by M. G. Harris
“Albert Camus. I was reading it for A-level French.”
I think of all my old school friends just like Tyler, working hard, looking forward to their future, only to have it blasted away in front of their eyes.
“Yeah . . . death became normal, all right. But killing, I can’t get used to.”
“That’s good, though, yeah?”
“If you’re going to protect your people, you got to be able to do what it takes. So I do what it takes, Josh. But it’s eating me away. Little by little. I can feel myself being swallowed up by this other Tyler, one who doesn’t mind so much.”
“You’re going to get out of that place, Ty. I promise.”
“Sometimes it feels like it’s true, what Camus wrote. The universe is indifferent. Nothing and no one gives a damn.”
Tyler’s morose mood is beginning to infect me. I know instinctively that I can’t risk letting myself think that way. The only way I can let myself use the Bracelet of Itzamna is if I keep believing that we can improve things: me, Bosch and Arcadio; three travellers in time, linked by some unseen force.
But when time stops being linear, history becomes like a jigsaw puzzle. I keep picking up pieces and trying to find their place. And still I’m seeing only a bit of the whole picture.
The contours of the holographic map become more pronounced. Bodies of water appear between the countryside, blue in green. The Muwan begins to descend. My visor alerts me that our destination is ahead. In the eyepiece, landing controls light up. I show Tyler how to select a landing programme. The Muwan offers three landing sites. We pick one in the car park of the ferry port. The aircraft comes down in near total dark, on the shores of a huge expanse of black water, lit only by the occasional ripple of moonlight.
According to the dashboard, it’s two o’clock in the morning. Not a good time to go knocking on the door of a family who haven’t seen you for two years. I know we’d be more comfortable in the tent and sleeping bags, but until I know how safe this place is, we can’t risk that. So I keep the air filters and the motion alarm going, but otherwise power down. Tyler asks if there’s anything to eat. I take a couple of chocolate banana energy bars from the panel under my seat. We chew them slowly, watching stars sparkle above the shadows of lakeside peaks.
After a little while, Tyler speaks again. “There’s something else I need to tell you. The Josh who was my mate, who was made a blue-blood same time as me . . . he and his old man didn’t always see eye to eye.”
“Is that why Josh became a blue-blood?”
“You don’t ask to become a blue-blood. They test you and if you’re compatible – most people aren’t – then they make you one.”
“What makes you compatible?”
Tyler shrugs. “There’s this rare gene. They called it ‘jelf’." Don’t ask me what it means, cos I got no idea. You’re either a carrier of the ‘jelf’ gene, or you ain’t.”
“A gene?” I wonder then, if it’s the same gene that makes it possible for me to use the bracelet. “Do you know what it does? Where the ‘jelf’ gene comes from?”
Tyler scowls. “They didn’t explain. Just grabbed us, tested our DNA, then made some of us into blue-bloods. Look - it weren’t like a nice, helpful vaccination program at school, mate. It was like when they used to nab kids to serve in the navy.”
“Maybe ‘jelf’ makes it possible for you to use hypnoticin - hip33, I mean.”
He nods, curtly. “We reckoned it might be something like that, yeh.”
“But it doesn’t mess with your mind, does it?”
“What’re you suggesting?”
“It doesn’t, like – make you want to do bad stuff?”
Tyler snorts. “No. You’re the same person after as you were before. No better, no worse. Just that you can use hip33 more than if you weren’t made a blue-blood. And your eyes are blue. What makes some blue-bloods into bastards, Josh, is having that kind of power. Being told and believing that you’re better than the rest.”
“So you didn’t want it – you were press-ganged?”
“Press-ganged – yeh, that’s it. And if my mate Josh had gone with his folks like they wanted, he wouldn’t have been made.”
“What was his problem? Why wouldn’t he go?”
“Josh didn’t want to run for the hills like your dad. To be fair, a lot of people thought like Josh. Me included. We didn’t have any idea how bad things would get. We wanted to get back to our lives. These people who said they were from the Emergency Government told us that everything would get straightened out. We wanted to believe them.”
“Josh wanted to believe?”
“He had a nice life, was with a great girl.”
“A girl? What was her name?”
“Emmy.”
I stare. “Emmy! You’re kidding. Emmy? Wow. I never thought she fancied me.”
“Stop day-dreaming, muppet. Listen, things didn’t fall apart overnight. At first it seemed like something that could be fixed in a week. Then they said a month. Food and petrol started running out; no one could get their money out of the bank. Hospital supplies started to disappear. Josh’s dad wanted to go, even before the beginning. Well, Josh refused. He wanted to stay with his girl. His dad got crazy, tried to order him to leave. They had a massive row. Josh left home. He stayed at my house for a bit.”
Tyler breaks off. There’s a long silence.
“And then?”
He answers quietly, “No one knew it, but it was already too late. See, pretty early on a germ had escaped from a lab. When the computer security went down. Then the plague came. And things got really bad. The Emergency Government started to get really powerful. They decided who got medicine and who didn’t. Josh and me, we were rounded up, tested. They tested Emmy too, but she didn’t have the ‘jelf’ gene. They threw her out of the city. They threw anyone out, who didn’t have at least one person in the family with the gene. A better tomorrow for the best, see?”
“You were a blue-blood, then. How did you get away?”
“They turned me against my own neighbourhood, Jericho. But instead of capturing people, I helped them to hide.” He gave a bitter laugh. “The EG didn’t like that. Not a bit.”
“So . . . Josh’s dad . . . he was right.”
“Hindsight is perfect. But, yeah.”
We’re both quiet for a long time, staring through the glass at the sky. The moon is less than half full but it’s bright enough to drown out most of the stars. Except for the Orion constellation, directly overhead.
With a teasing tone, Tyler says, “Emmy didn’t fancy you in your timeline, hey?”
“Nope. She was a good mate though. Maybe if I’d never met Ollie. . .”
“Ollie?”
“Just some lying cow who broke my heart. . .”
Tyler chuckles. “So mate – did you ever get with a girl?”
“Yeah.”
“You in love?”
I pause, wondering how much to admit. “Yeaaah. Wish I knew how she was doing. I kind of stranded her back there, when I time-jumped.”
“Better get back to her then, bro. Stay in hell much longer, the sin’s gonna end up sticking to you.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” I say, very slowly, “if she might be better off without me.”
“True, that. Nice boys don’t get caught up in gun battles.”
Maybe it isn’t meant as a hard statement. But his words take their effect - it’s like the ground being pulled away from underneath. I can already feel myself dropping out of the sky, blue and green contours of the land rushing up to meet me.
We don’t sleep long – three hours at most. With the Muwan parked on the banks of a long, black lake, the dawn light wakes us, stripes of clouds turning pink. I open the cockpit window, stand up, crack my neck, have a stretch. A skinny mist hangs over the metallic waters of the lake, which is about ten metres away. The rising sun begins to light the distant hills to the west. A flock of Canada geese fly past, land with loud slaps in the water
a hundred metres away.
Beside me, Tyler stirs, opens his eyes and stares at me. He looks at his surroundings, blinking. The line of his jaw is tight. He gazes at his hands.
I take out my binoculars and scope the place. The signs of neglect and dilapidation are all around. A moored ferry, falling to pieces on the wharf. Two abandoned cars in the car park, one with all four doors ripped away. Both petrol caps are open, I’m guessing from where the fuel has been siphoned away.
On a patch of pebble-dashed sandy beach, we stare into the water lapping at the edges of the lake. I reach down for a scoop and use it to wash my face, neck and hands. Tyler climbs out of the Muwan and wanders towards the water.
“Don’t drink it. Who knows where they dumped the dead people in a place like this?”
We share two strips of beef jerky, a dried mango bar and a strawberry-cream-filled Submarino cake. As we eat, I notice Tyler giving me an appraising stare.
“You been working out.”
“Yep.”
“Still play capoeira?”
“I practise the moves, yeah. But it’s no fun on your own.”
“So? Teach people.”
“Oh . . . I dunno.” I think of the ways in which I’ve recently used capoeira, in self-defence, but also to attack. It’s not a game for me, not any more. “I’m not good enough for that.”
Tyler puts down his tea. He stands. “Show me.” Then he’s in a ginga stance. I watch him for a second, then climb into the Muwan, turn on the docked iPod, select an uptempo version of the capoeira classic “Paranaue”. A grin breaks across Tyler’s features as he slides from side to side. “Come on, Mariposa. Muito axé!”
And we go to it. Real capoeira. Tyler flips and rolls around, throws in head spins, handsprings, sweeping kicks, slow at first until we get the measure of each other, growing faster as we become confident. The recorded music doesn’t synchronize with your pulse quite the way it does when you’ve got the twang of the berimbau right next to you, but even so my heart thuds with effort and thrill.
By the time the song ends we’re both smiling and sweating and it’s back to the lake to cool down. Tyler’s the real deal – a capoeirista. That should have been his life. Not becoming this isolated gang leader, holding on by his fingernails to survive. When it ends we embrace and Tyler whispers, “Thank you, my brother. I needed that.”
I lock the Muwan, and we start looking towards the nearby road. Beyond that lies the town. From here there’s no sign of any life. My guts coil like snakes when I think that I might be about to meet my parents; my parents-who-might-have-been. At least I can be certain that other-Josh won’t be there; from what Tyler says, he’d never have been able to escape from the Controlled Zone.
Tyler insists on bringing the rifle, says I’ve got no idea how unpredictable life has become. We cross the road, head for the dark stone cottages of the village.
“What are we looking for?”
“Josh didn’t tell me much about their holiday place. Only that it was in the middle of nowhere. He weren’t too happy about that.”
“But this is a village.” There are rows of houses, several streets’ worth. Nothing that matches Tyler’s description.
“Let’s start by seeing if anyone’s home.”
I stare, astonished. “You’re joking, right? The place looks pretty abandoned to me.”
Tyler shakes his head, grimly. “Stop going by appearances. In the badlands, people stay behind closed doors.”
I spot a door partly cracked open. “How about there?” Then I get my first shock: the sight of two finger bones clutching the edge of the door. Tyler pushes the door with his foot, his finger on the trigger. The rest of the body comes into view – a skeleton in grey trousers and a ragged checked shirt.
Tyler shoves the body to one side with the side of his trainer. He steps into the cottage. I follow him into a kitchen. Tyler goes straight for the cupboards, opens them up. They’ve been cleaned out. He turns on a tap and waits. Nothing. Without a word, Tyler makes for a downstairs bathroom that we passed on the way in. I watch him lift the seat with a foot and shake his head, very grim.
“What?”
“You don’t want to see.”
Ignoring the advice, I poke my head into the tiny room. The toilet is full almost to the brim, dark solid matter at the base, clearer liquid above. There’s very little smell. I guess bacteria have processed most of what was once there.
“Plumbing stopped working when the electricity plants failed. You had to go down to the river to fetch water. There was a time when people would charge payment in food to let you use an unblocked toilet. Those kinds of manners didn’t last long. After a bit there were people who’d kill anyone who had anything they wanted.” He looks thoughtfully towards the dead body. “Reckon he didn’t want to let someone use his toilet or eat his food. Looks like they did it anyhow.”
From there we go into the next house, and the next house, repeating what seems to be a practiced routine for Tyler. In the next five houses the dead bodies are in the bedrooms, tangled up in bedcovers dark with stains of blood and other gross stuff. Tyler takes his time checking drawers and cupboards.
“Someone’s done these places over already. Someone around here survived. They’ve probably taken anything useful from every house.”
It seems too much to hope that it’s Andres Garcia. Why would he survive such a terrible pandemic of whatever this illness was?
Back in the ghost-town street, Tyler suggests we move the search away from the main village. Anyone who survived the plague couldn’t have lived anywhere close to the rest of the population. They must have had access to a different source of water. They’d have had the means to protect themselves when people began to panic, to turn to theft and violence in search of food and medicines for themselves or their loved ones.
His gaze lifts to the rise of the hills. “Up there. They’d be high up, where they could see people coming. They’d have weapons, long range. To pick people off when they got close.”
“So we look for a house on a hill with a trail of dead bodies leading to the front door?”
“There’ll be no trail. Whoever survived this would know enough to move the bodies. And then . . . to incinerate them. They don’t call it the ‘badlands’ for nothing.”
I hand Tyler my binoculars, watch him sweep the landscape. Until he stops, his focus rock-steady on a white house, the last and highest building visible in the vicinity. He passes me back the binoculars. “That’s the one. Just like Josh said – middle of nowhere. Bet you two cans of Coke.”
The house is about a kilometre south-east of the ferry landing post. A narrow lane leads off the main road, past trees that shield most of the cottage from the lakeside village. We make our way up the lane, which is shaded by overhanging trees, a fast stream gushing to our right. The lane ends at a cottage of stone, painted white.
Behind some privet bushes there’s a crackle, the sound of static discharge, pungent fumes in the air. Tyler lifts his gun and whispers, “Electricity generator. The petrol kind.”
Another sound floats across the morning air. Piano chords and a saxophone. A slow, melancholy tune. Familiar as the scent of fig trees on a warm summer’s day and the overripe garden vines I’d pass on my way home.
Blue in Green.
Breath catches in my throat. The music seems to knife through me, to occupy space between nerves and blood cells. I close my eyes to an overpowering sense that I’m living someone else’s life. All I want, right now, is to escape.
From behind us, the click of a rifle being cocked. A woman’s voice says, “Don’t move.” We stall. “Drop the gun. Do it.” Tyler bends slowly and places his rifle on the ground. “Hands in the air. Turn around. Slow.”
By the time I’ve turned, I recognize the voice. It’s so different. Harsh. Cold. When I turn, the hard, pale eyes that glare at me over the rifle scope widen in shock. The rifle wavers.
“Mary and all the saints! Son, is that you?”
What do I tell her? She is Eleanor Garcia. But I’m not her son.
Blue-grey eyes hold mine in a paralysing stare. They’re only a grim reminder of my mother’s. Lined, gaunt cheeks where her rosy complexion should be. A tired gaze, fearful, deep with pain. Her hair is thinner too, lank, unkempt. The woman who is not my mother wears faded blue jeans, a loose cotton shirt, and green Wellington boots.
Something about having a gun pointed at you makes you want to raise your hands. A couple of seconds later I realize I’m holding my breath. Then that my eyes are stinging, hot and salty. I don’t even understand why.
“Josh. . .” breathes Eleanor. Her voice becomes huskier. “Josh. . .”
Tyler breaks in, “It looks like him, don’t it?”
She raises the gun again. “There’s something wrong with his eyes.”
“They turned him into a blue-blood, like me.”
There’s a sound from the side door of the stone cottage. A Border collie bustles through the door, barking ferociously at Tyler and me. The dog is followed by a little kid in dungarees, a girl with long, dark curls and two button-cute brown eyes in the middle of dimply cheeks.
She stands there with a finger in her mouth, gazing solemnly at Eleanor with the gun and the barking dog. A man steps through the side door. I’m not surprised at all to recognize him. All anger in his voice melts away when he sees me.
The air is warming rapidly now that the sun has broken free of the lakeside peaks. Faintly, in the distance, I hear the sound of bleating sheep, responding to the raucous echo of the dog. For a moment we all just look at each other. Only the little girl doesn’t seem traumatized. She walks up to the dog, less than a metre away from me. Pointing at me, she turns to Eleanor and Andres. “It’s Josh!”
“Eleanor. . .” Andres says quietly, “lower the gun.”
She does it, trembling as he moves in to take the rifle. Andres grabs hold of the dog’s collar, orders it to stop barking.
He glances at Tyler. “You’re Tyler Marks, aren’t you?”
Before Tyler can reply, Eleanor takes a step towards me. Her eyes have started to well up. I’m still held in some kind of powerful grip. And I can’t move.
