Something heavy draped over her and a pair of hands wrestled to hold her down.
"Okay now, the blanket should help...it's alright...settle down..." The voice struggled to stay calm and even, as much as Maeve struggled to get free of her bones and those hands that sought to keep her still.
Her eyes popped open. The room was dim, but she could make out the man's face. He was a stranger. Maeve's brain registered at once the overkill of his classically handsome features that didn't knit together in a way that produced a handsome man's face. Instead, his eyes were an odd shade of hazel, his strong cheekbones were set too high, the thrust of his forehead too drastic and his nose turned up just enough that she might be able to see the inner workings of his brain. To photograph him in pieces, he would be stunning, but to view him as a whole, he looked a little weird.
The man smiled, his piano-key teeth ducking in too close to her face. Maeve swung a fist free, ready to bang a tune out of his mouth. His faster reflexes saved his dental work.
"It's okay, sweetheart...it's okay..." he said, but his voice was high and tight, the calm clinging to it as desperately as a tightrope walker who had slipped. Maeve leveraged herself up and whipped her head around, trying to gather a sense of where the hell she was.
She squinted into the receding dark, making out a vague sea of coffins. No. They were not coffins, they were chambers.
It all came rushing back. She remembered what had once been a lighted showroom, remembered Casper Bergen's wire glasses, the way her parents had already been hooked up and locked down in their chambers by the time she got to her own. She remembered how frightened she had been to go through with it, how the sweat rolled down her fingertips in soft drops. How she cried when she laid back in the chamber, feeling like she was going to die, and then how Bergen was standing over her, with a syringe plugged into her arm. A sedative, Casper Bergen had said in his dull, emotionless voice. It was the last thing she'd heard.
Until now. As if her eyes had only just fluttered shut on a clean, bright room and fluttered open to this dusty, dark crypt. She blinked, as if that might be the secret of waking up to what she wanted. It wasn't.
Her parent's chambers were still sealed. Most were. The place smelled moist and stagnant with a whiff of rot. Maeve choked, putting a hand to her mouth.
"Thank God, you're okay," the creeper said. His voice was weirdly joyful, which plunged a hard dose of Maeve's flight instincts directly into her tingling, useless legs. She was stuck. Might as well keep him talking.
"Where are my parents?" she asked. The man's joy vanished.
"Still in their chambers."
"Could you wake them up?" She said it pleasantly, as if Mr. Creeper might really enjoy having Mr. Aypotu, and his extra-large aura of authority, present for this and all future conversations.
"I can't. If we open the chambers, they die. Or the bugs come out. You're the only one who's woken up on your own so far, besides me."
"What bugs?" All of her words were hollow, echoing in her head like she was trapped in a log.
"I don't know. There are bugs I've never seen before and they get into the chambers somehow. Once they get inside, the people die."
Bugs. Maeve had never been a shrieker when it came to spiders, but she knew she could cultivate a healthy fear of them if they were people-killing bugs. She squirmed and hauled herself up. The man helped her out of the chamber. She let him.
She scrambled over the side and collapsed off her wobbly legs, onto the chair beside the box.
Maeve clasped her head and closed her eyes. She vaguely remembered the assistant, Donny, who brought her down to the Archive, showing her the odd clock on the wall. It was big as a flat screen TV.
"You're making history right now, Ms. Aypotu. See that clock? It tells you the date and time. When you wake up, it'll read 2030, a few years after the government says this mess will be all straightened out. We've gotten all kinds of news that the atmosphere patches are already showing promise," he'd blabbed on and on. "We've even suspended a bunch of endangered species. We are planning on doing our part, here at the Archive, suspending as many species as we can handle. We even have mosquitos and dung beetles! Just think, you're going to wake up seventeen years from now and you won't have aged a bit."
"I guess I'll know how vampires feel."
"Oh no, things aren't going to change that much," Donny said. Like he knew. His smile said he was an idiot.
Maeve twisted around on the chair beside her chamber until she located the dark rectangle of the lifeless clock. "What year is it?"
"I don't know," the man said.
"What is your name?"
"Steven Burtman."
"I'm..."
"Maeve Aypotu," he said it like a breeze off his tongue. "It's a beautiful name. I read it a million times on your chamber tag."
Ok, that was a little creepy too. Maeve noticed the chair she was sitting on and the proximity of it to the chamber she'd just climbed out of. He noticed her noticing.
"I was hoping you'd wake up," he stammered. "I watched over you until you did."
"What did you do to make it happen?"
"Unfortunately, nothing." He relaxed a little, dragging a hand over his face. "I wish I knew. I just watched over you."
She glanced at the enormous room, a quarter full of chambers. "Why me?"
"Because," he said, nibbling his lip, "you're beautiful."
Oh great.
Slowly, Maeve was coming back to herself, her wits climbing back into her skin, her invisible wall scaling back up. Something was stuck to her chest. She reached into her neckline and peeled the plastic key Casper Bergen had given her from her skin, but she left it dangling around her neck by the string.
She rested her back against the chair, looking at all the other chambers, at the walls, at the dimly lit door that led into Supply. Oh yes, there was a place to eat. She remembered the dining room. Her belly grumbled, remembering too.
"Is there food?" she asked.
"Yes, yes, there is." He pointed as he stumbled toward the door to Supply. He paused at the door, holding it open. "Can you stand?"
"Yes," Maeve lied. She didn't expect to have to do it so quickly, and the last thing she wanted was him stumbling back over and wrapping his arms around her to help. Everything about waking up in this dark room with Mister I-saw-you-sleeping-and-know-your-name gave her the willies. In a burst of determination, she pushed herself to her feet and rocked, flattening her soles to the floor. Steven hustled back to support her, slithering a hand beneath her breast. He pushed it up a little in his palm as he pressed the edge of his thumb against the firm globe. Maeve knew perv when it touched her.
"Hands off," she said.
"Oh, uh," Steven loosened his grip, smoothing down her arm before he finally released her. "I didn't mean..."
"Steven? You said Steven, right?"
"Yeah."
"Steven, you might actually be the last man on Earth. It doesn't mean you can be weird, so quit it."
He stood back, surprise lifting his eyebrows. "How am I being weird?"
"Reading my name tag, staring into my time capsule...the way you copped a feel just now."
Steven's jaw pumped. "I...I apologize if..."
"Look, Steve, it's just you and me for now, so keep your hands away from my boobs, and let's just try to be normal, alright?"
***
Steven leaned forward on his elbows, beside Maeve, at the round, banquet table. In the brochure the linens were white. Now they were yellow.
To eat, Maeve picked up the edge of one cloth and flapped off a cloud of dust. Steven laid a stack of cans on the table and Maeve took a seat so the cans would be between them. He took a can off the top and used the opener to twist the top off. She ate like an animal, and even though he'd done the same himself, he watched her with arms crossed and the edge of his lip cocking unconsciously. She ignored him until she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.
"What do you have for desse
rt?" she asked. Disgusted or not, he was a gentleman and hoped she would soon remember she was a lady. He helped her search for something else to eat.
She found a plastic box stuffed with Twinkies. Maeve wasn't as excited about the pantry stock as Steven had been.
"Most of this stuff isn't good anymore," Maeve said as she rifled the cabinets. She slammed and banged the doors and the sound of it spiked Steven's anxiety. He rubbed his ring finger, thinking of his dead wife. She would have known what to do. Chloe wouldn't have slammed the cupboards. She would've shoved Steven down onto a chair, given him something to eat while she conducted an inventory. She would've made rationing charts. Maeve was nothing like Chloe.
"Whoever thought that cereal boxes or oatmeal containers would last was crazy." She banged another cupboard closed. "Most of the canned food has sprung leaks and a lot of it is rusty. It doesn't look safe to eat at all."
She ran a fork over one of the shelves and held it up, so Steven could see the crusty black stuff on the tines. He just nodded, depressed. A chamber bug shot out from behind a stack of dishes and Maeve bashed it with an egg skillet before it could reach Steven's hand on the counter top. He smiled at her. She was watching out for him after all. It stirred him, even though she never looked at him once. Instead, she removed the skillet and peered down at the smear of bug left on the counter.
"What are those things?" she said. "I've never seen anything like that."
"We're 17 years in the future," Steven said. "I suppose the bugs are going to be different, even if we're not."
"This different? Bugs the size of gerbils? If this is what's down here, I wonder what's changed up on the surface."
"It isn't inhabitable yet, I know that much. The outer doors are still sealed." He said it with great authority, but Maeve looked at him as if he didn't have a clue of what he was talking about. It rankled him a bit.
"Did you try to open them?"
"I tugged on them." His spine twitched. His eyes flitted away from hers.
"Big difference between closed and sealed, a little tug might not do it," Maeve said. "I'm going to try them."
She left the box of Twinkies on the table and crossed the Supply to the doors. Steven followed behind her. She gave the doors a yank. Nothing. She tried again. They were sealed. He jutted his chin at her with a dry smile.
"I told you."
"You didn't know," she sniped. They went back to the table, settling into the seats after Steven showed her how to hand-crank the lights. Maeve opened the Twinkie box and unwrapped a cake. Steven's eyes followed her hands to her mouth and remained there, mesmerized by her lips. He had traced their shape through the chamber window, but now here they were, moving. An image of her mouth, traveling across his hip, flashed across his mind. He blinked as she stuffed the whole cake between her lips. It might've been erotic, but she chomped the thing with her mouth wide open.
"We should play 50," she said.
"What's that?"
"50 questions," she muffled through the mouthful. She picked up the can opener, bounced the weight of it in her hand and placed it back down on the table between them. "My grandmother used to say that if you ask a stranger 50 well-thought questions, you would know them like the back of your hand when you're finished."
Steven's head cocked as he considered it, pinching the tiny ripples in the musty tablecloth. Sitting in this dismal hall, without a glimpse of the waking life they were promised, she wanted to play games. He grinned, cherishing the way in which her mind was unable to comprehend the breadth of a situation, the scope of their hopelessness. He felt a surge of pride at his ability to keep her insulated from it all. He had never been a strong man, but in this one way, he could protect her. "What if the players don't tell the truth?"
"Doesn't matter." She unwrapped another Twinkie. "Are you going to lie?"
"Not particularly. You know, too many of those will ruin that beautiful figure."
"That wasn't a question," Maeve said, taking a bigger bite than necessary. She stuffed the bite into her cheek and took another. Insolent. It twitched his hard-on beneath the table. "Do you want to play or not?"
"Sure, yes, definitely. Shoot."
He adjusted his rear on the seat, raising enough to rustle up his pajama legs with a little tug on his knees. Unsatisfied, he shifted again, crossing his legs and draping one arm on the table. He left the other to dangle across his thigh. He tried to arrange himself openly, casually, but stiff was as close as he could get.
Maeve swallowed down the huge glob in her mouth. "So, are you married?"
"I, uh..." He bought himself a moment by picking lint off his knee cap. He really didn't want to talk about Chloe. Not to the girl he was truly in love with. "I was married. She died in her chamber, shortly after I woke."
The lines in Maeve's brow softened. "I'm sorry."
"Yes, well." He picked off another piece of imaginary lint. "Those chamber bugs...that's what I call them. They got into her chamber and bit through her wiring. I don't know if that's what did it, but...I'd rather not talk about it."
A long moment stretched past them. He was sure Maeve wanted to ask questions, about the bugs, about Chloe, but to her credit, she only chewed up her second Twinkie. His hard-on sagged from the shame and it made him angry.
"And you? Are you? Married, I mean," he fumbled miserably, uncrossing his legs only to re-cross them in the other direction. He swung his foot like a nervous woman, waiting for her to answer. He pushed his butt through the open back of the folding chair. The metal protested with an embarrassing squeak.
"Nope," she said.
A rope uncurled in his gut. She looked just like Mona Lisa to him then. Smooth and flawless, creamy skin. Her mouth a delicate Christmas bow tied elegantly over her tapered chin. But she had no secrets. The thought of her, pure and virginal, stirred him again. The warmth in his chest was just as it had been from the moment he'd found her chamber. He wanted to hear her say it again, a hundred times.
"A girl like you? Beautiful, as you are, you never married?" His voice was a little giddy. This beauty before him could be his. Without any competition present, this girl, who would have been out of reach before, due to marriage and social stations and maybe even age, was here and now. She was available and in reach in this new reality they shared. They might be the only two people left on this planet and a thrill zipped up his spine, considering that they could be the Adam and Eve, the only hope of the entire human race.
Placed on the crown of that kind of future, he forgot all about sitting straight or adjusting his clothes to hide the beginnings of his middle-aged paunch. She was never married. The tight coil of the rope jerked the sleepy rod below his belly. Could she possibly be...a virgin? He almost groaned out loud.
She tipped her head, thick waves of her hair cascading over her shoulder. Somehow those curls were like a bungee cord, suddenly retracting his fantasies. Her file said she was twenty three. Twenty three, unmarried, and still a virgin? What were the odds? Not in their old society, where middle school kids were losing their innocence in the back of buses. But, the idea of her being with another man sent a curl of rage spiraling through him. Or what if she was a lesbian? His hand closed into a fist, as if she'd cheated on him. Then, the thought stirred into a black cloud. What if there had been many men? What if—
"Have you ever had sex?" he blurted. He had to know, even though he was appalled with himself for being so indecent, so intrusive. Still, he leaned off his chair, anticipating the answer he needed and dreading the one she might give him.
Maeve only chuckled. It unnerved him. Her gaze should have fallen away in shame, but instead, it remained rooted on his, an amused grin on her lips. Not a virgin, he thought and the frown was not just for her long-lost hymen, but for the line he envisioned of the men or women who may have had Maeve before he ever had the chance to. She chuckled again and then leaned off her chair, fiddling with her sock. She removed something from it, some piece of jewelry, which she held up, the sparkle co
ming from both the odd earring and her smile. She leaned back on the chair, arching her back a bit as she pulled up her pajama shirt. He was mesmerized.
"Are you a virgin?" she asked. She squeezed a tiny roll of flesh over the top of her navel and proceeded to jab the earring through it. He felt a little ill and looked away, straightening his spine. The idea of it clashed against his vision of her; Mona Lisa would never have a pierced navel. He searched for invisible crumbs to dot off of the yellowed cloth.
"Of course not. I told you, I was married."
"You're saying that you were a virgin when you got married?"
He jerked into a different stance in his seat, a strong heat forming, unlike the kind that fueled passion or colored cheeks. This was an indignant anger, coiled deep in the epicenter of his pride. He wasn't sure he could love this woman after all. Her face and her choice of words didn't match her elevated society status in the least.
"A woman of class never asks a man about his sexual life," he told her. Maeve's grin played at the edges of her mouth. She sat back, studying him.
"So, you're trying to tell me that you were Snow White on your wedding day." She picked up the can opener from off the table, moving the handles like she was cutting the air between them with lazy scissors. "Or, you're so ashamed about wanting a ball gag jammed in your mouth and your 'mommy' paddling you that it's impossible for you to get that enormous pole out of your ass and just talk about sex."
Steven Burtman blasted to his feet.
"How dare you," he hissed. "We are strangers! Your etiquette is an embarrassment to your family, your class, and your sex. You should be ashamed."
Maeve sat back in her chair, staring up at him flatly. "If you haven't noticed, genius, there's no one here to be embarrassed about your creepy fetishes, but you." Then she rose up to face him, stepping so close he felt her breath on his neck as her eyes bore into him. "And here's what you need to know about me, Steve-O: I am never ashamed."
The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) Page 6
