“Used to be. Now DBC’s a member of me. Hold on, let’s introduce.”
I hear some metallic clicking. A squeaking hinge. A few footsteps. Then the door to our cell swings open.
“What the hell?” Abram says as we all jump to our feet.
“Nice to meet you, Julie,” Tomsen says, thrusting a hand out to Abram. “H. Tomsen.”
“Uh, hi,” Julie says, leaning in to intercept the handshake. “I’m Julie. Hi.”
Tomsen looks somewhere between Nora’s age and Abram’s, but her appearance is ambiguous in more ways than one. With her face weathered by sun and scars, it’s hard to say if she’s a hard-worn youth or a well-preserved matron. Her skin is copper, her short curls are reddish brown, and her eyes are bright green, suggesting a heritage mixed beyond labeling. She wears a loose safari shirt and cargo pants whose patina of dirt and engine grease hints at a rough life on the road. Her wiry body seems to hide in their billowy folds.
“Who are you?” Abram says, moving to shield Sprout. “You’re not a prisoner?”
“Of course I’m a prisoner,” Tomsen says. “I’m in prison.”
“You just walked out!”
“Well I’m not going to sit in prison for two months without learning how to get out of my cell.”
Her features are fine and her eyes are striking, but pretty isn’t the right word for her. Handsome? Attractive.
Abram shakes his head, grabs Sprout’s hand, and pushes past Tomsen, scanning the corridor. Except for the one with our Dead family members in it, all the rooms appear empty, though fist-sized holes in the windows hint at earlier occupants. Whoever they were, they have been processed, their useful juices extracted, their husks expelled.
Abram tries the elevator. It emits a negatory squawk, flashing a red light on a keycard slot. He goes for the stairs.
“What’s that person’s name?” Tomsen whispers to Julie.
“Abram.”
“Abram!” Tomsen calls after him. “Twenty locked doors and twenty floors of beige-coats between us and street. Mixed-use building. Prison slash barracks.”
Abram pauses at the stairwell entrance.
“Room service comes every hour. You want to be in your cell when they get here or problems.”
Abram’s shoulders rise and fall for a moment, then they sag. He returns to the cell.
“Maybe steal a gun later?” Tomsen suggests. “Try again with a gun? You seem like a gun guy.”
“Okay wait, hold on,” Nora says, putting a hand out and shaking her head as if to clear away distractions. “We can talk escape later—what did you mean DBC is a member of you?”
Tomsen shrugs. “It’s me. I write the Almanac.”
Julie and Nora look at each other, cover their mouths, and squeal.
“We’re huge fans,” Julie gushes.
“Huge fans,” Nora elaborates.
Tomsen stares at them, startled into silence by this outpouring.
“But where’s the rest of your crew?” Julie says, glancing into the windows of the other cells. “Did they escape?”
Tomsen shakes her head. “Don’t know about crews. Never had a crew. Tried to get one back in school days. They escaped.”
Nora frowns. “But . . . who’s the ‘we’? Who’s DBC?”
“Dead Beat Cartographers. Used to be the family band, me and Mom and Dad, then just me and Dad, and now . . . just me!” She flashes a stiff smile.
Julie’s fangirl fervor cools into concern. “You’ve been doing all that exploration . . . alone?”
“Of course not alone, I’d go crazy! Barbara goes with me.”
“But . . . Barbara is your van, isn’t it?”
Tomsen lets out an uproarious giggle. “No, no, Barbara is definitely not a van.”
“Oh,” Julie laughs uncertainly. “Good. I thought—”
“She’s an RV. Vans don’t have bathrooms.”
Julie and Nora exchange another glance.
“I have to go now,” Tomsen says, looking around for a clock that isn’t there and fidgeting from foot to foot. “Guards coming. Nice to meet you people. I didn’t meet all of you. Only two actually. I’ll meet the rest of you later when the guards aren’t coming.”
M waves from the back of the room, still sitting against the wall. “Hey Tomsen,” he says. “Where’s the coffee?”
“They don’t bring coffee. Mostly water and Carbtein.” She cocks her head. “Why? Do you like coffee? I don’t like it. Makes me jittery.”
M smiles and shrugs. “Just wondering. Marcus, by the way.”
Tomsen waves at him. She steps backward out of our cell, then pauses in the doorway and looks at Julie. “They’ll probably take your Dead friends now.”
Julie’s face stiffens. “What?”
“Uncategorized usually go straight to Orientation. Sometimes here first for temp storage but never more than a day.” She flattens her lips into a sympathetic line. “Sorry.”
She turns and disappears into the corridor. I hear her cell door click shut, then her shaky falsetto again. “Attention, mon ami . . .”
Our door remains open. Everyone but M stands crowded in front of it, staring into the hall outside, wrestling the urge to run.
“Jules,” Nora says. “Don’t.”
Julie steps out into the dim, flickering hall. She reaches between the bars of her mother’s cell window.