Alexandria (48 page)

“Hold on, boy.”

He slides down off the saddle and takes stock of his whereabouts, searching for familiar landmarks. In his delirium, the rocks and far-off mesas appear to shape-shift, the ground under his feet seems liquid. He sways and tastes the wind. He reaches into his saddlebag and takes out his flask, fumbling the last few drops of water into the tired pony’s mouth. The pony coughs grit from its lungs.

Thomas faces the trail he’s just ridden. His tracks are fading under the pixilation of sand. Away back in the distance, a pale tornado of hoof dust rises above the flatness, gaining on him. He hooks his foot into the stirrup and flies backwards, landing on his ass with his foot still caught up. He groans and slaps at his head to clear it. Slowly, he stands and pulls himself awkwardly onto the saddle and touches his heels back. The pony, loath to move, trudges forward.

“Just a little further, old boy. Stay with me.”

The fluxing desert morphs into a vision of his childhood. He is twelve years old and his father and mother are guiding he and Ryan along the river in back of their house, riding up to see the big lake. He never lived a day more perfect. He sees the adventurous grin on his brother’s face just before he spurs his horse and tears off. He hears his father’s voice, yelling for him to slow down. He hears himself laughing as Ryan gallops away, and he laughs all over again from the thought of it, dry and ragged—a lunatic display in the empty desert.

The illusion disperses and he snaps back into the moment. His lips are so parched they’ve sealed themselves shut and he works his tongue around to pry them open. He slicks the sweat out of his eyes and settles back for the ride, delivering to the pony a soliloquy meant to inspire the troops of England at Agincourt.

Hargrove starts to rise and Nyla places a hand on his shoulder and takes up his empty plate.

“Sit down, I got it.”

A wry smirk tinges his face and he stays put. Nyla and the others carry the dishes into the kitchen and make quick work of cleaning up the front room. The desert glows with shades of red and orange through the tall open windows and the breeze running through has finally cooled. Hargrove leans back and picks at his teeth, thinking on their predicament. Nyla and the men are whispering about it in the kitchen. He notes the worried faces of his two young visitors, then rises and shuffles down the hall.

“Nyla, sweetie… why don’t you tell everybody to head out back. We’ll be around before long.”

“You need anything?”

“We’re fine. You want to join us?”

“Sure,” she says, wringing her hands on a wash cloth. “Give me a minute.”

“Tell Denit he’s welcome.” He dawdles around in the kitchen, hunting through the drawers for something sweet.

In the front room, Jack shoots Lia a nervous glance. They collect their meager belongings and shuffle toward the mudroom that leads to the front door, leaving behind the clanking of dishes and hushed discourses trickling through from the kitchen. Talk of armies and fighting. Scared talk.

Jack opens the door and guides Lia through with his arm around her. They step to the curved edge of the porch and gaze off at the tedious landscape.

“What are we gonna do when they get here? These people barely have weapons…”

Lia shakes her head. “I don’t know, Jack. Maybe we’ll run.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s no place to run. We can’t make it out in this desert by ourselves.”

“Nyla said they have a hideout somewhere.”

“I’m tired of hiding.”

“So am I,” she says, though she means a different sort of hiding.

They stand on the porch and watch the fiery sphere in the west sink perceptively toward the dry sand on the horizon. One by one, shimmering stars peek through the darkness in its wake. The front door whines open and Hargrove cocks his head toward them curiously.

“Where you headed?”

“I thought you said you were taking us.”

“I am. But it’s not out there.” He waves them inside and disappears through the mudroom.

Jack holds Lia a minute longer, wishing for some easy way out of this mess, and feeling a despairing lack of solutions. They turn and move back inside, where Hargrove has rearranged all the furniture in the front room, shoving everything back along the walls. He stacks chairs in the corner and motions for Jack to help him lift the table. When the center of the floor is clear, Hargrove reaches down and peels up the corner of a matted old rug and pitches it aside.

Concealed beneath is a large square door with a rope handle. He lifts it back and lets it swing over and fall to the floor. A blast of dust swirls around the room.

“Careful,” he says, and lowers himself down a wooden ladder to an underground platform.

“You go,” says Lia, pushing Jack softly.

He peers down into the pitch-black cellar, then places his foot on the first rung and descends. Lia climbs down more slowly, her knee still aching, and Jack steadies her on the last couple steps. In the darkness, they hear metal grinding on metal and a thin ring of murky light opens along the floor.

“Give me a hand here, Jack.”

Together, they pull back the rusted circular hatch. Cool air drifts past his face and Jack fights a quick spell of vertigo as he looks down the vertical shaft, boring deep into the earth. The duct is lit with strange patches of murky white light. He searches for the source but sees no lanterns or torches—only dimly lit metal rungs receding downward for a great long ways. Hargrove lowers himself over the lip and starts clacking down the rungs.

Lia looks over the edge queasily and Jack peers up at her.

“Can you make it?”

“Catch me if I fall?”

He smiles and disappears through the portal. After a long descent they reach a wider, circular platform. Hargrove moves past it and continues on down the spiraling stairs. The light is coming from thin, milky panels set into the walls. Only a few of them still glow. Jack reaches up and touches one.

“You coming?” calls Hargrove.

They curve down the stairs and arrive just as he is turning a metal wheel and opening an upright hatch on the middle landing. The spiral stairs continue further down, seemingly forever.

“Did you build this?” Lia asks in astonishment.

“No,” laughs Hargrove. “I can barely keep it running.”

He steps through the hatch door. Flickering white light throws spectral illumination across the crescent-shaped room. It is dingy looking, with skeins of dried rust water crisscrossing the metal walls. Hargrove ushers them to a round window on the far side.

“Touch it,” he says.

Jack reaches out and places his hand on the glass, cold to the touch. It feels so good after the desert heat that he presses his face against it. Through the glass, he sees tall black columns arranged in formation, several stories high, blinking with scatterings of pinpoint light.

“What does
this
machine do?”

“It remembers.”

Lia steps forward and gazes down into the shaft, coursing her eye along the sleek black pillars.

“What does it remember?”

“Everything. From thousands of years back, all the way up until twenty-two thirty-seven. It’s all here. Everything we’ve ever known about the world and about ourselves is written inside of here. We keep these things. That’s our purpose.”

Nyla's footsteps wind down the stairs and she ducks through the portal.

“Hi. Denit decided to stay up top.”

Lia fixes on a framed portrait fastened above the window, showing a handsome young man with slicked back hair, peculiar clothes, and a mysterious smile. Etched on the frame is the name
Ryan Hargrove
.

“That doesn’t look like you,” she says.

“He would be my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather,” says Hargrove, counting out the
greats
with his thumb and fingertips. “He built this. Over two hundred and seventy years ago. Just before the collapse.”

They stand simply, looking up at the picture.

“Why?” asks Lia.

“He was a philanthropist.”

“What’s a filanothrist?”

“A powerful person who wants to do something good. He built this as a lifeline, after it became clear that the last days were near. Named for the city in old Egypt—the library. It’s a preservation effort. Built to last a thousand years. By the looks, it won’t last half that. Time gets everything, I guess.”

“So there’s writing in there?”

“There is. But not writing the way you and I are used to. It’s coded. Runs off electricity.”

Jack furrows his brow.

“I’ve heard of that,” says Lia. “It’s lightning.”

“Well, sort of. It has its own power source, but it’s failing. To fix it, I’d have to work with matter on the tiniest scales. I’ll stick with gardening.” Hargrove grins. “I fear we may be the last generation of keepers who truly understands what it is we’re keeping.”

Jack traces his fingers over the cold glass, a solemn look on his face. “I don’t understand.”

Hargrove flicks his eyes toward Nyla. “You want to know what happened to the world, Jack? Lia? Would you like to see what the collapse of a civilization looks like? Are those the answers you're looking for? Because I can show you…”

Jack turns to Lia. She nods meekly.

“Yes.”

“Come on, we’ve got to get something from below.”

They step back over the metal lip of the portal and descend more steps, the light turning darker as they travel lower. A chill in the air runs clean through to their bones and they start shivering. Lia rubs her thumb against Jack’s palm as they descend, round and round, lower and lower. A strange noise emanates from the depths, more felt than heard. Everything seems to be steadily vibrating. A solitary plink of water breaks the monotony of the hum.

Nyla bears down on another metal wheel, stuck in place with rust. Jack goes to help her and they jerk their body weight against it to dislodge the mechanism. It screeches slowly until the hatch pops free.

They enter a small dark chamber, sulking in dim red light. Another clear wall stands before them. Nyla feels her way along the corner to a near-empty shelf and reaches for a stack of zippered pouches.

“No,” says Hargrove, “it’s not needed. Nothing to contaminate anymore.”

He steps to the clear enclosure and produces a square key, which he inserts into a slot, and the first of two doors cracks open automatically. He proceeds to the next, and when it opens, a wave of air gushes out under pressure. By the thin red glow, Jack sees row after row of shelves stretching back into the darkness. They are empty, save for one. A solitary black case rests alone on the barren shelves and Hargrove takes it carefully into his hands.

“This is our last,” he says.

They leave the clear composite doors wide open and trudge up the tight spiral, back to the crescent chamber on the middle landing. Hargrove lays the black case on the floor. Beads of moisture form on its cool surface. He pulls a tab along the corner and peels a line from around its edges, unfastening the case, then folds it open and removes a clear panel with wires dangling off the sides. He carries it over to a small console, where a similar panel is already installed, and takes a few moments to switch them out, setting the old rigging off to the side and connecting the new in its place.

“Hope it works.”

“Here,” says Nyla, fetching two chairs, “have a seat.”

She feels along the edge of the console and lifts a thin black lid, exposing a jumble of buttons and controls. Hargrove positions himself before it, dancing his fingers over the console as if trying to remember the routine. Tentatively, he clicks a series of buttons and the screen flickers with blue light.

“Ah. There. Pull up your chairs, let’s see if I can get this going.”

He enters more commands and the blue light becomes an image—a glorious city. Jack’s heart pounds as he looks on it. Tall glass towers, just as he’s been told.

“These are some of the last transmissions,” says Hargrove.

The image begins to move. The glorious city vaporizes in a fantastic ball of flame and the screen turns bright white. Changing patterns of light strobe across their drawn faces as they watch the horrors progress—a tiny apocalypse reflected in their eyes. More cities, felled by shockwaves of inferno. Violent hordes consumed with flame, their faces shriveling like burnt paper. Bodies so shrunken with hunger they look like ambulant skeletons. Armies of steel machines. Lia’s color drains from her trembling face. Jack is expressionless, void of emotion. A sudden wave of nausea rolls over him. Thomas was right—they never should have looked. Every image is worse than the last. There is no sense to it. Nothing to be gained. Every step they took through the cities of old, through those empty decaying streets, every step was a trespass on hallowed ground. All his fantasies about the old days seem so childish now.

“Make it stop
,” he says.

Hargrove taps his console and the screen flickers to blue. He looks at them and says nothing. For a long moment they stare at the field of blue light, letting the slaughterous imagery fade from their retinas.

Nyla steps forward and places her hand on Lia’s trembling shoulder.