The Aftermath

by Jen Alexander

  I’m not angry. At the moment, I’m just thankful to be alive. I don’t want him to stress over me when he’s so badly injured himself.

  Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him. He’s just worried. That’s why his eyes look so strange—it has to be.

  “You have the survival instincts of a toddler. And you listen like one, too,” I say.

  No, my words are all wrong. The opposite of what I need to say to him.

  He nods quickly and pushes himself from the concrete. “If it makes you happy, we’ll move immediately.” His blank, serene expression is back. Like everything is normal. Like he doesn’t feel the inflamed cut beneath his chin or the bruises that mutilate his face.

  I feel them for him, and I’m creeped out.

  He nods toward the back of the building. His movements are so quick and wobbly, I want to reach out and steady his head. “This is The Save for now. Open areas are a pain in the ass, but the rest of the building is too small to work with. Come on. I’ll show you where we’ve stored the food.”

  I shuffle slowly beside him. Sharp pangs make my stomach tighten. My head feels like a jar and someone is clenching the lid, twisting and wrenching. I twitch. Blink. And once again, I see my body motionless, the long silver device pushing against my scalp.

  This is the first time one of my nightmares has stayed with me outside of sleep, and it terrifies me.

  “Which one?” Ethan’s soft voice brings me back into the museum. He dangles two protein bars in front of my face. “Double chocolate or vanilla milk shake?”

  Chocolate, I think, but a toxic cocktail of frustration and pain, coupled with disgust at the sickening images in my head, suddenly replaces my hunger.

  “Vanilla milk shake,” I find myself saying as I snatch the bar from his hand.

  “Nice, she’s up.”

  Ethan and I both turn to face Jeremy. He perches against the rusted doorway, twirling a butterfly knife like it’s a toy and grinning. “You were gone far too long, Claudia Virtue, but I’m glad you’re finally back. It’s not the same without you. You’re way more interesting than April.”

  What isn’t the same? Raids? I draw a dizzying breath in through my nose. I am dying to demand an explanation. To force them to give me a play-by-play of the events following the woman’s death in the courthouse and the brief appearance of the gray-eyed boy dressed in black. But all I manage to do is take another bite of the stale protein bar and stare idiotically between the two of them.

  “Thank you both for completely going against my wishes and lying about it. It really makes me want to throw you both out of my clan.” There are a million thoughts racing through my head and none of them are being verbalized— Instead, everything that I’ve managed to say has been a confusing mess.

  Jeremy winks at me, but it looks so unnatural a shiver creeps through my body. “Don’t be so dramatic, Claudia.” He kicks his heel against the door frame and starts to walk off. “I’ll catch you in a bit. April and I need to go finish clearing out the jail,” he calls out.

  “I really should get rid of all of you,” I say.

  “Don’t be like that, Oliv—”

  “Don’t call me that!” I snap, focusing on Jeremy’s back as he walks away. Even though Ethan didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence, my heartbeat speeds up. He was about to call me Olivia, I think. The name from my nightmare. The name of that other girl. How does Ethan know about that?

  “Don’t bend your own rules.” I grind the tip of my index finger against Ethan’s bony chest. “Never call me that.”

  I don’t understand the painful disconnect between what I’m thinking and what I’m actually saying today. Why am I bringing up the rules? Within our clan, there are only two rules: never leave one another behind. And never break. Up until now I was certain the rule about breaking referred to us bringing up who we were before The Aftermath—what good did dwelling on things we couldn’t remember do us?

  Now I’m not sure what it means.

  “Rules are meant to be broken every once in a while. Besides, we almost lost you, and who knows what would’ve happened then.”

  I never cry, but I want to right now. From frustration. And from the numbing ache in the center of my head. I am going insane. That’s the only thing that makes any sense. I turn to Ethan and open my mouth to speak, expecting a dam to burst and all my questions about what happened after I was knocked out to come rushing out in a deluge. But all I say is, “April’s the one who wanted to move to this place, huh?”

  No. That’s not what’s important to me. Not what I need to say.

  The left corner of his mouth tugs up. He stares out of the storeroom to where April is touching the giant statue that’s the centerpiece of the museum. “How’d you guess?”

  I look at April, too. Her head is lowered so that her red hair tumbles around the faded golden feet. That statue makes the end of society bearable for her— She’s never said so, but I figured that must be the reason she’s drawn to it. After every successful rescue mission or raid, she comes here. The thief and her shrine.

  April’s lips move for a few seconds longer; then she presses her lips to the golden shield the statue carries. She looks up at us, smiles at Ethan, waves and finally disappears out a side door.

  Maybe April is ecstatic now that this is our home, but her obsession is the last thing that matters to me. I hate myself for my inability to say what’s needed. I close my eyes to ground myself. And for that moment, I am no longer in the black mold-infested storage room of a dilapidated museum. I don’t even think I am in my world at all.

  I am outside it, looking in from a white room.

  There are flashing red lights embedded in the ceiling at each corner of the room—ten of them in all. Every light is turned in my direction, like spotlights. The only furnishing in here is a plush leather chair that’s empty. And all around the chair are large video screens that completely cover all ten sides of the wall.

  In front of me, the side of Ethan’s face and body fill one of the displays. Two years ago, we took up residence in a movie theater on the far side of town. One of the screens was faulty, playing the same old movie on a monotonous loop. Every time I walked past it, I saw bits and pieces of the film, a movie about car racing. This bright room reminds me of that theater except the picture quality is vivid, not crackled and grainy. Ethan is so lifelike I wouldn’t know he was an image if I couldn’t see the white border snaking across the top and bottom of the ten-sided room.

  Ethan stares at the statue, and someone says, “I’m glad we didn’t have to change things—bring in another character.” It takes me a moment to realize the person talking is the one in the blindingly white room and even longer to grasp that I am not that girl. Our voices are completely different—hers is soft and whispery.

  The same voice from my dreams.

  Am I asleep now?

  Is everything that’s happened to me today nothing but a strange dream that I’ll awaken from, ready to look for more food?

  Ethan’s smile illuminates the entire display. I observe, transfixed, as he reaches out. On the screen, his fingertips seem to brush back and forth over an imaginary object. “Me, too. We’ll get out of here soon, okay? I promise. Maybe...it’s time to leave the others—just you and me. So the game can be fun again.”

  “Hmm, I don’t know about that. There’s that pesky little rule about team size, remember?” the girl in the white room asks. This time I hear my voice, too, speaking in unison with her. “We should stay put right where we are. At least for the time being.”

  I startle, and when my eyes fly open, the screens are gone, replaced by the museum itself. Ethan is in front of me—real, touchable. I tremble softly, praying he does not notice how my breath bursts in and out. He strokes my cheek with his thumb and forefinger. Exactly like the motion I saw on the display i
n the decagon room.

  His hand stops moving, pausing right under my lower lashes on the left side of my face. He stares down at me. My heart drums violently inside my chest. I try to swallow, but my mouth is so dry, my tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth. What just happened? What’s happening to me?

  At last, he gives me a smile. “We have more chance of staying alive with them. You know this already, Olivia,” he says grimly.

  Olivia. Here I am, my heart in my throat and my body numb, and Ethan is saying her name again. I rise on my toes and run my lips along his cheek. All this is happening, but I am not the one doing it. I’m too stunned to move. “Stop calling me that, Landon,” I hear myself say in a low whisper.

  A chill races through my bones.

  Who is Landon?

  Ethan laughs and pushes me back. “Got to go for a little. My mother...”

  He does not have a mother. Ethan is just like me and doesn’t remember anything before the apocalypse and doesn’t know anyone named Olivia. Isn’t he?

  “Claudia?” he asks.

  Things seem to move in slow motion for the next few moments.

  “Go tend to your mommy,” I say. “It’s time to give Claudia a rest anyway—her health level is crap. Log back on in three hours?”

  “See you then.”

  Log back on to what? I should know exactly what I mean—after all, it’s me saying these words, my voice!—but I don’t, and inside, I am screaming.

  “Yes, see you then,” I say, just before an electric tingle begins in the center of my skull, oozing down my face and body until it mutes each of my senses.

  * * *

  When the prickling sensation stops, I find myself under the statue, staring up at a large crack in its head. In the background, I hear crackling food wrappers. Hushed whispers. Above the statue, the night sky creates a dark canvas over the windows.

  When did it get dark? My head throbs as I try to remember what I did after my strange conversation with Ethan. Nothing clear comes to me, just fuzzy images. I am sick of distorted pictures and forgetfulness.

  A light flickers across the statue’s concrete face, and I think I am the one holding it. There’s no way I can be sure, though.

  I am not in my body.

  For the second time in one day, I’m on the outside, in the white room with the red flashing lights.

  The girl in this room—the girl whose eyes I stare out of—shakes out her pale hands. On the screen a sleeping bag cracks up and down. Dust floats from the fabric before the bag drifts to the floor.

  “Hungry?”

  We turn to the right, to a screen where Jeremy’s brown eyes greet us. They look empty—exactly like Ethan’s eyes. I feel this person’s head nod, hear this girl’s voice and mine simultaneously say, “Didn’t think you’d save anything for me.”

  I watch the screen in a mixture of horror and curiosity as it changes. The museum fades into the background. At the very top, THE AFTERMATH is written in a gritty block font with every few letters distorted and the color of blood. Just under that, on the right of the screen, is my photo followed by several rows of information.

  Name: Claudia Virtue

  Date of Birth: 04/22/2023

  Blood Type: B Negative

  Height: 5'3"

  Weight: 101 Lbs.

  This is the same data written on the bent, peeling ID card I found in my back pocket when I woke up three years ago—the only difference is the photo and my height and weight are all current. At least, I assume my measurements are recent. I’ve never come across a scale, though I have taken up counting visible bones when I wash up in the privy.

  Beneath my personal information are a bunch of words and numbers. Long colored bars.

  Life. Eighty-six. Green.

  Health. Seventy-one. Yellow bar.

  Sustenance. The number beside this is low—thirty-three—but I watch as it raises and the red gauge slowly changes color. Forty-two, red. Fifty-one. Sixty, orange. Seventy-two...yellow. The Health numbers have changed, too. Low eighties and neon green.

  The girl moves her finger across the empty space in front of us. The red X at the top of the screen glows. My picture and the information collapse, showing the museum again. The others are lying on their bellies in a circle around one of the pillars, on top of sleeping bags with their flashlights creating a ring of light. The girl takes one step forward. Transparent letters flash in the middle of the screen. Walk Mode. She taps her palm out once and the picture gradually zooms in on my friends. The girl flicks her hand two more times, the screen stills and she stands right above Ethan.

  Through the girl’s eyes, I can see a stray eyelash on his cheek; I can count the strands of hair falling onto his bruised forehead.

  He tilts his face up and smiles. The cut on his neck looks so much worse on the screen, and I want to shout at him. Shake him until he shows some emotion other than contentment, does something to address his awful wound. “It took you forever,” he says.

  “I was at thirty percent,” I listen to myself say. “It always takes more time when that happens.”

  “Stop doing that so much, will you?” April’s voice says from my left side. When I turn to her, I am back in the museum, back inside my own head and body. “We’ll never finish this game with your character getting sick or beat up at every turn.”

  The corners of my mouth feel as if they’re ripping open as my lips are coerced into a smile. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in one of the dark windows. My face isn’t damaged like Ethan’s. There’s not a new blemish in sight; even my sunburn is gone.

  And as I sit, listening to the others talk and responding with someone else’s words, I come to terms with something terrifying.

  My reality isn’t at all what I believed it to be. It’s not even real.

  I’m some sort of puppet, and this girl, Olivia, is the one pulling my strings.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  An hour later, I tell the others that I’m ready to leave. This is something I always say before I go to sleep, sometimes losing consciousness for hours and days at a time, and for the first time I understand why—it’s not me that’s leaving. It’s the girl, Olivia. Ethan draws me in for a kiss as usual, stroking my blond hair from my forehead as he promises me we’ll be together again soon. Then April and Jeremy mumble goodbyes.

  But for some reason, this time it’s different. I don’t black out like I normally do. At least not entirely. I feel the numbing static from earlier start in the middle of my head, but when it reaches my eyes and ears, it pauses. For the next hour the pricking sensation slides up and down my entire body, dragging me in and out of darkness like a chaotic light show.

  And then, consciousness. I’m awake in the museum, in our safe room. Every shelter we’ve ever lived in has The Save—a space we hide out in to rest. It’s where I am when I lose consciousness, and when I come to after a lapse. I’ve got a suspicion The Save has a function other than what I believed it to be.

  My eyes fix straight across from me at Ethan’s hazel ones. They’re open and emotionless. His lips are drawn into a thin line. What are we? Where are we?

  How did I get here?

  I feel my right eyelid twitch, feel the muscles in my fingers tense as I try to move them. Am I human? If The Aftermath isn’t even real, how do I know I am?

  What am I?

  When I’m sucked back into unconsciousness, I’m hit with a terrifying string of nightmares. At first, I dream of the boy in the elevator, with his clean face and dark eyes. My time with him is fleeting—just long enough for him to give me a crooked smile and cover his lips with his index finger. “Good night, Virtue,” he murmurs. Then he swings out at me, rendering me unconscious, sending me to another dream world that’s even more terrifying.

  Men and women in crisp dark
suits stalk in slow, deliberate circles around me like vultures. They’re so close I can smell them—the scents of vanilla perfume and cigar smoke and foul-smelling armpits mingling together—and I feel sick to my stomach. There’s no food left in me to vomit, though. I must have gotten rid of it all earlier, after...

  There is something I can’t remember—something important—but it refuses to come to me.

  “She’s the first,” a man says from the back of the crowd.

  The first what?

  A woman touches a few strands of my hair—it’s long in this nightmare—and studies me carefully. She reminds me of an owl with her large light-colored eyes and bobbed salt-and-pepper hair. “I was told she performed exceedingly well in the War trial. When do you plan to put her in?”

  “Tonight,” the man in the back says. The woman smiles at me. She has small teeth, like a piranha.

  I want her to stop touching me. I don’t want to be in this dream any more than my last nightmare, the one with the metallic white machine and the mechanical arms. But I can’t leave. I’m standing perfectly still, letting these people appraise me. And this time I’m certain I’m in my own body.

  “I’m a human,” I plead, but this only seems to amuse the group of people. They smile at me as if I’m a small child speaking her very first words. A man wearing a black-and-gray-dotted tie touches the top of my head. I shriek as pain blisters my scalp.

  “I’ve heard The Aftermath’s designers did an excellent job constructing the game’s world. My business partner toured the game and says it’s the most realistic one yet, with the asteroids and ruins,” the man says, ignoring how much agony his touch is causing me. He shoots a look over his shoulder.

  The smug voice behind everyone replies, “Physical reality is always realistic, but I agree. The Aftermath is a winner. Claudia is perfect—a symbol of dedication and progress.” When the crowd separates and the man walks forward, I can’t make out his face—it’s blurry—but I know I want to hurt him.

  I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.