Simpson said, a worried look on his face. It sounded like he was trying to shake Tobias out of a haze. Maybe he thinks I’m going into shock, Tobias thought. Maybe I am going into shock. Maybe that is a reasonable response right here, right now.

  Tobias thought about where he wanted to be when the atmosphere got sucked out of the world, when the water got sucked out of the Palmer Sea with the last of the fish and the sharks, when the air got funneled out through the sky, and trees, saplings maybe, were lifted out of the ground shaking soil off their roots as they spun into the air—where did he want to be when all of that went down, when the world went down? There wasn’t a quick answer to that question, no easy flash-bang-in-the-brain epiphany. There was no particular place that left him feeling sentimental. Depressingly, the place that came closest was the desk pool at the Security Bureau. But that lost its luster without Barnes sitting there behind his warm wooden door. All of New London lost its luster without Barnes.

  Some things were becoming clear, though: even if Simpson was volunteering to adopt him out of genuine care, it was not where he wanted to be. He would die watching a family cling together while he, inevitably, would be outside looking in. Even if they were holding him close, he would not be a part of them.

  Tobias had once interviewed a convict who was describing a murder he’d committed. The convict had told him, almost as an excuse for his crime, that everyone dies badly, and everyone dies alone. Tobias wasn’t sure he believed that, but he did believe that it was possible to die surrounded by people and still feel alone, if they weren’t your people, the people who understood you.

  All this flashed through his head in the seconds after Simpson gestured to him to lock the door, to stay in the car that would whisk him to a safe, known place. Not the place he wanted to be.

  “Stop the car,” Tobias said. “I want to get out.”

  “What?” Simpson shouted back with unexpected anger. He braked reflexively, and the truck behind them immediately honked a horn. Simpson shifted his feet on the pedals, and the car resumed its crawl.

  Tobias understood: he wasn’t operating from a place of logic, in fact he’d abandoned rationality hours ago, and he was sure it was exasperating for someone as levelheaded as Simpson. Simpson turned to face him, a look of confusion on his face. He leaned past Tobias and relocked the door.

  “I’m not going to change my mind. I need to get out,” Tobias said. He raised his h
ands in front of him in defense, as if at any moment Simpson might leap at him.

  “Bendel, just come with me,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “I want you to know how much I appreciate your offer. But if I go with you—” Tobias searched for the right way to say this. “It’s where you should be; it’s not where I should be.”

  He reached out and put a hand on Simpson’s shoulder. Simpson’s tension eased, just a little bit.

  “Where else are you gonna go?” Simpson asked. It might have been Tobias’s imagination, but it sounded as if his voice was breaking. “Do you have family somewhere?”

  “I’ve got nobody.” Tobias let out a small laugh as he said it. It was absurd. “But I don’t think it’s going to help if you try and take me in like a stray cat.”

  That had been the wrong thing to say. Simpson faced front again, sheepish. “It wouldn’t be like that—”

  “No, no—I know. I shouldn’t have put it that way. I really appreciate it. I just can’t.”

  There was a pause between them while Simpson took a few deep breaths, trying to keep himself composed. For the first time, Tobias considered that maybe Simpson had wanted him there for the journey at least, someone to talk to on the road back to New London, to help him stay sane.

  “What are you gonna do, then? Stay in Kittimer?”

  “I’m going to follow Myrra Dal,” Tobias said. He hadn’t even been sure that that was his decision until he said it out loud, but there it was.

  Simpson looked at him in disappointment.

  “It’s not like that—” Tobias said. “I just feel like I know her now. I think she’ll need someone around, someone to talk to. You already have your people. Maybe I can be her people.” Tobias shrugged, almost to acknowledge the presumptuousness of that. Maybe she wouldn’t want someone else around. “And if not, it’s something to do, at least.”

  Simpson’s eyes welled up. Tobias had meant the last bit as a joke, but it came out sounding especially sad. Nothing he could do about that. It was life.