The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (digital ebook reader txt) 📕

“You did steal something from me,” he said. “You stole my story to start ABANDON. Or did you think I never watched your videos?”

I chewed my cheek, stalling, ashamed. Dyson placed the keys in my hand and jogged to the men. On the bus, I wiped glass shards from one of the three-seaters near the back and lay down, hoping to nap.

My eyes couldn’t have been closed for ten minutes when I heard Dyson screaming, “Start the bus! Start the fucking bus!” Outside, the men were racing in my direction, their baggy track pants sinking past their hips as they ran. I was groggy and slow, and Dyson was on the bus, demanding the keys from me, before I stepped out of my seat.

“What’s happening?” I asked

“Man horde,” said Randy. Gerry, Dr. Mapplethorpe, Hughie, William, Mack, and Lawrence followed him onto the bus.

Dyson started the engine. He shut the bus door.

“What about the others?” I asked.

“They’re up there,” said Dr. Mapplethorpe. He pointed to the roof of the movie theater, which was under construction. Our men joined the hired construction crew; they were tossing scraps of building material into a chute feeding into a dumpster.

Dyson shifted into drive.

Our men quit tossing trash in the chute.

“They’ll snap out of it, Dyson. We should go grab them.”

The bus lurched forward.

“Turn around!” I shouted. I ran up to the front. “I’ll talk to them. We can talk to them. Sometimes they snap out of it.”

“They don’t anymore,” he said.

The bus continued driving. The men and I congregated on the left side of the bus, on separate three-seaters, kneeling in the bite of broken glass, eyes fixed on the roof of the theater, where Peter, Benjamin, Kevin, and David stepped to the edge.

Peter went first.

thirty

A headline would appear the following day: Man Horde Sufferers Die After Leaping from the Roof of Movie Theater. There was a photo—but I didn’t look. All four were classified as John Does.

thirty-one

“No one could’ve known that would happen,” said Dyson. We were sitting side by side in the cabin. It was the first thing either of us had said to the other since leaving the bus.

“I’ve been telling you this would happen since we got here,” I said.

“I took every precaution.”

“I told you not to recruit at the mall. We should’ve just driven back.”

“Most of the men hording these days are recidivists. I made sure none of the men had horded before. I asked them all to their faces.”

I didn’t feel guilty for hiding Peter’s secret. I was angry at Dyson, instead, for making the men return to the theater. This wouldn’t have happened if he had driven us back to the camp. “How are you not grieving?” I asked. “Aren’t these men your men?”

“One of them must have been lying to me.”

“It’s not about lying, Dyson. It’s about your reckless behavior and your obsessive drive for attention.”

“We’re doing this to help other people,” he said.

“You got four people killed today.”

“Because one of them—at least one of them, probably more—was lying to me. I told you from the beginning that cults were founded on honesty.”

“Just say it, Dyson: I got four people killed today.”

“If I say it then you have to say it.”

“I got four people killed today,” I said. It was easy for me to say. I didn’t believe it.

“Not that,” he said.

“Then what?”

“Use your superpower, Sasha. Decode what I’m trying to tell you, since I’ve never once said what I actually mean.”

“I’m not gonna say it.”

“I’ll go first,” he said. “I killed four men today.”

“I have no reason to say it,” I said.

“I killed four men today. Your turn.”

“Dyson.”

“Your turn.”

I couldn’t say it because I believed it. Despite my resentment, despite my righteousness, despite insisting on my innocence, I had believed it for months.

“You can’t move forward if you hide from your past.”

“Fuck your meaningless mantras,” I said.

“I killed four men today,” he said.

“You’re trying to hurt me.”

“What about you? What have you done?”

I needed to say it because I believed. “Please don’t make me,” I said.

“You can’t move forward if you hide from your past.”

“I did it,” I said. “I killed Lucas Devry.”

thirty-two

ROGER HANDSWERTH ARRANGED for a car to pick me up.

“Don’t you need an address?” I asked.

“We already know where you are.”

Dyson begged me to stay. “What does DAM even make?” he asked. “Who are they?”

“They’re people who’d never leave anyone for dead,” I said. Though I couldn’t be sure. I knew so little about DAM, only that Cassandra thought I should work with them and that Roger believed he needed me, that he planned to double my rates.

I spent my final night fretting on Peter’s old cot, sleepless with grief and guilt. The men lined up to wish me good-bye in the morning. We hugged chastely, one by one down the row, as a black town car idled behind me in the grass. Dyson didn’t show. I doubted I’d see him again. But he texted me on the drive: a fusillade of remorse. I deleted every text.

At the San Francisco airport, a bull-chested man in a pinstriped suit held a tablet with MARCUS blinking onscreen. “That’s me,” I said.

“Place your hand on the screen,” he said. The tablet scanned my fingerprints, glowing red and heating before flashing green in approval. A TSA agent walked us to a rooftop helipad. The man in the suit handed me earmuffs. He wished me good luck.

The ease with which Roger Handswerth conducted my travel made me feel like a dignitary. I’d never known anyone capable of wielding such power—Claire Lance had come closest, but her influence seemed so pedestrian compared to Roger’s. Flying over lush Douglas firs en route to DAM’s headquarters made me ache for the pines at The Atmosphere, for Peter. Dyson popped into my head. I flung him away.

A glass building sprawled, spiderlike, at the foot of a mountain. Eight