More Than This (20 page)

She glances at Tomasz, then back at Seth. “We’re not sure,” she says carefully.

“But you have an idea.”

She nods. “The things you dream. They’re important?”

“Yes,” Seth says. “More than I want them to be.”

“Some of it is good,” Tomasz says. “But good in painful way.”

Seth nods.

“But that, all that –” Regine makes a gesture in the air, capturing in a single twist of her fingers all the dreams he’s had –“all that is not your whole life.”

“What?”

“There’s more. There’s much, much more.” She gets a grim set to her mouth. “And you’ve forgotten it.”

For some reason Seth can’t quite put a finger on, this makes him angry. “Don’t tell me I’ve forgotten,” he says, fierce enough to surprise everyone, even himself. “I remember too much, is the problem. If I could forget some of these things, then . . .”

“Then what?” Regine says. “You wouldn’t have
drowned
?” She says the word with a sarcastic snap, challenging him with her eyes.

“Did you fall down those stairs,” he hears himself saying. “Or were you pushed?”

“Whoa,” Tomasz says, taking a step back. “Something has happened. I have missed it. Why are we fighting?”

“We’re not fighting,” Regine says. “We’re getting to know each other.”

“People who are getting to know each other share information,” Seth says. “All you’re giving me are riddles and hints about how much more you know than I do.” He stands, his voice rising with him. “Why do I have a brand-new notch in my head?”

Tomasz starts to answer, “It is not brand –” but Seth keeps going.

“Why did I crawl out of a coffin in the house where I grew up?”

Regine looks surprised. “You grew up here? In this house?”

But Seth is barely listening. “And where is everyone else? Who are you, anyway? How do I know you’re not working with that thing in the van?”

This causes a lot more outrage than he was expecting.

“We are NOT!” Tomasz shouts.

“You don’t know anything!” Regine says.

“Then tell me!”

“Fine!” she says. “Tomasz isn’t the first person I saw here. He was the second.”

Seth feels strangely victorious. “So there
are
others?”

“Only the one, before I found Tomasz.”

“And thank the Holy Mother she did,” Tomasz says, nodding vigorously. “Was in very bad way.”

“But before then,” Regine says, “there was another. A woman. I knew her one day.
One day.
And then I watched her die. She pushed me to safety and let the Driver catch her so it wouldn’t catch me. I watched it kill her. That baton has some kind of charge in it. It kills you. And then the Driver takes your body away.”

Tomasz frowns at Seth. “She does not like to talk about it.”

“So, screw you,” Regine continues. “How do we know
you’re
not –”

She stops.

Because they’ve noticed the sound.

A distant purring, a sound of the wind that isn’t the wind.

The sound of an engine.

Growing louder as it approaches.

They turn to the windows, though the blinds are still down and nothing can be seen of the street beyond.

“No,” Regine says, standing up. “It never follows this far. If we get away, it always stops.”

The sound of the engine grows louder, two, maybe three streets away.

And getting closer.

Tomasz scowls at Seth. “You were shouting! It heard you!”

“No, it didn’t,” Regine says. “It’s just searching, street by street, trying to find us. Now, be quiet.”

They’re silent, but there’s a shift in the sound as it obviously turns a corner –

And starts driving down the road to Seth’s house.

But Seth is thinking.

They only heard the engine after he spoke the words. After he accused them of working with it.

And now here it is.

I did this,
he thinks.
Did I do this?

“Our footprints are all over,” Tomasz says. “It will know we are here.”

“It’s driving,” Regine says. “It may pass by too quickly to notice –”

But she doesn’t finish.

Because the engine has come to a stop right outside.

Seth feels Tomasz’s hand slip into his own, gripping it the way Owen did every time they had to cross a street. Seth can feel the tension vibrating up from the little, stubby fingers, can see the nails that are bitten painfully down to the quick, can see the wide-open, terrified eyes looking back up from Tomasz’s face.

So much like Owen.

“It’ll pass,” Regine says. “It’ll drive on and out. Just nobody move, okay?”

They don’t move. Neither does the sound of the engine.

“What is it
doing
?” Tomasz asks, his voice a desperate whisper.

And Seth sees again the craziness of his hair, an avalanche of wiry tangle. Again, just like Owen’s. Seth looks at Regine, his mind racing.

Everything about this world has felt small. Everything has felt like he was hiding in a tiny pocket of a place with walls that pressed in from every side, in the form of memories he couldn’t shake, a burnt-out wasteland that made a border, and now these two, showing up just in time to stop him from going any farther, bringing him back to this same stupid house at the very moment he tried to leave it for good, and who knows, maybe even bringing this van after them.

“Something about this isn’t right,” he says.

“What?” Tomasz asks.

Seth squeezes Tomasz’s hand, then lets it go. “I’m going to find out what it is.”

“You’re
what
?” Regine says.

He starts to cross the sitting room toward the blinds. “I’m going to check and see what’s happening.”

Tomasz moves over to Regine and holds her hand now.

Seth stops and looks at them curiously. “You’re not here, are you?” he says, the words coming out, unexpected.

Regine frowns. “Beg pardon?”

“I don’t think you’re really here. I don’t think
any
of this is really here.”

The engine still thrums outside.

“If we’re not here,” Regine says, holding his stare, “then neither are you.”

“You think that’s an answer?” Seth says. “You think that’s proof?”

“I don’t care what you think. If you let that thing see us, we’re dead.”

But Seth is shaking his head. “I feel like I’m beginning to understand. I’m finally beginning to understand what this place is.” He turns back to the window. “And how it works.”

“What are you doing, Mr. Seth?” Tomasz says. “You said you were just going to check.”

“Seth, please,” Regine says, and he hears her say to Tomasz, “Go, run, there’s got to be a back way –”

“There’s nothing to run from,” Seth says. “There’s nothing here that can hurt me, is there?”

With an almost casual swipe, he pulls up the blinds. The sun blasts into the dim room, and Seth squints in the brightness –

And the Driver punches a fist through the window, slamming it into Seth’s chest, sending him flying across the room with seemingly impossible force.

He lands in a tumble at the feet of Regine and Tomasz, who are fleeing to the kitchen. His chest feels as if it’s had a hole punched through it, knocking every bit of air out of his lungs. The Driver smashes out the rest of the glass in the window, throws away the blind in a violently efficient motion and steps over the low window ledge into the sitting room, its feet hitting the floor with a dead
thump
that feels unnaturally heavy.

It stands there, arms out slightly, feet apart, its sleek featureless head angled so it seems to be looking down at Seth, still curled on the floor, struggling for breath. He can hear Regine and Tomasz as they battle with the door to the back garden, but there’s only high fences and deep grass out there. Nowhere for them to run away from this faceless, horrible, man-shaped
thing.

There’s no escape. For any of them.

The Driver moves toward Seth, its steps booming against the floorboards. As it walks, it makes a reaching motion with its arm, and the black, steely baton seems to just appear in its hand. The Driver swings it once, as if to test it. It crackles in the air, emitting a dangerous-sounding
hum,
tiny spots of light flowing from it as it moves.

Seth’s thoughts jar and tumble as he pushes himself back.
What a stupid time to be wrong,
he thinks, and
Here it is, my death
and
They just have to pull on it to make the lock work
and
Will it hurt? Oh, God, will it hurt?
and he’s trying to scoot away and the Driver comes on, implacable, baton at the ready –

He is dimly aware of Tomasz in the kitchen saying, “We cannot, we
cannot,
” and Regine calling out “Tommy!” but all he can see is the merciless, empty face looking back at him, coming for him –

“No,” Seth starts to say –

The Driver leaps, raising the baton to bring it down with a final, terrifying authority –

And is knocked to the ground by a full bookcase tumbling into it.

Seth cries out in surprise, but Tomasz is already running from where he overbalanced the bookcase as Regine scoots her hands under Seth’s arms to help lift him. They drag him into the kitchen, and Seth can see the Driver throwing the bookcase off itself with improbable strength. Tomasz slams the kitchen door behind them, and Regine helps him tip the refrigerator against it.

“Do you have a key?” Tomasz shouts, pointing at the door to the deck. “Please say you have a key!”

“It’s open,” Seth gasps, his chest still throbbing. “Pull on it, wiggle the switch.”

There’s a crash as the Driver throws its weight against the kitchen door, nearly knocking the refrigerator away on its first try, but Regine’s already got the back door open. She grabs Tomasz’s hand and yanks him outside, yelling, “Come on!” to Seth.

He staggers to his feet as a second crash comes, knocking the top half of the kitchen door from its hinges. But it holds. For the moment. Gasping, still hunched over at the pain in his chest, Seth dashes out the back door after them.

They’ve already disappeared into the grass by the time he makes it onto the deck. He can see Regine’s head above the stalks, but Tomasz is only a current running through them, like fish near the surface of a lake.

Seth stumbles past the heap of silvery bandages – still there, still where he left them – and into the grass as he hears a more definitive crash from inside the house.

“Tell me there’s a way out,” Regine shouts back at him.

Seth doesn’t answer.

“Shit,” he hears her say.

They stop next to the ancient bomb shelter, its door long gone, its innards piled high with shards of pots and about eighteen million coat hangers. The back fence is high and wooden with no easy place for footholds, and the embankment on the other side only runs steeply up to another fence, impossibly high with barbed wire across the top.

“Where exactly
is
this?” Regine says.

“The prison grounds,” Seth gasps. “There’s another fence beyond that and another beyond that –” He stops because Regine and Tomasz are looking at each other in surprise. “What?”

“The
prison
?” Tomasz says.

“Yeah,” Seth says. “So what?”

“Oh, hell,” Regine says. “Oh hell, oh hell, oh hell.”

“HERE!” Tomasz shouts, pulling at a loose board on the lower corner of the fence. Regine and Seth go to help him, Seth wincing as he bends down, and they yank back two, then three boards. Tomasz scrambles through to the other side. They pull off a fourth and Regine pushes Seth through.

He turns to help her.

But she’s looking back at the deck.

Where the Driver now stands.

Through the hole in the fence, they can see her looking at it, see her turn back to face them.

See her eyes calculating.

See her not moving.

“What are you doing?” Tomasz says, alarmed.

“Go, both of you.” She looks at Seth. “Take care of Tommy.”

“NO!” Tomasz shouts, lunging back for the hole, but Seth instinctively stops him.

“Regine, that’s crazy!” he says.

“I’ll slow it down,” she says. “You can get away.”

“Regine!” Tomasz cries, pulling against Seth’s arms.