A Savage Generation

by David Tallerman

  “Come on,” Doyle tells his son.

  The administrative wing, where Aaronovich’s office is, runs to their right, a long, squat building, innocuous compared to the aggressive bulk of the cellblocks opposite. Separating them is the yard, a desert of blanched concrete. The Big House, which closes off the farther, northern perimeter, is out of their way. It doesn’t matter. Plan John watches everything, and what he sees, he controls – or tries to. So there’s no chance of this ending without a confrontation.

  “When did you last eat?” Doyle asks Austin.

  “We stopped in a diner. But all they had was fries.” Austin makes each word sound like a trial.

  “I’ll fix you something,” Doyle promises. At least they still have food, for now.

  To his left, a small group are stubbornly working out in the weights pile, despite the summer’s heat. He identifies Farmer and Cousins, Landser and Silas from the white skinheads, and keeping slightly apart, Torres and Soto. Anywhere else, that little crowd – black, white, and Latino within a few square feet – would be a powder keg waiting for a match. Not here. There probably isn’t a prison on Earth as integrated as White Cliff. Plan John wouldn’t allow it any other way.

  He’d spelled that out when he’d spoken to them the day before, though it had hardly needed saying: “You’ll put aside your differences,” he’d declared, “because the only meaningful difference is the one between us in here and them out there.”

  Doyle wonders belatedly which them he was referring to. Had he meant the great mass of humanity, the vast everyone-else, or merely the sick? Rumor has it that Plan John, true to his name, has been preparing this current arrangement for a very long time. Even before the sickness became an epidemic, when the outbreak was confined to a few isolated cases in a country most people barely recognized the name of, Plan John had been avidly following its advance.

  Now, however, it’s Doyle’s and Austin’s progress that commands his attention. They are almost upon the Big House.

  “Are you listening to me?” Doyle asks, not turning his head.

  Austin makes a noise of vague assent.

  “Unless he questions you directly, whatever he says, you keep quiet. Do you hear?”

  Austin gives another noncommittal grunt.

  “Do you hear me?” Doyle growls.

  “I heard you.”

  Doyle stops, squinting up at the balcony and the ice-blue sky. Plan John, silhouetted, is Humpty Dumpty-like, his colossal mass scarcely contained by the chair he’s ensconced in. As Doyle struggles to bring his shape into focus, Plan John toys with the rim of his sun visor, squinting through its green plastic crescent.

  “Who’s your young friend, Mr. Johnson?”

  “This is my son,” Doyle answers. “Name’s Austin.”

  “Your son? What an auspicious occasion.” Plan John lays his palms flat on his vast stomach and smiles, with apparently genuine pleasure.

  “It’s just for a few days,” Doyle says, trying not to sound apologetic. “Until his mother gets things sorted.”

  “A sort of holiday for the boy,” agrees Plan John.

  “I guess you could look at it like that.” Doyle gives a shallow nod goodbye and begins to turn away, knowing all the while that Howard isn’t done.

  Indeed, he hasn’t taken a step before Plan John’s voice comes again. “Do you see this?”

  When Doyle turns, Howard has a hand raised to indicate the sun visor he’s wearing.

  “One of my most treasured possessions. It cost me two dollars in a booth outside the beach resort I was then staying in.”

  “Yeah?” Doyle says. “It suits you.”

  “Thank you. Some men wear three-thousand-dollar suits identical to ones that can be bought in a department store. They spend hundreds on watches that do nothing any watch wouldn’t do.” Plan John takes off the visor, wipes sweat from the elastic band with the hem of his Hawaiian shirt, puts it back on, and wriggles it until he’s satisfied with the angle. “Most people have no understanding of the value of things.”

  “It’s a nice hat,” Doyle says.

  Plan John’s smile broadens. “Well. I’ll let you get on with your business. I’m sure we’ll all be seeing each other again soon enough.”

  * * *

  Aaronovich looks the boy up and down. He’s lighter skinned than his father, smaller of build, slightly plump with baby fat he hasn’t quite grown out of. The only familiar features are those eyes, which have the same brooding quality as Doyle Johnson’s, and the mouth, set hard as a scratch in concrete. He already has his father’s intensity, that sense of pent-up tension kept on a short leash.

  She’d like to say something to reassure him, but all she’s felt since the moment Doyle introduced his son to her is horror. A child. A child in Funland. As if things weren’t bad enough. As if one loose spark wouldn’t suffice to bring Howard’s entire madhouse down in flames.

  “You must be tired,” Aaronovich suggests.

  “I’m fine.” Austin grinds the syllables together as though even this simple greeting is an intrusion.

  “All right. That’s good.”

  He doesn’t sound or look fine. He looks tired and on edge, more so even than the circumstances demand. But the fact is that she has no clue how to deal with this angry, brooding boy, no more than Johnson evidently has himself.

  “Austin,” she says, “would you mind if I talked to your father on his own? There’s a settee in the outer office. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable?”

  He raises his eyes then, transparently unsure whether he should glare at her or whether this is some limited kindness. Evidently the quandary isn’t important enough to pursue, for he drops his gaze and slouches out without a word, pulling the door closed behind him.

  Aaronovich releases the breath she hadn’t realized she’s been holding. “All right,” she says once more.

  Johnson is leaning against her filing cabinet. He hardly appears aware that Austin has gone. She tries to catch his eye, gives up. “I’m not an expert,” she says, “but frankly, the boy seems traumatized.”

  “It’s been a tough day for him.”

  “I mean, more than that. I mean, he seems traumatized. How acquainted are you with his home life? Has he been under stress lately?”

  “Everyone’s been under stress,” Johnson snaps. “You know what’s going on out there.”

  Aaronovich sighs. She’s seen Johnson like this before. Any conversation regarding his son is going to have to wait. “You’ve been talking to Howard.”

  “Howard’s been talking to me.”

  “He knows about Austin.”

  “Yes,” says Johnson, “he knows about Austin.”

  On occasions, Aaronovich has heard Howard refer to White Cliff as a machine. She understands that he intends something specific by this. A machine works in precise ways, which are the ways in which it was designed to work by its creator. Its elements act in unison, or else get replaced.

  Still, when he’d first said it, the metaphor struck her as clumsy, a thoughtless comment from a man of limited education. Nothing made from flesh and blood components could possibly function as Howard conceived. She had needed time to comprehend that Howard had said exactly what he’d meant, had found a simple and exact model to convey his perception of the place he called Funland.

  There’s one more thing about machines, it occurs to Aaronovich now. They have no use for excess parts.

  “So Howard has made your son his business. What are you going to do about that?”

  Doyle’s expression reminds her forcibly of Austin’s from a minute before. There’s that same uncertainty: is this provocation or help, and how much does he care to differentiate between the two?

  Just like his son, Johnson doesn’t reach any conclusion. “That,” he says, “is definitely the question.”

>   Chapter Three

  When Carlita comes into his room, Kyle pretends to be sleeping.

  He can’t say why, but he doesn’t want her to know that he’s been lying awake, staring at the ceiling and the minor galaxy of glow stars he stuck there, listening to the discordant sounds of the nighttime city and hoping for the rattle of the apartment door.

  “Kyle, wake up,” she says. Then, louder, “Kyle!”

  “What is it?” His heart is beating hard.

  “Your father’s been arrested.” Carlita speaks the words with forced calm, as someone else might say, Your father’s going to be late from work. “Uncle Nando is going to pick us up, even though he’s on duty and he shouldn’t. I need you to get dressed. And put some clothes in a bag.”

  As soon as she’s out of the room, Kyle does as he’s been told, feeling all the while only a hollow sense of anticipation. He stuffs a second pair of jeans and a few T-shirts into a backpack, and then underwear, books, his MP3 player. When he can’t think of anything else, he sits on the bed, waiting.

  A car horn bellows from the street. Looking out of the window, Kyle sees a police cruiser directly below, engine idling. Kyle shoulders his backpack, hurries out. In the hallway, Carlita is wrestling with a large suitcase and an overstuffed sports bag. Taking the bag, Kyle follows her out the door and down the central staircase. Even for the time of night, the building is quieter than he’s ever heard it.

  Behind the wheel, Nando appears nervous. Yet there’s no one in the street, certainly no sign of what the TV has taken to calling Sickers, when it became clear that the infected were not dying but finding new ways to grow more and more sick. Nando has the window down. When he spies the bags and case he says approvingly, “Good, good. You did like I said.”

  They get into the back and Nando pulls away from the curb. Normally, Carlita’s cousin is friendly and cheerful, full of jokes for Kyle. Tonight he says nothing. Kyle wants to ask what his father has done, but he knows they’ll tell him when they’re ready, or else not at all. He can’t escape the feeling that their silence is aimed at him, as though he’s guilty by association.

  Kyle has been to the police station once before, with Carlita. The route Nando takes is different, longer, and seems to consist entirely of diversions. Twice they have to reverse because roads are closed. On the first occasion, the obstruction is another cop car pulled across the street; on the second, half a dozen grim-faced soldiers gathered around a parked Humvee.

  When they reach the station, finally, Nando pulls into an underground garage and leads them up a back staircase. The first room they pass through is huge and chaotic, with panic tangible in the air.

  Catching Kyle’s expression, Nando leans close. “Your papi’s in my office,” he says. “Don’t worry, he’s okay.”

  Sure enough, when they get to his dad, Ben isn’t even handcuffed. He’s sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He glances up as they enter, and his eyes are bleak. Kyle wishes he could smile, to try and reassure his father, but he finds he can’t convince his mouth.

  “Hey,” Ben says.

  “Hi,” Kyle replies. Carlita says nothing, not even looking at Ben.

  “Okay,” Nando begins, starting to talk the moment he’s shut the door behind them. “Here’s the thing. I think I can get you out of the city, but you have to listen to me.”

  “All of us?” Ben asks.

  Nando scowls, not looking his way either. But he says only, “Yes, all of us.”

  “Then where do we go?” Carlita wonders.

  “There’s a place. A place called Funland.”

  “Like Disneyland?” Kyle puts in, faintly hopeful.

  Nando shakes his head. “Funland is a kind of prison. They just took to calling it that. Its real name is White Cliff.”

  “A prison?” Carlita’s voice has grown jagged.

  “We’d be safe. It’s all but abandoned. Do you remember my Uncle Tito? He’s a guard there and we write each other sometimes. The last time, he said that if things got really bad then I should go.”

  “So he doesn’t know about this plan of yours?” she asks. “Nando, I see that you mean well, but this is no good.”

  “It isn’t like that. Anyway, I’d warn Tito and he’d arrange something. It’s cut off; he says they haven’t had even a trace of sickness. We would stay with the guards.”

  Carlita’s exasperation is obvious. “You seriously want to take a woman and a child into a prison?”

  “Baby,” Ben says, “you’re missing the point.”

  Carlita stands so quickly that her chair goes tumbling backward. She closes the gap to Ben with a single pace, leans forward until her face almost touches his, and screams, “Shut up!” She raises one hand, as though she’ll slap him. Instead, she spins away and strikes her palm upon the window. Then she folds her arms against the glass, sinks her forehead onto them, and gives a choked sob.

  When she turns back, her eyes are dry, and sharp as nails. “This is your fault. All you had to do was find enough money for a full tank of gas. And now what? You’re going to prison, so I have to come too?”

  “I know it seems bad,” Nando tells her. “But we don’t have much time. So will you listen to what I have to say? I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t believe it was the right course. I’m trying to help you because you’re my cousin, and so I’m helping Ben, because he’s your boyfriend. The way things are, he might not even make it to jail in one piece.”

  “Can’t you just let him go?” Carlita asks, not quite pleading.

  “It’s going to be hard enough to arrange this. I think I can; they’re desperate for drivers. But—”

  “For drivers?”

  “They’re sending the sick out in trucks. The ones that get arrested.”

  Her eyes widen. “Oh no.”

  “Nobody knows what else to do. The commander is saying they have to be treated as normal until somebody tells him differently. It’s crazy, but there it is. Martial law will come soon, and then no one will give a damn about locking them up.”

  “Fernando, you can’t really be serious.”

  “They’re letting the trucks through as priority. No cars are getting out at all. There isn’t any other choice. If we don’t hurry, even this will be gone.”

  “I’ve heard what they’re like,” Carlita says. “I saw an old woman who had it. She was out of her mind, screaming about nothing. And then she chased a man, for no reason. She was so old, she could barely run, and people laughed at her. But I could see how badly she wanted to hurt him.”

  “That was what happened last night,” Ben mumbles. “I mean, one of them, the sick. It was the worst thing I’ve seen.”

  “So you understand? We can’t go to this Funland place.”

  “No, you’ve got it backward.” Ben’s voice is still hushed. “The cities are the worst bet. Somewhere like that, out in the middle of nowhere—”

  “That’s it,” Nando agrees. “Tito says Funland used to be a farm prison. They have their own water, supplies, everything. What could be better?”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” Kyle puts in, partly because he wants them to acknowledge him, for someone to care about his opinion, and partly because he has an image, firm in his imagination, not of a prison but of a farm, and he and Nando and his father and Carlita there and getting on again, as they hardly ever seem to do these days.

  But Carlita doesn’t look at Kyle. She’s staring at Nando, holding him with her gaze, as though she can weigh him and his plan both together. Finally, she looks away, releases him. “You’re a good cousin, Fernando. You have a good heart. I hope for all our sakes that you’re right about this.”

  * * *

  Since Fernando went out, saying only that he needed to clear some things, Ben has wanted urgently to talk to Carlita, to assuage her anger somehow. However, he knows her expression, and that
she’ll cool down on her own, an hour, three hours, a day from now. Ben thinks then of speaking to Kyle, of telling him what happened. Carlita has probably given him a distorted account of why they’re here, of what his father has been up to in the night. Ben feels ashamed at the thought, and frustrated at his shame. Hadn’t he tried to do the right thing? Nevertheless, he isn’t sure how his version would sound any better.

  When Nando returns, he’s even more on edge. “Okay,” he says. “Come, quick.”

  He marches them through the main office, down three flights to the garage in the basement. There, he leads the way to a white van parked near the exit ramp. A prison service decal has been hastily stenciled on the side; the paint is visibly wet. A mechanic in filthy overalls is just finishing sealing the back doors with an acetylene torch, having welded sheets of metal entirely over the rear windows.

  “Wait,” Ben says, realization dawning. “That’s an ambulance.”

  “We’ve been requisitioning them,” Fernando tells him.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “We still have a couple of squad cars,” the mechanic offers, “if you’d rather share one of those with half a dozen Sickers.”

  “They’re already in there?” Ben says.

  The mechanic hefts the acetylene torch, gives him a look of contempt.

  “They’re chained up?”

  “Sure. I went in and did it myself, while they were napping.”

  “How are they going to get them out at the other end?” asks Carlita.

  “Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far.” The mechanic fishes in his pocket, pulls out a key on a metal fob, and hands it to Nando. “The hospital let us take her because she was down for repairs. They’re morons, all she needed was new plugs. The tires are pretty raw and she could do with an oil change, but you said you were in a hurry, right? Anyway, you have problems, you know who to call.”

  Nando manages a weary smile. “Anyone but you?”

  “Fuck yes.”