On Wednesday at five, Mara was on Wall Road, watching the depot road from a bus shelter.
She'd never been there before. It was the end of the tram line. The tram ran down to a loop under the wall, turned around with a long squeal of wheels, and went straight back the way it came.
The East Wall filled the whole sky on that side of the street. It was forty meters of gray concrete, streaked black where the rain had run down it for years. Up on top, the nine red lights sat in their metal cages and hummed. From down here, Mara could feel the hum through the soles of her shoes.
There was a pharmacy with a green neon cross and a line for the autumn booster. There was a tire shop. Between them was a small shop. The sign over the door said REPAIRS. Under that, PHONES TABLETS RADIOS. Under that, in a different paint, ALL MAKES.
The east gate was two hundred meters away, the same gate as the sheet on Mr. Barrett's corkboard. She'd been under the shelter for forty minutes.
'Forty minutes in the rain, for a stranger. Dad would have questions. Theo would have a lot more, and he'd ask them all at dinner.'
In forty minutes, she'd learned the street. A street was mostly the same five things going past, over and over.
A boy on a bicycle, with a delivery box strapped to his back, had gone past her four times. He rode between a grill place at the corner and wherever its customers lived. His phone was clipped to the handlebars, and he read it at the red lights.
Twice, a white van had come down from the gate end much faster than the wet road allowed. Both times, it threw a sheet of brown water over the curb.
She noted the boy and the van, because she noted everything now. Neither of them had a number.
At ten past five, the man with the zeros came out of the repair shop, pulling his jacket on.
She followed him. She left a gap of about fifteen meters, which wasn't enough.
At the second corner, he stepped out right beside her, and she nearly walked into his chest.
'How? I was watching his back the whole time!'
"Okay," he said. "Either you're following me, or we've got the same bad way home."
Mara stepped back and tipped her head up.
He was about her age. Up close, his face was sharper than she'd thought, and tired around the eyes, like someone who kept the wrong hours. He seemed more amused than angry, and he hadn't decided yet what she was.
Her eyes went to the zeros before she could stop them. They sat a hand's width above his wet hair.
[00:00:00]
Behind him, in the tire shop window, his reflection had the same zeros, sitting still, same as on the hill.
"Are you ill?" she said.
"That's what you open with?"
"You seemed unwell on Monday. On the hill. I have a first-aid certificate. I wanted to be sure."
The certificate was in a drawer at home, under her old report cards.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
'The lie got me this close. Now ask what you came to ask.'
"So you came to where I work," he said. "Two days later."
"Have you had a fall recently? An accident? Anything with your heart?"
"I've never been better in my life."
He said it like a plain fact. For a second, he seemed surprised by it too.
He took a step back. "Look, I don't know what this is. I'm going home now. You should probably do the same."
"Wait," Mara said.
"No, I think..."
Mara stopped hearing him.
Across the road, the delivery boy had stopped at the red light, one foot down on the curb. Above his head, a number had just come on.
[00:00:42]
Mara felt her whole body turn toward it. The man saw her face change and stopped in the middle of a word.
"What?"
The light was still red. The boy was reading his phone. From the left, down Wall Road, the white van was coming again, as fast as the last two times. Its wipers were going full speed.
[00:00:36]
'No, no, no... he's just a kid with a box! He's carrying somebody's dinner!'
The light changed to green. The boy pushed off.
[00:00:31]
"Thirty-one," Mara said. She didn't know she'd said it out loud. "Thirty seconds. The van."
"What van?"
Mara was already in the road.
"HEY!" she shouted. "Stop! STOP THERE!"
The boy's head came up. He turned toward her, toward the wrong side of the road. The van driver saw him, and Mara heard the brakes grab and fail to hold on the wet stone.
She didn't see the man go.
He was next to her while she was shouting. A second later, there was nobody next to her.
He was on the far side of the road. She had no memory of him crossing it.
He had the boy by the strap of the delivery box and was dragging him backward off the bicycle. They both went down on the sidewalk, hard, and the boy's elbow skidded along the wet concrete.
The van went through the spot where they'd been, its back end sliding, and took the bicycle under its wheels.
Mara heard all of it. A crunch, a long scream of metal on the road, and the frame folding up under the axle. The front wheel came out the far side, bent in half, and rolled on by itself for a few meters. The delivery box burst open. Somebody's dinner went across the road in the rain, rice and red sauce and a torn paper bag.
The air smelled of hot brakes.
'He'd have been under there. Right there, with the rice...'
Above the boy, the number shook, and went out.
Mara measured the road with her eyes. Twenty meters wide, plus a curb.
'Nobody does twenty meters in that time. Nobody! I don't care who you are.'
The man got up and helped the boy up. People were coming out of the tire shop. The van driver had climbed out and was standing in the rain with both hands on his head.
The man checked the boy over, arms, head, hands, and said a few words to him. He turned and found Mara across the road.
The zeros were still above him. They hadn't even flickered.
He walked back. He didn't run.
Mara's phone buzzed in her pocket while he was crossing. She took it out without taking her eyes off him.
--Dina-- where are you
--Mara--
Wall Road. I'm fine.
She put the phone away before Dina could answer.
Neither of them said a word until they were under the pharmacy's awning, with the green cross flashing on and off over their heads. The booster line had broken up to watch the van.
He was breathing a little fast. Nowhere near fast enough for what he'd just done.
"You said thirty seconds," he said. "To yourself. I heard you. And then it was thirty seconds."
"Nobody crosses a road like that."
"You first. How did you know?"
Rain ran off the edge of the awning in a line. Across the road, two men were pulling what was left of the bicycle out from under the van. Mara couldn't pretend anymore, and neither could the man with the zeros.
'Say it. You've never said it to anyone. Not Dad, not Dina... but nobody else could have crossed that road. Say it.'
"I see numbers," Mara said. "Over people. They count down."
She said it in a flat, plain voice.
"To what?"
She turned to the boy across the road. He was sitting on the curb now, with someone's coat around his shoulders. His phone was still in his hand, and he was staring at it without reading it.
There was nothing above him anymore. Just wet hair.
"To dying," she said. "If nobody gets there in time."
The man tipped his head back and peered at the air above himself, as if he might see it too.
"Have I got one?"
"Yes."
"What does it say?"
"Zero. All zeros. It has since Monday."
"And when they get to zero..."
"They die."
The green cross went on, and off.
He put one hand flat on his own chest and left it there.
"I'm not dead," he said.
"I know. I've followed you for three days to make sure."
One corner of his mouth went up and came straight back down. He took his hand off his chest and turned it over, like the palm might tell him the answer.
"So what does mine mean?"
Mara closed her notebook. She hadn't known she'd taken it out.
"I have no idea," she said.