On the Edge of Gone Read online

  “I know I’m acting strange.” My words are precise and enunciated. “Don’t worry about me. Thank you. Let’s just look up the name, if that’s OK with you.”

  Heleen nods slowly. I doubt she’s convinced, but she lets it drop. “Here. Five hundred and three names in alphabetical order. Let me see.” She scans the pages for the letter S and jams her index finger at one spot. Then her face falls. “You didn’t say they had a baby.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Lisa is one of the people who . . . Her husband didn’t handle the rationing well. Medically speaking.” Heleen closes the file. “He and some others couldn’t wait for help any longer. They built rafts to go to the mainland. Lisa, her husband, and their daughter left two days ago.”

  “No.” I lean against the solitary table in the center of the room. “Damn it! No. Anke asked me to . . . I came here to . . .” I still my tongue.

  What am I supposed to tell Anke? Why would she help with Mom now?

  “Do you want to talk to any people who knew them?”

  I shake my head. All I want is to get back to the Nassau. No more hollow cheeks, no more questions. Getting back to the Nassau means facing Anke, though, without any proof I was even here. “Actually, yes. Maybe that’s a good idea.”

  “I’ll take you there.” To the men in the room, she says, “We’ll be back, yeah? Keep doing what you’re doing.”

  She takes me into the hallway, shakes her head at the people gathered in front of us, and steers us down the hall, past a dozen doors. “The room you saw is for the highest-ranking staff. The others are bigger. They hold fifteen to sixty beds each. And we’ve got several bathrooms, a kitchen, some storage, and a med bay.” She gestures from door to door as we move past them. I try to keep up, but she’s a fast talker. “Kinda different from your shelter, right?”

  “No. It’s similar.”

  We passed some people in the hallway, but now there’s a lull in passersby. Heleen takes that opportunity to whirl toward me. “The thing is, I come across a lot of names here, so I didn’t make the connection immediately, but when I realized Lisa was the one with the baby . . . Before she left, she mentioned her sister to me. She said not everybody could end up in a generation ship like her sister, but she didn’t want to die down here in this shelter, either.” She points a finger at me. “You mentioned the name Anke.”

  I keep silent. Part of it is that I don’t want to give Heleen any more ammo. Part of it is that I have no idea what to say. Breaking the number one rule—don’t tell anyone—was an easy decision to make with Iris. With anyone else? With someone in charge of over five hundred people desperate to survive? If they realize there’s a generation ship so close by, they might forget all about rafts and swim there themselves.

  “I can put two and two together. You’re not from a shelter. Is there really still a ship left on the ground?”

  “Please don’t tell anyone.”

  Heleen looks me up and down. Someone passes, and she waits for them to be out of hearing range. “Will they help us?”

  There’s no way to dress this up prettily. “I don’t think so.”

  “Will they let us on board if we make our own way there?”

  I shake my head.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  In the distance, the woman is still shouting. “Edmund Pettus Bridge, people!”

  “The Veluwe!”

  I say, “They detected radio transmissions a few days ago. People from the east are hoping to—”

  “Yeah, we heard about that. Not seen much of it, though.” Heleen blows a strand of hair from her eyes. “Listen. If you can’t help, there’s no use in my telling anyone. They’ll only get upset, and there’s enough of that already.”

  “People seem . . .” I’d worried this shelter would be like those Samira and Nordin had described. The EMP blowing out lights and prostheses, part of the shelter caved in. “People seem OK?”

  “People are getting by,” Heleen corrects, “because we all know what happens if we panic. And it’s not perfect. Some people, they’ve been . . . Listen, everyone thinks you’re from another shelter. You heard the questions. They’ll want to know which shelter, and whichever one you name, I bet someone will have family or friends there. They’ll ask questions that, frankly, I think you’ll have a hard time dealing with. You look like you’ll go off the deep end if someone so much as shoves you.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Do you want to deal with those questions or not?”

  Her words circle my brain. I know I’m tired, but I’m not—she’s just misinterpreting. She doesn’t know me.

  “Didn’t think so. We’ll say you’re from a small shelter, privately run, so no one will question why they haven’t heard of it. There’s, like, a hundred people there. The conditions are the same as here. All right?”

  “All right.”

  “You’re welcome. Now let’s just hope Lisa didn’t mention her generation-ship sister to anyone else. Come on.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  WITHIN A FEW MINUTES, I’M SITTING AT the end of a stretcher to talk to a father and his son—a kid no older than twelve—about Lisa and her family. The father is confused at first, squinting like he’s trying to place me, which reminds me of the first time I was on the Nassau and everyone wondered whether I belonged. When he hears I’m from another shelter and trying to give Anke news on her sister, he loosens up.

  “I have a brother. He made it into a permanent shelter in Algeria. Lucky bastard,” he says in Polish-accented English. A comet refugee, most likely, given the influx of refugees from Eastern Europe these months. He smiles wryly. “If I had any way to get news . . . Tell me what you need. Lisa’s family slept over there, right next to us.”

  “I’m sorry. I have a strange question. Can I film you?” I unclasp my tab and hold it up. “I don’t want to miss anything. I’m sorry.”

  I want proof, is what I mean.

  He lets me. For the next few minutes he talks about how he’d looked after the baby when Lisa and her husband needed a break, how they’d held up, how they’d spent their time. I keep the tab fixed on him for the most part, but so much is happening in the background that it’s hard to keep my own attention on him, too. Some people are playing a game I can’t figure out the rules of, and two men start a fight that’s quickly broken up. A woman turns into a corner to breast-feed while a teenage boy hovers protectively nearby. By the wall sits a group of about fifteen people, easily half of them in wheelchairs. Some kids play with old Legos, arguing loudly, and some of the adults talk to each other, but most of the group listens silently with anxious eyes or tense smiles or familiar swaying torsos. A slight man in a wheelchair cleans drool off one grinning kid’s face.

  Right when I think the man I’m talking to has said all he could about Lisa, he adds, “It’s smart what she did, right? Leaving on that raft?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’re less than twenty kilometers from land that’s above water level. Lisa improvised barge poles. Between that and the current, they must have reached . . . Right? I mean. That little baby. That little girl.”

  He grips his son’s shoulder suddenly, yanks him in close. The kid says something in stuttering Polish and looks at the group along the wall. Only now, when I look at him properly, I recognize the angle of his eyes and the soft features of Down syndrome.

  His father says a few words back. “There are other kids here, from a care home. He made friends,” he explains to me, as if apologizing for his son’s distraction. I want to ask more, but his gaze goes distant. “The current’ll get them there.”

  After a moment, I realize he’s talking about Lisa’s family again.

  I got to the Bijlmer that first time on my own raft, but all the currents and storms and almost-whirlpools I’ve encountered since then tell me that was dumb luck. There are always stories of people getting carried off within swimming distance of the beach. And it’s cold out, so
cold, and they’ve got a baby, and they must’ve been weak from rationing . . .

  “The rest of us should go, too.” The man leans closer, still gripping his son. The bed squeaks under their weight. “We’re so close—but we’re scared. We can’t build enough rafts for all of us to leave. That’s a fact. So now barely any of us have gone. In here, we might not have food, but they’ll find us eventually. We have beds, we have each other, we have electricity. Out there? We still won’t have food, and we’ll be all alone in the middle of a—an impact winter.”

  I stop recording.

  “We should go,” he repeats. Then he shakes his head. “Nowhere to go.”

  • • •

  Heleen helps me avoid questions from the other survivors and staff. I’m still shaking from the ladder by the time the hatch opens and the cold air hits me.

  I let my flashlight sweep over the scooter. Dirty, but intact. I’d almost worried someone would break the locks while they had me distracted downstairs.

  “I know no one from your ship will come.” Heleen stares into the dark, the goggles hiding her eyes again. Lightning flashes in the distance. It’s storming more often than ever. “But if they can help at all, we need medical supplies and food. There have been others from Amsterdam helping us out, with scooters like yours. Can we send them to pick things up?”

  I’d started to climb onto my scooter, but that makes me freeze mid-movement. “A Moroccan couple? Samira and Nordin?”

  “You know them?” Her goggles twitch, which might be a frown or raised eyebrows, I can’t tell.

  “When did you see them?”

  “Just this morning. Samira has been helping our doctor. They’re coming again tomorrow morning. So you know them? Can I send them to your ship?”

  The relief catches me off guard. I drop ungracefully into the scooter’s seat. “No. Tell them to meet me at our usual place and time. Please. If anyone else finds out about the ship, I’ll get in trouble.”

  Heleen hands me my backpack. “We wouldn’t want that.”

  “I’ve got . . . it’s not much, but . . .” I search the bag’s side pockets and hold out the protein bars.

  She takes them. “Good luck. You know, out there.”

  She tips her head skyward. I don’t follow the direction of her gaze. I know what’s up there, and it’s nothing but darkness. I focus instead on the way she holds the protein bars. She cradles them like something precious, something fragile.

  I should leave.

  “Aren’t you going to . . . Don’t you want to come on board? Don’t you want the scooter? I don’t understand. If I were you, I’d have spent this entire time begging for a chance.”

  Again, that twitch of her goggles. “Would it help if I begged?”

  “Anyone else would tip me overboard and take this scooter straight east.”

  “I wouldn’t tip you overboard. I’d drag you into this hatch, then take the scooter straight east.” Heleen smiles. It’s brief and hard. I think it’s the first smile I’ve seen on her. “If I survive, it won’t be at anyone else’s expense. That’s not the way I want us to go out.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  IRIS TOLD ME TO STOP BY THE PLAYGROUND where I found her. She’d left a distraction for the guards there, something to help me sneak the baby past them.

  I spot it at the top of the slide. Round, white, weighed down with a chunk of rock. A lid from one of the blue barrels. One side is cracked.

  Iris said she’d searched for barrels in the same location she’d found the other one. I guess this was all she found. I don’t have much hope of finding any more barrels, but seeing evidence that one of them is ruined beyond repair still stings.

  I slide the lid under my feet and set course for the Nassau.

  “And?” Iris finds me in the loading bay the moment I’ve dragged myself past the engineers and guards. “Did you . . . ?”

  I show her the cracked lid. “It distracted them.”

  “But—”

  She stretches her neck, staring at my backpack. Right. The baby. I minutely shake my head. I move into the hallway as a cart whizzes by. “Baby’s gone. They . . . people at the shelter . . .” I’d prepared for what I would say to Heleen, even if it amounted to wasted time, but on the way back, I hadn’t prepared at all. Anke will either understand I couldn’t find her niece or she won’t. I doubt the way I say it will make a difference. “I’ll send you a video. You’ll see.” I wake my tab and slide the file to hers.

  Iris accepts without looking. “Are you OK?”

  “Tired, is all.” A weak smile. We’re silent for the rest of the walk to our cabin. I sit on the edge of a desk chair as Iris opens the video. I’m tempted to fall onto my bed and sleep, except I’m covered in grime, and I should wait for Iris to finish watching. And we’ll need to tell Anke, and I should ask how Mom is doing, and forget about that kid looking at the group by the wall . . .

  A moan builds in the back of my throat.

  “Are you sure you’re OK?” Iris says softly.

  I’m rocking, I realize. Not just swaying, but lurching back and forth, straight-backed one second and practically horizontal the next. The movement makes the chair whine. And I’m gripping my own torso, nails digging into the fabric of my coat. I should stop. I should ask Iris about Mom. But moving like this helps keep the thoughts at bay, lets me focus on the shifting, roiling pressure and relief, like that of shrugging into a soft robe after coming inside from the rain, or turning down the volume after it’s been screeching in my ears for hours. I don’t want to stop, don’t want to bother with normal and useful and Denise with a mission for a while, just back, forth, back, forth . . .

  “Denise?”

  “I can’t talk to Anke.”

  “You’re more than just tired. What’s going on?”

  I dial back my movements a bit at a time. Throw off the robe. Twist the volume knob back up. “I can’t talk to Anke,” I repeat. My voice hitches. “She’ll . . .” Everything rushes back in and knots up inside me. All I want to do is move again, but Iris seems so relieved that I’m talking to her that I hold myself rigid.

  “She won’t tell anyone about Mom. She’s not the only one with blackmail material. We have that video she recorded for her sister, and I recorded Anke and me talking earlier today. If we get kicked out for bringing in Mom, she’ll get the same treatment for trying to bring her niece on board—not to mention the blackmail, lying to the staff, Max messing with the cameras . . .” Iris smiles grimly. “Don’t worry, I’ll be the one to tell her what you found. And she’ll keep Mom hidden.”

  “Iris?”

  She’s already on her way out. She turns by the door.

  “In the background of the video, you could see the shelter. What did you think?”

  “I thought I saw more melanin, wrinkles, and wheelchairs in that one room than on the entire Nassau.” She scoffs. “You were there, though. What did you think?”

  I’m starting to rock again, though more gently this time. “It’s better than I thought. People were calm. They were just . . . waiting. It’s worse than I thought, too.”

  “Why?”

  I can’t put my finger on it. I’d expected some pretty bad things. Not breast-feeding mothers, not kids playing with Legos. “I guess because I’m seeing it now.” No. That’s not right. “Because . . . it’s worse because it’s better. They’re waiting for something that I don’t think is coming.” My words shrivel into nothing.

  “You thought they’d be despairing.”

  “They should despair. They’re going to die.”

  “Yeah?” Iris leans against the doorframe.

  “Ships like the Nassau are leaving Earth for a reason.”

  “Yeah. The odds of survival are better. Living on a ship is a lot more comfortable. And it’s easier, sometimes, to leave and start anew—especially since we’re delegating that part to later generations.”

  “Which leaves the people here . . . with what? The Nassau won’t help. N
o one’s come from the east yet. Even if help did come, no one would prioritize these people. They have only Samira and Nordin. They think they have me.”

  “Samira and Nordin—your friends? The ones who didn’t show up yesterday?”

  “They’re fine, apparently. But they can help only so much.”

  “People can survive a lot, y’know. Samira and Nordin seem to be OK. People in that shelter are doing better than either of us thought. Mom survived the airport. Anke’s family may be fine, too. They could be walking on dry land right now and wishing people had followed them.”

  “Even if it’s dry, it’s dark and cold and there’s no food—”

  “People can survive a lot,” she repeats.

  “The end of the world?” I ask.

  “The end of one world. Humans have been around for a long time. We’ve been through a lot of ends of the world. We can handle a comet.”

  “It’s not just the comet. Acid rain and soot from wildfires are killing the plant life and poisoning the water. That rain and volcanic eruptions will turn the air toxic. Dust is going to block the sun completely for at least a year. Once it’s back out, we’ll have worse to deal with; the ozone layer must be gone, which will result in years of ultraviolet radiation. It’s cold now, but it’s going to get hotter. Too hot. Dinosaurs were around a lot longer than we were, and they couldn’t survive an impact, either.”

  “Well, birds did,” Iris says. “Snakes. Crocodiles. Bees. Sharks. Platypuses. Frogs. That impact was bigger than this one and, God, it sounds silly when you’re talking about comets and volcanoes and earthquakes, but humans are smart, Denise. We know what’s happening, and that makes all the difference. We prepared. We engineered plants to need barely any sun, to grow in a matter of weeks. We were ready to colonize other planets before we ever knew about the comet. A lot of people are dead, and more will die, yeah.”

  She hesitates. Studies me.

  “But a lot will live, too.”

  Earth means death.

  That’s what I told myself for the hundredth time as I watched the vet’s hands on that Wednesday in October. He stroked the cat’s head. She purred, but it didn’t mean she was comfortable: her eyes were wide, her ears flat, and she pressed her belly to the table.