Dominion

by Doug Goodman

  “Sir, if I may,” Aidan said, “How did you fight back the wargs?”

  “Wargs? You mean the giant dogs? We call them perros de apocalipto. Hounds of the Apocalypse. In combat, they are indomitable. You can’t defeat them.” He looked at them sternly. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”

  “We hid out in a house for two months, and we’ve spent almost a month wandering around East Texas since then,” Aidan said.

  “You must leave the math to someone else, boss. You’re off on your dates. You say it’s been three months since Black Friday, but it is not October. It is nearly Thanksgiving.”

  The lost boys looked at each other in shock.

  “Wait,” Peter said, “We missed Halloween?”

  “Almost three weeks gone. Come, you all look wasted away and drained. Val will show you to your quarters and you will get some rest. We can talk again tomorrow.”

  With that, Mr. Olivarez departed. As Val led them away, Aidan glanced back at the kitchen. Edna’s face-spanning grin had inverted into a giant toad-like frown. She turned away as the boys left.

  Val showed them to their beds, which were in a large red crate at the low end of the bridge on the far side. Their lodging was the third crate up. Aidan couldn’t help noticing that their quarters were close to the guard towers.

  Val said, “I’m sorry, but you will have to climb ladders to get up to your beds.”

  “I would climb razors if it meant there was a bed at the end of them,” Peter said.

  Val ignored Peter. He stared at Alyssa for a bit, then told her good night. She tried to hide her smile from him as she said, “It’s really good seeing you again.”

  The crate had been used to import smartphones, and stacks of the boxes rose to the ceilings. The beds were Tempurpedic. A thick curtain had been strung up to create two adjoining rooms in the crate. Riley and Alyssa slept on the far side of the crate. The boys slept on the side closer to the entry. For the first time in months, they each had their own bed and nobody slept on the floor. Aidan tried to fight the sleep, but between his full belly and the sound of water lapping against the ship channel bridge, he could not resist and soon fell fast asleep.

  Kirk was almost the last person awake. Only Peter was still asleep. The smell of cooked eggs woke him. Kirk rubbed his eyes and brushed his hair out of his face. Colt built a house of cards using smartphones he’d removed from their packaging. Colt was wearing new GAP clothes that looked straight off the rack. Then Kirk saw something that made his senses almost go haywire. In addition to the new clothes and breakfast MREs set out for him, not two feet in front of him rested a carton of cigarettes. He reached for the carton, smelled the tobacco and imagined the smoke filling his lungs.

  “You really need that, man?” Peter asked him from his bed. He yawned.

  “Been three months.”

  “Exactly.”

  Kirk put the carton down. He got out of the bed and put on his shoes.

  “Where you going?” Peter asked him.

  “Well, if I ain’t smoking, I might as well take a leak.”

  “Careful, bro,” Jax said. “They got escorts.”

  Kirk climbed down the ladder. He had to pause halfway down because he was still too drowsy to climb. He hadn’t slept that well in…well, as long as he could remember.

  As he landed barefoot on the ground, he felt the coolness of the November asphalt rising through his feet. For the first time, it felt like November to him. What was it – sixty-some-odd degrees outside? It was a good chill, a wake-up chill.

  An oversized woman holding an AK-47 and wearing a black windbreaker stood outside the cargo crate.

  “I guess I know you’re tough cause you’re wearing a black jacket,” he told her. She didn’t respond.

  “Up here.” Kirk followed the sound to Aidan, who was standing a little farther up the bridge, leaning against the concrete dividers that lined the side of the street. He was watching something higher up on the bridge. Like the rest of the lost boys, Aidan now looked like a walking GAP commercial ad. He wore a bright blue-collared shirt and khakis in addition to the old rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “I dig the new look, Aidan. You’re the gun-toting Boy Scout yuppie I always wanted to be.” Kirk walked up to him, found a space between two dividers, and pulled down his boxers.

  “Hey, we got places for that!” the woman with the AK, who had never stopped watching them, yelled at Kirk. He flipped her off and kept urinating off the side of the bridge.

  “Always the rock star.”

  “I just got a thing against authority,” he yawned. In nothing but his boxers, Aidan realized how sinewy Kirk was. Before Black Friday, Kirk had been the skinny type, so skinny you would miss him if he turned sideways, but since the apocalypse, well, he was pretty ripped. Aidan wanted to ask him when that happened, but decided against it. They had all changed since Black Friday, some for the better.

  “What are you doing out here by yourself anyway?” Kirk asked.

  Aidan shrugged as he turned his attention back to the bridge. Kirk followed his line of sight and saw Alyssa and Val talking to each other. Val must have said something slightly insulting because Alyssa punched his arm. Playfully.

  “You should go up there and say something,” Kirk said.

  “No, it’s not my place. Alyssa was in the same classes as Val and all those GT kids. I was never that smart.”

  “Smart enough to keep us out of trouble for the past couple of months.”

  “Not smart enough to count days. I can’t believe it’s November.”

  “Beat yourself up all you want, but that girl loves you.”

  “Yeah, but am I right for her? Look how happy she is. With all the shit we’re going through, she needs somebody who can make her laugh. She deserves it. I’m too morose for her.”

  “Listen to you talking like some emo. You saved her ass, and she saved yours. You can’t break that kind of bond with a couple of one-liners. Go fight for her.”

  Aidan started to go, and then said, “There was something else. Maybe I’m being paranoid. I know I have a history of being paranoid, but I saw something in the channel below. Watch the currents. There’s something there. I’m not sure what. Shadows in the currents.”

  Kirk looked over where he was just urinating. “If you’re telling me I just pissed on some monster, you could have warned me.”

  Kirk waited for the laugh, but it never came. Aidan was already walking over to Alyssa and Val.

  “Hey, Aidan,” Alyssa said when she saw him walking over. “Val was about to give me a tour. He’s been explaining all the improvements they’ve made. Plumbing, insulation, and they even have central air conditioning and heating in some of the crates.”

  “What’s in the water?” Aidan said without acknowledging Alyssa.

  “What are you talking about?” Val asked.

  “Watch your tone, Aidan,” Alyssa urged. “We are guests.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Aidan said to Val. “I saw it with my own eyes. There’s something beneath us. Some monster. What is it?”

  Val looked to Alyssa for help.

  “I have no idea what he’s talking about,” she said.

  “You bring us here, show this perfect world of beds, air conditioning and cooked meat, but it isn’t so perfect, is it? There’s always a monster around. A dryder, a roc, a warg – what is it this time?”

  Hearing the argument, some of the bridge people approached Val and Aidan.

  “Is he bothering you, Val?” a particularly brutish-looking man with a face tattoo asked.

  “No, I think he’s just confused,” Val said. Then to Aidan, he explained in his most placating voice, “There’s nothing to worry about here, Aidan. Look, I won’t lie to you. There probably are creatures in the channel, but there are creatures everywhere. The difference is, we are protected here. You don’t have to worry, boss. We have it all under control.” Val held Alyssa close to him.

  “Get your hands off h
er!” Aidan shouted. He tried to split them up, but the man with the face tattoo grabbed him by elbow. Pain splintered and cracked up and down his arm.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” the large man mandated. “You need to take a walk and cool off.”

  Later that day, Alyssa came and found Aidan with Kirk. Kirk excused himself to look for a guitar. “All these crates, one of them has to have a guitar in it.”

  Aidan noticed that in addition to new clothes, Alyssa was also wearing new earrings and jewelry. They were real diamonds.

  “Val give you those?”

  “Gee, hon, you look so pretty in the new dress and those wonderful earrings. What’s wrong with you? Why are you being such an ass?”

  “I’m not being an ass. I’m trying to take care of us. And you look very pretty.”

  “Too late, you lost your chance to flatter me. And no, you’re not just trying to take care of us. You’re being an ass, and it’s annoying.”

  “This morning when I got up, I was watching the ship channel. I swear I saw something in the water below. And yesterday, when we went to the kitchen, I looked back at the kitchen lady, and she was giving us dirty looks like we stole her baby or something.”

  “Well, I’m sure the monsters own the water, so you probably saw something, and after your blow-up about rations the other day, we can’t be surprised that somebody here is getting mad if they had to give away some of their food. That doesn’t mean you have to flip out.”

  “No, something’s not right here. Can’t you see? I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about how we’re always being watched. It’s not just the guards, either. Everybody watches. It’s like they’re waiting for something.”

  “Okay, there’s something I think you haven’t picked up on. They have a rule about not carrying weapons here. You’re walking around with a high-powered rifle, Aidan with a scope that looks military bad ass. I’d be watching you, too, if you showed up at my house looking like some Army sniper. You want them to like you, give them the guns.”

  Aidan put his hand on the Winchester. “They told you to tell us that, didn’t they? Val told you.”

  Alyssa groaned. “They’ve been very cooperative so far. And we don’t need the guns. Look around, baby. This place is safe. Wargs can’t jump this high, and they’ve mounted spikes to keep the rocs out. Bridgetown’s militia would blast them out of the sky before they landed.”

  “So they get to have a militia, but we have to give up our weapons?”

  “It’s not like that. They don’t know you like I know you. I’m sure once they get to know you, you can have the gun back.”

  “This place is bad for us, Alyssa. We need to rest up, then we need to keep heading north.”

  Alyssa put her hands on her hips. He knew she was really pissed if she did that. She flung her arms up in the air. Finally, she said, “What the hell, Aidan? We finally find a good place. A safe place. And you want to ‘pack ‘em up and head ‘em out?’”

  “We will be safe when we are someplace the monsters aren’t.”

  “Right, the cold tundra. I got to remind you, I’m a Texas girl. I’m Mexican-American. We don’t like cold.”

  When he didn’t say anything, Alyssa walked off.

  “Fine! Go be with Val!”

  As Kirk walked up and down both sides of the wide, eight-lane bridge, he checked behind curtains, beneath stacks of boxes, and inside crates, but he didn’t see anything that looked like a guitar or even a banjo.

  “You need to be careful,” the chubby woman with the AK-47 said as Kirk opened a trunk. “That’s individual property. We have rules here just like any society, and stealing is one of them.”

  “Are you really going to follow me around all day? Don’t you have something better to do? Dreams to fulfill? Children to bake?”

  “Sorry, cupcake, but tailing you is my dream come true.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ll be with you all day.”

  “Good luck.”

  And he was off, sprinting uphill as fast as his legs would carry him. Kirk was surprised at how well he climbed to the top of the bridge. There was a time when sprinting twenty yards would leave him out of breath. Maybe it was the cigarettes, he thought. Maybe it was the past four months spent running for my life. The uphill climb was still a bitch, though, so he stopped three-fourths of the way up and looked behind. The lady with the AK stood there at the lower end of the bridge giving him the evil eye. “Oh, c’mon!” he yelled. “You’re not even trying!”

  Not worried about his 300-pound shadow any longer, Kirk returned to his search for a guitar. He would take anything at this point. It didn’t have to be a Gibson.

  Kirk took in Bridgetown for a moment. Beyond the light posts and crates, it had a feel of the familiar. Kids rode bikes on the bridge, parents watched children from under little plastic or plywood awnings they had built for their crate-homes and friends sat around enjoying the cool breeze while they watched the clouds or read books. The town was communal and tranquil in an almost idyllic, Blue Bell commercial kind of way, which was weird since Bridgetown was also a post-apocalyptic shanty-town of giant industrial shipping crates stacked on top of each other like children’s blocks, all of which was connected together by a couple hundred thousand pounds of concrete and asphalt hanging over the shipping channel.

  What really struck him was the absence of animals. There were no kids playing with dogs, no cats reclining off ledges, no mice scampering between crates. The place was completely and totally devoid of animal life. He remembered when he was a kid that his parents were too poor to own a dog. He had a gray gerbil that he kept until he forgot to feed it and it died. It felt odd not having animals around, even gerbils, despite everything that had happened, whatever it was that had happened. He still wasn’t sure of that. Genetic mutations? Radiation? Super virus? Who the hell knew? Who the hell cared?

  From somewhere in the distance, a tune tickled his ear. At first, he thought he was imagining the sound. It had been months since he last heard guitar strings plucked. Nevertheless, as the sounds grew in his ear, it was as if the strings were plucked from his heart. Kirk casted like a hound dog in the middle of the road while he tried to figure out the source of the sound. Then he found her in a yellow crate with posters lining the inner walls. She was definitely older than he was, possibly twenty. A clove cigarette dangled between two peach-colored lips. Long straw hair hung over her leather guitar strap. A faded green tank top barely concealed her thin figure. Her nimble fingers danced along the frets of the guitar she was playing. The tune was Ledbetter.

  As Kirk climbed up into the crate, she didn’t look up or react, but kept on playing. A second guitar lay on its side, unused, right next to her. Kirk seated himself cross-legged next to her and attempted to join the song. Only after he struck the right chord did she look up at him. She smiled. She had blue eyes.

  Aidan and Peter and Colt walked the bridge at mid-day. They were eating peanuts since the kitchen was limiting them to two spaghetti dinners but would allow them to eat all the peanuts they wanted. (Bridgetown had an entire crate loaded with peanuts.) Most people were outside walking the bridge, either going to get their lunch rations or returning home to eat them.

  In the middle of the crowd, not far from where they were walking, two adults walked together. Their backs were to them. They walked like people who were lost and abandoned, like zombies. One wore a suit jacket and blue jeans. The woman was shorter and had cropped hair. She, too, wore a cream-coated jacket the boys knew too well.

  “Mom!” Peter yelled. “Dad!”

  Aidan and Colt ran behind Peter, full of longing and relief. Their parents turned around and started to cry. “Dodger!” the woman exclaimed. “I always knew we would find you!”

  Then five astonished, shocked faces looked at each other and saw only strangers. The parents’ faces turned into grim jack o’lanterns, and they turned around and renewed their zombie walk.

  Aidan shoved Pet
er hard enough to knock him down and walked away.

  As Peter stood up, two boys helped him. One was Indian and the other was black. They wore polos and khakis like everyone else, but to Peter, these looked like the kind of guys who would wear those clothes naturally.

  “Thanks. I’m Peter. This is my brother, Colt.”

  “Mayuran and Kobie,” the Indian boy said, thumbing at himself and his friend. “We were lost boys, like you guys.”

  “Your friend has a nasty streak,” Kobie said.

  “Yeah, well, he’s my brother,” Peter said. “Can’t live with him. Can’t live without him. How did you guys make it here?”

  “We flew,” Kobie said. “Mayuran’s had his pilot’s license for years. So when everything else went down, me and my friends decided no way in hell were we sticking around on the ground. We would fly to the coast and outrun the monsters.”

  “Boy, were we wrong,” Mayuran said. “And I wouldn’t recommend flying. The rocs own the skies. And if they find you, they will have no problem taking you out. Trust me. I’ve seen them take out Hornets, Warthogs, C-130s. It’s pretty impossible to avoid them. Maybe if you were in a Blackbird, but eventually you’d have to land, and then they’d really get you. I landed the Cessna down on the interstate about three weeks ago. We’ve been living here ever since.”

  “We looked as skinny as you when we first got here,” Kobie said. “Don’t worry. They will fatten you up real quick. Mr. Olivarez probably hasn’t shown you, but there’s like four crates full of MREs, more than enough to sustain Bridgetown for years.”

  “Hey, you want to see something cool?” Mayuran asked. “We can show you the generators.”

  Peter and Colt looked at each other. They had just been assaulted with a lot of information to take in all at once. “Um, okay, I guess. But could you guys slow it down?”

  “Sorry,” Mayuran said. “We can overwhelm. This way.”

  Mayuran and Kobie took them past a few crates. A ladder lay on the far end of one, and it led up five stories. At the very top, the wind was even gustier.