WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) (2 page)

            “I don’t want to know any more about how you got this,” I say, thrusting the map back into her hands. “Just tell me what’s so special about this map that we’re going to risk getting mauled again?” She leans down, her hair brushing against me for just a moment, the smell of spring flowers, and she grabs my arms and pulls me up so that I’m standing. Sand falls away from my legs, and before she even starts to tell me, as if she knows that I don’t need final convincing, she starts walking back toward the dunes, tugging me after her. Finally, her hand lets go of me when she knows I’m moving on my own, committed to the madness.

            “See this?” she says, holding out the map again. I look at the mesh of lines on the wrinkled yellow paper. Most of it looks like gibberish to me. But I see what she’s pointing at. It’s a tiny square drawn on with marker. Under it is written sloppily the word
mirror.

            “Mirror. What’s that mean?”

            “I’ve been coming here alone for the past week. To watch the tower. And I’ve figured something out.”

            “Alone?” I say, half hurt she didn’t ask me to come with her and half angry that she’s been risking the dunes by herself.

            “I had to. I had a hunch, and I was right. I know I’m right,” she says as we make it to the first line of shrubs, small prickly mounds of tangled roots and grass. We find the thin trail snaking out of the dunes and back toward the heavier forest. I wait for her to keep explaining as we hit the shade, but she doesn’t. I have to prod her.

            “Are you going to tell me?” I ask, but she’s stopped. Her eyes have caught something behind us. She looks back at the tower.

            “What?” I ask, alarmed that she might have seen a wolf, or something worse—one of the Fathers.

            “Look. About three-quarters of the way up, before the clouds,” she says, grabbing my shoulder to turn me so that I can follow her pointing arm. The electricity of her touch runs through my body, and I almost want to pull away before I lose myself in fantasy, but then I have no problem releasing my desire for her—because as good as it feels that her arm is on me, I see what she’s pointing to. A small but bright reflection shining from the tower at a staggering height.

            “What’s that? It’s a reflection from the sun,” I say.

            “No it’s not. It’s a generator.”

            “Way up there, high on the tower?” I say, thinking we’re looking at two different things. 

            “And it’s being powered by this,” she says, shoving the map forward again.
Mirror.

            “So you think that a mirror is pointing at the tower?” I ask.

            “Not just one. I think there are a lot of them pointing at it. But we need to find one first before we can know for sure, right?” And confident that I’ve seen the reflection, she spins me around and we’re on our way again, deep into the woods.

            “I think I might have seen that reflection before,” I tell her. “I just never paid attention to it.”

            “I’ve seen it almost
every time
I’ve come. But here’s how I really know—the spot never changes.”

            “Are you sure?” I ask her, somehow finding myself starting to be drawn into her psychosis against my better judgment.

            “Why do you think I’ve been coming every day?” she says, climbing over a log in front of us and jumping off. I race over it to keep up.

            “Because you’re nuts?”

            “No—because I had to be sure. And I took measurements. And
I’m right.
”

            And then, all of the sudden, it’s like she’s no longer interested in conversation. She’s focused on the trail, taking each stone and log and rock in a quick hopping rhythm. And when we come to the split, the split that only we know is a split—that deep out there in the woods is a crumbling stone road—she looks at me and hands me a knife from her pocket.

            “It’s the best I could do. But it’s better than last time,” she says.

            “
Maze!
” is all I can get out. The shine alone on the metal produces a gut reaction of guilt. “The Fathers will kill us.” And all I can think about is a scripture verse, the one we learned through rote repetition like all the rest—this one more egregious than the others to violate, a part of the founding principles of the Fatherhood. In a Father’s voice, I hear a sermon—
metal is the chiefest instrument of technology. Only the Fathers are permitted to touch it.

           
“Don’t be dramatic Wills. We’re climbing the fences, too. What’s the difference?”

            I try to rationalize it and I realize she’s right—there isn’t much of a difference—holding a piece of metal is not such a big leap from touching it for a moment to climb a fence. And then, when I realize the handle isn’t even metal but some other kind of material, I feel at ease again.

            We cut through the overgrown woods until we find the stone road that snakes toward the Deadlands. She stops all of a sudden, and she must be thinking of the risks and the craziness of what we’re about to do, because she looks at me for one last measure of approval.

            “You sure you want to come with me?” she asks.

            It’s like she’s already drawn me into a trap, though—and asking me now leaves me with no choice but to go on. It’s like she’s asking just to absolve her own guilt. But what else can I do? I admit to myself. I’m in love with her. And I try to tell myself that that’s not the real reason I’m following her into the old city as I nod my head and clench the knife in my right fist. We fight the bramble together for almost twenty minutes until the road clears out—a road from ancient history, its stones laid down way before the Wipe. Something only we know about. But I’m not sure how much pride I should really take in the discovery—because somehow, despite the constant preaching of the Fathers to avoid the Deadlands at all costs, we are the only ones stupid enough to actually seek them out. Or should I say Maze is, and I am stupid enough to follow after her.   

Chapter 2

As we wend our way through the last trees and exit into the field, it dawns on me that it’s Wednesday, the second most important service day of the week. I try to remember which Father is running the service today, and when I realize it’s Father Gold, I start to panic. But we’ve already made it to the edge of the field, and I don’t know how the hell I’m going to convince Maze we should turn back. In fact, I know I won’t be able to—but at least if I bring it up, I can find out how far she’s thought this through.

            “You know if we go all the way into the Deadlands, we won’t make it back in time for the noon service,” I tell her, doing my best to keep up now that we’re on the open road.

            “Of course we won’t,” she says, her head already twisting back and forth to survey the open terrain of the field—a meadow so long that we can see all the way to distant forests we’ve never dared to enter or even go near. I know she’s looking for signs of the wolves. The last time we did this, a wolf followed us from its den all the way to the fence. Maze hissed like a mad woman and raised her arms long and wide, and somehow, we escaped with our lives.

            “And Father Gold is giving the service you know. What are you going to do? I can afford to miss one, but this will be three for you in the last two weeks.”

            My thoughts fall back to Father Gold. Something makes me think he must have seen her spying from his roof, sneaking into his house. And he’s just waiting to use it against her, when he has enough ammunition to pull something really awful. My mind starts to go through what could happen to her. A worst-case scenario. 

            “I’m not worried about it,” she says, starting a trot along the wide rectangular stones that join together to form the weedy lane beneath our feet.

            “How are you not worried about it?”

            “Because I’m just not, okay Wills?” she says, stopping abruptly and turning to face me. The look of anger, so rare for her, spreads like a virus into my gut. It fills me up with apprehension and anxiety, because I know I’m the source of her rage. But I have to say it.

            “I don’t want something stupid like this—like hunting for fantasies in the Deadlands—to get you into some serious trouble,” I say, trying to maintain a calm, caring voice. But she sees right through me. At least I think she does, because her anger turns into firmness. Her old
I’m Maze
and
I-know-what-I’m-doing
and
that’s-a-good-enough-reason-for-me-to-do-it
attitude.

            “Listen,” she says. “You can go back. You’ll make the service in time if you go now. But I’m going to find this damn mirror, and that’s it. I don’t care about Father Gold, and I don’t care about what he thinks he can do to me.”

            And just like that, I’m settled again inside. I wish I had half of her resolve, her willingness to follow through with something her instinct tells her to do. I’ve felt my gut direct me a hundred times, and I almost never follow through.

            She leaves, not waiting for me to reply and tell her my decision to come or go home. I follow right behind her though, wishing I possessed her determination, because then I would have went in for a kiss ages ago. But the truth is I don’t, and I’m a chump, and that’s why I am walking through a field toward the Deadlands.

It takes another five minutes for more signs of the old world to appear up close. The first post-Wipe warning flyers are faded, the ones that must have been bolted up right after the Wipe. They caution us to turn back due to radiation and failing structures. It’s not until we make it to the first metal fence, with the wide spread of field all behind us now, that she acknowledges my presence again.

            “Give me a boost,” she says. I get down and let her step on my back. Like a panther she springs up and over the fence. From the other side, standing on top of a rusted dumpster, she hangs down and offers me her hands.

            “Come on,” she says. But then, as she’s waiting for me to climb, her hands pull back for just a moment, and her eyes rise, as if she sees something behind me. It looks like she’s searching deep in the field behind me. I turn my head and see nothing but an empty valley of high grass.

            “What is it?” I ask. “Maze?”

            “Nothing, come on,” she says. I grab her hands, lock on, and with a combined pull and push I’m over. My feet smack the gravel in the giant container lot and I look at her, her eyes still checking the field behind the fence.

            “What was it?” I ask again.

            “Wolves. I think. Back at the edge of the woods,” is all she tells me.

            “What do you mean you
think
?” I ask her, making sure my knife is back in my hand.

            “It was hard to tell. A couple shadows moved, but it was far away.”

            “Fuck,” I say, knowing nothing more articulate to express my sense of utter panic.

            “Calm down. We’re over the fence. We didn’t see any wolves past the fence last time, did we?” she says.

            “No, but I’m sure they have a way of coming around,” I say, fear rising in my gut.

            “We’ll be fine, come on.”

            I follow her through the line of old, dirty containers. They’re giant, as big as some of the houses back at home. The same sense of awe that I had the last time we came here floods through me again.

            “You said these things used to be carried on ocean ships,” I say, my eyes following the massive dented shapes. One of them says
MAERSK
in tall letters.

            “That’s what I heard,” she tells me.

            “Who told you?” I ask, checking through the alley lanes that open as we pass by each row of containers, looking for any sign of movement.

            “You remember old man Homs?” she says, jumping over a large iron beam lying on the gravel. I hop over it after her, catching my first glimpse of the deteriorating buildings ahead.

            “Yeah,” I tell her. “Of course I do. He was nuts.”

            “Nuts, but he knew a lot more than the Fathers.”

            “You really believed him?” I ask, remembering that it was Homs’s ridiculous stories that got him tossed out of Acadia.

            “Some of what he said, yeah,” she says. “What else do you think these things were for?”

            And I don’t even respond. She has to be right. Because there’s nothing else I can picture a thousand giant steel cages being used for except transporting supplies across the wide blue ocean. But the part that doesn’t make sense to me is how they’d ever float. Each one seems like it must weigh a million pounds, and to have a whole bunch of them all riding on the same boat seems impossible. I want to ask Maze if she ever thought about that part of it, but she stops dead at the edge of the container yard, just before we hit the next fence—the one that leads into the crumbling city streets.

            “Hold up,” she says. She’s got her arm on my chest to keep me from stepping forward. I pause and look back and all around, thinking that there will be another sign of the wolves. Sweat forms on my forehead as I grip the knife. I’ve never even used the damn thing before and I know I will be useless with it if something actually attacks us.

            “Wolves?” I whisper. I don’t even care that she sees me scared like this, because all at once I’m pissed and terrified to be back here. That somehow I’ve let myself get conned again, by my own longing for her, into doing something as dumb as coming out to the Deadlands. I think about my mother and what she’ll say if she finds out. How disappointed she’ll be in me just for missing service alone. And I know that she’ll double the guilt—she’ll tell me how my father would be upset too, if he were alive. But she’ll go on after that even, and say that he
is
alive, in the heaven of God, and he’s watching me, and he
is
upset.