Unable to sleep, Adele wandered into the living room. Even though Momma would most likely ignore her, she’d still get some comfort just from being in her mother’s presence and not sitting there alone. The living room was lit only by the glow of the television. Momma had turned the sound low, so as not to attract attention from outside. Adele turned toward the couch and gasped. Her mother was gone. The blanket had been kicked to the floor and the pillow and couch cushions still held her impression. Adele glanced at the stained coffee table. It was littered with used needles, an overflowing ashtray, and empty, crumpled cigarette packs. Most telling was the television remote control sitting on the arm of the couch. Momma’s lighter was gone, as were her shoes. Adele knelt down and reached under the couch, careful not to jab herself with any discarded needles that might be lurking in the darkness. She pulled out a slim cigar box that her mother used to hide her stash in. When she opened the box, there was a faint whiff of tobacco. The box was empty.
“Oh, Momma…”
She’d gone outside, in search of heroin or cigarettes, or more likely both.
Adele began to cry, not so much from sadness or fear. She felt those things, of course, but she felt another emotion, deep down beneath them, and it was that strange, unexpected emotion that caused the tears.
The emotion was relief.
* * *
Momma had left the door unlocked, so the first thing Adele did was lock it. She made herself a bowl of cereal. There was no milk in the fridge so she ate it dry. Then she did something she rarely had the opportunity to do—she picked up Momma’s remote and changed the channel to something she wanted to watch. Two of the local Baltimore affiliates were off the air, and the third was showing news, but Cartoon Network was still on the air. She sat there, munching cereal and watching television, and was content.
She fell asleep in front of the television.
* * *
She woke to another noise outside. This time, it wasn’t gunshots or screams. It was quieter—more discreet. At first, Adele thought she’d imagined it, but then the sound came again—a soft, subdued scratching at the door, followed by a thump. Wide-eyed, she pulled the blanket over her head. The fabric smelled like her mother. The noise came again, louder this time. Adele got up from the couch and padded across the room in her bare feet. Holding her breath, she glanced through the peephole.
It was Momma. She looked sick. Her eyes were glassy and drool leaked from the corner of her open mouth. As Adele watched, she raised one arm and scratched at the door again.
She must have found some, Adele thought. She scored, and now she can’t open the door. I’d better let her in and help her lie down.
Adele’s fingers fumbled with the lock. As it slid back, Momma pushed the door open so fast that Adele had to scurry backward to avoid being hit by it. Momma stumbled into the house, swaying unsteadily on her feet. Her lips were pale, and her eyes remained unfocused. She glanced at Adele, frowning in confusion, as if she wasn’t sure who the girl was. That was when Adele noticed the bite on Momma’s arm. There was an ugly, bloody, ragged hole where her biceps had been. The wound was white and red in the center, and bluish purple strands of tissue dangled from it.
“Momma, you’re hurt! Lie down.”
Her mother’s lips pulled back in a snarl. She reached for Adele and moaned. Drool splattered onto the floor. Adele had time to realize that Momma was neither high nor hurt. She was dead. And then Momma lunged for her, finally paying the attention that her daughter had craved for so long.
Screaming, Adele ducked her mother’s outstretched arms and ran down the hall. She fled into her bedroom and slammed the door. Her mother’s slow footsteps plodded toward her, but then stopped. Adele shoved her toy box against the door and stood there panting, waiting for the blows and scratches that would surely follow, but they didn’t. If Momma was on the other side of the door, she was being quiet. Adele wondered if it could be a trick. Maybe Momma was lurking, waiting for her to come out. The zombies on television hadn’t seemed very smart, but this wasn’t televison. This was real life. This was her mother.
Adele tiptoed over to the far corner and slumped down to the floor. She kept her gaze focused on the door, waiting for it to burst open, but it didn’t. She began to cry again—this time, because that feeling of relief was gone. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t escape through the window, because Michael had nailed them all shut. But even if she could have gotten the window open, there would be no escape outside. She was safer in here with one zombie than she was out on the streets with hundreds.
If she could make it over to Mrs. Withers’s apartment next door, she’d be okay. She was sure of it. Michael and Mrs. Withers could help her. But the only way to get there was through the front door, which meant going past Momma. Taking a deep breath, Adele crept to the door again and listened. The only sound from the rest of the apartment was the television, which was still tuned to the Cartoon Network.
“Momma?” Her voice, barely a whisper, was simultaneously hopeful and terrified.
Like she had when she was alive, Momma didn’t answer.
Adele reached for the doorknob with one trembling hand and turned it. Then she slowly opened the door a crack, fully expecting her mother to barge into the room. When she didn’t, Adele opened it wider and peeked into the hall. It was empty. She shut the door again and got dressed. She had a moment of panic when she realized that her shoes were in the living room, but then she found a pair of flip-flops in her closet. When she was finished, Adele quietly rummaged through her toy box and pulled out a small rubber ball. Then she opened the door again and rolled the ball down the hall. It bounced into the living room and vanished from sight. Still, there was no reaction.
Satisfied that her mother had left, Adele crept down the hall. The television grew louder as she neared the living room. When she rounded the corner, two things became immediately apparent. The front door was still hanging open …
… And Momma was sitting on the couch.
Adele stifled a shriek. Her mother sat slumped over on the sofa, her wound leaking onto the cushions. Flies flitted about the bite, landing on Momma’s arm and then taking off again. Their droning buzz was noticeable beneath the noise from the television. If Momma noticed her, she gave no indication. The zombie’s attention was focused instead on the remote control. Momma clutched it in one hand, and her thumb slid idly across the buttons, but she was holding it backward and nothing happened. As Adele watched, the thing that had been her mother moaned.
Adele looked out into the street and saw that it was empty. She was sure it wouldn’t be for long. If she was going to flee next door, she had to do it now. Taking a deep breath, she dashed into the living room and raced past her mother. She glanced back over her shoulder as she ran through the open door.
Momma hadn’t even noticed.
THE HAPPY BIRD AND OTHER TALES
Rio Youers
EVEN THE SKY IS SCARRED. Never blue but constantly ash-colored, and rent so that rain falls in narrow sheaves. Its belly is touched by the glow from campfires, where villagers huddle for warmth, damp blankets on their shoulders. Their eyes are open wounds. Nothing left in their hearts. They are the broken pieces of something that can never be fixed. Children play in the ruins of the school. Others make up games with stones and shapes drawn in the dirt. Their hands are cold and cracked.
Two years since Kosta Kojo was overthrown and executed for war crimes. The conflict is history, but the suffering continues.
The old woman glances at him and tries to smile but her lips only tremble weakly. She looks at the apple he has given her. It is pale green, bruised and nicked, but still her eyes mist with grateful tears. She clutches the piece of fruit as if someone might take it from her—as if, with callous nature, the wind would spirit it away.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“You feel gratitude.” His voice is dull, as gray as the sky.
“Yes.”
“Anything
else?”
The old woman nods and a tear trickles, separates into the creases of her nose. “I am hungry. And scared.”
“We are all scared,” he replies.
Raif Cerić is twenty-seven years old but the lines on his face run deep and he walks crooked, supported by a steel cane he has fashioned from wreckage. His left leg is atrophied, his calf muscle a series of broken strings. A bullet from an M57 is lodged close to the bone. His body is a tapestry of scar tissue. Nose broken out of shape. Blind in his right eye from countless beatings.
“We are all scared,” he says again.
Across the wastes of their village, stepping over rubble and broken glass and appliances stripped for parts. This building, with its blackened walls and collapsed roof, is where his best friend had lived, where they had laughed, guzzled rakia, and played belot until the numbers on the cards had blurred. Here is the shell of his brother’s house, empty of everything, especially life. This section of wall is all that remains of Jasna Džihan’s home. Jasna had been the village “grandmother,” loved by all. She offered food to the hungry, blankets to the cold. The light in her eyes gave hope to the forlorn. Jasna had been raped and beaten in front of the entire village. Her dismembered corpse hung from the swing frame in the children’s playground for six days.
Dust and ash thicken the air. You can taste it in your throat when you breathe. Weep, and even your tears are stained.
Raif wipes his sunken face and thinks, What are you feeling?
Through the allotment, where seeds are planted but few flourish, seeking nutrients in the soil, foliage pale. Past a row of shacks built from what materials they could salvage, and where they gather when it’s cold. The river they sometimes bathe in. Crippled houses of worship where prayers have turned to lamentations. The cemetery: the only place you will find flowers. Onward, past ruin, stacked and delicate, like books in a library, telling many thousands of tales. To the west, the hospital’s ghost shimmers through the dust. Its thirty-two beds had been filled with children when the Supreme Republic Army took to it with flamethrowers. The building had burned to the ground in less than three hours, but the screams can be heard to this day.
Raif continues to limp through the village, weaving through the rubble and woe, picking a route with the tip of his cane. He comes to the summit road, which leads through the mountains, down into the cities, and from there to the rest of the world. But Raif stops less than a kilometer from the village, at the agreed meeting point: the husk of a burned-out bus. He breathes unevenly and his blind eye weeps gritty tears. Hands on his thighs. Metallic pain seeping from his left leg into his pelvis, his gut.
He waits.
He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out a photograph, damaged by time, by being constantly taken out, creased and folded. It shows a young family: a man, wife, and their son, who looks to be about five years old. The man’s face is too faded to read. All that can be seen of his wife is a swirl of auburn hair. The boy sits on his father’s lap. He is grinning, missing a front tooth but altogether handsome, clutching a book titled The Happy Bird. Raif touches the boy’s face. Draws a circle around his head, like a halo.
“Cerić.”
He jerks, startled, at the sound of his name. Drops the photo. Reaches down to retrieve it and the pain makes him groan. He pushes the photo back into his jacket pocket and straightens with another groan, pressure on his cane, body trembling. A figure steps toward him, broad in the shadows.
“I startled you, Cerić?”
“I didn’t hear you approach.”
“You should be more vigilant.”
Raif nods and runs a hand through his hair. He steps to one side to see the man more clearly. Jergović. A small-time crook from the next village. There are two bulges beneath his jacket. One is the package. The other is a weapon of some description. A lead pipe. Maybe a machete. Insurance, Jergović calls it.
“You found it?” Raif asks.
Jergović nods and his heavy eyes flick down to the bulge in the right side of his jacket.
Raif licks his lips and his blind eye flutters. He feels something deep inside. He thinks it’s hope, but it has been such a long time since he has felt this emotion that he cannot be sure. A gray line of sweat trickles from his brow.
“You have something for me?” Jergović asks.
“I do.” And Raif shakes a knapsack from his back, made from sackcloth and string. He pulls it open and shows Jergović what is inside: apples, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes. Each fresh and ripe. Nothing like the pale, bruised apple he had given the old lady. Jergović plucks a potato from the top and bites into it. Juices dribble onto his chin.
“Good,” he says. Dirt on his teeth.
“Of course,” Raif replies. His healthy eye drifts to the bulge in Jergović’s jacket. He holds out one hand. Jergović grins, drops the potato into the sack, draws the strings tight. There is a moment where Raif thinks he is going to shoulder the goods and run without making the exchange. His heart ticks heavily; he knows he could never give chase. But Jergović opens his jacket and takes out the package, solid and thin, wrapped in old newspaper. Raif all but snatches it from his hand. Peels the wrapping away.
“Yes,” he says, and feels like crying. He turns it over in his hands—can’t remember having seen so much color, so much joy.
A moment later and he is out of Jergović’s shadow and limping back toward the village. It is growing darker now and he can see the fires flickering, like bright wings, smoke lost in the low cloud. He limps past the phantom school and Jasna Džihan’s home. Through the village square, where his people gather in sad flocks. The old lady is no longer there. She has stolen away, Raif thinks, to eat her apple in privacy. She will even eat the core, and perhaps weep guilty tears afterward. A villager notices him and calls out across the square, asks if he has any produce, and Raif lies with a heart like flint, tells him that the crops are effete. He limps on with his eyes down and doesn’t look up until he is on the roadway to his farmhouse.
Before the war, he’d farmed sixteen acres. Maize and wheat, mostly, although his potatoes were regarded as the best in the district. Thirty head of cattle. Goats for dairy. Enough hens to supply the village with eggs. It was a small farm, but rewarding. Now it is—like everything else—a shattered reminder. Withered fields. Stripped machinery. A farmhouse burned to black, brittle sticks. The barn (where SRA soldiers drank, raped, sang noble war songs until their throats were raw) is still standing, filled with mildewed hay, thick with bugs. Raif has salvaged a patch of land where the soil is fertile enough for a few crops. He distributes most throughout the village, though he uses the occasional batch for currency.
He limps, now, into his barn, and to his secret. A place undiscovered by SRA troops during their assault. He brushes aside a thin covering of hay to reveal a trapdoor in the barn floor. Pulls it open. Canted steps lead into a cellar. Used for storing wood before the war. He takes a kerosene lamp from a hook on the wall, lights it, ventures down, closes the trapdoor behind him. The lamp flashes orange on concrete walls and old tools thick with rust, cobweb. The stink of rot and cold earth. A dripping sound. A scratching sound. Raif’s healthy eye flickers in the lamplight. His hope is as brightly colored as the thing inside his jacket.
Across the dirt floor to the wretch in the corner, chained to the wall. Naked and wasted. Dead eyes staring into some pale place beyond words. Raif jabs him with the cane and he looks up, regards Raif without expression.
“What are you feeling?”
The wretch looks away and, as always, says nothing.
* * *
The world had been absorbed in crises. Global economic uncertainty. Civil unrest across the Middle East. War in Africa, Asia. Natural disasters in Chile, Greece, Japan, California. A North Korean despot with his finger on the trigger. Nobody noticed when General Kosta Kojo ascended to power. The world was blind to the anger in his smile. The hate in his eyes. This suited Kojo’s cruel agenda. He declared all Jews and Musl
ims impure and divided the nation in a heartbeat. Skirmishes broke out in all major cities, and after a failed attempt to take his life, Kojo established the Supreme Republic Army and the ethnic cleansing began.
There was resistance but it amounted to nothing. Rebels and militant factions. Unfunded, largely unarmed. A threat of intervention from the West, as hollow as a bullet casing; the West had its own concerns, many of them fiscal, and with Allied forces scattered across the world, they had little to offer in the way of military support. Kojo tightened the screw. His army marched from the cities to the towns, to the villages. The destruction was absolute, apocalyptic. Inhumanity reigned. While women were raped and children murdered, the West existed in a haze of naïveté. It—as ever—flicked channels, from the news to Monday Night Football. It downloaded music and apps and looked at the world like it wasn’t really happening. It clogged the interstates, railways, airports. It slept at night in a warmer bed.
They came to Raif’s village like a new machine. A spinning saw blade that cut through families and homes, across roadways and through livelihoods. Severing hope, goodness. Cutting belief down at the knees. The villagers had no fight. Raif—a strong, young farmer—was made an example of: tied to a post in the square and beaten, tortured, while his family was forced to watch. It was then—looking into the unfeeling eyes of his enemy—that Raif realized the stories about the Dead Ones were true. He’d believed them a fallacy. Metaphor for heartlessness.
No.
Put a gun in a young man’s hands and call him a soldier. Doesn’t make him a killer. Sew a stripe on his arm, a ribbon on his chest. Doesn’t make him soulless. The Supreme Republic Army was formed of patriots, eager to serve their country, their leader, often contrary to their own moral philosophy. For some, it was not easy to shoot a child in the face, to rape an elderly woman, burn babies in their cribs. They did as they were ordered, knowing the punishment for dereliction of duty. Still, there were rumors of SRA soldiers taking their own lives. The easy way out. Others turned to Synph.
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