Page 18 of Fable for the End of the World

“Well, I did.”

Luka pretends he’s the only one who really knew Dad, the only one who misses him. Sometimes I pretend, too. But deep down,both of us know the truth. Deep down, where we have another set of invisible, identical scars.

“People have survived their Gauntlets before,” says Luka.

He takes out his tablet. There’s a notification on the lock screen that shows my face, my name. He swipes on it and opens up the countdown clock. Ten and a half hours until the Gauntlet starts. I feel nausea overtake me when I look at the numbers, so stark, so cold and unforgiving. I wonder how many people will tune in to watch the live stream of my death. Thousands. Millions. The tracker whirs in my throat.

“Not people like me,” I say.

“Maybe not alone.” Luka looks up from the tablet and meets my eyes. “You’re not helpless, Nes. You never have been. You’re not just going to trot off to your death like a lamb to the slaughter—” He stops abruptly. I know he didn’t mean to call me a lamb, but the metaphor is too apt. That’s why Caerus picked it, after all. He clears his throat and then goes on. “I’m not going to let you.”

His gaze is fierce, steady. I don’t feel quitehopeful, but some of the nausea begins to recede.

“I’m not exactly what you’d call competent with a rifle,” I mumble.

Luka lets out a breath. “I won’t argue with you there. But I am. We just need... a plan.”

“An escape plan.” Running is better than fighting. No Outlier is any match for an Angel. Just a few minutes of watching Sanne’s Gauntlet was enough to convince me of that. The Angels are more machine than human. The Angel that killed Sanne certainlylooked more than human. Or less.

“Yeah,” Luka says. He runs a hand through his hair. Then he turns away from me for a moment, staring out over the railing of the porch at the black water below. It’s too dark to see much beyond that. But the forest is out there, the damp knot of trees and bushes, disguising dangers that are only kept at bay by Esopus Creek’s electrified barbed wire fence.

Luka’s eyes are narrowed, a little too bright. I haven’t seen him cry since we were kids. Even now, the tears gather, but they don’t fall. He’s always been so much better at staying composed than I am.

His gaze follows the line of the fence, a slash of silver in the dark. “I think I have an idea, though.”

I push myself off from the side of the house and square my shoulders. I will my voice not to tremble when I reply, “What is it?”

Finally, Luka looks back at me. There’s a defiant glint to his stare, one I recognize but rarely see in myself.

“I’ll show you,” he says.

When Dad first left, we all thought he would come back. It wasn’t unusual for him to disappear for a couple of days—once he was even gone for nearly two weeks. But he always returned, full of booze and whimsical excuses that were half true at best. He’d pass out on the couch for hours, in a deep and impenetrable slumber, while we all tiptoed around him and tried to convince ourselves that this would be the last time, that nothing would pull him away from us again.

I wish I had known, before he left for good, that it would be our final day. I don’t even remember it well. I didn’t say anything special to him. I poled down to the shop as he smoked on the porch. He and Luka talked; I don’t know about what. There was nothing, not even a subtle sign, to suggest that he was saying goodbye. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention.

Clearly Luka knows something I don’t, because he marches back inside, wordless, not even sparing a glance at Mom, who’s huddled on the couch. She looks over at him hopefully, as if she thinks she’ll be forgiven. She doesn’t even try to meet my eyes.

Mom’s bedroom is a proper room, with a door and everything, unlike the curtained-off space that Luka and I share. Ordinarily, neither of us dare to step past the threshold of Mom’s room. But now I follow Luka inside, with only a split second of hesitation.

It’s an unholy mess of open boxes, packing supplies strewn across the floor, and a pile of blankets so thick that I can hardly see the bed underneath. Luka clicks on the battery-powered lamp, and I step over crushed cans of diet soda to join him as he pauses in front of the closet door.

He opens it and pushes aside an overstuffed rack of musty-smelling clothes. There are sequined dresses, woolen slacks, even shiny patent-leather heels, though I haven’t seen Mom out of a nightgown in years. Bitterly I picture her scrolling through Caerus’s clothing catalogue, adding items that she’ll never wear to her cart, oblivious to her account plunging further and further into the red.

Luka flings away a fur-lined coat and a silky button-down shirt. Underneath, layered in dust so thick that my nose instantlybegins to itch, is a gray metal box. I watch in shock as he removes a key from his pocket, fits it into the lock, turns it, and flips the lid open.

I don’t say anything, but I can’t stop my sharp inhale of breath. I’m not offended that he and Dad had secrets just between the two of them. I’m just hurt that even after Dad left, Luka kept them from me.

Almost as if he can read my thoughts, Luka says quietly, “This is why I thought he might come back.”

I understand now. Luka’s secret wasn’t the box itself. The secret was that he had kept hoping, kept believing, even when I had long since given up.

With deliberate, practiced motions, Luka begins to remove the items from the box. It seems almost depthless as he piles its contents on the floor. I can tell he’s done this before.

There’s a vinyl backpack. Binoculars. Weatherproof ponchos and a drinking straw. Bandages and gauze and antiseptic wipes. Steel pliers, screwdriver heads, and even a hand chainsaw. Waterproof matches, work gloves, two sleeping bags. A flashlight and fishing line. Iodine tablets. There’s even a gas mask.

And, last of all, Luka removes a small object of tarnished gold. Unlike the other items, it looks old, as if it’s passed through many pairs of hands. When Luka holds it out, his fingers shake a little bit, but he manages to flip open the tiny clasp. It’s an analogue compass, probably a hand-me-down, maybe the closest thing we have to a family heirloom. They don’t sell anything like this in the Caerus catalogue.

All together it’s a treasure trove of survival gear, clearly accumulated over the course of years, packed and prepped and ready. I can’t believe Dad left all this behind. But then again, he left us behind, too.

---