We fed Orry his breakfast, and I was reminded why we were doing this. Somewhere, another child was eating something that may have only contained the tiniest traces of fava beans, and that child would probably die. I closed my eyes but my eyelids flashed with visions of Orry seizing, and I clutched my chest, reminding my heart to beat.
I could see Matthew’s pacing feet brushing the sides of the curtain. The standard white sneakers draped to the ankles with rough cargo pants.
“You can come in, Matthew,” I said.
He seemed flustered, but then we were all a bit unnerved. “We need to leave soon. Everyone is ready to go.”
“Okay.” I waved him off.
I looked to Joseph. “Do we say something to Orry?” I asked, unsure.
He shrugged but held Orry so they were facing each other. “Your parents are going away for a while. Pietre, Careen, and Alexei will look after you while we’re gone. And you’ll have Hessa to play with.” Joseph swiped his hand across his eyes. “Damn it.”
I kneeled down and looked into Orry’s eyes, my eyes. So strange, but so beautiful framed by his blond curls and sloping nose. “I love you,” I said. “Don’t miss me.” I pushed my finger lightly into his belly, and he giggled. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Orry leaned in and planted a sloppy kiss on my eyebrow. I felt like the ground might swallow me, like the whole earth was angry with me and might trap me beneath the real world forever.
I looked up at the ceiling, fighting with myself. Don’t let this be the last time I see my son.
I lifted him to my hip. Joseph carried our small backpacks over one shoulder. We were quiet as we fell into line with the others. Thousands of people poured like lava, up into the light, away from this place. Into a fight.
*****
I hugged and kissed him a thousand times, as he sat clinging to Careen’s waist like a bear in a tree.
“Promise me you’ll keep him safe,” I said, gripping her shoulders kind of desperately.
She grimaced from the pressure my fingers were putting on her collarbone, but tipped her delicate chin. “Listen to me, I will keep him safe. I promise. Just promise you’ll do the same.” She flicked her hair and blinked. “You know, for yourself that is. Keep yourself safe.”
I laughed nervously. “Okay.”
There were eighteen of us leaving in cars. Some I knew, some I didn’t, but as we climbed into the four cars, we held the possibility of a different future for everyone. This could change everything.
I jumped into the driver’s seat and Rash, Gus, and Pelo slid into the backseat, throwing their packs and equipment over the top of the sloshing fuel cans in the boot. I wound down the window and shut the door, feeling my heart and my body tearing open like flimsy fabric. I was nothing but a tattered scrap in the wind. I don’t know how to leave him.
Joseph’s hand slid over mine as it paused on the handbrake. He clicked it in and eased it down. He lifted my hand to the gear stick, keeping it steady as I changed gears.
I let the tears fall freely, my mouth set hard. My eyes on the road ahead. The car shuddered to life, and we rolled forward.
“Well, that was intense,” Rash exclaimed, while I glared at his flash-white grin and inappropriate expression in the rearview mirror.
“Shut up, Rash!” Pelo snapped uncharacteristically.
Gus grunted.
Joseph brought his handheld to his face, ignoring the men in the backseat. “Turn left here,” he said. I slammed on the brakes and turned the corner hard, watching the men’s shoulders bash in to each other like toppling tenpins, shutting them all up.
My lap handheld glowed in my lap like my own heart-aching sun, splitting and guiding me at the same time. Its screen showed a different destination. A blinking red light we were getting further and further away from. Orry.
We were to follow the M53, an old highway used back when there were cars everywhere, hugging bumper to bumper, and polluting the earth. I shook my head sharply at the old Class words remerging in my head like a poisoned lecture.
Rash played with one of the retrieved projection discs from the Woodlands and banged the side of his head on the window like a child. “I miss Essie,” he moaned.
“We’ve only been driving for ten minutes! Get over yourself, Rash!” I snapped, darting around a bicycle planted right in the middle of the road.
He fluttered his lips like a horse and stared out the window. I should have been nicer, but there was little left in me other than to drive and try not to turn around and return to my son. This was hard on Rash too. I swallowed some of my anger and tried to replace it with understanding. It bobbed in my throat like an anchored cork, not quite ready to surface.
*****
The cars were supposed to be quicker than walking, but I wasn’t so sure. Every few kilometers, we had to stop and remove an obstacle or several. I began to get frustrated at our pace and drove over the top of a disintegrating pram. It got caught under the wheels, which meant more time wasted. We needed to drive about six hundred kilometers northwest before we would abandon the cars and trek into the wilderness towards the Woodlands. It should have been a day’s drive, but it had already taken us two hours simply to pass the city limits.
Joseph had all his notes from Salim about the Superiors’ compound sitting in his lap, studying them intensely. No one wanted to talk. There was nothing to do but drive, stop, move obstacle, drive, stop, move obstacle. Each kilometer we gained was like a bead on a guilty thread. The longer it got, the worse we felt.
We finally moved past the city and onto the M53.
I stopped dead, four cars idling behind me. A long horn beep sounded out, bouncing and dashing over the cracked bitumen. But I wasn’t sure where to go.
In front of us was a horror in standstill. Cars spilled over the edges of what was left of the road. Doors were left open, hanging off rusty hinges, falling slowly down to the ground. I looked to my left and saw one machine crouching in the high grass, far away from the others, but not far enough to escape the destruction.
Everything was touched and owned by the fire. Burned out and charcoaled. I gripped the steering wheel and inched forward, following the double yellow line in the center of the road. The road ran like a grey ribbon on the earth, but it was dirty and frayed, cut in at all angles because we were driving through thousands of peoples’ last desperate moments.
The car crept forward. Sometimes I had to move off the road and over to the grass, the stalks grazing the underbelly of the metal beast, making papery noises. I know it was hundreds of years ago, but I swear I could smell the smoke and almost hear the voices. Joseph’s eyes were scraping the horizon instead of looking at papers now. Everyone was pensively staring out their windows as we wound in and out of different families’ horror stories.
After about fifty kilometers, the burnt-out cars started to fall away. There was more space to wind through. A lot of them, very suddenly, seemed to have veered to the left and right like an invisible obstacle stood right in the center, leaving the road itself clear. I shuddered as I pictured the people scattering as planes dropped bombs on them like giant black balloons, their only promise… an end.
I pushed down on the accelerator, putting as much distance between us and that moment in time as I could, feeling the car rumble beneath me like an animal approaching its prey.
*****
Rash broke the silence with, “I need to take a piss, like now!”
And as soon as he said it, the rest of us needed to go as well.
I pulled to the side, the tires grazing the gravelly edge of the road. The other three cars parked behind me.