2
The Village
Present
Lea sat outside his tin shack on a wobbly plastic chair, holding a pair of binoculars firmly against his eyes like a pirate scouting for land. Today marked the third day Roxas hadn't come by. His absence came with insisting nausea that no Spam in the world could ease. The world was an ugly place, prone to rip kindhearted people away in merciless manners. Lea fought tooth and nail to keep Roxas off the world's radar.
Lea shook his leg impatiently, searching the road all the way to the Village. The outskirts were full of children scavenging for food in the mud. Lucky ones found a maggot or two. The ruthless ganged up on the lucky ones.
The Village was a shantytown north of the City, placed outside the City's high and grotesque walls. The Village was a thirty minute bike ride from Lea's tin shack. It lay out by the outskirts of the wastelands ironically called the Green Zone. The Village sat in a small crater prone to floods and stale puddles; a pot perfect for shit stew. Lea avoided it at all costs. He could count on one hand the times he'd gone there since the age of fifteen.
Doves and rats were scarce this time of year, and Roxas never ventured outside the Green Zone. Three days without a visit meant he had no food, or worse, he'd succumbed to the counts and lords offering feed as bait.
Lea thumbed on the edge of a tin can with Spam and pickled onion on his lap. It was the last of his latest bounty. The mere sight of the colorful blue banner against the white background with an image of greens and pickled onion and Spam was enough for Lea to salivate. He pulled a folded four-pack of jerky from his back pocket. He held it to his nose and inhaled deeply. The scent took the worst of the edge off.
Roxas hadn't come by for a reason. Lea ran through a whole list of them. Broken bones, kidnapping, starvation, food poisoning. All of them were better than what was most likely; sleepwalking in the desert. Roxas had been having vivid nightmares lately. Olette said she tied him to herself in case he wandered off into the night, Hayner slept by the door and Pence had found a string of bells to hang on the window. But Roxas had made it out, sleepwalking, his feet raw after a few hours in the harsh desert, lips purple with cold. Lea would have to make a detour to the Village before work to make sure Roxas hadn't wandered off into certain death.
Lea clicked his tongue at the binoculars that saw no further than the misery of the children searching for food.
He went to his workshop, a small, secret, thirteen-by-thirteen foot room stacked with stuff he'd found scavenging the high piles in the Yellow Zone. A chopped, medium-sized stump stood in the middle of the room, Lea's chair, and on the table of mismatched wood in front of the stump, was the invention that would immortalize him: the Metal Bird Grabber. The machine was a mess of cables and old parts in various colors, all shaped like a helmet. The only esthetically pleasing parts of it were the black and slick side-pieces. At the right height and with enough battery power it could get in drone footage which was particularly useful for ventures into the Yellow Zone.
Lea put it on.
A screen flickered before his eyes. If there were any Metal Birds near the Village, he might get their signal and steal their eyes. One soared above the Prison, south of the Village. Lea lingered on it. The silhouette of the Village became visible at the first turn. A miserable place unfit for humans. Lea chewed on his fingers. Roxas lived in the outskirts near the Wall.
"Where are you?" Lea mumbled, hoping for somebody to appear on the screen.
The Metal Bird turned again, loyal to its designated path, and with it came the faint sound of sirens.
Lea put the helmet away and turned it off. Sirens didn't have to mean anything. Normally, they wouldn't mean anything, not until Lea had decided to be a friend and share a secret. The secret. He had shown Roxas his workshop. The one that was full to the brim with stolen materials and resources, with his inventions, things that would have him killed should the police ever find out; chief among those things was a priceless mechanical doll.
The Village was full of ears and empty pockets, any one of Roxas' neighbors could've overheard him talking about Lea's findings. Any one of Roxas' friends could've decided that money was worth more than Roxas' friendship. It was known to happen. Lea had experienced it, and yet, on that day, he'd let his guard down, and shared his secret.
The sun tinted the sky orange when Lea pulled his bent blue bike out and checked the attached bags at the front and the back. The tin can of Spam went into the bag on the steering wheel, wrapped in a ragged hemp towel.
Autumn rain made roads muddy. The road downhill was rough and slippery. A sensible part of him told him to turn back and go to work instead. Radioactive scraps were preferable to the foul memories that lay buried in the mud, shit and piss of the Village. Roxas was reliable, a promise was a promise was a promise. But Lea had been down that road. Trust was a luxury item. Nothing a Scrapper could afford, especially not with the interest his findings would attract.
Lea's precious doll sat under a tarp in his workshop on a second trunk, hidden away in the darkest corner like a testament to committed sins: a metal doll without a face, without a Core. Lea had found a Core for it once many years ago, but it had been stolen, so the metal doll remained hidden, faceless and incomplete.
Any complete set or parts of the Old Technology were to be returned to Insomnia Group. Scrappers that did were handsomely rewarded, none more so than those who found Cores. Failure to cooperate with the Group was a certified death sentence.
The sirens were clear. They echoed from across the Village. Lea veered away from the children, fearful that they would catch the scent of the Spam. Their penetrating gaze, runny noses, and rags for clothes was like looking straight at his past self. They were orphans because nobody wanted them. Nobody had wanted him. The sight made him nauseous.
Lea gripped the handles of his bike until his knuckles shifted white. I've grown into somebody, he reminded himself, a Scrapper, and somebodies did not deal with nobodies, especially those prone to dying.
Lea pedaled faster and harder through the thickening mud, earning curses and swears from the villagers in his path. There were more tin shacks now than there had been back then, but other than that, everything was exactly the same: the plaza with the marketplace and child-sized cages and crates for valuables, the rusty building in front of it with the large misspelled sign that said ORFANAGE, and even the first mini-mart was the same, with old man Ben seated on a plastic stool, more duct tape than actual plastic, fiddling with the radio to catch the latest news from the City.
Nobodies, the lot of them.
Roxas lived with Hayner, Pence and Olette in a small shack near the north main road. Olette braided straws of sunburnt grass and hung them on the door. A housewarming decoration that was also for sale at five gil each.
Lea searched for it as he struggled through the small alleyways. He saw the police cars first; mismatched old sedans with the rusted silver letters D SUN in the front. The cars were fit for four but the cops fit at least ten in each. Clown cars. As much nightmare-fuel as any other clown.
Lea froze.
"Search the area. The professor was seen around these parts before he went AWOL." The man giving the order wasn't a cop. He was dressed entirely in black, a fitted suit with shades to match. Cops wore dark blue jumpsuits patched to oblivion using the jumpsuits of deceased cops. The man in black, long dark hair streaked with gray, hadn't seen a patch in his life.
"Kids say they haven't seen 'im," said the man in a jumpsuit next to the other, his face a map of scars.
"So who do we believe, officer? Greedy brats who'd sell one another for a hot dog or the unbiased footage of the drones?"
"The, the drones, sir. Of course."
"Take the blond in for questioning."
"Not all of them?"
"Did I stutter?"
"Right away, sir!"
The order started the commotion inside. Lea pulled one foot from out of the mud. The intention to intervene was there. One foot in front of the other would get him there, but the last interaction with cops was much too fresh in his mind. The phantom pains in his recently healed shin anchored him to the ground. It had taken six months. Six long painful months; food scarce, water scarce, heat scarce.
"Let him go!" Olette yelled.
"Don't touch me, you spineless toad!" Roxas protested.
Five cops dragged a kicking-and-screaming Roxas out of the shack. Each step was a struggle because Hayner, Pence and Olette fought tooth and nail. The batons only seemed to encourage them to escalate. They bit where the patches on the jumpsuits were worn, scratched wherever they could reach. But the cops got Roxas into the car and left them in a cloud of dark smoke.
Lea stared wide-eyed. Roxas is a somebody. Roxas is a somebody. Roxas is a somebody. He could've run after the car, grabbed onto something, anything, to get Roxas out of the cops' filthy grip. But he remained motionless until the sirens died out.
Lea looked around and staggered back. No one was present to witness this slip of his true colors. If no one saw it, he didn't need to answer for it. He'd be more than glad to lie to himself. Next time, he thought. Next time he'd put himself between Roxas and whatever imminent danger they were faced with.
Lea dug for the wrapped tin can he'd brought with trembling hands. He left his bike in the mud to make the last few feet on foot. He rounded the shack, cautious of whatever could be watching from above when he climbed in through the back window, covered with black plastic bags and the bells on a string. The ground was a mess as if they'd turned every inch upside down. What little furniture they had was intact aside from a braided carpet Lea had gifted them. It was missing.
"What happened?" Lea asked when the three came back in.
"They took Roxas again," Olette said, eyeing Hayner.
"What for?" Lea wiped his nose with the back of his hand. It was going to be tough to get anything out of them. The older the kids got, the better the lies and the scheming became. Everything they said was calculated, the pros weighed against the cons, all of it translated to knowing glances to mark who was part of the group and who wasn't.
"Don't know," Pence shrugged. He lowered his head, pursing his lips
"Because of me?" Lea prodded.
"Uhm…" Olette began. She nudged Hayner discreetly, seemingly annoyed by his silence. "Maybe?"
"Hayner?" Lea turned to the oldest of the three. Hayner moved away from Olette and paced in circles, too quiet for someone always eager to get their two cents in.
"We haven't voted yet," Hayner said. "We - they, they came, and we didn't get to vote…"
"What's he talking about?" Lea took a deep breath to keep his hands from shaking. Any violent reaction would wreck what small trust he'd earned, but if they were anything like he'd been at that age, it would be enough to at least get them to speak some truth. "What's happening?"
"We should tell him," Olette said and pulled on her bangs as if that would keep her from speaking.
"Roxas said not to," Pence whispered. He panted and shook the front of his shirt for air.
"They're gonna bring the dogs… and when they do, we'll be made into Spam," Hayner told his friends.
"You're scaring me," Lea cut in. He chewed on the inside of his cheek. What if there wasn't a next time for Roxas?
"Do you get sick easily?" Olette asked.
"Just unearth the guy," Pence said. He rubbed his chubby face.
"Close the door," Hayner said at last, defeated.
Pence hurried to the latch.
All three dropped to their knees and began to dig like feral dogs. Under a good four feet of mud and gravel was a chest - half cardboard box, half compressed wood - full of nonsensical symbols. Lea hugged his wrapped tin can of Spam when he saw his house-warming gift, the carpet, sticking out from the sides.
The three made teamwork out of removing each layer inside the chest that would've been best left alone. Lea pressed one hand against his nose and mouth at the reveal of a hellish fiend. A corpse. The body was a mixture of purple and black. The eye sockets seemed hollow, cheek bones prominent when skin and bone were all there was. The mouth was shaped around a scream, hands clutching the face as if the mummification had been instant.
"What the fuck is that?" Lea stood leaning against the wall, hand still firmly in place over nose and mouth.
"A doctor from the City - from the vaccination group," Olette said mournfully. "He died this morning."
The brown-nosing doctors with their endless questions and never-ending needles to protect them from newly discovered diseases of which there were newer ones every year. With all their supposed help, people were still dying. Lea had tried to convince Roxas to maintain his distance, certain they weren't patients of these doctors, but their guinea pigs.
Lea made a face at the dimensions of the corpse.
"No fucking way. That's been dead and buried for-fucking-ever and it looks sick and contagious. Put it back under."
"Roxas did him in somehow," Pence said, sweating buckets. "The doctor's been visiting for a couple of days now. Said he needed blood samples to check our health. Before we knew it, it was like someone took a straw to him and sucked him clean out."
"H-how's - how's that Roxas' fault?" Lea sank to the ground. How many times had he asked - begged - Roxas not to let anyone from the City in? No good would come of it. On the few occasions Roxas bothered to counter Lea's request, he'd say they had all voted to let the kind doctor in. Majority rules.
"We don't know for sure that it is," Hayner said, exasperated. "He was testing Roxas when it happened. The screams must've alerted the neighbors, y'know, scared them shitless."
"Who was screaming? The guy?" Lea asked. "Maybe it's a set-up."
"Us! We were screaming!" Hayner pulled his hair at Lea's suggestion. "He just up and almost vanished right before our eyes. We're in so much shit right now. So. Much. He's a rich guy from the City, Lea. They're gonna clean us out. They already have Roxas." Hayner's voice quivered and he snivelled. "What are we gonna do?"
Lea pulled the rag from the tin can and breathed into it.
"This is for you by the way." Lea put the tin can down. "Spam. Made of offal as far as I know. Save some for Roxas."
"Roxas' in prison, Lea!" Olette said, flailing in frustration.
"I know! Alright? I know…" Lea began, "just, let me think for a second… I… look, I'll take him. The horror show you've got in the box there, I'll pack him up, toss him in the Yellow Zone. No one has to know. And then," Lea paused for breath, "then I'll get Roxas out. Easy. We've gotten him out before. We'll do it again. We just - first - we have to deal with that."
"How are you gonna get him out of the Village unseen?" Hayner asked.
"Crack him to pieces like rye bread," Lea said solemnly and approached the body.
"That could work," Olette agreed urgently.
"Let's get to it then," Pence said. "The dogs Hayner mentioned could be on their way right now."
The doctor was disturbingly easy to pull out of the box. He was hollow like a rotten trunk, fragile like a sheet of ice. He shattered like glass with one drop against solid ground. Hayner turned away first, heaving. Pence lingered for longer, but the frayed ends of the upper left arm were too much, and he stepped away, face white.
"Yeah, go away now that we race against time," Olette shook her head in disbelief as she gathered the pieces up like kindling.
"I have to pull my bike up back." Lea dusted off human remains from his hands against the legs of his pale green and padded jumpsuit. He had tied the sleeves around his waist to not sweat too much on his way over here; a futile effort now that he could feel the sweat stains in his armpits and on his back.
Olette had ripped the carpet to tie the body parts together in neat packages when Lea climbed back into the shack. She had purple dust all over her clothes, hands and lower arms. Lea pressed her hand down with one finger when she went to rub her forehead.
"Get cleaned. Don't breathe too much in here. Air this place out once I leave and... find water. There were some puddles up east, hell, even river water might be better than whatever this purple shit is. Just don't inhale it. Please."
Olette nodded slowly.
In pieces, the man fit in Lea's bags like a glove. The main road would have to do to avoid contaminating the whole Village with what the doctor had become, a purple husk easily made into a fine dust. For all the dirt and grime that existed in the Village, dust was uncommon, all thanks to the sandstorm that had blown in from the Yellow Zone after the Devil had left for the City. The lucky ones had died; others coughed their lungs to smithereens over time. Only those who had been wise enough to not be drawn in by the red hue of the storm and sought shelter inside were spared the hellish cough.
Well outside the Village, when the large piles of the Yellow Zone peaked from behind a sand dune, Lea pulled out his dosimeter and switched it on. He ran it over the remains.
If this instant mummification was a new type of outbreak, he'd have to inform everyone. The villages out west were abandoned after the Swollen Neck syndrome became prevalent in children. The City redrew the lines after that incident and made it only legal for Scrappers to rummage through the piles for materials wanted by the Insomnia Group. Meanwhile, the Green Zone had only grown smaller.
The dosimeter didn't react to the remains.
"Okay," Lea exhaled. At least it wasn't radioactive. "Let's hope you're a unique freak of nature, buddy."
Lea put his jumpsuit on properly and zipped it all the way up. From his breast pocket, he pulled out a makeshift mask and put it over his nose and mouth, adjusting the band for the mask to sit tight. He tied his hair into a neat double-folded ponytail and put a dark green cap over it. He pulled it all the way down over his ears. The gloves came on last.
Safety hadn't always been a priority. He'd walked these lands long before he knew why they were off-limits. The patrolling Metal Birds had been a challenge not a deterrent. The admission fee had proven, more than once, to be steep, but Lea had yet to pay for it with his health. He intended to keep it that way.
The dosimeter crackled louder as soon as Lea pushed his bike under a loose piece of fence and into the Yellow Zone. It was a copper-colored wasteland. Vegetation was scarce up until the border to the Red Zone where poisonous trees grew in dense packs. The oddest thing to grow in patches were large pink and white flowers. Its layered petals were shaped like blades; they surrounded a thick white bulb. They grew in the blood of those who had fallen victims to the Metal Birds.
"No one survives in the Garden of Eden" said a rugged sign past the Red Zone where the road ended abruptly and became a vast field of waist-high grass. Lea had been tempted to touch it more than once, to wade in and see where it led, but the relentless alarm of the dosimeter allowed for only a quick glance at the greenery before Lea's courage dropped to nothing.
Chain-linked fences had been put up as reinforcement of the border a few years back where the trees left openings. Monsters had a tendency to trickle in where the borders were weak, and should the Metal Birds ever fail to shoot them down, the Village would be made to the first line of defense. Lea rarely ventured that far out anymore. Not since he had seen patches of the chain-linked fence peeled back like a can lid.
Lea shoved the bags of human remains in the orifices of random piles. The City Guard wouldn't venture out here for the King himself let alone for some random doctor interested in the health of the villagers.
The doctor hadn't worn anything of value, Lea realized as he pushed in a stubborn piece of leg. No rings, no necklace or earrings. A wallet would've protruded like morning wood, but there had been none. A doctor was wise, not like counts and lords who had to flaunt their wealth at every opportunity. He must've left everything of value at home. If Roxas and the others were smart enough to bury the body before the cops came, surely they were smart enough to not hang onto anything else of his that was identifiable. Surely.
"Fuck sake," Lea breathed.
The Village was too far away to do anything about it now. Streetwise kids knew to at least wait for the dust to settle before selling anything stolen off a fresh corpse.
Roxas' situation was more urgent. However many strikes one person was entitled to before getting the noose, Roxas was well beyond that. Lea needed bargaining power and he'd already given away his last can of Spam. If he used the faceless doll, they'd just take it and give him a noose, too.
He ran back to his bike and dug out a small turquoise radio from it. It was old and useless where no radio waves from the City could reach them, but Lea had been tampering with it. The radio helped him find valuables.
Lea pulled the antenna as far as it would go and walked with it to spots where the white noise crackled and became faint words, sung in a broken melody. He had followed it before, to the pieces he needed to finish the doll. With luck, the melody would lead him to something valuable, something worth more to the cops than keeping Roxas.
Lea stepped forward slowly with the hope that the song would grow stronger, but the crackle kept disappearing, and turning to white noise. Lea retraced his footsteps until he could hear something again. This went on for hours, a desperate dance around the hundreds of piles full of rusting garbage. He almost stepped into the pathways of the Metal Birds whirring around the area, but the familiar sound of a charging barrel urged him to hide behind a particularly loud pile.
Lea switched off the sound of his dosimeter.
Two piles to the south, where the rustling of the trees was visible past two broken windows in a run-down brick house, the song grew clearer.
"I st… joke…"
Lea climbed up one pile and held the radio up toward the top while he found anchorage on old car parts.
Batteries trickled down the pile like cockroaches whenever Lea moved something. It made Lea's fingers itch. Normally he'd put each battery he found in a series of boxes in case they bust open and began to bleed their poisonous contents into the earth. Considering the wasteland he walked, it was too little too late, but maybe, he thought, if he put some effort into it, there'd come a day when this side of the Wall could match that which was on the other side.
The melody held his attention when it grew clearer. At one point, the crackling disappeared. The distorted voice became human, each word's meaning strengthened by the accompanying instruments Lea imagined coming from a backup choir of other humans whose voices could be distorted to make different sounds, like birds.
Carefully, Lea moved bits and pieces to find whatever made the radio sing. If it slipped and fell through the cracks, he'd be here all night disassembling the work of decades.
A particular sound popped from the radio's speaker when Lea found a dark, small bag of thick and sturdy material, like he'd run a magnet over the song and managed to bend it as he pulled the bag out.
Lea slid down the pile and opened the bag as soon as he touched the ground. Titanium coated key-rex screws, six of them. They were used to keep a Core in place. Each Core had a unique set.
"Jackpot?" he laughed and stepped back, ready to run back to his bike when a blue line lit up on the ground.
Lea took cover. It had been a year since the Metal Birds had been updated. The City might know something the Outside didn't, that a new outbreak was incoming, one that would leave few survivors if it was as instantaneous as Hayner, Pence and Olette had described it. This could be updated weaponry; a certified way of shooting and killing sick villagers. But the light came without any whirring or loading barrels.
The blue line began with the bag in Lea's hand and corrected the path to point south whenever Lea moved. It led to the red brick house far down the narrow point of the Yellow Zone near the chain-linked fence.
The radio was nothing but white noise until Lea moved it across the blue line.
"We interrupt this broadcast for an important message. Paradise Awaits, a new fragrance brought to you by DreamInc, the only right choice for the right one on Valentine's."
The announcement was accompanied by brass and strings and bled into the beginning of the song Lea had used as a compass. He followed the blue line toward the red brick house, knees achingly hollow with the certainty that the last thing he'd see alive would be the beady blood-shot eyes of the monsters pouring in from the other side.
He stopped by the doorway and narrowed his eyes to see into the darkest corners before he stepped in. Everything was where he'd left it. Dust had settled thickly on every surface. His footprints had long since vanished. The scratch marks on the floor were no longer visible. The red metal barrels with the bright yellow trefoil stood lined against the wall, lid firmly in place.
Lea pulled out his dosimeter, mouth dry at the sight of them again. As long as he didn't get an overload, he'd be fine.
The dosimeter screeched as soon as he switched the sound on; it counted, numbers flickering on the screen, quickly, then slowly.
"Let's do this fast," Lea said to the bag. He put the dosimeter into his pocket and moved alongside the walls opposite the barrels to follow the blue line up cracked bricks until it vanished.
The grout was darker around the bricks where the blue line ended. Lea knocked on it, loosening pebbles that fell to the floor. He dug his fingers around the four bricks held together by the darker grout until he could pull them all out. A metal box was tucked into the hole left behind. The box was about the width and length of Lea's hand. It didn't have a lock, only a small latch Lea had to fiddle with to pry open.
"C'mon."
The muffled beeping of the dosimeter made his hands shake.
Lea pulled it open. The hinges didn't make a sound. Inside lay a sight Lea never thought he'd see again, magnificent and regal against a crumbling rag: a Core.
The Core was a glassy gray object in the shape of a human heart, with ventricles, same-colored cables shaped like veins and an aorta for connection. A work of art, of engineering ingenuity that had been lost to the ages.
Lea didn't even touch it. He closed the box and put the bricks back over it and stepped back to make sure it blended into the wall as it had before. Roxas had to be saved before he could acknowledge his finding.
"Yeah," Lea said to himself and nodded. "First things first."
The titanium-coated key-rex screws were enough to cover for bail. They were straight off the special items list. Nobody needed to know about the Core.
Breathless, he stumbled out of the red brick house and dropped to his knees. It could be the radioactivity finally getting to him. He hadn't measured the Core for any radiation or the brick wall. Or this was what happiness was; an onslaught of vertigo, nausea and a primal urge to scream retribution to the high heavens.
Lea wept as he rocked back and forth, thanking a merciless god for allowing him a second chance. A Core was a surefire way to get permanent residency in the City with all the commodities that entailed, or so the story went.
The people in the City had no piles of garbage littering their lands, only food made to order; endless amounts of food that would appease kings and queens alike. Lea saw an ocean of Spam in funny shapes like rats or doves in his immediate future. Fancy Spam cut into circles. Spam with red onion and cheese.
Lea wiped his mouth to keep himself from drooling as he drove his bike through long-abandoned villages down the road to the southern entry point to the City.
White noise crackled as he steered down the narrow and sandy roads that twisted around empty tin shacks with blown-out windows covered with old plastic bags.
Far to his right, past a muddy creek and mounds of gravel and dirt, stood a large wall of red steel pillars, a chain-linked fence between each pillar loaded with enough voltage to light up the surrounding slum for a good year. Only, it was used to keep the outside away. The Wheel, the crown jewel of the City with its electric blue halo and black sun rays, levitated high up in the air. The skyscrapers on the right side of the wall, old and new, stuck out like middle fingers, and Lea returned the gesture before he switched the radio off.