The After/Life (The After/Life Odyssey) (2 page)

Chapter IV

And I tried to open my eyes and for a second I thought that the darkness would not let me go and there was a moment of panic and I struggled and finally there was light and I was awake…the darkness retreated for now - not for long and not too far, though…it would be waiting just around the corner to crawl back at night (hello darkness my old friend…).
 My name is Nad Raven and I see no dreams, not any more. Not since the bomb destroyed the world. Not since I found myself in this bizarre metallic box, which I learned (tried, failed, tried again and succeeded - temporarily) to call home. And for twenty two years now, every time I fell asleep there was only darkness. It was like Death was both angry and curious with me still being alive and it would come and hug me and stare at me (with a sort of cynical curiosity) and wait for the day when I too would join the orderly ranks of the dead and the Dark Reaper’s task would be complete and it too would rest in peace. Not yet, old friend, not yet… you just keep on waiting and I will make sure that you wait for a very long time.

I guess you could call us lucky - after all, we survived. Twenty two years ago, there were around ninety of us – students and teachers of Angel’s Elementary School. We were shocked and we were scared and we were lost and we were confused and in those first days after the End many of us, including me, wished we were dead too… After all, what made us so special to keep breathing when everyone and everything else ceased to exist? But little by little we got used, we adapted and we tried to move on. In spite of everything, the desire to live is as much a part of human nature as our dedicated quest for self destruction. The return to a normality of sorts was a slow and painful process and not all of us made it through. For some, accepting the new reality was too much…

I was one of the strong ones and I tried my best to help the other children to deal with this new reality - the reality of life after all the other life had ended, of a life in a three storey steel structure, a life behind a door that would not and should not open ever again (or so I thought…). The adults too went through a time of confusion and total loss of control but eventually they learned to deal and regained the sort of confidence needed to run the nuclear shelter. They chose both a strange and strangely natural way to do it - after all, they were teachers. And what is it that teachers do best? They teach. And one day, about a month or so after the bomb fell, our little underground home ceased to be a simple nuclear shelter and, amazingly enough, we returned to classes and a strange new kind of a mini society was born complete - with its hierarchy, rules and philosophy. And we called it the School (always with the capital letter).

And in the School, we, the children, were the Students and our leaders were our Teachers and on the very top of this new/old pyramid was the Principal. I don’t think that in the very beginning anyone thought that this structure was sustainable – it was just an attempt to preserve a sort of likeness of normality in a world which had gone off the rails and plunged itself into an abyss. Wonders never cease and somehow it all worked (until recently, at least).

Our new home was indeed very well equipped to house the survivors of apocalypse – our gardens and orchards supplied us with food and we even had a small farm with a variety of livestock. The facility was powered by a nuclear reactor on the fourth, restricted level of the School. Our water came from an intricate network of underground springs that were continuously tested for the level of radiation and went through a complex mechanism of filters. The medicine was produced in a specially equipped lab and mostly consisted of a variety of herbs we grew ourselves. Not everything ran smoothly from the outset but the Teachers of these first days showed amazing resourcefulness and an ability to learn and eventually our little society became fully self sufficient. Our first Principal was, not surprisingly, the serving principal of Angel’s Elementary School - Mr. Higgins. It was he who came up with the School concept and on September 1, 2053, we restarted all the clocks and watches and a New Era officially began…

Chapter V

And every morning we would wake up to the voice of the Principal in the intercom. I still remember Mr. Higgins’s voice, kind of sad and strong at the same time. It was a voice that both acknowledged the kind of situation we were in but also told you that it still could and would be alright. The morning greeting never changed and after Mr. Higgins died around two years ago his greeting lived on (in a way):

“Students, Teachers, the School wishes you a very good morning. Remember, our eyes
 cannot see the sun looking into our window, our eyes cannot see the clouds in the sky, but our heart can. We have survived, you have survived and we have found a new home and our new home is our School. We have survived and we were chosen and it is our mission to carry on the light and life into a new beginning. We are the School and we are together and in unity is our strength and in knowledge - our salvation for it is knowledge that saved us when the bomb fell, it is knowledge that keeps us alive now and it is knowledge that will set us free tomorrow”.  

During the Student years, our days were planned according to a detailed schedule. After the Morning Greeting at 7:00 AM we would go to the exercise rooms and work out for about an hour, head to the showers and start classes at 8:30 AM sharp. We would have classes up to noon, after which, each of us would
 be given a specific chore on a rotational basis so that no one would be stuck in any one place for too long. Some of us would go to the farm, the others would work in the orchard, some would clean the air purification filters while the others (the lucky ones) would help out in the communication lab where a Teacher was continuously trying to establish a contact with the outside world. At 1:30 PM we would have lunch and be back in class by 2:30 PM.

Our subjects covered a whole spectrum of topics from natural sciences to humanitarian subjects, from philosophy to art and religion. Our Teachers of the first days after the End were often learning together with us as we were, obviously, going beyond the frames of a typical elementary school curriculum. At 5:00 PM, the classes would be over for the day and we would have one free hour. I liked to spend that hour near the air filtration equipment on the first floor of the School – it somehow made me feel closer to the world outside.
  I sometimes caught myself listening closely and trying to pick out a sound from beyond through the powerful roar of the machinery. I knew that it was impossible to hear anything but I listened nevertheless. At 6:00 PM we would gather for dinner. 7:00 PM was the Library Hour when we read and watched video materials from the Era Gone. I liked reading. My favorite book was Homer’s Odyssey. The concepts of a simple man’s (as opposed to all the other decent heroes of that era, he was not a god or a half god or a specially blessed favorite - quite the opposite, in fact) journey into the unknown and his strive for home. The very idea of a quest into the dangerous but seductive uncharted territory connected with me strongly. I also loved Stevenson, Hemingway, Tolkien, Fleming and Stephen King (although the latter two were usually dismissed as pulp writers by the more highbrow students). I liked them all the same, liked them and admired them for their description of lone heroes facing seemingly insurmountable challenges but eventually making it through.

My ability to see dreams had died with the bomb but my imagination was alive and kicking and I would sometimes have storytelling sessions with my classmates, making up my own tales of mysterious journeys and dangerous adventures taking place in the world that no longer existed, adventures that seemed so out of reach
 in the sterile environment of the School.

Our days would end in the Church where Pastor Simmons told us his own tales of miracles and salvation, tales of a higher power watching over us (I wonder where the Big Guy was when the bomb fell? Was he also swallowed by the big hungry mushroom? Or maybe he was the one who set off the nice little Armageddon in the first place?).

At 10:00 PM the lights would go off and a simulated night would come over our little post apocalyptic haven until the next morning and the next Greeting - an ever repeating circle, a semblance of order in the chaos and life in spite of death, a circle that we thought would last forever (oh how wrong we were…).

Chapter VI

The symbolic declaration of a New Era (in the tiny boundaries of our steel home) and the carefully planned days, repetitive as they were, helped bring our lives back into some kind of an orbit, an orbit all of us were so brutally thrown out of. The often mundane tasks gave us a sense of purpose and normality and we were able to stave off the thoughts about that which was no more and those whom we never would see again. And sure enough, several months after sealing ourselves in the nuclear shelter, in a bold statement of human adaptability and our species’ often underrated will to survive, our little group of refugees from the now extinct planet Earth became a real community. As in every community, there were joys and sorrows, conflicts and resolutions, love and hate, there were losers and there were winners, there were leaders and there were followers but all in all, in spite of all our differences, we felt that we were an integral part of a whole, an essential ingredient in reviving the human civilization – we were survivors, the builders of tomorrow. And while it might have started as a desperate effort to preserve our sanity, the School turned into a real establishment where the rules were obeyed and the hierarchy - unchallenged (until now).

It never felt too good to be real and we never thought of our life as a utopia - there was always the dark whisperer so very eager to remind us that we were living on a borrowed time. He would visit us sometimes, especially in the first months. My image of him has not changed throughout all these years – I see him as absolute darkness - as seductive as it is deadly. It comes and talks to all of us, his lost children, his prey – the trick is not to listen to him and just keep on breathing (if you stop – you die). He always whispers the same things – simple and cruel and true and you must not listen, whatever you do, you must not listen. Not everyone succeeded in this and in the first months after the End eight people committed suicide and another two died of heart failure. The dark whisperer even took away our school cat - Mr. Z, my companion in the first tour of our new home. I discovered him one day curled up next to the exit door. The cat had tried to get out; eventually it must have realized that he was just as locked up as everyone else - that is when death had found him - that is when the darkness rejoiced once more and another life was gone from the already almost lifeless planet... And every time we gathered by the incineration chamber for the funeral ceremony, I thought that I could hear that seductive and deadly whisper, lurking somewhere in the background of the pastor’s speech and the quiet hiss of machinery, hardly audible but still very much there – seeking its next victim…

Where there is death there is also life and one night we were awakened by loud music coming from the intercom and we knew that a new life was born. Our history teacher Mrs. Stevens had a beautiful baby girl, whom she named Hope and I remember my happiness and I remember thinking how angry the dark whisperer must have been that night…

Soon enough, we were present at the very first post-apocalyptic wedding. There was a huge celebration that lasted two days and even we, the children, were allowed to drink a small glass of whiskey, which, in my (mostly unshared) opinion, was absolutely wicked…

Years passed by, new families were formed, children were born and the whisper of death grew very quiet - almost impossible to hear. Deep inside each of us it still sheepishly pleaded to give up but understood that there was no more easy prey…

At seventeen, I officially graduated the School. There were two paths you could take after graduation – you could become a Teacher or you could become an Assistant. This path was determined based on a special Test that evaluated your abilities. If your score was high enough, you were selected for the coveted Teacher Training. If it wasn’t, you were trained for one of the specialized tasks, such as electricity maintenance, technical support or agriculture (the Assistant profession possibilities were gradually expanded until the notorious addition of a Security Assistant option when the new principal took charge two years ago – we should have known and we should have stopped him then but we did not; it was a mistake – a mistake we would later regret greatly, a mistake that would change everything - forever…).

I vividly remember the day of the Test – the fear and the excitement I felt – the same fear and excitement I saw reflected in the eyes of my classmates. I remember standing outside the Principal’s office waiting for the list to be put up on the wall. I remember how impossibly long it took. I remember that when the list was finally up all of us started looking frantically for our names with that familiar whisper telling us that we would not pass and we would never become Teachers. I remember the moment when I finally found my name in the Teacher Training section – it was probably the single happiest moment of my life, it was the day when I was finally able let go of my sorrow and look into the future with bold eyes...
 

Chapter VII

Looking back now, I can say that the four years of Teacher training were probably the best time of my life. I was a teenager and being a teenager is always associated with certain notions and feelings – even in the post-apocalyptic world.

At that time, on the twelfth year of the New Era, there were around 160 of us and, for the lack of a better word, we were thriving. All the machinery and life support mechanisms of the nuclear shelter were running smoothly, there were no more sudden deaths, the gardens and orchards were producing crops aplenty and even the fact that one of the cows just gave birth to a three headed calf could not spoil the overall mood of jubilation and the feeling that life, strange as it may seem, was back on track.

This was also the time when I first fell in love. Her name was Suzannah. I had known her all my life. She was the only daughter of a local colonel in charge of the military shipyard. Sometimes, when my parents took me to the port, I would look at the giant ships chained in the brightly lit hangars – prisoners to their malfunctioning mechanical organisms - they looked uncomfortably out of place and positively unhappy in their stranded position. And there I would see Suzannah, running jubilantly around the metallic sea monsters with one of the soldiers trying to catch up with her lest she hurts herself. I would watch her as she laughed and kept on running with her long dark hair flying after her, her white dress flapping in the wind, all smudged up and completing the image of a little mischievous angel. She was two years older than me so she officially ignored me, although I would have sacrificed my favorite toys for a chance to climb one of those ships - especially the Orpheus - a magnificent military vessel that arrived at the shipyard just days before the End. It was damaged by a torpedo that left an ugly tear at the side of the perfect silvery hull. I dreamt of sailing the mighty ship (right into the maroon colored horizon) after it was repaired but not all dreams come true (or do they?).

After the End, Suzannah did not speak at all for almost a year. When she finally did, she seemed perfectly happy and calm, although sometimes her eyes would give away the storm that was raging inside her. I can’t say that we were friends as she was always hanging out with older Students. We were living parallel lives, each in our own little circle of friends. Our conversations were limited to an occasional small talk, which always left me feeling awkward and disgusted with my clumsiness. All of that changed on that day…

I was done with my Teacher training classes for the day. I had chosen World Literature and History as my majors and was enjoying every minute of my studies. After the classes, I dropped by the underground pool (which was actually part of the water filtration station) and swam for two hours in the dimly lit facility. Swimming gave me a sense of freedom from the overwhelming confines of the School. Sometimes I would imagine that I was somewhere else, somewhere outside, maybe swimming towards the Orpheus, back in the sea, once again ready to set sail for lands unseen (and, perhaps, never to be seen). After swimming I headed over to the air purification machines. Going there had become a kind of a habit and I would just go there and sit in the corner and sometimes read a book but mostly just listen, listen with almost no hope of hearing anything but listen nevertheless. And as I sat there with my back against the metallic wall, I saw her coming towards me. Suzannah was wearing the standard issue Teacher trainee uniform (grey with a wide black line across the chest and three red stripes on the left shoulder, showing that she was already in the third year of her studies), basic stuff, really, but somehow she made it look striking. I still don’t know what it was about her that made her so special. But something there was. Everyone noticed it and she stood out in a place where, after such a long time of communal life, all the people seemed to look and act the same. As she came closer, I felt the blood rushing into my head… still I could not look away... from her eyes - grey with a slight upward tilt... from her hair – cut shoulder length and pitch black... from her features – sharp but with that little hint of vulnerability that would make you forgive her everything and anything (or so I thought). Above all, you couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the way she moved – the quiet grace and this strange inner radiance, which would light up any place she was in, even down here - in the catacombs of tomorrow…

The School was a small place and you were prone to run into each once in awhile. This was probably just one of those times. Except it was not. This time, she did not just pass by me. Instead, she came and sat opposite me, looking straight into my eyes.

”Hello Nad,” she said.
”Hi Suzannah.”
”You come here often. Why?”

Always the direct question. That is how she was. No small talk, no false pretenses and positively no way to lie to those eyes – beautiful, dangerous with an evasive little spark burning deep inside the grey abyss. Just the fact that I saw her that way pretty much spelled out that there weren’t really any defenses I could put up against her – simply put: a recipe for disaster.

”I don’t know. I think I’m just hoping that, well, that one day I may…”
”Actually hear something?”
”Well, yes, I know it is crazy but…”
”I don’t think it is crazy. I think what’s crazy is the way we have locked ourselves down here and are pretending that everything is perfectly fine.”
”I don’t see us having many other options.”
”How long is the radiation contamination period?”
”Well, assessments vary but the general consensus is that we just don’t know because we don’t know the magnitude of the impact.”
”And, amazingly, our knowledge loving little community simply settled for the answer “we don’t know” and moved on.”

I had never seen her like this. Her grey eyes were burning and her cheeks were bright red and her lips were slightly trebling.

”Do you think we will ever get out?” she asked.
”I don’t know if there is any “out” left but I sure hope so. You know, all these years, I have been thinking about that ship I once saw in your father’s shipyard…”
”Orpheus?”
”You remember?”
”Of course I do. You know I cried the day my dad took me down to the port and I saw it there with that ugly hole at its side. I made him promise that he would get it repaired as soon as he could and would take me out to sail…”
”Into the maroon colored horizon…”

We were silent for awhile. It wasn’t a bad silence though and for the first time ever I did not feel like a complete fool next to her. She kept looking at me with her deep grey eyes and I knew just then and there that I was simply and most definitely and most hopelessly in love with her. Some time later she shook her head a little and was back to her usual self. We talked for several hours that day and, to my amazement, it was very easy to talk to her and we laughed and we joked and we remembered things that were no more and we talked about things that were and it was good. And when I walked her to the female Student quarters she stopped by the door and turned around and looked into my eyes and gave me a kiss – my first ever. And that is how it all started…