Across the Dark Water

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  It took him months to find the right guide. His search had cost him a small fortune so, as much as the thief hated it, he had to go back to his old ways in the plague-ruined city. The man who’d taught him the trade years and years before had handed him a shovel and taught him to rob graves. When he was older and out on his own, the thief swore he’d never grub in the dirt again. Yet now—because he could no longer bear to steal from the living—he was back on his knees, foregoing self-respect, and driven by a fear and an anger that felt like a stone in his chest.

  Earlier, when the plague had receded, Mina left him. She said she wanted to see if her mother was still alive. The thief offered to go with her, but she said no. She said she’d return when she could. Later, he went to look for her mother and found the old woman easily. That’s when he knew Mina had lied to him. And in the ruined city with its ashen survivors, and in his pain and his loneliness, he hated her for it. He would do anything to leave.

  The bar where he’d been told he’d find the guide was made up of three cargo containers laid out in a triangle. Sections were connected by flexible ribbed walkways looted from tram cars along the metro lines. The walls were red and gold gilt wallpaper, like some dream of a New Orleans bordello. Here and there were rips and bullet holes. Thick bundles of jasmine incense burned to hide the stink of cigarettes and sweat. It made the thief’s eyes water.

  The man he took to be the guide looked as he’d been described. Thick muscles under a cowboy shirt with roses by each shoulder. He still wore the police badge from a force he’d abandoned during the plague. Guns on a thick belt around his waist. The guide looked healthy. Healthier than anyone the thief had seen in months, and the thief took that as a good sign.

  He went to where the man stood at the bar and said, “Are you—?” and he said the guide’s name. The name he’d been told to use.

  The man just looked at him. After an uncomfortable moment, the thief took a crumpled business card from his pocket and held it out. The man took it. Looked it over.

  “The blind man sent you,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to hire you.”

  “Gun or guide?”

  “Guide.”

  “Where are you looking to go?”

  “I want to see the Turk.”

  The guide smiled and put the card in the breast pocket of his shirt.

  “Do you know him?”

  “No.”

  “What makes you think a man like the Turk will see you?”

  “I can pay.”

  “I knew you had money or the blind man wouldn’t have sent you. But do you really think the Turk will drop everything for money?”

  The thief set his hand on the top of the bar. It was sticky, so he took his hand off and rubbed it on his leg.

  “I don’t know if he’ll see me. But I have to try.”

  The guide’s eyes widened a little.

  “An optimist in times like these. Signs and wonders.”

  “You’ll take me?”

  The guide took the thief’s arm in a strong grip and led him to an exit that let out on the interior of the bar’s triangle. The ground was concrete with gravel at the edges. A few people were there smoking and drinking. They ignored him and the guide. The thief looked around. The space overhead was lined with razor wire. The only door led back into the bar. There was nowhere to run if things turned bad.

  The guide shook his head. His gray hair was buzzed almost flat.

  “Relax. No one is going to hurt you.”

  “I just don’t like being closed in.”

  “Tight spaces? Social proximity? Relax. The plague’s over.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  The guide gave him a look.

  “So. You want me to take you to the Turk. That’s quite a trek.”

  The guide then named a startling sum of money. The thief breathed in, not bothering to negotiate since both men knew he had nowhere else to go. They went to an empty corner of the triangle and the thief laid out gold, piles of cash, and four dense, semitransparent, emerald green plastic cards. The guide picked up a card. Held it to the light.

  “Account IDs?”

  “Yes. Each linked to a different offshore bank.”

  “How much in all the accounts together?”

  Now it was the thief’s turn to name a startling sum. Then, “I can show you if you don’t believe me. I have a reader in my bag.”

  The guide held up a hand. “I believe you. You’re too anxious to lie.” He laughed once. “Too optimistic.”

  The guide picked up the remaining cards.

  “On the other hand, if these are so valuable, why don’t you keep them for yourself?”

  “Fine,” said the thief. “Give them back and take the other stuff.”

  The guide pressed the cards to his chest.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  The thief looked at him.

  “When this is over I’ll be on the road. Gold is easier to trade.”

  “Even these days, you think?”

  The thief shrugged.

  “In medieval times, people revert to medieval ways.”

  The guide looked at him for a moment more.

  “I’ll keep the cards.”

  The thief relaxed a little.

  “Then we can go?”

  “Soon. There are details to sort out.”

  The guide started back into the bar, but the thief stopped. A few men had been playing with remote control toys nearby. Little drones and kitten-sized military walkers. What stopped the thief was something on wheels. He couldn’t quite figure out what it was. The dried flesh of a skinned cat had been stretched over the body of a small rolling mech. The machine’s LED eyes lit up, making the cat’s head glow. It raised its arms and made a grinding sound like it was trying to talk to him. When the guide looked back and saw that the thief wasn’t with him, he went to the toy and kicked it across the concrete to the men. They moaned and cursed and he pulled the thief away with him.

  The thief and guide walked a hundred yards down a long straightaway surrounded by immense parking lots full of dusty cars and empty trucks, the remains of a large homeless encampment. Sections of the lot had been cordoned off with biohazard warning tape. The vehicles in those areas were blackened husks, where the authorities had burned the dead in place. The guide noticed the thief staring.

  He said, “It was better this way. Why risk a crew to move the bodies when fire did the job just as well?”

  The thief had heard the jokes. “The gasoline vaccine.”

  “Cheap and painless.”

  “
As long as you’re sure everybody is dead before you strike the match.”

  “We were sure.”

  “It must be nice to be so certain of things.”

  The guide slowed his pace.

  “You think I’m lying?”

  The thief had to stop so as not to leave him behind.

  “No,” he said. “It’s just that I’m not certain about anything these days, except that I want to leave.”

  The guide pointed to the fairgrounds at the end of the long drive.

  “Come up to my office.”

  Inside, they went past the abandoned rides, many starting to show rust. Empty pens for animals. Dust and weeds everywhere. Food wrappers. Paper cups. The guide led the thief to a Ferris wheel near the center of the place. The thief was surprised by its size. The cars were large enough to hold a dozen adults. The guide went to the closest car and pulled the door open.

  “We can talk here,” he said and went inside.

  The thief followed him but, again, disturbed by the enclosed space, he remained by the open door. When they were inside, the guide took a metal box about the size of a cigarette pack from his bag and pushed a button. There was a metallic groan. The Ferris wheel jerked and the car rose into the air. The thief, caught off guard, slipped and would have fallen out if the guide hadn’t grabbed him and pulled him back into the car.

  “Not everything thing in here is broken,” the guide said and laughed.

  The thief sat on the floor, breathing hard until the car reached its apex. When it did, the guide pressed another button on the box and the Ferris wheel stopped. The thief gradually pulled himself to his feet and turned one hundred and eighty degrees. The city spread out for miles in all directions.

  “The view,” he said.

  The guide spit out the open door.

  “Nothing can sneak up on you from up here. It’s a good place to get the lay of the land before going out.”

  The center of the city and some of the outer suburbs were lighting up for the evening, but they were surrounded by vast stretches of darkness.

  “I never realized how much of the city we’d lost. I’d heard the numbers, but seeing it—”

  The guide lit a cigarette.

  “It makes an impression.”

  The thief turned to look at the guide in the doorway.

  “Now that I was dumb enough to follow you, are we really here to talk or are you going to take my money and gold and throw me out?”

  “I could, you know,” said the guide, looking down at the ground. “Take your shit and watch you fall.”

  “I know.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Of course.”

  The guide shook his head slightly.

  “But I’m not going to. I just like the view and I like privacy when we’re working out details.”

  The guide pulled a pint of bourbon from his pack, gulped a mouthful, and handed it to the thief, who took a good pull of the stuff and handed it back. The thief relaxed a little. Whatever was going to happen would happen. There was nothing he could do about it.

  “You mentioned details,” said the thief.

  The guide put the bottle back in his pack.

  “I’ll take to you to the Turk, but I’m not going in. That means when you go inside, you’re not going to have any backup.”

  “Do you have some kind of problem with him?”

  “Of course I do. Warlords and power brokers—I don’t trust any of them. So when you go in, you’re on your own.”

  The thief could tell there were things the guide wasn’t telling him, but he was grateful enough not to have been murdered that he let it go. “How long will it take to get there?”

  The guide continued to smoke.

  “Do you want to go fast or safe?”

  “I don’t want to die in this city.”

  “Safe it is, then.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “It depends on the road,” said the guide. “Two, maybe three days if the way is clear. If it’s not, it’s taken as long as five.”

  “Five days?”

  The guide gestured out into the dying light.

  “You get pinned down somewhere by cops or a decon sweep, there’s nothing to do but sit tight.” He looked at the thief. “This isn’t sightseeing on a bus with lunch and pretty snapshots.”

  “Still. Days.”

  The guide tossed the cigarette out of the car.

  “Take it or leave it. No refunds.”

  The thief thought about it.

  “How long is the fast route?”

  “A couple days. If we make it at all. Of course for that, I’ll want your gold and cash, too.”

  “No. Take me the way we agreed.”

  Without a word, the guide pulled out a key and unlocked a compartment under the single chair in the car. He took out two neatly packed black bundles and tossed one to the thief. The thief unfolded it and found it to be a stiff bodysuit that seemed blacker than black.

  “Light absorbent,” said the guide as he pulled on his suit over his clothes. “Put up the hood and the mesh over your face. You’ll sweat, but it’ll scramble facial recognition scans.”

  The thief put his on and stood flexing, trying to work the stiffness out of the joints. The suit was indeed hot, and smelled faintly of mildew.

  The guide continued to pull tools from the seat, some of which the thief recognized from his own work. Pitons. Breaching tools. A small cutting torch. A thin polymer climbing cord. The guide put it all into a larger pack that he also took from the seat. When he had everything he needed, he transferred the bourbon into the new pack and locked the seat.

  “Can we leave now?” said the thief.

  “When it’s darker and they’ve moved off across town.”

  The guide pointed to pinpoints of light moving through the sky.

  “Helicopters?” said the thief.

  “Drones. As long as things stay quiet out here, they’ll soon move back to the center of town.”

  So they sat and smoked and took occasional drinks from the bottle until it was night and the lights in the sky had gone. Then the guide took them back to the ground and they set out west into one of the blacked-out parts of the city.

  They didn’t talk as they walked. There was a bright moon, so the sleeping city was illuminated all around them. Skyscrapers and apartment buildings. Restaurants that even the rats had deserted. The thief shook his head. He’d avoided areas like this because they’d been picked clean early in the epidemic. Ransacked cars dotted the wide thoroughfare. Broken shop windows. Sodden boxes for electronics or food. For the most part, though, the empty neighborhood was perfect. Frozen in time. Yet ruins all the same.

  Finally, the thief spoke.

  “Do think they’ll ever lift the quarantine?” he said.

  The guide kept walking.

  “We were the epicenter. What do you think?”

  “I don’t think they’ll ever let us out.”

  They walked for perhaps a half hour more before the guide said, “Shit.”

  He raised his hand. Silent pinpoints of light, like shooting stars, swirled through the sky in their direction. He pulled the thief right and they ran down two blocks and waited behind the collapsed wall of a church. The side streets were much worse than the ones they’d been on earlier. More like war zones, thought the thief. There were bullet holes in the buildings and overturned police cars. Echoes of old riots.

  The guide jacked into a spysat view of the area and said, “Sit tight.” An hour later, they headed west again, walking carefully. The guide remained jacked in and the thief suspected that the other man had been spooked after encountering a skyborne patrol this early in

  the trip. He hoped he’d hired the right guide and not a fool who would lead him into a trap. There had been those in the past and he’d barely escaped.

  They continued through the night, clambering over piles of bricks and barriers made from stacked cars meant to seal
off the area from law enforcement. Near dawn, the men took shelter in the vault of an empty bank.

  It was close to winter and the morning air was chill. Eventually it seeped into the thief’s bodysuit, mingling with his sweat and making him shiver. The guide saw it and set out an ingot of metal that grew hot but gave off no smoke. The thief warmed himself near it.

  The adrenaline that had carried the thief through the night was ebbing now, and he felt ragged. As his eyes closed, he heard the guide say, “Why is it you’re willing to risk your neck to see the Turk?”

  The thief kept his eyes closed for a moment, his mind racing through good and bad lies. Finally, he decided there was nothing wrong with the truth.

  “Travel papers. It’s not enough to have a clean online health certificate. You need a physical, notarized form.”

  “Sounds expensive,” said the guide. “Think you’ll have and cash or gold left after you pay for all that?”

  “I don’t know. But I can always get more.”

  The guide looked at him conspiratorially.

  “Waylaying other sleeping travelers?”

  The thief frowned.

  “Not unless they try waylaying me first.”

  “Then how?”

  “Graves,” he said. “I rob graves.”

  For the first time the thief saw the guide look troubled. He said, “Stop talking and get some sleep. We’ll move fast tonight.”

  The thief settled down on the hard floor near the burning ingot and was quickly asleep. He dreamed of the day Mina left him and of finding her mother still alive. When he awoke in the later afternoon, he was in a foul mood. He ate a protein bar and kept to himself until it was time to leave.

  Before they left the bank, the thief took a small amount of a clear solution from a plastic bottle and rubbed it on his hands. Then he dry-swallowed some pills.

  “What’s in the bottle?” said the guide.

  “Skin sealant. It helps with cuts.”

  “And the pills?”

  “Immunosuppressants. I have job-related implants. This helps keep my body from rejecting them.”

  The guide, who’d been placing items in his pack, sat back on his haunches and laughed. “You’re taking immunosuppressants in the middle of a plague zone?”