Strange Days

by Constantine J. Singer

  She digs into her shirt and pulls out a little old-school camera. “Corina, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m glad to meet you. Here,” she says as she tosses the camera to Corina. Cassandra closes the distance between me and her. “Take our picture.”

  I feel her next to me. She’s sweaty and she smells a little bad, even compared to the ground around us. Now that she’s closer I can see that her shirt is dirty and so is her skin. It’s been days since she’s been in a shower. I look up at Corina and try to make a moment happen, but she’s looking at the camera, not at me. My eye travels down to the thigh that’s next to my leg. Cassandra’s shirt doesn’t come all the way to the waist and there’s no sign of the big nasty scar I saw before.

  “Okay.” Corina lowers the camera. Cassandra moves over to her and I make a face, like girl’s crazy and stinky. Corina smiles quickly and then turns to Cassandra, who’s grabbing the camera from her. “Jesus—didn’t anybody teach you not to grab?”

  Cassandra doesn’t react. She just takes the camera and holds out her hand. “The picture?”

  Corina looks at her for a moment like she’s thinking about beating her down, but then she sighs and slaps the wrinkled picture into Cassandra’s hand.

  Cassandra unfolds it and then turns to her camera. “Shit’s weird,” she says as she examines them both. “I can never get used to things like this. Did us getting the picture cause the picture to be taken or was the picture taken and then that caused everything else?” She pulls another sheet of paper out of her pocket and unfolds it. “Exactly the same.” She looks over at me. “You got any answers, man?”

  I don’t even know what she’s talking about. All I know is that she’s holding a second picture that, from this distance, looks suspiciously like the one that I have. “That’s the same picture?”

  She rolls her eyes at me. “Yes, dipshit, it’s the same picture. I got mine in a family photo album I found in my grandma’s house—where’d you get yours?”

  “Uh . . .” I stammer, which is embarrassing. “In a time capsule buried in my school’s gym.” I get myself together. “You didn’t send it?”

  She breathes out. Exasperated. “No,” she says slowly. “I didn’t send it.”

  “If you didn’t send it, how’d you know to be here?” Corina asks, not bothering to keep the beef out of her voice.

  “Because Sybil said to be.”

  “I’m supposed to find Sybil.”

  Cassandra looks at me. Her eyes steady. “You will.” She shakes her head, shoves the pictures into her back pocket, and holds the camera up in the air like she’s searching for reception, waits a minute, nods her head. “Stored in the cloud for whenever.”

  She brings the camera down and tucks it slowly into her bra, lifting up the fabric more than she needs to. She watches me while she does it and then winks. “C’mon,” she says, turning around, “we got a lot of walking to do.”

  I turn to look at Corina. She won’t look back at me. She waits a beat and then heads off after Cassandra, leaving me to take up the rear.

  We follow her back up to the main road and turn south. I can’t see anything on the horizon—there’s no town or even any buildings for as far as I can see.

  I jog to catch up with Corina. “She’s insane,” I whisper.

  Corina nods slightly.

  “I don’t know what’s up with her.”

  She nods again.

  “We don’t have to go with her,” I say. “I haven’t seen this before. I’m not a Zombie here.”

  While I wait for Corina to say something, I pull off my hoodie and my shirt. I tie my hoodie around my waist and I turn my shirt into a turban that I put around my head.

  I don’t feel any less hot than I did when I was wearing them.

  Corina slows a little, but then she picks up her speed again. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, we do.” And then: “We got nowhere else to go.”

  Fifty-Nine

  Corina and I walk together behind Cassandra. I reach for her hand and she gives it to me. When Cassandra turns around, she sees us and she smiles. “Cute as pie, you two.”

  I don’t think I’ve ever been this thirsty. I can tell from her music that Corina is feeling it as much as I do, but she’s not willing to show it. No weakness from her. Not right now.

  No weakness from me, either. My feet hurt like they’re broken. It was stupid to take off my shirt because my shoulders are burning to a crisp.

  It’s getting dark by the time we reach a town. There’s a mini-mart, but it looks like it’s not in business anymore. Cassandra walks to it anyways and pushes the door.

  The old man behind the counter is drinking from a forty-ounce bottle of Colt 45. He nods at us, but he’s too busy watching the TV to pay us much mind.

  “You don’t have anything to eat?”

  He doesn’t take his eyes from the TV. “Just some waters ’n’ those.” He points to a display of beef jerky and snack cakes that look old enough for a museum.

  “Thanks,” I tell him, and follow Cassandra to the cooler, where there are water bottles. The cooler’s broken, so the water’s room temperature, but at least it’s not a hundred and seven degrees.

  Three beef jerkies, three snack cakes. Three bottles of water.

  At the counter, ready to pay, I look up at the old-style wall-mounted TV screen to see what he’s watching.

  It’s a news broadcast—one of the cable networks. There’s a main anchor and a couple of windows off to the side.

  One of them’s got another person in it, talking, but it’s the last window that stops me from doing anything. I recognize the person in it.

  My heart starts to pound. It’s Jordan.

  She’s standing at a podium with the MtLA logo behind her, set between two American flags. She’s speaking and I know what she’s saying because I helped her write the speech.

  “Holy shit,” I say to Corina. “She was my glide target.” I turn to her and smile broadly. “I made this speech happen.”

  Corina is frozen in place. She doesn’t look impressed or curious. She looks scared. Her music is quiet, uneven. “You saw this part?”

  “Nah, I just did the—” But I don’t get to finish the sentence because all of a sudden the little box with Jordan in it takes over the whole screen. A dark spot has appeared next to Jordan’s podium, bigger than her—a shadow with nothing to cast it. It takes a moment for my eyes to focus on it, to see what it is, but even before it’s clear, my stomach curls up and I want to be sick.

  Locust. Jordan looks over. She’s so small compared to it, delicate.

  She’s just a kid.

  “No . . .” I don’t even mean to say it. It just comes out. “No. No, this isn’t . . .”

  The Locust spreads its cape, revealing its arms and legs, which are almost impossible to tell from its body, but I know they’re there.

  “Run!” I shout it out loud.

  “She don’t,” the counter guy says softly. “She just stands there.”

  I watch, as paralyzed as Jordan. She makes no move to get away from it as it moves toward her. She closes her eyes. It’s hard to see what she’s doing, but I know.

  She’s praying.

  I can even read one of the words on her lips as she says it.

  Abaddon.

  The Locust’s claw arm emerges, finds her neck. She doesn’t even resist as it pulls her in toward itself, enfolding her in its cape.

  “Jordan . . .” I’m nearly crying.

  The camera is starting to shake and then suddenly there’s movement from the left side of the screen—a guy has come up onstage. He’s moving over to where the Locust has Jordan.

  I know him, too, and as I watch him edge closer to where the beast has Jordan, Sabazios’s plan becomes absolutely clear.

  I know what’s ab
out to happen.

  The guy onstage is Bicycle Man.

  He’s got Live-Tech.

  The Locust seems to notice him approach, and instead of reaching for him, it glides back and away from him, dragging Jordan with him, only her feet visible beneath its cape.

  The frame freezes and a circle appears around Bicycle Man’s ear. It zooms in to show his pod. It’s Live-Tech.

  JEFFREY SABAZIOS’S LIVE-TECH CLAIMS TRUE? appears on the screen underneath, then fades. The screen zooms out, the action continues.

  And it’s clear that, just like with me, the Locust is pretending it doesn’t want to be near the Live-Tech.

  Everybody thinks it’s afraid of it, but now that I know the truth it’s hard for me to see how anybody can believe the lie.

  Within moments, the Locust backs up against the wall behind the podium. The wall shimmers behind it.

  It does something under its cape. Jordan’s feet twitch. Her toes extend, flex in her shoes, then relax.

  Blood drips down her exposed legs.

  Her body drops.

  The Locust backs into the wall and disappears and then Jordan’s body is alone, bloody, collapsed on the ground.

  She fell just like my mom did.

  “Alex,” Corina whispers. “We’ve got to go.” She touches my shoulder, leaves her hand there. The sunburn under her fingers comes alive and the pain is searing, but I don’t move away because I can’t move at all.

  “I killed her.” But no one seems to hear me, so I say it again. “I killed her.”

  “No you didn’t, Alex,” Corina says. Her voice is almost too quiet for me to hear.

  “I set her up.” My voice is squeaky and high but I don’t care, can’t. “I made her do the speech. She wasn’t going to, but I made her.”

  “You didn’t kill her, Alex.” Corina squeezes my shoulder, making me wince. She pushes against it, turning me to face her. “You didn’t do this.”

  I shake my head, ready to tell her that she’s wrong, but she puts up a finger, stops me.

  “Sabazios made this happen, not you.” Then: “Not me.”

  It takes me a moment. “You knew?”

  She nods her head, then looks at the guy behind the counter, who’s watching our conversation. “President Castle was my target. I was there when he got the news.”

  “That’s some terrible shit,” Cassandra says from behind me. “But one dead kid isn’t the end of the world. The end of the world is the end of the world, and if we don’t get a move on, it’s gonna be here before you know it.” She points at the counter guy, who’s wide-eyed. “Give the guy the money.”

  I hand the guy the wad of ones in my hand. “Don’t believe the bullshit about Live-Tech,” I tell him. “It’s a lie. It’s how they target you—that guy on the screen wasn’t saved by it, he used it to bring that Locust to her.”

  He doesn’t say anything back. I don’t ask for change.

  When we leave the store, I offer Cassandra one of the beef jerkies.

  “I don’t eat meat,” she tells me, grabbing the three snack cakes out of my hands instead.

  She doesn’t say thanks.

  “Jesus,” I mutter.

  “Your friend’s a piece of work,” Corina says.

  It’s hard to focus on what’s around me because my head’s filled with Jordan. Not big moments, just memories. Her excitement at the prospect of waffles.

  The way she thought it was funny that everybody took her dad so seriously.

  How much she wanted to help.

  How real she was with Will.

  Will. He was there. He watched that happen in real time.

  I convinced her that this was the time for her to be Abigail. We were both sure that what she was doing was right.

  She thought it was God’s will.

  It’s full dark when we pass a painted mountain. I can just make out the colors on it. It’s covered with colors and designs, rising hundreds of feet off the road. I slow to look at it, but Cassandra doesn’t and neither does Corina. She’s too tired.

  While I’m looking at it, there’s a flash of light and then, a few seconds later, an explosion. It’s followed by several more—big hot red round balls of fire rise off the ground in the distance. It sounds like war. “What the hell is that?!” I yell.

  I can hear Corina’s concern over the explosion, but it doesn’t show through in her face. She’s too tired.

  Cassandra shrugs. “Artillery.” I wait for more explanation. None comes.

  I jump with every explosion. They get louder as we get closer. When Cassandra turns, the bombs are falling so close I think I can feel their wind.

  Everything on this walk has been strange, but the place she takes us is like a scene from the end of the world. We’re walking on a desert road across an open field, and there are fires burning all around us. I sense hundreds of people nearby, but there are no lights beside the fires. There’s no cars, but I can see the outlines of camper shells.

  We’re walking up Fury Road, but all the insanity around me is overwhelmed by Jordan in my mind. She’s everywhere and I can’t escape.

  Eventually, Cassandra stops in front of the nose of a yellow school bus that’s rising out of the ground like a dolphin jumping from the water. It’s sitting at a thirty-degree angle. Everything beyond the fifth row of seats is underground. “We’re home.”

  Sixty

  Cassandra fiddles with something in the wheel well of the bus and moments later, the door swings open. It’s a step up and my legs are so tired, I’m not even sure I can do it. Cassandra leaps up like it’s not a problem. Corina and I look at each other in the dark. She rolls her eyes. I smile.

  There’s another generator humming nearby. I look back at the fires behind us just as another artillery shell lands on the range nearby, lighting us up like a Halloween haunted house.

  “C’mon,” Cassandra calls from inside. “You’re letting the cold out.”

  I brace myself for the pain from my legs and step up inside. I turn to offer my hand to Corina. She takes it. I pull her up, and when she’s in, I turn around to see where we are.

  The driver’s seat is where it’s supposed to be and there’s even a steering wheel and a gearshift, but after that, the whole thing has been hollowed out. Where the seats should be, there’s a stairway that goes down. It’s not fancy or even well-built, but Cassandra is already halfway down and it holds her just fine. There’s light at the bottom, too, bright enough to silhouette Cassandra and cast shadows up at the surface.

  Corina and I look at each other again. She shrugs. I shrug. I start down the stairs and she follows me. She’s close enough behind me that I can feel her heat.

  The light at the bottom of the stairs is coming from a single bare light bulb hanging from a socket attached to an extension cord. The room is hollowed out of the ground and there are boards holding up the dirt around us like an old-school mineshaft. While I’m studying it, there’s an artillery burst up above. The boards rattle. Dirt and dust fall from the ceiling.

  Cassandra ducks down into a tunnel that’s no bigger than the frame of a car door. She crawls on her hands and knees and Corina and I follow suit. My knees are killing me and I’m dragging my backpack behind me like a stuffed toy. I can hear Corina trailing me, struggling and cursing under her breath.

  Just when I think we’re never going to stop crawling, the tunnel gets wide again and we’re at the base of another staircase, this one going up. There’s another bare bulb lighting the way. If I wasn’t afraid for my life I think this would probably seem really cool, but right now it just makes me feel like I’m in the hands of amateurs. “Quite a setup,” I mutter.

  “You could do better?” Cassandra replies. “The bus is the only way in.” She points up. “This is the safest place on the planet when it comes to keeping out Gentry and their minions.
”

  “Can’t they find us from underneath? Have some witness glide us?” Corina replies. “How is this”—she gestures at the dirt—“gonna keep them from finding us?”

  Just as I’m about to pile on with Corina’s question, I notice the silence. I can only hear Corina, Cassandra, and two others. The rest of the Jungle is silent . . .

  “We’re shielded,” I tell her. “The Jungle is blocked here.” I’m already beginning to feel lonely.

  Corina nods slowly, still cautious.

  “What jungle?” Cassandra asks.

  I hate explaining the Jungle. “The noise,” I start. “The loud stuff that comes up from down deep . . .” I’m sounding like a crazy person. “It’s like music.”

  But Cassandra nods and continues up the stairs as I’m trailing off. “Oh, the Syllogos,” she replies as she climbs.

  “The Silly Juice?” It’s what my Voice said. For the first time in forever it feels like there are answers around me, but I don’t know how to ask the questions.

  She stops again, turns around. “Sil-low-joss.” She pronounces it carefully with big wide lip movement.

  “What is it, though?”

  She shrugs, turns back up the stairs. “It’s like time and choices and stuff—it’s where the Live-Tech gets access to our minds, too. Ask Sybil. She knows. She’s the one who gave us the doohickey that blocks that shit so we can’t be tracked in here.” Then she’s up out of view.

  Corina and me stand at the base of the ladder for a moment. I don’t know if I’m more tired from the hike and the heat or wired by the idea that I might get some answers.

  I look at Corina. “We have a doohickey,” she mutters. “Blocks that shit.”

  “The see-low-joos . . .” I whisper back to her. “Blocked that shit.” For the first time since we got to LA, it feels like we’re in tune.

  The stairs come up inside what looks like a trailer. It’s got fake wood paneling and bad carpet. There’s furniture, but it’s ratty and generally makes me not want to sit even though I’m totally wiped from the walk.