The Participants (11 page)

His warm breath tickled her neck. “He
wouldn’t need Observers if He didn’t want our input.”

Elza shifted closer to his warmth. “She
wants our experiences, not our opinions.”

The hand around her shifted. “Then why
aren’t we supposed to participate?”

“I don’t know, Hess.”

His lips brushed her neck. She leaned into
it. “Hess, I’m still cold.”

Quebec escorted him into her room at the Butler
Days Inn, then released one of his hands to cuff him to the bed.
When she finished securing him, Quebec went to the room’s table,
placed her gun down, and retrieved implements from a suitcase
already in the room. All without saying a word. She hadn’t spoken
except to silence him since the car.

With the assistance of a tiny screwdriver,
the handgun came apart in her hands. Quebec drizzled oil onto a rag
and several Q-tips, then began to thoroughly scrub the weapon. Her
every movement was deliberate in the extreme, almost inhumanly
economical.

“
What kind of gun is
it?”

His other questions had only tightened the
skin around her eyes, but she answered this one. “It’s a Ruger
Security Six. I’m firing three fifty-seven hollow points through
it.”

“Do you have to clean it very often?”

“I clean it after every trip to the range.
And sometimes just to help me think.”

Zack looked around the hotel room. Besides
two suitcases and the cleaning kit on the table, Quebec had left no
mark on the place. “Do you go to the range a lot?”

“Most people would say so.”

“How often do you go?”

Quebec dropped the rag and began to rapidly
reassemble her pistol. “I try to put three hundred rounds downrange
every week.”

“Is it expensive?”

“Doesn’t matter. I can get as much money as
I need.”

“How?”

“Casinos,” Quebec said.

“What, you count cards?”

“I count cards, read expressions, do
probability analyses. And when I win big, I make sure it is
statistically likely so I avoid notice. Casinos are like ATM’s to
me.” Quebec tightened a final screw, loaded six rounds into the
cylinder, and snapped it closed with a flick of her wrist.

Now that she’s talking . .
. .
“So what are we going to
do?”

Quebec dug into a suitcase and brought out a
slim laptop. “I haven’t decided yet. We should leave the area,
change identities, and lay low. That’s what we should do.”

“Then why aren’t we doing that?”

Her fingers drummed on the table. “Because I
don’t think I can walk away from them. They deserve the very worst
I can do to them.”

“I know.” Zack thought of Lacey, begging him
to save her and the baby. “I know they do.”

“But not the darkness,” Quebec said, voice
soft. She looked towards him, making eye contact for the first time
since the car.

He dropped his eyes. “I
don’t know what they did to you, but you can’t do
that
to
them.”

“That’s what they did to me, Zack. Locked me
away in the dark. Me and the man I loved. It’s impossible to know
how long I was there before the world ended. All I can say is it
was too long. Did you know I can’t even ride an elevator? Every
time I think of stepping inside, I imagine the thing breaking down
and trapping me inside. Try dealing with that in New York
City.”

Zack cleared his throat. “Does night bother
you?”

“I’m not a big fan of the dark.” Quebec
stood and walked to stand beside where he lay on the bed. She held
out her wrist to display an analog watch with neon hands and hour
markers. “My watch is made with tritium. The hands and hour markers
will glow day and night for over ten years.” She undid the clasp
and removed the watch. Quebec leaned over him to wrap it around the
wrist of his free hand. Her dark hair tickled his face as she
fastened it.

“Now you don’t have to worry about the
dark,” she said.

When Quebec stood, Zack released a breath he
didn’t realize he had been holding. The scent of her, floral fabric
softener and fruit body lotion mingled with gunpowder and oil,
lingered over him. “Won’t you need the watch?”

Her eyes were steady on him. “I think it’s
enough not being alone.”

“I’m not him,” Zack said.

Quebec turned her back on him and went to
her laptop. “I’m trying to find their base of operations. It will
be somewhere close, but remote enough that no one will interfere
with them. They haven’t had much time to set up in the area, so
they’re probably squatting in an unoccupied hunting lodge or
abandoned building. Do you know of anywhere they could hole up? It
would have to be out of screaming range of neighbors.”

“I know where they are.”

Her back stiffened. “You were there? How did
you escape?”

“Someone named Ingrid helped me out.”

“Ingrid? Are you sure it was her? Maybe I’ll
go easy on her for that.”

“Ingrid was a man.”

“Well, she was a woman the first time we met
her,” Quebec said.

“I am not Hess.”

In a sudden motion, Quebec
swiped her laptop from the table, sending it crashing to the floor.
“You’re not Hess? Then why does everyone think you are? Do you
think we’re stupid?” Her voice grew shriller. “There are a million
different ways for us to identify each other. We know. So please
stop the act.
Please
.”

“I’m sorry, Quebec.” Zack closed his eyes to
block out her pain. “Was he your husband?”

“Husband
?” She shook her head. “Never my husband. Never. Marriage is
what these people do to ease their insecurities. They try to bind
love in a contract. We never needed that. You chose me world by
world, moment by moment, again and again. We’ve spent lifetimes
together. I don’t even know who I am without you.” Quebec wrestled
herself back under control. “Who else is with them?”

“Erik. A guy named Drake. I heard them
mention someone named Griff, but I never met him.”

“So Erik, Drake, Griff, Ingrid, and Kerzon.
I might be able to handle the five of them.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.
“You’re not exactly Rambo.”

“I have enough muscles to pull a trigger. It
takes over five minutes to regenerate after a death. If I can
surprise them, then my only trouble will be restraining the bodies
before they wake up.”

“They were going to bury me in the ground.
What if they do that to you? It would be a lot worse than getting
on an elevator. And Erik has a few kinks that almost make you want
to go underground.” Zack raised his chin. “I won’t tell you where
they are unless you promise not to go after them.”

She bent to retrieve her laptop. “I can find
them without you.”

“They’re not where you think they are.”

“Then I go back to your trailer and wait for
them to pick up their truck.”

“Enough people have been hurt already,” Zack
said.

“Your wife?”

“Her name’s Lacey. Erik threatened to cut
the baby out of her.”

Quebec looked at him. “Do you love her?”

“I like her most of the time.”

“The
baby isn’t yours. Observers are sterile.”

Zack shrugged. “She was pregnant before I
met her. What does it matter which body made the baby? Lacey needed
someone. Her baby will need someone. Why shouldn’t I do something
useful while I’m stuck here?”

The hint of a smile played at the corner of
her lips. “What do you see when you look at these people? Do you
dream of a better world for them?”

“They make such a mess of their lives,” Zack
said. “But they’re happy with it. I don’t understand that. I wish I
could, but I can’t.”

Quebec nodded, serious again. “Sometimes
happiness seems impossible.”

“Promise me you won’t go after them.”

“Show me where they are and I promise to
stay away.”

The late winter snow was beautiful as it twirled
to the ground. Elza watched the frosted landscape around their
tent, breathing in the chill air. It was almost time for them to
leave the north, but not quite yet. The world promised more days of
snow, more long, cold nights.

Hess emerged from the tent with a long, thin
spear in his hands. “I’ll be quick.” He bent to kiss her, wrapping
her tightly in his arms.

“The fire will be ready to light when you
get back,” she said.

They stood there a moment,
eyes locked. Since the day they agreed to separate once they
traveled south of the mountains, their partings had grown longer.
Hess bent to kiss her once more. When he straightened, she rested
her forehead on his chest.
This needs to
end.

“I better go now if we want to eat,” Hess
said.

“Hurry back.”

The way he looked at her in the moment
before turning away . . . . Elza watched him disappear through the
frosty trees. They still had weeks before they could begin their
journey. Maybe a month to cross the mountains. Then their paths
parted. They would stop whatever it was they were doing and return
to Observing.

Trying not to think, Elza swept their stone
hearth free of snow with the branch of a nearby shrub, then set out
in search of firewood. The area around their tent was picked clean,
so she made a large circle to gather fallen branches. Their
existence in the frozen land had become routine.

Maybe we should visit the
sea before we go our own ways. What is a few more months compared
to the hundreds of years we have lived?
She shook her head. It had to end soon. Before one of them
said something to make things serious. Though their conversations
touched on every other topic under the sun, they managed to avoid
that one subject. Whatever was between them had to remain
unsaid.

She stacked the wood in a dry spot on each
trip back to their camp. When she had enough to cook several fish,
Elza arranged the sticks and used a flint knife to create a pile of
kindling. Then she filled a wooden bowl with snow and placed it
where the heat of the fire could melt it later. There were few
edible plants available and no palatable ones, so their diet
consisted almost entirely of meat and fish. When she had tried
collecting acorns in the fall, Hess had informed her that the ones
this far north were too bitter to eat. She had quickly realized he
understated the case against their edibility.

She sat to wait for Hess. As she did often
lately, Elza reflected on her long life. The moment creation sprang
into motion had been glorious, coming awake full of glorious
purpose. Everything had fascinated her. The false memories of the
identity provided her by the Creator were dim shadows incomparable
to the experiences she accumulated every moment.

In the early days, nothing could perturb
her. Elza had walked through life knowing everything was a
temporary illusion, the Creator’s grand dream. People lived their
transient lives and died without ever grasping the truth of their
existence. She had felt so privileged.

Over the years, something had stolen the joy
of her calling. Perhaps it had been enduring the constant
rejections of the creatures she was sent to observe. Perhaps it had
been the tedious monotony of centuries. Perhaps it had been the
gravitation of the world towards brutality. Or maybe all of it
together was to blame. There had been no single dramatic event to
change her, only lifetimes of hollow memories. Despite enduring
beatings and deaths over the years, it wasn’t until recently that
she had truly experienced drama.

What if Hess hadn’t been
there to stop the men?
The men would have
done what they wanted to her, of course. She could endure anything,
but not without consequences.
Would that
have been the dramatic event that changed me? Like Hess had with
his sister’s death? If I live long enough, isn’t it inevitable that
something will happen that I can’t handle?

The wind picked up and Elza moved to avoid
the snow-filled gusts, going inside the tent where their mingled
scents took her mind in a different direction. Though few enough
men showed interest in her, there had been many owing to the sheer
number of years she lived on the world. Most treated her with
apathy, happy to part ways when the time came. Several had regarded
her as property. A small few had genuinely liked her. But none of
them had looked at her the way Hess did.

If I was just a woman and
he was just a man . . . .
She didn’t
finish the thought. The wind outside howled its loneliness while
Elza waited inside the tent. Hours passed.

Then the entire world began to thrum in an
impossibly deep pitch. With every second that passed, the sensation
grew stronger, as if existence itself were about to shred into a
million slivers. Without knowing how, Elza recognized what
happened. From the moment of Creation, she had known this world was
only the first Iteration of many and that it would end when the sky
opened.

A counterpoint to the deep thrumming began,
a wailing shriek emanating from everything and nothing. The volume
of both increased with every moment, triggering an expectation deep
within her. The ultimate moment of her existence was about to
arrive. It was time to return to the Creator.

The sky opened. To all outward senses,
nothing changed, but to Elza it seemed that the restraints of the
mundane world vanished, ripped away by an unknown force. Nothing
held her to creation. The rumbling and shrieking became louder
still, warning her to leave or be consumed with a world marked for
destruction.

Elza hesitated for just a second, eyes going
to the door of the tent. Then she slipped free of the world to join
the Creator.