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Chapter Four

The music, muted from behind the door, hits me with its full voice and vigor as I cross the threshold. There is no airlock. It takes a moment before that sinks in. As I begin to try and figure out what that means I realize the people dancing are mask-less. Eyes closed, the throng of people jump and thrash about wildly. Sweat beads on their skin as they press together in an organic, undulating mass. Nevertheless, they do not appear to be rhythmic or orderly, but syncopated and chaotically individual. Their clothes, too, are not the trench coats, stained black from daily use, but bright, revealing clothing. It is close, hot, and uncomfortably alien to me but I cannot leave. This is worlds away from home and exactly what I wanted.

Pushing through the dancing bodies, I work my way toward the back. Every footfall is labored with the suction of the sticky floor. Pressing deeper and deeper in, I feel awash in a sea of music, light, heat, and humanity.

I spot a bar to my right serving drinks of every color in tall thick glasses, undoubtedly the reason for the sticky floors. I continue on. Pressing deeper, I emerge from the pack and find, against the back wall, a row of empty tables. It seems everyone is dancing and no one feels like sitting.

After taking a seat at a corner table, I slowly survey the room. Across from the dark wood bar is a stage lit up in bright orange lights. A man stands behind a musical input device the likes of which I’ve never seen before. His fingers sweep, dodge, and weave through the projected light and I immediately recognize its connection with the ebb and flow of the rhythms within the music. I close my eyes and let it wash over me. I sway silently, letting the beat drift me away.

The tranquil blissfulness is disturbingly interrupted with the forceful sting of my mask being ripped from my face. Panic pulls me back into reality and I clutch at my mouth and nose in a pathetic attempt to keep the poisons out. A pungent aroma of alcohol, sugar, and sweat overwhelms me. I know I should have nothing to fear, all these people are dancing wildly, gulping deep breaths of air, but I’m so conditioned against the idea of breathing in buildings without an airlock that my hands remain over my mouth. Turning around to see who pulled off my mask, I come face-to-face with a woman not much older than myself. She is striking and her eyes burn with the reflected orange light from the stage.

“If you’re going to try to fit in here you should at least look the part.”

She practically shouts to make herself heard over the thundering noise of the music.

“But there’s no airlock.” They are the only words I can think to reply and I immediately regret them.

The woman tilts her head back and roars with laughter.

“You are definitely not from around here. How old are you? I bet you’re still in school.”

“Neptus Memorial. I only have a few months left before graduation.”

Her face turns up in amused understanding.

“Rich kid. I don’t think mommy and daddy would like to find out you’ve been hanging around a place like this.”

“My parents don’t care what I do.”

“Tell them you’ve been here and I’m sure you won’t have that smug look on your face.”

I notice my smirk and drop it from my face. As we shouted to hear each other, the conversation escalated faster than I think either of us intended.

The woman takes a deep breath and relaxes the tense look on her face.

“I’m sorry kid, what’s your name?”

“Evelyn. Evelyn Brennen. And you are?”

Her face lights up with a smile.

“Delia. Pleasure to meet you Evelyn.”

She extends her hand toward me. I pull the glove off of my right hand and grasp her hand, firmly shaking it. We release hands and the music overtakes the silence growing between us.

“If you want to talk, there is a quieter place.”

“Sure.” I reply.

Standing up as I speak, I follow her out of the dancehall through a door I didn’t notice on the way in. As I close the door behind me the music muffles and I can hear my thoughts again. I follow her farther into the room looking around at the walls. They are draped in bright fabrics. Covering the floor are similarly bright carpets dotted by pillows of assorted sizes and wild patterns. Taking us to the back, toward a particularly large and comfortable looking set of pillows, she plops down and beckons me to do the same on the one across from her. She turns my mask over and over in her hands.

I fall onto the pillow. It wraps around me in a soft embrace. I relax for a moment then realize I still have my filthy overcoat on. Hastily I unbutton it and pull it off. Standing back up, I look at the now soiled pillow.

“Don’t worry about it kid, happens all the time.”

Sighing, I sit back down onto the pillow.

“It’s just so beautiful. I’ve never been any place like this or seen…” My words trail off as my mind struggles to take in the radical vibrancy of the room.

“I figured as much. I was much the same way the first time I ventured off the beaten path.”

“I just can’t fit the two places together. The streets above and this place here are as different as night and day. There’s life here.”

“Uncomfortable, isn’t it?”

“It’s overwhelming.”

“It gets better, but you’ll always have that nagging doubt that this place is wrong. That it shouldn’t be.”

“But it should—it has to be.” I reply. The passion in my voice startles me.

Delia smiles. “Agreed. But sadly that’s just not the way things are.”

I pause for a moment. The way things are. The Caretakers, our Great Society. Regimented, isolated, dark, terrifying. “But why?” I reply. My words sound pathetic, but I feel their meaning deeply.

Delia’s face stiffens. “Maybe we should change the subject. How did you find this place?” Her tone is more somber and serious than before.

“I was wandering around and heard the music. I followed it down here.”

“Wait, you weren’t invited? You could hear it on the street?”

Delia jumps up from the pillow with alarming speed and dashes back through the door. For a moment the volume rises then recedes as the door slams shut. Instinctively, I stand and begin to put my overcoat back on. The muffled music stops. As I finish the top button, Delia returns. She hurls my mask at me. I catch it, stinging my hands.

“Come on. We need to get out of here. Follow me.”

She breaks into a run back toward the dance floor. I don’t hesitate and quickly catch up. Following closely behind her, we press through the frantic swarm of people making it for the door. I fight not to lose sight of her vibrant green shirt.

The front door is swung wide open from people mashing against each other to get out. The atmosphere, so inviting before, is now electric with terror. Seeing the open door, and the falling ash outside, my heart sinks.

With trembling hands I haphazardly pull on my mask. My hair snags painfully on the rubber straps. Shaking, I’m overrun with fear. I don’t know what’s happening.

As I begin to shut down, a hand firmly grasps my hand and pulls me toward the exit.

“Come on, Evelyn!”

Delia’s voice is clearly audible over the panicked cries of the crowd. Coming into the doorway, I am pressed from all sides and struggle to remain standing. Clawing hands and pressing bodies send waves of pain rippling through my body but I don’t let go of Delia’s grip. I struggle until I’m free.

We race up the stairs with reckless haste, keeping each other from falling with our hands’ death grip on the other’s. At the top of the stair, Delia leads us straight into the street. The automobiles there are at a full stop.

Weaving, sliding, and jumping we pass through the congested street. The motorists honk angrily. I keep my eyes fixed on her shirt to guide me through the sea of grey and black.

Emerging from the traffic jam, we dart into the first alley. The sound of sirens begins to echo in the claustrophobic space.

“Keep moving, we need to keep moving.”

Delia leads us through the confusing maze of alleys. Darting left and right,, we quickly lose sight of the street and rapidly increase the distance between us and the rising roar of sirens.

My lungs burn from the effort. Outside of the gym there is little place to sprint, and I have never done it in my mask. My strained, carbonized breaths feed a growing feeling that I’m going to hyperventilate, but Delia’s unrelenting speed propels me forward and strengthens my resolve.

Mercifully, a few yards ahead, Delia leads us into a small blind alley which is partly obscured by a dumpster. She releases my hand. Blood and sensation rush back into it. It throbs a little. I fight to catch my breath with short gulps. Delia presses her back to the wall and slides to the ground. From a small pouch on her waist she pulls out a gasmask and places it over her face.

“Are you ok? Do we need to get you to a hospital?” I say panicked. I have never seen anyone outside without their mask. You’ll die. It’s that simple. Or at least it was until a few moments ago.

“No, I’m ok. Plus I can’t be seen right now. I’m a dead giveaway in this green shirt.”

Delia looks down at her green shirt steadily turning black in the falling ash.

“What now?” I ask.

“I need to wait until dark before I can get out of here. And you need to get home. Your parents are going to be worried.”

“They don’t worry about me.” I say indignantly. My resentment toward their fight last night clearly shines through.

“You know that’s not true. Plus with all the Peace Officers swarming around you definitely don’t want to be here.”

“But I can’t go. Your mask, I mean you didn’t need a mask. You know things. Things I want to know. I need to know the truth.”

Delia lifts her head locking her eyes with mine.

“That’s a dangerous path kid. You think you want to know, you think you’re ready but you’re not. You should go home and forget everything you saw.”

“Impossible,” I say.

Delia’s head drops. “I know.” The sorrow in her voice sends a shiver down my spine.

“If you want to learn more,” she continues, “ask yourself this. Why have you never seen someone die on the street? Where are the corpses of rats and birds? Once you’ve started to peel those layers back ask yourself, what’s hidden in the silver trucks?”

I gulp hard. Fear radiates in my body. Silver trucks? What is she talking about? With every passing moment more of the world is revealed to me, yet I can’t shake the feeling that I understand it less and less.

“Where do I even start? Can’t you tell me?”

“I wish I could kid, but this is one journey you have to make by yourself.” She pauses for a moment. Taking in a deep breath she continues, “Blend in, cover your tracks and don’t make waves.”

Her warning sinks home. Peace Officers don’t take kindly to abnormal behavior. It’s beat out of us at school to the point where it becomes unimaginable. I care not to think about what happens to the people who cut their own path.

Delia pushes herself up from the filthy alley floor. The conversation dies. Only the movement of falling ash breaks up the stillness. Delia looks exhausted. Not from the sprint, but from being on the run. The woman who approached me in the club is gone. Her vibrancy has faded from her face and is now stoic with resolve. I imagine for a moment that I’m looking at my future self. The thought sinks into the pit of my stomach. Delia locks eyes with me. I see something there, familiar, yet I cannot express it. Like the look my mother gave me all those years ago, this too will haunt me. She turns away from me and begins taking long strides down the alley. I panic; she can’t leave yet! This has been too much too quickly, and I still have so many questions.

“Where are you going?” More of my anxiety seeps into my words than I would like.

“I don’t know kid. Now go on, get home. And remember, tread carefully.”

I stand frozen as I watch her turn the corner and disappear. Minutes ago I didn’t know her world existed and now it’s slipping away from me. I think of crying out to her but decide against it. But the gnawing remains. If I let her get away now I may never find the answers I seek. Forcing my muscles to move, I run after her as fast as the slippery cobblestones will allow.

The alley forks and diverges. I pick paths on impulse, then double back when they turn up empty. My lungs rasping, mouth tasting of copper and ash, I slow down to a walk. Tears well in my eyes. I found what I was looking for, I found her, and I let her slip away. Sliding down the wall behind me, the adrenaline fades away and my heart slows. Heavy tears stream down my face, pooling in the inner seal around my eyes, obscuring my view. Slowly I put all the emotions this encounter has unleashed back into place and I rise from the cold, stone alley.

I wind my way back to the main street. Instantly, I slip into the crowd and disappear. As I walk I know that I’ll never see Delia again and that my life will never be the same. Contradicting emotions, both sadness and joy, fill my heart.

Chapter Five

I wander the streets for nearly an hour before I stumble across anything I recognize. With the sun now set, the roads are tricky to navigate in the sickly yellow glow of the street lights. In the large gaps between light posts, the darkness is as thick and suffocating as the falling ash.

I keep moving with the thinning crowd until I make it back to familiar surroundings. Across the street from me stands the impending visage of my apartment complex. Stopping to look at it, I realize for the first time its enormity. Shooting higher into the sky than the buildings around it, it looms over everything in sight.

Everything feels different. The world seems darker, the ash thicker. My mask feels heavy and uncomfortable on my face. The sounds of wet ash sloshing under the wheels of passing cars and the dull hum of the sickly yellow lamps fill me with dread.

It’s as if my eyes have been opened for the first time, only instead of seeing the world illuminated, it is engulfed in total darkness. I am blind.

I pass through the airlock and enter the lobby. A small fleet of mechanical sweepers finish their dash across the floor, leaving it polished and clean in their wake. They disappear into hidden panels along the wall.

The concierge glances up at me then returns to his magazine. I know he recognizes me, but I don’t feel welcome here.

The elevator whirs its comforting sounds. And I exhale completely for the first time in hours. Emptying my lungs of the day, I refill it with filtered, lemon tinged air and instantly begin to feel better. Today has been a whirlwind, and I am floating in the unknown, but I have new knowledge to ground me. The masks. How can the air be poisonous if Delia didn’t die? This mystery is certainly bigger than that, but it’s a place to start. If I can answer that I can move on to the bigger questions and maybe one day I’ll no longer be in the dark.

Ding. The elevator doors open and I step out into the hallway. Pacing down the hall, I suddenly remember how late it is. Is Mother worried? Has she even noticed? She always tells me to be free, so she shouldn’t have a problem with how late I stay out. Unconcerned, I open the door.

Immediately I know I’m wrong. Mother sits on the edge of the couch rocking back and forth. Her hands, clasped tight, are red from the force she’s holding them shut with. Seeing me, she jumps up and runs down the hall toward me.

“Evelyn? Darling, I was so worried.”

She wraps her arms around me. Her embrace is uncommon but not unwelcome. I hug her back. She pushes herself back to look me in the face, our masks eye-port to eye-port.

“Never do that again! Do you know how much anguish you caused me? I phoned the school, Peace Officers. I’ve been here worried sick.”

“You called Peace Officers?”

A knot closes up my throat. If I hadn’t followed Delia out of there, we’d be having this conversation at a detention center and the tone would be drastically different. I swallow hard.

“I’m sorry, Mother. I didn’t mean to worry you. I walked home from school, that’s all.”

She embraces me tightly again.

“You could have gotten yourself killed, Evelyn. I don’t want you doing that again.”

Her grip tightens, and all the warmth of the hug is gone.

“You can’t let them get you, Evelyn… you can’t.”

Her fingers dig painfully into my back.

Releasing me, she steps back. “I’m going to bed.” Her voice, drained of all emotion, is barely audible.

I stand in the silence and watch her disappear into her room. Her vacillating tone confuses me. It’s as though she’s conflicted. She wants me to live and be free, but she also deeply fears the air, the subversives, everything. This struggle leaves her conflicted on how to interact with me and leaves my feelings toward her twisted up in knots.

She’s just as blind as I am. She doesn’t know, so she can only fear. I empathize with her, but the pain in my back from her fingers makes it difficult.

Father still isn’t home. Not wishing to wait for him, I head off to get ready for bed.

All night I dream of the club. The bright colors, the heat, the smell, the life, and the look in Delia’s eyes.

Morning comes quickly. Mother enters my room. Still in her mask, still silent. I obediently replace my filter. As soon as I do she slinks back off to her room. Getting up and dressed, I push her from my mind.

Why we wear our masks is all I can think about on the way to school.

The loud crackle of the classroom’s speakers coming to life pulls me out of my head. Looking at Speer fiddle with the command module, it’s clear that something isn’t working. The speakers begin playing the audio of our next documentary, G
reat Occupations in the Great Society
, but the projector remains off.

“Damnable thing!”

Speer slams a fist into the command module. The narration stops. We all remain silent, but I’m sure I’m not the only one with a smirk on my face.

“Stand by, students.”

Speer turns and leaves the room, without waiting for our response. He doesn’t have to. He knows that we are incapable of anything but obedience, and sadly enough he’s right. Sitting in the silence of the room I can’t help but think of the club.

It was cramped, loud, chaotic, and intimidating, but it was also alluring, sensational, and alive. The contrast between then and now is so strong that I begin to doubt if yesterday’s events were real or just a figment of my imagination. That place seems so otherworldly in the cold grey stillness of the classroom.

Speer returns to the room followed by two gangly men in brown overalls and simple rubber masks.

“The projector finally crapped out, huh? We’ll get it up and running again, but it’ll take us a while.” Says one of the eerily similar technicians. The other nods his head in agreement.

“I thought that might be the case. All right, students, listen up. The projector is in need of repair so we will work around this by going to the computer room for some unstructured lab time.”

The other students fidget with excitement, but I don’t. I too am excited, but for completely different reasons. I have a plan.

“Settle down. Don’t make me regret this. Stand up! Proceed to the computer lab single file.”