WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) (3 page)

            “Not wolves,” Maze says, her voice calm as ever. “People.”
            “People?” I try to get a good look out at the street. I don’t see a thing—just the dilapidated structures of a couple two story buildings. The windows are all cracked, and the walls have chunks of brick and wire and concrete poking out and hanging down. Some of them have rusted beams exposed to the air, like dark skeletons yielding at last to the passage of time. Time that wears away the memory of the dark civilization before the Wipe. And the vines climb the skeletons everywhere, trying to cover the buildings up so that no one will ever know they existed.

            “How the hell are there people out here?” I say.

            “I don’t know, but we’re going to find out,” she says. And just like that, she bolts away, leaving me all alone between two giant blue containers.

            “Damn it Maze,” I grunt, chasing after her. She runs almost into the open, and now, as I follow quickly behind her, I see the people too. They’re walking on the far sidewalk, ducking down to investigate something by one of the old metal booths that protrude from the ground.

            “You see them?” Maze asks me, and it almost sounds like excitement in her voice at the prospect of immediate and real danger. All I want to do is tell her we need to go back. Wait till they pass us and turn around. But she extends her arm before I can say a thing, and looks at me through the gloom of the overhang we’re hidden beneath.

            “I need you to do something.”

            “What the hell can I do?” I say. It runs through my head that I’m entirely useless to her. No good for fighting, no good for buying into her conspiracy theories, and no good for keeping my cool out here when there are mysterious crazies roaming the streets just a block away.

            “I want to get a better look. Watch my back for me,” she says.

            “Watch your back? How am I supposed to do that?”

            “I’m going to go upstairs to the second floor of this building. I want you to hang over there, in the alley. If any one of them crosses over, or tries to come into this building, give me a bird call or something.”

            All I can visualize now are the wolves coming, at just the moment she leaves me. They’ll run right for me, hopping over the fence to the container yard because they’ll smell that I’m weak and vulnerable now. But her hand crawls up and squeezes my shoulder.

            “Wills. I need you. You with me?” she asks.

            “Yeah,” I say, ruined by her genuineness. If she were any less sincere, it would be easier for me to ignore my feelings for her, to have turned back once we reached the forest. But that’s part of the deal. Part of why I like her so much. As much as I know that her theories are nonsense, just like the Fatherhood’s,
she
isn’t. Not when she speaks to me like that, from her gut. I can feel it and I’m powerless to resist.

She moves away softly over the rubble and disappears through a doorway. I hear the creaking of what must be a staircase, and I watch her through a shattered window until she’s out of sight, whispering
be careful Maze
even though she can’t hear me. And then, once I know she’s made it to the second floor of the rusting piece of shit safely, I start my own path around to the back of the building. At least we won’t run out of daylight, I tell myself as a chill wind cuts through to suggest what this place must be like after dark. The black rises of the abandoned buildings, all cold and empty and filled with the terror of night wolves and whatever other kind of horrible creatures live out here. And then, in the next minute, I’m at the edge of the alley. I dart up and duck behind a metal garbage can that’s bolted right into the concrete. I peek out and look, and there, right ahead of me, are the men. But they’re much closer now, and I realize they must have crossed the street to our side. I can tell right away they’re going to walk right into the building Maze just went into. They must have heard her. I make my whistle, a horrible bird call, and two of them stop. I pull back and out of sight. The third one continues into the building to look around. That’s when I realize that they’re Fathers. I can’t believe it—up close and in the light it seems impossible that we didn’t notice before.

Why would there be Fathers in the Deadlands?
The very place that most of their sermons preach against ever traveling to.
It doesn’t make any sense, and my first instinct is to ask Maze, but she’s upstairs. It dawns on me that my bird call sounded terrible, and she may not have heard it at all. I make the noise again, but this time, it’s too loud. And I know—it sounds nothing like a bird.

            When I poke back out, the two men pause, peering down the alley as if they’ve caught sight of me. I jerk back behind the trashcan. The next thing I know, I can hear one of them calling the other, the third Father, to come back out to the street. It sounds like one of them is nervous, and the other one says something about hearing something in my direction. I don’t recognize any of their voices. And then, all I can hear are their footsteps. That’s when I decide to stick my head out one last time, to be sure my instincts are right, to be sure I’m as screwed as I think I am. And it’s exactly my worst fear—all of them are coming. Right down the alley. I know I won’t be able to stay hidden behind the trashcan for long.

            Some part of me thinks that Maze will save me—that she knows exactly what’s going on, and she’ll come jumping out of the window to save the day. But I realize that there’s nothing she can do, and she probably doesn’t even realize they’re all coming after me. She heard my call and won’t even move a muscle because she’s doing her best to hide. So I do the only thing I can—in one powerful explosion, I bolt off, away from the trashcan and around to the back of the building.

At first I think I hear footsteps coming after me, as if the Fathers are giving chase. But the next thing I know, I’m free, racing over the low fence and back into the container yard.  I charge past the first half-dozen containers, nearly tripping on the tangles of metal debris, until I find a container that’s half-crushed beneath another one. I get down on my knees, my pants grinding against the gravel and then along the rust of its steel floor. And then, I’m inside the metal tunnel. Shadow covers me and the whole inside of the container except for the slit I wedged in through. I wait for the sound of footsteps—for the sound of three men figuring out my hiding spot. But they never come. And eventually, when the minutes pass and I start to grow paranoid that Maze will leave me behind, and that I’ll have to go home through the woods by myself, with the wolves waiting for me, I make my way back out into the container yard.

When I look around, the Fathers are nowhere to be found. I take cautious steps past each container alleyway, but there’s no one and no more footsteps. Then, at the fence again, I see Maze. She’s up in the second story window looking right down at me. I see her hand moving, and at first I think she’s signaling for me to turn around and run, because she sees something behind me. I turn and look in every direction but I don’t see a thing. When I look back at her, she’s still waving. And then I realize: she’s asking me if it’s okay for
her
to come out. I walk cautiously forward, signaling for her to wait a moment. As I reach the street and see no signs of the Fathers on either sidewalk, I stop and listen. My ears strain for anything out of the ordinary. But there’s nothing. I make my way around to the back of the building, between the fence and the trees and the overgrown ivy and weeds until I come to the metal trashcan in the alley again. But the Fathers are gone without a trace. Feeling desperate and bold, I dash right into the building, fly up the rickety stairs, and reach Maze.

            “What the hell happened?” she asks.

            “They were
Fathers
,” I say, waiting for the same feeling of horror that wrapped me up to spread across her face. But she doesn’t even look shocked, and she doesn’t offer up a theory. Instead she just looks at me with a strong layer of confusion masking her face.

            “Are you sure?” she asks.

            “Yes I’m sure. They freaking chased me Maze. They had on their service robes and everything.”

            She takes a step over to the window, looking out to the street. “I thought they were coming for me. I heard someone walking downstairs.”

            “They were. But I’m such a good whistler that they decided to go bird hunting instead and come looking for me.”

            “They really went after you?” she says.

            “I ran and I heard them following me for a bit, and then I lost track of everything by the time I reached the fence to get back into the container yard.”

            “Where the hell did they go?” she says, walking away from me to check every window in the room. Then, when she’s satisfied they’re not out on the street, and they’re not going to come back, she takes the map out of her pocket.

            “Okay,” she says. “We’re here. If we follow this street, and then this one, we should be on a straight shot to this street, this wide one, which will pretty much get us to the mirror.”

            “Are you kidding me? After that—you still want to go?” I say in disbelief.
            “Wills—there is no way we
can’t
go now. Do you know what this means?”

            And then I know—just like my gut was telling me—she does have a conspiracy theory for this already.

            “That the Fathers are hypocrites about this place and their sermons are bullshit?” I say. “I already knew that.”

            “No. It
means
that they’re snooping around in the Deadlands to find something.”

            “Like what?” I ask her, trying to make a connection.

            “I don’t know what. But I bet it has something to do with the Ark.”

            I want to tell her to stop with the Ark, and with the tower being a post-Wipe construction, and with the mirrors. With all of it because now the danger is too real. First the wolf shadows and now this. I want to call her out on everything she’s deluded herself into believing over the past year. Tell her that it’s no worse than the Fatherhood’s scriptures.

            “I think we need to go back. We’re already missing service. What if they recognized my face?” I say.

            “Then you lie. I’m your alibi.”

            I can’t help but laugh. “You?”

            “Are you planning on going through the woods alone?” she asks me, dropping her tone to deadly seriousness again. “I didn’t think so. So you don’t really have a choice here. And we’re wasting daylight. Just keep an eye out for them in case they’re still hanging around.” And just like that, she’s taken my thunder again. I have no choice but to follow her deeper into the city.

            I give her my own rationale for the Fathers as we descend the groaning steps and cross the cracked glass and step out onto the fractured pavement of the street.

            “They’re looting. This is where they get all their metal. For all of that crap in the chapels,” I say.

            She doesn’t answer me, and for a minute, I think I might actually be selling her on an idea. Something that logically breaks her own confirmation bias and disproves part of her conspiracy theory. But then I find out—as usual, she is just figuring out a way to make it all fit.

            “You could be right,” she starts, almost conceding to me. “But that doesn’t make sense. They get all the idols and relics premade, don’t they?”

            “I have no idea. It just makes sense. They have
a lot
of trinkets. Have you seen the inside some of the Father’s houses?”

            She stops and turns and looks at me, her brow slanted down in an obvious show of disappointment that I’ve already forgotten her latest heist.

            “Sorry,” I say. She starts walking again, just a little faster now, and I keep my eyes peeled in every direction as I step on the high weeds that poke through the fragments of graying blacktop. “I forgot you were invading their homes.”

            “Look, it’s a good idea. I mean, you might be right. Even still, it doesn’t explain the mirror. Or the light on the tower.”

            “Well, what if what they say about the tower is true?” I ask her.

            “You mean the whole pre-Wipe, hubris of man story?”

            “Yeah,” I say, growing increasingly wary as we cross another alley between two slanted high rise apartment buildings with wide open foyers of smashed glass.

            “I have a feeling we’ll have some answers by the time we’re heading home tonight.”

            And when she says the word, that’s when the fear really dropkicks my stomach.

            “Tonight?” I say, almost gasping for breath.

            “Did you even look at the map?” she asks me, agitated, slowing a bit so I’m alongside her again. She hands it to me and starts glancing behind us, checking the road for any signs of movement.

            “I don’t like that they just disappeared like that,” she says. “But to be honest, I bet they were more scared of you than you were of them. I bet they come here regularly. And how often do you think they see people? Never. I bet you heard them running in the other direction Wills.
Away
from you.”

            She starts to go on about the Fathers again, and what route they are using to get home—what secret trail they have, or if they use the same old stone road we do. But I can’t pay attention to her. Because for the first time, I actually do pay attention to the map. And what I see terrifies me. It’s a little marker in the corner, showing each inch to represent one mile. And then, I trace the edge of the Deadlands, where we hopped the fence into the container yard, all the way to the red square marked with the word
mirror
.

            “This has to be…” I say, trying to figure out the math.

            “Seven miles,” she says. “If we don’t get screwed up again, we’ll make it back before dark.”