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Kingdom

Page 10

by Anderson O'Donnell


  That’s when Dylan saw it: Staring back at him from the television was the same face, the same eyes he saw on the building last night. Dylan felt his stomach flip and the world went wobbly.

  The look on his face must have been worse than he felt, because Chase was actually up, moving off the couch, asking Dylan if he was OK. Dylan could only point to the television in response; the close-up of the face had ended, segueing into a political ad for the man to whom those eyes belonged: Jack Heffernan. Strong, warm colors flooded the screen and Heffernan was shaking hands as he moved through crowds, as he toured construction sites, as he met with members of the United States military.

  “Those eyes…” Dylan half-whispered, his throat dry.

  “Yeah, man,” Chase said, looking uncertain as he nodded toward the screen. “Kind of reminds me of your pop’s. In a good way. I mean, everyone thinks so…Just no one really wants to bring it up around you, dude…You can’t tell me this is the first time you’re seeing this guy? He’s everywhere…I might even register to vote. I mean, probably not but I’m considering it, you know?”

  Dylan was shaking his head, no longer certain. Had he seen Jack Heffernan before? It was impossible to say; he just couldn’t remember. The past few months had just been a blur, one continuous attempt to escape from fear and anxiety and memories—nothing was certain.

  The ad ended and Dylan felt his pulse slow, his world steady. He glanced at his phone.

  “It’s all pretty intense dude,” he assured Chase, trying to forget about the ad, trying to focus on what he had to do next. “Look, I gotta jet. We’ll meet up later.”

  “Later,” Chase agreed as he turned and headed back toward the couch but Dylan was already out the door, keys, lighter, and iPhone shoved in the front pockets of his jeans, wallet in the back left, sunglasses in the back right.

  Dylan’s loft apartment was on the 15th floor of a 20-story apartment building located in Tiber City’s Glimmer district, a neighborhood populated by the young and wealthy who had chosen not to flee for the relative safety of the suburbs. The hallway of the building was bright and wide—too bright—and his headache mushroomed, his hangover serving notice it wasn’t going away without a fight. Wincing, Dylan pulled the sunglasses—black-tinted aviators—out of his pocket and put them on, exhaling as the world dimmed. He continued down the rest of the hall, running his hand along the wall as he moved toward the elevators, where the doors opened on their own.

  He stepped into the elevator, pressed the button for the lobby, and leaned back against the cool metal wall. A Muzak version of an old Doors song—“People Are Strange”—was playing and Dylan found himself humming along, the painkillers kicking in as the elevator crept down toward the earth before rumbling to a halt, the white button on the side of the wall marked “L” lighting up as the doors slid open.

  Dylan walked out of the lobby of his building, which at one time may have been a factory but now was a series of absurdly expensive, minimalist lofts teeming with wealthy junkies and trust fund artists. A security desk was positioned between the elevators and the entrance, a dozen different CCTV feeds from all over the building displayed across a row of tiny monitors positioned under the elevated countertop where guests signed in and packages were left. But the desk was deserted, the monitors broadcasting to an empty seatback, and Dylan kept moving, pushing through the lobby’s revolving door and into the street.

  It was raining again—a warm drizzle that smelled like rotting hot dogs, which smelled like the city—so Dylan picked up his pace, cutting across the street that, even though it was still only the late afternoon, was jammed with taxis, with people trying to flag them down, with people shuffling in and out of the cabs, all the while vendors jockeyed for position along the packed sidewalks, each one of them crying out, a sense of urgency infecting the crowd as the sun began to fall behind the tops of skyscrapers.

  On the other side of the street now, Dylan pressed ahead, the rain coming stronger, some people opening umbrellas, only adding to the chaos. The pills were kicking in, cascading nicely over the effects of the Ativan. Still, he wished he had taken something stronger but there was too much happening right now; too much he needed to do.

  The current block ended and Dylan was crossing the street, moving onto the next block, the storefronts indistinguishable, overdressed black children trying to shake his hand, to introduce themselves and establish some sort of connection whereby Dylan would feel obligated to take their flyer, to listen to a story, to buy candy. But he looked past them, brushing them aside although even as he did he wished it could be different, wished there was no need to be on guard against a child, but this was America in the 21st century and there was no going back. And so Dylan marched ahead, pulling his collar up against the rain, his sunglasses now on his forehead, holding back his long wet hair, his eyes locked on his destination: In the middle of the block, a gap appeared between the row of storefronts and restaurants, revealing the top of a series of downhill escalators framed on each side by stone obelisks that meant something once but were now simply in the way, inconveniences around which harried commuters had to navigate on their way into the subway.

  Dylan took the escalator down into the earth, past a toothless troubadour holding—not playing—a beat-up guitar, whispering lyrics to an old Doors song—the same one that had been playing in the elevator earlier that day—reminding Dylan and everyone else who passed that people are strange and as the moving steel stairs carried him away from the surface, Dylan turned and watched the old man, the rain intensifying, the busker just standing there, repeating the same phrase over and over, the other lyrics forgotten or irrelevant or both, the cracked case at his feet empty save for a few coins, a cigarette butt, and a HEFFERNAN FOR PRESIDENT button.

  The escalator continued to pull Dylan deeper underground until the surface disappeared and for a moment Dylan could see neither where he started out nor where he would end up: His world was a large concrete tunnel—almost 30 yards across, hundreds of feet from top to bottom—sliced into thirds by steel escalators that bore diagonally into the earth. The escalator moved slowly, ferrying Dylan into the earth while an asexual voice coming from somewhere repeated the same series of instructions again and again—passengers should alert transit authority representatives of any suspicious activity and not be afraid to ask fellow commuters “Is that your bag?”—the message interspersed with a reminder that low-interest lines of credit were now available, followed by a website address travelers could visit for more information—subject to certain restrictions, terms, and agreements of course.

  The concrete walls on either side of the tunnel were plastered with colorful advertisements, lit from below by a series of lights running through the small gap between the wall and the escalator. The advertisements on the walls framing the escalators were apolitical: One featured a non-threatening, healthy-looking heterosexual couple doing something vaguely athletic—there were hiking boots, paddles, a mid-sized SUV, a white Labrador—the scene constructed in order to explain that a popular herpes medication was now available without a prescription, while another—an image of an assault rifle resting across the top of a gas mask, the entire ad cast in washed-out green and gray—was promoting the release of a new video game set in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland that, judging from the images etched behind the mask, bore a disturbing resemblance to Tiber City.

  Several toxin-neutralizers were fixed above these ads. Visitors to Tiber City often mistook these devices for intercoms but, in the case of a chemical attack on the subway, they would deliver a life-saving blast of nanopowder. Or something like that—there had been an attack a year ago and very little toxin neutralizing had occurred or at least that was the impression left by the 50 or so dead bodies. In the aftermath, there was the requisite congressional inquiries, press conferences, and class action lawsuits but somehow the devices remained—version 2.0—and were now adorned with the insignias of corporate sponsors. Your defense against chemical warfare brou
ght to you by your friends at Shibuya Industries East.

  Placing his hand on the escalator’s rubber rail, Dylan tried to focus on nothing, his eyes wandering down from the advertisements and toward the line of lights running underneath them. There was a consistency, an order to their arrangement that for a moment was somehow comforting but as the ground floor drew closer he noticed something else: In that tiny gap, interrupting the row of ordered lights, was a tattered sleeping bag surrounded by a mountain of clothes, dirty diapers, shards of glass, and a stroller laying twisted and broken on its side.

  But then the escalator reached bottom and Dylan stepped off, pushing through the turnstile and onto the platform that, flanked on each side by tracks, cut the concrete subterranean chamber in half. Monday through Friday, this station was jammed with young executives, jostling, attaché cases transformed into shields, umbrellas wielded with more than a hint of malice as vigorous men shouldered women and old people aside in order to squeeze into a subway car already filled to capacity, chivalry forsaken even though the digital screen hanging from the ceiling noted that another train would be arriving in less than two minutes.

  Late on a Sunday afternoon, however, the place was deserted. Dylan moved toward the far end of the tunnel, past a series of stone benches, his footsteps echoing off the floor, the walls, the ceiling. When he reached the last bench—the back of which was tagged in graffiti, in symbols and words that meant nothing, something, everything—he sat down, his hangover finally beginning to recede, his chest loosening, his breathing more relaxed as the Ativan continued to carve away the anxiety.

  Staring at the empty tracks in front of him as he lit a cigarette, Dylan noticed a hole—or was it a crack—in the wall above the tracks. Water trickled through this break in the concrete, running down onto the tracks and forming a brown pool between the rails. Around this pool, which was filled with empty cartons of cigarettes, old newspapers and magazines—the paper disintegrating, the ink faded beyond recognition—a red plastic bag, and what looked like a pair of panties but Dylan couldn’t be sure, clusters of vegetation were visible, tiny sprouts of green coaxed out of the earth by stale water and artificial light, only to choke on the recycled air and blasts of burning rubber before being cut down by the rush hour express. This process would repeat itself endlessly: Whatever plant life existed before the subway was built forever attempting to reclaim the land, heeding only instinct, striving to fulfill its sole purpose.

  Dylan could hear the train rumbling in the distance, getting closer, dull red lights lining the edge of the platform beginning to flash in anticipation, in warning. Seconds later the train burst out of the darkness at the far end of the tunnel, brakes screeching as the giant metal worm ground to a halt, near-empty, poorly-lit cars flashing past the platform. Finally it stopped and the doors slid open with a hiss, the kind of noise that seemed to characterize even the most advanced commuter technology—like some kind of reminder that the thing was not fucking magic, that it was, at the end of the day, still a collection of steel and wire and electricity put together by human beings.

  And then the automatic door was sliding shut, another computerized voice, this time vaguely feminine, cautioning Dylan to move all arms and legs away from the door because it was about to close. There was a sign on the wall of the subway car informing him that, in the event of an above-ground emergency, riders could opt to receive special alerts via their mobile devices, thereby ensuring that, even as the city dissolved in a mushroom cloud, nothing would inhibit the flow of information. Dylan imagined the subway continuing in a post-apocalyptic loop, the riders long dead, mobile devices still buzzing with alerts informing the corpses that the world had ended. He felt an urge to run out of the car, sprint through the city until he was back in his bed, but before he could move the car was gliding away from the platform and into the dark tunnel ahead, steel screeching as the train picked up speed, and Dylan was thinking about the fact that the earth was once ruled by giant reptiles—about dinosaurs, about extinction, about his father.

  The Journal of Senator Robert Fitzgerald

  Excerpt # 2

  To Dylan,

  Things have begun to unravel. For as long as I can remember, even before you were born, I have felt a disconnection, a sense of separateness from not only my fellow man, but from the very world itself. What about your mother, you might ask? The answer is as simple as it is terrifying: I married her because when she and I were together, that fundamental separation seemed furthest and I imagined that, with enough time, she would be the way through which I would dissolve these boundaries. I was wrong. Elizabeth has been everything I could have hoped for in a woman, in a wife. But the things I feel, the deep alienation from my fellow man, are not mere loneliness or alienation: I sense—I know—they are something far more systemic; the products of a fundamental flaw deep within me.

  By the time you were born, I already knew Elizabeth couldn’t save me. I didn’t want kids; I knew I wouldn’t be a very good father. Guess I was right. But the night we took you home from the hospital—that may have been the closest I ever came to escaping my demons. Holding you against my chest, I spent most of that first night walking around the house, whispering to you, telling you only the good things about the land into which you were born. The world was still and quiet and I felt that if only I could somehow freeze that moment in time things could be OK.

  But I had to be in New York for a fundraiser the next afternoon and I remember sitting on the plane, watching the world fall away, wondering if it would be better for you if I never came back.

  Love,

  Your Father

  Chapter 10

  Tiber City

  Aug. 28, 2015

  3:05 p.m.

  The helicopter moved over the city like a terrible angel, its rotor blades slicing through the thick smog pressing down on Tiber City. Earlier that morning, there had been a moment when the chaos of the city paused and, as a light breeze blew in from the Leth River, the natural world seemed to exhale, lending the entire landscape an unusual sense of calm. Yet by the time Michael Morrison’s private chopper began its descent to the roof of IDD Energy stadium, the city was once again riddled with anxiety and expectation and as the sun—looking like a planet on fire—ascended higher in the sky, the breeze vanished, sending the temperature soaring.

  As the city whipped past the window in a blur of steel and glass and concrete, Morrison scrolled through the messages on his phone, barely paying attention as one line of text merged into the next. Campbell’s refusal to rejoin Exodus, while not entirely unexpected, was infuriating and as the chopper swung around the stadium, Morrison seethed. Were it not for a single gene—the Omega gene—he would have wiped Campbell off the face of the earth a long time ago. Instead, because the Exodus team could not divine the function of this single gene, Campbell was not only still alive and toiling in some refugee camp, he was now openly defying Morrison.

  One gene, Morrison thought. It was incredible. There had been no problem identifying this gene and Morrison and his team were even able to reproduce this rogue molecular puzzle piece that, ostensibly, served no biological function. But when the Omega gene was dismissed as vestigial, a mere piece of evolutionary trash, and therefore excluded from the original Exodus prototypes, the results had been the things of nightmares: As the only explanation for these continued biological horrors remained the Omega gene, Morrison demanded the gene be included in all future prototypes. At first the transfer seemed to hold, and the mutations that plagued the early Exodus prototypes didn’t surface. And so the first complete product rolled off the Exodus assembly line and into American political life.

  The chopper set down on the roof of the stadium, bouncing once before settling on the giant “H” marking the center of the concrete landing pad. Morrison snapped back to the present, sliding the helicopter’s door open, pushing past the two men holding semiautomatic rifles, ignoring their pleas to allow for a perimeter sweep as he strode out across the rooftop,
barking orders into the tiny microphone attached to his collar, his voice carrying over the roar of the rotors. Seconds later, fireworks exploded overhead, confirming the information that had just been relayed to Morrison: Jack Heffernan was ready to take the stage.

  The people gathered throughout the stadium were chanting Heffernan’s name, and those seated on the field rushed toward the stage, a massive, faceless beast. Back and forth the beast swayed, agitated by the unusual heat, and this beast would surge forward before falling backward, only to surge forward again moments later. There were too many people in the stadium and the smell of sweat and body odor and fried food permeated everything and there was a tension building, a tension that Morrison and his public relations wizards had spent years cultivating, a tension that would continue throughout Heffernan’s stump speech before the inevitable climax that would leave the collective beast delirious.

  But the restlessness ripping through the crowd was just foreplay and a minute or two later, a beautiful young blonde woman, wearing a sharp but conservative black suit adorned with an American flag pin on one lapel and the red-and-black Progress Party ribbon on the other, stepped out onto the stage and, waving to the crowd, walked to the microphone.

  “Hi Tiber City! How are you today?” she asked.

  The crowd roared its approval, again surging toward the stage, sending bodies tumbling over the barricade as security scrambled to prevent anyone from getting too close to the woman who, still smiling, had raised her right hand over her heart.

  And then she was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, her eyes locked on the only U.S. flag in the stadium, which was attached to the roof and, as part of the ownership group’s attempts to squeeze every possible cent out of the stadium, was sponsored by First Bank—the pole was an alternating white and deep blue, First Bank’s corporate color scheme; changing the color of the stars hadn’t polled very well.

 

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