pool. Steam rises from the blood in serpentine curls. I have a crazy thought that if I could press that hot concrete to her wound, it would seal her shut.
“Don’t you dare die,” I tell her.
The Swiss laughs. “You cannot save anyone. Not England. Not this creature. Not yourself.”
“Don’t die,” I say over and over, all the way up the gangplank onto an abandoned yacht. In a game of rock, paper, scissors, fiberglass beats metal. Man-made outliving earth-made once again.
One half of the handcuffs encircles my wrist, the other snaps around the rail. My captor unloads Esmeralda’s cargo and stows it belowdecks.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m going home with my child. To build a new Switzerland.”
But not me. He’ll cast me overboard the moment I outlive my purpose. I wonder if he means to let me live long enough to be a wet nurse to my own baby?
Irini isn’t visible from here, so I twist around until I can see her, ignoring the metal biting into my skin.
My face is hot and wet; I can’t tell where the sweat ends and the tears begin.
The Swiss leaves, taking Esmeralda with him. She tags along dutifully.
“Don’t you hurt her.” My lips are dry and cracked and it hurts to speak. The skin splits and bleeds the more animated I become. He says nothing, just keeps on leaving. I know he’ll be back, because I have what he wants.
It’s just me and Irini now, or maybe it’s me and Irini’s ghost. Is she still alive? I can’t tell. The sun sears my retinas until I’m seeing in dot matrix. I bow my head, try to shield my face from the relentless rays. My sunburn has sunburn. If I’m not careful, I’ll wind up with an infection. I almost laugh, because on a scale of one to catastrophe, bacteria rates somewhere in the negatives.
I don’t realize I’ve been asleep until the Swiss’s yelling jerks me awake. He’s pacing the promenade, waving his gun, ranting in his own tongue. Using my hand as a shield, I start looking for the source of his anger.
Irini. She’s gone. All that’s left of her is a browning stain. The sun and the thirsty concrete have sucked away the moisture. But there’s no evidence of the woman who bled so they could drink. My body shivers as I contemplate what might have happened. Did something drag her away? If so, how close did I come to being consumed in my sleep? Or did she escape? No, not possible: her injury was fatal. There’s no way. There’s just no way. But a little voice reminds me that the rules of biology are different now. Things exist now that didn’t before.
The Swiss slides the gangplank into place. The boat shakes under his footfalls.
“Where is she?” His veins are like engorged worms under his pink skin.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“How could you not? Were you not right here?” He jabs the air with his finger.
“I… was… asleep.”
“Stupid bitch.”
The boat shakes and heaves again. He returns dragging a bulging tarp. This he stashes down below with the other supplies.
“I’m going to find her,” he says. “If she is not dead already, I am going to kill her properly.”
TWENTY-THREE
He returns near sunset with more things. Baby things. Clothes and diapers and cream to prevent tiny cheeks from chafing. Things I haven’t had time to think about because I was so focused on surviving.
He holds up a dress, yellow, sprinkled with white flowers. “What do you think?”
The words stick to the walls of my throat. All I can do is look away.
He brings food. Cold meat from cans, a combination of pigs’ lips and assholes and whatever other remnants were lying around the processing plant. Cold vegetables, also from cans, with labels I can’t read. Depicted on these slips of sticky paper are families smiling so cheerfully, they can’t be real. Who smiles like that? Nobody I’ve known in this new life. I slurp down the juice after I’m done chewing the chunks. For dessert he has tiny chocolate cakes wrapped in plastic. I eat these greedily, licking the plastic clean when I’m done. I’m a shameless and wanton eater. I don’t care what he thinks of my manners. When all that’s left is the taste of chocolate in my mouth, I ask about Irini.
“Did you find her?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“She was probably eaten by animals. Or worse.”
“Or she escaped.”
“Unlikely. Not with a wound such as that,” he says. “How is my baby?”
“My baby is fine.”
“May I?” He holds out his hand as if to touch me. Suddenly polite.
“Touch us and I’ll cut you.” Cold. Calm. Truthful.
He laughs like I’m kidding.
“I thought for certain your womb was empty, like that stupid girl’s.”
“When are we leaving?”
“Soon,” he says.
“What are you waiting for?”
“My baby.”
I won’t let him take my baby. I won’t. Never. I’d die first, and that’s what he wants. A plan. I need a plan. I have to get away now before it’s too late and I’m dead and my child is his.
The thought is unfair but I can’t control it; Nick has no way of knowing we’re here. The thing bobs around in my head like a speech balloon in a comic. It’s not supposed to be this way—for any of us. But as people used to say in the old days, when there were enough of us to create and perpetuate slang: It is what it is. And that’s what I have to work with.
He leaves just after dawn. Gone again to get things for a child that isn’t his. This time he cuffs me to the single leg that holds up a tabletop in this tiny room below the deck. He empties my backpack onto the carpet, picking out anything I might use as a weapon. Good-bye, nail clippers, tweezers, and an old dressmaker’s pin that’s been rusting in a side pocket for maybe ten years. He locks the cabin’s door. I know he’s worried Irini isn’t dead, despite his protests and his faux certainty. Nothing is certain anymore—not even tomorrow. I wouldn’t even put money on the sun setting this evening.
I’m on the floor of a boat surrounded by everything I have in this world: old clothes, maps, and Nick’s letter. What can I do?
The carpet peels away easily enough. I don’t pull up much, just enough to figure out how the table’s attached to the floor. Bolts. They’re on as tight as tight can be.
What do I have? A big fat nothing.
Pain cuts across my back. I change positions, lie back, breathe deep. Junior rolls with me. I stare up at the underside of the table. It’s crafted from cheap fiberboard that flakes when I scrape my fingernail over it. There’s a lot number scrawled on there. Or maybe some secret code meant for someone long dead.
