Elysium (14 page)

Antoine took him deep into the tunnel. He stopped at a metal door and opened it. He turned on the light. It was a maintenance office. Inside, there was a room with a toilet and another with a desk and papers all around. In the corner was a small couch, and beside it was Antoine’s stash — a box full of spray cans. Adrian picked up one with a red cap. It was heavy with paint and made a
clack
-
clack
-
clack
sound when he shook it.

“We can stay here for a while,” Antoine said. “No one comes here anymore. We get power from the solar panel outside. So we won’t be in the dark. Move underground. Always gotta go underground.”

Adrian sat down on the couch. The weight of his feet was heavy. So tired.

“You bring your sketch pad?” Antoine asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good, me too,” he said. “You got anything new?”

A beat. He did have something that Antoine hadn’t seen yet.

“Yeah, I’ve been working on something but it’s not done.”

“Can I see?”

“Not yet.”

Antoine smiled. “That’s cool. Now you’re thinking like an artist. Don’t never show your shit before it’s ready.”

“Did you bring any food with you?”

“A little. That store had a lot of stuff in it. I should’ve taken more.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I think I’ll go back there and get more stuff.”

“But those things are out there.”

“I know, but we haveta eat.”

Adrian looked away. Everything was so bad. And their dad wasn’t around to make things right anymore. Not like after their mom died. BREAK.

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry,” Antoine said and flashed that smile of his. “They can’t catch me,
son
! I got this!”

The smile was infectious.

“Okay,” Adrian said and Antoine left him alone and, for the moment, safe.

** BREAK **

>>

>> .

>> createdoc check_for_daemon.fi

# check_daemon.fi -- check if daemon process

# is running in the background

ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep Gauns

# if not found - equals to 1
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then echo “Found daemon process…”
.eof

>> execute check_for_daemon

>>

.
.
.

Antoine left two days ago and hadn’t been back since. Adrian waited in the cold maintenance office, too scared to move. The things were out there. Maybe they were in the tunnels. Maybe they were waiting for him out on the streets. It didn’t matter. Antoine was gone. And he probably wasn’t coming back. BREAK.

As his stomach twisted with hunger pains, Adrian sketched. Magic markers squeaked and scratched over the paper. The rhythm of his hand made music on the page. He drew face after face after face. Over and over and over again he drew. Strange faces. Faces of friends. Faces of the fellahs from around the way. Faces of the kids at school. Different faces. He stopped and looked over all of the pages he had done. The faces had merged into one. They were his brother.

Antoine. Antoine. Antoine. BREAK.

There had been a hum in the tunnel that was now silent, and the lights began to flicker. Had Adrian understood what that meant, he would have left the room then. It meant that power was no longer going to the pumps that kept the groundwater out of the tunnels. It meant that the underground was about to flood. The silence soon became unbearable, so Adrian opened the door. Water was flowing almost up to the steps of the office.

He packed his sketchbook and as many spray cans he could carry and walked out into the tunnel, stepping carefully through the dirty water. The further Adrian walked, the more flooded the tunnel became. He walked until the water reached his waist, holding his bag over his head. Wet and miserable, he climbed the stairs to the street. Adrian was afraid of running into one of those things. But he was hungry, and he wanted to find his brother. So he wandered down the long avenues of the city, listening to his feet scrape the ground.

In his heavy knapsack he carried the several cans of spray paint that made up the colors of his essential palette: red, green, gold, brown, black, several cans of white, yellow and a small can of blue. The remaining cans he left in the box hidden behind the couch in the maintenance office. He thought he could get them later. He pictured them underwater now.

He searched all of the places he knew Antoine liked to go — the old harbor that overlooked the next state, the cement park where the skateboarders used to hang out and practice their moves, the park in the square where the green market had met three times a week. All of them empty — no Antoine, no anyone. Only the lonely howl of the wind and the sounds of birds flapping overhead. And it was cold.

The sky above remained gray, the blue never returned. The dust had settled and formed an even layer on the ground. Adrian ventured out during the day and spent his nights huddled in the small corners of high-rise offices, his knapsack of spray cans for a pillow. Once, when passing the city hall, he saw an elk. It was wandering between the parked cars, then striding along the sidewalk puffing white cold smoke. It stopped for a moment and the two stared each other. The moment passed, and it made a slight sound like the whinny of a horse. For a moment, Adrian thought it was trying to speak. But then the elk turned its head and walked away, disappearing down the long corridors of the streets.

Adrian found canned stuff left in abandoned shops that was still good. He felt loneliest when he ate. Mealtime was when he and his father and his mom and Antoine used to talk. Mostly Antoine, though. Antoine would tell jokes that he’d heard, or dreams that he’d had the night before, or stuff that had happened that day in school. Now meals echoed the silence of the crunch or the swallow and nothing more. BREAK. Adrian didn’t understand when his dad said, “Adrian, you could rule the world if you put your mind to it, but Junior … I don’t know about him sometimes.” How could he not know that Antoine was the center of the universe? Adrian could see it. He could plainly see it.

Adrian painted on walls. The once forbidden places now belonged to him. He chose the cement side of a government building first. He worked all day. First he laid out the outline in white, checking his sketch pad to make sure he got the proportions right. His fingers were covered in gloves with the tips cut off, and his face was masked so he wouldn’t breathe in the paint fumes. By nightfall, his mural neared completion. His brother’s large face stared back at him. He put the finishing touches on it before he lost the light. A light spray here, a little highlight there, and the metallic finish he wanted on the letters was complete. Instead of R.I.P., he put only a name: Antoine. That’s when it hit him. The only way Antoine would be away this long was if his brother was never coming back. Adrian crawled into a ball and spent the night sleeping next to the mural he created. It was a stupid thing to do with those things still roaming the streets. But it was the closest he’d ever be to his brother again.

He painted another memorial on another wall. And another and another. He decided that his brother would not be forgotten. Antoine’s image would live on forever and ever. One time he gave his brother that sly smile that he remembered so well. Another time, his brother looked down, serious and considerate. It became a mission to paint his brother’s face everywhere there was a blank wall. What else was there to live for? He went back to his old neighborhood — an empty ghost town of whispered memories. He painted on the wall of his old apartment building. This was where Adrian intended to create his greatest work: Antoine set in the night sky, floating as if living amongst the stars and above him an eagle with wings outstretched, hovering as if carrying Antoine into the heavens.

Something made a sound behind him.

>>

** BREAK **

Found daemon process…

>>

>>

He lingered over his finishing touches on the mural. He didn’t want to leave it.
Stupid.
He slung his knapsack over his head and ran. They were close behind him. Almost upon him. A voice from above said, “I got you, son.” Adrian felt his feet leave the ground as he was taken into the sky. The sun blocked Adrian’s eyes. He saw spots and lines of blinding light. Strong arms closed around him, wings outstretched. Feathers flutter flutter against the static gray sky. He looked up into the face of his father, changed but it was him.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said.

And he flew his remaining son safely up with no mention of his namesake.

>>

>>

** INTERRUPT **

ERROR: SYSTEM FRAGMENTATION

ERROR: SOME DATA LOSS

** SYSTEM RESET **

.
.
.

10.

They started as little nubs burrowing out of her back. At first they itched like tiny insect fingers crawling up and down just under her shoulder blades. She tried to ignore them. Then she tried to hide them. Even the thick sweater with the holes in it couldn’t cover the growing bumps. Adrianne didn’t say anything to her father. He so desperately wanted her to be normal. She didn’t know how to tell him that it was happening to her, too. He was so busy worrying about finding their next meal that he didn’t seem to notice her strange behavior. There was a sweet pain in knowing that she was becoming like him. She wasn’t sure that he’d see it like that.

Whenever her father flew away he told her how much he hated to leave her alone. Adrianne always knew he was not leaving just to look for food; he was leaving to look for people. He still believed that there were folks holed up somewhere down there — survivors — folks like them with their minds still intact. He wanted to find them and maybe form a community, maybe even rebuild a little of what once was. Adrianne had doubts that she kept to herself. She watched him open his wings high on the morning breeze and coast into the purple sky, ascending and flapping.

Flutter, flutter.

He had been gone for almost three days. She tried not to worry. It was hard when he was away that long. The mist was thick again. She hoped he could see his way home. He was probably in one of the bombed-out buildings, waiting until the heat of the sun burned off the fog. But he’d come back. He always came back. …

Home was a high-rise office building. It was a shell of its former self, a metal skeleton. Broken glass was everywhere. Papers and the insides of computers were strewn all over the floors. They had cleaned it up when they arrived and made themselves as comfortable as possible. Adrianne used one of the offices for her room. She liked having a door. It meant privacy. She needed that, or so she thought. She spent her days reading and writing in a journal, a leather-bound fancy thing that she had found in the office supply closet.