The Invasion of the Tearling

“Arnie’s gone.”


Lily focused on the window again and found Greg reflected behind her, though she could not read his expression in the glass. She said nothing, looking ahead now, toward Boston. There was no place for Greg in that journey. He would only get in her way.

“Are you excited, Lil?”

“About what?”

“About Monday.”

Lily’s hand clenched on the handle of a pot, and for a moment she very nearly turned and flung the pot at his head. But her mind cautioned patience. Her aim might not be good enough. Greg had six inches and nearly a hundred pounds on her. She would have one shot only, and she could not afford to miss. She cast along the counter, and her gaze fixed on a large, heavy picture frame, nearly a foot tall, that stood on the windowsill. Photos of their wedding day flashed endlessly over the screen in sparkling pixels; Lily saw herself, only twenty-two years old, covered in yards of white satin, getting ready to cut an enormous tiered cake. Even though her hair was beginning to come down from its elaborate coiffure and Greg’s wretched father stood beside her, she was laughing.

God, what happened?

Greg took a few steps forward, so close now that Lily could feel his breath on the back of her neck. She reached out to touch the picture frame, grasping its edge in her good hand.

“Lil?”

If he tries to fuck me now, she thought, I will go insane. It will be very easy; I’ll just float off, and then none of this will matter, not William Tear or the Blue Horizon or a warehouse down on the Boston port. None of it.

“Lil? Are you excited?”

His hand settled on her shoulder, and Lily whipped around, bringing the frame with her, swinging it sidearm as she would a tennis racket at the club. The frame crunched into the side of Greg’s head, tiny plastic shards flying everywhere, peppering Lily’s hand and arm, and Greg fell sideways, banging his head on the marble counter on the way down, a deep thunk. Lily raised the frame again, ready, but Greg was down for the count, sprawled on his side on the kitchen floor. After a moment, blood began to trickle down his face from his scalp, tiny red dots dripping onto the white tile.

“Well, that’s done,” Lily whispered, unsure whom she was talking to. She thought about checking Greg’s pulse, but couldn’t bring herself to touch him. Moving slowly, as if in a dream, she went upstairs to their bedroom. She pulled out her oldest jeans, the ones she never wore when Greg was around, and a faded black T-shirt. These clothes were still nicer than anything poor people would wear outside the wall, but they were better than nothing and might offer some camouflage. She covered them with a beaten leather jacket she’d had since she was fifteen, a remnant of better times that Lily refused to give away. The Mercedes was an automatic; after a moment’s thought, Lily removed her splints and left them on the dresser. She tapped at the wallscreen, examining maps of the Port of Boston while she dressed. Conley Terminal was a big container facility down near Castle Island, tucked into one of the thousand inlets that seemed to make up the Massachusetts coastline. Public roads, it would be have to be, Highway 84 to the Mass Turnpike. The private roads would be full of Security checkpoints, particularly at night, and when they scanned her chip and found out that she had left her husband behind, it would raise more questions. Lily would have a better chance on public roads … if she even managed to get outside the New Canaan wall at all.

After a bit more searching, she found that condemned property was the province of the Department of the Interior. There were two condemned buildings located on Conley Terminal; only one looked like a warehouse, but Lily mapped each location carefully and sent the maps on to the Mercedes. Belatedly, she realized that these searches were probably going to trip an alarm somewhere at Security, and she had a quick moment of panic before she realized how small a problem that really was, with her husband lying bleeding on the kitchen floor. Even if Greg wasn’t dead, women had been executed for less. Lily went downstairs and grabbed the small codekey with the Mercedes emblem off the hook on the wall. The Mercedes was their third car, the fancy one for emergencies or important visitors. When she held the key up to the light, she found that her hands were shaking. Her driver’s license was still valid, but she hadn’t driven a car since she was eighteen.