Lightning Child

by Hakok, R. A.

  ‘Excellent choice.’

  She pushes it open and steps through, but instead of following her in I wait. It’s been weeks since we’ve been alone together, without either the kid or the Juvies nearby. I should be looking forward to this. But somehow I can’t help my thoughts returning to what I thought I saw in the plant room earlier.

  I shake my head.

  I’m being stupid.

  I take a deep breath and step over the threshold.

  The cots bolted to the walls are too narrow to share so she takes the thin mattresses off, lays both side-by-side on the floor, then latches the frames out of the way. I unpack our sleeping bag while she wriggles out of her thermals and slips under the quilted material. I set the flashlight down so I can get undressed, not paying attention to where I point it. Her eyes narrow at the beam, and in the second before she reaches to turn it away I glimpse again what I had almost convinced myself I had imagined down in the plant room.

  I freeze, one foot still caught in the leg of my pants, but she’s busy pointing the flashlight at the wall and doesn’t notice. The pale cone of light reflects dully off the tired steel. Even as I watch it shrinks, the weakening bulb shifting from yellow to orange as it dies.

  ‘Hurry up, slow poke.’

  I finish getting undressed, making much more of a deal than I need to of folding my clothes. She props herself up on one elbow, watching my progress from inside the sleeping bag.

  ‘Really? That’s your priority right now? Should I be worried, Gabe?’

  She says it like it’s a joke, but when I look down the smile that goes with it is less certain. She holds back the flap. I don’t know what else to do so I climb in beside her.

  The flashlight flickers for a few seconds, steadies, then finally blinks out. For a moment afterimages of the dying bulb swirl across my vision, then they too fade, leaving only blackness. I close my eyes then open them again, like I do when I’m trying to get them to adjust. It makes no difference, though; I can’t see a thing. We lie there for a while, barely touching, then she takes my wrist, guides my hand to her side. After a moment she moves it down to her hip. Where there should be cotton my fingers feel only skin.

  I think of the nights I have spent since we quit Eden, trying to find a way past that narrow stretch of material; the daylight hours spent in contemplation of how it might be achieved. My efforts never came to anything. Whatever subtlety, distraction or boldness I attempted, the result was always the same: my hand would gently be relocated elsewhere.

  I let my fingers rest where she has placed them.

  All I can think is how cold she feels.

  She murmurs something I can’t make out, shifts closer. I feel her arms slip up behind my neck. Her face is only inches from mine but the darkness is complete, impenetrable; I can’t make out anything there.

  But she can see you.

  She stretches up, pressing into me, and now I feel her breath on my neck. An image appears, unbidden, the flashes of silver I saw earlier. I feel myself tense.

  She pauses. I screw my eyes shut, trying to push it away, but the image reappears, and this time the voice returns with it. It effects a drawl, the last thing Hicks said to me as we stepped out of The Greenbrier’s tunnel.

  When the time comes there’ll be no warning. It’ll be like a switch has been flipped.

  I know it’s Mags, but I can’t help it. As she leans in to kiss me again I flinch.

  She stops.

  ‘What’s wrong, Gabe?’

  My heart’s pounding and there’s a tightness in my chest, a weight, just beneath my ribcage, like I’d get when I’d go out in the tunnel in Eden.

  ‘Nothing. I…I guess I’m just a little tired.’

  I feel her pull back. I can’t see a thing, but in my mind’s eye I picture her, examining my face, searching it for proof of the lie I’ve just told. It won’t be hard to find. I’m sixteen years old; most of the time it feels like I was standing way too close to the front of the line when hormones were being handed out. Nobody knows that better than Mags. This isn’t an invitation she’d ever have expected to be declined.

  She exhales slowly, and then for what seems like an eternity there’s just the darkness and the weight of her stare. Finally she turns around. I slip my arm hesitantly around her waist, but this time she doesn’t press back into me.

  *

  HE SITS ON HIS SLEEPING BAG, his back to the wall. The lobby is small, narrow. A row of bank machines at one end, their long-dead screens gray, filmed with dust. At the other a small trashcan, lying on its side. Scraps of crumpled paper spill out onto the moldering carpet.

  The remains of his meal lay spread out around him. He picks at the pouch’s contents with the plastic fork. The girl says he has to eat as much of it as he can, so he takes another bite. He tells himself it’s not so bad. It doesn’t taste of much at all, really, but if you stir it like she showed him at least it’s not gritty, and that helps.

  He looks out into the parking lot. The girl was supposed to be back by now. The tall boy’s gone to get her. He wonders if he should have told him about the others he met, in the shopping mall. But then the boy might have tried to find them, and the girl with the pink hair said that wouldn’t have been a good idea.

  He takes another forkful of the food, chews it slowly. Even mixed up properly it’s not as nice as the candy bar. He eyes the HOOAH!, still in its wrapper, sitting on the sleeping bag next to his goggles.

  The boy with the dark skin is gone now, so he doesn’t have to wear them anymore. The boy stayed as long as he could, but eventually it got too cold and he had to go back inside. He offered to make him a fire. The girl lets him build them so he’s gotten quite good at it. He knows how to stack the firewood and where to place the kindling, and to blow on the flame when it catches to so it will spread up through the branches and not die. But the boy said they couldn’t have one, not out here. Somebody might see.

  He looks out to the parking lot. The wind has picked up; it sends snow swirling around the abandoned car.

  A fire would have been fine. No one could be out in that.

  At least not one of them.

  He likes the boy with the dark skin, though. He seems okay. He was nervous at first, even though he tried not to show it. But after a while he rested his gun against the wall and sat down. Not close, but not as far as he could have sat either. He even spoke to him a few times. Mostly just to ask what he could see, so not a conversation exactly, but better than silence. Much better. Back in the cage he wasn’t allowed to talk at all.

  The other boy came out to them a few times, but he never stayed long. He kept to the far corner, clutching his rifle, and pretended to stare out into the darkness. He was pretty scared. He could smell it, even from all the way at the other end of the lobby.

  After the boy with the dark skin went back inside he could hear them, whispering their questions.

  What was it like?

  Did it say anything?

  Weren’t you frightened?

  The boy who stayed in the corner said he wasn’t; he had a gun. The boy with the dark skin told him to shut up. After that it had gone quiet again.

  They’d get used to him, that’s what the girl said.

  But it’s been a long time now.

  Outside the wind gusts against the glass, flexing the pane. He catches his reflection as it shifts. Maybe if he looked more like them. He tilts his head, studying the still-unfamiliar face that stares back at him. The grimy glass makes for a poor mirror, but it shows him enough. The shadows that darken his eyes seem to be fading at last, but slowly. He reaches up, takes off the cap the girl makes him wear, runs the fingers of one hand over his scalp. He feels something there, like the beginnings of stubble. It is hard to tell just by looking. The hair that grows there is white, just like his skin. He can’t be sure, but he doesn’t think that was the color it was, before.

  He looks down at the food pouch, eyeing it guiltily. He will definitely finish it later. He
hesitates for a moment and then reaches for the candy bar. He’s busy tearing at the wrapper with his teeth, so at first he doesn’t hear the footsteps. Then the door creaks open behind him. He drops the HOOAH! and scrabbles for his goggles just as the beam from a flashlight dances into the lobby.

  The boy with the curly hair steps through, zipping up his parka.

  ‘What’re you still doing out here?’

  He turns away from the light while he sorts out his goggles. Once he’s got them situated he looks back at the boy and says he’s keeping watch.

  The boy hugs his arms to his sides and glances back over his shoulder, to where the others are huddled around the fire.

  ‘Aren’t you cold?’

  He shakes his head. The truth is he’s not. It is colder out here, but it doesn’t bother him. Not really.

  The boy stands there for a moment, as though he’s considering that. He steps back into the other room but then he returns, carrying an armful of branches from the firewood they collected earlier. He dumps them on the ground and then heads over to the corner and bends to the trashcan.

  ‘We’re not supposed to have a fire.’

  The boy doesn’t look up from his task.

  ‘Nobody’s coming now.’

  He returns with a handful of crumpled ATM receipts. The flames are reluctant at first, but slowly they creep up through the kindling and then start to lick at the wicker of blackened limbs above. When he’s certain they’ve caught he sits back on his haunches and dusts off his hands, but he makes no move to leave. He watches the fire for a while, as though measuring his work.

  ‘So what’s with your eyes? Are they troubling you?’

  He shakes his head. The tall boy asked him that too, when he first started wearing the goggles. But the truth is they’re not, or at least nothing like they used to. The light outside sometimes hurts, but only in the very middle of the day, and even then not much. When he’s wearing his goggles he hardly even notices it.

  ‘Why do you wear those all the time then?’

  He shrugs. The boy looks at him for a while like he might press him on it, but he doesn’t.

  ‘Is it true you can see out there?’

  He hesitates. Being able to see in the dark is another way he’s different. But the tall boy already told the boy with the dark skin about that, so they probably all know by now. He nods.

  The boy stares into the fire for a while as though he’s considering this. He looks like he has another question he wants to ask, but it takes a long time for him to get to it.

  ‘Mags too?’

  He’s not sure what to say. He’s pretty certain the girl doesn’t want the others to think she’s different, any more than he does. That’s why she wears the cap and pretends with the flashlight. But he doesn’t think this boy means her any harm. He sees how he looks at her, when he thinks no one’s watching. Sometimes he feels a little sad for him.

  He nods again.

  The boy with the curly hair keeps looking at the fire. Eventually he says Okay, then, as if to himself, and then he gets up and goes back inside.

  *

  I OPEN MY EYES SLOWLY, still fuggy with sleep. The cold darkness, the thin mattress, the unyielding steel, all are familiar, and in those first uncertain moments between sleeping and waking I think I’m back in my cell in Eden, waiting for the buzzer to sound, and everything that has happened since we left, all just fragments of a dream that, however vivid, will soon begin to fade.

  I pull the sleeping bag around me. Not so much a dream as a nightmare. I close my eyes and wait for it to recede. The dream is stubborn, however; I find myself wishing for the bulkhead lamp to blink on and banish it. But for long seconds nothing happens. I open my eyes again as it slowly begins to dawn on me where I am.

  I stretch out one hand, sweeping the cold metal for the flashlight. I pick it up and crank the stubby handle. It graunches a complaint but after a few turns the bulb starts to glow, slowly illuminating my cramped sleeping quarters. I play the beam over the worn steel. Even with the bunks latched out of the way it feels tight in here, confined. The reluctant cone of light continues its journey, coming to rest on a pile of clothes by the door. I stare at them for a moment, vaguely aware that something’s not right. Far too neatly folded for my hand. And Mags certainly isn’t in the habit of picking up after me.

  Mags.

  The thought of her brings everything else back. I swing the flashlight around, but I’m alone. I struggle out of the sleeping bag, pulling my clothes on as I stagger out to the landing.

  I waited until she’d lapsed into whatever passes for sleep for her now, then I checked her crucifix again. I had no reason for doing it other than habit; I already knew what I’d find. After that I just lay there, waiting, trying to keep images of things I have seen in dark places from popping into my head. She woke with a start some time later. I listened while her breathing calmed, pretending I was asleep. I don’t think she was fooled, but she mustn’t have had anything to say to me either, because she didn’t call me on it. For a long while we just stayed like that, not speaking. I hadn’t meant to, but I guess at some point I must have drifted off.

  And now she’s gone.

  I lean over the guardrail and call out to her, but the only answer I get is my voice echoing back up through the silo. I tell myself there’s no reason to be concerned. She’ll have got bored just lying there and gone off to do something, maybe see if she can find those manuals she was talking about, that’s all. But my heart’s beating a little faster than it should as I cross the short gangway and start down the stair.

  The steps spiral down, past the dorms below, then the showers. I call out as I go, but still there’s no answer. The voice pipes up; it has something it wants me to see. It shows me a long tunnel, a flashbulb image of something pale, impossibly thin, bounding towards me. I screw my eyes shut, trying to banish it, but the voice grows bold with the darkness. It shows me another. The basement of a hospital this time; a dark shape slipping from behind an operator booth.

  I grip the handrail.

  I’m being stupid. It’s Mags. She wouldn’t hurt me.

  Marv this time, on his knees in the snow, silver eyes staring back at me from inside the shadow of his hood as he slips the hunting rifle from his shoulder. My hand drops to my hip. I realize I’ve left Hicks’ pistol back in the cell.

  The voice wonders whether it might be a good idea to go fetch it.

  I put that shameful thought from my mind and climb through the hatch into the plant room. At the bottom of the ladder I pause, listening. I think I hear a sound now, drifting up from below. A tapping: hollow, metallic. It stops for a second and then resumes.

  I rejoin the stair. Every few steps I call out; still there’s no answer. I keep following the flashlight around, forcing my boots to continue their downward journey. The air grows thick, dank. I feel like I should be close to the bottom, but I’ve forgotten to count, so I can’t be certain. I listen for the sound of lapping water. It’s hard to hear over my own breathing, though.

  The tapping grows louder. It seems to be coming from the end of one of the gangways. I point the flashlight there, but whatever might be causing it is beyond the beam’s reach. I crank the handle. Something inside grinds in protest and then the dynamo whirs; for a few seconds the bulb grows brighter.

  I step off the stair and make my way along the catwalk. An access panel lies propped against the guardrail, the old steel dented, scarred. I find her just beyond it, lying on her back on the metal grating, peering up into the belly of one of the ancient machines, an assortment of tools spread out around her. There’s a windup flashlight among them, but she must not have need of it because she’s allowed it to go out.

  I call her name again. There’s a pause and then she puts down whatever it is she’s working on and starts to wriggle herself out. My heart races again as she sits up, but she gets a hand up to ward off the beam before I have a chance to see whatever might be there.

  ‘Poi
nt that somewhere else, will you?’

  I hesitate for a second, then let the beam fall to the grating.

  ‘What is it, Gabriel?’

  The long form of my name; never a good sign.

  ‘I…I was calling for you.’

  ‘I heard.’

  I want to say something about what happened last night, about what I saw in Starkly, about what might be about to happen to her. But how do you begin with that? Hey Mags, guess what? The scanner I thought would cure you? Yeah, it didn’t do that after all. Turns out you and the kid both still have one-way tickets to Furytown.

  In the end I just point the flashlight at the generator and ask if she needs help.

  She tilts her head and stares at me for a moment, like she wants to know if that’s really the question I want answered. When I don’t come up with another she just shakes her head and slides back under the old machine.

  I tell her I’ll go back and fetch the others, then. But the only answer I get is the sound of the tapping resuming.

  *

  I CLIMB BACK UP THROUGH THE HATCH, trading the plant room’s depths for the compressed levels above. At the dorms I step off, grab my parka and backpack from the cell, then continue my spiraling journey up through the silo. When I reach the concrete shaft I pause to crank the flashlight. The handle sticks but then the bulb burns brighter, throwing confused shadows over the rust-streaked walls that shift and merge as I climb. Tight spaces don’t bother me anything like they used to, but there’s a weight that has lodged itself behind my breastbone, an ache that is at the same time hollow and heavy, just like I’d get when I’d step into Eden’s tunnel. I quicken my stride, anxious to be outside again now.

  At last the shaft ends and I hurry along the passageway and into the airlock. I push back the outer door, step outside, and for a moment I just stand there, waiting for that feeling I’d get when I’d crawl out through the portal, like an invisible burden had been lifted. But the weight in my chest remains.

  I look up to the sky. Somewhere off to the east dawn’s already breaking. The light that filters through is gray, flat, but sufficient to grant me my first view of our new home. There’s not much to look at. Blackened trees circle the compound, pressing themselves up against the rusting chain-link, like they might still hold a grudge for the clearing they were once forced to concede. The part of Mount Weather that was above ground was busy with buildings: storage sheds, a barracks, a motor pool, the control tower; even a hangar for a helicopter, but here there’s nothing other than the two huge concrete cubes that guard the entrance and a single tattered windsock, clanking listlessly against its pole. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Mount Weather was an underground city; the silo’s only a fraction of its size. I can’t escape the feeling something’s missing, all the same; something that should be here, but isn’t.