“Sixteen days,” I repeated, trying to sound encouraging.
The gun finally lowered slightly. I met the woman’s eyes over the top of the barrel. “Can you still read?” she finally asked.
Moments later, the twins were on either side of me, one with her hands on my shoulders, the other carrying a torch made from a broken branch, guiding me through the woods at a fast walk. The woman with the gun marched beside us. I tried to keep my breathing calm, but I was panicking, Ory. I was sure I still knew how to read, but I hadn’t seen any words for a few days now, since the last time I came across a road sign. What if I only thought I could still read, and then when they put a book or whatever it was they wanted me to decipher in front of my face, none of it made any sense? I’d never really thought about it as a thing I might lose before, but these eight must have forgotten. What if I had, too? I tried to imagine the letters of my name in my head, but the ground was so uneven and we were walking so fast in the darkness that it was all I could do to concentrate on not tripping. Suddenly, ahead of us was a giant RV beneath a draped tarp, parked in a carpet of dried leaves. They had a vehicle! I checked the ground as we approached, but the tracks looked fresh. They weren’t stranded—they’d just driven it off the road to hide it here for the night.
“Here.” The woman with the gun stopped abruptly and put her arm out like a barrier. The twins halted and turned to me. Behind us, I could see the faint glow of their little campfire, and the others hunched around it.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked nervously.
The woman brushed a fly off her shorn head, and nodded at one of the twins. “Up,” she said, and the one holding my arm jogged around to the back of the RV, where there was a little metal ladder attached to its side. She climbed up and struggled with a rope tied to the roof. The other twin stood beside the vehicle, torch held high.
“I don’t—” I started, but then the rope unknotted and the tarp dropped away from the RV in a hissing swoosh, hitting the grass. “Oh,” I murmured, transfixed. I dimly felt myself take a step forward.
Something had been painted across the side of the RV, stretched from front to back over the windows. Huge black letters in all capitals, each stroke as thick as one of my arms. I stared at the bold, curving shapes.
“Who painted this?” I finally asked the twin still on the ground, with the torch. She caught a warning glance from the leader and shook her head instead of answering me, but I could see the anticipation in her expression—they themselves had put it there. This was the only way they could test if I really could read, because even though they couldn’t, they still remembered what this one thing said. “How long ago was this done?” I asked, stalling, but the women were out of patience.
“Ursula,” the twin atop the RV whispered to their leader eagerly. Ursula. I tried to burn the name into my memory with everything I had left.
“Can you read it?” Ursula asked, her voice betraying her nervous hope for the first time. The gun came up again, trained on me. The message was clear. Read it or you won’t remember anything at all.
I nodded vigorously. “I can, I can,” I said. I turned back to the RV and looked at the paint strokes. I have no idea for how much longer, Ory, but for that moment at least, the shapes were still letters, the letters still words, and I could understand them. “It reads New Orleans,” I said.
Orlando Zhang
THE LIGHT BURNED WHEN HE OPENED HIS EYES. A SEARING, blinding pain that went straight into the back of his skull. Ory groaned and closed them again. Flashes came back: he was running, the singing note as a metal bat swung through the air, the deserted campus, the fine dust that covered the empty parking lot as he went down, clawing, kicking, the finder and his men slamming their weapons into his ribs.
Ory’s hands went to his pocket. The wallet was still there. They hadn’t gotten it before he must have driven them off, thank God. The shells, the shotgun, they barely mattered. He still had the photograph of Max.
There was enough light left in the evening sky to get his bearings again. Ory could have, but he didn’t go back to see what he’d done to get away. If he’d survived, maybe so had one of them. And if they hadn’t, he didn’t care.
It took him the rest of the sunset to get back to the pile of sand that had once been their apartment building. Max might not be there, but if she had left any trace of herself at all to follow, he told himself that was where he’d find it.