“What you’ve said is impossible,” he says. Regine makes a tutting sound, but he continues. “But everything here is impossible, too. The emptiness. The dirt. The world growing old with no one in it.”
“Except us,” Tomasz says.
“Yeah,” Seth says. “Because that’s the question, isn’t it? There weren’t any other coffins in my house or any of the houses on my street. If the world put itself to sleep, where is everyone?”
Neither of them answers.
And Seth realizes he already knows. It has all the inevitability of a story.
“The prison.”
Tomasz studiously avoids his eye. Regine ignores him, too, but then finally gives him a resigned look.
“We can’t,” she says.
“Can’t what? You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“Yes, I do, and I’m telling you we can’t.”
“We really, really cannot,” Tomasz says, pleadingly. “Really.”
Seth is annoyed at their sudden resistance. Ever since he’s been here, the prison has loomed. In the distance or over a hill or even just the knowledge of it out there somewhere, unseen. The source of everything that set his life down a path away from the one that could have been good, that could have been happy.
He’s avoided it, by sheer, gut instinct.
But now that they’re telling him he can’t go, it suddenly seems like the one thing he must do, the obvious thing. Because if this is a place his head made up so he could accept his death or if it really is some kind of hell where he’s been sent, then either of those things would mean the prison is important. A place where answers might be found.
But also, if Regine is somehow right and this is the real world, then that means it’s where his family is.
Right now.
“Show me,” he finally says. “Take me to the prison.”
39
“Oh!” Tomasz says, pulling the mass of his hair with two fists. “I knew this! I knew this would happen.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Regine says. “The Driver won’t let us anywhere near it.”
“But it obviously isn’t at the prison all the time,” Seth says. “It goes out patrolling or whatever.”
“It’ll know you’re there and it’ll do more than punch a hole in your chest.”
“A hole that’s healed oddly rapidly, don’t you think?” Seth thumps his chest, then winces at the bruise. “We could find a way in.”
“Please do not make me,” Tomasz says. “Please do not. Not again.”
“Again?” Seth says.
“I woke up there,” Tomasz says unhappily. “So many coffins. And you do not know who is in them or what they are dreaming or if they are even alive.” He’s holding his hands together, wringing them, the first time Seth’s ever seen the word actually demonstrated. “And my mother.”
“Your mother?” Seth asks when Tomasz doesn’t continue.
But Tomasz says nothing, just shuffles over to Regine, who stubs out her cigarette and embraces him so he can cry again against her stomach. “He was running from the Driver when I found him,” she says. “We barely got away. It was a week before I could convince him I wasn’t an angel or a devil.”
“I know the feeling,” Seth says. “What did he mean about his mother?”
“Not everything is your business. I’ll tell you what we know and what we think, but there’s stuff that’s private.”
“You’re saying everyone’s at the prison?”
“Well, not everyone in the world, obviously. But a lot of people from this town. There’ve got to be other places, but who knows where they might be? Or what’s guarding them.”
“But we could –”
“We’re not going to the prison. It’s the one place here you don’t go.”
“You went there when you found Tomasz.”
She stops at that. “Becca had been killed. That woman I met. I didn’t know what else to do.”
He looks at her now, more closely. “So you went to a place you knew was dangerous?”
She picks a bit of ash off her tongue and asks him, deceptively simply, “Where were you running to this morning?”
There’s a long silence at this. Regine brings the still-snuffling Tomasz to the front of the cigarette counter, and they sit down on the floor against it. Tomasz leans into her, closing his eyes.
“Why would everyone be there,” Seth asks, “if I was at my house?”
Regine shrugs. “I was at my house. Maybe they just ran out of room. Or time. Maybe some people had to make do with what they had.”
“Seems like a pretty inefficient way to arrange things.”
“Who says it was arranged? Maybe they were in a rush and had to cut corners.”
“How do you mean?”
“Have you seen the world?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “Where are all the animals? Where did all this dust and mud and decay come from? That’s way more than just eight years’ worth. When did that fire on the other side of the tracks happen, before or after? What’s with all this freaky weather?” She shrugs again. “Maybe the world was just getting too bad and we finally had no choice but to leave it entirely.”
Lightning flashes so bright they all jump, even Tomasz with his eyes closed. The world holds its breath, then a long roll of thunder peals, quickly followed by the pounding of rain against the glass, hurling itself against the storefront as if all it wanted to do was come in and seize them.
Tomasz falls asleep with his head in Regine’s lap. Seth gets some cans of food and sits next to Regine. They eat with plastic spoons, trying not to wake Tomasz. The rain keeps slamming down outside, so hard it’s like they’re underneath a waterfall.
“I don’t remember rains like this,” Regine says. “Not in England. It’s like a hurricane.”
“There’s too much wrong with your explanation,” Seth says, struggling to swallow his room-temperature spaghetti. “Why would I be in my house, but not my parents or my brother?”
“I don’t know. We’re having to guess at everything. Like how is it that the coffins are powered through that one connection at the bottom, but there’s no electricity anywhere else?”
“Yeah, I saw that, too.”
“And this.” She taps the back of her head. “A connection point that doesn’t pierce the skin?”