“You know the weirdly shaped slide and that bug climbing thing? I could see them in the background. And the rock wall that Tuck broke his thumb on. You can just catch a glimpse of it.”
I adjust my knitted hat, pulling it farther down over my ears, which I’m sure are about to freeze off like an alley cat’s. “So? That means there are survivors. We knew that.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t know the Nahx were still there. Some kind of secondary ground assault? And there are humans there, fighting back. We could join them. Every day that goes by . . . if they’re still alive . . . Fuck it, Crowfoot Park is blocks from my house. They don’t even know . . .” He struggles to regain his composure. Another thing Tuck would never do. Tuck would give into it, weep and rage and rail against whatever was bothering him, usually his own weaknesses, until I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I’d take him in my arms and tell him everything would be all right. But Topher lets himself get tied up in knots. And I’m probably the only person left alive who can unknot him.
“I should have gone weeks ago,” he says. “I should have left as soon as . . . It’s just . . .”
I stare out into the white expanse, knowing what’s coming. But he is silent next to me. After a few seconds I finally work up the courage to turn and look at him. He’s hunched over, one mittened hand covering his face.
“Toph . . .”
He speaks without looking at me. “I shouldn’t have told you about Emily. That was a dick move.”
I wasn’t expecting that. He hasn’t mentioned it apart from that one drunken time. “It’s true though, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And there were other girls, before that too, right? Before camp?”
He hesitates before answering. “Yeah.”
I have to close my eyes to let that sink in, as fundamental beliefs about what Tucker and I had reorganize themselves in my head. I made excuses for the way he acted around other girls sometimes, telling myself it didn’t mean anything, that he loved me. But clearly I wouldn’t know real love if it smacked me in the forehead.
“I’m sorry I was such a dick about you and Tucker.” Topher is practically whispering now. “It’s was because . . . you spent so much time with him and I didn’t . . . couldn’t . . . kind of . . . function . . .” His voice breaks, shrinking to the pitiful cry of a little boy. “I never knew what to do . . . without him.”
He suddenly sobs. “It’s so hard to make a decision without him.” He cries as he speaks, tears freezing on his cheeks. “I barely even know how to get out of bed or get dressed. I can’t think. I can’t sleep. . . .”
Kneeling down in front of him, I slide between his knees and put my arms around him.
“I sometimes wonder how I’m even still alive,” he says, pressing his face into my shoulder.
“I’ve wondered the same thing,” I say. “Don’t get snot on my coat, okay?”
This makes him snort out a desperate little laugh.
“Everything will be all right.”
He pulls back and looks at me as though I’ve gone mad. “No, it won’t,” he says, wiping streaks of ice from his face with the back of his mittens.
“No, you’re right. I just thought I’d try it out.”
This time he laughs properly and wipes what I’m almost sure is snot from my shoulder, letting his hand linger for a moment.
I sit back on my heels and look up at him. The morning sun makes his brown eyes seem gilded, like they are made out of gold. His cheeks are ruddy and flushed from the cold. A chin-length strand of dark hair has escaped from under his hat. And he needs a shave. I breathe, reminding myself that he is not Tucker, though each day that goes past, it gets harder to remember that, harder to resist Topher’s pathos. Maybe if I closed my eyes and fell into his arms, it would feel like going home. Maybe all the bits of Tucker that we both carry around combined would be enough to reconstruct a kind of facsimile of him. It’s a tempting idea. And at least Topher has never seemed very interested in Emily.
“So the plan has changed,” I say, swallowing. “Vengeance goes on the back burner. We get to Calgary somehow. We look for your parents or other survivors. We kill some Nahx, to make it worthwhile. Deal?”
He closes his mittened hand around mine.
“Deal,” he says.
When we tramp back into the bunker entrance, shaking snow from our coats, something is happening. Kim has called everyone into the cafeteria. Everyone, no exceptions. Even the few people in the infirmary are wheeled in. Children, whom I rarely see, cling to adults, some of whom I know are not their real family. Kids hang off people too old or too young to be their parents. There are heartbreaking stories here, ones I have no desire to hear. The thought of my own broken family keeps me awake at night, every night, obsessing about things I wished I’d said and done.
Seeing the whole population of our refuge together for the first time, I’m struck by the futility of our existence. I’ve seen the food stores. This bunker was never properly supplied. The food will run out before the winter does, even on reduced rations.
There are about two hundred and fifty of us. If we could make it through the winter, we could plant in the spring, maybe venture out into the abandoned farmland and see what animals have survived the snow. Hunt. Gather. Fracture, let the bones regrow, bent and weak. Shelter in place, just like those government safety videos advised. Wait until someone, somewhere, somehow, wins this war for us.
I envy those in the base who live by that hope. The more time passes, the more I find I don’t have the strength to hang on to the idea of rescue, or a human victory. It feels hopeless. I feel hopeless. But maybe that’s just the helplessness of having to wait for someone else to act. All the more reason to go back to Calgary, see who we can rescue and who we can kill and whether there is a way out of here, a way to the coast.
The coast is nearly a thousand miles away over a mountain range that could be swarming with Nahx.
When everyone is seated, Kim climbs onto an empty table in front of the video screen. She looks terrible, haunted. Her hair is limp and streaked with gray. Nearby, Liam stands, stoop shouldered, his arms tightly wrapped in front of him, like he’s holding his own chest cavity closed.
“Any idea what’s going on?” Topher says, sliding onto the bench beside me. I shake my head as Kim begins to speak.
“The Nahx killed my husband and daughter right in front of my eyes,” she says.
Well, that explains some things.
“It came down to what side of a fence we were on. They were running, actually ahead of me and Liam. They ran right into a pair of Nahx, who shot them dead without a second of thought. Liam pulled me to the ground and we rolled under a car. He clamped his hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming. The Nahx came around the fence and walked right by us. My son. My hero.”
Liam, who I expect to be reveling in the glory, is actually hanging his head. One of his friends pats him on the back.
“This side of a fence or the other side,” Kim continues, her voice breaking. “It could have easily gone the other way.” The vise that holds her together is coming apart. I can see it happening. And I think we’re about to find out what pulled it open.
Without saying another word, she steps down from the table. Someone flicks a switch and the video screen clicks on.
There is no sound. The image is a map of the world. The countries, the familiar patchwork of politics and borders, are gone. The seas are blue; the continents are gray. It is like a simple puzzle for children, the shapes crude and expressionistic. Over the speakers, a woman’s voice starts. Once the volume is adjusted so we can all hear it, it’s easy to tell she’s no one important. She doesn’t have the oratory skill that even Kim has. She’s reading something that someone else has written. She’s the message bearer, not its creator.
“ . . . that in the last forty-eight hours, the International Cooperative Defense Force have attempted to negotiate with . . . with the invading forces, now known as the Nahx.
”
Topher twitches next to me. The woman continues reading, tonelessly, tightly, liked a drugged widow reading a eulogy at her husband’s funeral.
“To date, the human losses have been unacceptably heavy, and the ICDF has determined that losses would not only continue but increase unless hostilities cease. The Nahx’s advanced technology and . . . ruthlessness make them an impossible foe.”
The map starts to change. Red patches start to appear, like blood from bullet wounds. A slash from Alaska to Nevada, a patch farther east. Central western Europe, north India, parts of Africa all soaked in red.
“Those are mountain ranges,” I say to Topher. His eyes are fixed on the screen. The woman’s voice continues. Her pitch increases slightly, making her sound younger.
“The Nahx occupation patterns have indicated a preference for territory above twenty-five hundred feet in elevation. For this, uh, reason, the ICDF, in agreement with the nations that make up the forces, has . . .” Her voice breaks here, and there are several seconds of silence. We watch the map as the red zones spread over the land we currently live and breathe on, the Rocky Mountains and the high plains to the east. “ . . . has taken the drastic and regrettable step of surrendering all territory above two thousand feet to the Nahx.”
There are gasps as the map stops changing. The red stains become fixed, grotesque blotches, like third-degree burns. My vague understanding of our location puts us well inside the red zone, at least a hundred miles from any border. Somewhere in the cafeteria, someone, possibly a child, starts to cry.
“The perimeters of these territories are now heavily fortified and patrolled. The ICDF and the United Nations tried to arrange the evacuation of the surrendered territory, but the Nahx command would not communicate beyond . . . compass points and maps.” The woman is crying now; I can hear it in her voice. “If you are hearing this message from within one of these regions . . . we had no choice. . . . You are now subject to Nahx rule.” There is a long pause before she finishes. “God bless you.” Static surges over the speakers, and the map of the world fades. Someone clicks the screen off.
Topher has laid his head on the table. I lay mine down beside his. Our eyes fix on each other.
“God bless us?” he says. “God has completely and utterly fucked us.”
The cafeteria erupts. The civilians react with all the ferocity that we militarized types keep contained. There is screaming and accusation in at least five different languages. There are a lot of tears. I expect Kim to stay, to try to restore order, but she and Liam walk out together, leaving us leaderless and broken.
It’s not long before Sawyer finds us, along with Xander and Mandy. Emily slips in beside them a minute or two later. I have to force myself to make eye contact with her.
“You think anyone here knows what this means?” Mandy asks.
“Probably not,” I answer. “Do you?”
She looks much calmer than I might expect, watching the civilians gathering back at tables, their voices lowered now to sepulchral tones.
“There is very little medicine left,” Mandy says. “Things like high blood pressure and heart disease we can try to control with diet, I guess, but we’ll lose a few to that. There’s a child here with leukemia. It was just diagnosed. Funny, right?”
Xander starts to bang his forehead on the table as she continues.
“At least we can probably avoid the worst of the seasonal viruses, since we’re isolated. Everybody has been cleared for HIV and hep C, and that’s good because, I’ve got to say, we’re getting through the condoms pretty quickly.”
“Jesus,” Xander says to the tabletop.
“People were counting on a rescue,” Mandy says. “That’s why everybody has been so calm, I guess. Lulled into a false sense of security by those bullshit videos. The fight continues. We will defeat them. Shelter in place. Ha! We’ll be lucky if we come out the other side of winter.”
“But will the Nahx come here?” Emily says.
Sawyer speaks at last, with some of the authority that he showed before Felix died. “This quarry is pretty low, even though we’re surrounded by mountains. And we’re underground. We might be trapped, but maybe we’re safe here.”
I sigh impatiently. “That’s what you said about the camp.”
“Right, and don’t you think now that you should have listened to me?”
“So we could starve? And that was even higher up than here!”
“We could have made a go of it! They might never have found us!”
“Or maybe they would have!”
Topher’s head shoots up. “Stop it! Stop it, you two!” He turns to me. “It’s possible that the Nahx will ignore us since we’re hidden, but I wouldn’t count on it. It’s immaterial though because Calgary is in the red zone, and we’ve made that our new objective. Right?”
“We have?” Sawyer says. Topher turns to me expectantly.
“There are survivors in Calgary. There’s also a ton of supplies, medicine, food. Condoms,” I add, and can’t resist directing my gaze at Emily. “We can get there if we take the Humvees.”
Sawyer speaks with a lower voice. “I don’t think Kim will go for it.”
Topher replies with his twin’s intensity, scanning our little group. “But it’s a good idea, right?”
I turn to look at Emily and Mandy, at Xander, whose lost expressions pretty much sum up my whole attitude too. The plan to launch a rescue mission back to Calgary now seems even more fanciful than it did an hour ago when we first conceived it. It would be like last-ditch chemotherapy on a terminal patient. Maybe give us a few more months until starvation, disease, or the Nahx get us. At least if we stay here, we will die warm. That would not have been the case at the camp. On the other hand, if we want to survive longer term, leaving is our only option. We need to start sourcing food and medicine.
It seems hopeless. But now it’s our only hope. My head hurts.
Topher turns to Sawyer. Even though things have changed since we arrived at the bunker, he’s still our leader. “Are you in?”
“Like I’d let a bunch of seventeen-year-olds go off on their own.”
“I’m sixteen,” I say. Xander grins along with me.
Sawyer reaches into his jacket and pulls out a hip flask, passing it to me.
“This is contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” I point out as I uncap it. “You should be ashamed.”
“There is no age of majority after an apocalypse. Can we agree on that?”
The sip of vodka stings on the way down, but the instant sensation it gives me makes me crave another.
“How do we convince Kim?” Topher asks, taking the bottle from me.
“Why do we have to?” Sawyer says. “Since when do we do things by the book?”
As we pass the bottle around our table, I realize the cafeteria has fallen silent except for the continued sobbing of a toddler. I look around in time to see another older child, a dark-skinned girl with a long braid, rise and touch the crying child’s head affectionately. I expect her to say There, there or something, but instead she starts singing “Baby Beluga.”
When the toddler’s mother starts to sing along, the child settles. But the little girl keeps going as others around her join in, one by one. Adults sing. Children sing. I’m pretty sure at least a couple of people are singing in French, and Xander seems to be singing in Chinese. Soon the whole room is singing. “Baby Beluga” is the funniest, most incongruous song to sing deep underground a thousand miles from the sea, but we bellow it out, laughing through tears, our voices ringing off the concrete, stone, and metal walls of our snow-covered tomb.
I sing too, because we need it. We are terrified. Betrayed and uncertain. Angry and heartbroken.
But united, for now. And human, above all. We are human. We are human.
I’m just not sure that will be enough.
EIGHTH
I suppose I should be grateful that it is a human who finds me and not one of us, a human with a g
un more suited to killing squirrels than penetrating armor. But the man scares me anyway. He screams hateful and violent things at me and empties his sad little gun, from point-blank range. The bullets ping off my armor, but sting enough to knock me over.
Think now. Think. My instinct is to kill him. I could snap him in half. I could certainly get a dart into him, drag him back out into the street, and drop him into a snowdrift. That’s my mission. Those are my directives. Their relentless rhythm in my mind is much stronger now that I’m with others. Much harder to disobey.
Disobedient. Defective.
Spiderwebs. Snowflakes. The golden-haired human girl. I stand with my rifle raised.
The man shakes so much as I stand that he can’t reload his gun. “No, please . . . ,” he says. I take a step toward him. The mission is . . . the mission . . .
Run, I sign to him. He doesn’t seem to understand. Some part of me longs to pull the trigger. He’s standing right there. I could crush his skull with one hand.
Run, please.
He doesn’t move. I search my memory for some alternative to killing him. Can I just walk away? He might manage to shoot me in the back, but that won’t injure me.
I focus on the image of the girl, her hair the warm color of new pinecones. I lower my rifle.
Where are your friends?
The man takes a step back, then another.
Your friends. Are you alone?
As he turns and runs. I hear a noise from the street above. Heavy footfalls. Not human.
No! Wait. I’ll help you!
I can’t stop him. He runs back out of the storeroom, knocking over boxes and shelves as he goes. I hear the outer door bang open, the whining of the dart rifle, and the thump of the man’s body falling onto the icy sidewalk.
I tell myself there is nothing I could have done and creep back into my hiding place until the heavy footsteps fade away.
RAVEN
Nights in the base are quiet now. Kim seems to have disappeared. She and her cronies, the other officers, her son and his close friends, sometimes issue orders from the command level. They change snow clearing or kitchen shifts. Occasionally, sleeping arrangements are reorganized. It all smacks of a command team with nothing to command. If they’re still planning an attack on the Nahx, wherever they are, they haven’t shared it with the likes of me. Topher, Xander, and I train some of the other civilians in hand-to-hand combat, more as a way to pass time than for any realistic purpose.
Zero Repeat Forever Page 11
