Seth’s father had come up with a surprising solution. A small liberal-arts college on the dark, wet coast of Washington, where he’d once spent a semester as a young visiting professor, had answered an inquiry and said yes, as a matter of fact, they did have a place for him to teach, should he want. It was even less money than he made in England, but the college was so desperate for staff, they’d provide a housing stipend and moving expenses.
Seth’s mother hadn’t hesitated, not even at the remote location, two hours’ drive from the nearest cities. She’d started packing boxes before his father had even accepted the job, and they were gone from England in a bewildering tornado of a month, moving to Halfmarket, a place that may not have been under a permanent winter’s night but sure felt that way.
Seth shakes his head now, rejecting the idea that the whole experience had somehow just been online. His mum had been too angry about everything, his father too unhappy, Owen too injured, and Seth too ignored. If it was all fake or programmed or whatever the hell it was, why wouldn’t they be better? Why wouldn’t they be happier?
No, it didn’t make sense.
Well, okay, it made more sense than any other explanation so far, but still. The world might have done that, gone online to forget itself, but his parents? They wouldn’t have chosen that. Seth sure as hell wouldn’t have chosen those things to happen to him.
Unless they hadn’t had a choice?
He stops before his front door.
Maybe the Driver wasn’t really guarding the people in the coffins from outside interference. Maybe it was there to make sure no one ever woke up. It didn’t look fully human, so maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a robot. Maybe it was an alien and they’d forced humans to –
“Crap sci-fi,” Seth mutters to himself. “Life is never actually that interesting. It’s the kind of story –”
He stops again.
It’s the kind of story where everything’s explained by one big secret, like everyone going online and what’s real and what’s not being reversed. The kind of story you watched for two hours, were satisfied with the twist, and then got on with your life.
The kind of story his own mind would provide to make sense of this place.
He pushes open the door. It isn’t locked, never has been. The Driver could have walked in and killed them before they’d had a chance to run anywhere. And that would have been the end of that story.
Instead, they survived. In unlikely ways. The Driver had waited outside until Seth saw it, then taken its time coming into the house after punching him in the chest – he rubs the area now, still bruised, but not nearly as bruised as it should be – before taking its time again to chase them through the grass.
And everything else, too. An outdoor store to provide every bit of equipment he needed. A supermarket stocked with enough food to keep him alive. Rain that not only washed him, but showed up just in time to put out a fire that clearly – as he finds the lantern and flicks it on – hadn’t even reached the kitchen.
Everything inside is just as they left it. It smells of smoke, but that’s all. He climbs over the tumbled fridge and goes out to the deck. The tall grass is all burnt away, but the deck is intact, if blackened at the end. The pile of his original bandages is still there, too, the metallic strips reflecting the moonlight almost more than they should be able to.
He goes back inside, has a quick cold wash at the sink, and dresses in warmer clothes. He finds his torch, and that quickly, he’s ready to go.
But he takes one last look around the sitting room and finds himself doing what he told Tomasz he was going to do.
“Good-bye, Owen,” he whispers. “Good-bye, house.”
As he steps out the front door, pulling it shut behind him, he wonders if it really is the last time he’ll ever see it. He feels unexpectedly sad about that.
However real this house is, it’s meant something.
And then he remembers Regine’s words.
I’m the only real thing I’ve got, he thinks.
And then he remembers what else she said.
“Know yourself and go in swinging,” he says out loud.
It’s time to go to the prison.
Because, real world or not, maybe there are answers there.
43
He heads toward the train tracks on a path that’s become familiar. The moon is bright enough that he doesn’t need to turn on the torch. It’s completely quiet as he goes. No crickets. No owls. Still no wind, despite the earlier rain.
He keeps alert as he walks, ready to run at any movement, but he makes it to the passage between the blocks of flats without incident. He reaches the train station and treads quietly through it past the train, wondering all the while if boars are nocturnal. He hops lightly down onto the tracks and looks in the direction of the prison.
The tracks are strangely empty. There are tall weeds here and there, but it’s mostly just gravel and strangled-looking grass that barely reaches his ankles. He can still see the rails shining in the moonlight for much of their distance south. Maybe years of pesticides to keep them clear were hard to fight.
On the right, there’s a brick walkway, possibly for train repair crews, that still seems in pretty good shape. Seth makes his way over to it and heads out of the station building. To his left, over the low fences, he can see some of the burnt neighborhood. It’s too dark to make out any details, just shadows on the landscape that could be tombstones. He sees no signs of movement, just empty desolation, with the silhouette of Masons Hill on the horizon.
He knows from memory that this track goes all the way to the ocean, though they’d only gone a couple times, and frankly, it was about as appealing as the seashore in Halfmarket. All rocks and cliffs and outlandishly cold water. But before the train would reach there, he remembers, as it pulled out of the station heading seaward, it would start its journey by passing great rows of fences and walls, chain link and brick, cornered by towers poking out of the surrounding trees. An architecture designed to hide itself within its own folds: the prison.
In the moonlight, he can already see one of the towers through the treetops in the distance. It’s probably not even a ten-minute walk from here, when it should be, he feels, something that took hours.
Ten minutes seems way too easy.
And not nearly enough time to work himself up to it.
He keeps heading down the brick walkway, gripping the torch like his own version of the Driver’s baton. He checks back to make sure a boar isn’t after him, and he sees the bridge over the tracks, on top of which he caught his first glimpse of the burnt-out neighborhood, and from where Tomasz saw him for the first time, too.