“Do you hear something?” Emmy asks quietly, her face tense. I shake my head.
“Nothing,” Robert says, just as quietly.
Max stops beside me when we reach the car, but I hold back. I can’t even bring myself to look at him. I step back as he reaches for the door handle, and then turn away as I hear the click of the door.
“OK,” says Emmy. “Great. While you get the charger I’ll try to fish the generator out of the van.”
I don’t want to stay with Max, so my feet follow Emmy over to the van: the least bad alternative. Its position makes it look vaguely menacing, a wounded animal lying on its side to regain its strength.
“I don’t know how we’ll get inside,” says Emmy, her voice flat but pragmatic.
I know what she means. The van had been parked with its rear angled toward the other van, so its back doors took the brunt of the explosion. It’s so dented and blackened that I’m seriously doubting if we’ll ever get them open.
“I can try,” I say, against my better judgement. “If not I can try to climb in from the driver’s seat.”
Yes, the one up in the air.
I’m expecting a protest, but she just nods.
I reach tentatively for the handle, which is still hot. I try to pull it, but it won’t budge.
“OK,” I say to Emmy—no more, no less. No more is needed.
I walk around to the front of the van. The side is higher than I’d expected. There’s no chance I’ll be able to get up there myself.
I look for something to stand on, but Emmy is already lugging a semi-charred tire my way. Once she’s next to me she turns the melted clump of rubber onto one side and holds out her hand for me to take.
“Thanks,” I say, my eyes lingering on hers a second too long. I hadn’t meant to; I just get stuck, somehow, and she does, too.
I don’t know what we’re saying to one another.
I put my foot on what’s left of the wheel and lift myself up. I almost lose my balance, but manage to get a hand on the door handle. Then I pull myself up, kicking the tire for an extra push. The side of the van is smooth and covered in soot, which smears itself all over my clothes as I somehow manage to haul myself up so that I’m sitting next to the driver’s door.
I get onto my knees and pull at the door. With gravity working against it it’s surprisingly heavy, but at least it isn’t stuck in its frame. Using both my arms, I lift it high enough for the door hold mechanism to kick in, then worm my way down inside.
It’s like a fun house for grown-ups in there: a normal, familiar setting turned ninety degrees the wrong way. There are things scattered everywhere, and the hatches have flown open, sending trash and debris raining down in the van. The passenger door is strewn with old stumps of pencils, and the coffee cup from the journey up. And there, beside them, lie the papers I found in the church. For just a second I hesitate, but then I fold them up as carefully as I can and stuff them into my back pocket to take with me.
The small window between the driver’s seat and the cargo compartment has been blown out—either in the explosion or when the van flipped—but the empty window frame is completely blocked. Something has wedged itself up against the opening, and it doesn’t want to shift. I assume it’s a tripod or something.
Is this all that’s left of my dream?
No. I can’t think like that now, can’t let the sadness set in. Because with that will come the fear. The shame. The anxiety. Black, oozing tar.
I have to focus on what needs to get done.
I shift backward so the dashboard is against my back, then put my feet up against whatever it is that’s blocking the opening, and press as hard as I can. For a moment I think my back’s about to give way—my muscles are strained to the point of snapping, and the sweat is beading on my forehead—but then a split second later the whole shebang suddenly shoots out of the way like a cannonball. There’s a huge clatter as the heap blocking the empty window frame subsides, and I instinctively curl up with my arms over my head.
“Alice!” I hear Emmy cry outside.
“I’m OK!” I call back, surprised she would raise her voice.
I squeeze in through the hole and feel my way around the piles of equipment. The windshield cracked in an elaborate star pattern in the blast, and was then covered by a layer of soot from the fire, so it lets hardly any light into the back compartment. I can’t tell what it is I’m crawling over, only that it’s plastic and metal, sharp corners and wires. I wonder how much of it held in the explosion. Presumably very little.
The generator is a small, sturdy cube, and I do my best to grope around for something of that shape. One of my feet slips, and my knee knocks against something sharp, so hard that I see stars. I whimper quietly and grab my knee. My pants have held, at least. The knock can’t have broken the skin.
I wish I could see better.
I consider getting out my cell to try to use the flashlight, but then I remember my dead battery. That’s why I’m in here, duh, to try to get out the generator to charge Max’s phone. To get out of here. Away from this fucking place.
And then, in the
