S Morden - One Way

She’d divorced him. Of course she had. He’d told her unequivocally that she should, and she’d agreed faster than he thought she might. But he’d betrayed her, by not telling her what he’d been planning. And if he’d loved her more, he might not have done it.

Rereading the letters gave him comfort, though. He had been loved. He had had the capacity to love. He might even love again, at some point. He had known once upon a time how to do that and what it had felt like.

“ Report to Building Two. Acknowledge .”

“Acknowledged.” It might be the last time he heard that voice in his ear. “It’s been real.”

He picked up his box and headed down towards Building Two, where there was a line of minivans waiting. The evening air was cool, and coming off the desert, so it tasted of salt.

The others were there, congregating at the steps up into the medical center, each of them was holding a California Department of Corrections cardboard box. Marcy’s was tied up with string. There were also suits, but they were waiting on the other side of the road. Apart from their earpieces, the cons were alone.

Zeus, sitting on the steps of the Blood Bank, moved across to give Frank some room. “Good?”

“Good enough.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.” Zeus’s thick fingers dug into the board of his box, perched across his knees. “This is too quick.”

“I’ve registered my objections already. It made no difference. We just have to suck it up, big man.” The wind tugged at Frank’s ankles. “We’re on our way. We’ve been on our way since we left the pen, but someone, somewhere, had one of those big clocks and it’s counted down.”

“That’s always bugged me. The countdown business. If everything’s ready, why not just press a button and launch?”

“I guess it’s more complicated than that,” said Frank. “You wouldn’t turn on a pump until it had liquid inside it, so people have to know the order in which to do stuff.”

“I suppose so. If there was someone we could have asked, that would have been cool, you know? It’s like we’re being kept in the dark on purpose.” Zeus glanced behind him at Building Two. “Do you know how they’re going to do this?”

“We get in the cars and they take us to wherever, where they do whatever it is they do to us. Then we wake up on Mars.” Frank saw he had an audience. “That’s what they’re going to do.”

Alice jerked her head at one of the vans. “Go and take a look in the back.”

“Which one?”

“Any one.”

Frank put his box down and walked slowly over. He shielded his eyes against the reflections around him and peered in through the tinted side windows. He frowned, and hunkered down for another, better look.

Inside was like the back of an ambulance. There were machines and straps and wires and tanks, and things he couldn’t even recognize.

“They’re going to put us under here,” she called. “We won’t even get to see the rocket. We’re the cargo. We’re not important.”

Frank realized that he should have expected this. That every time his jailers had the opportunity to behave like decent human beings, they disappointed him. They were determined to let him down at every turn. All he’d wanted to do was step up to the rocket like a regular astronaut, so that he felt as if he was actually going on a journey. Brack had said “transport”, but they were just going to freight them all as frozen corpses. It would explain why they were waiting outside the Blood Bank.

“Well,” he said. “Goddamn.” He walked back to the steps, picked up his box again and cradled it against his chest.

The door to Building Two swung open, and the suits shifted their stances, in exactly the same way that prison guards did when they thought something was about to kick off. Rather than a message over the earpiece, it was one of the medics, holding a tablet, calling them inside.

Frank looked around at the others. Did any of them seem more agitated than usual? Were they going to make a futile run for it? There was nowhere to go, and no one going to help them. Demetrius was almost shaking with fear, and Marcy put her hand between his shoulders. She whispered something to him, and the boy nodded hesitantly.

“We’re not quitters,” said Zeus. He got to his feet and started up the steps. “We might be a lot of things, but not that.”

Then he started to sing.

“Oh mourner, let’s go down, let’s go down, let’s go down. Oh mourner, let’s go down, down in the valley to pray.”

“ No singing ,” said his ear.

Not this time. Frank couldn’t sing. Couldn’t so much as hold a note from one word to the next. He’d never really tried out of childhood. But damned if he wasn’t going to try now. The words weren’t familiar to him. He was more West Coast than he was gospel, and maybe he’d heard the tune once before, with different lyrics.

“Go on, Zeus. Sing it for us.”

Zeus glanced behind him, and gained strength from what he saw. “As I went down in the valley to pray, studying about that good old way.” His voice was high and clear and clean. For a big man, he sounded more like a choirboy. “When you shall wear the starry crown, good Lord, show me the way.”

The medic wordlessly stood aside for the line of them, Zeus in front, Marcy propelling Demetrius ahead of her at the rear. When it came to the chorus, Frank joined in, hesitantly and very inexpertly.

“Oh sinner, let’s go down, let’s go down, let’s go down. Oh sinner, let’s go down, down in the valley and pray.”

“ No singing ,” said his ear again. Presumably in Zeus’s too, but he wasn’t going to be put off either. Not this time.

“I think I hear the sinner say, come, let’s go in the valley to pray. You shall wear the starry crown, good Lord, show me the way.”

They were walking down the corridor, down to the very far end, where Frank had never gone before.

“Oh mourner, let’s go down, let’s go down, let’s go down. Oh mourner, let’s go down, down in the valley and pray.” Was it everyone now? It was difficult to tell without stopping to check. It sounded like most of them. Perhaps not Alice, but then again, why not? If an ex-white supremacist could sing a spiritual, then there was no good reason for a doctor guilty of murdering her patients not to do so.

It was an act of defiance, for certain. There was nothing that their jailers could do to them. Not now. It was also an act of contrition. Zeus was singing the songs of the people he’d tattooed his hate for across his body.

The double doors at the far end of the corridor opened up, revealing a bright, white space beyond, and Zeus strode into it, carrying the rest of them along in his wake.

Seven tables. Seven coffins. Screens between them. Two medics in each bay.

Zeus’s voice faltered, just for a beat, before he resumed. “I think I hear the mourner say, come, let’s go in the valley to pray. You shall wear the starry crown, good Lord, show me the way.”

One of each pair of medics came forward to claim their victim, and led them to their separate areas, where it was just them, the three of them together.

“ Get undressed ,” Frank was told, and he got undressed, like he had done a hundred times. He put his box on the floor in front of his white, plastic coffin, and purposefully took his clothes off, trying to record for posterity what it felt like.

“Oh sinner, let’s go down, let’s go down, let’s go down.”

The roughness of the fabric, the weight of it as it fell away. The cold, antiseptic air giving him gooseflesh. This might be the last thing he ever remembered. The slickness of the rubberized floor. The strange envelope of the stretchy one-piece he had to put on, that went right over his head and left only his face exposed.