by Matt Moore
No mention of Second Chancers. No concern for thousands held without due process. Desperate to stay riled up, he flipped over to what had been a pop station, but the owner had found God during the Ascension. “Only one man has risen from the dead. They are here to tempt us with lies of what comes after death. No judgment, they say. We are all connected, they say. Folks, these things don’t eat, so how can they be walking around? Well, what supernatural force could impel them? I can think of one.”
Spotting flashing red-blue lights at a checkpoint ahead, Alejandro slowed.
A white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, Alejandro took the curving exit ramp faster than he should have. “Legislature’s not in session,” the checkpoint’s lead cop had responded when he saw Alejandro’s legislative ID. “That makes you nobody.” It had been evident they’d known who he was and the cause he advocated. That’s why they made him step out of his car while they searched it. “Can’t be too careful checking for Chancer smugglers.” After half an hour, they finally let him go.
Mounting the porch, his rage steeled him against the paradox of his home. Lydia’s essence filled its spaces. Photos of her, of them. Mementos from their eleven years together that she’d insisted they save—movie tickets, sea shells from Hammonasset Beach, a two-dollar bill a clerk had given as change on their second date. He’d mistake the house settling for her footsteps. Late at night, he’d awaken having thought he heard her voice. Her smell lingered in her pillow. And yet every room seemed too empty, too still.
Too silent.
Tears threatened to push up again. They’d seemed to do nothing but fight in the months before the Ascension. She’d tap her lower lip, a tic when she grew frustrated. Then she’d unload on him about his job, about a baby, about how much housework fell to her. She had her own pursuits, administering a women’s shelter and studying law. But when they needed to sacrifice, she gave in. Where did his priorities lie? Being with her or always out fighting for some cause?
How had it come to that? They’d met in student government fighting the administration’s rules that could bar students with juvenile records from residence halls. From there, they’d pushed to restrict campus security’s ability to frisk or search bags. They’d demanded an easier appeals process for student who’s violated conduct codes. His love for her had grown into an aching thing. Sex had left him exhausted but craving more. She made him roar with laughter and pushed him to be better, smarter, craftier. How in all that—
Bodies. Flames. The putrid, sweet charcoal sink. That goddamn arrogant captain who’d turned intersections and lawns into infernos—
“No,” he hissed, teeth gritted. There had to be something. He scanned the three computer screens on his dining room table. Conversations flew past. He clicked on a video generating considerable discussion. A physician in St. Louis claimed she had replicated the results of the researchers in Quebec City, showing Second Chancers maintained a consistent mass down to the gram. Though using different terms, she asked the same question as the radio station DJ: where did the calories that moved Chancers come from?
“Are Second Chancers perpetual motion machines?” a commenter asked. “Does the first law of thermodynamics not apply to them?”
Another comment about harnessing Chancers as a source of labour descended into a debate about slavery.
Farther down, a comment stated the physician had been arrested, the Chancers executed.
Alejandro nearly shoved the monitor off the table. He shot to his feet, knocking the chair back—the video, the camps, the propaganda about getting back to normal.
He looked at his cell phone and the idea struck.
He sat in front of the webcam, cleared his throat and—without rehearsing—hit record, letting the words flow.
A car horn woke him. An everyday sound slowly returning to normal.
Half-asleep and eyes gritty, he checked his phone. Almost ten in the morning. The icons for e-mails, social media messages and voice mails all showed “100+.”
Excitement propelled him to his feet. He turned on the TV on his way to the computer. A local station showed an aerial shot of Yale Bowl, the university football stadium converted to one of Connecticut’s camps. Small crowds had gathered in the parking lots. They waved placards with slogans demanding the release of Second Chancers. A few wore purple make-up. The image zoomed in on something that looked like a small tower.
His fingers flew. In seconds, he found a news report from that morning about three groups of Yale engineering students competing to see who could build a functioning trebuchet, but police had shut them down. A subreddit discussed how to protect launched phones so they wouldn’t shatter on impact. Another news story reported someone with a T-shirt cannon firing phones wrapped in shirts into Rentschler Field in East Hartford while drones buzzed in and out.
The governor’s office had released a statement urging people to stop. Alejandro smirked as he read how their actions “risked destabilizing public safety.” The state senate majority whip distanced the party from Alejandro. But the suggestions that he run in the election to replace Martin Burnaby in the U.S. Senate made Alejandro smile. “If the courts do the right thing and give Chancers the right to vote,” a comment said, “it will be a landslide.”
Subsequent comments said voting was a God-given right and God had forsaken Chancers.
He kept searching, finding articles from the previous night. His simple message had grown and spread: with coverage restored, find a way to get cellphones into the camps. Since the military had concentrated Chancers into outdoor arenas in urban areas, phones didn’t need to be smuggled into closed facilities or risk being rendered useless in rural dead zones. He didn’t know how to do it but had been certain others would figure it out. And, he’d concluded, to let him know if anyone found his wife.
He’d meant it only for Connecticut, but Alejandro saw comments from across the country and into Canada.
Opening his e-mail, he found interview requests mixed with messages of support and condemnation. He played a voicemail from Cedric. “Do you know the shitstorm you’ve created?” That was the Cedric Alejandro remembered. “You need to tell these people to stop.”
“Not gonna happen,” Alejandro muttered. He clicked on a video from Nova Scotia, keeping the sound off but enabling auto-transcription. MY NAME IS PETER COUNTING WOOD, the captions stated, a small bay behind him with a city farther on. IF MY WIFE SEES IS TELL HER I MISTER AND I LOVER.
Cedric’s voicemail continued: “I know you’re trying to find Lydia, but this won’t go how you want. Trumbell will feel he needs to push back. And people will support him. They’re scared and confused. They want a strong leader. Someone who says ‘there’s the problem’ and goes after it.”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Alejandro muttered, flipping through local TV stations.
“Look, call this off and I’ll make some calls. Get back to me, okay?”
“You could have made those calls yesterday.” Most stations covered the camps, but the local Fox affiliate showed clips of the U.S. House Majority Leader reacting to a video of her twenty-year-old Chancer daughter recorded at an abandoned impound lot in Phoenix. “That dead thing is not my girl,” she said. Alejandro knew bluster when he saw it. This wasn’t it. It was terror. “It’s the thing that killed her. Something that will not stop unless we stop it.” The scroll reported “TheThingThatKilledHer” was trending across social media. The next item reported that while the president called for calm and patience, quoting First Peter and the Gospel of John, the governor of Idaho urged a return to mass extermination, citing Revelations.
So much like that Army captain, justifying the piles of bodies—some burned, some burning, some waiting to be ignited. Bragging about his men’s ruthlessness—
The room swayed, his chest tight. He pitched forward, head between his knees, heart thudding at the memory of Lydia’s voice, yanking him awake during the fifth night of the Ascension. He’d been dozing, fading in and out of not-
sleep.
Alejandro had nailed boards he’d found in the basement, left by the previous owner, across the front door. Luckily, the front of the house sat high on its foundation, putting the windows out of reach, and an eight-foot cedar fence around the backyard protected its rear. Though secure, food was running low. What had been in the fridge had spoiled and he’d almost run through what little had been in the pantry. At least the water pressure still held.
Several times, he’d tried to get to a neighbour’s house. During the day, he’d never made it past his driveway before someone soundlessly pursued him back behind the fence’s safety. At night, shapes moving in the darkness wore down his courage.
With nothing but time, he’d reflected on how selfish he’d been. She’d been right, of course. He’d come to take her for granted. A fear tickled the back of his mind that her trip to see her family might have been an opportunity to reconsider their marriage. What if, on the other side of the country, she told him she wasn’t coming back? Even if she were still alive somewhere, would she return to him?
From time to time he’d heard gunfire. And voices. The first time he’d gone outside and called out. A man, voice gruff and distant, had replied: “It’s okay! Don’t be afraid! We’re all connected! The universe itself is alive!” Then something had pounded on the other side of the fence.
But on that last day, alone with his thoughts: “Alejo? Are you there?” The front door.
He flew from the couch, barking a shin on the coffee table in the darkness. “Dee?” He put his hands on the door. “Sweetie?!”
“It’s me—”
She’d made it. Somehow she’d made it. “The front door’s boarded up. Come to the back.” Right shin throbbing, he felt his way through the darkened house. Outside, moonlight cast deep shadows, everything silver-white. The cool April breeze carried the harsh scent of fires. Orange-pink glows dappled the horizon. He undid the lock holding the gate shut. He pushed it open an inch, saw her waiting, threw it open and pulled her inside. He yanked the gate shut before wrapping his arms around her and crying out in joy.
And with his arms around her, rocking back and forth, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
She must have sensed it because, her voice raw, she said: “Alejo.”
Her cheek, pressed against his, felt cool as the night air. Her skin seemed brittle under the pressure of his fingers. He pulled away and tripped over his feet at the sight of her: bruise-coloured skin, hair gone grey, eyes cloudy. A chunk of flesh had been ripped from her right shoulder, dark stains spattered across her clothes.
“It’s me, Alejo,” she said, making an it’s okay gesture.
He tried to crawl back, strength draining from his limbs. “You’re . . .”
“I know how I look and can only imagine what you’re thinking. But I’m not going to hurt you. I love you and have so much to tell you.”
After she’d changed into clean clothes, they sat entwined on the couch. Gradually, he grew accustomed to the coolness of her skin. Lydia explained how she’d been stuck in traffic when a wave of people had washed across the highway. Their skin purple and eyes white, they’d smashed their ways into cars, yanking out and attacking drivers.
She described fighting off a young woman, but not before she’d bitten Lydia in the shoulder. Lydia had tried to run and here she paused, tapping her lip and Alejandro wanted to embrace her. She’d described becoming “lost in others’ thoughts”—connected to people all over the world, unsure if she’d been attacked or the attacker. As she tried to make sense of this, she watched helplessly as her body pursued and attacked the living.
Then, something—some force—pulled her up and out, taking her someplace “higher” dominated by a beautiful light. A light that had created everything. Connected everything. “Not God,” she clarified. “At least, not the God of the Bible.” Infinite. Peaceful. She came to understand the Ascension needed to happen. Whatever illness or infection that corrupted the body also elevated the mind. “Almost like a soul,” she added, though Alejandro had never known her to be religious. “Something . . . eternal.”
But the light had sent her back. Her consciousness returned to her body, finding it smeared with gore. As she made her way back to Middletown through the carnage and destruction, she gathered others like her—lost, but filled with hope—with similar stories: after being attacked, they went to someplace “higher,” but the light had sent them back to their bodies. Comparing their timelines, they found two days had passed from the time of the attack to when they returned.
Those still in its grips ignored Lydia and her growing group, but relentlessly attacked the living. A lone scavenger stood no chance, but military patrols had moved in, turning Hartford into a war zone, cutting down anyone infected. She told how she had lost half her group as they’d approached a Humvee, begging for help.
So they moved at night and hid during the day. Seeing flames, the group had refused to enter Middletown and remained in the woods off Route 66. Alejandro hadn’t been surprised Lydia had continued on her own.
Her story caught up to the present, she’d took him upstairs and opened a window. After a moment, he heard it: the low rumble of vehicles. “The military,” she’d said. “Those poor men are terrified and don’t understand we’re not a threat. If they find my group, they’ll kill them. I have to bring them here.”
In his memory, their argument went on forever as the distant sounds of vehicles growled and sputtered. Going out there would be too dangerous, he said. Bringing others like her to their home could make it a target.
She’d countered that as an elected representative he was obliged to protect them. The chaos would end, she’d promised.
By then the sun had risen, making it too dangerous to go out. Overhead, inky cloud wind-driven smoke floated south. Lydia told Alejandro to go to sleep and when he awoke a few hours later, he found canned and dried food in the kitchen. From the neighbour, she explained. The house was empty, but she knew where they kept a spare key.
Alejandro had wolfed down the food, realizing he didn’t even know their neighbours’ names while Lydia knew where they kept a key. While he ate, Lydia spoke. “The world is going to change. The light sent us back to deliver the message that everything is connected. We’re part of something greater. Together we can be a part of that.”
It had been her appeal to them being “together” that made him give in. He’d change, prioritize her, listen to her. They’d be the unstoppable team they had been.
The thwup-thwup-thwup of helicopters and rattle of gunfire had echoed in the river valley as the day wore on.
When night had fallen, she’d kissed him, her lips cool and dry. “I love you so much,” she told him.
The emotion choked him. “Me, too. I love you.” He wanted to say more, but the words would not come before she slipped out the back gate into the darkness.
She never returned. He stayed up the whole night, the stench of fires carrying on the night breeze.
An hour past sun up, military vehicles roared into the city. Checking the radio, he found stations back on the air with Governor Trumbell bragging about the relentless forces retaking the state. They’d ended the crisis and were restoring order.
“Lydia,” Alejandro whispered, tears dropping to the dining room floor at the month-old memory. The television had moved on to mounting claims threatening to cripple the insurance industry.
He had to be strong. Had to see this through.
He dialled the local CNN affiliate to accept their interview request. He wanted a large audience for the next step: rally people to get the Chancers freed. No negotiation, no compromise.
His phone buzzed again. The caller ID told him it was another of the television stations that had set up outside. Alejandro set the phone down and resumed watching the fire-filled images.
It had started in Ohio. A group of college students, arms linked, had tried pushing through a cordon of National Guard troops surrounding a camp. They’d met
batons and rifle butts, resulting in rocks and bottles. Tear gas brought Molotov cocktails. Then gunfire, killing twelve.
Montana and Pennsylvania had followed. The group in Lancaster had been pushed back with few injuries. In Billings, station KTVQ reported the Highway Patrol had shutdown I-90 on either side of the city while local police hunted for a doomsday militia blamed for the attack. No word on causalities, but a spokesperson expected them to be high.
It hadn’t stopped there. The scroll reported that, at last count, twelve camps across nine states had been stormed, resulting in countless Chancers escaping and over one hundred deaths. Alejandro had wanted to throw his remote at the TV when the anchor had reported the number of dead could include Chancers’ bodies, so the actual number of deaths might be lower. Still, she continued, officials worried that with so many loose they might start attacking the living again.
And every few minutes, Alejandro’s name went by in the crawl as the possible author of the destruction.
All this following a six-minute interview earlier that evening with that attractive, brunette host on CNN. They’d discussed his search for Lydia and why he championed the unpopular cause of defending Chancers’ rights. She’d wrapped up by asking what came next. He’d shrugged and let the words flow, smooth and precise: “The government has turned against its people, violating its essential duty to reflect our will, and therefore negating its mandate to govern. Therefore, we the people must do whatever it takes to see that our loved ones are liberated.”
In the short time it had taken to drive back home, his supporters had taken his words to mean storming the camps. As the coverage repeated the clip every ten minutes or so, he’d been amused by how much he sounded like Cedric’s public persona.
He hadn’t been home for long when trucks from local stations had set up outside and reporters had knocked on his door. Cedric and senior party officials had phoned, demanding he call it off. Even the governor’s office had offered a meeting to settle things.
