WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) (18 page)

            “Maze!” I yell. But the chanting and the sawing sounds are too loud and I know she can’t hear me. It hits me that they must have already started to hurt her, as the sound of the sickle smashing down so many times makes me know I was wrong to assume it had been landing on Logs each time. I feel the last bit of desperation slip out of me, the last bit of hope, and it’s like a great dark whirl of deflation in my chest has released the last bits of my soul—as if I can just succumb to the madness, the bad dream of this all—that I’m really just sitting in the lawn still, under Acadian trees, drawing my picture, shadowed by the eaves of the Acadian houses, cool under the lush overgrowth, angry at my mother and the Fatherhood. It’s the sensation that this is still somehow really yesterday. But the feeling of surrender is gutted suddenly by something far worse the very next instant, a void darker than anything I’ve ever known—something that swallows up every bit of future and past I ever had.
This is the last I’ll know of Maze. Of myself. The mind I’ve swum through. Put so much time into figuring out.

I hear a soft noise from Maze, enough to pull me from my darkness and open my eyes again. Dancing now, behind crouched forms that duck and drink from the streams of blood, some of the Nefandus start to swing objects through the air. At first I don’t recognize what they have, but soon, when one of the objects is large enough that I recognize its color—the color of skin—I know. They sawed him apart. Before I shut my eyes again, wiggling my hands one last time to be sure there’s no chance of freeing myself, I make out the shape of a severed foot. And then, I can’t help but keep watching—the man puts the foot into his mouth. Red shines and runs on top of the dark ink skin, and stark white teeth appear just for a moment. In the next instant, he thrusts the leg out and strands of skin rip off, dangling from teeth and lips. Another creature comes and takes the remains of the foot, and they pass it around. A dizzying chant resounds: “
Lux in tenebris.
” Within the clamor something like drums start to beat. They hit softly at first, but it grows steadily louder. And then, suddenly, everything silences. Only one voice continues:

“One life has been given up for you, oh savior. And now, we offer the second of the trinity.”

The voice is like syrup, deep and slow. But I know what the words mean. I open my eyes one last time and twist my head. And it’s at that moment that I realize they’re not going to kill me next, but Maze, because the Red Horn steps right over me and goes to her. I see her plainly now that there’s nothing left of Logs’s body between us. Her eyes are down and closed, facing right into the granite.

“Maze,” I say, too softly to be heard. I feel the desperate need to comfort her somehow. As if I can offer some last bit of solace. But there’s nothing. And there’s only one thing I know to say—the only thing that I’ve ever wanted to say to her, that I need her to know. And it hits me that I’m really saying it for myself—one last selfish act before she dies.

“I love you.”

There’s no reaction from her, and I know she must have already passed out from shock, and it angers me that I haven’t blacked out too. The Red Horn’s strike is surreal, his arms going in slow motion. The red faces bounce a circuit around the rim of the table, cups in hand again, calling out the same words as before.

Suddenly, as the sickle starts to fall, the chant changes.

“
Stupri corporum,”
they yell, over and over in quick succession. Then, the sickle pauses, and the others in the group call back: “Preserve her for it!”

When the sickle starts to move again, and the red faces crouch in anticipation for the renewed streams of blood, Maze’s blood, I close my eyes for good. I can’t watch it.

The minute the black closes in, I hear the noise—it’s different, somehow more like the drum sound than the suction that sounded when the sickle struck Logs. A sinking in my chest causes me to pull my head up—as there’s something familiar to the sound, and it’s not the drum. When I look to see the aftermath, expecting the closed look of death on her face, her eyes are wide open. She’s wide awake, staring right at me. Then I see the Red Horn, standing frozen over her, his sickle paralyzed, stunned by the noise, and it hits me—it’s the sound of a gun, somewhere deep in the woods, the same as last night. The forbidden artifact Garren had wielded, the fiery bomb of light that mowed down the red men. Suddenly all of the Nefandus are paused, staring off into the forest in the same direction. And then, it sounds again, this time much closer.

A giant pressure grounds into my calf as the Red Horn steps over my body, hopping off the table. The entire throng starts to disperse from the rim of the table, dropping their cups. They frantically squish together into a tight pack, the biggest Red Horns uniting in the center. That’s when I twist around just enough to see the first shot hit.

The bang is so loud this time that it stings my ears and my instinct is to poke my fingers in to stop the pain but I can’t. It’s all I can do to watch—the head of one of the smaller Nefandus blows apart. His red body falls backward from the edge of the group, toppling into another. More gun blasts sound. One of the antler beasts roars something I can’t understand. I see a giant form, standing alongside several others, drop to the ground and out of view. And just as quickly as they formed their pack, the whole group scatters, breaking apart and fleeing in separate directions. Only one stays behind, wounded, struggling to his feet. It’s one of the biggest Red Horns, but for all his strength he can’t lift his leg, like it’s been destroyed by the gun. When he half raises his body to stand, the snapping pop of his bone sends him crashing back down to the earth. Fists pound into the ground to prevent his head from hitting first, and then, slowly and from behind, I watch him raise his antlers and point them toward to the forest. That’s when I see the shadow.

One of them, and then another. Finally there are three. Only one of the faces I recognize: it’s Garren, and in his hands is the silver shine of his gun. The barrel points toward the struggling Red Horn, and then, there’s another painful clap of sound, a rush of light, and the strong stench of smoke. Without a sound, the large red body flattens against the ground. His antlers point up, a wide arcing silhouette like veins running to the sky.

“
Jesus...
” I hear one of them say.

“They saved us,” another voice says from behind me. It’s Maze, as soft and weak as I’ve ever heard her, but fully alive, and I twist to see her. As I stare into her eyes, tears down her cheeks, the fear that we’re not really saved forces my eyes up to scan the forest. But there’s nothing out there. The red men are all gone.  

Rafe and Gala and Garren, the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen in my life, run over to us and start to cut us free without saying a word. Only Gala mutters something. She’s discovered something on the ground. And then she says it: “
Logs
.”

By the time they work us both free, we’ve jostled enough over the table
, sliding over slick warmth, that we’re both covered in Logs’s blood. And then, before there’s an explanation—why they’ve come for us, saved us, risked their own lives for just one of their own, against an entire horde of demons—we’re running into the forest. Maze asks where we’re going and Rafe just tells her to be quiet. I stumble on as best I can, battling the throb in my leg. And then we just continue to march. Soon, the pain in my leg is replaced by a euphoria, a materializing sensation that I’m really alive, and so is Maze, and we’re still together. As I follow their backs, the feeling overrides everything else.

            We jog on, wending between thick growths of trees, finally spilling out onto a flat dish of rock high over the edge of the coast. Far below us I spot the running line of the shore, black and gray crags, whitecaps washing over them where they spike too far into the ocean. And then, my eyes have to glance up. I take it in again, for the millionth time, at the line of the sea’s dim horizon, ejecting up from its center, into the speckled canopy of the world—the tower. That’s when we stop, and I realize when I reach them that the only reason we’ve paused is for Garren to catch his breath. He hangs the long gun down his side and leans on it, and then Gala goes up to him and whispers something. He nods, and then I see it—the long streak of dark red, running down his side, right underneath his left armpit. I want to ask how badly he’s hurt, and how many survivors there are at the camp, and what we’re supposed to do now. Half of my questions are directed at Garren and the rest at Maze, but I stay mute. And then, with wonder, I just watch her.

            She approaches them without stopping to check in with me, looking overcome with urgency again, like the euphoria of survival has already worn off in her, and she needs to set to the task of the tower again, right away, more seriously than ever before. And my premonition is confirmed right away with her words—she asks Garren, as he breathes horrible rasps over the gun that supports him, if he’s going to help us or not, because if he’s not, then this is where we part ways.

            “What?” says Rafe, almost breaking into a laugh. “We just saved your lives.”

            Maze ignores him, her eyes on Garren, waiting. I walk up next to her, summoning every bit of strength I can, enough to mirror hers, standing erect and looking at Garren, showing my solidarity with her. We stare together, waiting. And as much as I don’t want to cast off into the woods alone, in the opposite direction probably from our saviors, back toward the fleeing trails of the Nefandus, I stand my ground with her. Whatever she wants.

            “Rafe,” Garren says between squeezed breaths. “Go with Gala. See she gets the trail, without a Red Horn coming down her back.”

            Rafe just nods reluctantly, as if he doesn’t want to go, but I feel it—there’s something underneath the demand. Something of a misdirection. Rafe goes, just leaves and follows Gala right into the woods. When Garren is sure we’re alone, he tells us.

            “We didn’t come because of Logs,” he says. And it’s like he’s desperate that no one else hear but Maze. I push in closer. Somehow, I think he must mean her and me, but as he presses his head right into her, nearly touching hers with his, I know it’s only to her he’s speaking. “You’ve got the mark.”

            “What mark?” Maze asks.

            “On your god-damned leg,” Garren says. And right away I know. I’ve seen it a thousand times. The tattoo. Stretched out because she had it since she was little. Something from before she came to Acadia, from the time before she remembers things. Three tiny lines that intersect a half-circle. Small and black. Not a birth mark. Something someone cut into her skin a long time ago.

            My eyes instinctively wander down her leg, right to where the mark is, on her ankle. But her shoes and pants conceal it. I half expect her to draw up her pants, to confirm he’s right, as if she doesn’t know the very thing engraved on her own skin. But she just watches him, and I realize—he must have come in. Sometime in the night. Sometime while we were sleeping. Looked at her body. I see her face tell me she must be realizing the same thing, but then she just asks:

            “You going to tell me what the hell is going on?”

            “They’re not crazy—your stories. I told him to find you. To get you out. Once I found out you were so close. It just took longer than I thought.”

            A wall of confusion smashes my head, diminishing the last bits of comprehension and euphoria I have. Endless questions scream through my mind, but I wait for Maze, who must have the same ones. But she stays quiet and it kills me, like she somehow already understands and is just letting it sink in. That Sid was some pawn of Garren’s, baiting her out of Acadia. And as if Garren senses her sudden dejection, he says that Sid should have been done with it the first time he saw her.

            “But he fucked up. He fell in love with you,” he says. “And he died. But it doesn’t matter, because you’re right, and you’re here.”

            “Why tell me?—why trust me not to tell them?” Maze says. “No one knows any of it. I could tell them everything.”

            “You won’t,” Garren says.

            “Why not?”

            “There’s no them left.”

            Garren struggles to remove his weight from the gun and stand upright.

            “We’re going,” Maze finally says.

            “Yeah. And I’m taking you.”

            “To the tower?” Maze says.

            “To the tower,” he replies.

I wait for more, for it to all make sense, but there’s nothing—nothing about what the mark means on her leg, or how many of the Resistance really survived the attack. We just start to walk again, the conversation dead, until we meet up with Rafe and Gala. I finally work up the nerve to ask her, fearing that she’s kept an infinite number of things from me now, and with each question I ask, I’ll reveal more of how little she really trusts me. But when I ask her what the mark is, Maze tells me she has no idea. Ask him, I tell her, anxious, as we trail the three who lead us down a beaten trail, back into the dark woods, away from the coast.

            She stops for a moment, turns to me, and looks into my eyes. An ancient feeling rushes through me, mixed now with as much confusion and anxiousness as hope.

            “I will. But I—I almost don’t want to know. I don’t want to be part of it,” she says.

            “Part of what?” I say.    

            “Any of it.”

            “You think you’re part of something bad?” I ask.

            “Look at it, Wills,” she says. And for her entire life in Acadia, the wide span that I’ve known her, I think of how her obsession with the tower has been the one constant—the one driving force, external, around which all of her energy has revolved. Where all of her imagination bends. Where her theories all stem from. Yet it’s only now, when shows me the mark—exposes her olive skin—that it becomes so clear, so impossibly obvious. It’s almost too much for me when I realize I’d never put it together before. The line, cutting up into a  half circle. The curve of the Earth. The rise of the line. The tower.