Final Respects
By Sophia Jirafe
Classification: VA
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through S8
Archive: permission required; links only
Feedback: skepticgirl @ yahoo.com
Disclaimer: If you can recognize them, you can sue me
Summary: In dark times, a line is crossed.
----
The straps of the pack cut into his thin shoulders as he hikes up
the dusty street. Piles of rubble crowd his way, and he climbs over
them with wiry strength, hands gripping the cement bones of
buildings long since tumbled. It's still and quiet tonight, and
starlight is enough to illuminate the road in front of him. He can't
remember a time hen he wasn't able to pick out every constellation
with perfect clarity.
It's hard to believe this was once a city. He's seen pictures, of
course, but he can still barely imagine what it must have felt like
to walk down those closed-in corridors full of cars and buildings
nd lights and strangers. He doesn't even like it the way it is now,
a spread out mess of levelled concrete and metal. Nothing compares
to the prickly, golden hills he grew up in, rolling to the endless
ocean where warm, baked dirt met frigid waves. He's hiked across the
continent and never seen anything he loved as well.
He's glad, though, to have had the chance to get a glimpse of the
rest of the country. America has always been a name to him, never
an image. He grew up listening to his parents remember miles of
black asphalt, towering skyscrapers, faces cut into mountains
and rivers flowing to the gulf, but it was never real. Even the
old pictures they'd find sometimes, postcards and magazines and
photo albums, failed to give him a clear vision.
A nation is its people, he thinks. In that sense, America is still
real. He's seen it over the past few months of travel, scattered
knots of family groups, two or three larger units boasting a
teacher, perhaps, or a doctor, a farmer, a cobbler. The older ones
remember. He's seen their homes, Quonset huts decorated with
macrame plant holders, leather recliners, pictures of long-dead
relatives. They wear old clothing until it falls to rags, and
they use the old expressions that no longer hold meaning.
"He's not playing with a full deck."
"She's hell on wheels."
"Rome wasn't built in a day."
Rome was one of the first cities to go.
The few younger people are nothing like him. He tries to imagine a
time when people grew up in harmony, when mass media synchronized
desires and people on the other side of the country wore the same
jeans as you did. Now only those raised together are alike.
The teenagers of the great salt plains were burnt brown, wearing
little, and they spent the days in their tents eating bits of cactus
and looking at patterns in the sand. In the cool Applachian forests,
they played games with the little children, whooping up hills and
climbing trees and splashing through creeks. Near the eastern ocean,
they swam races and caught fish for dinner and were solemn and quiet
around their parents.
Where he grew up, few children his age had been born. It was the
geographical mindset, his mother explained once; people here thought
they could wait until middle age before starting families. They had
lives to live before they tied themselves down with children.
When the wars started a few years after his birth, no one even thought
about children. He knows from his parents that everyone expected
this to be the last war, the scourge they'd feared for years. And it
was, of course, it was the absolute last plague, but even now that
isn't fully understood. The lines of communication had been destroyed
long before the ships landed in the cities.
Most people, he knows, don't want to understand. Their world has
ended; that is enough for them. They don't tell their children either,
and what he has seen on his four month journey is strange, backward
groups of frightened people who protect their fierce ignorance. He
has tried to gather information from them, asking hushed, respectful
questions about how much remained in the area. But the older people
wouldn't talk about the few buildings left, and the younger ones
would only pester him for bribes, sugar and electrical wires
and toilet paper.
Part of it, of course, is the demographics of hiding. In some of the
more mountainous areas, lifestyles have hardly changed at all. Many
of the plains dwellers live in basements built decades before the
invasion, stocked with enough Gatorade and cans of soup to last
twenty years. These are underground people who survived, the ones
who disbelieved newspaper platitudes and started packing the day the
borders closed. It is their nature to be shy and distrustful, but
they are tenacious, and he thinks they might have lived a few more
generations if only they'd had the sense to have children.
But children are a rare thing these days. From the scavenged
literature he's read, he would have thought that anarchy would have
bred promiscuity, or at least relaxed social mores. Instead, it seems
like people have drawn away from each other. He has seen his own
parents grow distant over the years, worn down by the rigors of
subsistence living. He knows about the things they miss, like electric
blankets and movie theaters and espresso, and he's sorry for them in
a quiet way. It seems like those things oiled their lives, helped to
sand the edges off their sharp characters.
He's glad, really, to have been free of all that. His attachment to
anything beyond basic survival gear is minimal, and it's comfortable
to know that he can pick up and leave when he wants.
He trips over a crack in the asphalt and barely catches himself,
the heavy pack pushing his balance forward. The roads here are some
of the worst he's ever seen, and he knows this is because the
fighting was heavy in this city. He's asked his parents about it
before, but neither would describe it. His mother was always
businesslike in her refusals to discuss the wars.
"Anything but that," she would say. "Ask me about McDonald's or
trains, but don't ask me to tell you about that."
His father's reaction was harder to judge. At first he would only
crack a sad smile and shake his head, then take him outside to toss
around one of the baseballs they'd salvaged from a burned-out
Wallmart. In recent years, though, his father had slipped away in
increments. Any question about the past sent him into a tragic dream,
staring up at the ceiling until nothing but a firm shake would
rouse him.
The boy has never known regret like that. He has never, in truth,
known regret at all. There is nothing for him to miss; if anything,
life has improved for him over the years as his family learned to
live with less each day. He wishes, sometimes, that he could have
felt more sympathy for his father. But he grew up with parents from
another world, lost people, his loving mother with the hardness in
her eyes and his dreaming father, industrious some days and then
useless for weeks on end.
An intersection approaches. He pulls a chipped black compass from
his vest pocket, and a creased, stained map from a side pouch of
his pack. Squinting at both in the dimness, he traces his finger
along the unfamiliar lines demarcating streets. It's strange to
have to think in such a linear way. His forebears were cruel in
the way they imposed their will upon the land. There must have
been hills here, once, and maybe a dense forest filled with small
animals and birds burrowing their way into it. They seem to have
done better in his native west, where the old roads wind over
rises and through low valleys crisscrossed with thin fences. They
had learned a little by the time they reached the end of the
frontier, and some of the harsh, frenzied colonial energy had
worn away.
Something similar had happened with the next batch of colonists.
He takes a right and turns onto the street, which is more crowded
with rubble than the last. This street held the nation's most
important buildings, he knows, and it is their detritus he picks
his way through. He is getting closer now, and in his thin chest
his heart begins to beat a little faster. The thrill of the
unknown has kept him going all summer, but this is his last
challenge. He doesn't know whether to be sorry it's over or
worried about what comes next.
Four years ago his mother sat down at her desk with a frown creasing
her pale forehead. Her hands were empty, and he questioned her. With
a catch in her voice, she explained that she couldn't think of
anything else to teach him. She'd stayed up all night, searching
through her notes and her water-stained books, trying to think of
some area of knowledge he hadn't already been trained in. His
father had been fading then but he'd helped too, racking his brain
for stray pieces of information. They could come up with nothing.
At age fifteen, he knew everything his parents had ever learned, and
he knew that this scared them.
Since then, he's found his own way of learning. His parents didn't
know, for example, how to rewire a ham radio so it would catch very
high frequencies. They also didn't know how to climb buildings
where the fire ladders had rusted shut, or how to make one revolver
out of the pieces of three, or even how to make a food dehydrator
out of foil and milk jugs and most of a carburator.
He checks the compass again and veers left, counting foundations.
After a minute he stops at the remains of a long stucco building.
Stepping from the crunchy asphalt to the rubble-strewn grass, he
surveys the unassuming structure. His eyes pick out a stairwell,
nearly covered by a dented dumpster tipped on its side, and he
crosses the field to it.
He slides between the rails around the top of the stairs and lands
lightly at the bottom. The metal door in front of him is filthy and
scratched, covered with old graffiti from before the aerosol cans
of paint ran out.
"Die fucking Bug Eyes!"
"America forever"
"Jamie is the shit"
For lack of anything better to do, he knocks on the door with a
hollow rap, the corroded surface scraping his knuckles. He waits
a long time before he hears a noise from behind it, a slow shuffling
punctuated by the sound of something heavy being dragged to the
door. For the first time he notices the small hole drilled near
the top and looks up to it, hoping to catch a glimpse of the
ruin's occupant.
"Password," he hears whispered through the hole.
"Three kappa eta fourteen thirty-six two sigma tau," he recites
from memory.
There is a pause, then the heavy something is pushed aside again
and the door swings open with a scrape. A thin, haggard woman
wrapped in a dingy bathrobe stands before him, strings of greasy
ash-blonde hair hanging in her face.
"It wasn't even locked," he says.
"It doesn't matter either way," she tells him. "Come in."
He follows her into the dark, damp hall, lined with fungus-covered
cinderbrick. The way is lit by the dim glow of a propane lamp in a
room at the end of the passage, and even his quick feet stumble
over the cracks in the invisible cement floor. She leads him to
the room, then shuts the door behind him.
This summer's journey has left him nearly incapable of surprise
at the variety of human existence, but the room is still beyond
his experience. He is used to people making at least a minimum
stab at daily comfort. Nothing here even reaches that level. A
pile of crumbling newspapers occupies one corner, with a few ragged
towels thrown over it. A rickety card table with faded pictures
of playing cards marching around its green vinyl top holds the
place of honor in the middle of the room. A metal trash can, turned
upside down, serves as a chair.
As far as he can tell, there is nothing to do in this room. No books,
no radio, no way of creating enough electricity to run any sort of
small appliance. Does she sit here in the dark all day?
She goes to the newspapers in the corner and sits down cross-legged,
staring at him with blank blue eyes. In the marginally improved
light he can see that she is as much of a wreck as the room. The
filthy garment she wears is threadbare and full of holes, and her
feet are shod in worn rubber boots. She's older than he'd previously
thought; her hair is a shade more grey than blonde, and while her
lovely bone structure has weathered the years well, fine wrinkles
crease the skin of her face.
Awkward, he glances around the room and finally perches on the
upended trash can, unshouldering his pack and setting it between
his legs on the floor. Their silence is as dark and moldy as the
room. A lifetime of obedience weighs on him before he finally speaks.
"What do you have for me?"
Her gaze flickers away. She mouths the words to herself, then looks
back at him.
"Did they tell you I had something to trade?" she asks in her
gravel tones.
"I...not exactly. When I told them what I was looking for, coming
here was the final part of my instructions."
She sighs a thick sigh, gathering a deep breath into her chest
before expelling it.
"Fools as always, with their stupid games. Boy, whatever it is you
want, I don't have it. Look around. Does it look like I'm in a
position to give anything away? I live in the rubble. I can't even
clothe myself properly. They bring me what they think I need, and
god help me if I venture outside. I haven't left this basement
in eight years."
Her voice warms as she speaks, and he can hear vestiges of a cultured
accent. He wonders what she once was, if the time and trouble has torn
away at her as it did his father.
"I--I don't think they explained what it is I want."
"Information? You and everyone else born after the wars. It's a waste
of time. Who gives a fuck what the world used to be like? It's hell
now, and that's all that matters."
"My parents--"
"Wouldn't tell you anything? Broke down crying when you asked them
to describe the grocery store around the corner? Built shrines out
of old Newsweek magazines and spent their days staring at broken
skylines of dead cities? Stop torturing them. Get over the past and
do something for yourself."
"My parents are dead."
She shakes her head with a fierce motion, and the warmth has spread
from her voice to her face. He senses he is the first person to
touch her in a long, long time.
"I won't say I'm sorry because I think they're better off that way.
No one should have to live, remembering what we do."
She glares at him, and he tries to think of another tack.
"Listen, I don't think you understand what kind of information I want.
I don't want to hear about the past. I can see that's a very painful
subject for you. I understand that you have some...instructions."
"Even if I have this thing, give me one good reason I should give it
to you," she snaps.
"There was a trade arranged. I would do a few things for them, and
in exchange they'd do a few things for you."
The new color drains from her face, and he sees her wounded, lonely
soul in her big blue eyes, beautiful as a young girl's. She opens
her mouth, then closes it again.
"Did they--did they say exactly what sort of things they'd do?"
she asks, her voice hoarse. "Any phrase in particular?"
He searches his memory, then dredges up the words.
"They said to tell you they were going to end a game of Russian
roulette in your favor. Does that mean anything to you?"
She stares at him, shocked, for a long moment.
"A--a man I loved once," she whispers at last. "A long time ago.
He's been in prison for fifteen years."
The beautiful eyes close, and tears slide down her cheeks. She
clutches the robe tighter around her, and rocks back and forth on
her rubbish pile.
"Ma'am?" he asks after a moment. "Will you give me what I need?"
She nods at him, still weeping with her soundless, open mouth.
He watches her cry for a few minutes longer, and then she recovers
with a shudder that takes her whole body. Wiping her eyes, she rises
and comes towards him, opening her robe a little. She pulls out a
piece of paper as wrinkled and creased as his own map, and hands it
out to him with a shaking hand.
"It's a little hard to read," she tells him in an unsteady voice.
"But if you have a compass, you should be fine."
He takes it carefully, and tucks it into his pack.
"Thank you," he says. "Just tell me...why haven't you used it?"
She snorts sad laughter at him.
"Use it? Why on earth--" She stops for a second, then smiles. "Yes,
why on Earth. There's nothing else out there. It's a godforsaken hole,
but it's the only thing left for me."
She cocks her head and looks him in the eye suddenly.
"Tell me, though, why do you want it? Is it just because your parents
are gone? You must have someone else you're attached to, something
else you care about."
Memories and images whirl through his brain, dizzy thoughts trying
to break through old barriers.
"No," he tells her. "There's nothing here for me anymore."
She shrugs, dismissing him and his incomprehensible motives. He
rises, shouldering the pack, and starts down the dingy hallway
again, she following. When they reach the doorway, she looks up
and out, gazing at the bright points of light in the night sky.
"They might be back any day now," she says quietly. "Any time they
want. They said they would."
"I know," he answers, his throat tight. "That's why I had to...do
some things. To be safe. I missed it the first time, and I can't
stand to see it happen again."
At the intensity of his tone she turns, and seems to look at him
closely for the first time.
"You remind me of someone," she says slowly. "Your voice. Something
in your eyes. Did I...where do you come from?"
"The west coast."
She shakes her head, frowning.
"No...but then, everyone spread out after that first attack. Some
even before, those who knew it was coming. And you...well, never
mind. If your parents are dead, I suppose it doesn't matter at all."
He nods, anxious to be on his way.
"It probably doesn't make sense to wish you luck, but I will
anyhow," she tells him. "I think you'll need it."
"Good luck to you," he replies. "With...whatever it is they're
going to do for you. You look like you could use a break."
A dreamy, joyous smile covers her face again, making her look
almost pretty.
"Yes. I think I could."
He starts up the steps, towards the cool night air, leaving the
wrecked woman and her sad smiles behind him.
Once on the ruined street again, he pulls his city map from his pack
and studies it. The building he's after is hardly a kilometer away,
and he walks quickly, anticipation spicing his step. The final task.
He rounds a corner, and there it is, the tallest structure left in
this miserable, decimated city. Seven stories high, a miracle in
this age, and smooth and brown as the day it was finished.
He circles the building slowly, piqued by its strange, clean lines.
He supposes this was civic art, an attempt to ease the ugly sprawl
of concrete that had destroyed the natural beauty of the country.
It looks pretty hideous to him, and that makes this all the easier.
He stands in front of the structure for a moment, old awe creeping
in then, the love of his species for things bigger than themselves.
For just a moment, he understands the creep and crush of civilization.
It's comforting to worship what one has made.
He kneels down in front of what was once the main entrance, now a
gaping metal hole filled with shattered glass, and opens his pack.
The paraphernelia is quickly unpacked, his practiced, capable hands
doing their work without effort. This doesn't take thought anymore,
and conscience is out of the question.
He straightens up and begins to walk backwards, rolling the wire out
behind him. He remembers the first time, hands shaking as he held
his breath and counted, adrenaline surging. He remembers the dust
and fire scent, like the kiln his mother once set up in the backyard
of their old house before his father moved them into the mountains
where there was no soft red clay.
Shit, he's not going to think about his parents anymore, but it's
too late, and his heart chokes him as the images come.
//He served them dinner and his mother looked at him with surprised,
happy eyes as he set the bowls down in front of them.//
He tucks the end of the wire into the box.
//The soup was thin, with bubbles of oil, and it sloshed out the
sides when he put the bowls on the table.//
He seals the crack with the last of the putty.
//His father was almost lucid then, and he gripped his spoon with
thumb and all four fingers to steady himself.//
He pulls the handle up.
//His mother began to cough. She coughed until the blood poured out
of her mouth in a thin trickle.//
He pushes the handle down.
//His father fell face down into the bowl and breathed in liquid.
He choked but did not move, and the frothing stopped after a few
minutes.//
The charge travels towards the building.
//His mother threw her head back against the chair. Her eyes were
open but she saw nothing.//
The noise is as loud as ever, louder even because this is the biggest
thing he's blown up yet. The structure implodes on itself, crumbling
down until it's nothing more than wreckage, like the rest of this
useless town. The whole world looks like this now, and he's glad to
know he helped in some small way. It doesn't matter why he's doing
it, or why any of the young people like himself are participating
in mass destruction. The world is over, and it's time to burn the
bridges.
He wipes off his hands and pulls the woman's map out. The
handwriting on it is small and precise, with crooked lines inked
out, and he can see the airstrip is fairly close.
The sun is rising when he reaches the chain link fence at the top
of the rise, rusted and bent but still intact, held together in
places with pieces of bailing wire. He scales it easily and jumps
down on the other side, sending up dust clouds where he lands. He
looks around with a wary eye, waiting to see if the breach has been
noticed, but the airstrip is peaceful and undisturbed. He finds the
trailer with no difficulty, and crosses the field towards it. An
old airplane sits outside, one of the private jets so popular with
the rich and loose-walleted of the last century. He mounts the metal
stairs with confidence, with no trace of his earlier apprehension.
He belongs here now.
After a perfunctory knock on the door he opens it enough to put his
head in. What he sees startles him.
A man is seated at a desk in the corner, writing with a silver
pen. The room is lined with bookcases, an expensive oriental rug
on the floor. All of it must have cost a fortune in this time of
devastation.
He enters the trailer and walks towards the desk. The man looks up
with a blank expression, no emotion on his smooth features. His age
is indeterminate--his features are young but the set in his eyes
is not.
"William Hale?" the man asks in smooth tones.
He nods.
"I see you were able to meet your contact with no trouble. And your
mission..."
He flips through a few folders on the desk with him. The young man
stares straight forward, not wanting to let his guard down. This is
not as he expected, a well-appointed office with a smiling,
suited man.
The man finds what he's looking for and smiles, a cruel little smirk.
"I see you've done as you were asked--you completed your final task
only a few hours ago, yes?"
"That's right, sir. The big house operation."
"Then I don't think we have much more to talk about. I assume you
have everything prepared to leave immediately?"
"Of course, sir."
"Good then, good." The man at the desk roots around some more in the
clutter, and pulls out an unusual object, a black square appliance
with buttons. William slowly recognizes it from old magazine ads as
the man begins to punch buttons.
"Hello, Martin? Yes, Base 12 here. We have the package ready. Yes,
departing immediately. Right, just bring your gear along--we have
plenty of fuel left for this month. All right."
He thumbs the phone off and turns his bland face back to William.
"Be about twenty minutes, sonny," he says familiarly. "Might want
to sit down for a while." He gestures to a cracked but well-cared
for leather couch in the far end of the trailer.
William shakes his head.
"I'll be all right, sir. I'll just wait outside, if that's all
right with you."
The man gives him a strange look out the corner of his eye, then
shrugs.
"Whatever suits you," he tells him. "You've done a fine job for us.
A pleasure working with you." He extends a hand over the desk.
William looks at the hand, and then at the face. There is nothing
behind the man's eyes, only that brittle smile, that soft skin.
"You know," he says slowly. "This...isn't quite what I was led to
expect. I thought...isn't this the same organization as Nature's
Own?"
The man laughs a dry, sour little laugh.
"Not exactly, sonny. We control Nature's Own, of course, and a dozen
other shitty little rebellion groups. But we have more of what you
might call a...corporate mindset."
"Then I don't understand, sir," William says, frowning."Why did
you hire me? What was the purpose of the destruction?"
"You want the simple truth? We don't want any upstarts, and
buildings mean possibility. What little we've got, we're holding
onto. Rules of business and all."
He flashes his perfectly white teeth in a tight smile, and William's
stomach turns.
"B-business?" he breathes.
The man behind the desk lets his smile grow, and a light enters
his eyes for the first time. He contemplates William for a few
moments.
"Sonny, what exactly did your contacts tell you?" he asks at last,
smug amusement in his voice.
"They--they told me..." William flounders, his heart sinking. "They
told me I would be given a way to leave," he says weakly.
"And your parents?"
"They said my parents' time was finished, that it was a mercy,
really," he says stiffly, forcing each word out. "They said it was
the kindest thing to do, that they could never really let go."
And it's true, really true, they were drowning in their own sorrow,
but at the moment all he can see is his father drowning in his
own soup.
"Well, look, Willy," says the man, interrupting his thoughts. "I'm
sorry you got the wrong idea about us."
William looks him in the eye and knows he is not sorry.
"We're not a charity. We're a company, a rather old establishment.
Your father probably could have told you something about us. We
had--er--extensive dealings with him. You might be interested to
know that he spent almost ten years working in the building you
just blew up."
William opens his mouth and closes it again. His father the ghost.
"So while I'm sorry if you acted on any misconceptions, your
contract still stands."
The man's eyes are hard now, and William is afraid for the first
time.
"I...see," he fumbles out. "I--I guess I'll just be outside then."
He begins to leave, then turns again.
"Where am I going?" he asks quietly.
"Costa Rica," the man says in his oily voice. "It's a resort there,
built just before the wars. Of course, it was never completed, so
the amenities aren't quite up to scratch. But then, I don't imagine
your type really needs much more than a bedroll and an outhouse.
And don't worry...you'll be very well-protected. Wouldn't want to
lose someone of your--er--skill."
Possibility surges for a moment. The revolver in his bag, the
paperweight on the desk. He could leave. But they would only find
him again, as they found him the first time, age sixteen and sullen
and bored. They know who he is.
William shudders at the man's final smile, and trudges out of the
room. He shuts the door behind him, and sinks to the metal steps
below. The world seems suddenly very large, and very cold. He
pulls a down jacket from his pack and shrugs it on, wrapping
his thin arms around himself.
Gazing at the stars once again, he settles in to wait.
**********
I'm deeply indebted to cofax, for being my eyes, and Alanna, for the
handholding and the adjective clauses. Thanks to both for such great
help on such short notice.
This and more at http://thedoublehelix.org/sophia/
By Sophia Jirafe
Classification: VA
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through S8
Archive: permission required; links only
Feedback: skepticgirl @ yahoo.com
Disclaimer: If you can recognize them, you can sue me
Summary: In dark times, a line is crossed.
----
The straps of the pack cut into his thin shoulders as he hikes up
the dusty street. Piles of rubble crowd his way, and he climbs over
them with wiry strength, hands gripping the cement bones of
buildings long since tumbled. It's still and quiet tonight, and
starlight is enough to illuminate the road in front of him. He can't
remember a time hen he wasn't able to pick out every constellation
with perfect clarity.
It's hard to believe this was once a city. He's seen pictures, of
course, but he can still barely imagine what it must have felt like
to walk down those closed-in corridors full of cars and buildings
nd lights and strangers. He doesn't even like it the way it is now,
a spread out mess of levelled concrete and metal. Nothing compares
to the prickly, golden hills he grew up in, rolling to the endless
ocean where warm, baked dirt met frigid waves. He's hiked across the
continent and never seen anything he loved as well.
He's glad, though, to have had the chance to get a glimpse of the
rest of the country. America has always been a name to him, never
an image. He grew up listening to his parents remember miles of
black asphalt, towering skyscrapers, faces cut into mountains
and rivers flowing to the gulf, but it was never real. Even the
old pictures they'd find sometimes, postcards and magazines and
photo albums, failed to give him a clear vision.
A nation is its people, he thinks. In that sense, America is still
real. He's seen it over the past few months of travel, scattered
knots of family groups, two or three larger units boasting a
teacher, perhaps, or a doctor, a farmer, a cobbler. The older ones
remember. He's seen their homes, Quonset huts decorated with
macrame plant holders, leather recliners, pictures of long-dead
relatives. They wear old clothing until it falls to rags, and
they use the old expressions that no longer hold meaning.
"He's not playing with a full deck."
"She's hell on wheels."
"Rome wasn't built in a day."
Rome was one of the first cities to go.
The few younger people are nothing like him. He tries to imagine a
time when people grew up in harmony, when mass media synchronized
desires and people on the other side of the country wore the same
jeans as you did. Now only those raised together are alike.
The teenagers of the great salt plains were burnt brown, wearing
little, and they spent the days in their tents eating bits of cactus
and looking at patterns in the sand. In the cool Applachian forests,
they played games with the little children, whooping up hills and
climbing trees and splashing through creeks. Near the eastern ocean,
they swam races and caught fish for dinner and were solemn and quiet
around their parents.
Where he grew up, few children his age had been born. It was the
geographical mindset, his mother explained once; people here thought
they could wait until middle age before starting families. They had
lives to live before they tied themselves down with children.
When the wars started a few years after his birth, no one even thought
about children. He knows from his parents that everyone expected
this to be the last war, the scourge they'd feared for years. And it
was, of course, it was the absolute last plague, but even now that
isn't fully understood. The lines of communication had been destroyed
long before the ships landed in the cities.
Most people, he knows, don't want to understand. Their world has
ended; that is enough for them. They don't tell their children either,
and what he has seen on his four month journey is strange, backward
groups of frightened people who protect their fierce ignorance. He
has tried to gather information from them, asking hushed, respectful
questions about how much remained in the area. But the older people
wouldn't talk about the few buildings left, and the younger ones
would only pester him for bribes, sugar and electrical wires
and toilet paper.
Part of it, of course, is the demographics of hiding. In some of the
more mountainous areas, lifestyles have hardly changed at all. Many
of the plains dwellers live in basements built decades before the
invasion, stocked with enough Gatorade and cans of soup to last
twenty years. These are underground people who survived, the ones
who disbelieved newspaper platitudes and started packing the day the
borders closed. It is their nature to be shy and distrustful, but
they are tenacious, and he thinks they might have lived a few more
generations if only they'd had the sense to have children.
But children are a rare thing these days. From the scavenged
literature he's read, he would have thought that anarchy would have
bred promiscuity, or at least relaxed social mores. Instead, it seems
like people have drawn away from each other. He has seen his own
parents grow distant over the years, worn down by the rigors of
subsistence living. He knows about the things they miss, like electric
blankets and movie theaters and espresso, and he's sorry for them in
a quiet way. It seems like those things oiled their lives, helped to
sand the edges off their sharp characters.
He's glad, really, to have been free of all that. His attachment to
anything beyond basic survival gear is minimal, and it's comfortable
to know that he can pick up and leave when he wants.
He trips over a crack in the asphalt and barely catches himself,
the heavy pack pushing his balance forward. The roads here are some
of the worst he's ever seen, and he knows this is because the
fighting was heavy in this city. He's asked his parents about it
before, but neither would describe it. His mother was always
businesslike in her refusals to discuss the wars.
"Anything but that," she would say. "Ask me about McDonald's or
trains, but don't ask me to tell you about that."
His father's reaction was harder to judge. At first he would only
crack a sad smile and shake his head, then take him outside to toss
around one of the baseballs they'd salvaged from a burned-out
Wallmart. In recent years, though, his father had slipped away in
increments. Any question about the past sent him into a tragic dream,
staring up at the ceiling until nothing but a firm shake would
rouse him.
The boy has never known regret like that. He has never, in truth,
known regret at all. There is nothing for him to miss; if anything,
life has improved for him over the years as his family learned to
live with less each day. He wishes, sometimes, that he could have
felt more sympathy for his father. But he grew up with parents from
another world, lost people, his loving mother with the hardness in
her eyes and his dreaming father, industrious some days and then
useless for weeks on end.
An intersection approaches. He pulls a chipped black compass from
his vest pocket, and a creased, stained map from a side pouch of
his pack. Squinting at both in the dimness, he traces his finger
along the unfamiliar lines demarcating streets. It's strange to
have to think in such a linear way. His forebears were cruel in
the way they imposed their will upon the land. There must have
been hills here, once, and maybe a dense forest filled with small
animals and birds burrowing their way into it. They seem to have
done better in his native west, where the old roads wind over
rises and through low valleys crisscrossed with thin fences. They
had learned a little by the time they reached the end of the
frontier, and some of the harsh, frenzied colonial energy had
worn away.
Something similar had happened with the next batch of colonists.
He takes a right and turns onto the street, which is more crowded
with rubble than the last. This street held the nation's most
important buildings, he knows, and it is their detritus he picks
his way through. He is getting closer now, and in his thin chest
his heart begins to beat a little faster. The thrill of the
unknown has kept him going all summer, but this is his last
challenge. He doesn't know whether to be sorry it's over or
worried about what comes next.
Four years ago his mother sat down at her desk with a frown creasing
her pale forehead. Her hands were empty, and he questioned her. With
a catch in her voice, she explained that she couldn't think of
anything else to teach him. She'd stayed up all night, searching
through her notes and her water-stained books, trying to think of
some area of knowledge he hadn't already been trained in. His
father had been fading then but he'd helped too, racking his brain
for stray pieces of information. They could come up with nothing.
At age fifteen, he knew everything his parents had ever learned, and
he knew that this scared them.
Since then, he's found his own way of learning. His parents didn't
know, for example, how to rewire a ham radio so it would catch very
high frequencies. They also didn't know how to climb buildings
where the fire ladders had rusted shut, or how to make one revolver
out of the pieces of three, or even how to make a food dehydrator
out of foil and milk jugs and most of a carburator.
He checks the compass again and veers left, counting foundations.
After a minute he stops at the remains of a long stucco building.
Stepping from the crunchy asphalt to the rubble-strewn grass, he
surveys the unassuming structure. His eyes pick out a stairwell,
nearly covered by a dented dumpster tipped on its side, and he
crosses the field to it.
He slides between the rails around the top of the stairs and lands
lightly at the bottom. The metal door in front of him is filthy and
scratched, covered with old graffiti from before the aerosol cans
of paint ran out.
"Die fucking Bug Eyes!"
"America forever"
"Jamie is the shit"
For lack of anything better to do, he knocks on the door with a
hollow rap, the corroded surface scraping his knuckles. He waits
a long time before he hears a noise from behind it, a slow shuffling
punctuated by the sound of something heavy being dragged to the
door. For the first time he notices the small hole drilled near
the top and looks up to it, hoping to catch a glimpse of the
ruin's occupant.
"Password," he hears whispered through the hole.
"Three kappa eta fourteen thirty-six two sigma tau," he recites
from memory.
There is a pause, then the heavy something is pushed aside again
and the door swings open with a scrape. A thin, haggard woman
wrapped in a dingy bathrobe stands before him, strings of greasy
ash-blonde hair hanging in her face.
"It wasn't even locked," he says.
"It doesn't matter either way," she tells him. "Come in."
He follows her into the dark, damp hall, lined with fungus-covered
cinderbrick. The way is lit by the dim glow of a propane lamp in a
room at the end of the passage, and even his quick feet stumble
over the cracks in the invisible cement floor. She leads him to
the room, then shuts the door behind him.
This summer's journey has left him nearly incapable of surprise
at the variety of human existence, but the room is still beyond
his experience. He is used to people making at least a minimum
stab at daily comfort. Nothing here even reaches that level. A
pile of crumbling newspapers occupies one corner, with a few ragged
towels thrown over it. A rickety card table with faded pictures
of playing cards marching around its green vinyl top holds the
place of honor in the middle of the room. A metal trash can, turned
upside down, serves as a chair.
As far as he can tell, there is nothing to do in this room. No books,
no radio, no way of creating enough electricity to run any sort of
small appliance. Does she sit here in the dark all day?
She goes to the newspapers in the corner and sits down cross-legged,
staring at him with blank blue eyes. In the marginally improved
light he can see that she is as much of a wreck as the room. The
filthy garment she wears is threadbare and full of holes, and her
feet are shod in worn rubber boots. She's older than he'd previously
thought; her hair is a shade more grey than blonde, and while her
lovely bone structure has weathered the years well, fine wrinkles
crease the skin of her face.
Awkward, he glances around the room and finally perches on the
upended trash can, unshouldering his pack and setting it between
his legs on the floor. Their silence is as dark and moldy as the
room. A lifetime of obedience weighs on him before he finally speaks.
"What do you have for me?"
Her gaze flickers away. She mouths the words to herself, then looks
back at him.
"Did they tell you I had something to trade?" she asks in her
gravel tones.
"I...not exactly. When I told them what I was looking for, coming
here was the final part of my instructions."
She sighs a thick sigh, gathering a deep breath into her chest
before expelling it.
"Fools as always, with their stupid games. Boy, whatever it is you
want, I don't have it. Look around. Does it look like I'm in a
position to give anything away? I live in the rubble. I can't even
clothe myself properly. They bring me what they think I need, and
god help me if I venture outside. I haven't left this basement
in eight years."
Her voice warms as she speaks, and he can hear vestiges of a cultured
accent. He wonders what she once was, if the time and trouble has torn
away at her as it did his father.
"I--I don't think they explained what it is I want."
"Information? You and everyone else born after the wars. It's a waste
of time. Who gives a fuck what the world used to be like? It's hell
now, and that's all that matters."
"My parents--"
"Wouldn't tell you anything? Broke down crying when you asked them
to describe the grocery store around the corner? Built shrines out
of old Newsweek magazines and spent their days staring at broken
skylines of dead cities? Stop torturing them. Get over the past and
do something for yourself."
"My parents are dead."
She shakes her head with a fierce motion, and the warmth has spread
from her voice to her face. He senses he is the first person to
touch her in a long, long time.
"I won't say I'm sorry because I think they're better off that way.
No one should have to live, remembering what we do."
She glares at him, and he tries to think of another tack.
"Listen, I don't think you understand what kind of information I want.
I don't want to hear about the past. I can see that's a very painful
subject for you. I understand that you have some...instructions."
"Even if I have this thing, give me one good reason I should give it
to you," she snaps.
"There was a trade arranged. I would do a few things for them, and
in exchange they'd do a few things for you."
The new color drains from her face, and he sees her wounded, lonely
soul in her big blue eyes, beautiful as a young girl's. She opens
her mouth, then closes it again.
"Did they--did they say exactly what sort of things they'd do?"
she asks, her voice hoarse. "Any phrase in particular?"
He searches his memory, then dredges up the words.
"They said to tell you they were going to end a game of Russian
roulette in your favor. Does that mean anything to you?"
She stares at him, shocked, for a long moment.
"A--a man I loved once," she whispers at last. "A long time ago.
He's been in prison for fifteen years."
The beautiful eyes close, and tears slide down her cheeks. She
clutches the robe tighter around her, and rocks back and forth on
her rubbish pile.
"Ma'am?" he asks after a moment. "Will you give me what I need?"
She nods at him, still weeping with her soundless, open mouth.
He watches her cry for a few minutes longer, and then she recovers
with a shudder that takes her whole body. Wiping her eyes, she rises
and comes towards him, opening her robe a little. She pulls out a
piece of paper as wrinkled and creased as his own map, and hands it
out to him with a shaking hand.
"It's a little hard to read," she tells him in an unsteady voice.
"But if you have a compass, you should be fine."
He takes it carefully, and tucks it into his pack.
"Thank you," he says. "Just tell me...why haven't you used it?"
She snorts sad laughter at him.
"Use it? Why on earth--" She stops for a second, then smiles. "Yes,
why on Earth. There's nothing else out there. It's a godforsaken hole,
but it's the only thing left for me."
She cocks her head and looks him in the eye suddenly.
"Tell me, though, why do you want it? Is it just because your parents
are gone? You must have someone else you're attached to, something
else you care about."
Memories and images whirl through his brain, dizzy thoughts trying
to break through old barriers.
"No," he tells her. "There's nothing here for me anymore."
She shrugs, dismissing him and his incomprehensible motives. He
rises, shouldering the pack, and starts down the dingy hallway
again, she following. When they reach the doorway, she looks up
and out, gazing at the bright points of light in the night sky.
"They might be back any day now," she says quietly. "Any time they
want. They said they would."
"I know," he answers, his throat tight. "That's why I had to...do
some things. To be safe. I missed it the first time, and I can't
stand to see it happen again."
At the intensity of his tone she turns, and seems to look at him
closely for the first time.
"You remind me of someone," she says slowly. "Your voice. Something
in your eyes. Did I...where do you come from?"
"The west coast."
She shakes her head, frowning.
"No...but then, everyone spread out after that first attack. Some
even before, those who knew it was coming. And you...well, never
mind. If your parents are dead, I suppose it doesn't matter at all."
He nods, anxious to be on his way.
"It probably doesn't make sense to wish you luck, but I will
anyhow," she tells him. "I think you'll need it."
"Good luck to you," he replies. "With...whatever it is they're
going to do for you. You look like you could use a break."
A dreamy, joyous smile covers her face again, making her look
almost pretty.
"Yes. I think I could."
He starts up the steps, towards the cool night air, leaving the
wrecked woman and her sad smiles behind him.
Once on the ruined street again, he pulls his city map from his pack
and studies it. The building he's after is hardly a kilometer away,
and he walks quickly, anticipation spicing his step. The final task.
He rounds a corner, and there it is, the tallest structure left in
this miserable, decimated city. Seven stories high, a miracle in
this age, and smooth and brown as the day it was finished.
He circles the building slowly, piqued by its strange, clean lines.
He supposes this was civic art, an attempt to ease the ugly sprawl
of concrete that had destroyed the natural beauty of the country.
It looks pretty hideous to him, and that makes this all the easier.
He stands in front of the structure for a moment, old awe creeping
in then, the love of his species for things bigger than themselves.
For just a moment, he understands the creep and crush of civilization.
It's comforting to worship what one has made.
He kneels down in front of what was once the main entrance, now a
gaping metal hole filled with shattered glass, and opens his pack.
The paraphernelia is quickly unpacked, his practiced, capable hands
doing their work without effort. This doesn't take thought anymore,
and conscience is out of the question.
He straightens up and begins to walk backwards, rolling the wire out
behind him. He remembers the first time, hands shaking as he held
his breath and counted, adrenaline surging. He remembers the dust
and fire scent, like the kiln his mother once set up in the backyard
of their old house before his father moved them into the mountains
where there was no soft red clay.
Shit, he's not going to think about his parents anymore, but it's
too late, and his heart chokes him as the images come.
//He served them dinner and his mother looked at him with surprised,
happy eyes as he set the bowls down in front of them.//
He tucks the end of the wire into the box.
//The soup was thin, with bubbles of oil, and it sloshed out the
sides when he put the bowls on the table.//
He seals the crack with the last of the putty.
//His father was almost lucid then, and he gripped his spoon with
thumb and all four fingers to steady himself.//
He pulls the handle up.
//His mother began to cough. She coughed until the blood poured out
of her mouth in a thin trickle.//
He pushes the handle down.
//His father fell face down into the bowl and breathed in liquid.
He choked but did not move, and the frothing stopped after a few
minutes.//
The charge travels towards the building.
//His mother threw her head back against the chair. Her eyes were
open but she saw nothing.//
The noise is as loud as ever, louder even because this is the biggest
thing he's blown up yet. The structure implodes on itself, crumbling
down until it's nothing more than wreckage, like the rest of this
useless town. The whole world looks like this now, and he's glad to
know he helped in some small way. It doesn't matter why he's doing
it, or why any of the young people like himself are participating
in mass destruction. The world is over, and it's time to burn the
bridges.
He wipes off his hands and pulls the woman's map out. The
handwriting on it is small and precise, with crooked lines inked
out, and he can see the airstrip is fairly close.
The sun is rising when he reaches the chain link fence at the top
of the rise, rusted and bent but still intact, held together in
places with pieces of bailing wire. He scales it easily and jumps
down on the other side, sending up dust clouds where he lands. He
looks around with a wary eye, waiting to see if the breach has been
noticed, but the airstrip is peaceful and undisturbed. He finds the
trailer with no difficulty, and crosses the field towards it. An
old airplane sits outside, one of the private jets so popular with
the rich and loose-walleted of the last century. He mounts the metal
stairs with confidence, with no trace of his earlier apprehension.
He belongs here now.
After a perfunctory knock on the door he opens it enough to put his
head in. What he sees startles him.
A man is seated at a desk in the corner, writing with a silver
pen. The room is lined with bookcases, an expensive oriental rug
on the floor. All of it must have cost a fortune in this time of
devastation.
He enters the trailer and walks towards the desk. The man looks up
with a blank expression, no emotion on his smooth features. His age
is indeterminate--his features are young but the set in his eyes
is not.
"William Hale?" the man asks in smooth tones.
He nods.
"I see you were able to meet your contact with no trouble. And your
mission..."
He flips through a few folders on the desk with him. The young man
stares straight forward, not wanting to let his guard down. This is
not as he expected, a well-appointed office with a smiling,
suited man.
The man finds what he's looking for and smiles, a cruel little smirk.
"I see you've done as you were asked--you completed your final task
only a few hours ago, yes?"
"That's right, sir. The big house operation."
"Then I don't think we have much more to talk about. I assume you
have everything prepared to leave immediately?"
"Of course, sir."
"Good then, good." The man at the desk roots around some more in the
clutter, and pulls out an unusual object, a black square appliance
with buttons. William slowly recognizes it from old magazine ads as
the man begins to punch buttons.
"Hello, Martin? Yes, Base 12 here. We have the package ready. Yes,
departing immediately. Right, just bring your gear along--we have
plenty of fuel left for this month. All right."
He thumbs the phone off and turns his bland face back to William.
"Be about twenty minutes, sonny," he says familiarly. "Might want
to sit down for a while." He gestures to a cracked but well-cared
for leather couch in the far end of the trailer.
William shakes his head.
"I'll be all right, sir. I'll just wait outside, if that's all
right with you."
The man gives him a strange look out the corner of his eye, then
shrugs.
"Whatever suits you," he tells him. "You've done a fine job for us.
A pleasure working with you." He extends a hand over the desk.
William looks at the hand, and then at the face. There is nothing
behind the man's eyes, only that brittle smile, that soft skin.
"You know," he says slowly. "This...isn't quite what I was led to
expect. I thought...isn't this the same organization as Nature's
Own?"
The man laughs a dry, sour little laugh.
"Not exactly, sonny. We control Nature's Own, of course, and a dozen
other shitty little rebellion groups. But we have more of what you
might call a...corporate mindset."
"Then I don't understand, sir," William says, frowning."Why did
you hire me? What was the purpose of the destruction?"
"You want the simple truth? We don't want any upstarts, and
buildings mean possibility. What little we've got, we're holding
onto. Rules of business and all."
He flashes his perfectly white teeth in a tight smile, and William's
stomach turns.
"B-business?" he breathes.
The man behind the desk lets his smile grow, and a light enters
his eyes for the first time. He contemplates William for a few
moments.
"Sonny, what exactly did your contacts tell you?" he asks at last,
smug amusement in his voice.
"They--they told me..." William flounders, his heart sinking. "They
told me I would be given a way to leave," he says weakly.
"And your parents?"
"They said my parents' time was finished, that it was a mercy,
really," he says stiffly, forcing each word out. "They said it was
the kindest thing to do, that they could never really let go."
And it's true, really true, they were drowning in their own sorrow,
but at the moment all he can see is his father drowning in his
own soup.
"Well, look, Willy," says the man, interrupting his thoughts. "I'm
sorry you got the wrong idea about us."
William looks him in the eye and knows he is not sorry.
"We're not a charity. We're a company, a rather old establishment.
Your father probably could have told you something about us. We
had--er--extensive dealings with him. You might be interested to
know that he spent almost ten years working in the building you
just blew up."
William opens his mouth and closes it again. His father the ghost.
"So while I'm sorry if you acted on any misconceptions, your
contract still stands."
The man's eyes are hard now, and William is afraid for the first
time.
"I...see," he fumbles out. "I--I guess I'll just be outside then."
He begins to leave, then turns again.
"Where am I going?" he asks quietly.
"Costa Rica," the man says in his oily voice. "It's a resort there,
built just before the wars. Of course, it was never completed, so
the amenities aren't quite up to scratch. But then, I don't imagine
your type really needs much more than a bedroll and an outhouse.
And don't worry...you'll be very well-protected. Wouldn't want to
lose someone of your--er--skill."
Possibility surges for a moment. The revolver in his bag, the
paperweight on the desk. He could leave. But they would only find
him again, as they found him the first time, age sixteen and sullen
and bored. They know who he is.
William shudders at the man's final smile, and trudges out of the
room. He shuts the door behind him, and sinks to the metal steps
below. The world seems suddenly very large, and very cold. He
pulls a down jacket from his pack and shrugs it on, wrapping
his thin arms around himself.
Gazing at the stars once again, he settles in to wait.
**********
I'm deeply indebted to cofax, for being my eyes, and Alanna, for the
handholding and the adjective clauses. Thanks to both for such great
help on such short notice.
This and more at http://thedoublehelix.org/sophia/