The Revival (3 page)

The Uptowners are waking. The first sign that we've been spotted is a water balloon breaking in front of us. We look up and see a kid flipping us the bird. Where the balloon hit, a noxious smell erupts.

Then Peter is hit by another one. It explodes on his shoulder and splashes the side of his head. His hands go to his eyes, and he screams in pain as I duck the drops that scatter into the air.

“Pepper spray!” he says before Kath and I drag him toward the building, under its big elaborate eaves. It's an old building, made with care. Tall sash windows, sandstone and curlicues. More balloons hit the ground.

We crowd against a mottled bronze sign that reads
THE METROPOLITAN CLUB: 1891
.

“Oh shit,” says Kath when she realizes.

“Oh shit, what?”

“I wasn't thinking. This place… We should've gone another way.”

“Why?”

“It used to be a private club. Like, old dudes backslapping and drinking. Now it's basically a barracks.”

As she says this, I hear a commotion from beyond a set of high metal gates. Uptowners are swarming out of an ornamental vestibule, carrying guns, bats, swords, knives, pouring out like poison.

I crook my AR through the bars of the gate and fire, sending the frontmost tumbling to the ground and temporarily damming the flow.

“We've got to get away while we have a chance,” says Kath. “Leave him here.”

She means Brainbox, who, fortunately, isn't conscious to hear it.

“Fuck that,” says Peter.

“He comes with us,” I say.

“Fine,”
says Kath, and seizes an edge of the sheet and starts trotting ahead, practically pulling Brainbox out of my hands.

We totter toward the park as the Uptowners gather their courage and pursue. But before we can even cross Fifth, I see a gun barrel pointing over the low wall ahead of us. Guards in the park start firing, swearing, and launching steel arrows that clank along the ground at our feet.

“That way!” I call. We take a left, back toward downtown and the fortress-like Plaza Hotel, with its big mucky fountain out in front and, nearby, a golden equestrian statue striding irrelevantly and perpetually forward. A glance tells me that this, too, is a bad scene—the hotel's flagpoles are draped in private school banners, and armed thugs loiter on the steps.

We switch direction again, find ourselves backed against a glass cube projecting from the ground. Sci-fi glass architecture with a familiar logo etched above a transparent portal: a giant apple with a bite out of it.

I remember pictures of people lining up for days, sleeping on the streets, waiting for the advent of the new iPhone. Urban campers. Bougies in a breadline for one of the few things they couldn't yet have.

“Ugh. Retail,” says Kath. She's actually thinking of facing the mob rather than fleeing into the Apple Store.

“At least it's a flagship store,” I say.

I wedge the doors open—the mechanical opener is long dead—and help the others pull Brainbox through. As we get him to the bottom of the spiral glass stairs, the Uptowners thunder down after us. It's the Thrill Kill Twins who save the day. They charge up the stairs and flail away at our pursuers with their makeshift clubs. One Uptowner and then another falls, until the entryway is clogged with broken bodies, and the rest retreat. The twins gallop down the stairs, faces dotted with blood and smiles flashing.

We collapse in a pile behind the rattling metal gate, a utilitarian embarrassment that never would have been seen during opening hours. It runs the length of the basement vestibule and serves, effectively, to wall us off from the world above. We throw the bolts at the edges and find ourselves, for the moment, safe.

I shut the padlocks on the bolt housings. I have no idea where to find the keys, so there's no getting out, but that seems to me the least of our problems.

“What is this place?” asks Abel, the boy twin, and that's how I know he must really be traumatized. He can't be so young that he doesn't know about iPhones and MacBooks, but he's been through so much that those memories have been wiped from his mind.

“It's an Apple Store.”

“I don't see any apples.”

His eyes are bright and empty, his face freckled with drying gore. Back at the lab on Plum Island, the Old Man had a whole school class of tweens like this one under his control, stoked with amphetamines, tranquilizers, and video games.

I hope these children are not the future.

The Uptowners have now gotten down the stairs and are smashing at the gate like something out of
The Walking Dead
. They perforate the slats with bullets, and I pull the others to the ground before anyone gets hurt. Next to me, little elfin Anna chortles, like this is all a game.

Thin shafts of light pierce the murk. It reminds me of ten or twenty movies I've seen but can't put a name to. Then I think of how strange it is to think your life evokes a moment in a film, and I tell myself, no, this moment, maybe one of my last moments, belongs to me, and it reminds me of nothing. This moment reminds me only of itself.

There's a lull as the Uptowners try to figure a way to pry the metal gate open and realize it won't be an easy task. We can see them eyeballing us through the bullet holes.

“You're gonna die!” they shout. “Shoulda never come Uptown, bitches!” And then they just start to howl.

We could answer back if there were anything useful to say. But we've given up on words. Instead, we've fallen into some vestigial mode of hunter and prey; they may as well be badgers digging up a rabbit's nest.

I can't help feeling that it'll get worse.

I LOOK AROUND AT THE OYSTER BAR,
the bros sitting in council, the white Formica stained with brown blood, the prisoner and me in the hollow of the U-shaped counter.

Pap!
I backhand the kid again. Actually, he's not a kid; he's an adult. He just looks like a little pussy-ass bitch, so we thought he was young. He's been ready to talk for a while, but I'm angry and I'm high and I'm having fun and he's the nearest thing to hurt. Besides, he's got to know what's what and who's who, for instance who runs this bitch. Which is me. And it's not just him that's got to know that I am not suddenly fuckwithable, new developments notwithstanding. The whole Confederacy has got to know, all the captains, all the bros, all the bitches.

Ever since we found out that little shit Jefferson was lying to us and that there were actually old people out there in the big, wide world, and they still had, like, iPhones or whatever, people have been peeling off, trying to find some magical rescue party they think is coming to save them.

I'm maybe not as enthusiastic as everybody else about the news, and I've made it clear that defection from the Confederacy will be punishable by death, but still, motherfuckers be slippin'. Problem is, maybe I apply the death penalty to too many things, like, people figure, I'm probably gonna get popped for some other bullshit anyway, so I may as well split now.

That's what you call a perverse incentive.

It's a fine line between fun and long-term damage, I like to say, so I stop, and I tell him,
Okay, spill
, which doesn't sound as cool as I wanted it to.

He looks at me and says,
Spill? Who are you, Humphrey Bogart?

I'm like,
Who the hell is that?
but then I remember he was one of my dad's favorites, and he's right, it sounded like an old-timey movie, like some black-and-white shit, and that's kind of hard to pull off. I was hoping for gangster, or rather, gangsta. Next time I kick someone's ass, I'll say something different.

I put a lot of work into the shit I say. Why? Well, in part it's for the bros because, you know, you've got to have a certain amount of style when you're a leader of men like I am.

But when it really comes down to it, I could give two shits what people think of me. What would be the point of an apocalypse if you couldn't be yourself? Like, what's the point of obeying rules when the rules have been thrown out? Make your own rules, like that ad used to say. That's what I'm about. That's how I've crafted this Confederacy, using my personal charisma, my willingness to go the extra mile in terms of inflicting pain when necessary. I'm like Steve Jobs or some shit.

Check it—here's why I am always being stylishly badass and saying awesome things: I'm in a movie that God is watching.

Not an actual movie, of course. Duh. A metaphorical movie. You must have felt it before, right? The sense that somebody was watching, or the desire to behave as though somebody was watching.

So I fancy up my moves a little, beat Chapel with some style, fan my hand back and forth when I slap him.

I think that people had it all wrong about God—that, like, he cares. I mean, yeah, he cares, but not in a
Here, let me help you with that, poor baby
sort of way. I mean, obviously he doesn't give a shit. He cares in a sort of
Wow, I wonder how this episode is going to end
way. Or
I wonder what this character is going to do!
Or
This is getting boring. Time for some action!

See, God has a whole bunch of universes that he created—and don't say that he couldn't, because that's saying that there's something that God can't accomplish, which is saying that there's something more powerful than God, which is blasphemy, which is wrong.

God is, like, channel surfing between various universes with a big universal remote, just checking things out. Not intervening. When you watch a movie, do you want to have to decide all the time what people do and say, or would you rather be told a story? Would you rather have your team always win, or not know, so that it's exciting when they do? There you go. So God sits back and watches, celestial popcorn in the cup holder of his heavenly La-Z-Boy.

And it's our job not to bore him.

This time around, he wanted excitement and sex and novelty, so he went for a teen apocalyptic action movie.

Makes sense, right? And my point is, it's up to me not to be an extra. Like, I spent so much of my life wondering what it was all about. What the point was. And now I finally found out. It's about me! And the point is me!

Chapel is moaning a little now, but I can't allow myself to lose focus, can't stop kicking ass and looking good and coming up with cool dialogue. Like, I don't want God to get tired of all this. 'Cause if he does, maybe I get canceled.

But you know what? I kind of have a feeling he's into it. I mean, I feel like there's somebody looking out for me, like no matter how hard the haters hate, Evan comes out on top.

Which is so sweet, because all my life up until the Sickness, nobody cared. That is, nobody in authority. They were always trying to trip me up. Like, parents and teachers and shit. Life was just the word
no
over and over again.

No, you can't have that.

No, you can't do that.

Leave your sister alone.

Don't hit him.

Don't grab!

Don't take that!

That's not nice, that's not kind, we're so disappointed, how could you do this to us after all you've been given?

Fuck that noise.

Shit, I'm punching the dude again. I gotta watch that, hurting people without thinking. I take a little walk around the counter, catch my breath, because whaling on this dude takes energy. I look up at the vaulted ceiling, down again at the bros, sitting around the Formica in the old leather swivel chairs like they're waiting for lunch.

I focus my attention on the prisoner.

The guy smiles, which looks creepy since his nose is busted and there's a fine line of blood outlining each of his teeth. He says,
Are you done?

I think to myself, the guy's got some balls, not like the usual whimpering mess we get down here.

It's nighttime in the Oyster Bar, and I've got center stage as my boys from the various posses of our Uptown Confederacy look on. There's representatives from all the major schools: Buckley, Collegiate, St. Bernard's. They applaud when I stop, flick the blood off my hands, and bow.
Nice one, Evan!

Sick!

Thought you were going all the way!

They high-five, tilt back their brews, lean over to get a closer look at the prisoner's face.

I take in the compliments, tally who is acting the most loyal.

They're all my boys, but you never know who might have to get kicked off the island.

The atmosphere is kinda tense. This is a closed meeting, soldiers at the door. Inside, it's all quiet and stuff, so quiet you can hear the blood pitter and patter on the floor. Outside, you can hear the party, the one that doesn't stop, over the sounds of the diesel engines. Booze, sex, drugs, fighting. Entertainment. Whatever you want. I love this fucking place. But back to the matter at hand.

Thank you
, says the guy, like I've just given him the podium at some conference or something. Like he's not some victim-of-the-day random in the deepest shit of his life.

I think you know the basic facts,
he says.
The good news: The rest of the world, outside the US, of course, is free of the Sickness.

Shouts of amazement from the bros. That's what we've heard from all the rumor-traders and whatnot, but it's another thing to get it from a real live grown-up.

The bad news is, Mommy and Daddy aren't coming to get you.
That quiets down the Council. He goes on.
They're going to let you die. Much easier to do that and clear away the corpses than have to deal with all of you twisted little sons of bitches while you're still alive.

A few of the boys look upset, like downright hurt, at this news. Like they were hoping for a puppy. Like all they want to do is go back to high school and watch YouTube or some shit.

Personally, I'm like,
Forget that
. Have you ever seen that movie
Conan
—the one with Arnold Schwarzenegger, not the one with the Khal Drogo dude? They ask him: Conan, what's the best thing in life, and he's all,
To take no shit, kick major ass, hear your enemies' bitches cry, and party your ass off
. And that's pretty much my zeitgeist or whatever. I was made for this world, and this world was made for me. So I'm not exactly sad that the rescue wagon isn't coming.

Okay, and who are you?
I say.
I know you're not some kid from the island. You're some kind of spy, right?

I'm Chapel,
the guy says, like it's supposed to mean something to me. Then he says,
Lieutenant Commander, US Navy. Well, former.

Keep going,
I say.

Like I said, they're going to let you all die. “They” includes the navy.

I'm not dying,
I say.
I got the Cure. I got jabbed. You were there.

Which is true. Down at the United Nations, they had a Gathering of the Tribes. We were supposed to agree to be one big, happy family, and in return, we got the Cure, which was some kind of goo they cooked up from Jefferson's blood. I suppose I've got some of that kid's DNA cruising around my veins. I suppose I owe him my life. I don't like thinking about that.

Chapel shrugs.
Maybe that changes things, maybe not. Probably you're just out of the frying pan and into the fire.

How do you figure that?

Well,
says Chapel,
The Powers That Be—that's the Reconstruction Committee, the US government in exile—figured everybody would be dead in the space of a few years, right? If it turns out that you're going to be playing
Lord of the Flies
in the Big Apple for the next fifty years, let alone
propagating
, they'll change their plans. They'll come in, round you up, and exterminate you
.

Bullshit,
says Spencer, one of the capos.
My parents were out of the country when the Sickness hit. If they survived… no way are they gonna just let me die here. Let alone send somebody to kill me.

I wouldn't be so sure they'll find out you're cured,
says Chapel, looking up at all the faces peering at him from around the U-shaped counter.
That's an official secret. Nobody wants to deal with twenty million pimply refugees. The government will keep a lid on the news. Above all, they need to keep the Cure from spreading to the rest of the country so they don't have more living teenagers to deal with.

Now this makes me laugh—the idea that somebody would treat the Cure like a disease and try to keep it from spreading. But it makes sense. It's cold, but I get it. Like, if the plan is to take over, who wants somebody like me around, fucking things up? Because no way am I, after the glory years of the Sickness, working for the Man. I'ma carve out my piece of the pie. Each season of The Evan Show has to get cooler and cooler. The budget has to go up; the hero has to rise higher. He has to level up, unlock new powers.

All right,
I say to Chapel,
so let 'em come. I got a thousand soldiers. They'll figure out it's better to work with me than against me.

It's Chapel's turn to laugh, I guess. Which makes me hit him again but probably saves his life because I figure he must know something if he's that ballsy.

Okay,
I say,
I'm a busy man. You've got one hundred words to save your life.
This is a favorite game of mine, and the boys know that I like keeping score, so Cooper, from Buckley, takes out a pen and paper. Every once in a while, we'll spark up and do dramatic readings of Famous Last Words and laugh.

Shoot,
he says.
I mean, you know what I mean.

I don't need a hundred words,
says Chapel.
Look in the bag.

Brick—who we named after the dude in
Anchorman
because he's so stupid—brings over the bag Chapel had when he showed up at our doorstep. It's a shitty black leather briefcase stuffed full.

Brick hefts it over and plants it on the counter. I unzip it and empty the contents on the floor. There's a bunch of binders, like in school. They splay open.

So what the hell is this?
I say.

That,
says Chapel,
is the whole world.

I pick up the binders and start leafing through the pages. Rows and columns of numbers, some official-looking instructions for a thing that looks, based on the pictures, like an old-fashioned cell phone, from when they were gigantic and crappy.