North

by Frank Owen

  She racked her brain, trying to recall what she’d told Vida about Renard in the way-back, before she’d said he was her father, when it was just a story about her old life up North, like her old life back in South Africa: foreign; too far back to hurt anyone in the present. Had she even mentioned what he looked like? Had she ever said any tender thing about him? Had Vida had any idea of the suffering motherhood had been for Ruth, the terrible mixed blessing of that paternity? It was Everett she missed now, Ruth thought. She always would. The love that came after the blistering damage of youth: that was the most precious kind, because it was clear-eyed and knew its own worth.

  She shifted and sighed, and Vida watched her mother from the back seat, where she lay against the door handle. She had fished Ears McCreedy out of the bag and was using him as cushioning against the bumps in the road. There was some primitive scent to the creature that appealed to her, some memory connected to the thing. As he traveled with them, Ears had started looking less and less like the squirrel he had been; now he was a bean-bag totem holding the grit and gravel of the South that Garrett had so lovingly stuffed inside him. Vida thought: He’ll probably be the baby’s first toy.

  Not toy.

  Ancestral spirit. Guardian angel.

  She thought about her own time with Everett: the days they had spent moving between settlements, and then the days in the old house. Once Vida had come back after a strange man had blundered into their yard, screaming wordlessly at the sky. There was blood trickling from his ears so that his shoulders were cloaked. It was Everett she wanted, Everett who would keep her safe. She must have been little, but she’d slammed the door against the bleeding man and shouted, ‘Fuck Renard!’ Had her mother echoed the sentiment about her old-time lover? Had she ever said ‘Fuck Renard’? Vida couldn’t remember. It was too wrapped up with all the other things she felt about Ruth: the love, and the resentment, and the guilt.

  Dyce clicked his back and yawned. The lights of towns were flecking the horizon, more than they’d seen closer back to the Wall. Wyoming had been okay, but Nebraska and their whip through Iowa had smelt of decline. Des Moines, now that Dyce saw the true lights of other cities racing past, had been unelectrified in whole sections, rot on a body that hadn’t spread yet but would. Here, further east, the night-covered landscape twinkled with street lights and back-lit shop signs. The further they drove and the faster they went – Iowa City; Davenport; Ottawa – the closer modernity came, eating history even as they made it, until at last they crested a hill and the rising sun revealed the outskirts of distant Chicago.

  ‘Now that,’ said Dyce, ‘is a metropolis.’

  And then time speeded up again, the way cars made it, and they were close to Maple Lake. Every now and again Dyce asked Ruth to match the road signs with the map, translating them from paper into the language of tree and rock and road. She held fast to her sports bottle all the while, the sparse green-brown fibers swilling.

  They passed a white clapboard church in the encroaching forest, the cemetery choked with dandelions and the palisades pushed over in places by fallen branches. They went on, along a road flanked by more maples until it forked right at a bright yellow triangle that said NO PASSING ZONE.

  The road climbed slightly and the foliage seemed to grow thicker, crowding the road until the canopy reached over them, the trees touching to form a tunnel that felt ominous, as though they were being funneled into a trap. Dyce and Garrett had watched trapdoor spiders at work, before they began the game with the pins, fascinated by the way the little critters dug and spun and crafted their tunnels. Nothing that went in there ever came out – no wings or legs or crispy carapace leftovers. Those doors were all one-way for the visitors. He hoped like hell that he and Ruth and Vida were the spiders.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ he said in a tight voice, and Vida sat up properly and looked out at the closeness of the leaves and the sparse yellow chevrons that marked their passage.

  Then, too fast, at another fork, there was suddenly water beyond an edging of trees and another sign that pointed them left around a grassy triangle.

  ‘So this is Maple Lake,’ murmured Vida. ‘It’s pretty.’

  ‘Nice place for a showdown,’ said Dyce.

  They slowly skirted the lake and came to the overlook: a parking lot with a low wall and oil-drum bins – the same kind, Vida noticed, they had used as braziers in the Capitol Building. She imagined it now, its burnt-out shell. Somewhere in there were the fatty, scorched remains of Buddy and his red baseball cap. She fought the nausea down. You just help me now, she told the baby. This is all for you. So behave.

  Ever law-abiding, Dyce turned the truck into a bay and cut the engine.

  When they opened the car doors, the air was cold outside. They climbed out, taking stock of the place as Vida stretched her aching leg. On the opposite bank were more maple trees, crowding the edge to make a thin shore. There was an early-morning haze over the water, clinging to the surface in tendrils. Two geese flew overhead, honking damply, silhouetted against the orange sky.

  ‘It’s lovely here,’ said Ruth. She was still holding the bottle. ‘So quiet.’ For some reason it made her want to cry.

  ‘Maybe we’ll come back,’ Dyce lied, and he put his arm around her. To his surprise, she let him. They stood and contemplated the path that led out along a spit of land reaching into the lake, ending with a rusting jetty. On the sand was a picnic table. Some parks-and-recreation man had once coated it with bitumen, and the smell made Vida long again for Everett.

  ‘I just need to know why we’re meeting here,’ she said, turning around to take it all in.

  ‘At least it’s quiet. We’ll be able to tell whether Renard comes alone or not,’ Dyce said. He wasn’t sure.

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’

  ‘We make a run for it.’ He shrugged. ‘What else are we going to do? But that won’t happen. He’s expecting you and Ruth, right? Not me.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Vida wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

  ‘If he sees me, that’ll be the deal blown. But I could take the rifle and hide somewhere out of sight with a clear line. In case something goes wrong, you know? In case it’s not just him that shows up. He’s not exactly known for his fair dealings.’

  Vida shivered. ‘That would make me feel better.’

  ‘I was thinking about that in the car. I could take him out. I could shoot him. I’d do it happily. He’s your father. I know that.’

  ‘Stop,’ said Vida. She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I have to do it myself, okay?’

  ‘You’re just going to kill him?’

  ‘I’ve thought about it.’ She was matter-of-fact, and in that moment Dyce was afraid of her. ‘I’ll drown him. I will. I’ll push him into the water and I’ll hold onto him until there isn’t one fucking bubble left. Like Mami Wata.’

  Dyce didn’t have to look at Ruth to know that she was shaking her head. ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I know that. But it’s personal, Dyce. I want him to suffer. I don’t believe in all that heaven-and-hell shit. You know that. He has to know what he’s done. If you shoot him, then he won’t get it. Does that make sense? He’s killed millions of people, far away, in a place he can’t see because he forced his own people to build a wall to hide it. He couldn’t even watch. He’s a fucking coward. He’s not my father in any way that actually counts. Renard doesn’t get long-distance death or turn-theother-cheek. He gets me. With my hands around his neck.’

  ‘Jesus, Vida.’

  ‘What did you think was going to happen, Dyce?’

  ‘I just didn’t imagine you would enjoy it.’

  She clicked her tongue. ‘Don’t shoot him unless something goes wrong.’

  ‘All right,’ said Dyce.

  ‘Promise me.’

  ‘Fuck! I promise!’

  Ruth spoke up. ‘You need to get going now. Vida and me, we’ll sit at the bench. It’ll give you a clear view.’

  Dyce turned Vida t
o face him. He angled his head to kiss her and she pulled him fiercely to her. Ruth looked away, and made a show of searching for somewhere to hide the bottle where it would be safe.

  ‘I love you,’ said Dyce. ‘I fucking love you and I hope you know that.’

  He walked off up the road and Vida watched him go. It was the pearly light and the lope of his stride, but she thought of Garrett. A little way along he turned back to blow her a kiss.

  It was Dyce, all right. There was no mistaking that. But he’d changed. She turned the idea over in her head.

  He didn’t look young anymore, or meek. That was it.

  Then, in his new skin, he turned off the path into the forest and was gone.

  55

  The virus factory, lit orange by the early sun, looked as though it had been designed to mimic a Norman castle or a monastery. At the base, behind all those barriers and barbed wires, Felix could make out a gray patchwork on the wall – he’d seen it plenty in New York, where someone had covered over graffiti that disagreed with them. There was hope in that – for one, it meant the building’s security wasn’t watertight, but also it meant there were people here willing to risk their lives to send a message. It gave Felix a warm feeling and it made him wonder just how many Resistance fighters there were up North.

  What if it was half the Northern population? What if it was more than that?

  The main structure was square and at least ten stories high, the walls smooth and windowless – except for a panel of blackened glass just below the lip of the precipice. Felix scaled the wall with his gaze and settled on the windows, that row of sightless eyes, gleaming reinforced glass. If there was a control center, it’d be up there, he was sure. He glanced over at Kurt and saw that he had made the same deduction. Was the kid serious when he said he wanted to end it all? Did he think that by simply waiting and watching, he could walk right into the heart of the beast and turn it all back on itself?

  Felix pictured the building sprouting legs and arms and standing up, its fists clenched like Godzilla. But of course it didn’t have to: it brought more destruction in its permanence, spewing viruses out into the sky and letting nature take its course, strangling the South and controlling the North.

  Above the glass windows along the roof were four galvanized pipes, each big enough to swallow a small plane. Those, Felix bet, were the faucets for the airborne diseases. Somewhere behind and deep below them were the labs where the viruses and their matching antivirals were manufactured, like test-tube twins.

  Beneath it all was the waterworks that ensured that the good citizens got their daily dose. Felix wondered if there was something else in the water apart from the antivirals. Something that made people relaxed, less likely to fight, like that stuff they used in the soldiers’ canteens during the world wars: bluestone.

  But real blood-and-guts fighting was happening right in front of him. Even from across the street it felt to Felix as though he was watching a battle on one of his old televisions – the really big ones, the ones that cost a fortune to keep in stock, heavy as hell, but worth it for colors that vivid, the sound effects ringing in your ears long after, so that a man’s dream life bled into his daytime. The clash and roar rose and fell in waves around them, but still Felix held back. He’d finally decided to fight, and now he couldn’t. Whatever he did, he couldn’t let the boy out of his sight or something terrible would happen.

  Kurt sat and watched too, his face expressionless – and it made Felix wonder again what he’d done to Norma. Kind, dumb old Norma. It was her blood and her blouse he wore, like trophies of war.

  The Resistance army had desperation on its side, and it was making good ground. It was pretty obvious that the guards up in the factory weren’t trained for a full-on assault once a virus had already been released. Felix reckoned it was likely a one-off, a unique strain designed for the purpose – and that meant no antiviral to turn it toothless. None, at least, that would make it into the water supply.

  The Resistance just kept coming. If Felix hadn’t been there to see it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it. Adams’s people were nothing short of miraculous, pushing on through the mist of deadly pathogens. With each wave of attack another perimeter wall fell: the explosions were sowing the havoc that they were always meant to.

  At last the factory guards emerged along the rooftop between the huge pipes with their guns and their masks, lying low against the structure to make themselves more slender targets. It was a fuck-up, that was for sure. The soldiers were distant specks of black against the gray wall, but it was clear enough to anyone watching. If reinforcements were coming, they were taking their time. Had the North planned another, later attack on the Capitol Building? Or had they really just not seen the convoy leaving Des Moines? Perhaps Renard’s men and Adams’s army had passed in opposite directions on the open highway. Felix snorted at the idea.

  ‘Great minds,’ he told himself. It happened.

  As far as he could tell, the Resistance was suffering. The factory guards, once they were in place, recovered themselves and began to do serious damage to the army. Where the mortars had blasted holes in the perimeter walls there were bottlenecks of Resistance soldiers, pushing and shoving: they made soft targets for the men on the roof, like peasants storming the castle.

  An RPG hit the front wall and set the Northern guards back. Felix could tell they were assessing the damage before they crept to the edge again. While they did, the Resistance men and women crouched and sprinted, crouched and sprinted. He was glad not to be in the thick of it now – not especially because of the bullets, but because he didn’t think his calceous spine could have stood it.

  Surely they were within reach now. The first tattered explosives crew touched the base of the factory wall and began setting up, their compatriots covering their activities with distracting fire. Still the factory guards aimed over the edge, their bullets boring holes straight through the tops of two Resistance skulls. Felix felt each one.

  The rest didn’t stop their work, bolstered as they were by the arrival of the reserve crew. Even at this distance it was easy to tell when the bomb was armed. That determined wave of attack against the building stopped abruptly, and the Resistance army peeled off left and right to get some distance from the explosion’s impact.

  He and Kurt saw the ball of fire erupt. When the explosion came, a moment later, the earth actually shook. It felt as though someone had punched Felix in the chest. He coughed up a piece of apple and doubled over.

  When he could breathe again, Kurt was holding his hands over his ears like a little kid who didn’t want to hear an insult. Felix grabbed his arm so the boy looked at him, and mouthed, ‘You okay there?’

  ‘That’s our cue,’ shouted Kurt. He had that look again. ‘Every Northern soldier is probably on his way now, thanks to that little alarm bell. So if you’re good to go, let’s move!’

  Felix nodded as if it was his idea, and straightened up all the way, grasping at the old authority of adulthood. They made their way quickly across the street, but once they were on the opposite sidewalk, Kurt broke into a jog and it hurt Felix to keep up. His knees were twanging like a banjo – his hips too – and with each jolt there was a sharp pain in his neck. I’m the fucking Tin Man, he thought sourly.

  What kept him going, measured his pace close to Kurt’s, was knowing that this was the last time he’d feel this terrible. His body telling him how old it was, how ready it was for the end of all suffering. Wasn’t that what they said about torture? That you could stand the worst kind if you just knew there would be an end?

  He kept his head down, tallying up the bodies as he passed them. There they were: Pete and Sam from Horse Head, bleeding out into the cold dirt; Gabby the torture expert, caught upright on a coil of razor wire and shot through a dozen times because she couldn’t fall; Sy and Mario side by side, their faces frozen in snarls of death under the Northern sky, gone the way they would have wanted; dozens more Felix recognized but whose na
mes he’d never known.

  But it was Adams he was looking for among the twisted heads and twisted limbs. Adams was the only one who counted. And there was no sign of him, was there?

  He and Kurt forced their way through the corpses, dodging the craters and the fragments of razor coils that sat like cottonmouths in the grass. He wanted to apologize, and then he didn’t, because there were too many for it to mean anything. They still smelt human, that was the worst of it: of shit and blood and some dirty, wet stink that underlay it all and seared his nostrils. It was only now that he recognized it for what it was, though he’d inhaled it every time he’d peed since he’d eaten Dyce’s fucking miracle cure.

  It was the smell of the mushrooms, here among these new bodies: the stench of Buddy’s ghost. It turned the recent dead as dank and earthen as the guilty caverns under the Mouth; it stole their decent particular names. Felix tried to wave the stink away and kept on, his lungs burning, for the last stretch.

  The hole in the building looked like a mouth too, with the sharp points of reinforcing pointing down like teeth. The ground was still warm, moist where the soil had melted into muddy globs like it was the first day of Creation.

  Kurt was unfazed and he scuttled through. Felix followed him.

  And then they were in the basement of the factory, dizzying and stagnant as a nightmare. Somewhere a man was shouting, and Felix turned his head as if he could identify the voice.

  Adams. It had to be. He was somewhere ahead of them. Felix would bet everything he had that the man hadn’t seen any bullets up close. Through the maze of the mezzanine stairs and the curve of the outsize pipes, the Resistance was setting the final bomb – the one that would paralyze the factory for keeps. The allies, however many there were – and all right-thinking people – were about to get word that Big Daddy was gone: Renard’s control of everything they drank and breathed no longer meant a thing.