WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) (4 page)

            It seems to me that we didn’t screw up a first time—that it was bad timing and bad luck that we ran into the Fathers. And a big part of me realizes I would feel a whole lot safer turning myself in—accepting whatever raw punishment they would mete out and at least have the guarantee of a safe passage back to Acadia. But now, the feeling of absolute aloneness overtakes me. There’s no one to protect us anymore. Because we’re completely out of their jurisdiction, and there’s nothing I can do but follow Maze. I know I’m too much of a coward to go back on my own, but the idea of traveling fourteen miles round-trip through the Deadlands makes me feel hollow inside. Beyond afraid. And then I see the rundown pharmacy—a dangling
REDDY’S RX
sign that dangles so low from the porch that it nearly touches the raised pavement. It’s the landmark—the farthest we’ve ever been inside the Deadlands. And then, just like that, we walk right past it, toward buildings I’ve never seen before. Some of them rise so high that I think they’re equals to the tower out on the sea. But no—I realize they’re not—because here, I can see where they end.

            “Never seen the skyscrapers up close before, Wills?” she asks me, as if she has.

            “They didn’t seem so big from far away,” I say. “Wait—what do you mean
me
never see them so close before…”

            “You don’t really think this is my second time out here?” she says, like it’s no big deal.

            “You lied to me?” I almost forget the awe and fear surging through my stomach, boiling in me like some kind of acid mixture. As if it—that she tricked me—hurts worse. 

            “I didn’t lie,” she says, smiling. “Do you realize how you act when I do something you don’t approve of?”

            I stop to think about it for a moment, but the truth is, I don’t seem to understand her question. It doesn’t make sense. And then, she knocks it into me so hard I’ll never forget it.

            “Wills—you know how much you mean to me. But you worry about me
way
too much.”

            Just like that, I turtle up. I can only be quiet, unable to form words. It’s like I don’t know how to respond, and it dawns on me finally why—it’s because she’s right. And the mixture of her words—saying that she cares for me, thrown together in the same breath as her confession that I worry about her too much—puts me into a head spin that I just can’t pull myself out of. All I can do is look at her, studying the curves of her body, the long hair flapping with her quick steps, all while her back is to me. Walking away from me like she has no idea how badly that hurt. And we go on just like that, in silence, marching through the ruins of the skyscrapers, the land forbidden to us by the Fatherhood, the heart of the Deadlands. Neither of us say a word for a long time. I start to wonder if her silence means she knows she hurt me. If she knew ahead of time she would, and if for some reason I don’t comprehend, she meant for it to hurt.

            “Hey Wills,” she finally says when we turn a corner after a long road. I sheepishly look at her, sensing that her eyes are on me again. I do my best to make it look like I haven’t looked at her or thought about her once since she said that I worry too much. But she’s always been too smart for my games.

            “What?” I say, hoping not to sound scared or upset.

            “Two more streets to go and we’re there.” Her smile returns all of the sudden, like she’s using it to cut through my resentment.

            Somehow, I know she’s lying—that we can’t be that close already—but I don’t ask for the map to check. And then, when she comes closer and wraps me in her arms, squeezing me for a moment and then releasing me, I can’t help but feel all the tension and anger rise up and disappear out of me like so much smoke. It’s as if she knows I need her light-heartedness, and it flows right into me, and then, we’re walking side by side again. Right through the wide vein of the rubble-filled street.

By the time we are close to the end of the last road, I think I’ve seen a hundred phantom faces staring at us through the windows of abandoned hallways. Every time I point out a shadow I think moved, she takes a look, double-checking what I see, and calls me paranoid.

            “There’s nothing out here,” she says each time, telling me I have an active imagination, and how it’s going to get me in trouble if I can’t turn it off. And when we reach the last bit of the long open highway, littered with the bare frames and broken tires of worn down cars and trucks, she points to one of the skyscrapers.

            “That’s the one,” she says, looking at the map twice and then back at the gleaming giant.

            “You want to go up that?” The thing looks bigger than any of the buildings we’ve seen so far—like a glimmering diamond that’s been shattered on every square of its wide face of windows, all the way to the top where vines and weeds hang over the edges.

             “You didn’t think the mirror would be on ground level, did you?” she says, and before I can protest more, she pulls me toward the front steps.

            We walk over a pile of crushed glass, through the broken front door, and step onto the cracked tile of the lobby. Everywhere I look I see hazards waiting to happen—bent railings like spears, sagging girders of rusty steel, pipes poking down just where I know they shouldn’t be. A steady fog of dust particles somehow stays afloat in the air, each molecule bobbing up and down but never falling, suspended by the threads of sunlight that punch through the room. Two curling staircases rise from the center of the lobby to elevated walkways that overlook the weed-filled space below and the overgrowth on the pavement beyond.

            “Come on,” she says, and just like that she leads me past the peeling paint and the dust-producing ash on the floor. I calm down a bit after the steps hold us firmly without a sound. We reach the second floor landing and turn down a trash-strewn corridor to find a dented steel door with a plastic sign bolted on it. The picture is faded but it’s clear enough for me to tell how funny it is—a stick man with a mustache drawn on him. He’s standing on a blocky row of stairs. The thought crosses my mind that the picture is a lie. Those strong black blocks in the picture are nothing like the death trap we’re about to climb. An ancient staircase that goes to the roof of this beaten monster. But Maze doesn’t even stop to look at it. She just pushes the door open to the sound of a metal whine and we walk into a new mist of dust.

            “Ugh,” I breathe in pure particles. “Disgusting.”

            “I think it will be better up top,” she says. And then her feet find their way through the crumbling layers of paint and metal flakes, each step raising a new cloud of dust that settles on top of our boots.

            “So how far into the Deadlands have you really been?” I ask, trying to distract myself from the dizzying circles of the unending stairwell and the growing height of the airshaft in the middle.

            “Not this far.”

            “How high is this?” I ask, watching her take another corner and fall out of sight.

            “High enough that we should be able to see the mirror from the top.” And then, she just keeps stomping along. No more talking. The metal creaks so loudly that I think the whole building will cave in on us, fall right on my head. As I sense the panic choking me, I run up until I’m practically one step behind her.

My dizziness swells with each round we make—we climb eight steps, make a hard right, I look down, and then we climb another eight stairs, make a hard right, and repeat. The pattern continues, over and over, sometimes with the metal groans beneath our feet getting so loud I’m convinced we’re never going to make it back down this same staircase—as if the great pillar had one last bit of strength in it, just to take us up, but it won’t be able to hold us anymore on our descent. We’ll go tumbling down forever, right through the jagged beams, impaled, maybe living to die slowly in the rubble. Lying and thinking about who would ever miss us. And one thing is for sure, as I visualize the horrible but realistic scenario—no one would
ever
find our bodies.

            “You think anyone would miss us?” I say as sweat drips from my forehead onto my boots.

            “What do you mean? Don’t get all gloomy on me, Wills.”

            “I’m serious—if we died out here…who would miss us?” 

            I watch her pace slow up just a bit, my eyes glued to her butt, the perfect and irresistible curves, and I know she’s slowed down just enough to think about what I’ve said.

            “The Fathers would miss us,” she says, her voice twisting into the usual cynicism.

            “Oh come on. I’m being serious.”

            “They would give a beautiful and long sermon about how we were great servants of God. All of our efforts bent upon God’s will. And that the sins we committed while alive—the sins that led to our deaths—well, they should be overlooked, because now we are in the After Sky.”

            “What a crock of shit.” I can’t help but react, distracted from my original line of morbid questioning. “But I was thinking, like—besides my mom—who else would really care if I didn’t come back today?”

            “At least you have your mom,” she says, cutting her tone from sardonic back to neutral. “I don’t have anyone. I’m the incorrigible scar of Acadia, remember?”

            I wait for a while, thinking of a sensitive reply, and I realize I should have known that that was coming. That even though my mother is nuts, a freak for the Fatherhood, a full believer in every line that rolls from the services—arriving early every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday—it still doesn’t change the fact that I
have
a mother. I think about how today’s service has already passed, and she’s probably already worried sick—how the last time I did something remotely wrong in her eyes she didn’t let me hear the end of it for a week. All she could talk about was the way I was subverting God’s will. It wasn’t ever that she was worried about me though, or that she
would miss me. It was always God that was upset, or sad, or angry. And it was God’s will that dictated I shouldn’t have done something—not hers. Still, Maze’s history floods through my head, and the guilt that I’ve been so rash floods through me.

            “I’m sorry. I don’t think before I say things,” I say.

            “Don’t worry about it,” she says. And if there’s any lingering annoyance with me, I don’t hear it in her voice. 

            I want to ask her for the hundredth time, even though I’ve just pissed her off, what she remembers from before the Fatherhood brought her to Acadia. If she can remember her time of Orphanhood, as the Fathers call it. But I know now isn’t the time to press it. I hear her foot claps increase in speed and volume, and a new shaft of sunlight breaks through as windows open up along the wall for the first time.

            “We’re getting close!” she says, energized by the view. It captivates me too and I have to stop for a moment. Through the film of particles brightly displayed by the cutting sunlight, I see a squared expanse of lines and rising spires—a bird’s eye view of the city waste. Some of the buildings only make it halfway to what must have been their original height, and then they sag and lean as if they’ll collapse with the slightest gust. But some look clean, untouched by the Wipe. Like they’re frozen in time and as solid as the day they were built. Their bright windows gleam against the radiant sun, reflecting a spectrum of color that looks as beautiful as the flowers in Acadia’s gardens. I want to stay and study the magical landscape, the wide metal and concrete expanse of the old world that time has forgotten, and pick out the preserved structures from the one’s time is deleting. Even the roads, from so high up, look unscathed by the tracks of weeds and brush. I almost expect to see one of the wrecked automobiles jump to life. Start rolling down the street, pumping out its poisonous gas. I know the thought is sacrilegious—that it’s blasphemous to desire such a thing. The sin of lusting after technology. And it crosses my mind to ask Maze if this is why it’s forbidden to come to the Deadlands—if the real reason they tell us not to come is that we might find beauty in the rotting city, and it will incite a lust for the knowing—the knowing of pre-Wipe civilization. But she’s already hollering down at me because I haven’t moved a step and she’s way ahead.

            “Wills!” she calls. “Hurry up—here’s the door.”

            I look away from the electric vision and bolt up after her, stairs creaking and crying in protest as I go. Dust settles at the top when I reach the final landing, and with the door already open, Maze sees me nearing and walks out onto the roof. When I get out, I feel as if the sight is even more beautiful than before. Now it is the same gorgeous geometry, symmetry, and mixture of broken and new, but spread out in complete panoramic truth. I twist in every direction to take in the full scope of the city, and the view is so clear that I can see all the way to the edge of the Deadlands, where the buildings look like tiny toys, only an eighth of the height of the monsters surrounding us in the middle. I even think I see some of the blue containers, rusting in the yard that leads to the field and then the forest path beyond. But I can’t be sure, because Maze’s forceful grasp pulls my shoulder again. And as wonderful as I feel on top of the world, what she turns me to see half-horrifies me. At first I can’t make sense of the mind-scorching brightness. But it’s clear as day what it is as I shield my eyes and look away so that it hangs dimly in the periphery of my vision.

            “Is that it?” I ask.

            “Yep,” she says. “And look—it’s moving.”

            I cup my hands over my eyes, making just a couple slits to see through, and try to get a better look at the mirror. The large rectangular slab of light is bolted to a skyscraper roof that’s just a little lower than ours, two buildings away. The sun against its glass stings my eyes, but I definitely see the glare turning. Just for a moment. And then it stops.