It’s probably not fair to say that everyone has calmed down, but we have at least achieved the status of rational human beings again. Devon has cried herself out. Malcolm has finished obsessively searching for every piece of lost luggage, no matter how damaged. Jasmine is starting to talk again. Aiko has finished barking orders at everyone. And Nikolai has stopped threatening to have the Russian mob rub out me, my family, and anyone I may have said hello to during my tenure on this planet. And I have recovered from totally losing my shit over no longer having a way to fly out of this hellhole and finally accepted Malcolm’s promises of “an exit strategy” without threatening to resort to violence.
It’s a desolate bloody place we’ve landed in. What’s left of the plane lies on an old road, a thoroughfare that is now more weeds than asphalt. Gray buildings, ragged and sharp-edged, stare blindly down at the ruins of their city. Every window in the place is shattered. The whole place looks shattered. Like whatever happened here took the city and broke its back. It is a city gutted, all its viscera on display.
Even Mother Nature has been halfhearted in her attempts to reclaim the place. The trees are straggly things, anemic arms reaching desperately for the heavens. The vines clamber halfway up the walls and then seem to lose their sense of urgency. Dead gray strips of leaves hang down like discarded thoughts.
Malcolm is going around handing out guns like penny candy. We lost Nikolai’s giant sack of weapons, but fortunately by that point, so much of its contents had spilled about the fuselage that we have enough guns lying around that no one goes empty-handed. I even get another shoulder holster.
“All right then!” Aiko claps her hands. “Let’s get going!” She’s talking too loudly, too brashly.
“It’s OK.” I reach out a hand to her. “We can take a moment.”
“No.” She shakes my hand off. Then she stops and looks at me. “Please,” she says, and her voice almost breaks, “can we get out of here?” She takes a breath, it sounds loose and too long. “Come on,” she says, the false brashness back in her voice. “Let’s get moving, people!”
So we pull together our remaining bags, dust off our wounds, and start walking.
Finally I see it. I’d expected it earlier, and had almost lost my faith. Had almost started to believe this was all for nothing, that I’d been blown out of the air for nothing. But then: proof. This is the correct path. For all of its terrifying implications, we were undeniably right.
The deer paces slowly out into the road before us. It lowers its head, nibbles at a weed, then raises its head and looks at us. After a moment it moves slowly on.
Copy after copy of the deer drags after it as it moves. A concertina of flesh. It stops to eat again, and one by one the multiple hindquarters fold into the whole.
Wonder and horror in equal parts leave me speechless. There is something majestic about it. Something awful.
“Woah,” Nikolai says, summing up the moment as best he can. “That is some pretty fucked up shit.”
He takes a step toward the animal, and it lurches into movement, leaping up and away. It multiplies as it does so, copy after copy of its own body hesitating momentarily before leaping after the first. Like photographic stills laid over each other. It bounds away, trailing its elongating body, disappearing into a long-abandoned office building.
“That’s it,” Aiko says. “That’s what you saw at Trafalgar Square, right?”
“Yes.” I nod. “Yes that’s it.”
“Residual temporal-spatial disturbance.” She smiles and holds up a palm. It’s a confused moment before I high-five her. “Proof, Arthur. Not belief. Just there. Just happened.”
I smile.
“So.” Jasmine looks worried. “It just, like, wandered into a pocket of space-time crazy and that totally happened to it?”
“Pretty much.” I nod.
“So,” Jasmine persists, “we could totally walk into one and become, like, creepy monster us, right?”
“It’s on the continuum of possibilities,” Devon responds.
“So, you, like, totally have a way to spot those, right? Because I am really so not about ungluing myself in space and time.”
“Erm.” Devon turns to me.
“Erm,” I say.
“Totally reassured, guys. Totally.”
“There.” Devon points. “That building there.”
Things have been getting decidedly weirder the closer we get to the Chernobyl power station. The fountain that flowed backwards was desperately strange to look at. And there was the massive flock of birds caught in an infinite spiraling loop above a high-rise of cheap housing. The crumpled bag of crisps caught quivering in mid-air spitting out potatoes that melted to seeds on the ground. We’ve taken wide berths around these phenomena. So far everyone appears to be attached to the same space-time continuum they arrived in.
The same can’t be said for our surroundings. As we’ve moved toward the edge of Pripyat, closer to Chernobyl and the epicenter of the explosion, the levels of dilapidation have been increasing. The buildings are coming more and more to resemble giant piles of rubble.
But the building Devon is pointing at is remarkably whole.
“Reinforced structure.” Malcolm nods.
“Which means?” Aiko looks perplexed.
“Government building,” Devon and Malcolm say in unison.
Aiko and I get to the conclusion of that thought at the same time, but she’s the one who gives eloquent utterance to it.
“Pay dirt.”