What Came After

by Sam Winston

  He smelled meat from below and thought about calling out for some in case they’d forgotten about him and he imagined how his voice would sound to the people down there. Coming from the high dark. It would be the voice of a god in a world that didn’t have room for gods. Better to stay forgotten. He pushed the pile of film cans toward the door by way of an alarm and kicked a place clear in the middle of the floor and went to sleep. Thinking of Penny and Liz. That old rhythm returning. Sure that with the dawn he would come up with something.

  * * *

  A child arrived in the morning. A soft rap on the door and a plastic plate pushed through the lower ventilation slot. The plate hanging there balanced and a presence outside waiting for him to take it. He scrambled awake and went to the door. Thinking at least they let him eat. At least they ate from plates themselves. They hadn’t lost that. It could have been worse. He leaned against the tower of film cans and wiped his fingers on his pantlegs and dug in. Cold meat cut cleanly with something sharp. His own knife or some other knife. The presence outside lingering. He leaned forward and narrowed his eyes and looked through the slot and saw it was a child. Girl or boy he couldn’t say. An animal child looking at him as at an animal. Fascinated but afraid. He leaned back on the pile of cans and the child stayed put. The meat tasted good and he said so and the child didn’t respond. He said thank you for bringing this to me and the child just stared at him through the slot. Blinking but that was it. He finished the meat and licked the plate clean and slid it back through the opening in the door, saying are you trying to fatten me up or what. Smiling. The child taking the plate and turning its back and running like mad.

  He didn’t despair. He had two aims for the day. First to work some likely bit of the projector loose, and second to mind the schedule of the people in the auditorium. Family or colony or whatever you’d call them. Tribe maybe. He did his best to identify individuals by size and demeanor and the particular rags and skins they wore. The one who’d brought him up here at gunpoint still seemed to be in charge, judging by his manner and by the subservient pose that others fell into when he was around. He kept Weller’s gun clipped to a leather thong tied around his waist and he wore the bandoliers as if they signified his status, which Weller guessed they did. He’d need to keep an eye on him.

  They left the premises early and they stayed gone. Keeping the kind of schedule any working person kept. The child went with the rest. Two by two and three by three they passed through a fire door close to the front of the auditorium, up by the stage. A couple of them staying behind to finish up one chore or another and then those two going as well. Only one stayed behind for good, the one he’d seen turning the spit. The one who’d moved so slowly and painfully. Left behind here to circulate all day, sorting this and that, tending the fire. Clearly of no use in the harsh green woods and perhaps revered in some way for his or her age. Her age, he thought. But he couldn’t say for sure.

  He worked silently and steadily on the projector. Freeing the housings and prying the metal trim loose. Mice lived in each of the housings and they scrambled away at his touch in a shower of sawdust and shit that turned into a torrent when he pulled the covers away. The decorative trim was thin chromed metal too weak to be of any use. It broke when he folded it forward and back on itself enough times, but a short length of it doubled over and flattened on the concrete beneath the hammer of his boot-heel made a good flat-bladed screwdriver, which was something. The spool on the top of the projector was vacant but the spool on the bottom had an empty reel mounted on it, a skeleton of galvanized steel that looked useful. It was held on by a locking mechanism that had seized up a long time ago, but the mechanism was held together by screws and Weller had a screwdriver now.

  He had the reel off and taken to pieces and had begun filing one arm to a sharp edge when he heard the fire door open down below. He stood and went to the window and watched. People coming back in, silent as monks, bearing skinned animals and scrap wood and salvage. A stringer of fish. Dropping everything and settling in and signaling to one another with those hand motions again. The old woman, for he had grown certain that an old woman is what she was, put more wood on the fire. Weller counted them all again just to be sure.

  The child appeared at his door again, carrying another plate. Slipping it through the ventilation slot and balancing it there until Weller took it and then waiting. Weller ate and burped and said I feel like Hansel and Gretel in here or don’t you know about Hansel and Gretel. Nothing back from the child. The gingerbread house and all, he said. He finished and licked the plate clean, wondering if he could make this child a friend. Saying come on now, didn’t anybody ever tell you that old story. The woods and the breadcrumbs. The wicked witch and the gingerbread house that turns out to be just a trap in the end. The child listening, drawing ever so slightly nearer. Blinking. Weller deciding that it was a girl after all but not being able to put into words why he thought so. Thinking of Penny. Maybe that was all.

  The girl took the plate and tilted her head to one side and didn’t move otherwise. Weller got the idea that she was waiting for something else. For some word. He came slowly to his knees and the girl pulled away again. He held still and the girl didn’t come back. She was just a shadow out there against the dusty light that rose up from the lobby. Come on, Weller whispered. Leaning forward slow. Cat got your tongue?

  At which the child came forward and showed him. Showed him through the slot. Came near and opened wide and let him see the reason that she hadn’t spoken. She had no tongue at all. Just rotten teeth and the black pit of her throat and a hard wet knot pulsing. Weller drew breath. She clamped her mouth shut and dropped the plate and ran.

  * * *

  Later the old woman came. She stood outside banging on the door with something hollow as if she were demanding that he open up when she was actually warning him back. And back he went, as far away from the door as the little room permitted, dropping the metal arm that he’d been working on into his pocket. Hearing the hollow banging on the door and seeing her legs blocking the lower ventilation slots but not seeing anything through the upper slots at all and guessing who it was. He hollered all right come on in I won’t try anything. For all the good talking to her might do. She sprang the lock and pushed the door open a crack and slid through. The door opening hard and the old woman stronger than she looked, using her shoulder. She kept an eye on him and put down a red plastic bucket. Just inside. Closing the door behind her but not locking it and giving Weller a look like don’t you come near. Like don’t you dare. The red plastic bucket a warning and its missing wire handle proof that someone had been circumspect. Weller felt the arm from the take-up reel in his pocket and wondered who. Who had been careful about what he might do with a length of heavy wire and who knew she was up here and who might be waiting for him to make a mistake and push his luck.

  The woman leaned forward in a crooked way that made her seem both smaller and more threatening, and she looked Weller square in the eye. Steady and unafraid. Almost taunting. She was bent and wizened and lined all over like a map of someplace nobody had visited for a long time. Filth in those lines and puckers. Every pore and cut and eroded place plugged up with dirt. But she looked at him evenly and calmly and with serious intent. Holding out an accusatory finger. He thought she might begin signaling something to him the way he’d seen them signal to each other down below and he felt at a loss on that account, ignorant, but she didn’t signal anything. She just held out her finger quivering. And after a moment, in a nearly inaudible voice that hissed and creaked from disuse, she said, “You leave my grandchild be.” Five words that took all her breath.

  “Your grandchild.”

  “Shhh.” Her finger to her lips. “I still carry a little weight around here is all.”

  Nothing from Weller.

  The woman backed up and unlatched the door and toed the bucket toward him. A peace offering or something. Who knows. “We can save you for the cold weather or we can eat you right no
w,” she said, “it’s all the same to me.”

  “I’m—”

  “That child’s got troubles enough.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sure she does.” For what child doesn’t.

  * * *

  In the morning he rose and went to stand by the square window, patiently rubbing his bit of steel on the cinderblock and watching the day unfold below. Work details forming just as they had yesterday. The old woman tidying up and not looking toward the projection booth even once, as if he weren’t there. A couple of the men, the leader and one other, kneeling together over what looked from his elevation like one of his road maps, poking at it with their fingers, disagreeing about something from the way they looked at each other and the way their hands flashed. Tight little movements at chest height. Something belligerent about them. A disagreement. Weller thought he knew who would win.

  The other man folded the map and put it in Weller’s backpack along with a few other things. The leader took some of those things back out and the other man let him. He didn’t look happy about it, but he acquiesced. He knelt and dug around underneath a pile of junk and located the bag with Weller’s spare pistol in it and the half-carton of ammunition and the leader shook his head. No. He patted the weapon hanging from the leather thong around his waist as if he were the only person in the world entitled to wear such a thing. The other man shrugged and hoisted the pack onto his back and they both made for the door. Separating once they were outside, the leader going left and the other man going right and the fire door clapping shut behind them.

  Soon everybody was gone except the old woman. The granddaughter leaving with the rest of them. Weller made a point of watching her go and he saw no sign of affection pass between those two. No sign of any connection whatsoever. Just two animals. Not even animals. Animals showed affection or something that you could mistake for affection, particularly with their own young. Dogs and cats, foxes and deer. No doubt even bears, which he’d thought these people were when he’d first seen one of them. He got thinking about that moment and about the narrow column of smoke he’d seen rising out over the forest earlier that morning. He’d thought then that the smoke was from a lightning strike but now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe they’d been watching him all along. Maybe he should have been more careful. It was too late now. Standing alongside the wall scratching his bit of steel against the cinderblock and checking his progress and watching the last of the people in the auditorium below filter out. Like bees, he decided. Like some kind of insect. Insects working together toward some automatic aim. They’d made themselves that way.

  Lucky him, he thought. The place emptying out every day except for the old woman. Plenty of food coming in, just in case she was right about what they had in mind for his fate. Every day that they came back with rabbits or birds or fish he had another day to work on freeing himself. And whenever he finally pried the pins out, all he’d have to do was wait until it was just the old woman home before he opened up the door and left. As simple as that.

  He thought of how easy it would be and he thought of getting home to Liz and Penny and it gave him the patience he needed. Plus now he knew where to find his spare pistol.

  Later on she brought his food. She didn’t enter this time. She stood outside the door while he ate and that was all right because it meant she didn’t see when he soaked up a pool of grease with a part of his shirttail and saved it for lubricating the hinges. She just bent to slide the plate through and then stood outside the door. He talked to her, though. Said he hadn’t meant any trouble by speaking to the girl. By seeing if she knew some old fairy tale. It wasn’t anything. He hadn’t meant any harm. Certainly not by asking if the cat had her tongue since who knew. It was just an expression people had.

  The woman didn’t answer. Weller just talking to the idea of her outside the door. Talking and tearing off a piece of his shirttail with his teeth and sopping up grease and continuing to talk. Telling her he hadn’t meant any harm. Not to a poor little girl. Not when he had a little girl of his own back home who was the whole reason he was down here in the first place.

  Just planting that seed. Sliding the plate back through and thanking the old woman kindly, and planting that seed.

  * * *

  She brought him his breakfast the next day and he talked to her some more. Told her why he was on the road if she was interested. Why he’d come so far from home. How that daughter he’d told her about was blind and how he was going to get her cured if it killed him. Not looking for sympathy but just telling his story, the way a person would.

  Around noon, when they were all alone in the building, he stepped away from what he was doing and called down to her from the square window. She glanced up at the sound of his voice and quickly turned her back as if to pretend she hadn’t heard him. Busying herself. He called down asking her name. Saying his name was Henry and what was hers. She didn’t answer.

  * * *

  He had his tools ready, and he began working on the hinges. Working on the top hinge for a while and moving to the middle when his back started to seize up and then kneeling to work on the bottom. Repeating that. Thinking he’d like to get far enough today that he could work a little grease into each of them and have that going overnight.

  Between the noise of his scraping and his deep concentration and the old woman’s light tread, he didn’t hear her come up the stairs until she was there. Outside the door saying, “What in hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t tell me nothing. I’ve got ears.”

  “I’m working on your movie projector,” he said. Not sure where the lie had come from but glad to have it.

  “You can lay off right now,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “I want to see if I can make it work.”

  “We got no use for a movie projector.”

  “I know that,” he said. “The bulb’s busted anyway and you don’t have any juice, so you’d be in trouble if you wanted to start watching a movie.”

  “Nobody here needs to watch a movie.”

  “I know that.”

  “So leave it alone.” That cracked voice sounding hurt. “It’s been ages since I seen a movie and I don’t guess I need to see another one.”

  “All right. I’ll quit.”

  So he had to work quietly. He kept his motions small. He wrapped his scrapers with rags. He untangled the bedsheets and the foam rubber that someone had made into a pallet and he shook out the mouse droppings and folded them double and he worked underneath them. There was no air and it was hot and it stank, but everything stank. A man using a red plastic bucket for his toilet doesn’t trouble himself about that. He only considers how long it might be before he’s free of the whole business.

  When they all returned that afternoon he hadn’t scraped away enough to use the grease, so he waited. The old woman brought him his supper and he ate it and saved some more grease in case. She whispered to him through the slot once he’d handed it back. Said she was glad he’d made up his mind to behave himself. Said if he kept it up he might last until his people from Black Rose came and got him.

  He whispered back what was she talking about.

  She was gone.

  * * *

  By that same time the next afternoon he’d broken through to raw metal in three places, one at the top of each hinge where the pins went down through, and he worked the sharpened steel into the crevices he’d exposed. Rubbed in some grease and let it work.

  She came and slid him his supper and he whispered to her. What was that she’d said about Black Rose? He wasn’t any Black Rose.

  She said not to kid her. That motorcycle. The helmet. His gear. All of it Black Rose and all of it brand new and nobody got hold of that stuff who didn’t have a claim to it. You try stealing from Black Rose you don’t get very far so don’t try to kid her. She said they’d sent one of their own to negotiate. To cut a deal and sell him back home where he belonged.

  He said, “You
mean that fellow who left.”

  She said, “That’s the one.”

  He said, “So he’s going to Washington.”

  She said, “Wish him luck. You still might get out of here in one piece.”

  It was ridiculous but he didn’t say so. Black Rose would come get him if he’d taken possession of that car he was after, but until then he was utterly dispensable. The man was chasing down a dead end. Probably fixing to get shot. He felt some sympathy for him but not enough to say so. Not enough to say so and let the old woman see how little value he actually had in the world. So what he said was, “That’s a good plan. You folks think of everything.”

  And what she said was, “Don’t get smart.” The fellow who’d left was her son-in-law. She’d lost her daughter in the Great Dying, but still. Family was family.