WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) (14 page)

To forget everything, I look out at the tower and make it my whole existence. It’s thin needle that rises thinner and thinner, cutting the sky forever. The idea that we’re going to try to reach it replaces my anger for a moment, replaces everything. I wonder who the red people are, and how they fit into all of this—if Sid is telling her in his dying breaths. I hear her whispering to him, and when I look again, unable to resist any longer, I know that he’s dead. When she finally stops whispering, and notices me watching her, she stands up. Then, just as quickly, she ducks back down and digs around in his pocket, finds something and takes it. Motioning to me, she says we have to go. I follow her down without a word, dropping toward the ocean over rocks blackened by slime, until we’re wading through water. Right up to the boat, and then, we tug it close and tip ourselves in. Sid’s keys go in and then the rumble of an engine starts. In just another moment, we’re slicing through the whitecaps. All I hear is the wind and all I see is her hair. And through my mind flash thoughts of blood against red skin and the last kiss she gave to him.

Chapter 9

Maze steers the boat through the surf and into deep water. Bits of spray launch over the front and rain back down. Salt hits my lips. The rocking unsettles my stomach after a few minutes and I sit down, watching her lead us somewhere. Eventually, we’re lined up right along the coast, running parallel for what seems forever.

            After a long silence, something too heavy for me to break through myself, as my mind circles around whether she’ll still be the same person after his death, Maze asks me to take the wheel of the boat. She tells me it’s easy—just keep us along the coast, and don’t bring us in any closer. And then I sit down and hold the wheel. She walks away, to the back of the boat, and just looks out at the water. At the tower and the blue white sky. I tell her to come and talk to me. And then, almost by instinct, something left over from a lifetime of Fatherhood sermons, I thank God when she comes back over.

            “I’m really sorry,” I say, somehow knowing it’s way too soon. But a force compels me to do it anyway, like I need to interact with her before she slips away. She sits down in the passenger seat, her eyes fastened straight ahead.

            “It’s okay,” she says. Her voice is steel. And after, as much as I expect there to be more, there’s nothing else. I want to ask her what she knows, what he said with the last of his strength, where we’re going. I want it all at once, because the emotional drain of Sid is fading, replaced by new fears. They swell inside me as I watch the failing height of the sun.

            “He called them Nefandus,” I say. I know I shouldn’t have referred to him again by her face, but the words are out and it’s too late.   

            “They’re the same as the Fatherhood.”

            I wait for more, but there’s nothing. No explanation.

            “They don’t look the same,” I say.

            “Another dogma tribe,” she says. Her voice is cool and even suddenly, and I almost convince myself she’s okay again, that fast.

            “Do you know where we’re going?” I ask.

            “There’s a camp. We’ll find it if we follow the coast long enough.” Then she pauses, filtering through something. “That’s what he told me.”

            “Resistance camp?” I ask.

            She nods her head. Without realizing I’m doing it, I take my right hand off the wheel and reach over and touch her shoulder. I rub her back for a second and then pull away. She doesn’t react at all, one way or the other.

I wait, hoping she’ll want to talk more, but I can’t figure out anything more to say. I just focus on the small waves, riding over them, little hills that remind me how sick I feel. Every once in a while I glance over to the shore line to make sure we’re staying in a straight line. And then, without prompting, she tells me what she knows.

            “He only told me a little about them. They believe in the same thing as the Fatherhood, for the most part. Their dogma is sin. They think—Sid said they think that by maintaining enough sin in the world, they cause the contrast that creates goodness.”

            “Makes as much sense as the Fatherhood,” I say, and just like that, she laughs. It’s quick and sarcastic and she stops herself. I look over, and for a moment, fading from her face, is her old smile. Like a flame my heart leaps up, as if through all of this, that by the death of Sid, I should have some reason to hope again. But it dies just that quickly, and her face sours into nothing again, just a plain stare toward the horizon. For a long time we fall into silence.

            “They’re the only ones we can trust. The Resistance. They’ll help us get out there,” she tells me.

            “To the tower?” I ask.

            She nods.

            My mind swirls into a thousand new questions as she falls silent again. I want to know if this is what Sid told her. But it must be. I want to ask if they’ve ever tried going out there before. And if they did, what happened to them? But I don’t press it—and we glide forward endlessly over the small swells. My eyes fall to the numbers on the dials of the boat’s dashboard. With curiosity I try to make sense of each of them. One of them clearly reads
GASOLINE
, and its needle is about halfway down to the bottom. For a moment, I think of being stranded on the water, this far out. Images of sharks, something the kids in Acadia used to joke about, sharpen in my mind.

            The sky stays clear and we keep riding the coast in silence. I test my ankle, twisting it in every direction, figuring out which ways it won’t cooperate. I tell myself it’s not that bad. It’s another twenty minutes before Maze makes the suggestion I could never have expected to come from her mouth.

            “Maybe we should go back,” she says.

            She looks at me with half-dead eyes. At once I’m torn, because she’s acting just like I would, and it will be too easy for me to cave in. It’s the most I can do to utter “
Why?”

            “It all depended on him. They would trust us because he brought us.”

            “They’ll trust us,” I say, unsure why I’m saying it. And then, for a long time, we fall to more doubt and silence, but neither of us turn the boat around.

            The coast stays the same for a long time—just the cascading layers of blackened rock, some vertical and sheer, rising into verdant foliage, and I watch the lines slowly go by—each one layered into sloping steps, mismatched eons of stone that end in the white breaks of the sea. That’s when I see the bodies.

            “Maze,” I say. As if out of a trance, she looks at me. “Look at the woods.”

            She turns and sees them too. Body after body, all of them dressed in black and white. The  robes of the Fatherhood.

            She gasps and then studies the polarized silhouettes.

            “What’s that around their necks?” she says, straining to see. She tells me to get up and look, knowing I have better vision. She takes the wheel and steers us toward the coast, just a few hundred feet from the first visible reef. That’s when I make out what I see.

            “Chains,” I say. “They’re all hanging from chains.”

            “Metal,” she says.    

            “Do you think it was the red things—the Nefandus?” I say.

            “It had to be.”

            We pass about a dozen bodies, one after the next in succession, each one hanged from the highest trees. Some dangle right over the water from trees that lean out over the edge of the precipice. Metal encircling their necks. The great sin given to them in their deaths. I start to think about how much the Fathers in Acadia would cringe at the prospect of their final rest being bound up in metal.

Maze keeps us in a line along the coast until we see the first signs of life. There is a string of boats bobbing near a black jetty. On the coast, a few small buildings come into view—wood-walled huts with roofs of rippled silver metal. Resistance camp.  

            “This has to be it,” I say.

            “Let’s find out.”

            And then she’s pulling us right in, almost knocking into the other boats. “Be ready at any time, okay?” she says. And then, in one quick motion, we almost smack another boat but halt in the water dead next to it. From her pocket she pulls out an object the size of a knife, but it’s brown. The color of the antlers. The tip is red with dried blood.

            “
Maze,
” I say, but she’s already hopped onto the rocks. I look at the shore—it looks like where we came from, as if we didn’t get anywhere and did one great circle. I find my feet on the slimy rocks, looking down until they’re dry, and then my eyes are on her back. She slows down for me before entering the camp.

            “Hopefully they all know each other well,” she says.

            “We don’t look like Fathers. And we sure as hell don’t look like Nefandus. What else could there be out here?”

            And then, the moment we’re in range of the buildings, a woman sees us and starts over. She’s wearing just the same tight-fitting camouflage that Sid had on. Resistance clothes. For some reason, a wash of relief rolls through me.

            “Where are you going?” she says. And then, from her side, a long shaft of sharpened metal slides out. She raises it at us, like she’s going to throw it. Her other hand grabs at something else—a small knife. Maze stops and so do I. In the distance I see many more camouflaged suits, all huddled around a fire. They chat loudly. No idea we’re here.   

            “We’re from Acadia—I’m Sid’s friend,” Maze says.

            “Where the hell is he?” she asks, frozen in place.

            “The red things attacked us.”

            “
Nefandus
? Here?” she asks.

            “There were a lot—thin ones with spears, and then big ones—”

            “Christ—
Rafe!
” she calls, turning back to the fire.

            “Yeah?” a voice returns between drunken laughter and shouts.

            “Come here.”

            A middle-aged man with messy gray-black hair walks over, a small jug in his hand.

            “Well, what’s this?” he asks, staring into us. The smirk on his face dissolves.

            “They say they’re from Acadia. They were with Sid.”

            “Where is that bastard? He’s missing the rounds. It’ll be his turn next,” he says. And just then, in the background, I hear the chorus go up, and the group starts singing something—some jovial melody that hangs in the air.

            “They say the Nefandus attacked,” she says, bringing her metal spear down again, relaxing just a bit. I watch Maze. She looks ready to pounce, completely coiled.

            “Bullshit
.
Not on this coast
,
” Rafe says. “Never once on this coast.”

            “Where did I get this?” Maze says, raising the broken antler. Rafe steps forward, as if he’s been drawn by a magnet. Maze hands it to him. He holds it up into the afternoon light and sighs.

            “They get him?” he asks, a sudden change in his spirit.

            Maze looks at her feet for a moment, and then she finally just mutters for him to look at the blood on the damned thing.

            For a long time Rafe looks at the antler, spinning it around through his fingers, inspecting every side of it. Then, as if he’s been thinking long and hard about Sid, and something has just come into him, he looks up and trades the intensity to Maze.

            “You believe us, right?” Maze finally says.

            Rafe hands Gala the antler.

            “It’s her. This one. Who told him it’d get him killed? Falling for a whore of the Fatherhood?”

            “You’re right….” the woman finally says, as if she’s just put some puzzle together. She looks at Maze, and Rafe stares too. I feel their hatred. All of it directed at her, like she’s responsible for Sid’s death. And when I look at her, it’s all mirrored on her face. She’s buying into it.

            “It wasn’t her fault,” I say. “She killed it trying to save him.”

            “Killed a Red Horn? A Nefandus Red Horn? Girl where did you find this?” laughs Rafe. “You hear this Logs?
Logs!
”

            From the fire pit another man stumbles over, older and more drunk. He asks Rafe what the hell’s going on, telling him he’s got to sing a song. And then he realizes we’re here and locks onto us, the exuberance fading from his face.  

            “See this pretty thing?” Rafe says.

            “How couldn’t I?” Logs says, stepping closer. His tongue jerks from his mouth and rolls across his lips. 

            “She says she killed a Red Horn.”

            A sudden eruption of laughter rises into the night. Then, when Logs can hold it together again, he draws up really close to Maze. I watch her, hoping she won’t try to stab him now, because I know the others will be all over us and we won’t stand a chance.

            “And pray tell, young miss, how on this fallen Earth you managed to do that?” he says, his sick breath wafting quickly enough that I smell it too.

            “They die easily enough when you stab one of their eyes,” she says, stepping forward.

            “Don’t do it,” I say, sensing her eagerness.

            “Oh, and who are you?” Logs says, turning and walking closer to me.

            “Must be her other boyfriend. One for the Fathers, and one for Sin,” Rafe says, and they both go up in laughter. The idea angers me so much that I’m tempted to slash Logs’s eye out myself, but I somehow manage to stay still and look into his stinking mouth.

            “Hit them behind the knee after you get the eye and they’re about as useless as you are,” Maze says, diverting the tension.

            “You didn’t kill it,” Gala suddenly says. Her voice is plain and even, like she’s the only one not completely drunk. “But you hurt it. Most don’t get that far. Not with just knives.”