Year Zero (35 page)

“They’re all overseas,” he pointed out. “They’ll never make it here. They don’t even know we exist.”

“But there will be American survivors.” Quietly, she said, “Once America dies off. The disease will sort them out.”

“What makes you think they’ll come here?”

She gestured at the lights. “They’ll see us from far away.”

“But who will they be, these survivors?”

“They could be our last hope,” she said. It was like a mantra. “They may have developed antibodies to modern Corfu….”

“No,” he interrupted. “I mean who will they be?”

She was confused. “Americans. Probably people from this land mass, maybe migrant groups drifting south from Canada….”

“Be careful what you wish for,” he said. “You want them to be lambs. But what if they’re wolves?”

She didn’t answer.

“You have no idea what it’s like out there.”

She looked away from him at her beloved city.

“Maybe you should be afraid,” he said.

She stood up. “I expected better of you,” she said. He listened to her footsteps crunch through the gravel. The door shut behind her. After she was gone, he continued sitting on the edge of the roof, wondering what was real outside of his desire.

A
N HOUR LATER
, he reached the outskirts of South Sector, breathing hard. He came here often, always like this, stealing through the trees, covered in night. It was cold, but the jog had warmed him. As always, South Sector lay beyond the forest like an island of light. For a place with such a dark reputation, it was ungodly bright. Klieg lights blazed. The fence line glittered like a a silvery wall.

It had become a regular stand-off. South Sector held Ochs. Ochs held the secret of Grace. Nathan Lee had the wire cutters and the knife to cut her free. But not the courage. It was more than that. He had lost his direction. The world had never seemed so immense. What if Ochs was only an excuse to be lost? What if Grace no longer existed? He dueled with his doubts.

Nathan Lee edged through the trees. The tops of scattered clusters of buildings stood above the gleaming dike of triple fence. He drew closer. The compound foreshortened. At last he could see only guard towers and coils of razor wire and warning signs surrounding it.

The cleared earth blazed white. There was no in-between in that no man’s land. No shadows allowed. It was always like this. The clones wanted out. He wanted in.

They would catch him. That was a given. The clearing was marked. It was mined and there were sensors and cameras and patrols. Even so, he might have stepped into the light. But he didn’t trust his destiny.

“Nathan Lee.”

He ignored the whisper. It was the forest. The wind.

The voice whispered again. This time, he ducked and turned, and it was Miranda.

She shifted in the screen of brush and woods. The shadows striped her. Her eyes were green lights in the darkness.

She had followed him. He was flustered, as much by her stealth as by his carelessness. You had to run to stay with her, but that was by day. Where had she learned to move through the night? There was no path in here. From night to night he wasn’t sure how he would approach.

“What are you doing?” he whispered.

The forest changed her. She was Miranda, but different. She moved backward into the deeper shadows. She was sure of herself. His foot snapped a twig. He lost sight of her. She moved, and he found her again. The shadows streamed like water.

He followed her further and further away from South Sector. The light dwindled. She paused. She didn’t stop, only let him catch up. She stayed in motion, latticed by shadows.

“How did you find me?” he said.

She tsk’ed. He was easy stalking. And it wasn’t her first time. It rattled him. She had watched him slouching on the border of light. He felt foolish.

“I come here to think,” he said.

She wouldn’t quit moving. She paced. He had to twist in circles to follow her.

“Why throw yourself away?” she said.

“I’m not.”

“You want to.”

“Want,” he said bitterly. “Everything I want, I can’t have. I’m faking it.”

“It’s stupid.” She was angry. Her hand shoved at him. He stumbled.

She started to push him again, but this time Nathan Lee caught her wrist. It felt like he was falling or holding on for dear life. Miranda could have jerked from his grip. Instead, she pulled, but not to pull away. She drew him in.

Later they would make a game of it, each accusing the other of stealing the first kiss. Then they would take turns laying claim to it. Then they would start over with each other all over again, telling and retelling their beginning until finally it felt woven into the myth of them. All lovers do it, creating the world fresh around them. The only difference is that some have less time for it than others. And so they hurried to catch up with themselves.

O
CTOBER

S
omeone snuck into the yard one night and hung a crucifix in a crook of the tree. By the time Nathan Lee arrived in next morning, the yard was empty. The damage was done. Izzy stood by the tree.

“The clones took one look and bolted for the door,” Izzy told him. “Now they won’t come out.”

Nathan Lee plucked the crucifix from the crook of branches. The little figurine had its arms cast wide. The culprit had been Catholic, or stolen it from one. Protestants worshipped empty crosses, the transformation not the suffering. “Who would go to the trouble?” He held the thing in his hands. “And why?”

“Maybe it was meant as a gift,” said Izzy. “Or a token of their Lord’s Prayer, to declare solidarity. Modern Christian to primitive Christian. Probably nothing malicious.”

His mind had been full of Miranda, her lean body, her green eyes. He didn’t want the interference. He tossed the crucifix into the fire. “Now what?”

“Let’s just explain it to them,” Izzy wisecracked. “Boys, we’ve made a religion about a corpse nailed on wood.”

They had discussed it before. Even the primal Christians in the group wouldn’t buy it. The worship of the crucifixion hadn’t evolved for many centuries after the early Church began. The actual practice had needed to end before its adoration could begin.

“They think it’s an omen of things to come,” said Izzy. “If they had doubts before, they don’t anymore. This is hell. They’re in the hands of demons.”

The supernatural world was utterly real to them. Nathan Lee had heard it over and over in their testimonies to home. Demons were to blame for everything, for the cold air, for stomach and headaches, for strange noises on the far side of the courtyard walls, for their captivity and the voices on their intercoms, for their bouts of depression and uncontrollable anger. It was not something they could turn on and off.

There was a theory that consciousness, the idea of self, didn’t develop until two or three thousand years ago. To that point, the human brain hadn’t been wired to distinguish between self and being. The Year Zero clones straddled that psychological divide. For them, or most of them, demons and spirits were everywhere. The Bible talked about
go’el,
or guardian spirits. Dreams were alternate realities. Their innermost thoughts were the voices of invisible creatures. Back then—a hundred generations ago—people could look at a burning bush and believe they were hearing the voice of God.

“We start over,” said Nathan Lee.

“Why?” said Izzy. “Why put them through it again? Maybe they’re better off buried in their cells.”

“No,” said Nathan Lee. “They’re not.”

They tried to lead by example, walking past the clones’ open cell doors. “You see?” Izzy told them, “It’s safe.”

“No,” men insisted. “The demons are waiting for us.”

Near the end of the day, as the shadows turned purple, Ben came out into the yard. Nathan Lee was squatting by the fire. A cold front was passing through. The yard looked bleak, like an arena with its walls blackened with smoke. Leaves swirled on the circular breeze.

Ben stood above him. “Where is that thing?” he asked. He meant the cross.

Sparks rose among the pine boughs. “In the fire,” said Nathan Lee. Part of it had fallen into the dirt. He jabbed at it with a stick. “There.”

“Why aren’t you afraid?”

Nathan Lee reached for the words, something suitable to his role as a scribe. “God writes our life.”

“If we let Him,” Ben said. Or perhaps he said, “Not if we don’t let Him,” or something like that. Nathan Lee’s Aramaic was elementary. Ben continued standing for another minute. Then he hunkered beside Nathan Lee at the edge of the fire pit. He found a stick of his own, and poked at the embers and flames.

Izzy appeared in the doorway and came hurrying over, his sandals flapping. “Here you are,” he said.

“Here we are,” said Nathan Lee. He motioned with his eyes for Izzy to join them. Izzy took his station to one side.

Ben pointed his stick at Nathan Lee’s missing toes. “They say you tried to escape,” he said.

“Like you,” said Nathan Lee. He gestured with his own stick at Ben’s scars and the missing tip of his ear.

Ben grunted. “We’re alike, I think.” The seams on his ripped face were purple from the cold, or the flames. They lay on his skin like vines.

“Two handsome men?” said Nathan Lee.

Another grunt. “That must be it,” Ben said.

Izzy looked from one to the other, trying to catch up with them. Or slow down. There was a rhythm here. He waited.

“I see you listening. And listening,” Ben continued. He plucked at sparks as if they were insects. “Once that was me. Throwing my net in the air. Pulling the stories from the wind.”

Nathan Lee didn’t say anything. He let Ben draw himself out. It was him who had searched Nathan Lee out, for some reason.

“I used to gather stories, too,” he said. “From men like these.”

“Our poor brothers?” said Nathan Lee.

Ben’s eyes glittered. “Damned men,” he said. “Men on their trees.”

The crucifix.

“At the age of fifteen, I left my family to go wandering,” said Ben. “You know how young men are. Full of questions. Impatient for the world.”

“Ask him,” Nathan Lee said in English. “Where did he go?” Time to bring Izzy into the loop. He didn’t want to miss the story.

Izzy made himself transparent. He had become the best of translators. Their words flowed through him.

“I roamed along the River,” said Ben. “I meandered south to the Dead Sea. It took me years. Along the way, I would stray for a week or a month, sometimes alone, sometimes working in a village. There were many people on foot, going here and there. Sometimes I would join one band or another. I studied with Pharisees and Saduccees. With heretics and pagans. I saw magic. Wandering Stoics shared their campfires. A colony of Essenes took me in. They fed me and taught me to read and write. At the end of three years, I left them. My teacher wanted me to stay. He was angry, not without reason, I suppose. But I had my own path to find.”

He fell silent. Nathan Lee added another log to the fire. He poked it to a blaze. “What path?”

“Through the emptiest place I could find. Into the desert,” Ben said, but he patted his heart. “It was a dangerous place, crawling with bandits and prophets and wild animals. I thought such a bare land could not possibly hide the truth. But I found no answers. And so I climbed out from the valley. I went up into the land of the damned.”

Izzy finished quietly. They waited some more. When Ben spoke again, there was no need for translation. “Golgotha,” he said.

Nathan Lee felt his blood racing. He glanced up at the walls, and every camera was trained on them. He could almost see them through the lenses, three men perched by a fire melted into a parking lot.

“Have you been there?” Ben asked lightly.

Nathan Lee met his eyes. “A long time ago.” He didn’t offer details.

Ben went on. “I made it my home.”

“Jerusalem?”

“No,” said Ben. “In the garden. Among the trees.”

Golgotha?
Nathan Lee was careful. He kept his eyes on the fire. What was Ben telling him?

“I lived there for an entire year. I slept in empty tombs that had been carved and were waiting for their wealthy owners. When one was filled, I would find another.”

“You slept in tombs?”

“You couldn’t stay in the open. It was cold. There were dogs. I learned to sleep with stones near at hand.”

“To throw at the dogs?” asked Nathan Lee. He remembered Asia.

Ben nodded. “And also at the women. The widows and mothers of crucified men. They were possessed by demons and roamed at night. Even the soldiers were afraid of them.”

The flames made images. Resin hissed and snapped.

“It was a different kind of wilderness,” Ben said. He spoke in bursts. “Further along the path stood the walls of Jerusalem. But you know that.” He stopped.

“Not like you are telling,” said Nathan Lee.

Ben grunted. He flicked at the fire. “At night you could hear the sounds of babies crying and people talking and laughing. The smell of food drifted over the walls on the breeze. You couldn’t see the cook fires and lamps, but they cast a light as gold as butter.

“The crucified men would think they were dreaming. But, of course, they were not. To sleep was to die.”

He meant it literally. The process of dying on a cross had become lost in the mists of time. In the centuries after crucifixion fell from use, artists had begun depicting Christ in heroic poses with a nail through each palm. Even after Leonardo da Vinci experimented with cadavers and learned that the weight of a human body would have torn the palms free, the nail through the hand had remained a popular fiction. In the same way, misled by artists and storytelling priests, people had come to believe death came from the bleeding and torture, even from a broken heart. Not until a twentieth-century physician conducted a medical reconstruction was it realized that death resulted from asphyxiation. Once your legs gave out and you hung from your arms, the diaphragm was quickly overtaxed and you suffocated.

“When the moon came up,” Ben continued, “their shadows were like a forest. I remember lightning playing along the faraway sea. I remember a man’s dog that came and lay at his feet and starved there, guarding his body. Sometimes they would sing to each other on their crosses. Village songs. Prayers. It could be very beautiful.”

He stopped again. He squinted as if peering into a deep hole.

“Why?” asked Nathan Lee.

Ben noticed him with a start.

“Why did you live with the dead?”

Nathan Lee already had a hunch. He’d visited the burning
ghats
along rivers in India and Nepal. Since long before Siddhartha, ascetics had gathered like vultures around the sick and dying and dead to meditate upon impermanence and suffering. Two thousand years ago, it wasn’t only spices and silk that flowed along the trade routes, but philosophies, too.

“Not the dead,” Ben corrected him, “the dying. Each morning the sun rose up from the desert, over the crest of the Mount of Olives.” His hand moved in the air, describing the arc. “Then I would start my circle. I went from cross to cross and to the trees where they were tied and nailed. I talked to the dying men. They would live for days on their piece of wood. If a man was strong, he might last a week up there. I sat by their feet and we would talk like you and I are talking now.

“Oh, they told me everything. About their families and crops, their animals, their failures and triumphs, the weather, their first time with a woman, how many
shekels
or
denarii
their neighbors still owed them or they owed their neighbors. What a blessing it was when a cloud crossed the sun. They talked about weakness and temptation and evil. And they talked about their hopes.”

“Hopes?” said Nathan Lee.

“Yes. Even with the wood against their spines, even drying out in the white sun, they held onto their hopes. They talked about the future. Their plans. How they would improve their field or build a new room onto their house. How their sons would prosper. How their daughters would be beautiful. All day long I visited them. When they were near the end, I would stand on a rock and watch their eyes.” He held one finger up, inches from his face. He stared at it.

“Slept in graves,” Izzy muttered in English. “Hung around with dying prisoners. Hitchhiked on their death experience.”

“Let him speak,” said Nathan Lee.

“Have you ever followed a man on his cross?” Ben asked.

“How do you mean?” evaded Nathan Lee.

A log burned through just then, collapsing the others in a spray of sparks. Its heat foundered. The cold and dusk surged against their backs. The men added more wood. Nathan Lee crouched and pursed his lips and blew. The flames leapt high and warm again. Ben squatted in his place again. Nathan Lee went back to his perch along the edge. It took a few more minutes to resume.

“It’s like watching a man build a fire,” Ben commented. He had the storyteller’s gift of borrowing from what was at hand, in this case their fire. “His journey on the cross. At first there is smoke and your eyes sting. Then the heat and light appear. At last the smoke clears away.”

“I don’t understand,” said Nathan Lee.

“At first you resist,” Ben said. “You struggle. It goes on that way for a very long time. But near the end, there are openings in the pain. There is clarity. After all that violence, there is peace. God creeps in.”

“Is that what you saw in their eyes?”

“Yes, like in the eyes of a newborn infant. God.”

High in the tree, they heard a rustling sound. It was a bird, trapped in one of Joab’s nets. God would be getting a snack in the morning.

“These dying men,” said Nathan Lee, “what did they think of you?”

“Some cursed me. Others begged me to stay. It is very lonely on the cross. They called me many things. In their minds I was their friend and their enemy. I was God’s servant and I was the devil. They called me brother and son and father and
rru-bee.”