Page 179 of Hellbent

She had no idea how long she’d been sitting like this. Her hamstrings and calves ached. Even her Achilles tendons throbbed.

She was having what more poetic types might call a crisis of conscience.

The Samsung might ring.

Or it might never ring again.

If it did, she had no idea what she’d do.

It was one of those wait-and-see things, and she wasn’t really a wait-and-see girl. Or at least she didn’t used to be.

What was she now?

The phone vibrated against the carpet, uplighting her face with a bluish glow. The Signal application, presenting her with a two-word code.

It was Van Sciver.

Somehow alive.

She found herself not answering.

An unanswered phone seems to ring forever.

At last it stopped rattling against the floorboards.

She picked it up.

She keyed in a different phone number.

1-855-2-NOWHERE.

She stared at the phone, the empty house seeming to curl around her like the rib cage of some long-dead beast.

She hung up before the call could ring through.

She pressed the Samsung to her lips and thought for a time. Then she set it on the floor, rose, and walked out.

She took nothing. She didn’t bother to lock the door behind her.

She wouldn’t be coming back.

76

Something Flat and Unchanging

Van Sciver reclined on his bed in the ICU, his face washed of color. A gray sweat layered his flesh as he dozed, his eyelids flickering. A urinary catheter threaded between his legs. A monitor read his heart rate, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and half a dozen other vitals. A central line on the left side of his chest fed in nutrition and vitamins from a bright yellow bag of TPN.

It was a private room, the curtains pulled around to shield his bed from the glass walls and door.

In one hand he clutched his Samsung.

It chimed, awakening him.

The Signal application. Was it Candy, finally back in contact?

Weakly, he raised the phone to his unshaven cheek. “Code,” he said.

Orphan X’s voice said, “Behind you.”