We had no hope. The conclusion was written. The last line had been carved in stone and our judgment handed down. There was no appeal, no do-over. The moment we’d stepped into the Overlook we’d chosen our path, and we’d chosen wrong.
It would take us a long time to get there—longer than I’d even realized at first. The building had an elaborate roof garden with a saltwater pool. Early on we rigged a ladder to get up there, and thanks to a retiree with an odd penchant for collecting seed packets, we were able to plant a vegetable patch that was pretty successful.
But on that first morning at the Overlook there was this moment when I was standing on the balcony with Nicky and the rising sun hit the pink-tinted windows of an apartment building a few blocks south. And suddenly, everything around us turned rosy; the world became soft and beautiful.
Nicky pulled me down into the chair next to her and she tilted her head back and I did the same. “When you only look at the sky,” she whispered, “it’s like nothing’s changed.”
And she was right. The wall of the balcony blocked the chaos below—I could no longer see the wrecks or the carnage. In that rose-tinged heartbeat, there existed a flutter of hope. I could see it in Nicky’s eyes—that what she’d said earlier wasn’t really true. Being the hopeful survivor wasn’t just a role. She didn’t believe in giving up, which is something I wouldn’t come to fully understand until much, much later, when her raw-ribbed chest rattled and wheezed.
I’d come onto the balcony that morning to give her the chance to circumvent it alclass="underline" change her decision and choose a new path. She could fly over the railing or take the elevator down to the main level or find any other number of ways to determine her own ending.
All I could see were the ways our world had fallen apart, but somehow Nicky had found a way to show me that in some respects it was still the same, and it could be beautiful.
At the very end she would take it all back, of course. When death was no longer a promise but a pressing reality, I asked her if she regretted this dawn-inspired commitment to survival. Her answer had been a simple yes. That if she’d had it to do over again, knowing that rescue would never come, she’d have killed herself on that first morning.
And then she was gone and it was just me. The only one who’d never really hoped. The one who’d never seen the Overlook as some sort of waiting room before life resumed as it had once been. The one who understood that our world hadn’t been put on pause but shifted into a new reality and that days would continue to come and go, piling on one another as they always had.
I’d known from the beginning what Nicky had understood only at the very end. But just because I’d seen the truth from day one didn’t mean I needed to force her and the others to see it too. Because there’s something I learned in that sliver of pink sunrise: we all come into the world knowing we’re going to die. And maybe I’d figured out that our death would come sooner and it would come harder, but that didn’t make it any more or less inevitable.
And it didn’t mean there wasn’t something worthwhile about those days in between—the good and the bad of them. The kisses and the fights and the fears and the laughter. I was done with fearing death and I was done with fearing regret. I’d made my choices. Maybe they’d been the wrong ones, but I intended to live them to the end.
The Harrowers
Eric Gregory
The kid didn’t have a feed. He glanced over his shoulder and scratched the back of his head, and I saw there was nothing in his neck. You didn’t find many folks without feeds in the city. Right away, I knew he’d brought me a problem. “I’m looking for Ez,” he said, and I said yeah, I was him.
He looked relieved then lowered his voice. “And you’re a guide?”
I wiped grease on the front of my jeans, closed the hood of the 4Runner, and gestured for the kid to follow me. He took the hint, nodding with absurd gratitude, and I led him down past the line of old rigs, all waiting to be stripped. Across the yard, someone cranked up a saw.
“Who gave you my name?” I asked.
“Guy called himself Coroner.”
“You don’t want to talk to him again.”
The kid gave a sad sort of smile. “No. I really don’t.”
He wasn’t the roughneck sort who usually came around looking for a guide. Right age, maybe: Seventeen, eighteen. But the boy had a pressed, conservative look to him. Skinny, clean-shaven, all done up in slacks and suspenders and a white, sweaty shirt. I didn’t know what to make of him, and I didn’t like that I didn’t know.
“You from around here?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, sir. Lynchburg.”
“Nice town,” I lied. Hive of fanatics. “How long you been here, then?”
“Not quite a day.”
“And you already want to go outside.” I grinned. “Jesus.”
It wasn’t much cooler in the office, but there was beer and shade. The kid settled onto my ratty, floral-print sofa, and I opened two Yanjings, thinking maybe he was used to the fancy stuff. I still couldn’t get a fix on him, but he dressed like a big spender. He folded his arms and crossed his legs at the knee, glancing at the old gas station signs on the wall.
“What do I call you?” I said.
He frowned into his beer. “P. K.”
“All right, P. K. You want to tell me about your deathwish?”
He shook his head.
“No deathwish. I just want to see my old man again.”
My turn to frown. “Your old man.”
“Yessir. He’s outside.”
I slid my bottle across the desk, back and forth from one hand to the other.
“How far outside?”
“Cherokee North. Between here and Johnson City.”
“That’s a lot of forest.”
He shrugged.
Some guides don’t like to get nosy. Take the job, don’t ask questions. Lot of those guides develop a nasty case of dead.
“You want my help,” I said, “you’re going to have to tell me what he was doing there.” If Coroner had sent him, I didn’t have many choices here, but maybe the boy didn’t know that. He nodded, answered without hesitation.
“We were out harrowing.”
Christ, I thought. And then: Of course—P. K.: Preacher’s Kid. Should’ve caught that earlier. I finished off the Yanjing, then opened the cooler and unscrewed a jar of whiskey. I’d heard of harrowers before, but never met one alive.
“You were with him,” I said.
“Yessir.”
“He preaches, you shoot. That how it works?”
The kid looked embarrassed. “I haven’t learned to bless yet.”
“And you got separated?”
He inclined his head. “Pack of wolves surprised us. We were running, and my father—” He paused. “He fell. Over a ledge. I saw him roll, heard him call out, but the slope sharpened and—I didn’t see where he landed. I searched until sundown. I love my father, but—” he pursed his lips “—but I’m not stupid.”
“You did right.” I leaned forward. “But you understand he’s dead.”
The boy was silent.
“I ain’t gonna sell you false hope. Your daddy’s gone. I’ll take your money, I’ll take you out there, and I’ll help you make whatever amends you want to make. But I want us both to understand what’s going on here. I don’t want any confusion between us. You have to show me that you know we’re not going to find him smiling.”
“I have to find him,” he said. “I know the odds.”
I wasn’t sure he did. “I ain’t cheap. And I ain’t stupid either.” I told him the deposit. “I need to see triple the advance in a credit account, and I need the account linked to my feed. In the event of my death, the triple transfers automatically to my family.”