Life on the Preservation, US Edition (9 page)

“Zach?”

Ian came around the corner. Zach lay sprawled on the floor with one of his antique revolvers in his mouth. There was a big hole in the top of his head and a gruesome spray of ejecta on the hardwood floor. Taped to his chest was a big manila envelope. On the envelope in block letters were the words: IAN READ THIS RIGHT NOW.

CHAPTER EIGHT

OAKDALE, WA., 2013

K
YLIE RODE HER
bicycle down a residential street in Oakdale. The daytime sky was pearlescent, glaring. The air felt dense. The whole town was only a dozen square blocks. Many of the houses and commercial structures had been blown over or severely damaged. Being snug against the foothills of the Olympic Mountains probably spared the town from total annihilation. Mount Constance loomed, as it had Kylie’s whole life. Only now it looked like the whole mountainside had been clear-cut. The coniferous forest of spruce, cedar, hemlock and Douglas fir hadn’t been cut, though; a massive shockwave had flattened it. A year ago, at midnight, the sky had flashed white. Those who looked up were instantly struck blind. Kylie and her mother, both night owls, were arguing in the basement at the moment of the apocalyptic detonation – Maggie calmly folding laundry while Kylie lost her temper over some curfew issue. Kylie halted in mid-yell when the little window over the dryer blazed up, like a thousand camera flashes popping off in the garden at once. Shadows of Maggie’s nodding tulips imprinted on Kylie’s corneas. Moments later the shockwave rocked her and Maggie off their feet as it swept half the town away – swept most of the
world
away. Not their house, though. All it did was rip off part of the roof and take down the attached car-port. But life as Kylie had known it was over forever. Judgment Day had arrived, according to Father Jim and the handful of Oakdale survivors. Only Billy, returning from outside the town, believed differently. Only Billy maintained the Earth had been attacked by an alien force. The tulip shadows were an hour fading from Kylie’s corneas.

In the basket attached to the bike’s handlebars five of Kylie’s favorite DVDs plus a couple of books bounced with every bump in the road. She had gathered them from Billy’s house and was bringing them to her mother’s. Billy was there, recovering – or trying to. This wasn’t her first trip. A couple of days ago Billy had sent her back to retrieve the other gun, the big revolver. The Magnum. When she brought that one home she made sure her mother didn’t see it.

As she coasted by a row of mailboxes a rock flew by Kylie’s face. It struck one of the mailboxes and the little door dropped open. Kylie swerved, stubbed her front tire into the curb. DVDs and books bounced out of the basket.

Ray Preston, whose major accomplishment since The Judgment was burning down what remained of the high school he had previously dropped out of, regarded her from across the street. A faded pink plastic flamingo on a spike tilted in the dead lawn behind him. Ray had another rock in his hand.

“Why’d you do that!” Kylie shouted at him.

“Because you ain’t right, that’s why. You’re holding us back.”

“Back from what, you idiot?”

Preston was so skinny he looked like a starving man. His clothes hung in rags. He never cut what was left of his hair. Scabs crusted the bald patches of his scalp. His scraggly gray and black beard grew down his neck like diseased moss. He had been the last person in town to quit drinking ‘spirits’, and Kylie doubted he had quit for real. Father Jim had worked on him a long time but people had been working on Ray Preston his entire worthless life. Kylie wasn’t afraid of him. Ray looked like one of the skin-and-bone people who occasionally lurched into town. The SABs didn’t act human, most of them. They were kind of like movie zombies, except they didn’t eat people. When skin-and-bone people appeared they were always run right back out of town. Ray Preston was terrified of the SABs, even though he looked like one himself. Father Jim said the SABs were people whose souls had been stolen by the Devil.

“Holding us back from the
Lord
,” Preston said.

“You better not throw that rock in your hand.”

“Why not?”

Kylie withdrew Billy’s baby automatic from the zippered pocket of her leather jacket and pointed it at Preston. Billy had the big revolver, but he had told her to keep the small gun for protection. It had belonged to his mother. He said it was a good gun for a girl. Kylie let that pass. “That’s why not,” she said to Preston, leveling the good-for-a-girl gun.

After a moment Ray casually tossed the rock behind him. “I wasn’t going to throw it anyway.” The rock landed next to the flamingo. Ray wiped his hands on his filthy Levi’s. He picked at a scab on his nose. “That the gun you shoot Father Jim with?”

“I didn’t shoot him, but it’s the gun.” Kylie tucked the automatic back in her jacket. She picked up her bike and leaned it against the mailboxes. Ray watched her but stayed where he was. She gathered the spilled DVDs and books and replaced them in the basket. The dust jacket was torn on one of the poetry books, a vertical tear right through Robert Frost’s head.

“He’s a prophet,” Ray said, referring to Father Jim. “Everybody says so. A Prophet of the fuckin’ Apocalypse.”

“Who’s everybody, you and all the other idiots in this town?”

“Why don’t you shut up, you little cunt.”

“Watch your mouth,” Kylie said, “or you might get shot in the head yourself.”

“Day’s coming when getting shot in the head won’t mean nothing,” Ray said, looking like he wanted to ask
himself
what that meant. He pointed at Kylie. “That’s a warning.”

Kylie pulled out the .22 and fired into the air.

“So’s that!” she said, but Ray Preston was already halfway down the block.

H
ER MOTHER LOOKED
at her suspiciously when Kylie shouldered through the front door with her arms full of the stuff she’d retrieved from Billy’s house.

“What’s all that?” Maggie said.

“Some books.”

“I mean those other things.”

“Movies.”

“What for? You can’t play them here.”

“I don’t
know
, Mom, I just wanted them. They’re not going to hurt anything, don’t worry.”

“Did I say I was worried?”

“Whatever.”
You don’t have to say it,
Kylie thought. Her mom worried constantly and always had, even before The Judgment. She followed Kylie to the top of the basement stairs and said, “Wait just a minute, please.”

Billy had been living in the basement for three days. It was almost a week ago that Father Jim had hit him in the head with a baseball bat. Kylie had stayed with him at his house for two days, and Billy never once got off the sofa or ate anything. Every time he tried to sit up dizziness overcame him, and with no food in his stomach he couldn’t afford to do any more retching. Frightened, Kylie had gone to her mother and told her what happened. Maggie had been a nurse in the days before The Judgment. She came, looked at him, and pronounced him, “Seriously concussed, maybe dead serious.” Kylie refused to leave him alone, and Maggie wouldn’t allow Kylie to stay in the house with him, now that he was incapacitated. The two of them moved him across town, rolling him in big wheelbarrow. People came out to watch. Some of them looked like they had wanted to throw rocks, just like Ray Preston. It was better at Kylie’s mother’s house. Maggie had superior pain pills for Billy. She had OxyContin.

Maggie said, “I heard a shot.”

Kylie didn’t say anything.

“What happened?” Maggie said. Yellow discharge had accumulated in the corners of her eyes, a progressive sign of the illness. It hurt Kylie to look at her mother. “You might as well tell me,” Maggie said. “I can smell that little gun in your pocket, so I know you fired it.”

Kylie shrugged. “Ray Preston threw a rock at me, so I scared him off is all.”

“Dear God,” Maggie said.

“He’s stupid.”

“Kylie.”

“Well, he is.”

“He has a good core, I’m sure. I remember before the–”

“His core’s not
good
. He tried to hit me with a
rock
. Father Jim put him up to it. Father Jim’s going around telling everybody he’s some kind of prophet, just because he got shot in the head and didn’t die.”

Maggie pressed her lips together and blew air out her nose, a trick she used when she didn’t want to speak in anger.

“He’s
not
a prophet, Mom.”

“No, he’s just lucky,” Maggie said. “But Kylie, God does favor the lucky. Gunshot wounds are tricky. A boy came into the ER one time, his friend had shot him in the back of the head. An accident. God knows how you accidentally shoot your friend in the head. Doctor couldn’t remove the bullet. It was lodged deep in the brain. Didn’t know that at the time, of course. Just this boy acting perfectly normal except guess what? He’s got a hole in the back of his head, and all of a sudden he’s left handed when all his life he had been right handed. Plus he said he could see light around people, like auras? That might have been a miracle wound or dumb luck, who knows? I’d guess dumb luck. Now Father Jim, that little bullet never penetrated his skull. It’s either stuck in the bone or under the skin someplace, guaranteed. Most people who survive headshots, that’s the case. That little hole in his forehead should have healed over by now. My guess is he gouges at it with something to keep it looking fresh. Starting to look
infected
, you ask me. None of that matters to the people in this town, though. It’s a miracle of God, and that’s that. Because they need it to be one.”

“I have to see Billy now,” Kylie said.

He was lying on the day bed in the basement room Maggie had formerly used for entertaining. It was the same bed where Father Jim had thrown her after he razor-nicked his cock. Kylie’s mother, of course, knew nothing of
that
incident.

“I’m back,” Kylie said to Billy. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Will light hurt your eyes?”

“No, it’s okay.”

She quickly lit a few homemade candles, and the room became cozy, almost, except the floor was cold linoleum.

“I brought some books.”

“Okay.”

“Want me to read one to you?”

“Sure.” Billy tented his fingers delicately over his eyes.

“It sucks God made you all dizzy and blurry so you can’t even read, while He lets Father Jim limp all over town with a
bullet
in his head.”

“Yeah, God’s a jerk. Anyway, I can see okay now, most of the time.”

“Mom says God favors the lucky.”

“Right.”

Kylie flipped through the pages. “It’s poems. I want to read the one about the wall.”

“Kylie, we have to talk first. Go shut that door. You know how Maggie always listens.”

Kylie closed the book and the door then returned to the bed.

Keeping his voice low, Billy said, “I heard what you said to your mother.”

“That rock wasn’t anything.”

“Shhh.”

“It wasn’t anything,” Kylie repeated, in a softer voice.

“It’ll get worse.”

Kylie zipped her thumbnail down the pages of the book.

“A
lot
worse,” Billy said.

“Mom won’t let them hurt me. And I won’t let anybody hurt you, Billy.”

“Kylie–”

“I want to read the one about the wall.”

Billy was quiet a minute, then quoted, “‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.’ That’s totally you, Kylie.”

“I guess,” Kylie said.

“There are walls, then there are walls.”

“I like the part about the apple trees not sneaking into the neighbor’s field,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s funny.”

“Okay, okay, Billy, go ahead.”

“What?”

“Go ahead and tell me how it’s going to get worse. I know you’re dying to.”

“First let’s talk about something good,” Billy said.

“Okay.”

“You remember what I was saying before the priest came to the door?”

“About running away?”

“That and the Seattle Dome.”

“What about it,” Kylie said.

“I know what’s inside it.”

“How could you know?”

Billy sat up a little. “The skin-and-bone people come from the Dome. They were inside, all of them.”

Kylie stared at him. “I don’t believe it,” she said, not knowing whether she believed it or not. She was thinking about the city under the Dome. Seattle. It was the
Say Anything
city, the
Sleepless
city. Kylie had been to Seattle in real life, but the movies she watched were more vivid than her memories.

“If they were really in there,” Kylie said, “how did they escape?”

“They didn’t escape. They got thrown out.”

“Why?”

“That part I’m not sure about. When I lived on the Big Boat we saw a lot of SABs. Most of them were like what you’re used to seeing, barely human. But some were fresh. The fresh ones looked more normal and they could talk. They were in shock, most of them, and confused. They talked about being in Seattle, living their lives and then slowly becoming aware that something was wrong. From what they said we started to piece it together, Kylie. We think the Dome is some kind of zoo or living museum. Like one of those natural history museums where you can see what life was like in prehistoric times? Only this one’s for humans and it’s way more sophisticated than a natural history museum. It’s a whole functioning world and nobody knows they’re in it. They think it’s just regular Seattle. Except sometimes they
do
know they’re in it. At that point they get thrown out.”

“You know, I’m probably not as dumb as I look, right?”

“You’re not dumb at all. And everything I’m telling you is true. Listen, we have to make a plan and get moving before things really go to hell around here. I want to take you to the Big Boat. It’s relatively safe there, at least it was when I left. Probably a lot of people have died since then, but there will be plenty left, too. They aren’t ignorant hicks, Kylie. They aren’t scared of Father Jim’s stupid Judgment Day. They’re hard-headed people, some of them, engineers and scientists. They’ve studied the Seattle Dome. They have a plan. And they’ll welcome you with open arms, Kylie, because you can do something none of them has ever done.”