Chapter 5 TESNI
FIVE
TESNI
It’s out there on the horizon, and I can’t tear my gaze off it.
There should only be ocean out there, dancing under the sunrays, a sprawling body of water that looks like it has no end.
Instead, I see coarse black brushstrokes violently painted over an ocean.
The darkness is so much more than black clouds. It is textured and thick and churning.
We are trapped in it.
The east coast is submerged in the blackout.
The west coast is following close behind.
Darkness is advancing from both directions, closing in on us.
When we sped out of the campsite, panicked in our horror, we thought we had hours, maybe moments, before it swallowed us whole.
The radio did, too.
But then it halted.
Didn’t stop, exactly.
Just suddenly… slowed.
The radio says it slowed all over the world.
I listened to that transmission.
Cuddled up to Bee on the double fold-out bed in the camper, I let that news wash relief down my icy insides. The dread started to fade. Tension in my muscles softened.
I let a smile touch my lips.
And the kicker—my soul returned to my body.
What an idiot I am.
The blackout slowed, but it didn’t stop.
And every day that has passed since, it only seems to darken, thicken even more.
Now, a week after the blackout first touched the sky of wherever exactly it came from, it has spread across most of the world. Within just one week, every country, every sea, every island, every ocean, will be taken.
The blackout is coming.
And I watch it advance.
A slow-moving, inevitable end.
Out here, in the tumbleweed town on the west coast of Washington, I sit on the damp sands of a beach, not the sort of beach I would visit for a nice day out, but the kind where people used to ride their horses and fly kites, sometimes visited by the locals in the town over the road, and travellers stopping for a rest.
Now, it’s visited by us.
Five women on the world’s worst vacation.
I jerk with a scoff.
Happy birthday to me, right?
Not the way I pictured celebrating my thirtieth. That’s a hard age to swallow as it is.
A huff deflates me.
I tug a grey cap over my braided hair. The shade pulls low over my brow, shielding me from the sun’s glare.
The shade is welcome, and I hate that I think anything negative about the sun.
I should be nothing short of eternally grateful for these final moments under the sunrays, in the heat washing over me, watching light bounce on the surface of the waters.
There’s just one more thing that’d make this moment a halfway decent celebration of my birthday.
The bag strap is slung over my shoulder, but the weight of the bag itself is nestled on my lap, right between my spread thighs. I fish around in it, knuckles grazing a can of mace, the cold kiss of a cell without any internet or signal, until I touch the smooth gloss of a lighter.
The bag jangles as I tug it out, then lure out a slender menthol cigarette from the side pocket.
Everything feels so monotonous, like every movement and breath is robotic in a way.
I light the cig, nestle it between my lips, then shove the lighter back into the bag.
The smoke billows out of my mouth as I lift my gaze to the Pacific Ocean.
Boulders disturb the shallows. Rocks protrude from the calm ripples. It’s actually really fucking beautiful.
I should have paid more attention.
I should have cared more.
But I didn’t.
Now, it’s slipping away from me.
How many days are left before the darkness takes hold completely?
The radio broadcasts estimate a few days.
But who’s to say it won’t speed up, or even slow down again? Maybe recede back to whatever holes it came from?
That’s what they say.
It came from holes. Holes in the earth, hollows in trees, small cave openings—
That ache.
That fucking ache in my chest.
I flatten a hand to my breastbone and press, firm, as if to crush the icy sensation out of me.
The deep inhale of the cigarette floods my lungs. I release the smoke with a choked cough.
The chesty sound of my coughing fit merges with the crashing song of water washing over the shore, all the way up to my boots. It’s a blended song that muffles the radio.
That fucking radio.
I can’t with that radio. Not anymore.
A week of this shit.
A week of the same transmissions over and over and over, all day, all night. It’s never off.
If Ruby isn’t guarding it, then Louise is.
They take turns sleeping in the driver’s seat. The only ones of the group who can drive a manual. A ‘stick shift’, as Dad likes to call it.
But since it’s only Louise and Ruby who can drive the camper, and they have both taken to guarding the radio ever since Ramona tried to rip it out in a fit, I can’t get close enough to destroy it.
Shouldn’t get too fussed about it.
Transmissions will go down soon.
The blackout is impacting radio frequencies—and if we’re not within five or so miles of the source, then we’re not getting that transmission.
The world is inching closer to being totally cut off.
That was the final straw for me, the cut of the last thread in my heart, before I slipped out of the camper at first light and snuck down here to the shore.
Maybe a part of me wants to watch the sunrise. It will be one of the last—for however long.
Will the blackout take hold forever?
A thought that strikes me, and I flinch against it.
Bringing the heel of my palm to my temple, I rub as if to knead those intrusions out of my mind; my ugly, tangled mind.
This helps.
The soft butt of the cigarette touching my lips.
Even if it stirs the ache in my chest, it’s worth it.
It grounds me.
“They’ve stopped calling for evacs!” Ramona shouts down the hill. The sound of her nearing voice steels my shoulders. “And the blackout is like… doing something to the cars. They stop working.”
I sigh a deflating breath before I touch my chin to my shoulder. The look I give her is dull.
A shadow behind her, a silhouette of curves, says, “Ramona, can you head into the town? We’re low on food.”
Ramona falters.
The deep caramel hue of her cheek turns to me, planted on the shore.
She blinks once, twice, then an uneasy smile pins to her dimpled cheeks. “Sure, yeah—I’ll take Louise.”
Bee spares her a wink before she starts down the hill for me.
“Thanks,” I mutter, my words coming out in grey smoke, grey to match those sharp eyes latched onto me. “I can’t stand another word of it.”
I turn to watch the waves, the darkness rolling over the farther reaches of waters.
It’s not unlike when we watched from the campsite, but now the dark moves like it’s in slow-motion, and I can see the details, the wisps, the threads of it, spooling, then unspooling, lashing, then curling back into the source.
Bee parks herself next me. “So you need the morning.”
My brow pinches. “More than a morning—”
“The morning is all I can give you.” Bee rubs her lips together for a beat. “The blackout is distorting machinery, like cars, and signals, like the radios—I just… I can give you the morning out here, alone, but after that we do need to talk. All of us. There are decisions to be made.”
I say nothing.
I watch the black clouds ahead for a while before I flick the cigarette into the water.
Bee’s mouth twists.
It’s my revenge for her intrusion on my quiet moment—and she knows it, too. Before she can call me out on it, littering, I jolt with a sudden cough striking through me.
My chin knocks off my knee as I double over.
That ache has swollen in me, icy and chesty. I feel the pressure building in my face, heating my cheeks and throbbing my brain.
Then my lips part around an ugly hacking sound—and my breath comes smoother.
It’s over.
I wipe the back of my hand over my lips, then fall back onto the sand.
Bee considers me with a frown, silent.
I stare up at the sky, a streak of blue, wisped with white clouds.
I almost smile.
Bee drapes down beside me. Her hand inches over the sand for mine. “Happy birthday.”
The cool touch of metal presses against my palm.
It’s so familiar to me, I don’t need to look down to see what it is.
“I polished it,” she tells me, soft.
I wonder if she means that. That she has gone out there to buy polish, or she just used a rag in the camper to wipe off the sweat and dirt gathered over these past couple of weeks.
It’s nothing special, the locket, nothing like solid silver or white gold. It’s plain old dipped silver that, under pressure from just pinched fingertips, will bow. But it was my mum’s locket, and the photo clippings inside are all that I have left of her.
I pocket it.
Bee’s hand follows mine—and lures.
I allow it, the threading of her fingers through mine, and turn my chin until my cheek is pressed to the sand.
I study her.
In the light, the grey of her eyes is speckled with faint glimmers of green. The mousy ponytail that’s notched to the top of her head has two loose pieces to frame her round, pretty face.
When I first met Bee, as a new housemate at the home-share in London, about a decade ago now, I took an instant dislike to her.
Truthfully, it was her face.
Not just pretty, not just beautiful, but alluring, too. Like the wink she used on Ramona, the one that sent her off to town for food, or a quick seductive smile that gets us freebies at the bar.
There’s something about Bee that just draws people in. Her smiles dazzle more, her eyes glitter more.
She has that vibe.
People like that never sat right with me.
Besides, I never expected her to bother much with me, not when there were four others in the houseshare, cooler and smarter than me, nicer and kinder, prettier and funnier.
But out of everyone in that house, she liked me.
She worked for it, too, my approval. Really wore me down every chance she got, and the moment I let her close, and I saw that her allure was from something beyond manipulation, our bond was latched.
If soulmates are friends, she is mine.
I am hers.
But that means I know her.
It means I can read her.
I can read most people, see the little looks out the corner of my eye, the faces they make when they think I’m not observing, the shift in body language when I enter the room.
Bee never did that to me.
Bee never made me feel like an intruder.
Still, she’s a fibber.
I tell her that. “You lied.”
Bee doesn’t flinch. Her full mouth parts over murmured words, “What lie are we talking about?”
“How many are there?”
Silence comes for only a moment before, soft, she says, “A lot.”
I watch as she turns slightly and lifts her stare to the dazzling, blue sky.
“You said you would leave me to have my one morning,” I say. “That’s the lie I’m talking about it.”
“Oh.” Her grin turns on me. “That one.”
The smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
“What other lies have you come to tell me?”
Her fingers tighten around mine. “None. Let’s have the morning.”
My nod is faint and short-lived.
The ache springs in my chest—and I twist around just before the coughing fit strikes.
I smack my hand to my mouth, a habit as I rattle with the violence of the coughs. It’s not so much the ache that’s getting to me, or the ragged sandpaper scrape of my throat. It’s that the fit hits so hard and sudden that I can hardly manage a breath between the coughs.
Distantly, I’m aware of Bee patting me on the back. She does that as I ride out the fit.
I let my eyes shut as I catch my breath, and tug my hand from my mouth—
We both still.
Because my hand comes away with blood.