After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (22 page)

“The colonel turned to the seven of us,” I said, the story now mine to tell. “He asked
if we understood what our fathers had done, what was going to happen. Two of the children
were too young to answer, but the rest of us said we did. He said under ordinary circumstances
he would tell the soldiers to kill us swiftly, but because one of the children in
the room had laughed when the mosquito stung him, the soldiers would be instructed
to prolong our deaths so that we could suffer as he had suffered. He asked if we agreed
with the justness of our punishment, and we said we did. He asked us then if we were
willing to thank him, as the representative of The Leader, The State, for the agonizing
pain we were about to endure. All of us, even the little ones, thanked him.”

“And the colonel showed you mercy,” the girl said. “He let you live. He must have
because you’re sitting here, in this room with me.”

“He showed us mercy,” I agreed. “He let us live. But he said he still needed a demonstration
of our loyalty. He told each of the seven of us to pick one of our parents for the
soldiers to kill. Our mother or our father. The decision was ours. We were to kiss
the parent we selected for death. I kissed Mama. I kissed her twice so the soldiers
would understand who I’d picked to die.”

“It was a test,” the girl said. “Another test. Mama is here, the same as you are.
The colonel showed all of you mercy.”

I shook my head. “All the other children wanted their mothers to live,” I said. “Papa
was told to stand with the six mothers, while the other fathers and Mama stood by
the children. But the colonel played a joke on us all. He ordered the soldiers to
bayonet the six mothers and Papa. The parents we’d chosen to live were the ones who
were killed. The colonel laughed along with the soldiers as our parents lay dying
on the floor. He pointed out to the seven of us that our parents had sanctioned our
deaths. Not a single one had murmured a word of protest when he’d described the horrible
fate that awaited us. Then he pointed out to the parents left alive that their children
had chosen
them
to die. Now, he said, we could understand why our loyalty must be only to The Leader,
to The State.”

“The colonel told us to dip our fingers in blood and make a mark on our child’s file,”
Mama said. “One by one, he told each father that their missing child had been sent
to a death camp, and because of the disloyalty we had shown today, there could be
no negotiations. Finally he got to my darling Maria’s file. She alone was safe, adopted
by a family with position and power. Her beauty had saved her.”

“We were pariahs after that,” I said. “Of all the mothers in the room, only Mama had
been allowed to live. Of all the children taken, only Maria was allowed to live. None
of the villagers would talk to us, not that day, not for years.”

Mama spat contemptuously. “They were always jealous,” she said. “Of Maria’s beauty.
Of mine.”

The very next day, I remembered, Mama had made a new friend. The colonel came over,
and within weeks, Mama was friends with the other officers as well. As she aged and
her beauty faded, her only friends were the soldiers stationed in our village. But
even the lowest of soldiers had more power and position than any of the villagers,
and Mama was given food, clothes, protection.

I was given nothing. The day after Papa’s death, I was sent to the fields, along with
all the remaining children, to work for the little food my family was allotted. Mama
took her share from me, while I got nothing from her friends the soldiers, until I
was old enough and they befriended me as well.

The partisans sensed my bitterness and anger, and, knowing I was in a position to
hear things, recruited me. I spied for them before I knew what the word meant, and
I fought alongside them. Sometimes, in spite of my exhaustion, terror, and grief,
I even laughed with them.

Our success came slowly and at great loss. But the glorious day arrived when The Leader
was finally taken down. Soon his generals and their families were executed. I danced
in the blood of the soldiers who’d died loyal to The State.

Only because of me was Mama allowed to live. We made our own peace, united by her
dream of reclaiming Maria.

“And where was Christian during all this?” the girl asked unexpectedly. “Our brother
who we adored. Was he at the office with the families and the colonel? Did he pledge
his fealty to The Leader? Did he watch along with you while Papa was killed? Why haven’t
you mentioned him?”

We were silent.

“I’ll tell you why,” the girl crowed, her eyes gleaming in triumph. “Because there
was no Christian! We had no brother. You invented him to trap me.”

I turned to Mama and laughed. “She found us out,” I said.

“I said she was smarter than you,” Mama said. “You’re right, my darling Maria. There
was no son. I had only the two daughters: Isabella, who wished me dead, and Maria,
my little beauty.”

“I knew it,” the girl said. “We were told you’d tell us lies, trying to catch us in
your web of deception. And if one thing you said was a lie, then all things you said
were lies. There was no colonel, no soldiers. True, I was taken. I remember that.
But you were told immediately what had become of me. You were glad to see me go. It
meant more food for you. Everything I was taught was true. You are no better than
animals. You have no human feelings.”

“There was a colonel,” I said for Mama. “There were soldiers. I picked Papa to live
and watched as he was killed. Mama grieved for you every single day. I’d come home
at night, exhausted from fourteen hours of labor, and Mama would say she’d strangle
me with her bare hands for a moment’s glimpse of her precious Maria. Does that mean
she has no human feelings?”

“It does,” the girl said. “No mother would ever say such things. My mama never would
have.”

“Mine did,” I said. “She said that and worse. But you’re right about something. We
did tell lies. We had no other way of knowing if you are Maria, her daughter, my sister.
All the files were destroyed by the soldiers before The Leader was overthrown.”

“I’ve proven I’m Maria,” the girl said. “I knew there was no Christian.”

I smiled sadly at her. “You’re not Maria,” I said. “Not our Maria, at least. There
was no son named Christian. But there was no Bobo either, no doggie. We had no dogs,
no pets. Even before The Leader took power, we had no money for pets, no food to spare
for one.”

“But I remember my name was Maria!” the girl cried. “And I remember doggie.”

“That could be,” I said. “Or it could be you’re lying. Either way, you’re not one
of us.”

I must give the girl credit. Her eyes glistened, but no tears rolled down her cheeks.
She had learned her lessons well.

I got up and walked to the back door of the office, the one painted the same dull
brown as the walls, to make it less visible. I knocked twice and a partisan came out.

“Take her,” I said.

The partisan grabbed the girl. With his strong right hand, he pinned her arms to her
back. With his left hand, he covered her mouth to muffle her sounds of protest.

“Where to?” he asked me.

I looked at Mama.

“I thought for sure she was my Maria,” Mama said. “She looked just as I remembered
my darling daughter.”

“Just the eyes, Mama,” I said, gently touching her cheek with my work-roughened hand.

Then I turned to the partisan. This time I had no trouble reading the girl’s face.
There was terror in those brown eyes, not defiance.

“I don’t know who she is,” I said to the partisan. “But I think she is one of the
taken. She should go to a reeducation camp. She might be salvageable.”

The partisan nodded and dragged the girl back through the hidden door.

“What number was she?” Mama asked. “How many have we seen today?”

“Five,” I said. Two I’d had sent to reeducation camps. I left the fate of the other
three to the partisans. Perhaps they were dead already. There was a constant rumble
of gunshots outside, but with the office window painted brown, there was no way of
seeing who they’d chosen to kill and who they’d kept alive for their entertainment.

“Five,” Mama said, with a sigh. “You’re a fool, Isabella, not to be able to spot my
Maria. How many more are left?”

I walked over to the anteroom door. Using the fingers of both hands, I counted. “Seven,”
I said, looking at them. Seven brown-eyed girls, all about fourteen years of age,
sitting with perfect posture, their hands neatly folded in their laps, their ankles
demurely crossed. Any one of them could be my sister Maria. But it was just as likely
Maria was dead, executed along with the general and his wife, who had stolen her.

“Look for the prettiest one,” Mama instructed me. “Maria was a beauty, the prettiest
girl in the village. Don’t look for girls with plain faces like yours, Isabella. Bring
me my beautiful daughter Maria, so that I may hold her and kiss her, as I’ve dreamed
of doing every day, every night, for the past ten years.”

F
OR
C
HRISTMAS OUR JUNIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL, ALL OF
our parents got us guns. That way you had a half a year to learn to shoot and get
down all the safety garbage before you started senior year. Depending on how well
off your parents were, that pretty much dictated the amount of firepower you had.
Darcy Krantz’s family lived in a trailer, and so she had a peashooter, .22 Double
Eagle Derringer, and Baron Hanes’s father, who was in the security business and richer
than god, got him a .44 Magnum that was so heavy it made the nutty kid lean to the
side when he wore the gun belt. I packed a pearl-handled .38 revolver, Smith & Wesson,
which had originally been my grandfather’s. Old as dirt, but all polished up, the
way my father kept it, it was still a fine-looking gun. My mom told my dad not to
give it to me, but he said, “Look, when she goes to high school, she’s gotta carry.
Everybody does in their senior year.”

“Insane,” said my mom.

“Come on,” I said. “Please…”

She drew close to me, right in my face, and said, “If your father gives you that gun,
he’s got no protection making his deliveries.” He drove a truck and delivered bakery
goods to different diners and convenience stores in the area.

“Take it easy,” said my dad. “All the crooks are asleep when I go out for my runs.”
He motioned for me to come over to where he sat. He put the gun in my hand. I gripped
the handle and felt the weight of it. “Give me your best pose,” he said.

I turned profile, hung my head back, my long chestnut hair reaching halfway to the
floor, pulled up the sleeve of my T-shirt, made a muscle with my right arm, and pointed
the gun at the ceiling with my left hand. He laughed till he couldn’t catch his breath.
And my mom said, “Disgraceful,” but she also laughed.

I went to the firing range with my dad a lot the summer before senior year. He was
a calm teacher, and never spoke much or got too mad. Afterward, he’d take me to this
place and buy us ice cream. A lot of times it was Friday night, and I just wanted
to get home so I could go hang out with my friends. One night I let him know we could
skip the ice cream, and he seemed taken aback for a second, like I’d hurt his feelings.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and tried to smile.

I felt kind of bad, and figured I could hug him or kiss him or ask him to tell me
something. “Tell me about a time when you shot the gun not on the practice range,”
I said as we drove along.

He laughed. “Not too many times,” he said. “The most interesting was from when I was
a little older than you. It was night, we were in the basement of an abandoned factory
over in the industrial quarter. I was with some buds and we were partying, smoking
up and drinking straight, cheap vodka. Anyway, we were wasted. This guy I really didn’t
like who hung out with us, Raymo was his name, he challenged me to a round of Russian
roulette. Don’t tell your mother this,” he said.

“You know I won’t,” I said.

“Anyway, I left one bullet in the chamber, removed the others, and spun the cylinder.
He went first—nothing. I went, he went, etcetera, click, click, click. The gun came
to me and I was certain by then that the bullet was in my chamber. So you know what
I did?”

“You shot it into the ceiling?”

“No. I turned the gun on Raymo and shot him in the face. After that we all ran. We
ran and we never got caught. At the time there was a gang going around at night shooting
people and taking their wallets, and the cops put it off to them. None of my buds
were going to snitch. Believe me, Raymo was no great loss to the world. The point
of which is to say, it’s a horrible thing to shoot someone. I see Raymo’s expression
right before the bullet drilled through his head just about every night in my dreams.
In other words, you better know what you’re doing when you pull that trigger. Try
to be responsible.”

“Wow,” I said, and wished I’d just hugged him instead.

To tell you the truth, taking the gun to school at first was a big nuisance. The thing
was heavy and you always had to keep an eye on it. The first couple of days were all
right ’cause everyone was showing off their pieces at lunchtime. A lot of people complimented
me on the pearl handle and old-school look of my gun. Of course the kids with the
new high-tech nine-millimeter jobs got the most attention, but if your piece was unique
enough, it got you at least some cred. Jody Motes, pretty much an idiot, with buck
teeth and a fat ass, brought in a German Luger with a red swastika inlaid on the handle,
and because of it got asked out by this guy in our English class a lot of the girls
thought was hot. Kids wore them on their hips; others, mostly guys, did the shoulder
holster. A couple of the senior girls with big breasts went with this over-the-shoulder
bandolier style, so the gun sat atop their left breast. Sweaty Mr. Gosh, in second
period math, said that look was “very fashionable.” I carried mine in my SpongeBob
lunch box. I hated wearing it; the holster always hiked my skirt up in the back somehow.

Everybody in the graduating class carried heat except for Scott Wisner, the King of
Vermont, as everybody called him. I forget why, ’cause Vermont was totally far away.
His parents had given him a stun gun instead of the real thing. Cody St. John, the
captain of the football team, said the stun gun was fag, and after that Wisner turned
into a weird loner who walked around carrying a big jar with a floating mist inside.
He asked all the better-looking girls if he could have their souls. I know he asked
me. Creep. I heard he’d stun anyone who wanted it, for ten dollars a pop. Whatever.

The senior class teachers all had tactical twelve-gauge short barrel shotguns; no
shoulder stock, just a club grip with an image of the school’s mascot (a cartoon of
a rampaging Indian) stamped on it. Most of them were loaded with buckshot, but Mrs.
Cloder, in human geography, who used her weapon as a pointer when at the board, was
rumored to rock the breaching rounds, those big slugs cops use to blow doors off their
hinges. Other teachers left the shotguns on their desks or lying across the eraser
gutter at the bottom of the board. Mr. Warren, the vice principal, wore his in a holster
across his back, and for an old fart was super quick in drawing it over his shoulder
with one hand.

At lunch, across the soccer field and back by the woods, where only the seniors were
allowed to go, we sat out every nice day in the fall, smoking cigarettes and having
gun-spinning competitions. You weren’t allowed to shoot back there, so we left the
safeties on. Bryce, a boy I knew since kindergarten, was good at it. He could flip
his gun in the air backward and have it land in the holster at his hip. McKenzie Batkin
wasn’t paying attention, and turned the safety off instead of on before she started
spinning her antique colt. The sound of the shot was so sudden, we all jumped, and
then silence followed by the smell of gun smoke. The bullet went through her boot
and took off the tip of her middle toe. Almost a whole minute passed before she screamed.
The King of Vermont and Cody St. John both rushed to help her at the same time. They
worked together to staunch the bleeding. I remember noticing the football lying on
the ground next to the jar of souls, and I thought it would make a cool photo for
the yearbook. McKenzie never told her parents, and hid the boots at the back of her
closet. To this day she’s got half a middle toe on her right foot, but that’s the
least of her problems.

After school I walked home with my new friend, Constance, who only came to Bascombe
High in senior year. We crossed the soccer field, passed the fallen leaves stained
red with McKenzie’s blood, and entered the woods. The wind blew and shook the empty
branches of the trees. Constance suddenly stopped walking, crouched, drew her Beretta
Storm, and fired. By the time I could turn my head, the squirrel was falling back,
headless, off a tree about thirty yards away.

Constance had a cute haircut, short but with a lock that almost covered her right
eye. Jeans and a green flannel shirt, a calm, pretty face. When we were doing current
events in fifth period social studies, she’d argued with Mr. Hallibet about the cancellation
of child labor laws. Me, I could never follow politics. It was too boring. But Constance
seemed to really understand, and although on the TV news we all watched, they were
convinced it was a good idea for kids twelve and older to now be eligible to be sent
to work by their parents for extra income, she said it was wrong. Hallibet laughed
at her and said, “This is Senator Meets we’re talking about. He’s a man of the people.
The guy who gave you your guns.” Constance had more to say, but the teacher lifted
his shotgun and turned to the board. The thing I couldn’t get over was that she actually
knew this shit better than Hallibet. The thought of it, for some reason, made me blush.

By the time the first snow came in late November, the guns became mostly just part
of our wardrobes, and kids turned their attention back to their cell phones and iPods.
The one shot fired before Christmas vacation was when Mrs. Cloder dropped her gun
in a bathroom stall and blew off the side of the toilet bowl. Water flooded out into
the hallway. Other than that, the only time you noticed that people were packing was
when they’d use their sidearm for comedy purposes. Like Bryce, during English, when
the teacher was reading
Pilgrim’s Progress
to us, took out his gun and stuck the end in his mouth as if he was so bored he was
going to blow his own brains out. At least once a week, outside the cafeteria, on
the days it was too cold to leave the school, there were quick-draw contests. Two
kids would face off, there’d be a panel of judges, and Vice Principal Warren would
set his cell phone to beep once. When they heard the beep, the pair drew, and whoever
was faster won a coupon for a free thirty-two-ounce soda at Babb’s, the local convenience
store.

One thing I did notice in that first half of the year. Usually when a person drew
their gun, even as a gag, each had their own signature saying. When it came to these
lines it seemed that the ban on cursing could be ignored without any problem. Even
the teachers got into it. Mr. Gosh was partial to, “Eat hot lead, you little motherfuckers.”
The school nurse, Ms. James, used, “See you in Hell, asshole.” Vice Principal Warren,
who always kept his language in check, would draw, and while the gun was coming level
with your head, say, “You’re already dead.” As for the kids, they all used lines they’d
seen in recent movies. Cody St. John used, “Suck on this, bitches.” McKenzie, who
by Christmas was known as Half-toe Batkin, concocted the line, “Put up your feet.”
I tried to think of something to say, but it all seemed too corny, and it took me
too long to get the gun out of my lunch box to really outdraw anyone else.

Senior year rolled fast, and by winter break, I was wondering what I’d do after I
graduated. Constance told me she was going to college to learn philosophy. “Do they
still teach that stuff?” I asked. She smiled. “Not so much anymore.” We were sitting
in my living room—my parents were away at my aunt’s. The TV was on, the lights were
out, and we were holding hands. We liked to just sit quietly and talk. “So I guess
you’ll be moving away after the summer,” I said. She nodded. “I thought I’d try to
get a job at Walmart,” I said. “I heard they have benefits now.”

“That’s all you’re gonna do with your life?” asked Constance.

“For now,” I said.

“Well then, when I go away, you should come with me.” She put her arm behind my head
and drew me gently to her. We held each other for a long time while the snow came
down outside.

A few days after Christmas, I sat with my parents watching the evening news. Senator
Meets was on, talking about what he hoped to accomplish in the coming year. He was
telling how happy he’d been to work for minimum wage when he was eleven.

“This guy’s got it down,” said my father.

I shouldn’t have opened my mouth, but I said, “Constance says he’s a loser.”

“Loser?” my father said. “Are you kidding? Who’s this Constance? I don’t want you
hanging out with any socialists. Don’t tell me she’s one of those kids who refuses
to carry a gun. Meets passed the gun laws, mandatory church on Sunday for all citizens,
killed abortion, and got us to stand up to the Mexicans.…He’s definitely gonna be
the next president. “

“She’s probably the best shot in the class,” I said, realizing I’d already said too
much.

My father was suspicious, and he stirred in his easy chair, leaning forward.

“I met her,” said my mother. “She’s a nice girl.”

I gave things a few seconds to settle down and then announced I was going to take
the dog for a walk. As I passed my mother, unnoticed by my dad, she grabbed my hand
and gave it a quick squeeze.