WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) (34 page)

            “All this—an abandoned school? Why would it be made of metal? That doesn’t make sense,” Maze says.

            Without explaining further, Wrist just says that this place was a holding pen, nothing more. And that he doesn’t know why the metal, and the electricity.

            “I learned to use the computer from a metal man—do you believe me?” he says.

            “Metal man?”

            “He looked like you, flesh—normal on the outside. But later, I found out what he was underneath. Metal. Just metal and electricity.”

            “A drone? Like in the video?”

            “Yes. Will you come with me to the elevator?”

            “You said it’s under water,” Maze says.

            “Did you know this whole place goes out under the ocean—out to the base of the tower?”

            “Yes.”

            “Well something happened. Whoever kept this place maintained, after the Wipe, they stopped. And there is one place where it’s flooded. But we can get through.”

            “After the Wipe—Wills!” Maze says.

            “You’re lying to us,” I say, suddenly struck again by the malevolence in Wrist’s eyes.

            “Why would I?”

            “How have you lived down here? Survived?”

            “I told you—since I generated the skulls, no one comes here—no one bothers me.”

            “But what do you eat?” I ask. And then, Wrist pauses—like he’s calculating his response. I look just for a moment at Maze, to make sure she’s catching it too.

            “Fish and fish and more fish!” he says. “There are enough for me.”

            “Down here?”

            “Of course, where the flooding starts. They come in and die somehow.”

            I watch him, hoping there’s some way I can keep from believing him, but it starts to make sense.

            “Listen—I can get us to the elevator. There is a way through the flooding. And you can open the elevator—if you really have the key in your leg. Trust me. And we can go up—find out what’s in those computers. Figure this all out together.”

            Without even consulting me, Maze agrees, and then Wrist says we can go right away.

            “Come on, this way. We will go deeper now.” And then, we follow him from behind, back to the main tunnel, until the familiar flickering lights grow brighter and the strange metal music of the past starts playing again. Minute by minute, I see more water on the floor, and the temperature starts to drop. The descent becomes steeper, until it feels like we’re walking down a ramp.

The first puddles appear, and with them, the first signs of wear in the steel floor. Pockets of the floor are buckled near the edges and stagnant water pools sound out soft drops. This is all fresh, says Wrist, and he stops to have a drink.

            “So we’re not under the ocean yet?” Maze asks.

            “Must not be,” Wrist says. “In fact, I’ve never been able to figure out the exact line where the tunnel crosses from land into the ocean. But the water’s always been fresh. Even the flooded part is fresh water.”

            “Then you’ve never been out into ocean yet.”

            “Jesus Maze—the elevator is on the land part—it must go down,” I say.

            “What? What are you talking about?”

            “The elevator doesn’t go up, I bet. I bet it goes way down, right to the bottom of the sea.”

            “We’ll find out soon enough,” says Wrist.

            As we drink and I watch Maze, part of me becomes angry that Wrist is here. That I would rather have died lying together with Maze somewhere. Close and next to her. I’m afraid I can’t try to kiss her again as long as he’s around. That she won’t let me do it with him here.

            “How far is the elevator?” I ask.

            “Just a little farther,” he says, his eyes looking at me for clues. As if he feels how much I want him to disappear.

We follow Wrist until the lights start to flicker more, staying off for ten seconds at a time, only coming back on hesitantly, and the puddles on the floor become the music, their pockets turning into running streams along either side of the tunnel, running down and down toward the same orange-lit abyss. Wrist tells us it all runs into the flooded section. When I ask him how we get through the flooded part, and reach the elevator, and if the elevator is underwater too, he takes his time before answering, as if he’s calculating an answer again.

            “No—there’s no water where the elevator is. All the water is blocked up before the elevator.”

            I leave his answer alone, but my mind starts to wander. I think about the metal man he’d talked about. And how he could have discovered the man was made of metal if he’d looked human. And how in the video all the drones had looked clearly like metal, and none of them appeared to be human-looking. It comes down to one dark, recurring thought—that he killed the man, and in doing so, discovered what his insides looked like. That maybe there are no fish, and that people do wander down here. And that maybe the skulls aren’t mirages, but the waste of all his meals.

            A sheen of orange glass reflects at us up ahead in the tunnel, and as we draw near to its edge, I recognize that it’s the flat top of water, running out at an angle from the descending tunnel like a mirror. No way to go but walk straight down into the water, which rises up to the ceiling. And then, I see the fish, and I know he’s at least telling part of the truth. They swim so close to the surface that I can’t imagine it would be hard to catch one.

            “I’ve done this a handful of times. You just have to hold your breath for about a minute. There’s a wall, and we go over the top of it. You’ll see the light and know where to go.”

            I look at Maze, waiting to see how far her trust of him will go—if we’ll risk drowning on the hope that he’s not lying.

            “If we swim into this for a minute, we won’t be able to make it back if there’s no slit,” I say to her.

            “No, we won’t,” she agrees. And it’s enough for her to ask him one more time. Why we should trust him.

            “Don’t you see that you’re the answer I’ve been waiting for? You have the key. I want to get up into the tower as much as you.”

            “Alright, seeing as we’d have run into this water anyway,” Maze says, looking back to me. I nod. And then, Wrist explains in more detail—we’ll swim until we see a lighted slit near the top of the water, and then, grab the lip of a wall and pull ourselves through. It’s a bit of a drop back down to the floor, but you’ll be fine, he says, The wall must have a safety measure, preprogrammed—a seal of some kind, and we’re lucky it didn’t flood to the top. With a quick shake of her head, Maze lets me know—I can’t try to swim with the shotgun. We have to trust Wrist completely. I lay it down and together we go to the edge of the water. And after drinking until we can’t drink anymore, we wade in.

The water is freezing. I follow after Maze and then we’re pushing hard through the fish and the darkness until I see the orange electric lights again, a mirage underwater. There is a strong line of light all across the ceiling, and a dark edge, just like Wrist described. And then, almost out of breath, I see Maze stroke up and grab and hoist herself through it. Just when I think my muscles will give out from lack of oxygen, I find the edge and pull myself through.

            The impact blasts through my body as I hit the ground. And then, in another moment, I’m on my feet, soaking wet and freezing cold.

            “There it is,” says Wrist. “The elevator. Time to see if you really have the key.”

            Without a word, dripping wet, we walk down to where it is—a large golden rectangle built right into the silver wall. Before there’s time for any suspense, the wall starts to make a low humming noise. Then, as if it had been waiting for us forever, the door slides to the left, and there’s a small room with a dim, flickering light. Wrist erupts in happiness.

            “It worked!” he yells. I wait till they’re already inside, and then I follow them. The next thing I realize, the door has shut and we’re moving.

            “We
are
going down,” Wrist says.

            “Into the ocean,” Maze says.

Chapter 18

By the time the thing stops, it feels as if five minutes have passed. And then, we’re out, walking on a flat floor that looks identical to the one before, except for its angle. But the music is back, and every twenty feet there seems to be a shuddering blackout. Each time, the music stops. But there’s no dripping anymore. Just total silence. When we start moving again, I begin to notice how dizzy I’m feeling, and I ask if anyone else feels it. Right away Maze tells me yes, she feels it too. Lightheaded.

            “Maybe that means there’s something wrong with the pressure system,” Wrist says.

            “What’s that?” I ask.

            “If we’re really under the ocean, then we’re under billions of tons of water now. If the pressure system fails—” Wrist says. As he says it, the lights flicker off again. Everything failing one piece at a time. I realize this tunnel hasn’t been used in a long time, and it must all be falling apart. And that maybe nobody at all is in the tower. Maybe there will be more skulls there. And it’s as abandoned up there as the tunnel is. A last remnant of the old world. “Then we all die. But it will happen instantly, I think. Not slowly. So—you see—nothing to worry about.”

            “There’s more water,” Maze says. And then I see it too. Running along the wall, down in a line to the edge of the floor. She moves to it and kneels down, dipping her finger in and raising it to her mouth. Taste it, she says.

            Wrist goes and I follow, and we all taste the salt together. “We’re under the ocean.”

We walk for two hours, mostly in silence, and the temperature gets warmer. Wrist asks if we notice it, and after we say yes, he says it’s a good sign. A sign that the computers are still working. And then he asks if we feel like we’re being watched.

            “Watched?” I say.

            “By whoever’s up there,” he says. My eyes instinctively go to the ceiling, as if I’ll see something there. But it’s the same line of lights, some of them with a watery look now, as if the sea has been trapped within their fixtures in places. Nobody answers Wrist, and we keep walking.

            “There might not be any more fish,” Wrist finally says, breaking the silence. And just as he says it, the lights flicker out again, as if he’s causing it to happen each time with his words. We wait like usual for their return, but they don’t come back on.

            Time passes endlessly in stillness. When it’s clear that something’s wrong, and that this is the longest we’ve ever lost power, Maze says we should sit down. I keep waiting for my eyes to adjust, like there’ll be just a little light, enough for me to make out shadows, but there’s nothing. Only complete blackness. And it’s Maze’s arm that reaches out to touch me. She slides along my arm until we’re holding hands, and then she tugs me close to her against the wall. Soon our sitting becomes an awkward sort of lying, and then we’re right on top of each other. I have no idea where Wrist is and I don’t care. All I know is she’s asleep with me, together and resting on me, sharing her warmth with me. I fight the impulses to trace the outline of her body with my hand. She’s tired, I tell myself. I’m tired. If we survive this, she’s yours. I don’t know why I start to tell myself it, but I do—over and over again. Maybe to convince myself it will be in bad taste to try and kiss her again now, while she’s sleeping. But I hold back. I hear a strange noise and then realize it’s just Wrist, and that he’s given in too, waiting out the darkness somewhere on the floor. And it’s when I’m almost completely out that Wrist says something about whether or not the lights will ever come back on, showing me that he’s still wide awake, and maybe, scared too. Revealing how wrong I might have been about him. That he’s not a threat at all, and just as worried as me.

            “What if they don’t come back on?” he says again.

            “What’s the longest you’ve ever been in the dark?” I ask.

            “Nowhere close to this long.”

            And then, we stop talking again. I think I hear running water somewhere. But it’s the beginning of a dream I tell myself. Go with it. And then, I push Maze a bit, so we’re lying on the floor. I take off my shirt, almost completely dry now, and ball it up as a pillow for her. And then sleep takes me.

We wake up like machines in the darkness. Wrist says there is no other choice but to touch the wall with our fingers and keep walking. At first, it’s strange—moving in the dark, one of my hands glides along the metal and the other firmly grasps Maze’s free hand. It’s the longest I’ve ever held her hand, and yet, the longer we walk, the more I just want the lights back on. I realize that it’s exactly what would happen—I’d have her but only in the darkness, and there’d never be another chance for me to see her face.

            Occasionally the water trickles through the ceiling and makes strange noises. I ask Wrist if he hears the quiet whirring, and he thinks it’s some kind of heating system, or maybe the pressure system. When I press him again, about how he knows so much—about the robot man he’d learned about computers from, he evades. I want to throw my suspicions to Maze with a glance, and I instinctively turn to her, but there’s nothing—not a measure of light to even illuminate her silhouette. And so everything will be heard by Wrist, and I’m quiet. But as we walk, and I throw probes at him once in a while, digging into his history, it becomes more and more obvious that something is amiss—that he doesn’t want to tell us the truth, or at least that his truth isn’t adding up. He claims that the Nefandus are just as educated as any other people on Earth, just as smart as the communities in the Fatherhood, but that they appear barbaric because their scripture demands it—and specifically, he tells me, that it is at a certain age that the intellect in a Nefandus is squandered. The age when a man passes into his journey of conquest:
for it is the collective purpose of our people to unite the world under our doctrines—to unify all human life under the great power of Satan.
As absurd as it sounds, Wrist explains that the roving bands of Nefandus have the sole purpose of conquering the habitants of all lands to unite them under true civilization—that civilization which will recognize that God has been the cruelest of lords, and it was the first to reject his tyrannical game of self-amusement, Satan, who should be rightfully followed. Satan—Wrist tells us in the dark—was the first to assert the insanity of God, and then, to reject it.