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She steps across the floor. Practiced steps on the tips of her toes, picking her way between the roots. She bends at the waist, hair falling in front of her face. One fingertip touches the belled cap of a mushroom, and the net of roots seizes, a ripple of movement that turns into a rustle that turns into a whisper, emanating from the fungal growths themselves.
When it fades, I find my teeth clenched, anger in me like a lash of thorns. I take out my phone. I’ve kept it off. No point draining the battery. Now I turn it on as Becca watches me, head cocked.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Recording it. So there’s proof,” I say.
“Proof?” She makes an odd gesture, her hand turning over, thumb pressing to middle finger. “For—for when we get back.”
“Exactly,” I say.
“You think we’re going to get back,” she says. Like she hasn’t considered it. Not really.
“Of course,” I say. “That’s why we came. To find you. And get home. Don’t you—you were talking about getting out. I thought...”
“Out of this house,” she says. “I don’t know. I guess I haven’t thought about what comes after that for a long time. It’s easier not to. Safer. And all of that... Home? The world we came from? It feels less real than this place. It was easier, knowing that I would always be here.”
“But if you were always going to be stuck here, why stay alive?” I ask. “Why survive so long?”
She laughs. Quiet, like everything she does now, a flat spiral of sound. “Because I wanted to outlive that bitch,” she says, and that hard glint in her eye is the first I’ve really seen of my sister since I found her. “Make the recording. People should know. Whatever happens.”
VIDEO EVIDENCE
Retrieved from the cell phone of Sara Donoghue
Recorded April 19, 2017, 12:49 a.m.
The phone’s light casts the scene in harsh, blue-tinged tones. Becca, hair a tangle, somehow gaunt though she is not one ounce lighter than when she stepped onto the road, waits for confirmation. She makes a soft sound, tongue against the back of her teeth, and bends again, this time her fingertips skimming the bared curve of Zachary’s brow before a fingernail flicks once, lightly, against a mushroom cap.
The whispers spin themselves together like spider silk. The voices are distorted but recognizable as Zachary Kent and Grace Winters.
ZACH:... get back to Becca.
GRACE: We need to think this through.
ZACH: What’s to think through? Separating is a bad idea. We don’t know what’s in this place. That spider—
GRACE: Zach. You’re a smart kid. Smart enough to divide by two. There’s three of us. That leaves a spare. Someone with no way out.
ZACH: We’ll find a way.
GRACE: Two of us are leaving here. And it will be easier if we make the decision now.
ZACH: You think you should be one of them.
GRACE: An organism strives first for self-preservation. Understanding that is the key to understanding everything else, don’t you see? There isn’t room for morality in survival. The road wants to survive. That’s why it calls us here. And we want to survive.
ZACH: I’m not leaving Becca behind. And she won’t leave me behind.
GRACE: Are you sure about that, Zach?
ZACH: Yeah. I’m sure.
GRACE: You know she doesn’t feel about you the way you feel about her. I’ve seen the way you look at her. You’re in love with her. She’s got none of that in her eyes for you.
ZACH: That’s not—
GRACE: I know more about this road than anyone. If you want to survive, I’m your best bet. Or you can risk your neck for the girl who will leave you the moment she gets off the road. You don’t think she will?
