Zero Repeat Forever

by G. S. Prendergast

  We slink across the room, pressed against the wall, careful not to step on anyone or trip over their legs and feet. We both have lights, but don’t dare use them. On the first night in this holding cell those who turned on lights were quickly targeted for beatings, or worse. I’m not sure I understand the logic of this. It’s possible there is some directive that I haven’t received. Some others seem to know what is going on more than I do.

  The other one, the boy, pulls me through a doorway and down a passage. We are not supposed to leave the holding cell, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone there to stop us. We reach a corner where a small light bathes us in a dim red glow.

  Rank? I ask, able to see him at last.

  He tilts his head to the side and lifts his free hand, palm up. It’s a question hand, but I know he means something like Do you need to ask?

  Eighth? I sign, and he nods, pulling me forward. Eighth, like me. Maybe all Eighths think for themselves, feel lonely, and like holding hands. Maybe this is something he knows and I don’t.

  We reach the end of the dark passageway. The other Eighth lets go of my hand, turning to the wall and sliding his fingers up and down, looking for something. I could turn and run back to the holding cell. If we are caught here, they will kill us both. I don’t know where this Eighth is taking me or what he wants. There is something troubling, a slip of an idea that concerns me. I think of the human girl, and a dream that woke me drowning in shame. I can’t really remember what I felt so ashamed about.

  The other Eighth finds a latch. I hear a tiny click and feel a rush of cold air. A door slides open just enough for us to slip through, and suddenly we are outside, on a kind of walkway. He hops over the guardrail and disappears. I hesitate until I see, beyond the rail, that the ground is covered in soft, fresh snow. I swing my legs over the rail and let myself fall, landing fifteen feet below, in snow up to my ankles.

  I’m overcome with such a feeling of pleasure and relief that I fall to my knees, pressing my hands into the snow. The smell of it is indescribable. I grab handfuls and hold them up to my nose, sniffing deeply. After a few seconds I feel Eighth’s hand on my head. He stands above me, making a question hand.

  I feel very happy, I sign. He nods and does the sign for “repeat,” pointing to his own chest.

  Me too.

  Gesturing for me to follow, he trudges off. I follow, placing my feet in the footprints he leaves in the deep snow. The dark of night is so profound that I can barely see him ahead of me, much less where we are going. But after a few minutes we reach a high fence. It looks like something that humans built, flimsy and poorly designed. Each post is crowned with a watery blue light. The other Eighth waits for me to join him, then places his index finger dramatically on the fence. It crackles with electricity. He flicks his head back a couple of times. I’ve seen only Sixth laugh before. On this one it’s not as mean. He’s laughing at the fence, not at me. Electricity is not something that deters us. The fence must be left over from whatever this place was before we arrived. Why it is still electrified, I don’t know. Maybe someone thought it would prevent escapes. It’s then I realize what his intention is, the other Eighth; he means to escape. He pinches a wire of the fence and pulls it easily away from the steel post. A couple of sparks hiss into the snow. He pulls another and another, until there is a gap wide enough to crawl through.

  He stands back, turns to me, and holds one hand down, fingers apart, like he’s grasping something large and round. Then he turns his hand upward. I’ve never seen this sign before, but like all of them, I somehow know what it means. It wouldn’t be one that was needed very often in our lives.

  Free.

  I repeat it, making it a question. Free?

  The other Eighth nods and ushers me forward. I step over the bent wire, glancing back at him as he follows me through the gap.

  Turn, he signs when he reaches me. I obey without thinking, turning my back to him. I see from our shadows in the snow that he has one of our knives in his hand—a knife he should have turned in when they locked us inside. He could hurt me with that knife, but more than any fear of that I’m intrigued by his disobedience. He’s defective, like me.

  I feel him press the knife into the back of my neck. Maybe he is going to kill me. Part of me longs for it; part of me would rather be dead than . . . whatever this is.

  There’s a loud click and then silence.

  Silence. The perpetual humming of the degraded mission directives has stopped. My thoughts empty of it so quickly, I feel faint and sway where I stand. The other Eighth takes my arm to steady me as I turn back to him. He holds out a small bundle of metal and wires, no bigger than a beetle.

  Muddy death, he’s beyond defective; he’s crazy. Disconnecting a transponder will get us both killed.

  Run, he signs.

  I do as I’m told, expecting him to follow me. I run fast, taking long strides through the white drifts. After a few seconds I find myself on a raised road. The wind has kept it clear of snow. My brain works well enough to realize this means I could go either way and they couldn’t track me. I’m not sure which way to go, so I turn toward the city. The mountains are past the city, and I still feel the tug of the air and trees and mist I know I’ll find there.

  The other Eighth appears at the edge of the road behind me. Behind him, I can barely make out that he has stepped into my footprints.

  Together?

  He shakes his head. I think I must have made a mistake, or maybe he intends to go the other way on the road. It’s a reasonable plan, less chance of being caught.

  Run, he says again.

  I start to run toward the city. A hundred meters on I find a human’s car, stop beside it, and look back. I don’t understand what’s happening. In the unfamiliar silence of my thoughts I’m confused, and the syrupy sludge isn’t helping. It surges through me, trying to focus me, but without the buzz of my mission directives, it has nowhere to go, nothing to work with. The other Eighth is still standing where I left him on the road. I’m about to wave at him, or maybe go back when . . .

  A shot rings out. The other Eighth clutches at his throat and tumbles forward. I dive behind the car, poking my head out just enough to see what happens next.

  Three high ranks come to the side of the road. One of them throws something down on Eighth where he fell, and he explodes into flames.

  I shrink back behind the car, my fists pressed in front of my mouth.

  As if I could scream.

  RAVEN

  We leave a week later, all of us who signed up except Emily, who has fallen ill with some kind of stomach bug.

  “I bet she’s pregnant,” Xander whispers conspiratorially as we run through a final supply check.

  Liam overhears. “Not by me, she’s not.” His tone is cool. Seeing these two boys banter about a girl’s fate, even a girl I don’t particularly like, gives me a chill. Was there a time when people were more considerate? Maybe ages ago. There are fistfights over food now and hushed rumors that someone got raped on perimeter watch. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I fantasize that someone tries something with me, and I kill him. Is that just me being a badass, or is this place getting to me, changing me? I’m actually happy to leave the so-called safety of our refuge, happy to leave all these desperate rats in a cage.

  Before the invasion it always seemed like nature was out to get us—with cold or rain or plagues of grasshoppers. Now I see we were always our own worst enemy.

  Liam brings five other volunteers with him. A girl called Britney, who I think might be Liam’s new . . . whatever, a guy called Dinesh, and three white boys whose names all sound the same. I’m sure that older people volunteered, but Liam made the final selections and somehow managed to choose other teenagers. Not sure what that says about him. He’s not happy that Sawyer is older than he is, that’s clear.

  We’re heavily armed. Kim has trained me on a small but she says very powerful pistol with which my aim is slightly better. It seems powerful, but what w
ould I have to compare it to? I know it nearly threw my arm out of the shoulder socket the first time I used it. We’re low on ammo though. I have three clips for it. When those run out, I’m left with my knife. If I lose that, I’m dead.

  Apart from weapons, our packs are light. We wear all our clothes, and if we don’t find food in Calgary, we’ll be very hungry on the way back. Mandy rejects a box of bottled water in favor of more first aid supplies.

  “The ground is covered in snow, Liam,” she says when he complains. “Everyone has a canteen, right?”

  Liam makes a big show of confirming this with all of us and going through other items in our personal kits so pedantically I’m ready to throttle him.

  We finally depart, eleven of us, in two Humvees. After all her bluster about preserving fuel, Kim clearly wants her son to travel in style and comfort. He and two of his friends are outfitted with the best in military accessories the base can come up with: Kevlar body armor, helmet-mounted cameras to record the mission, and weapons, of course.

  Topher, in an improvised uniform, rides in silence, his crossbow on his lap, a rifle tucked beside him. My weapons are holstered as I’ve been instructed, even though it’s uncomfortable to sit like this. “Too many inexperienced soldiers fumble their weapons from surprise,” Liam tells me, like he’s been in a battle before. “I doubt the Nahx would give you a chance to pick them up. And I don’t think your whole Jackie Chan thing will help you either.” He’s goading me, but I don’t take the bait. I need to focus on staying alive.

  See a Nahx, draw my weapon, fire. Neck, shoulder, or hip joints. Chest, back, and head are bulletproof, unless you have armor-piercing bullets, which we don’t. The videos taught us this. Shoot first, yell second, think later, Topher says, like that’s an easy choice to make. “Code Black” is the warning call we’ve agreed on. The likely scenario is that if you have to use it, they will be your last two words.

  The journey is slow, through remote roads piled with snow and abandoned cars, but surprisingly uneventful. We encounter no Nahx, but see enough evidence of their handiwork to fuel nightmares for a hundred people. Death is everywhere. Every rest stop, every town is littered with bodies, most in a perfect state of preservation. There is some decay, a few babies in strollers, for example, and dogs on leashes, frozen and starved. Some adults and older children too, who died in other ways. We see broken necks, smashed skulls, and some bodies that are so decayed the cause of death is unknown.

  Rather than pitch our winter tents the first night, we all curl up in the Humvees, trembling, and not just from the cold.

  We arrive at the city limits around midnight on the second day. Lookouts spotted Nahx transports hovering and landing at dusk, taking off an hour later. So we linger out of sight and approach from the opposite direction, setting up a rough camp inside an abandoned barn. We eat, and draw straws on who gets to take watch. Whoever it is won’t get any sleep at all, since Liam wants to move out at dawn. My luck is bad and good. I draw one short straw, but Sawyer draws the other.

  Liam won’t let us use the cameras.

  The frigid night air washes over me as the others bed down. I shiver, zipping up my jacket and pulling on a knitted hat, gathering my gun and knife in their holsters. I buckle them into place, then slip on my gloves. Sawyer and I begin our watch, heading in opposite directions around the barn.

  We pace, passing each other every few minutes. Sawyer nods a greeting each time. When this gets boring, he begins telling long meandering jokes, one line at a time. I have to stifle a laugh each time he gets to the punch line, even though I can hardly remember the beginning of the joke. Eventually, he runs out of jokes, and we continue the watch in silence.

  My mind drifts here and there as I trudge through snow. I think of my parents again. They might have survived. I have no way of contacting them unless we get to some kind of proper communication. Not for the first time, I try to imagine what they are going through. It’s something a therapist once told me I should do. Imagine how your parents feel when you do these things, she said about the fighting and the drugs and the staying out all night with questionable boys. Imagine how worried they are.

  As I walk, I have a quiet moment to think about that. There never really was that much fighting outside the dojo. And the drugs were only ever a bit of weed. And how questionable were the handsome twin sons of a nice doctor? It’s possible all the other things the court-mandated therapist said to me were bullshit too. ADHD. Attachment disorder. Anger issues—labels every therapist loves to slap on someone who looks like me.

  Argumentative I’ll concede was pretty accurate. As for the rest, maybe no one ever really knew me, not even my parents. I did try to imagine their worry, but all I ever saw was disappointment that I would never be like them—a beloved English teacher and a respected Métis activist. But maybe I imagined the disappointment, too.

  It’s hard to imagine people when you are not sure they’re alive. In a way, it’s easier to imagine those who are certainly dead. I think of Tucker in his grave, and Felix and Lochie lying dead in the churchyard. I pass Sawyer, who pretends to be a zombie. I think of Topher in his sleeping bag, with Xander snuffling beside him. I’m so cold and tired I’m tempted to crawl between them and fall asleep. The next time I pass Sawyer, I’m laughing to myself about how pitiful I am. He yawns and walks on.

  The yawn is catching. Suddenly, my eyes feel heavy, sticky, like they are adhered to my eyeballs with Krazy Glue. I take a deep breath of the cold night air and try to wake up. The air smells of hay, and a little horsey from the barn. There’s also a faint burnt smell, like charcoal, perhaps coming from the burned-out house.

  Smell is a powerful memory, I’ve heard. The most powerful. With that little whiff of charcoal, the Nahx in the trailer floats into my head again. My wrists ache, and my heart aches, and my mind churns like a storm. I feel like there is something important about what happened, but I can’t quite grasp it. I stop, listening. I can hear Sawyer’s trudging footsteps around the other side of the barn. Closing my eyes, I remember the plodding gait of the Nahx rocking as he carried me. I don’t remember being picked up or set down, but I have a slip of a memory of being carried, of looking up at his shadowed shape, with the stars behind it. He was tall, straight backed, and warm. I remember the warmth.

  When I open my eyes, he’s there.

  A barely visible shadow lingers in the dark by the burned-out house, looking right at me, a night-armored Nahx invader standing twenty feet away.

  I’m paralyzed. Code Black, my mind shrieks, but nothing comes out of my mouth. I reach for my weapons, my lungs trying to take in enough breath to scream. When my gun sticks in the holster, I glance down to free it, and when I look back up, the Nahx is gone.

  “Rave?” I spin around, both weapons raised. It’s Sawyer, standing there, a horse blanket slung over his shoulders. “Whoa, it’s me. Sawyer.”

  Finally I gasp, as my breath catches up to my galloping heart. I must look wild, because Sawyer raises his hands and steps slowly forward. “It’s okay. It’s me.”

  “There was a N-Nahx,” I stammer, pointing back with my pistol. “Right there. Standing right there.”

  Sawyer frowns and looks over my shoulder, taking another step toward me. “Holster your weapons, please,” he says in a firm tone, and I do so, dazed. Sawyer reaches out and touches my shoulder. His firm grip brings me back to my senses.

  “There’s nothing there,” Sawyer says, letting go of my shoulder. “If there had been a Nahx there, you would be dead. So would I.”

  “I saw it,” I say.

  Sawyer steps back and looks at me. Then he turns me around and checks my back. “What are you looking for?”

  “The videos said the darts are sometimes duds. Did you feel anything?” He searches the ground around me.

  “He didn’t have a weapon,” I say.

  “He?”

  “The Nahx.” I try to remember the shape of the shadow in the dark.

  Sawyer frowns a
t me for a moment. I think he’s about to tell me I imagined it, but then he shrugs off his blanket, draws his gun, and clicks the safety off. “Show me where it was standing,” he says.

  I take him to the spot by the house. With his free hand he pulls a small squeeze-charged flashlight from his thigh pocket and cranks it, shining the dim light on the ground.

  “There’s nothing here.” He shines his flashlight away from the snow on to the clear ground. “I wish that tosser had given you a camera. You’re sure you saw something?”

  I don’t know what to say. I had just been thinking about the Nahx when he appeared before me. I’m exhausted and paranoid, half starved and weak with cold. “Maybe . . . ,” I start. Maybe what? Maybe the Nahx who captured me, who delivered me to the edge of the mountain a hundred miles away, who spared my life, followed me here? It’s utterly ridiculous. I don’t even finish my sentence.

  Sawyer clicks his safety back on and holsters his pistol, also pocketing his flashlight. He walks back and collects his blanket from the ground, carefully laying it around my shoulders. It smells of hay and horse, but not of charcoal. “You were sleepwalking, I think, Rave,” he says to me, like I am a child, but I don’t know how to argue.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I say.

  In the morning we fan out from the barn and cover our tracks as best we can. We take what we need for the day, leaving the Humvees and most of the supplies. As the sky lightens we set off. I see Topher and Sawyer walking together, talking in low tones. After a few minutes Sawyer jogs up to the front of the line, and Topher drifts back until he is next to me, matching my pace in a heavy silence.

  “Sawyer told you,” I say finally.

  “Lots of us see things,” he says. “Xander sees his old dog.”

  “I’m not seeing things,” I say. “I think it was the Nahx from the trailer. The one who left me by the fire.”