The Loudness by Nick Courage

Author:Nick Courage
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Published: 2014-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

It’s a packed car on the way to the Other Side. Grammy’s driving, tapping the gas pedal with a nervous rhythm I can’t quite place, and Conor and the skinny engineer are sharing the passenger seat, hands pressed protectively against the dash. I’m in the back with Mrs. Wallace, Guv, and another, fatter engineer from the dam. The fat engineer, who’s actually not fat so much as he is husky, is obviously interested in Mrs. Wallace. I can tell by the way he focuses on the lace of her dress instead of meeting her eyes, and by the way he chivalrously gives her as much space as possible. Which would be fine, except he’s scootched over so far that he’s half-sitting on my leg.

Not only is it still raining—all of us are dripping from the crazed run to the car—but Grammy has her headlights off so as not to draw any unwanted attention. The darkness, coupled with the pounding rain, makes it almost impossible to see, and even though Grammy’s driving painfully slowly, we keep running over deceptively deep troughs where the road’s been ripped up but not yet repaved. The first time this happened, I was trying to get the story about their trip to the dam, about Freckles, from Conor, and Grammy—cursing—shushed me, saying she needed complete silence to concentrate on the road.

I cross my fingers, praying that the tires on Grammy’s old sedan hold up at least until we get to the Other Side and imagining worst-case scenarios regardless: the car turned over in a muddy ditch, wheels spinning against the rain, while a fleet of black jeeps surround it. My parents, dead. Mouse, dead. Myself, alive in a federale jail, in a full-body cast from the car crash.

Waiting for the end.

The storm makes it easy to feel hopeless, to give myself to it. I stare sadly out the window of the car—which is silent except for the rain’s white noise and Grammy’s occasional muffled curse—and let the engineer sit on my leg, because nothing seems to matter anymore. Even the Other Side, when we finally reach it, seems depressed. The flags are tangled and mottled with dirt. The million multicolored flyers are peeling off walls, collecting into unrecognizable piles of soggy pulp when they hit the ground.

It feels uncomfortably like the Grey, to be honest. Quiet and creepy. Grammy idles the car, and we all wait in silence, unsure whether to stay or make a run for it. I bounce my knee, feeling trapped by the crush of the crowded back seat and by the emptiness outside. All my life, I’d been raised to believe that—no matter what—it was possible to carve out a life here, to grow something new and vibrant out of the silt-rich dirt. But now even the Other Side is covered in mud and darkness; in a mute, collective fear . . . and it feels like no matter what, the Zone always ends up buried in a dingy, heartless Grey.

The white

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