The Book of M. Peng Shepherd

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СКАЧАТЬ said Boston, but they told us they were really flying to Providence—because it was safer, because for some reason that city is almost empty of people now—and we’d have to make our own way from there. They were charging—I don’t even know. I just kept throwing money at the counterperson out of Maman’s savings until the lady gave me a ticket. Someone tried to rob me after that, but the airport staff beat him off. I went in the bathroom and put everything I had left in my bra and underwear then. Not like it was much.”

      “What happened in Providence?”

      Rojan shrugged. “The guy sitting next to me on the flight said he has a daughter here in Boston somewhere. I gave him the rest of what I had in exchange for a seat in his rental car. Well, the car he found in the rental car parking lot and hot-wired. We split up at the roadblock on the freeway just outside city limits.”

      “Fuck,” Naz said. “He could have killed you or something.”

      “I—yeah,” Rojan admitted. “I kind of—I kind of can’t believe I did it now. I just didn’t know how else to get here.”

      They sat close, shoulders touching, as they ate the last of the bags of airplane peanuts the stewardess had generously gifted Rojan on the flight. Naz’s stomach ached ravenously. It was more food than she’d had in a long time. “So … what now?” she asked.

      THEY DECIDED TO HEAD FOR NEW YORK, BECAUSE THAT WAS the only place nearby that Rojan thought she hadn’t seen come up on the news by the time she left Tehran. It struck them as a little funny—that of course it would be New York that would survive when the shit hit the fan. “Things weirder than this probably happen in New York every day,” Rojan joked as she held open the duffel bag while Naz packed it with what little they could take from the studio.

      “That’s just movie New York,” Naz said, but still, a part of her had hope. If anywhere in the United States was still functional, she couldn’t help but believe it would be New York, too. Although even if it wasn’t, nothing was going to be worse than Boston. “Take off your necklaces,” she added. “They draw too much attention.”

      “They’re Maman’s,” Rojan protested. “I’m not just going to leave them here.”

      “Wrap them up and put them in the bag, then. You can’t wear them.”

      Rojan obeyed, reaching for a pillowcase. “How long do you think it’ll take on foot?” she asked.

      “If we really rush, ten days, maybe?”

      Rojan nodded. “Good thing I packed soap.”

      Naz smiled. She didn’t have the heart to tell her sister that they weren’t going to stop long enough at any point to allow washed fabric to dry, so there’d be no washing anyway. But they could survive each with a few pairs of underwear and the same bra. The bow was what she really needed to make sure they were safe, once they got out into the open country.

      They had to get out first, though. The roadblocks were still in place all over the city, held by police and emergency military personnel, the main streets all locked down. There was only one place left the government couldn’t monitor very well.

      “The water.” Rojan grinned.

      It was how she’d avoided the roadblocks and reached Naz in the first place, it turned out. After watching the man she’d shared a ride with turned away by police in riot gear carrying huge machine guns, Rojan had decided she didn’t want to press her luck and started hunting for an unguarded street—but she couldn’t find one. Sooner or later, she always ran into another roadblock or a roving patrol, blue and red lights dazzling the night. By accident she found herself crouching behind a small overturned boat in a trash heap to hide from a passing cluster of police, and that’s when she got the idea.

      “I dragged it up onto the bank where I came out and tried to hide it in the bushes,” she said. “I can show you where from the roof.”

      Once they were ready, they went up for the last time. Rojan walked to the far side of the roof and pointed. From Dorchester Street, it was just a few turns from the shore of Old Harbor, where she was sure the boat was hidden. They waited until 1:30 A.M. exactly and then ran down the road as silently as they could in the pitch-blackness. Sure enough, the little metal boat was there, stuffed into the shrubs. As they dragged it the last few yards to the shore, Naz stepped into the icy water by accident with one foot and gasped in agony.

      “Naz!” Rojan whispered, panicked.

      “Fuck, that’s cold!” Naz hissed.

      “Don’t do that! I thought something was wrong!”

      “Something is wrong!” she snapped, but she shut up. Her sister was right, she could be freezing later. Rojan climbed into the boat and set her backpack and the duffel bag down, then put out a hand. Naz slipped the bow over her shoulder and grabbed Rojan’s palm.

      They rolled up their sleeves and paddled with their hands until their fingers were numb, because there were no oars. They drifted south, south, south. At some point in the darkness, they bumped into something floating. Naz’s first thought was that it was a body, but thank God it wasn’t—it was just a piece of wood.

      When they finally found a shore that seemed far enough away, they crawled out of their own dinghy and crept between the carcasses of other half-sunk boats to the asphalt.

      “Heritage Drive.” Rojan read the street sign overhead softly. She looked at Naz expectantly, waiting to hear if they’d gone far enough, if they were clear of Boston proper and the roadblocks.

      “I think we’re okay,” Naz muttered, dumbfounded. Somehow they’d paddled all the way to Quincy. How far was that? She tried to estimate. Five, six miles? “Let’s go slow.” She pulled the bow off her back and kept it ready. The streets were even more unnervingly still than from where they’d come.

      On the back wall of the next building, glowing under the flickering light of a roof security lamp, someone had graffitied a phrase in spray-paint.

      “The One Who Gathers?” Rojan read softly. The name sent a chill through Naz as her sister said it. Rojan reached out and touched the bottom drip of paint—it was long dry. “What on earth do you think it means?”

      Naz shook her head slowly. “I have no idea,” she said.

       THE ONE WHO GATHERS

      LATER, HE CAME TO HAVE MANY NAMES. THE ONE WITH A Middle but No Beginning. The Stillmind. Patient RA. Last, most important of all—The One Who Gathers. But in the beginning, he had no name at all.

      Once he had recovered enough to walk on his own, he was discharged from the hospital and moved to an assisted-living facility, to begin therapy with a specialist named Dr. Zadeh. This was years ago, some three months before that ominous May day when Hemu Joshi became the first man to lose his shadow. It was still early spring where he lived, in New Orleans—the sun rose late and set early in the gently crisp air there. Dr. Zadeh had come to him in the ICU on the first day, once the surgeons told him that his new patient was awake.

      Things were a blur then. Emptiness and fear. He couldn’t lift his head or speak. The nurses were so harried that none of them realized he might want to know what was going on, let alone stopped to tell him. But then Dr. СКАЧАТЬ