The letters translate. Kind of. There are three that have a dubious association, and one that could easily be either of two English letters, so we make multiple versions of the name in Morse code and line them all up on a paper. The Redding shakes the building as it probes around the corners of this lab. I'm sure we're breathing some kind of virus at the moment, but I'd take that over instant drowning. We can only hope Ditzy was right: that seven weeks have been enough to render this place at least somewhat safe.
Even the red patches on my neck—and down my back now—ache furiously. Patrick must have it ten times worse, but he works with clear eyes and a clenched jaw, the picture of determination now that all our lives are on the line. When we've got as many versions of the name as we think we're going to get, we all look at one another. In the silence, the shake of the building is underpinned by another sound that's somehow even more ominous. The clench in my gut intensifies. I think that's more than just the Redding in the building now.
"So, are we doing this?" says Calico J.
"Yeah," I say. We station ourselves around the table, each with one fist poised. I take a deep breath. "Ready?"
Everyone nods.
"Okay. Three, two, one, go."
Our fists beat in rhythm, beat and swipe, swipe and beat. Already, though, I can tell something's wrong. I meet Patrick's eye. I'm not imagining things. The Redding hasn't even started to respond. It either can't hear us, or it isn't listening.
Or this isn't going to work.
It needs to work. It can't not work. We must be doing something wrong.
"We need to go outside," says Patrick, his voice trembling.
I know he's right. I don't want him to be, but we've sealed off the Redding from this place, and it "listens" through the water. You can't wake a Sleeper by saying its name in the next city over. It has to hear it, and some part of its brain has to react, to respond, to recognize. This is a cosmic game of Red Rover, in the end. Which means we have to form our line, then step out onto the battlefield and sing: sing our intention and our target's name, and only then, maybe, will this end.
Red Rover, Red Rover, we call Redding over.
Calico J gives a shaky smile. "If this goes wrong, I just want you guys to know... I'm really glad I met you."
Patrick clamps him in a hug. Calico J hugs him back. That's the trigger we all needed, and we glom together, taking comfort in each other's closeness for a long moment before we break apart. Words don't capture any of that.
Ditzy takes a deep breath and regathers her flail. "Shall we?"
"Now or never."
"Actually..." She pauses. "One last thing. Just in case we don't make it out tonight."
I see it coming. I see it, and I meet her halfway around the table; we collide with one another, and this time I don't care. Neither of us care. Ditzy kisses me and I kiss her back. She's wearing raspberry-lemon lipstick because of course she is; she's perfect and gorgeous and put-together even in the apocalypse, and even when it takes her all the effort she can spare. I grip her shirt; she threads her fingers through my hair. A second, deeper kiss follows the first. The whole world disappears for a moment as me and the girl I love both stop pretending to be people we aren't, and just enjoy this moment. Then it's over. We break apart, and the end of the world returns.
Calico J looks from one of us to the other. "Took you long enough."
Patrick chokes on a laugh and starts wheezing.
"So, six years until the next kiss?" says Calico J. "Gotta keep up that track record."
"Two rooms in the next place?" says Patrick.
"Nah, they've gotta grow grey hairs first."
"Both of you," I say, "if we survive this, I would push you in a river, but that's off the table, so I'll need time to think of something when we're not all about to die here. But I will remember this. Fuck you."
"Nah, I don't think we're the ones you want that with," says Calico J with a shit-eating grin. Ditzy blushes so furiously, I see her turn color even in the dead light of our headlamps.
"The moment you have a boyfriend again, J, you're dead meat," I say.
"I'll make sure to grab marinade. So, are we doing this?"
"Yes," I say, before anyone can capitalize on the opportunity provided by "marinade." We're wasting time here. Even if this is probably everyone's way of psyching themselves up to, y'know, maybe dying the moment we step outside.
Ditzy's still composing herself, so it's Patrick who walks to the door first and drums leave on it for the Redding on the other side. I don't think that works, either, but it's worth a shot. It's probably more of a reassurance anyway. When we join him, he falls back and starts a breathing exercise while Calico J and Ditzy grab the door's sealing-handle and haul it back. The door swings wide. I'm ready with a fist on the wall. Redding surges forward, hits my leave, and rears back again. We can still control it. But there's a lot of it, pouring down the walls and stairs, bloodying the windows, covering the floor. I fall back beside Patrick. Don't touch us, we drum together. Keep away.
That protection should travel with us, at least for a little while. I take inventory of the landing now that we're not under attack. The stairway sits at the side of the building, and has floor-to-ceiling windows. I edge over to them. There's a near-full moon tonight, and the sky is clear. The city below us glistens. Not glitters, like it would if it were full of lights. Glistens, like there's something huge and wet and shiny in the streets below, which is of course exactly what we're looking at. My throat goes dry. The Redding has risen in a wave like the one that chased us up a hill two days ago, only it's three stories deep as far as I can see. It's taken over San Fel, and I know—know—it's here for us.
When I lift a fist to the wall again, the Redding scoots back. I can feel it gathering in the stairway: a smaller wave than the one outside, but part of the same giant organism, and sharing the same intention. Hungry.
"Wait for it," I murmur. My friends are all beside me now. Ditzy wraps an arm around my waist. The walls are dry here, and the Redding might need to touch us for this to work. I finish, "It'll come to us."
The wave surges up the stairs.
"Now!" I shout when it hits my ankles. The Redding realizes its mistake too late. Even a sentient goo is still subject to forces of momentum, and we're already six letters into the name by the time it stops the bulk it flung up the stairs. It's up to our knees now. Patrick feels what's about to happen the moment before I do. We grab the railing. The Redding sucks back with the force of a riptide, trying to drag us off the landing and down the stairs. My feet nearly go out from under me. But Ditzy's still holding on, Calico J has Patrick, and the Redding can't move all of us. Red Rover, Red Rover, we call Redding over. We've linked our arms, and it can't break our line.
Twenty letters. Twenty-five. The entity is howling now—not an actual sound, but the feel of a scream as deep and wild and visceral as an ocean storm. The Redding drags harder. It hurls another wave. We slam out the last letter before it hits. And the whole world—
Goes silent.
Not actually silent, but the howling stops dead. I cling to the railing as a torrent like river rapids gushes around us, down the stairs. It's limp, like water. We hold fast to one another and the railing and the wall and our footing as more Redding pours down from further up the stairs, now raining off the edges of them, something it didn't do before. Redding doesn't move like water. Water moves like this.
My heart plunges with a sudden thought, and I look out the window. San Fel is caught in a tsunami. The Redding in the streets is draining, too. It punches through windows and picks up cars, piles over smaller buildings until their walls buckle and fracture and are carried away. Debris freckles the surface of the flow. The ex-Redding forms currents around corners: great, sucking vortices taller than I am, that would mean certain death for any person caught in them. I would scream for those people if I weren't so sure already that any Sleeper in San Fel an hour ago is already dead. I hope most of humanity didn't walk far enough for this stuff to reach it before this flood began. I hope the flood itself is localized. I hope—
I remember Ember and Oreo with a jolt so fierce, it punches my chest and makes me gasp. My friends look at me in alarm. I say the names of the people we left behind, and that's all it takes for Ditzy, Patrick, and Calico J to bolt after me up the stairs.
Another pitch for The Book of Miranda! Come for the sass, stay for the sapphic, the suspense, and the spook. Teaser opening below, but the full book is complete and fully edited on my profile, SmokeAndOranges. Just in case, y'know, you need something else to read once you finish this book ✨
By the time my parents' coach pulls up in front of Melliford Academy, I've decided the best place for the pad of letter-paper my father gave me to keep in touch is in the closest garbage can I can find. My father himself is pontificating about something to do with reactionary utopias, exemplary rational states, and the contradictions of capitalism. He's been going for an hour, and I've long since tuned out. Both to stop my brain from leaking out my ears, and because the last time I actually tried to listen, I discovered a brand-new level of failing to care. Which is amazing, really. I thought I reached the bottom of that barrel years ago.
The contradictions of capitalism linked somehow to my keeping in touch with my parents, but I lost that thread when we passed free trade. My mother interjects periodically with some version of, "We will be so worried about your wellbeing if we don't hear from you weekly!" It's nice to know I'm still worth the lie. Or maybe that's just my boarding-school tuition talking. Both my parents have made it clear they're paying an arm and a spleen for me to come here, and I wouldn't be surprised if their concern lay less with assurance of my personal welfare and more with ensuring a good return on investment. I'm not sure how my father feels about return on investment. I'm not sure my sanity would survive the answer if I asked.