As for me, I bore my shame. A small part of me felt guilty for dragging these two nice white boys into my messy life. A bigger part of me felt guilty about dragging my hardworking, long-suffering parents into it. The rest of me focused on the goal—a good summer, a debt paid, a lesson learned—and gave thanks that I didn’t lose Tucker as part of the deal.
But then . . .
Had it been two weeks earlier, I might be dead too. I would still have been in high school in Calgary, which, from the glow in the sky, from the days of low rumbling booms, we assume was bombed to nothing but ashes and ghosts. A week later there would have been a hundred campers here, with enough food and fuel for a week. Instead, there were only nine of us, junior counselors and trainers, for two weeks of training with Pip and David. Food for a hundred divided by eleven equals eight or nine weeks of supplies, ten if we ration carefully. Simple math. The end of the world doesn’t change that. We even have weapons; basic hunting and archery were planned camp activities, and remote camps like this always have rifles, in case of bears. So we train with them, carefully, responsibly, conserving ammo as much as possible, since there’s every chance we will need it. We have no way of knowing if the rifles or crossbows will be of any use. We have few ways of knowing anything. Communications were cut somehow, along with the main power that first night. We wait in the dark, armed and fatalistic. If they notice us, our chances are slim. They haven’t noticed us yet.
Pip and David set out in the van to find answers but never came back.
After two weeks of knowing nothing Felix rigged something up with the satellite phone and the old radio tower on the hill. We tried to send distress calls, but all we got in return was a low-frequency humming that Felix finally figured out was a video signal. He theorized that someone had hacked into one of the emergency broadcast system servers. Some of it was emergency broadcast stuff. There were repeated generic instructions to “shelter in place,” but eventually those stopped and were replaced with amateur videos.
The bandwidth was prehistorically slow. A one-minute video took hours to download to Felix’s laptop. The videos were like something from a shooting game or a horror movie. The creatures were named “Nahx” by some Russian gamer on the day of the invasion, and the name stuck. They are like walking night, moving shadows, blindingly fast and utterly ruthless. They shoot with whining dart guns. The darts do little physical damage, like tranquilizer darts, but they kill in seconds, filling their victims’ eyes with weird metallic tears. The Nahx kill indiscriminately—women, children, soldiers or not.
There are videos of humans vainly fighting back. It is often young men—they hoot and swear with feigned courage as they waste their bullets on armored enemies who won’t fall. The Nahx are unstoppable, is what the videos tell us, even the ones where we fight back. Felix spent hours a day downloading the videos, his laptop charging from the radio tower solar panel. Who is making and sending the videos is mysterious, but the message inherent in them is clear, to me anyway. They remind me of the futile bleating of a mortally injured animal.
I called the videos “revenge snuff” and stopped watching them, but Tucker watched them over and over, his eyes growing glassy with something almost like desire.
Tucker’s eyes. They stare up at the clear sky, but see nothing. I close them, then bend down to kiss his cold lips. Topher, sitting across from me, hangs over him and sobs, his tears falling onto Tucker’s sunburned arm. He takes one dead hand and presses it to his mouth.
I wonder which one of us hurts more, and if Topher will use sorrow as a final contest for his brother’s love. I can’t quite imagine his grief; I’ve never had a sibling, much less an identical twin. And though I may never know if my parents survived, or my cousins, my aunts and uncles, my massive stepfamily up north, at least I haven’t had to confront any of them dead in front of me. Except in frequent nightmares.
War, love, loss, grief, and me and Topher, each holding a hand of someone we will never get back, not even to share. The sun is too bright, he said, as though Tucker could still see and still be bothered by the sun in his eyes. As though he could see through Tucker’s eyes. A fraction of the bitterness I feel for him crumbles, then a chunk, then pretty much all of it. He’s been sitting here with me for hours, crying. How can I continue to hate him? We have nothing to fight over anymore.
In the end, it is just a war, but we seem to have lost.
We lost the world. I lost the chance to make it up to my parents for all my stupid mistakes.
And I lost Tucker. Without him those things I thought I could survive threaten to overwhelm me.
When Topher sets Tucker’s hand back down on his chest, I do the same with the other hand. Wordlessly, we lace his fingers together. He could be napping in the sun but for the blackened veins in his neck and face.
“Earth or fire, do you think?” Topher says, and without hesitation I answer, “Earth.”
He nods, agreeing with me for once.
Xander and Lochie offer to dig the grave, but Topher wants to do it. While he sweats down by the lake, digging deep under a birch tree, Emily, Mandy, and I wash Tucker’s body. I can’t imagine undressing him though, not in front of them, so we wash his face and neck, his arms, hands, and feet. We bury him in his clothes, cargo shorts and a grubby camp T-shirt, but Topher keeps his hiking boots. I take his gold earring and hook it into the hole at the top of my ear. I slip my beaded bracelet around his wrist.
Sawyer and Felix, senior counselors who have taken charge since the camp directors disappeared, stand hand in hand, leading the service even though they are only a few years older than us. They are a couple. It was a big secret for the first few weeks, even after the invasion, but gradually they stopped hiding it. And none of us care, anyway. The end of the world is not the time to get hung up on labels.
Sawyer speaks calmly, but Felix grips his shoulder as he finishes. I don’t really process the speech beyond the general gist. Something about bravery and survival and living to honor Tucker’s memory. I’m glad he didn’t make out that Tucker was some kind of angel, because that was definitely not the case. Except maybe to me.
We take turns shoveling dirt into the grave. I scoop it in with my bare hands, because I am trembling too much to hold the shovel.
Emily and Mandy have made a wreath of pine and birch boughs. Xander plays a mournful tune on his harmonica that has us all shuddering with sobs. But Topher stands as still as an ancient tree, tears streaming down his cheeks. I don’t even bother to stay standing. I fall to my knees and try to suppress the urge to scream and scream until I’m shivering uncontrollably. Someone—Xander, I think—puts a sweater over my shoulders. Someone else reads a poem, or a Bible passage. Someone sings. My blood rushes in my ears.
By the time we finish it is dusk.
This time two days ago Tucker and I snuck down to the lake and swam naked in the icy water, then forgot the end of the world for a blissful private moment under a blanket on the beach. He told me he loved me and that he was sorry for . . .
Well, nothing like that matters anymore.
War and grief—this is my life now.
“Raven.”
At first I think it is Tucker’s voice in a dream. Have I been sleeping? Time seems to have passed. I am kneeling at the graveside, my knees and ankles stiff. Topher kneels across from me. We are surrounded by half-burned-down candles.
“They shot him in the back,” Topher says.
I nod, unable to form words.
“He was running away. They could have let him get away.”
Everything we know about the Nahx, which isn’t very much, suggests that this is unlikely, but now is not the time to disagree.
“I’m going to find the one that did this and kill it.” He sounds so much like Tuck at this moment that I have to look up to check. But no, it’s Topher with his neat hair and clean camp T-shirt, as if we’re still on duty. His face reflects Tucker though. His fierce and sure expression says Tucker. Tucker never approached
anything without a gallon of certainty. Tucker was so sure he would come back with fresh meat last night. But he never came back at all. Two arrows were missing from his quiver. The rifle hadn’t been fired. His smartphone was on the ground next to him when Topher found him, smashed beyond repair, as though he’d been trying to call for help on networks that no longer functioned.
“Toph, how will you find it, this particular Nahx?”
He shakes his head, wiping tears with the back of his hand. I notice the broken blisters on his palms from digging the grave.
“Swear to me that you’re with me on this,” he says, as if he’s angry at me.
“I swear. I’ll kill it too, if I find it.” I’m too tired to argue. Topher needs this. He needs to think he can fix this somehow. And he’s all I have left to fix.
“Swear on his grave.” He must know it’s an impossible promise. But I suppose many things that once seemed impossible happened anyway.
We place our hands on the loose dirt, leaving handprints into which we drip candle wax and tears. A long time passes before either of us speaks again.
“Do you want to sleep here tonight?” I ask. Topher simply nods. We walk back to the cabins to get sleeping bags. Halfway up the hill he puts his hand on my shoulder, and we walk like that until the trees clear and we’re on the open field.
“We have to do this together, you know,” he whispers, as though those treacherous stars might be listening. “We can’t fight anymore.”
“I know,” I say, and wonder whether Topher can hear the echo of his brother’s laugh, as I can.
EIGHTH
Muddy death, someone help me.
Help me.
What do I do now?
RAVEN
I watch the sky with Topher, neither of us able to sleep. Sometime after midnight, when we hear footsteps crunching down the hill, Topher wriggles out of his sleeping bag and slips an arrow into Tucker’s crossbow. But a burst of giggling and a whiff of sweet smoke let him relax. He unloads the crossbow and sets it aside.
Xander appears on the path with Lochie and Emily, the two Australians. Wisps of smoke trail behind them. I sit up as Xander passes the joint to Topher.
“Where did you get this?” Topher asks, taking a deep drag. He passes it to me and I puff on it silently. When it becomes clear I’m not giving it up, Xander produces another one and lights it on the embers of our fire.
“Broke into the office,” Xander says. “Sawyer and Felix are hoarding medicine in there. And this.”
“They confiscated it from me when I arrived,” Lochie says, in a halo of smoke. Lochie looks like a stoner, a typical sunburned and bleached-hair surfer dude, but he’s also a hard-core survivalist who can make a fire by rubbing sticks together and eats insects and slugs for our amusement.
Soon we’re all as high as the silver moon. Emily sits behind me, arranging my tangled curls into a dozen little braids and twirling and tying them with ribbons of dry grass. She’s a pale and dreamy hippie chick, who paradoxically is also something of a weapons expert, from her outback farm upbringing with three gun-crazy brothers. She taught Tucker to use the crossbow. They practiced until his aim was lethal.
Not lethal enough though, apparently.
I never liked having my hair fussed over for longer than a few minutes. When I twist away from Emily, she turns her attention to Xander, making him a crown of pine fronds. He wears it with surprising dignity, like Chinese royalty, a beautiful Ming dynasty prince.
As he starts another tune on his harmonica, I lie back and gaze up at the stars again. By now we are used to the large bright ones that move in unexpected patterns, and the occasional flashes. Sawyer thinks the Nahx are destroying satellites, one by one, and space junk that interferes with their ships. This is why our satellite phone stopped working. Our cell phones turn on, if we charge them with the solar generator, but apart from reading old e-mails or looking at photos of people we’ll probably never see again, they’re useless.
Ten weeks. It’s been ten weeks. There are eight of us left. Right now five of us are so wasted, a band of invading Smurfs could paint us blue and eat us. But who cares? I have nothing left to lose.
The stars move, and move back. One pops in a flash. And one shoots out of sight.
Yes. Like that last beautiful night on Earth.
The first group of campers were due to arrive in two days. We had been training, building on skills we already had. Pip and David had to make the most of us, since half their crew had been denied work permits due to some kind of immigration screwup. Self-defense and martial arts was my class. Topher would do canoeing and fishing, Tucker, what else? High ropes, climbing, and zip line—the dangerous stuff. Mandy would teach first aid, Emily weapons and hunting, and Lochie botany, maybe what mushrooms to eat, depending on how you want to feel. Xander, a friend of Tucker’s whom we roped in at the last minute after another permit was denied, was down for orienteering. He threw himself into it with typical zeal. We all did. To avoid a sentence of vandalism and destruction of city property, it was a pretty good deal for Topher, Tucker, and me. And the rest were getting a nice wage. Oh, what fun we were going to have helping kids learn “How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse.”
Shit. The irony.
That night Tucker and I disappeared down to the lake right after dinner, stripped down to our bathing suits, and sparred, old-school karate style, on the dock until I was able to knock him into the lake. At the last second he grabbed my wrist and pulled me down after him.
“Illegal hold,” I said, spitting water.
“Hold this,” he said, pressing my hand to his crotch under the water. But Xander and Topher appeared on the shore.
“Have you seen the meteors?” Topher said. But of course they weren’t meteors.
On the second night of the invasion we hiked up to the ridge and watched the repeated blinding flashes from the horizon, waiting each time for the sound wave to reach us like a thumping blow to the chest. We had no word from anyone in Calgary. By this time the phone, TV, Internet, and radio were all dead. Without ever discussing it, we all came to a silent consensus that Calgary was gone. And with it Tucker and Topher’s parents, Xander’s family, and all our other friends. In the early days, we spoke of these losses as though they were real and confirmed, but eventually we stopped discussing it. Tucker confessed to me that he still thought of his parents as alive.
“It’s easier,” he said, which was odd. He was never one to choose the easy path, even when it came to emotions. Maybe he meant it was easier for Topher.
As for my parents, they were planning to make their annual drive out to the coast, leaving on the day of the invasion. Maybe if they weren’t in an urban area, or were able to get off the main roads, they could be hiding somewhere too. Jack was an experienced wilderness camper, and though Mom wasn’t a big fan of camping, she knew what to do. But it all depends on what time of day they left. And how far they got. I try not to think about it, because there’s also a chance that they’re dead with everyone else. And everything I wanted to prove to them, everything I wanted to apologize for, everything I promised to fix is gone. Forty-eight hours was all it took. Our world is gone too. We grieve. And survive.
But for what?
I blink away the afterimage of exploding stars as Topher lies down beside me.
“We have to get out of here,” I say.
“I know.”
“The food is almost finished, and anyway there won’t be enough daylight to properly run the solar for much longer. And we have hardly any fuel. We should have rationed better.”
“I guess we thought we’d be rescued. Or something. We were supposed to shelter in place, remember?”
More irony. Of all the government advice and instructions I have ignored in my life, that “shelter in place” is the one I ended up following. I’m pretty sure it was the wrong choice.
“The fuel will run out before the snow comes,” I say. “Then we’re completely fucked.”
; “Hunting is obviously dangerous,” Xander offers. I look up to see that everyone is facing us, listening.
“Where can we go?” Lochie says. “I don’t know much about this area, but I think Xander and I can keep us alive in the wild for a little while. As long as we keep clear of the baddies.”
“We’re about a day’s hike from the nearest town,” Topher says. “But Tuck was heading that way.”
“It might be safer to go in the other direction,” Xander suggests. “Toward Calgary, stay off the highway though, go along the river. There’s a kind of tourist resort at Whatsitcalled, in the foothills. Right? Maybe people are hiding out there. That’s what I would have done, if I’d been in town. Headed to high ground.”
“How long?” Emily says.
“Two days maybe. There’s a lot of uphill. It depends what we take with us.”
“Don’t you guys think we should go away from Calgary?” I ask. “Head west, toward the coast?”
Topher gives me a meaningful look. He knows what I’m getting at. We’ve talked about my parents and where they might be a hundred times. “We’d never make it across the mountains. Not now.”
“And we don’t have the supplies for such a long hike,” Xander says.
“Hike?” Emily snorts. “Isn’t it like six hundred miles?”
“It’s smarter to see what’s happening nearby,” Lochie says. “We might find supplies, food. We could always come back here.”
“Or head west,” I say stubbornly. The four of them stare at me, and I start to feel like we’re going to have a vote, and I’m going to end up looking like a dickhead. “Fine. You’re right. We should look for other survivors around here first. So we should take food and weapons. Maybe warm clothes. We’ll need them soon.” We could have blankets of snow by late September, if we live that long.
“Right. Lots of weapons. Everything we have.” Topher curls his fingers around Tuck’s crossbow.
Zero Repeat Forever Page 2
