Regine says nothing, but Tomasz sniffles and says, “We had a little bit guessed.”
“I know,” Seth says. “And that day you found me, that day you stopped me from running into that thing in the van, I . . .” He wavers, but then forces himself. “I was going to do it again. I know Masons Hill. I know where I could throw myself off. And that’s what I was going to do.”
He tastes blood on the back of his throat and spits it out. “And so when I say you weren’t a horrible surprise, I mean it. You were a good surprise, so good it’s why I doubt it’s even true. Even now. And I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry it made me lie to you. I’m sorry it sent me to the prison. And I’m sorry, Tomasz, for seeing what I saw. I didn’t mean to.”
Tomasz sniffles again. “I know this. But still.” He’s wearing the saddest face Seth has ever seen, his mouth curled down, his bottom lip out, his eyes too old for his young, young face.
“I did not get struck by lightning,” he says.
“We had nothing,” Tomasz continues, looking at his feet. “Remember those years when the world lost all its money? Even online, I guess.”
Seth and Regine both nod, but Tomasz isn’t looking at them anyway.
“We were poor before that,” he says. “And it was worse after. You used to be able to cross borders in Europe, but when all economies fell, you could not anymore. No one wanted anyone else. We were trapped, my mama and me. But she found a way. She found a man who says he can smuggle us in on a ship. Give us passports, documents to say we were there before borders close.” He clenches his little fists. “It costs us everything we have. More than everything, but my mama says it is better life. Makes me learn English, says all will be better.”
His eyes narrow. “But it is not better. Journey is very hard, very long, and the men who help us, well, they do not help us very much at all. One is nicer, but one is very bad. He treats us very badly. He . . . do things. To Mama.”
Tomasz turns his fists up and looks at them. “I am too small to help. And Mama says it is all right, we are almost there, we are almost there. And one day we arrive in England. We are all very excited, day is almost here, we have traveled long and hard road, but here we are, here we are, here we are.” His face has opened up a little in wonder, but it hardens again. “But there is a problem. Money, always wanting more money, always asking more from people who have none.”
He sighs. “But there is no more. And the kinder man comes to where they are keeping us. In big metal container for ship. Like we are pigs or trash. The kinder man comes one night.”
He looks at Seth. In the moonlight, his eyes are filled with tears again, and Seth realizes what he’s asking.
“He shot you,” Seth says simply, finishing the story. “He shot you and your mother and everyone else.”
Tomasz just nods, fat tears running down his cheeks.
“Oh, Tommy,” Regine whispers.
“But I do not know why I am here,” Tomasz says, his voice wet. “I get shot in the back of my head and I wake up here! And this is making no sense. If we have all been sleeping away somewhere, why do I not wake up in Poland? Why can I not find my mother or anyone else?” He appeals to Seth. “I do not recognize this place at all. I wake up and I think the men must be after me still and so I am afraid and I say to Regine when she finds me that I have always been here, that Mama and me have been here for long time, but . . .” He just shrugs.
“Maybe you were here,” Seth says. “Maybe you reached here and they put you in the coffins and . . .”
But it doesn’t make sense.
Or maybe, he thinks, maybe there hadn’t been time to deport anyone anymore. Maybe Tomasz’s mother did get here in the real world just before everything ended, when Tomasz was a baby. And maybe they were arrested and the only thing to do was to put them to sleep, making them think they’d never left Poland. That they were back where they started without ever having made the journey.
But if it was someone with the willpower and courage to make that journey once, they might be the sort of person who would be willing to make it again, wouldn’t they? If they didn’t know they were online, only that they had to get somewhere else, at whatever cost.
Never knowing they had already succeeded and were already here.
It seems almost impossibly cruel.
“Tommy, I’m so sorry,” Regine says.
“Just do not leave me alone,” Tomasz says. “It is all I wish.”
She embraces him again even more tightly.
“What about you?” Seth asks her. “How did you get here?”
“I told you,” she says, not looking at him. “I fell down the stairs.”
“Are you sure?”
She glares at him, not answering, but Tomasz is looking up at her, too, the same question on his face. “It is all right,” Tomasz says. “We are your friends.”
Regine still doesn’t answer, but a flicker of doubt crosses her brow. She takes in a breath, to explain or deny or tell them to piss off, Seth will never know, because somewhere, in the distance, they hear the engine of the van start up all over again.
56
“Hurry,” Regine whispers back to them as they rush from shadow to shadow.
“How far?” Seth asks when they catch up to her, huddled between two cars at the side of a road.
“We’re close, but there’s a big main road to cross first.”
“The sound is distant,” Tomasz whispers behind them. “It does not know where we are.”
“Has it ever seen where you guys are staying?” Seth asks.
“We do not think so,” Tomasz says. “We have always lost it before we got home, but . . .”
“But what?”
“But it’s not that big a neighborhood,” Regine says. “And your lights are still blinking. In a world this dark, that’s going to be noticeable.”
“If they were broadcasting some signal,” Seth says, “it’d be on us by now, wouldn’t it? So that’s something at least.”
“Something,” Regine says. “Not a lot.”
She leads them in a crouched run through the parked cars, across a small street and up the sidewalk toward an intersection. It’s the main road Regine was talking about, and aside from the usual weeds and mud, it’s a massive open space they’re going to have to cross. They wait between two small white trucks parked at the edge.