WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) (40 page)

            When she starts to take off my pants, working as quickly as she can, like we’ll run out of time, I pull her to the ground again. And then, just side by side on the horrible steel, we watch each others’ eyes. My hand teases down her arm to her stomach and leg, and everything slows. The frenzy is gone. But she’s still smiling. I ask her if this is just another dream. I hope not, she says. I tell her, in a rush of feeling, that I could give it all up. My need for security. My need to have a safe, unexciting life. That I could do this. Keep going. Before we even know if that’s possible—as if it
were
possible, that this quest could go on forever. I say I can do it. I’m not really what Wrist says I am. She just says it’s okay. That she’s not what Wrist said either. That Wrist didn’t know what he was talking about. And that she could be happy with me. Back home, she says. I wrap my arms around the small of her back and pull her into me again, kissing her, pulling and pulling until we’re pressed tightly. And then, I turn her legs, at just the right angle, and stop everything. Just admire them—their shape, that they’re mine for this moment, that I can do with them whatever I want. It’s no longer a fantasy. It’s real. I raise and lower them, and she laughs, and then, without enough discipline to counter the force any longer, I pry her pants down and off, turning her over completely to rip them away. My mouth comes down and her skin is fire on my tongue, and then each new place lower and new fire, somehow hotter, until I go where my instincts demand. She softly gasps, and then loudly, until I find what my body needs. Her thighs close against my temples and my hands search blindly along her stomach until they reach her breasts and then her hands. I push my fingers into hers to stop her from fighting. Time ceases to pass and there’s nothing but the noise from her lungs, her hips coming up and then flattening again, in time with the motions of my lips and the warm pulse of my tongue. She cries out so loudly I wonder what I’ve done to her. But she just pulls me up, smiling, and grabs the back of my head, pulling me by the back of my head into her mouth again, kissing me, and then, she throws me over, rolling me onto my back, and her hands work quickly until air cools my naked skin. She sits on me and pushes her hand into my stomach and then into my neck. Pinning me against the ground so that I must endure her control. The pleasure is too much when she slides down on top of me, and then it’s somehow increased—each smile and look, and whip of her hair as she moves, and all I can see is the line of her stomach from her belly button to her neck. And then, uncontrollably, it’s all of her—the complete shape—each feature, dark and light, blended into the forceful act of sin she’s chosen to defile me with. But it’s when her voice erupts that I can’t stop myself—the loudness disturbing the dead chambers of the After Sky, waking the dead. My own voice matches hers until she slows down, and then, somehow without leaving me, she lies at my side, our bodies connected, perfectly meshed, with warm panting breaths so closely shared that the wetness of the air paints patterns on our skin. And then, once again, time is gone. Evaporated by the exchange and its conclusion—so that all we are remains in silence, until there’s a soft row of kisses along the back of my neck and then into my hair. And my hand runs down to hers, and over her leg, and then back to her hand. I bring it up and kiss it softly, and then her arm, and then I’m still. Just the occasional movement, tracing a line along some beautiful curve. Listening to the trade of sweet I love yous.

Clicking wakes us. Maze starts first and I don’t know if she ever fell asleep at all. What’s that? she asks me. And then, it’s a scramble to get dressed, to stand again over Wrist’s dead body and realize it’s not from him that the noise is coming, but from the blue room. My eyes adjust and my brain clears, doing its best to eliminate the euphoria of sex with Maze so that I can take in the problem. Some kind of alarm is going off, I say. Ready? she says to me. Ready to do this? And then, grabbing my hand, the same as before but with a different meaning this time, she pulls me along, past Wrist’s body, and into the blue room.

Chapter 22

We walk into the room. Each wall is as bare as the tunnel. Maze walks around, tracing her finger over the emptiness, her eyes eventually scanning the ceiling for the source of the clicking. I walk up to her, run my hand over her back and tell her we should keep walking down the hall because there’s nothing here. Just the lines of blue light against the silver. But she tells me no—something has to be in here. I wait for her, like her force of will could create a sign for us.

I go around the room one more time to satisfy her, waiting for something to appear. But there’s nothing. And then the clicking stops. My fingers touch the smooth metal, as if another computer will light up. No water here. How many of Wrist’s words were lies, after all?

She comes to me and puts her arms around me.

            “How much of it was true?” I ask her.

            “I didn’t mean any of it Wills,” she says.

            “No—what he said. What we are. About everything.”

            “I don’t know. Maybe none of it. I don’t know anymore.”

            “Let’s go?” I say. And it’s suddenly I feel that my whole body is leaden, like I’m stuck to the floor and there’s nothing I can do now but go into the final sleep, despite my words to keep searching. Because I know—there is no After Sky—no water or food either. This place is just a wasteland looking down at the planet. And then, when I’m about to lie on the floor and just close my eyes, and think of Maze’s words, her body, and that my life is now complete and I can die, she says something. She says it twice so that I respond.

            “There has to be an Ark.”

            I look at her, her eyes as glazed as mine feel. Fatigue and exhaustion settling in with some final and irrevocable confusion.

            “It doesn’t matter,” I say. And I almost don’t know why I say it. But part of me realizes that even if a small part of what Wrist said is true, it’s all too complicated now. Our purpose is lost. Some deep part of me, tied to the exhaustion, realizes that humans have gone on for too long. That it’s all too complicated and there is no resolution. There never will be. But I only muster enough energy, when she prods me for an explanation of my attempt to give up, to give her a weak look of old defiance, to tell her that it’s not worth fixing anymore.  History isn’t worth our time, whatever of it is left to know. Lie down with me instead, I tell her.

            “No,” she says. She takes my hand and tells me we’re going farther. And I don’t object. Just follow, back out into the orange tunnel. We walk. Down and down. No more dripping, and eventually, no more music either.

At the end of the tunnel we reach another door. Maze walks back and forth, as if her tattoo will open it for us. Nothing happens. I look at her and then back down the hall. Wrist’s body is now out of sight. And then, off to the side, near the floor, I see a sliver of difference in the metal—some non-orange strip filtering in. Just a few inches high from the floor. I walk to it and lie flat on my stomach.

            “Maze,” I say. She comes and lies next to me. Her warmth is soothing. Makes me want to go to sleep again. I squeeze closer against her so we’re touching. Our heads align and we look out through the sliver of window. The vast curve of the planet stretches out below us. Everything from all of time. The white splotches and lines running through blue and darker blue and in places green and black. Behind it all are the speckled bands of stars. Strange lit dust hanging like frost against an empty black reach.

            “It’s beautiful,” she says. I put my left arm on her back and then crawl with my fingers to her neck, to her hair. I turn my hand around and press the backs of my fingers into the soft strands. For a moment I want to roll her, take her again and confirm twice our love. But the energy of life has been sucked out of me. And there’s nothing I can do but stare at the enormity—the contrast of death and life in some eternal void that we’ve tricked ourselves into assuming purpose within. It echoes like a knife through my head: this has all been to get her. And now it’s over. Everything is too complicated now. There’s nowhere else to go. Nothing more to do. And my eyes start to close. I notice the deep bass thrumming of some electrical circuit, the thing that must be sustaining the orange light all around us. I feel her hand on my back, running in small arcs. And I close my eyes again. They open once more to see it all, and she whispers how beautiful it is. She talks about the Ark, and how it will explain everything that’s ever happened down there—
down there.
For some reason, I know already we’re never going back. That this is our After Sky. I drift into some warm sleep—inside a warm bed back in Acadia, in some parallel life where Maze fell in love with me without the need to quest out to our deaths. She wakes me up.

            “We have to go back,” she says.

            “What?” I say. And I notice now that she’s behind me, standing up again. Her hand, her warmth, gone.

            “I checked again. The door, the blue room, the computer. There’s nothing more here. We have to go back, find food and water. Get to the Resistance and tell them. Bring them back here with us.”

            My first reaction dies quickly—an old anger that she’s gone off on her own, exploring down the tunnel without me. And then, the next flame leaps into my chest. To scold sense into her—that there’s no getting all the way back there. Not when we don’t really know the way. Not when the Nefandus prowl the beaches, waiting for us. Not when we can barely move. Barely keep our eyes open. Instead of all that, I tell her no. No, Maze.

            “Stop it. Get up,” she tells me. And just like that, with her hand descended in front of my face, I roll onto my back, take it, and rise to follow her.

We pass Wrist’s smokeless body. I give him one glance, a look into his eyes, and my head sounds a silent question to him—What was the point? Why make it all up? And if it was true—even more, why? Why work so hard to preserve what we are, if that’s the truth?

As the door of the elevator comes into view again, I’ve worked through things enough to realize that my thinking had been correct before—that in the end, it will always be chaos. And the more you know, the harder it becomes to maintain the bliss of ignorance. I realize that now, it’s all too much, whether it’s true or not—some tired acceptance washes over me, that it was a mistake to ever leave. That maybe, just maybe, Maze wasn’t worth it. That all of this is blind dogma. My every step. It’s the very thought striking my head when we realize the elevator door, our only chance of survival, won’t open for us. Nothing.

            Maze tries everything to reactivate the elevator, but it doesn’t make a sound. There is no new light from the small compartment that carried us all the way up here. For a moment, frustration rises in her voice. It’s something like panic. And all I can do is put my arms around her, and instead of offering my words, I kiss her. Her forehead, her cheek, and then I just hold her.

For a few minutes she tries again, cursing, and says we should check the blue room again. I tell her no, that we should just lie down. I don’t tell her it’s all over. Or that we have to enjoy the few hours we have left. Just that we should go lie down. Even still, as I pull her back, away from the door and toward the only beautiful thing left to us, the sliver of window, she has to stop at the blue room again. I don’t even go in.

I sit in the hall and listen to the static—occasionally a flicker of music comes through. I wonder who picked out the song—who played it—what their life must have been like. And then, I look at Wrist for a long time. Even when Maze starts cursing again behind me, beating the sound of our impotence against the walls. I think about his brain—the metal and electric wires that must have been inside there—and that if I could somehow open his skull, and take it out, I would get it out for us. Everything we need to know. Before I can crawl over to him and start my dissection, Maze returns. Her eyes are empty. I stand up and put my arm on her.

            “Let’s go look out the window,” I say. She shakes her head and starts to cry. I kiss her again, and then, when there’s no cure, I just hold her. Finally the sobbing is over. I tell her to Come on, and pull her, until we’re lying on the floor again.

This time it isn’t me who begins it. She lies next to me at first, watching the world below. Both of us must have the same thought—that we took it for granted. Despite how fucked up it all was. And then, that thought fades from my mind. I think only of the beauty of the image. Her hands start over my back, to my neck, and then she’s kissing me again. My neck to my cheek, and then, turning my head, my mouth. Mixed life. For some reason I think of Sid, but then he’s gone too. Her kisses grow angry until she’s rolled me over. She puts her legs around my stomach and sits down, pulling back so that we see each other’s eyes.

            “Don’t,” she says when I close my eyes.

            “What?”

            “Don’t look away. Just look at me.”

            And I stare at her. Feed deep into her dark eyes. She smiles, the first smile I’ve felt in years. And the feeling grows enormously, filling me up, until after endless minutes she pushes her eyes right up to mine, so that our noses touch, and then she kisses me softly and quickly and endlessly. My arms come down, wrapping her. Her hands slide up my chest. Our bodies the only thing left in life to explore. And like all of her anger and loss is coming out in her movement, she takes all of my clothes off, piece by piece, the same as before, and then her own. The cold air is gone and there is just heat and pressure. Everything evaporates into blankness no different than the darkness outside the window. When she’s given me the last bit of her strength, and our animal eruptions have faded and died a long time ago down the hall, she collapses on top of me. The perfect weight, I think to myself. Her eyes close and it’s all I can think about as I trace her ear. That all this time, I never knew it. She’s the perfect weight to feel. I feel it for the longest time until my mind gives in to sleep.