Itsuki

By Zach MacDonald

When a life means the world, there is no letting go.

Brook travels on foot down a highway cut through the British Columbian wilderness, carrying with great care a paper doll he calls Itsuki. A disaster has largely emptied the land of human presence, yet he fears he is being followed, and by night a strange aurora burns in the sky, i

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atmosphere Press
• Release date: May 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781647647261

Book preview

PART 1

ZERO

CHAPTER ONE

T

he fuel gauge has read empty for half an hour when the engine begins to sputter. It soon dies, along with the hissing static from the radio, and the wilderness presses in from all sides. The car continues to roll down the incline and comes to a rest on the side of the road, tires scrunching on the gravel shoulder before the quiet of the surrounding pines leaks into the vehicle.

Brook allows himself a moment of contemplation before he throws the door open and steps out. He pauses there, listening to the caw of a distant crow, its cry swallowed by the sea of trees. A breeze soughs through the highest branches.

He opens the back driver side door and takes the back- pack resting on the seat. The bag’s orange and black material is coated with brown dust, the colors no longer vivid.

Stardust, he thinks distractedly, beating at it. He slams the door closed and, in a burst of anger, kicks its side with the bottom of his foot. The depression he makes is like a mouth punched into featureless clay: a blind mouth, senseless and screaming not to be left alone here.

You’re not alone, says Brook, resting a hand on the roof of the car. We all feel like that. He chokes out a laugh and kicks at the dent-mouth again, and a third and fourth time, beating it in further and distorting it until it’s wide and rounded, toothless.

He lowers the backpack to the ground, goes to one knee and tugs the zipper carefully. There’d been two zippers for the main compartment, but one’s already broken off.

The knife’s leather sheath (not the original, but a decent fit) and the weight of the blade inside it are comforting. He removes it from the bag, relieved, as though the weapon could have escaped at any time but has chosen instead to stay. He slides it into his pants pocket, zips the bag closed and walks to the other side of the car.

She’s visible through the window, sitting on the front passenger seat, waiting. The window is filled with spidery cracks and several holes. He pulls on the handle to no avail; the door is jammed, crippled from an unknown impact. He pulls again, harder, and after more resistance a mechanism inside makes a pop and the door comes ajar. He forces it open far enough to get his arm inside, the bent metal near the hinges screeching in protest.

She knows he’d never leave her here, thinks Brook. He takes her gently in hand and lifts her out of the car.

There are no eyes, just black bangs over the forehead of a blank, chalk white face, but she continues to stare ahead nonetheless; down the road they must travel. Brook once took her out of the plastic sleeve she’s in, on the day he received her, and never again after that. She’s safer from the elements this way. Water would be the end of her.

He opens his windbreaker halfway and parts the Velcro fastening of the inner breast pocket, slipping her inside. He presses the doll against his chest, in the same way he used to feel for his wallet when walking in a crowd. Satisfied, he closes his eyes and leans against the car, collecting himself.

The breeze has moved from the treetops and begun to blow on the level of the road, coming from the same direction that Brook was driving. It’s warm now, but it will get chillier as night falls. He gazes at the beat-up car, debating whether to stay inside it tonight after all.

He cups his ears and listens, but detects nothing suspect on the wind. Nevertheless, he decides the highway is not a safe place to be caught sleeping, not after what he felt in the last town, a chipped-paint burg called Kourawick that looked like its heyday had ended decades ago. The sense of being watched was one thing, but the sense of being watched and followed—stalked—was another. He can rationalize the feeling no more than he can explain the details of string theory, but it’s still present now, as sure as hunger or thirst: someone, or something, from that town has come after him.

Brook pats his breast one more time and starts down the road. His stomach growls, but he refuses to eat until he’s stopped for the night. He has a schedule, which he’s survived until now by following.

There’s been nothing simple about crossing what was once British Columbia. It’s a hideously large place, and even larger now that its land borders have effectively dissolved. There’s no longer any semblance of containment to its vast emptiness, no more imaginary lines to break up the continent of North America into convenient jigsaw pieces. Only the Rockies, far back to the east, serve as a porous divider between two former provinces.

The last look he had of himself was in the rearview mirror. A three-week beard shadows the lower half of his face. His eyes are sunken, the whites bloodshot under heavy lids, pupils reduced to pinpricks in a wild brown pond—already the eyes of an animal, desperation eating at the fringes. His cheeks are growing gaunt.

The car’s clock read 3:40 by the time its engine cut out, and Brook walks down the road for what he estimates to be an hour, stopping every once in a while to rest and catch his breath. It’s as though the air has grown thin, the way it gets near the top of a tall mountain.

The trees huddle together on either side of the road here, rising out of the needle-strewn ground like soldiers at attention, distinguishable for perhaps fifty feet in before the forest grows too dark and they become one joined mass. They are starting to unnerve him.

The road continues to curve this way and that, go uphill and down, and around each corner and over every crest there is again that wall of green on either side of the thin black ribbon. The trees leer, telling him to stay on this track his kind have cut and paved through their number.

He halts to sling the pack off his shoulders. His temples are pounding and a new ache thrums in the back of his skull. Dehydration. There’s a water bottle in the side sleeve of the bag, which he digs out to peer at the amount left inside: maybe a third, a bit less. He hasn’t allowed himself a drop since he woke up that morning, but now he sits down on the warm pavement and removes the lid.

The water is the same temperature as the air, but it’s wet and wonderful. When the bottle is empty, Brook presses it against his forehead, shutting his eyes. Midnight flowers bloom in the darkness, each luminous, unfurling petal beckoning him to sleep. His fall toward them is interrupted by a wave of nausea, and he’s jolted out of his stupor by the fear of losing everything he just drank. He places a hand over his chest, feeling the shape there, and the urge to vomit passes.

Later, as the light drains out the sky, Brook ventures into the forest. He goes just deep enough to be concealed from the road, while he himself will have a reasonable view of it from a certain elevation.

Not all the trees are coniferous: lonesome hardwoods vie against those evergreen branches for the sun’s nourishing rays. He makes his way through the trees for several minutes, parallel to the road, before he finds an oak with low enough branches for him to leap and grasp onto. He catches hold of the one he’s aiming for on the first try.

The bark is cool and rough beneath his palms. He doesn’t have near enough strength to pull his body up using his arms alone. Instead, he does the same thing he did when he climbed trees as a child, swinging his feet over to the trunk and walking up it until his sneakers are level with his head. The laces hang backward into space. He strains with the effort of bracing his weight against the tree, but manages to hook a leg onto the branch, and with a grunt of effort levers his entire body atop it, panting.

He comes to standing, balancing on the branch, then climbs to the next one, a little higher, and steps into the wide crook where several more split away from the trunk. He can just make out the road from here, which is good enough. He settles into the crook, finding that he can even lean back a bit. Still, it doesn’t feel safe for his purposes—safe to sit in, yes, but to sleep?

A lot of maybes come to you when you’re alone. Maybe he’ll fall out of here and die during a dream. Maybe he’ll wake up just as his balance is lost for good and he goes tumbling down; he’ll cry out, and the cry will disperse through the air and be gone a second later, eaten by the trees the way they ate the caws of the crow. Maybe he’ll wake up broken and paralyzed in the morning at the base of the trunk.

A shiver runs through him and he clenches his teeth.

Or maybe I’ll wake up okay and well rested, he thinks. But first some dinner.

He opens the pack. At the bottom of the bag is a box of granola bars and a deflated bag of potato chips. He tears open the top of the box and plucks a bar out, fingers trembling.

Shouldn’t have waited this long, he tells himself, but that voice is crushed under the weight of a far greater one, which pushes to the surface and whispers for him to eat, consume, nourish himself at all costs.

He strips open the foil wrapper and shoves the bar into his mouth, forcing himself to chew. He fumbles for another, and another.

By the time he rips into the bag of chips, the forest is growing dark and a chill has crept into the air, washing over the surface of the windbreaker and seeping through his jeans.

When the chips are gone and Brook has emptied the last crumbs into his mouth, he crumples the bag and tosses it into the yawning maw of the pack, where it lands atop the empty granola bar box and six wrappers. He stares at this little garbage nest and sucks the oil off his fingers, its pungent tang lingering on his tongue, then takes the chip bag and wrappers out of the pack and throws them into the air, watching them rain down to the earth like metallic leaves.

Out of habit, he runs his hand over the knife handle and pops the snap, pulling the instrument free of its sheath. There’s no lovely gleam on the blade at his hour, only a dull luster to the steel, mimicking his metallic leaves. Night is here.

The show has already started in the sky, through the branches and somewhere over the distant mountains. The aurora shimmers and convulses, folding over and into itself in a strange, self-consuming movement. Seen in shards and slivers tonight from between the leaves, the lights take on a menacing cast, as if thousands of roving eyes are searching for Brook from within them. The colors range from violets and neon orange to spidery black blotches that blot out the stars behind, masquerading as cracks of unblemished night.

Brook is reminded of the evening he flew out of LAX, headed east, on the eve of the countdown to Zero. He’d had a window seat, and Los Angeles blazed orange under a cloudless sky. As the plane gained altitude, the grid pattern of streets and roads, legions of red taillights trickling through them, coalesced into a greater sea of lights, and the chaos of the metropolitan spread, highlighted against the darkness, began to reveal itself. The suburbs flowed and curled out from the formless illumination of the city’s heart, creeping across the land, winding around hills like vine tendrils around stone. It looked like an amoeba, a cell, growing and reaching out in any direction that would allow its passage.

The black blotches in the aurora bloom and ripple, tearing pseudopodia into the fabric of shimmering sky, narrowing and stretching.

There’d been those that claimed the northern lights should be a sight on everyone’s bucket list—though none of them, thinks Brook, would ever have seen ones like this. They shouldn’t be so consistent at this latitude, not at this time of year, not ever. They shouldn’t be anything like the way they are.

In an hour Brook’s arms have gone slack, hanging out into space. He drifts away into sleep, curled with one leg in the crook, the other hanging out as freely as his arms, fifteen feet above the ground, pack resting on his stomach, wood for a pillow.

Yet he is still watching the aurora. He’s been staring into it for hours, or days, an indefinite amount of time, entranced by it, mesmerized, in the way that one is mesmerized by the heart of a bonfire. It consumes the world before him.

He begins to see himself watching the aurora from behind, or from the side, and somehow both at once. Everything slips into blackness now and again, and then returns, the lights spilling back in existence like a waterfall from the heavens they render invisible. It’s pulsating, godlike. It wants to claim Brook and make him a part of those lights, and he comes to the awful understanding that they are all up there. Everyone. They’ve all become part of the lights and they want him to come. The glow shimmers on a wind of souls, frantic and palpating with ferocious resentment, envious that he can walk the earth in his little body of flesh and bone, that he hasn’t had to leave while they were all ripped from their own, and that envy coalesces into a solid thing, so potent that he can feel it radiating through him to the core: a furious, unwavering hatred.

It’s not my fault, he says, his voice cracking though bone-dry cords. It’s not my fault!

He begins to blubber. He feels his face contorting with the sob and watches it happen at the same time. His features have softened into that of himself as a nine-year-old boy, sniveling with fright and looking up at his father after kicking a ball through the glass of the front window.

I’m sorry, he cries. "I don’t want to be here. But you died."

The lights shimmer deafly.

You died! Brook’s voice rises to a scream. All rationality disappears as her face—

Oh god, no—

Her face sweeps through the lights, impossibly lost, and he realizes that no one can see each other up there. All of them are struggling to find they’re not alone, blind and groping for one another before they’re finally drawn out into space, before they become ghosts in the nothingness that’s waiting beyond the aurora—and yet, somehow, they are one.

He keeps on screaming.

CHAPTER TWO

M

ichael Brookfield leaned his face against the vista of frozen sky, savoring the coolness of the glass on his forehead. Ten kilometers below, the landscape of northern Alaska spread itself like a sea of teeth, free of obscuring clouds. The terrain was foreboding, lifeless from this altitude, yet imbued with a kind of romantic preservation, like houses in a snow globe.

He ordered a coffee from the attendant making her way up the aisle. Sipping it, he glanced out the window again at the charcoal-on-canvas wastes below, and lowered the shade halfway against the glare of the sun. He tried to sleep.

Eight hours later time had leapt dramatically forward and the world was cast in the glow of a sunrise. The seatbelt light dinged on and awoke the dozing passengers. Cracking open his window shade, Michael was greeted with the sight of a dark ocean, awash with glittering orange, as though fires were burning just beneath the surface.

The plane began to drop in altitude and flew into a wisp of cloud. When they emerged from it a moment later the island of Honshu had come into view, cutting against the sea with a white line of foam at its edges. Upon first glance from this angle, the land had a soft, rolling surface, like a blanket bunched up on an unmade bed, with a coastal highway on which toy cars trundled along, winking the red of the day’s first sunlight into the sky above.

The plane dropped lower as it came over the land, mountains unfolding below it, in the valley of which villages were visible, nestled deeply, like late-melting spring snow. With a sharp turn of the aircraft, Michael’s view of the mountains gave way to a flatter stretch of land, bordered by foothills whose sides were brown and balding, the vegetation scraped away to leave mangy patches of treeless soil. On this plain a vast swath of civilization spread out in all directions and the landscape became one of blocky buildings, concrete and sparkle-black glass, broken in places by wooded hills that rose out of the city, pushing above the sterility like weeds in a parking lot. Everything was cast in the same orange that was burning in the waves out on the ocean.

Twenty minutes later Michael joined the international arrivals line, where a combination of tired-looking, retirement-age couples and grinning young people were waiting to be given passage into the country.

The immigration officer glanced at the front page of his passport before flipping to his visa.

What is your business in Japan?

I’ll be teaching English, said Michael.

The officer nodded disinterestedly, asked a few additional questions and let him through.

The man holding a sign with Michael’s surname on it was taller than he’d expected. He had slight bags under his eyes and Michael pegged him to be in his early forties. He smiled when Michael gave him a wave and the bags seemed to become a part of his grin.

Mr. Brookfield?

That’s me, said Michael politely.

My name is Mr. Mochizuki, but you can call me Ryoma. He spoke slowly, seeming to carefully weigh his own words.

I’m Michael.

Michael, Ryoma repeated crisply. It’s nice to meet you. He offered his hand and Michael pumped it twice. Ryoma’s grip was limp, and as awkward as the bow Michael attempted as they shook. When he looked up there was a glint of humor the man’s eyes.

Welcome to Japan.

Thank you. Um, yo-ro-shi-ku onegaishimasu.

He expected Ryoma to laugh at this attempt at formality, but Ryoma responded in the same with a humble air, and this time gave a small bow of his own.

I think we . . . er, are you hungry? asked Ryoma.

A bit, yes.

Would you like some breakfast then?

That’d be great.

Ryoma motioned to the bulging bag that Michael had in tow. Okay, so, let me carry one of your luggage.

It’s really heavy. My whole life’s in there.

It’s okay. I think you’re very tired from your trip.

They made their way through the arrivals hall of Osaka airport. Ryoma led the way determinately, a step ahead of Michael, down a hall lined by shops and restaurants. The one Ryoma led him into, serving noodles, had a faint salty smell, like the scent the air takes on closer to the beach.

Ryoma ordered them ramen and black coffee. He sighed contentedly when the latter arrived, steaming in white mugs.

You look very young, he said, taking an experimental sip.

I’m twenty-six, Michael told him.

Ah, yes, even twenty-six you look young, I think.

Well thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment.

You do not have these . . . Ryoma traced a finger along the faint crow’s feet at the corner of one eye.

Oh, said Michael, not sure whether it would be rude to indicate he noticed anything at all. I suppose not. Give it another year or two.

Ah, yes. Ryoma took another sip from his cup. His eyes found Michael’s for the first time in a way that appeared less in curiosity than in calculation. So, Michael-san, why did you come to Japan?

He hesitated, deliberating how to answer. Huh. Big question.

Ryoma regarded him patiently.

To teach English

Ah yes, I know that part. But why did you choose Japan? Not Korea, not China . . .?

I don’t know exactly. Something told me I should come here.

Ryoma raised his eyebrows. Something told you?

I felt it was the right thing to do.

Ah. Ryoma fingered an unopened packet of creamer. That is good, he said thoughtfully.

A waitress drew up to the table and placed a large bowl of ramen in front of each of them. Michael realized for the first time since arriving how hungry he was.

Can you use chopsticks? Ryoma asked, breaking apart the disposable wooden pair he’d picked out of a jar at the side of the table.

Michael chuckled. I think so. I’ve eaten sushi with them before. He broke apart his own pair and attempted to scoop up some noodles. They slid off the chopsticks and splashed back into the bowl. He tried again, this time managing to raise them, dripping, out of the oily broth.

Across the table, Ryoma slurped his first mouthful loudly and wiped at his lips with a napkin. Oh, very good with chopsticks, he exclaimed, seeing that Michael had succeeded in drawing some noodles to his own mouth. They were piping hot and he almost spit them out, but instead followed Ryoma’s lead and sucked some air over them, managing not to burn his tongue.

They left promptly upon finishing, Ryoma paying for both of them despite Michael’s protestations. Once in the hall, Ryoma told him that they’d now proceed to Shin-Osaka Station, where he would buy Michael a Shinkansen ticket to Nagoya.

Nagoya was a name Michael had only seen in text, but he recognized it as where his training was to take place.

Are you going to be coming to Nagoya too?

Ryoma shook his head. No, no—I stay in Osaka, he said, as if this were an obvious point. In Nagoya you will meet a trainer.

Despite being full, the train that shuttled them into the heart of the city was relatively quiet. A foreign metropolitan world scrolled by out the window, a long complex of houses and monochrome apartment buildings, punctuated here and there by small rice paddies tucked into leftover space.

Were you born in Osaka? asked Michael, after a period of silence had passed between him and Ryoma.

The other was staring out the window as well, looking contemplative. I was born in Nagasaki, he said. It’s on island of Kyushu.

I see, said Michael, recalling grainy stock footage of a mushroom cloud. Do you miss Nagasaki?

Sometimes I miss very much. But now I am working for Passage company, and there’s no Passage in Kyushu.

So you meet all the new teachers that come here?

Not always, but sometimes. I like to meet the foreigner. When I was a student I wanted to go to abroad. I studied English very hard, but . . . it never worked.

How come?

How come? You mean, why? Ryoma’s gaze fell to his knees and he kneaded a wrinkle on his pants. "It’s complicated, I think, but anyway I couldn’t. Shouganai desu."

What’s that?

"Shouganai . . . I don’t know how you say in English . . . He glanced up to the advertisements lining the wall above the windows, as if they might contain the answer. Maybe it means, can’t change. We can’t change it." Evidently unsatisfied with this, he cocked his head, frowned and mouthed something to himself, but didn’t elaborate.

Michael was drawn back to the window as the train coasted past and over the bustling morning streets of the city.

In the lobby of Shin-Osaka Station Ryoma shook Michael’s hand once more, a shade more firmly this time, and wished him good luck. From there Michael was sent to wait alone for the Nagoya-bound Shinkansen to arrive. He ascended to the crowded platform and sat on a free bench, filled with nervous anticipation yet wanting nothing more than to meet the trainer in Nagoya and be done with it.

Distant announcements came from the interior of the station, but out here there was relative tranquility. The morning sun shone brilliantly on two empty tracks, and he watched the people waiting on the opposite platform, black-suited and resigned to the coming work day. An alarm went off, shattering the solitude, and the smooth, sloped head of the bullet train came into sight, bending fluidly around the gentle curve into the station. It coasted to a stop and the doors opened with a hiss.

Michael boarded, and the train pulled away from the platform, accelerating rapidly by the time he found his way to his seat. The buildings nearest the tracks whizzed by in an increasing blur. They entered a tunnel and the view was cast into darkness. Where the train emerged a few moments later, the land was spread flat in a wide plain, mostly square rice fields divided by narrow dirt roads, with power poles stringing black wires between the houses that dotted the open land. Behind this a range of hills rose out of the earth, some rolling in appearance, while others seemed to have been hewn by the axes of ancient giants. The hills ambled away into the distance, row after row, their vividness fading under a humid haze and the vibrant green of their vegetation descending into pastel shades of dusty blue.

Within an hour he’d arrived in Nagoya. Having gathered up his luggage, Michael headed to exit the platform, passing colorful kiosks selling rice balls, cigarettes and beverages. He descended the stairs in a cluster of hurrying bodies. Looking beyond the gates, he recognized, from dozens of photos, the person waiting for him—a lone Caucasian, husky and tall, holding a sign bearing Michael’s name. The man smiled at him and Michael smiled back, an automatic reaction, for he’d readied himself for this moment many times.

The trainer still had a smile on his face as Michael passed through the ticket gate, but it was the business smile now: tight-lipped, self-assured. He came toward Michael holding his hand out, and as Michael approached him, he thought that the strength might go out of his own. He took the proffered hand anyway, gripping it firmly. He pumped it twice, as he had Ryoma’s, but more forcefully this time, squeezing.

I’m Michael Brookfield.

Nice to meet you, Michael. I’m Rupert Walsh.

I know who you are.

The grin melted off the man’s face. Excuse me? A red tide flushed upward through his neck and the already ruddy meat of his lower face.

Michael yanked the handle of his bag and wheeled it around to his front. It bumped Rupert’s shoes and he shuffled back from it. Michael bent and opened the front compartment.

He drew the envelope from the bag and held it out to the trainer, face up. It was bleach white, generic, except that RUPERT was scrawled across the bottom in red pen.

This is for you, said Michael.

What is it? Rupert demanded. His arms hung motionless at his sides, but his hands were partially curled into fists, fingers hooked like hawk talons. They stretched and curled once more.

Michael shrugged with mock nonchalance. Like I said, something for you.

Rupert Walsh eyed his name on the envelope, then took it to retrieve the letter Michael had waited four long years to deliver.

It was, at that time, less than two years before Zero. 

CHAPTER THREE

B

rook jolts awake, heart thundering in his chest. His legs kick involuntarily and he draws a great gulp of air, as though he’s breaching the surface after a long time underwater. Pitch black, everywhere. He feels the bark sliding against his back, and his brain, the monkey brain, cries a warning that he’s losing his balance. He locks one arm—the other is asleep, he perceives hazily, dead to the world and his commands—around the branch next to him, bracing his weight against it.

He’s still in the tree. Not on the ground. Not out of commission.

He steadies himself, eyes widened to saucers, striving to take in the scant moonlight.

The aurora is gone from the sky, and in its place is a moonless black, broken only by pinpricks of the very brightest stars. The night air is fragrant with the surrounding pine.

He tries to slow his breathing and calm his heart. He knows he’s wasting energy, and recalls, disheartened, that he ate all his rations before going to sleep.

His back feels like a giant spider web of aches that have netted together in a dull, uncompromising pain. He wiggles to take pressure off different parts, then settles into the same position he was sleeping in, listening as his pulse tapers off in his ears.

Now there is a sound, coming from up ahead in the direction he’s facing. Out on the road.

Brook tenses his entire body. His bag is still resting on his stomach and he grips it tight. It rises in the gloom with each breath. If it were to fall it would make a noise.

The sound draws closer, coming down the road, and there’s a slow, unmistakable rhythm to it: footsteps, heavy and plodding, punctuated by thin, short scuffs against the pavement. Scrip-scrape, scrip . . . scrip-scrape.

The knife in his pocket has grown heavy, but he can’t bring himself to open the snap and hear the metallic pop it makes. It will be so loud out here—it’s not a forest noise. Brook closes his eyes tight.

From the town, he thinks. From Kourawick. It’s real and it’s come after me.

The steps stop, a complete halt, so immediate that it’s like phantom hands have been clapped over Brook’s ears. The silence is as unsettling as the disturbance itself. Brook opens his eyes and peers hard into the black.

Is it listening for him?

He looks straight ahead, motionless.

The sound picks up again at last, but the steps are different now, much quieter, fading. Whoever is making them has moved from the pavement to one of the gravel shoulders. They die away even faster than they’d come on, but whether their maker has gone out of range or only stopped again further on isn’t discernible.

Brook doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night, though no more noises come to him. When the sky lightens enough that he can see the road’s yellow divider lines from his perch, he shoulders the pack and climbs stiffly down from the tree. It’s comforting to feel the earth beneath his feet, and at the same time he is struck by a sensation of vulnerability that stabs at him from all directions. The trees, which had seemed to close in and stand guard during the night, now seem frighteningly far apart. He can peer far into the forest, as weak as the light of dawn is, but only in one direction at a time, whereas whoever was out there, if they’ve been waiting or casting about all night, might be watching from anywhere.

The morning air appears filmy, thick, like Brook is looking at it through a nylon stocking. The sun is still low, but he predicts that things will grow clear in an hour at most.

He pats his left breast. Still there: safe. Snug as a bug in a rug.

He trudges back to the road, brushing needled boughs away from his face. Leaving the cover of the trees, he finds himself in the roadside ditch, and scrambles up the low embankment to the road’s shoulder. He pauses, gazing back the way he came the day before. Down there, well past where the road bends out of sight, the empty car with the dented door sits on the equally deserted highway. When Brook faces the other direction, he’s presented with essentially the same view, almost a mirror image of what’s behind him. Through the looking glass, he thinks, and plods forth, grimly aware of the backpack’s newfound lightness.

The inside of his mouth is pasty. He needs water. He’s known it since well before the car broke down. It takes him a moment to work out that he’s only had one half-liter to drink in two days, the empty bottle still riding passenger in the pack. He cups his ears as he walks, as if by some fortunate twist of fate the telltale gurgle of a stream, or static rush of a river, will be audible. There’s no such thing to be heard.

The lightening sky is bringing with it another change: the air is beginning to warm. It won’t heat up too fast, he hopes, but as it does he risks losing more water to sweat.

He rounds a bend in the road, revealing a new horizon to the north. A range of low mountains looms in the distance, protruding from the earth like a great spinal column. Here, not far ahead, the road slopes downward, and Brook imagines wishfully that when he reaches the top of this slope, he’ll be able to see down into a valley, and there he will catch sight of a town, or a village, or a rest stop, or even a single lowly vehicle waiting on the side of the road with the key inside. He is ready, he’s told himself, to pull bodies out of the seats if he has to, but it’s more likely the vehicle would have simply run dry out here and been abandoned, rather than parked so its passengers could perish inside. In all probability, any automobile he finds