Psychopomp: A Novella (10 page)

Endless years of drought had ravaged Rueville with dust and hopelessness. The entrenched weariness and resignation on the faces of the people I passed would not fade for generations. But I didn’t pity them. Pity was a luxury.

My feet dragged through the dirt that had overtaken the asphalt. I tripped every few steps on uneven pieces, heading toward the main street with its stalls and spoiling fish. If I looked back I could still see the asylum, no less sinister for its blazing whiteness.

I was supposed to buy bags of water for our journey. We would need a lot. The drought and pollution damage stretched far. Nobody lived out west anymore, not for a long time. Gabriel and I wanted to see as much of the country as possible before the inevitable happened. Out there, we would find ourselves.

The past few days with Gabriel disturbed me. I’d thought he wasn’t a bad person. Dark and delusional, sure. But now, possibly, he was evil too.

Maybe I had changed without realizing it. Maybe my affection for him clouded my perception.

I can’t go with him
, I kept telling myself.

And yet I continued walking, intent on buying the water. It wasn’t unusual for me to stay too long in a bad situation. And I loved Gabriel more than I ever did Verm or Anden. More than I ever thought I’d love anyone, though he’d done little to deserve my loyalty.

I’d almost made it to the water stall when a hand closed around my arm. Another clamped over my mouth as someone pulled me into a nearby alley. I kicked and struggled, but soon enough the person—a man—had dragged me to a car. I braced my feet against the side as he tried to shove me in the back. One foot slipped and my leg slid up, my body twisting painfully as the man pushed me harder. Then I fell inside, breathing heavily with adrenaline and anger. Blood glimmered on my shin and my hip ached. I wasn’t going to cry.

“Marlo,” a voice said. “Marlo Balfour.”

My name was spoken in such an icy tone my spine went cold. Turning, I met the sinister eyes of Ambassador Killering. His voice was a dreaded sound from the depths of my nightmares.

“Why?” I choked out as the car lurched forward. We sped along the magnet roads toward the city.

“You got away,” he explained. “You were a loose end. I never forget a face.”

The room with blue light. The black dirt. Tearing my gaze from his, I placed a hand over my beating heart, but that only made it harder to breathe. “I have to go now. I have to get back.”

“To the mortician?”

“Sí.” I nodded fervently. He would see my urgency. Gabriel was going to leave. He was going to leave without me.

The ambassador was silent so long I finally looked at him again. “You’re in love with him,” he said, his lips pressed together in a dark, gleeful smile.

His words didn’t make sense. “Qué? I don’t…”

“You are. That’s precious, Marlo.”

“Stop saying my name. You don’t know me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said dismissively. “All I want is your plasma. Taking it will be enough to extinguish your fire.”

We turned away from the city, toward the metal forest. The car glided through the shade until it reached the very last house before the dusty fields began. Dread filled me as I peered out the window. Sleek and strange, pieces of the house jutted off at impossible angles. It was white, wrapped with windows. Light shone cleanly from within the enormous, alien structure, but nothing about it felt friendly.

Passing beneath the shadows of false trees, we got out of the car and walked inside. He held my arm the whole way, his grip firm but not bruising.

The floor was polished concrete. The ceilings soared above my head. A long island separated the kitchen from the large living room. I spotted electronic screens and panels discreetly set into the walls. Picture windows offered views of the dark trees outside.

Without speaking, we crossed the room to a door set around the corner from the kitchen. Ambassador Killering opened it and a gust of cold air washed over me. I saw nothing but a set of stairs leading down into darkness.

“No one,” he said, “has ever escaped. No one but you.” Glancing over at me, he looked almost admiring. “Such strength. Such will to live.”

“No. I—”

He pulled me down the stairs. He didn’t turn on a light. We reached the bottom and I blinked, recognizing the blue glow from my dreams. I saw the rows of beds and the blinking lights of the plasmapheresis machines. Many of the beds were empty, but I could see the outlines of unmoving bodies resting atop some of them.

“You donated plasma regularly,” he said as we moved further into the room.

“I needed credits.”

The ambassador nodded, having expected my answer. “Plasma is used to treat individuals with a variety of diseases. It’s very valuable.”

“And you’re stealing it,” I said.

“Oh, no. I would never steal the plasma good people like you have donated. Others need it too much. Instead, I steal
people
like you, who will never be missed, and harvest the plasma myself.”

“Why?” I asked again.

“I conduct my own experiments with plasma,” the ambassador replied. “You’ve heard of our soldiers? They’re fast, fierce, and indomitable, rapidly gaining access to water in remote parts of the world. And why? Because we make them that way. A small team of scientists has helped me develop serums for strength and stamina. It’s quite astonishing, the advancements that have been made.”

“You’re not helping people who really need it,” I accused. I thought of those I’d seen awaiting organs in a shabby building in Cizel, and the ones crowding the med center in Marshwick. “What you’re doing is sick.”

“Perhaps.” He seemed unconcerned.

We reached an open bed. I pulled back, knowing what would happen if I laid down in it. But he was stronger and just as determined. I felt the cold vinyl against my skin as he pushed me down.

“A sedative first,” he murmured kindly. With one hand he held me down, and with the other he shot something into my arm.

“Por favor,” I said.

“Of course,” he went on, ignoring me, “the serums don’t always work. The formula is very precise, and sometimes there’s a bad batch. Sometimes a soldier’s body simply won’t accept the serum, and they become useless to our country. So we need to run tests. In secret, of course. This sort of thing would never be allowed were the public to know about it, even if nobody cares about a few slumlings.”

I struggled to sit up. “You can’t—”

He stuck a needle in the crook of my left arm, right into the scar. It didn’t hurt like when Kev stuck me. Just a quick sting and then a vague discomfort as the needle settled into my vein.

“Blood is the debt we all must pay,” he murmured.

Watching him smile and then walk away to check on someone else, I tried to keep awake. But I was falling fast. The plasmapheresis machine whirred, warming up to draw my blood. I tried to muster the will to move, but all my will had gone. I was going to die here in the misery someone else had made for me, and no one would ever know.

Above me, the ceiling was a network of pipes and beams. I stared at their crisscrossing shapes, unable to do anything else except fight to keep my eyes open.

Seconds began to slip away from me. Minutes became meaningless. I could feel nothing.

At some point I stopped seeing the ceiling, though it seemed my eyes never closed. The framework of the house disappeared and the shadows melted. It had all turned to blue… like a sky. A blue sky like I’d never seen, except maybe in a book. I stared up at it from the ground, but I also saw myself from above. I lay in something repulsively soft and green. Slender shoots erupted around me, shivering with monstrous life. Red flowers unfurled and vines snaked toward me, seeking the blood I shed for them. Greedily, they curled around my body, drawing me into the earth.

But then I was awake, gasping as I opened my eyes to the indigo room. My right hand came up automatically and ripped the needle from my other arm. I looked down as I sat up, seeing the dark trickle of blood.

My feet landed unsteadily on the floor. I braced myself against the beds and machines as I staggered through the room. Every few steps I touched a foot, a leg, recoiling instantly at the feel of skin. The walls were lost in shadow.

There was a door somewhere. I knew there was a door that led outside instead of back through the house.

I had done this before.

A push bar materialized under my hands. I leaned all my weight against it until I gulped in a breath of artificially cool night air. The door fell shut behind me and I dropped to my knees, weakened. My palms hit the ground and I struggled to draw breath.

Disquiet settled into my bones.

It was just in front of me. The hole. I remembered it from my dreams.

Clawing my way to my feet, I walked forward on shaky legs.
Don’t go
, I told myself.
Don’t look.
But I couldn’t stop. Bit by bit, I watched the hole appear. I forced myself to look down into it.

The ambassador had hired someone to operate a machine to dig right through the spongy composite that made up the ground here. He would have had to, judging by the massive size of the hole. It gaped like a bloodless wound. With each step I took toward it, it yawned wider.

This was where he disposed of the bodies when he was done draining all their plasma. Where he disposed of his failed experiments. I could see them down there, half-buried, faces and rotting limbs showing through. In some places tiny, sickly green plants had begun to sprout between the bodies.

Now I knew where the dirt from the graveyard behind the asylum had gone. Ambassador Killering needed it to conceal the proof of his crimes. The isolation of his mansion and the shadows cast by false trees weren’t enough. Eventually he would need more, but Gabriel and I wouldn’t be around to dig it up for him.

I kept staring. I couldn’t move. But I realized some of the bodies in the hole were moving. Rising, shaking. Dirt fell from their withered skin and tattered clothes. Hands clawed at the sides of the hole but they couldn’t get out. I heard them groan. Goosebumps covered my arms.

The serums don’t always work.

They become useless to our country.

Useless. Not dead.

“No,” I whispered.

Tears pooled in my eyes. I had to leave.

At this time of night, at this end of the city, there was only one place I could go.

I blinked. I knew this place, though not well. The street was bathed in red light shining from above doors. Everyone’s face was in shadow. My mind was half blank, dread weighing in my stomach. I didn’t know if I’d find her.

Nobody moved. They all just stood there by the doors, on the corners. I knew everyone was looking at me as I walked down the street.

A man grabbed my arm. “What do we have here?” he said, turning me around to face him. I could just make out his leer. I didn’t have the strength to shake him off, but he let go when he found his hand slicked in my blood. Muttering to himself, he walked off.

Bandages. I was still bleeding and hadn’t thought to check the needle stick as I walked here. Half-dried rivulets trailed down my forearm. Slipping my other hand beneath my shirt, I pressed the fabric against the wound.

Ahead of me, a girl traipsed slowly down the sidewalk, her head down. Something seemed familiar about the way the light fell on her dark hair…

“Pell,” I cried, reaching toward her. “Ayúdame.”

She came closer to the light, lifting her head, and I saw her eyes widen. “Marlo. What are you doing here?”

I shook my head as she moved toward me, her hands coming up to cup my elbows. It was too much to remember. I wanted to sleep.

“What happened to you?” she whispered.

“It was—it was—”

“Shh.” She stroked my back to calm my gasping breaths. “I’ll take you home. Do you think you can make it?”

From here to Marshwick wasn’t a far walk. I nodded. My heart was beating too fast.

Pell held me against her as we walked, one arm around my shoulders. My vision blacked in and out, but somehow I managed to keep walking. Only when we reached my house—the old house where I’d lived all my life—did the world start to spin. My head was heavier than the rest of my body, pulling me down to the tilting ground.

I woke in my own bed. My old bed. I stirred, feeling the plain sheets, gazing at the plain, cracked walls. The pale green curtains let in a dingy light. Nothing about my room had changed.

“I searched all night for you after the party.”

I turned toward Verm’s voice. He sat in a chair beside the bed, his blond hair a little longer than I remembered.

“I thought you’d been lost or killed.”

“I lost you,” I told him. “So I ran away.” I wanted to lift my head off the pillow, but it still felt too heavy.

He just gave a sour smile. I remembered when he’d told me never to run from him again. Though I knew he could still hurt me, I wasn’t afraid now.

Leaving him this time would probably be harder. He’d make sure of it. He didn’t need me. He just wanted to own me.

I wouldn’t stay here, though. This time I was not just desperate to get away, but determined too. I was afraid Gabriel wouldn’t wait for me before setting off across the country. He’d assume I’d left him on purpose, and he didn’t love me like I loved him. Without him, it would be that much harder to leave the city. I wasn’t sure I could do it on my own.

It embarrassed me to have placed all my hope in him and none in myself.

From somewhere in the house, the baby let out a cry. It seemed so much longer, but I realized I’d been gone from here less than a month.

“You always did just what you were told,” Verm muttered, studying me. His eyes were softer than I’d ever seen them. “Till you ran. Never thought you’d betray me like that.”

I didn’t want to hear him talk to me like this. “I’m hungry,” I told him. “Is there food?”

“We don’t get your rations anymore,” he said. But he rose from the chair and moved toward the door, jerking his head for me to follow him.

With great effort, I roused myself from the bed and hugged the wall as I trailed after him. He couldn’t hold me here. No one could hold me. No one was strong enough.

He’s got you, doesn’t he?
a voice whispered in my head.

Not for long
, I promised myself.

Harkin and Blanca sat on the couch, drinking. The screen was on, muted, smoky shots of war-torn cities flashing across it.

Music drifted from a tiny radio on the kitchen table. Pell sat there, head bent over strands of fishing line and a selection of shells. She looked up at me to offer a brief but pained smile.

Verm was in the kitchen, throwing together some food for me. I sat down across from Pell and dropped my throbbing head into my hands. My arm had been cleaned and bandaged with strips of old towels.

This was my family’s house—
my
house. I knew where each stair creaked and where my fingers would find chips in the wall. I knew the patterns on the ceiling and the stains on the carpet. But Verm lived here now. He was head of this place. Harkin answered to him and Blanca shied away. Even Pell had a place here now.
I
was the trespasser. I didn’t belong here anymore.

A familiar hand squeezed my shoulder as a tin clattered on the table in front of me. I ate the paste ravenously, scraping the tin for every last bit. Verm had let go of my shoulder and now stood behind Pell, stroking her hair while staring at me. I wondered if I could convince her to come with me when I left.

“Come sit with us,” Verm said when I’d finished. He came back to my side of the table. By taking my hand and leading me into the living room, he made it clear he didn’t want to let me out of his sight.

I sat down on the couch and he dropped down beside me, too close. His arm went around my shoulders to keep me from scooting away. Sometimes his other hand would roam casually over my thigh. I felt Pell’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t look at her. She had to know this wasn’t what I wanted.

As we sat there, I started to notice how warm and familiar Verm felt next to me. For a second I let myself fall into the romantic fantasies I’d once had of him, the lies I’d once wanted to believe. If I’d just stayed, if I’d just taken everything in silence, maybe things could have been different and better. We could have loved each other.

But no. That was poisonous thinking, and it would be my prison if I let it.

Verm drank with Harkin and Blanca, their laughter becoming wild and loose. Their glassy eyes danced. The music seemed to grow louder. At one point I thought I heard the baby crying, but no one else seemed to notice. I got more and more anxious, counting the minutes until I could get away and try to find Gabriel.

Gradually, the din drifted into a lull. Conversation hushed. Blanca and Harkin turned toward each other, whispering and kissing. Pell was still at the kitchen table, making her jewelry. I could hear Verm breathing beside me.

He turned toward me. “Did you know I missed you?”

“No,” I said coldly.

“You got kinda tan. And skinny. It don’t suit you. You look sick. Where’ve you been, anyway? Shacking up with some guy?”

“I wasn’t—”

“Hey, it’s no big deal. I always knew you were just a little slut.”

In silence, I stared at him. Violent desires assaulted me, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of trying to hurt him.

After a moment, he released my shoulders. “Go wash up,” he said.

I didn’t hesitate. I knew this would be my chance.

In the bathroom upstairs, I stood in the tub and quickly scrubbed the grime and sweat from my body. My mind worked. I could climb out my bedroom window and shimmy down the drainpipe. Or I could go up and jump from roof to roof; the houses were close enough together. I just couldn’t go back downstairs, past Verm. Not even if he were sleeping. The front door still made a loud, jarring sound when it opened. And I didn’t want to get near enough to him again to chance his laying his hands on me.

A knock sounded on the door as I finished up, and my heart sank. Maybe I wouldn’t have a chance to leave after all. “Sí?” I called softly.

“It’s me,” Pell said, and I was relieved to hear her voice. “I have something for you to wear.”

My clothes lay in a pile on the floor, dirty and worn. Wrapping a towel around my body, I let her in.

The dress in her hands was dark blue, almost navy but brighter and richer. I took it, turning my back to slip it over my head. It gathered neatly at the waist, buttoned up to my neck, and left my arms bare. The hem ended just above my knees in subtle ruffles.

Another dress.

“I got it on the lane for cheap. There’s a hole on the back,” Pell explained. She shrugged, seeming embarrassed. “I saw it and thought of you. Somehow I knew, even though you were gone, I’d be able to give it to you someday.”

“Thanks,” I said. I tugged on my shoes, ready to run. “I love it.”

She turned to the door, beckoning me. “Come downstairs.”

“I can’t. Verm—”

“He’s gone. He and Harkin went to cash in some credits. Sometimes they like liquor more than food.”

Cautiously, I followed her. It was quiet downstairs, Verm nowhere in sight. Blanca stood in the living room, the baby bundled in her arms.

“Are you leaving again?” she asked.

I nodded. “You could come too. You and the baby. You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.”

She drew back a little. “But I do want to. Harkin’s here.”

I turned to Pell. “What about you? Do you want to leave with me?”

Her gray eyes widened wistfully. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. West. Out of Cizel. I’ll go to the other coast if I can make it that far.”

“But you don’t know what’s out there.”

“I can’t stay here with Verm,” I said. “And there’s nothing for me anywhere else. I’m done with this place.”

“Hold on.”

She went into the kitchen. Blanca gently rocked the baby in her arms.

“Be good to her,” I said. “Tell her she’s strong. Tell her she doesn’t belong to anyone. Tell her she can take care of herself. No one else is going to do it for her.”

It almost looked like Blanca was going to cry. Then she nodded, her voice light as she spoke. “I will.”

Pell returned and handed me a bag. “Here’s some food and water. It’s all our rations, so it should last you a while.”

“How will you eat?”

She shrugged, thrusting the bag more insistently at me. “We’ll figure it out. I’ll just work a few extra hours on the edge until I make up the credits.”

“Verm will hurt you,” I said, “when he finds out about this.”

“I know. But that doesn’t really bother me.”

“Pell—”

“Just go, Marlo.”

I threw myself at her, arms taking her into a fierce hug. “You’ll always be my best friend,” I said.

“And you’ll always be mine.”

Drawing away, I took the bag. There was nothing left to say. I turned to the door and left my house for the very last time.