by David Arnold
Kit made a mental note: If he ever got a pet, he would name the animal Tartt-Asimov Zusak. His Dakota had always loved interesting names. She would most definitely approve.
“What about this?” asked Lennon, pulling a third book from Nico’s bag.
“It’s nothing.”
“Leaves of Grass, huh?”
“What.”
“Nothing, I just—didn’t peg you as a poetry person.”
“First off, I don’t know what that means. And second, I reject any literary criticism from someone who hasn’t called Hogwarts home.”
“I mean—I get the gist of Hogwarts.”
“The gist?”
“Yeah. Jean told me the story. You’ve got the kid wizard—”
“Oh my God.”
“Whatshisname.”
“He is literally the title.”
“Harry, right. You’ve got Harry. And then he goes to the magic school with Gandalf—”
“Stop.” Nico raised a hand, palm outward, took a deep breath. “Kit. My beloved friend, pray tell. What spoils will you be bringing with you?”
“Three boxes of colored pencils, already packed.” Kit pointed to his bag. “And then I’ll probably bring another one of these.” He tapped his sketch pad.
It wasn’t that Kit didn’t like reading. He loved it, truly, and very often missed his library. But the books had always been intermission.
Art was the show.
Later, once everyone had packed what books and art supplies they could fit, they ate dried meats from Echo’s cabin, a few servings of Nico’s strawberry granola, and talked more about the notion of traveling by boat.
“In places where the river’s widest, we’d be visible for miles,” said Nico. “Nowhere to hide if the Flies come. And God knows who else is in these woods. I’d rather not announce our presence to the world.”
“I agree,” said Lennon. “We’d be sitting ducks out there.”
“Plus, the water gets fast in places,” said Kit. “And there are rocks. Big ones.”
After they all agreed it was best to continue on foot, they settled into their sleeping bags. Harry nestled beside Nico as she pulled a pen out of her bag, added another tally to her hand. And Kit wondered what it would feel like if his Dakota had given him a mission before she died. Good, because he’d still have a connection to her. But not good, because what if he failed?
“Hey—” He propped himself up on one elbow, having just noticed something. “Why are you guys so far apart?”
Lennon said, “Who?” and Nico said, “What?” at exactly the same time.
“Yeah, see”—Kit pointed to Lennon, who was in his sleeping bag by the endcap labeled STRONG WOMEN—“you’re there. And then Nico’s, like”—he pointed to Nico, six aisles down by an endcap called BODY, MIND, SPIRIT—“waaaaay over there.”
A solid four seconds of silence before Lennon said, “You got any more of those hilarious jokes, Nico?”
“I mean, there’s all this space between you.” Kit threw both arms wide open. “It’s a little weird, is all I’m—”
Nico interrupted with a loud clearing of her throat. “So this alpaca walks into a fancy restaurant and asks if they serve potato chips.”
Lennon chuckled. “Ha. Good one. Alpaca. Classic.”
“It’s not over, bud. So the alpaca asks if they serve potato chips, and the waiter is like, ‘No, we don’t have potato chips. Also, we don’t serve alpacas, now get out.’ So the alpaca leaves. Next day, the alpaca comes back to the same fancy restaurant. ‘Hey, you guys serve potato chips?’ The waiter is like, ‘No, now get out.’ Day after that, same thing. Alpaca is back, asking for potato chips. Waiter says, ‘We don’t have potato chips, we don’t serve alpacas, and if you come back again, I’m going to staple that fluffy tail to the wall.’ Alpaca leaves. Next day, he comes back to the same restaurant, only this time, he asks to borrow some staples. The waiter says they don’t have any. The alpaca says, ‘Awesome. Do you guys serve potato chips?’”
Laughing with your friends in the magical land of BAM! was Kit’s new favorite thing.
faces in the tendrils
Later, long after their laughter had died and the soft flickering (old book) candlelight had taken Kit by the hand, ushered him to the edge of a deep, promising sleep—
“Nothing is as strong as the absence of itself,” Lennon whispered.
Kit lifted his suddenly weighty head to inquire just how long it would be before Lennon stopped talking. It was one thing, laughing with your friends in a magical bookstore. Quite another, trying to decipher their late-night musings.
But when he looked across the room, he saw on Lennon’s face the faraway kind of sad, and so said nothing.
“Jean used to say that,” Lennon continued. “She had all sorts of wise little nuggets.”
Kit was suddenly reminded of his own mother’s nugget of wisdom. “When the majority of the world has been wiped out, you don’t kill what’s left.” He turned over onto his back, stared up at the ceiling. “My Dakota used to say that. I eat meat all the time now.”
Lennon, quietly: “We are completely different people than we’re supposed to be. In a completely different world.”
“Hey—” Nico was interrupted by her own massive yawn, which made Lennon yawn, which made Kit yawn. And by the time they’d all finished yawning, they slipped into a fit of giggles at the orchestra of yawns. Finally, when the yawns and giggles had come to an end, Nico completed the thought she’d started like an hour ago: “Did you guys know that Flies aren’t really flies?”
“Sure,” said Lennon. “I mean, no one really knows what they are.”
They lay in the dark and listened to Nico explain how her father had told her that Russian scientists had used a virus to genetically modify the honeybee. “Only it went wrong—”
“You think?”
“The virus and bee mutated, and now . . . here we are. Yawning in an empty old bookstore, in the middle of a destroyed world.”
Kit thought of the homemade sign in the Taft library, how it had theorized that the Flies were not a product of nature, but a failed experiment.
“If that’s true,” said Lennon, “it’s next-level poetic justice.”
“You mean that the world ended at the hands of human hubris?”
“You fuck with nature, it fucks you back.”
O bedtime stories of old! How Kit missed those tender-hearted tuck-ins. Even so, his eyelids felt weighted, and just when he thought he could no longer keep them open . . .
“What did she mean?” asked Nico.
Lennon rustled, turned onto his side. “Hmm?”
“‘Nothing is as strong as the absence of itself.’ What does that mean?”
The question hung in the air a few seconds, and then Lennon said, “I used to think it meant, like—the normal things people did that I’ll never do. Drive a car. Go to college. Change a light bulb.”
“And now?”
Her voice sounded as tired as Kit felt, and as he let himself plunge into the glorious free fall of sleep, he heard Lennon say, “You can’t feel the absence of something that was never there to begin with,” and Kit was vaguely aware of his friend’s words spiraling up into the bookstore rafters, another tendril among a thousand authentic old book plumes, where together, words and smoke took the shape of the saddest boy Kit had ever met, someone who surely understood absence in a way he never would.
“I wonder what happened to Echo,” said Kit, and then he fell asleep.
THE DELIVERER
I follow the Merrimack north, shovel over shoulder, as it is written in the Red Books.
As I walk, I imagine others out there like me, roaming hillsides and ruined cities, foraging for supplies, operating on the fringes, trying to put their little piece of the world back together again. Maybe they
have biosuits too. Maybe the biosuits were a military thing, in which case, who knows how many there are? Maybe after the completion of the Books, I will explore and investigate these matters. And if I do find others like me, we could compare notes, laugh over shared experiences, and I’ll look back on it all through rose-colored glasses. Ah, the good old days, we’ll say, and we’ll toast each other over raucous rounds of “Auld Lang Syne.”
Shake the thought.
Life after the Red Books is a distant, fragile bird. Quiet, or you might scare it off.
I arrive at the appointed place, keep to the banks of the river, quiet now, behind thickets and bramble. There, in a clearing: the group sleeps soundly around a fire.
It is not uncommon to develop a sense of where I’m going before I get there. Transport imprints, I call them. Like harvested images from someone else’s life. The sallow-green tint of the visor turns their campfire strange pinks and purples, only amplifying the effect. The image bleeds into my head, I feel it now, not someone else’s story, but my own.
“We’ve been here before,” I say softly.
One member rustles from sleep. I duck behind the brush, wait until all is quiet, and I cannot help myself from thinking how easy it would be for me to tell him.
He’s right there. I could wake him up and tell him.
I could stop it from ever happening.
According to the Red Books, I have tried. Not once. Not twice. Four times.
In my 152nd Life, I came here with no shovel and a different agenda. Upon arriving, I crept over to where he slept, and I told him what would happen. Ensuing panic, according to the Red Books. I was shot and barely made it back to my house alive.
In my 153rd Life, I tried again, only when I got here, I had a completely different idea. Things went much better, though I wished I’d brought a shovel (which I recorded in the Books).
Apparently, Lives 154, 155, and 156 had decided to forgo the plan that worked for the plan that did not. All three attempted the same actions as my 152nd Life, and all three were remarkably unsuccessful.
Even so, it is tempting to try again.
Maybe this time would be different . . .
I close my eyes and see his face. And as much as I wish it weren’t true, I know . . . there’s nothing I can do.
For now, I follow the code. I stay put. And when all is quiet, I carry my shovel up the hill, not toward the cabin, but toward the appointed tree. It is an old tree, and it has witnessed many things, but none so tragic as the death of the woman who painted it red.
At the foot of the blood-tree, I collect what little of this woman is left, carry her to her small son’s grave. And beside that grave, I dig a new one.
Under the snow, the earth is hard.
That’s okay. This is not my first dig in hard earth.
The cat joins me first; the dog comes next, as it is written. They sniff my legs, I offer my hands, and when they seem satisfied that I am not here to hurt them, or anyone else, I pet their heads, feel them calm to my touch.
Under the gaze of animals, I go back to my digging.
When the hole is deep enough, I place the woman’s remains in the bottom, begin the process of filling it in. Eternal rest is only as good as the company you keep; at least she will be buried beside her little boy.
When the job is done, I set the shovel on the ground. Under the blood-tree, I find two twigs, and pull a spool of thread from my pocket. When the cross is done, I stick it in the ground at the head of the new grave.
“Rest in peace.”
I take a breath.
And when I look up, the other one is standing there as I knew he would be, watching my every move, light from the moon glinting in his sad-star eyes.
Echo is a mess, the product of accidental survival.
I raise a finger to my mouth. Shh.
He nods. Okay.
Only on the rarest of occasions have the Red Books instructed me to intercede fully on behalf of a person’s fate (the weeks of gastric lavage practice and the incident in the Pin Oak forest being the most obvious). These brief interludes in the Law of Peripheral Adjustments provide an opportunity to flex a little, to use the full extent of my knowledge and skill. And while experience reminds me of the inevitable comedown afterward, it makes little difference in the moment: deep inside, a flame ignites; there is light in my Life.
I motion for Echo to follow.
He looks at the two little graves. Then he looks at me, and nods. Okay.
The cat is already gone, disappeared into the woods.
The dog follows us for a while, tail wagging as we walk the Merrimack south. I let this go for a half mile, then stop, take a knee. I pet the dog’s head. “Time to go back now,” I say, and the dog obeys.
Reality is a meticulously calibrated machine: a single turn of the dial in the wrong direction, and everything goes to shit. New turns are possible. I went 152 Lives before bringing Echo to the house, and so far, that turn seems to work out fine.
Some turns of the dial don’t work so well.
Like the one currently asleep in the shadow of the Cormorant. That dial I’ve tried turning many times, and every time, a disaster.
Echo and I walk alone.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
“I’m giving you what you always wanted.”
“And what’s that?”
I consider how many memories I’ve lost and found, transport imprints from various Lives bleeding together, and already I feel the comedown, like I’ve fallen into a hole only to discover there is no bottom.
“A big house,” I say.
KIT
things look different in the morning
Morning people, as Kit understood them, belonged to a breed of humans who derived unending joy from the horrors of emerging from one’s bed.
Monty and Dakota were “morning people.” Most mornings, Lakie and Kit would stumble down the stairs of the Paradise Twin to find their counterparts in the kitchenette, having finished breakfast, already discussing the day’s plans. Inevitably, either Monty or Dakota would make a snide comment about early worms or the day being half over, et cetera and so forth.
The only thing “morning people” enjoyed more than morning was telling everyone else about it. It was a badge of honor, apparently, to be a “morning person.”
Kit wore no such badge.
As such, when he woke the following morning to find he was the first one up, his initial thought was that something had gone horribly wrong. This was immediately followed by relief that nothing had, which was then followed by four quick realizations:
One. For the first time since departing the Paradise Twin, he’d slept through the night without his recurring dream. No bright-as-sun room. No person on the other side of the table. No speaking in thoughts. No buzzing-black fog rolling in like a storm. Nothing but deep, peaceful sleep.
Two. Harry was right beside him. Thinking back, Kit was sure the dog had fallen asleep beside Nico.
Three. The sunshine through the windows seemed quite a bit brighter than usual. Closer to an afternoon sun than a morning one.
And four. When Kit had fallen asleep, Nico and Lennon had been separated by six aisles of floor space. Now, still asleep in their respective sleeping bags, there was only a few feet between them. Each had a single arm outstretched toward the other, and in the middle, their hands met, fingers interlocked.
Beside him, Harry yawned, and looked at him like, Can you believe this?
Kit smiled, scratched behind the dog’s ears. “It’s all very healthy and normal, according to Emil Johansson, MD.”
the language of art
By the time everyone was awake and packed, and breakfast had been had, the sun was much higher in the sky than they would have liked. Still, it seemed their evening in BAM! had bonded them to the point where squad was ha
rdly the right word.
Family seemed more appropriate.
A quick perusal of the map correlated against the roads running through and around the BAM! parking lot confirmed what they’d suspected last night: they were in the city of Concord. And because the river took a few detours through the city, Lennon decided it would be more direct to simply follow the compass south and slightly east for a while, before picking back up with the Merrimack.
Concord, as a city, was beautiful; a unique mix of wildlife and civilization, as if the humans of old—or the Concordians of old, at least—had figured out how to grow and thrive without destroying the natural beauty around them.
Somewhere south of the city, they found an enormous movie theater tucked back in the woods. It was nothing at all like the Paradise Twin. Probably had a dozen screens or more.
“I once read a book about the early days of movies,” said Kit. “It said one of the first films ever made was called The Horse in Motion, which was three seconds of nothing but a horse running. Another was called Roundhay Garden Scene, and it was two seconds of people walking around a garden. And there was a third one called Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, which was literally fifty seconds of a train pulling into a station. This was back in the 1800s. But according to the book, the people who saw these movies were shocked and amazed. Unleashed psyches all over the place.”
“Unleashed psyches,” said Lennon.
“When that down-deep part of your soul feels free and easy.”
Nico and Lennon smiled at each other. They thought he couldn’t see them, but he could. Normally it annoyed the ever-loving bejesus out of him when people treated him like a little kid. But this particular smile seemed like something else, maybe.
“Anyway,” he said. “The book made it seem like those people were silly for thinking how amazing it was to watch a train pull into a station, or a horse run for three seconds, or people walk in a garden. But I get it. If I saw a photograph move—”
