I step over the fallen door and into the trailer, immediately picking up the scent of the munies, not recently but back when they'd taken their claws to it. The bed is pulled to pieces, the sink and counter in parts on the floor. Even the bottles of rubbing alcohol lay empty in the shower drain.
The record player is broken. The records shattered. I'll never put my ear in close and listen to the sounds of the real times again, have words whispered to me as I try to understand what they are. This is what life was for so many years, but now it seems so small to me, so small and quiet and sad.
A moan comes from the bed when I sit on it as if it's a living beast that doesn't want me near. Cruz's gun is in my lap. I feel how heavy it is on my leg, the cold metal touching my skin, until I lift it up and put its mouth to the side of my head.
The trailer is so small. Of all the things that have surprised me in the last few days, the most surprising is that I passed so many days here, so many years spent behind these weak walls. As I put my finger to the trigger, prepared to finally give myself the death, I realize something so strong that I feel the thought of it push the blood from my face all the way down to my feet.
It's not that the gun might not work, or that it may not have bullets in it, or that it might not give me the death all the way but instead give me terrible pain. It's that, as I was passing those years inside this place, hiding from the dangers of the world, I was never actually alive.
As my finger goes tight around the trigger my mouth pushes out all the air that's left in my lungs. Without my meaning them to, my eyes close. And then, against my eyelids, so clear it's as if cut into them with fire, I see a picture of her. The one that matters to me most.
**
I crawl into the nest, pulling the blankets in close around us. Child startles awake but I calm her, telling her to go back to sleep.
“Where go,” she asks, beautiful eyes half-open.
“Mother,” I say. “You can call me Mother.”
We'll stay here a while, then we'll move on. It's like I told Child, more than any other thing it's quiet that gives me the fear now. To keep moving. To make it harder for the death to find us. That's what life is.
ZERO
“Silvia?”
This book is confusing. It skips around too much, I can never figure out how to read it.
“Hey, did you hear what I said?”
I hold it up to my mother. “I think I lost my place again.”
“You can come back to that later. You should check out this wooly mammoth, it's pretty damn cool.” She moves closer on the bench. “Remember my friend Henry? He was part of the expedition that pulled a male mammoth out of the Alaskan ice. It still had the fur on it, and get this- he said as soon as the air hit it you could smell the thing like it was right next to you. It's amazing what can last given the right conditions. Ten thousand years in the ground and it still had body odor. Just like a boy, right?” She pokes me in the side.
“Why do they put “He” in upper-case when they talk about God?”
She clears her throat. “Some people do that for things they hold very important. You know you don't have to read that if you don't want to.”
“It was just a question.”
“Questions are good, but that book is more your father's territory. There's a time and a place.”
Like I haven't been here a million times.
“You know, it's his loss if he doesn't want to spend time with the greatest, weirdest little girl I know.”
A tall man with a big belly and gray hair hurries over to us. “Cait, I've been looking everywhere for you,” he says, breathing hard.
“I don't know why you did that, I've been here the entire time.”
“The link-up already started.”
She gets to her feet. “What? That's way ahead of schedule.”
He nods. “Phillip.”
“Jesus Christ, I've never known a project leader more intent on ruining everything he touches. Seven months of excavation and he can't wait two damn hours. You know what he's doing, right? He wants to run in guns blazing for the cameras.”
“You don't have to tell me.”
“You're right, I should be telling the council of antiquities. See if they like having the biggest dig since nineteen twenty-two screwed up by their golden boy.”
I pull on her arm. “Mom.”
She tells me to hold on and keeps talking to the man with the big belly. After a few seconds I pull on her arm again but she doesn't notice, so I walk away from her, and I take my dad's bible with me.
I used to like coming here. I liked the way mom's face got shiny as she talked about the things from the dirt. I used to have fun watching my mother and father argue about what year something happened, or which doctor was more important, or who should have won a no bell.
Now I just think there are too many people in museums.
By the time mom catches up to me I'm four rooms away and an old guy with a big, metal pin on his chest is asking me if I'm lost. He asks if I want to go to the front desk, so they can contact my parents. I ask him, “Can they call my dad?”
“It's okay, I have her.” My mom puts her hand on my shoulder, out of breath like the big belly guy.
“Doctor Wilkins, I didn't realize this was your daughter.”
“It's okay, Frank, I think she forgot for a minute, too.”
As the man walks away to bother more kids, my mother leans down. “Sil, what was that?”
I point to the ugly, blue thing hanging between the two stairs. “I wanted to see the big fish up close.”
She laughs. “The fish, huh? Well now I know you're lying, you have zero interest in science. I've never met a kid who doesn't even know what a bear is.”
“I don't see why I need to.”
“Because, you might grow up and decide to move to the countryside, or to a farm, and then you won't know anything about all the little beasts running around. Things come up, life shifts. If you're smart you'll be prepared for all the little surprises life sends your way.”
She looks at a clock on the wall. “So, what do you say we watch history being made?”
I nod.
“Good. I saved you a seat.”
**
As we pass the fake people in the glass, my mother points to one of them, a woman with no gold and not as nice clothes as the others.
“People don't realize how much equality there was between the sexes in ancient Egypt. Women could own property, free slaves. They could adopt. They could even divorce.” The smile goes away from her face. “You should know, it's not going well between your father and I.”
“But you said you would get back together.”
“We said we would try, and we did.”
“You don't love him?”
“That's a complex question.”
“You used to.”
“I know.” She touches my back. “People change.”
“If it's because of what happened, you can't blame dad for me being stupid.”
She stops and turns me to her. “Hey, hey, hey, don't you dare think that about yourself. With your genetics it's impossible for you to be stupid. Or at least so statistically unlikely that it would be just as impressive if you were.”
We turn down the hall to the place where not everyone is allowed.
“That was a joke,” she says, “you were supposed to laugh.”
“I didn't.”
“I see that, you have on your serious face.” She puts her hand on the square next to the door and it lets us in.
People with their faces covered so it looks like they don't have mouths sit at tables. They have things from the dirt in front of them, brushing them with tiny brushes, looking at them with big glasses and red lights. My mother can't help but tell me about the things from the dirt every time we come here. She points at the people in the drawings and says, “You see how they're crouched like that? We've never seen it in any of the artifacts before these. It almost makes them l
ook like animals, but you can clearly make out that they're human.”
“Maybe they're both.”
She thinks about it. “Well, Gods and Goddesses were often depicted as part human and part animal. Horus the sky God had the head of a hawk, for instance. But these...” She looks closer at one of the crouched people. “There's something different about them.”
“They're definitely ancient Egyptian,” a person with no mouth says, “carbon-dating confirmed it.”
“No doubt, and we wouldn't have found the dig site otherwise. It doesn't mean they can't give me the creeps.” She catches me looking at her, smiles and pinches my nose.
Then someone shouts, “It's starting!” and all the people put down their things and hurry to a big screen on the wall showing the bright place with lots of sand. They save the seat up front for mom. She sits and pulls me onto her lap.
I don't see anything except machines and sand, and way far off there's a bird making circles in the sky.
“Isn't this exciting,” mom whispers. Everyone hears and looks at me and waits for my answer.
“I have to pee.”
The face of a man comes onto the screen. He has big, black eyebrows and gray hairs up his nose.
“Ah, Cait, I 'm glad to see you got around to joining us. Did we interrupt something?”
“You're the one who jumped the gun by two hours. Are you positive the ground is stabilized?”
“More than ever.”
“Don't be too sure of yourself, the rug can always get pulled out from under you.”
The hairy man looks away and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, the harbinger of doom,” and a bunch of people we can't see start to laugh. He turns the camera around to show all the people talking and taking pictures. The ones in front look like news people. The way Mom sits up, I can tell she's surprised.
“Please excuse our leader,” she smiles, “he likes to dig first and ask questions later. We believe he watched too many action movies as a kid.”
The camera suddenly shakes and turns back to the hairy man. He looks mad, but he talks like he's trying to hide it from the news people. “Yes, well, aren't we all about ready for some answers?” They clap and yell. Very quietly I hear mom call the hairy man a word I can't say. “As you know, to my left is the first, entirely new and previously unknown dig site in years. It was such a well-kept secret, in fact, that we were only led here by deciphering clues found on several artifacts recovered sixty miles from here. That and the most expensive x-ray satellite in human history, which our sponsors can to.”
One of the people with no mouths behind us says, “Such a ham.”
Another says, “That should be you there.”
“Just let him have his day in the sun,” mom tells them.
The hairy man points behind him. “If you make your way to the entrance, you'll find my team waiting for you. I'll join you there just as soon as I get hooked up here.” He fake smiles until they leave, then he turns back to the camera. “What the hell was that?”
“You're the one throwing insults. If we're lucky enough to have another dig after you screw this one up, stick to the schedule we agree on.”
The hairy man grabs the camera and puts it on his ear so we can see what he's seeing: news people, tents, machines, and a big rope around an even bigger hole. Science people stand all around it, doing things that look important.
“It's only two hours,” the hairy man says, “it's not the end of the world.”
**
The hole in the ground is bigger than I thought it was. It's so big that if our house fell into it, it would eat the house up and ask for more. It isn't empty, though. It has one of the triangle buildings down in it.
“That's what your mother was doing all summer,” mom says.
“You built that?”
A couple people laugh. “Digging it up, silly. I couldn't build something that big if I had ten summers.”
“But you built the hole, didn't you? And the hole is even bigger than the building.”
“Good point. I like the way you look at things.” She types on the computer and brings up one of the news channels, then she flicks it with her finger up to the big screen. She types in another and tells me to get this one. I flick it and it shoots up to the screen to join the other one. Now we can see the triangle building from three, different ways.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the hairy man says to the news people, “if you direct your attention to the sand under your feet, you'll find it isn't like any you've ever seen. That's because we've changed the way it binds together by altering its static cohesion. That's what keeps a hole of this size from collapsing back into itself. We got the idea from Howard Carter, a legend in the field who solved a similar problem by wetting the sand, if you can imagine. Consider this a complicated modernization of that poetically simple solution.”
One of the people behind us says, “He doesn't even bother to mention that it was Cait's invention.”
“That's alright.” Mom pulls the hair away from my face. “The important thing is what we find inside.”
**
I don't like when too many people look at me. When that happens it's good to put water on my face and feel how cool it is on my cheeks.
I come back from the bathroom to see mom waving me over, saying, “You're missing it!” On the screen, the hairy man and the news are all showing the exact, same thing: a machine up against a flat rock, and the flat rock has a picture of an eye on it. Mom says it's the eye of Horus, a symbol of protection.
There's a high, loud sound like at the dentist's office and then CRACK the wall breaks right in half. All the news people lean in to take pictures of the flat rock being pulled out of the way by the machine, but then this WOOSH of air comes out of the dark and blows their hair and clothes, and the people shout like they smell something bad, the news people, the science people, all of them coughing and spitting.
“Is everyone okay?” Mom sounds worried. “Can you hear me?”
The science person next to us hits the buttons so fast I can't see his fingers. “The air sensors picked up a broad spectrum of foreign matter. I'm comparing it against the bacteria catalog.”
“Check for carcinogens while you're at it. Phillip, are you there?”
There's loud coughing as the screen shows the hairy man's feet. Something wet splashes the sand and Mom turns my head away as I realize what it is.
“I'm alright,” he says, “I'm alright, I'm alright. Just a little dizzy.”
“The test came back clean for anything serious,” the science person says. “Just some mild bacteria. No known toxins.”
“You should take a physical sample anyway,” mom says to the hairy man, “delay the breach until we're sure.”
“I'm not waiting three days for lab results, the air sensors are perfectly accurate.”
“Don't play it fast and loose. That site has been there three thousand years, it'll be there in three days.”
“But the cameras won't.” The hairy man walks back to the dark place where the flat rock used to be and tells the news people everything's okay.
“Phillip? Phillip? That bastard turned off his mike.” She thinks for a second. “Put me through to Alicia.”
“She's up, go ahead.”
“Alicia?”
The nice girl's face pops up on the screen. “Morning, Cait. Morning, everyone. Hi, Silvia!” She waves at me.
“Where are you right now?”
Alicia's hand gets big and she turns the screen to show a roomful of machines and glass. It's the tent mom used to call me from. She said it was a special tent, that the walls were strong because in the place with the sand and sun there was wind so bad it could rip open a regular tent.
“Didn't you want to be there when they breached the seal?”
Alicia sighs. “Phillip insisted I stay here and keep at it.”
“You're better off. He lost his breakfast the moment they got it open.”
“Are they okay?�
��
“Air quality is questionable. The sensors gave the go-ahead but you know I don't like to leave it at that.”
“The old Tutankhamun's revenge. Okay, I'll head out and take a sample.”
“Overnight one to my husband's lab, you'll have your hands full the next few days with all the excitement going on. And Alicia,” mom gets a serious look on her face, “wear a mask.”
Alicia's piece of the screen goes dark. One of the science people says, “Is all that necessary?”
“It doesn't hurt to be careful. We've lost too many reckless archaeologists from not taking the time to do a few simple tests.”
“Excuse me.” Everyone turns to me. “Aren't we supposed to watch history being made?”
They all laugh, and one of them says, “Careful, Cait, she'll be your boss before you know it.”
Mom smiles and makes Phillip's piece of the screen bigger. It's dark, like the screen has been shut off, until he holds up a flashlight and shows the hallway inside the triangle building.
“How does it look,” Mom asks me.
Like a place where people aren't supposed to go.
The news screens follow behind Phillip as he and three science people walk down the dirty hallway pulling webs from their hair, their flashlights showing rocks that fell from the ceiling. They point them out for the others to step around and say how amazing this is, what an honor, and I can tell it bothers mom that she's not there with them to see it.
“Perry,” she says, “get a shot of that wall to your left.” One of the screens turns and shows us a bunch of weird lines on the wall, all close together like writing but made of pictures, and everyone gasps and cheers and starts talking all at once.
“Look, a setting sun.”
“The sign of Amenta. The underworld.”
“Move further down so we can see the rest.”
All I can think is, I don't know why they're so excited. I can draw better than that.
The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Page 24
