The Electric Kingdom

by David Arnold

  Deadly storms were life-giving.

  As they crossed the bridge-road, Kit looked over the edge and saw the road running beneath him, and he wondered if anything was ever only one thing.

  Frozen ears and wet socks, maybe. He was tired and cold and tired of being cold.

  The problem was, even though snow came and went, the ground stayed muddy and wet, the air thin and bitter. He’d pulled his knit cap down so many times, it was all stretched out.

  “Quite the sleeping bag you’ve got there,” said Lennon, nodding to Lakie’s pack.

  “I don’t play around with sleep,” said Lakie.

  Kit raised a hand. “I can vouch for this.”

  “Looks pretty heavy, though.”

  Lakie shrugged. “It’s a Big Alma. Found it on a scavenge a few years back. Seventy-five-denier ripstop nylon shell with Insotect Tubic construction.”

  “Well, sure, one of those.”

  “Make fun. But in a battle between a bobcat and Big Alma, I’m not saying Big Alma would win, but it would be close.”

  “See, that’s good, ’cause we’re entering primo bobcat territory.”

  Kit looked at him. “Really?”

  “He’s kidding,” said Lakie. A few steps later she looked at Lennon. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Let’s just say I wish I had a Big Alma.”

  “He’s kidding,” said Lakie.

  Lennon winked at Kit in a covert way, which Kit found surprising. Given Lennon’s tracking skills and overall demeanor, Kit had assumed he wasn’t the joking type.

  Maybe people could be more than one thing at once too.

  qualities miraculous and mysterious

  At sunset they found themselves in a place that might generously be called a town, but was basically a strip of houses, an old baseball field, and the ruins of a bank. They tried a few houses first, with the idea of sleeping indoors. But these were not the synthetic pastels of a touristy mountain town whose residents had lived elsewhere when the Flies hit. These residents had clearly hunkered down for the long haul. Whatever was left of them—a decent amount, given the smell—was still in there.

  The bank was a heap of bricks and two walls, both of which looked like a good strong breeze might take them down at any moment.

  Most of the baseball field was covered in patches of mud or large swaths of weeds and overgrown grass, but near the back, along the border of a chain-link fence, they found a more manageable area where they dropped their stuff and got to work making camp: Loretta took her rifle into the woods, and this time, Lakie joined her; Pringles and Lennon went off in search of twigs and leaves for kindling; Kit helped Monty sprinkle cinnamon around the site.

  Kit understood cinnamon the way he understood sex: he had been told by those he trusted that it worked a certain way, and so he believed it; its qualities, while supposedly miraculously effective, were a complete mystery; its implications were terrifying.

  “You think this stuff actually does anything?” he asked, imagining that giant flailing octopus-swarm, climbing down out of the mountains only to turn around at the smell of the dreaded cinnamon.

  Monty shrugged. “It’s not just us. Loretta—the other group, I mean—they use it too. Had it spread all over the front yard of that house.”

  For all the good it did.

  “Maybe for the smaller swarms,” said Monty, reading his mind.

  Or maybe it’s just a trick, thought Kit. A comforting hoax. Yes, human, you are still in control of things.

  Maybe sex was a hoax too. Maybe the reason his Dakota had never talked about Kit’s dad was because he didn’t have a dad. He’d once read a book from the nonfiction shelves about certain hammerhead sharks whose female eggs could self-fertilize. Another one said whiptail lizards were an all-female species, and they seemed to be doing just fine, thank you.

  Maybe science was in his corner! Maybe the reproduction of humankind didn’t really require men, after all!

  He needed to think about this.

  Later, when they had a good fire going, they changed their socks and shirts, hung the damp ones to dry. Pringles removed the bandage from his elbow, and even though it hadn’t been that long since he’d last changed the dressing, his skin was beginning to change colors. Blood and some kind of ooze was seeping from it.

  Infection was a word Kit knew.

  “Damn, Pringles.” Loretta and Lakie had just returned with a large dead turkey. They hauled it to the fire, dropped it on the ground. “Does it hurt?”

  He shrugged, began wrapping the elbow in new bandages. “Nice bird.”

  Loretta pulled her eyes from the blossoming rainbow that was Pringles’s elbow to the turkey. “Lakie was asking if I’d show her how to breast it out. Lennon, loan her your knife?”

  Kit watched in a cacophony of horror as Loretta and Lakie bent down, flipped the turkey on its back, and proceeded to slice into it. “Breasting it out is way easier than a true field dressing,” said Loretta, guiding Lakie through the steps. “Cleaner, quicker. You don’t have to mess with feathers or innards.” Loretta said Jean and Zadie had kept rigid sanitary practices, and even had a camper designated for the dressing of carcasses. “You’re doing great,” said Loretta. “You sure this is your first— Whoa, maybe slow down around the—”

  Just as she said this, the inside of the turkey spilled out all over the place, intestines, and a good spray of blood.

  “Shit.” Lakie stood, blood all over her pants from the knees down.

  “Yeah.” Lennon smiled, took the knife back from her. “Probably some of that on you too.”

  After Loretta finished the job, it took quite a long time (in Kit’s stomach’s opinion) for Pringles to roast the thing, but eventually, they all dug in, and Kit promised himself that once they reached the Isles of Shoals, he would reclaim his vegetarianism.

  Later, as everyone began spreading out sleeping bags and bedrolls (giving the wild turkey entrails as wide a berth as possible), Kit had an idea. He walked over to Pringles, who was still nursing his elbow. “Where did you find the sticks for the fire?”

  Pringles pointed toward a cluster of trees back behind home plate. “Don’t wander too far, little man.”

  Beside them, Lennon stood from his bedroll. “I’ll go with him.”

  Belittling was a great word inasmuch as it meant exactly what it sounded like; it was, however, a frustrating thing to feel. “I understand that I am small,” said Kit. “But I am lightning quick.”

  Lennon’s smile changed; Kit couldn’t tell if he liked it or not.

  “I don’t doubt that. But I helped Pringles earlier, and I saw some good sticks. Plus, I like to walk before bed.”

  “Okay.” Kit pulled the stretched-out edges of his hat over his ears. “Let’s go, then.”

  As they walked, Kit explained the sport of baseball, how humans used to smack a ball with a stick of wood, and then run around the diamond-shape from one rubber base to the next. “At the end of the match, whichever team circles the diamond-shape more frequently wins.”

  “You know a lot about baseball.”

  “I read about it in Play Ball, Amelia Bedelia. I used to have a very convenient library in my building.”

  “Your building?”

  “William H. Taft Elementary School. By the way, why do you wear a broken watch?”

  Lennon held up his wrist. “Not broken.”

  “Don’t watches need batteries?”

  “Most do. This one’s a windup, though. See? I just have to wind it every night.”

  For the first time, Kit got a good look at the watch, at the two hands slowly rotating in front of . . . “Is that a city?” he asked.

  “Boston skyline. My mom—not biological, but one of the women who raised me—”

  “Jean or Zadie?”

  Lennon looked impresse
d. “Lightning quick and a good listener. Jean. We were close. She gave it to me.”

  Something in his tone made Kit wonder if Lennon had a purple flower somewhere too.

  They passed a cement structure with the word DUGOUT painted across the side, and through a gap in the fence until they reached the cluster of trees Pringles had pointed to. Kit paced, eyes scanning the ground for the perfect stick. He needed a pointy end. Thin enough to hold like a brush, but sturdy enough it wouldn’t break in the snow and mud. “Cool name, too,” he said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Lennon,” said Kit. “I feel like I’ve heard it before.”

  “Ever heard of a band called the Beatles?” Lennon started singing a song about hiding love away, and then said, “John Lennon. One of the greatest songwriters who ever lived. Zadie used to play guitar, knew all the Beatles’ stuff. Jean and Zadie had a few days with my birth parents in Pin Oak before the Flies hit. They even ate dinner together once. I know it’s—sad and weird, probably. That the only things I know about my biological family, I learned from the memories of a single dinner.”

  “It is sad,” Kit said. “But not weird.”

  Lennon smiled. “My parents were immigrants from Jordan. I guess doors had been closed to them based on who they were, where they’d come from. Not like a name was going to open all those doors, but they hoped it would help. My biological mom was obsessed with the Beatles. Jean said they could hear her carrying me around the campsite at night, quietly singing me to sleep . . .”

  He picked up in the song where he’d left off, and Kit added it to the list of things that were two things at once: 100 percent heart-hugging; 100 percent heartbreaking.

  “Sometimes,” Lennon said. “I know it’s silly, but—”

  “You still hear her.”

  At night, alone in his sleeping bag, Kit would close his eyes and turn his head to one side, and he could swear he felt his Dakota’s hand under his cheek, that silver key dangling from her necklace, brushing his forehead. He remembered his beginning, how he was born in the upstairs projection room of an old theater to a mother who had yet to pick a name. And then I saw the box, she whispered at night, and I thought, Yes, this child is mine.

  “I still hear my mom too,” Kit said.

  Before Lennon could respond, the earth groaned.

  A pulsing buzz in the distance, and Kit was full of fear and relief, both in full, both at once: fear that the Flies had come; relief that he could now stop wondering when they would.

  gone

  Lennon grabbed his hand. “This way.”

  They ran back the way they’d come, through the gap in the fence, only instead of heading for the outfield, Lennon pulled him to the right, and into the dugout. If tonight’s the night, I’ll see you soon, thought Kit, the buzzing louder, nearer, though I have no one to plant my purple flower. From inside, the dugout felt like an elongated closet, equal to the area behind the concession counter at the Paradise Twin, and behind that, the room where I watched your soul pass from this life to the next, save a place for me, please and thanks, as close to you as possible, please and thanks, and to their right, a long bench lined the back wall of the dugout; to their left, between them and the field, cement blocks to the waist, chain link above that.

  Lennon crouched, pulled Kit down so they were both hidden from view. “Okay, okay,” said Lennon, looking around, and even though they were right up next to each other, Kit could barely hear him, the buzzing was so loud now. “There.” Lennon pointed to the space under the bench, said something else Kit couldn’t hear, and in the air around them, Kit thought he could see the molecules of sound, vibrating, dancing this way and that. Lennon pushed him under the bench, his mouth took the shape of words, “Now, quick, get under,” and what will it be like, I wonder, to live as a breeze forever, traveling time and space? Whatever it’s like, it will be better, because we’ll be together, and Kit got on his hands and knees, shuffled under the bench until he was as tucked away as a human could be.

  Keeping low, Lennon peered out over the top of the cement blocks.

  Seconds passed unaccounted for, as if time had stopped dead or sped up, is there time where you are? I’ll know soon enough. Kit could only raise his head by inches before hitting the underside of the bench, his vantage narrow and restricted, and it seemed fitting, but so unfair, that his view of the world would be as limited in death as it was in life.

  From here, neck craned, Kit saw: a dirty, snowy cement floor; the boots of a boy whose mother had loved the Beatles and only wanted good things for her son; the boy himself, the side of his face, eyes wide with a fear lit by the moon; and then, slowly, the fear blurred, its source came into focus, the sky and the moon and the wave, the flailing tentacles . . .

  Kit closed his eyes.

  In that nothingness, he saw his projection room, your footsteps coming up the stairs, you bring the story of my beginning—now let me tell you the story of how it ends, and he saw her face coming in the room, her necklace, her eyes so full of soil and mountains and a past he would never know, now tuck me in cocoon-style, just the way I like . . .

  That face.

  In a world so impossibly big.

  Places he would never see, tiny islands in a vast ocean.

  Like Texas.

  Jazz clubs.

  She smiled at him.

  And shook her head.

  Not yet.

  Kit opened his eyes and saw Lennon’s lips moving, but couldn’t hear the words, and then his eyes refocused on the sky behind him, and at first he didn’t register what he was seeing. Slowly, he came out from under the bench, crawled over to Lennon, and as he got closer, under the great buzzing drone, he could hear Lennon’s voice now: “Oh my God, oh my God,” over and over again, and together, they stared up into the night, “Oh my God,” watched the enormous swarm fly higher and higher, “Oh my God,” and framed in the light of the shimmery moon, grasped at the end of a flailing, soaring Fly-tentacle: the outline of a human. Below that, in another tentacle, something else—another human maybe, hard to say. “Oh my God,” said Lennon, and they kept their eyes on the sky until the swarm was gone, and they wondered which of their friends were gone with it.

  his anchor too

  Not Lakie or Monty, not Lakie or Monty . . .

  Kit and Lennon ran toward the campsite in the outfield, the cold anticipation of who’s left? All Kit could see was that human shape in the sky, the swarm surrounding it, enveloping it—

  Not Lakie or Monty, not Lakie or Monty . . .

  As they neared the campsite, there was a moment of horror when it looked like no one was there, like he and Lennon were the only ones from the group to survive. The swarm had been large, teeming; for most of the attack, he’d been stuck under a bench in the back of a dugout, he could have missed other human shapes in the sky . . .

  But then Loretta emerged from the woods on the other side of the fence, and Monty with her, their faces with the same sobering shock, a look that required more than one word, or that a new word be invented.

  They hopped the fence and Loretta attacked Lennon in a wide-eyed hug. “Holy shit, Len.”

  Monty ran to Kit, dropped to his knees, and Kit could not remember the last time they’d hugged like this: tight, vulnerable, real. Like they were brothers.

  “Was Lakie in the woods too?” Kit asked.

  Monty pulled out of the hug; his face was the only answer Kit needed.

  “We saw them take Pringles,” said Loretta. “He tried to run, but . . .”

  The four of them stood there, looking around the campsite. It was in complete disarray: sleeping bags and filter bottles, backpacks ripped open, charred wood from the fire scattered all over the place. Near where the fire had been—where there were now only glowing embers—Monty bent down, picked up Lakie’s rifle.

  “We don’t know they got her,” said Lor
etta. “She may have survived.”

  “There were two shapes,” said Kit, thinking how heavily he’d relied on Lakie to be his anchor—to the Paradise Twin, to his mother, to whatever fragile future lay ahead. “In the sky, there were two shapes.”

  “We don’t know it was her,” said Lennon. “I mean, look at this place. Half our shit’s gone, it could have been anything.”

  “It was her,” said Monty, turning Lakie’s rifle in his hands. “She never would have left this behind.”

  Neither Lennon nor Kit asked what Monty and Loretta had been doing in the woods to begin with. It was obvious enough. And the truth was, whatever their motivations, being out there had most likely saved their lives.

  They tried cleaning things up, but their hearts weren’t in it. Eventually Loretta picked up her sleeping bag, her backpack, and walked off toward the infield. One by one, they each did the same, carrying their stuff to the dugout, a silent understanding that tonight, if they slept at all, it wouldn’t be under the open sky.

  Later, from a cold, quiet dugout, Kit cried silently. And he felt the field turn to a vast, empty sea, the weight of his Dakota’s key against his chest, a reminder of her absence. With Lakie gone, his anchors had been lifted; he was a ship floating aimlessly into the horizon.

  “It’s my fault.” Buried in the sleeping bag beside him, Monty’s voice was barely audible. The words came again between sobs, “It’s my fault,” and Kit knew: she’d been Monty’s anchor too.

  missing things

  Next morning—after much stalling and yelling their lungs out in the woods beyond the outfield fence and gathering and repacking what provisions the Flies hadn’t shredded or tainted—Loretta and Lennon, Monty and Kit walked out of town, and even though their numbers were fewer, their bags less full, each felt heavier than they had walking in.

  “I never found it,” said Monty.

  Kit had been admiring his new stick. He’d gone back to the cluster of trees this morning, determined not to let the Flies take this away too. It was pointy, but not too pointy. Sturdy enough to use for walking and drawing in the mud and snow.