A Place Called Zamora

by LB Gschwandtner

  “I have this.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out a very small rectangular object. She waited to see if he showed any interest before divulging what it was. He looked unlike the others she usually encountered when bartering. He wore a loose, long-sleeved shirt, untucked from worn denims so faded it was impossible to tell what color they had been. His mop of hair curled around his ears, but it was his mouth that she found arresting. His lips curled slightly up at the corners as if he were holding himself back from laughing. No one laughed. Except, every once in a while, the sisters joked with each other and the children, especially when they read books aloud.

  She almost smiled at him, but not quite. He reached out for the object, but she pulled it back.

  “Are those eggs in the box?”

  Then he did smile. A broad smile that crinkled his dark eyes.

  “Yes. Fresh this morning. How many do you need?”

  “How many are in there?”

  “I’m not sure. Suppose we go over there and count them.” He pointed to an old bus stop with a crooked wooden bench.

  El looked around. This wasn’t one of the more populated streets, so they were alone. She hesitated since you never knew who might be dangerous or even a spy for the Regime. But she needed eggs, had promised the sisters she would come back with some, and he seemed harmless. She followed him to the bench.

  He pushed aside some dust and sticks. “Here, sit down.”

  Except for the nuns, El had never been treated kindly. She hesitated.

  “Go on, sit down. I won’t bite.”

  She sat a little farther away than he had suggested. He placed the box carefully between them on the bench and lifted the sides to reveal a whole batch of eggs.

  “Where did you get them?” she asked. Her eyes grew wide with wonder, and she looked up at him as if he’d just shown her a jeweled crown.

  He chuckled and said, “They’re only eggs.”

  “But so many. I bet they were laid by . . .”—she stopped to calculate in her head—“thirty chickens?” She looked at him and he smiled.

  “I suppose so.”

  “They’ll have to be kept cold,” she said almost to herself, thinking about where they could be stored at the convent. She still held the small rectangular object in her hands. “Or we could hard-boil them.”

  “Well, you’ve seen the eggs. Now what is that?” He pointed to the little thing.

  “Oh, no. I don’t think you’ll want it for so many eggs.” El shook her head.

  He laughed out loud at that. She jumped up. “Maybe you think I’m not old enough to bargain.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and patted the bench. “Sit back down. I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that no one ever traded in that particular way before, and it made me happy for a minute.”

  “Oh,” she said, and sat down again. “Well, here it is.”

  She opened her palms to show a tiny picture of Jesus. The frame and the corona around Jesus’s head were both done in gold leaf. The painting was delicate and detailed, showing Jesus washing his disciples’ feet.

  Niko studied it carefully, bending over to see it clearly, placing his hand above it to shield it from the sun. “What is it a picture of?”

  When she explained it to Niko, he asked, “But why would he do that?”

  “To show that he is their servant.”

  Niko pondered this. What does this mean that he is their servant? A servant brings rich people their food and cleans their house. A servant? Why would anyone want to be a servant? And why would anyone paint a picture of a servant?

  He stared at it for many minutes, mesmerized by its careful brushstrokes and the gold around the subject’s head. This wasn’t just any servant. And the look on the servant’s face . . . why is he looking up at the sky?

  Niko wanted to ask these questions, but he didn’t want this girl to think him an idiot, so he just asked, “What’s your name?”

  “El. What’s yours?”

  He told her and then said, “I’ll trade with you. The eggs for the picture. I think it’s fair.”

  Later he would unwrap the tiny picture and stare at it for hours, puzzling over its meaning. This was the first of what would be many encounters with El. They would trade or talk. Sometimes Niko would just gaze at her until she reddened and turned away. El asked him questions about his life but he never told her about how he’d run away. Niko also asked her about her life in the convent and what the nuns had taught her. And so they became close in a way that was rare in that city at that time.

  By the time Niko was fifteen he was already running his own street operations. This often involved brawls, which Niko made sure to end quickly before the Watchers showed up. Although it was well known they didn’t care if the Leftovers wanted to kill each other, Niko was careful about protecting his loot and made sure to control every situation.

  On that day the fight had begun when someone grabbed the bag of loot Gruen was carrying. He’d just made a score—bruyaha or something else smuggled through The Protections from outside the city. Smuggling went on all the time. There were regular trade routes that illicit go-betweens used, all paid off through the Protectors. They smuggled by underground tunnels the Watchers couldn’t detect from up in The Globe. Burrowers were in high demand and spent their whole lives half-buried in earth, digging new mazes of tunnels so intricate there were stories of people getting lost and dying in far-off dark corners. When the stench of their corpses reached into the main tunnels, the Collectors were called in for extra duty. They hated having to work underground. Still, they were paid underground extra so they did it, but not without much complaining.

  The Collectors worked for more than wages. When someone died in a living unit, before hauling the body onto their ghoul wagon, they were entitled to whatever had been left behind with the corpse. Scroungers followed them on their rounds, ready to make deals for old furniture, clothing, jewelry, kitchen appliances, fans, shoes, hats, coats, telephones. They even traded InCom screens if they could yank them off the wall from inside a unit. These were encoded for each person in the city, so once a person died, it was useful only for parts. After everything had been looted, the living unit went into listings for a new resident. Again, there was graft involved through an elaborate system run by the Protectors.

  On that day, Niko happened to round a corner in time to see Gruen’s fist connect with the nose of a burly Scavenger. It was a well-known street fighting tactic to temporarily stun an opponent by smacking his nose so badly blood would spurt out, giving you a moment’s edge to land a knockdown to finish it quickly. Niko knew the Scavenger only by his street name, TMan, and had traded a few items with him in the past. He also knew TMan wouldn’t let a bloodied nose stop him. And Gruen wasn’t much of a fighter with that one weird eye.

  Niko always carried a heavy iron pipe. He walked toward the gathering crowd slowly, the way a guy walks when he knows he can overpower the situation. He didn’t want to kill anyone. It was crucial to end a fight before the Detainers got wind of it and everyone was hauled away to the camps. Some of the bag of loot Gruen carried was his, too, so he had a financial motive. Still, Niko liked to keep his sectors as clean as possible. Which is to say his unofficial sectors. He patrolled them as diligently as any Protector. Of course, he paid off the uniformed thugs on a schedule as regular as any mortgage.

  Niko circled behind TMan as his arm went back, fist clenched, to take a swing at Gruen. Whack. He clubbed him a solid one on the back of the head. Still holding the pipe as TMan wheeled around to see what had hit him, Niko was ready to flatten him full in the face. But the guy’s knees buckled, and he went down in a heap at Niko’s feet.

  “Stomp him!” yelled the others. “Kill him. He’s a rat anyway. Destroy the rat.”

  Niko held up a hand to shut them up before the Detainers showed up. He knelt down and felt for a pulse. Feeling the slight throbbing, he stood again.

  “Get out of here before you get hauled away for an ill
egal gathering,” he said in a low, authoritative voice. They hurried off, leaving TMan on the ground where he was beginning to moan softly as he came back to life. He would crawl away soon enough, back to his hovel to nurse his wounds and prepare for the next street fight.

  As soon as they were gone, Niko led Gruen into the doorway of a nearby one-story building with no windows left and a door hanging on bent hinges. There they divided what Gruen had been protecting in the bag hanging from his belt.

  “You had a good day,” Niko told him.

  “Unit ten raided a warehouse outside The Perimeter. They paid off the guards. Cost them plenty, but it was worth it. Look here. I got a watch.”

  Gruen showed off the watch on his wrist. Niko whistled softly. “Nice one too,” he said.

  “Hey,” Gruen whispered, “you notice anyone following you? I got this creepy feeling of someone dogging me every time I meet up with you.”

  Niko shook his head. “No, man. No one’s watching me. I’m real careful about that. Anyway, who would care about me?”

  Gruen shrugged and tied the bag onto his belt. He stuffed his take into a flat pouch he kept in a kind of holster he’d created inside his faded jacket.

  “You never know,” he cautioned Niko. “But I got a definite feeling about this. Just watch out. Might be we’re not paying off the right people. Or spreading enough around.”

  He sneaked a look outside the doorway before stepping back into the street, which was empty except for a scrawny cat sniffing at a drain.

  “Got a bead on something that could be big. I’m not saying it is, but it could be. Only getting it is risky. Nothing I could handle. But you . . . Meet me in the third quadrant over by that big pile of old bricks. It’s near where those same Scavengers hang around.”

  “Okay.” Niko nodded. “But I doubt they’ll try this again. They’re a bunch of low-life cowards most of the time.”

  He waited until Gruen was out of sight before he also left the shadowy doorway and turned toward the Tower of David over in The Ring. He never walked on the streets without being aware of his surroundings. The faint scent of meskitta smoke came to him as he passed an alleyway where a scrawny dog pawed a piece of garbage. Niko glanced at the dog and then saw the toes of highly polished black shoes that looked new and expensive protruding from a corner.

  Darkness would envelop the city soon, and Niko wanted to get home. But he thought about what Gruen had said. Was someone following him? If so, he had to know who and, more important, why. So he veered into the alley, fingers clenched around the iron pipe, eyeing the dog that now pawed a crumpled cardboard box.

  Meskitta scent was heavy now, sweet and musty. He held the pipe firmly in case he had to strike fast. And then, as he advanced deeper into the alley where anything might happen, from the shadows a man appeared, his hands up, two fingers holding the meskitta cigarette, a bemused smile on his face, an expensive-looking, carefully pressed suit that matched the shined shoes covering his trim frame.

  Niko sized him up quickly. He looked—how did Niko think of it?—pampered.

  “I give up.” The man stepped forward. He was grinning broadly now.

  There wasn’t much to joke about in Niko’s daily life. So he didn’t respond to the teasing. And the man kept coming toward him, his hands raised, his face in shadow, the meskitta trailing a slender stream of smoke above his head.

  “Here.” The man opened his jacket with one hand. “Have at it. Whatever I’ve got. It’s yours. Go ahead.”

  “I’m not a thief,” Niko said, but he kept hold of the pipe.

  “Of course you are,” the man said, and dropped his arms. He took a last puff on the meskitta. “We’re all thieves at the right price. I have nothing against stealing.” He shrugged and dropped the stub to crush it underfoot, then looked up and smiled at Niko. “What’s your price?”

  “What do you want?” Niko relaxed a bit. He looked down at the pipe as if considering whether to let it drop.

  “You can keep hold of it, if it makes you feel safer,” the man smiled again. “Although, if you decided to slam my head in, you’d find yourself in trouble like you can’t imagine. But we all take chances, don’t we?”

  “Why are you tailing me?”

  “Am I? Or did you just happen to find me in this alley?”

  “You don’t look like the kind of guy who hangs around in alleys. Especially in this part of town. So, yeah, you’re following me.” Niko wondered if he was one of those older men. The ones who like teenage boys. And when the man reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim wallet, Niko backed up.

  “Not interested,” Niko said. “Go on back to your mansion and leave the streets to the rest of us. You’ve got enough already.”

  Niko turned to go, but the man was on him like a hungry wolf. He took hold of Niko’s shoulders, pressing him to turn back so they’d be facing each other. And then he grabbed the pipe before Niko realized what was happening. He tossed it far back into the alley and spun Niko around, and the grin was gone. The man had a tight grip, a weight trainer’s grip, the kind of grip that was foolish to resist.

  “Listen, I know who you are and how you live. I’m on your side. I won’t tell you why or how, but I’ll be around. And one day, you’ll come to me and I’ll help you.”

  With that, the man let go of Niko with a little shove. He handed Niko a card and said, “Come see me here,” and walked quickly out of the alley.

  Too stunned to react quickly, Niko exited the alley just in time to catch a glimpse of the man sliding gracefully into the back seat of a long, black car. Niko had never seen one like it before. The door slammed, and the car pulled away rather fast. Niko marveled at the car and wondered about the man. He looked at the card which read simply Huston. There was also a number with an address in The Compound.

  One night, not long after Niko’s encounter with Huston, Miriam happened to be at the newspaper office after hours when she first met Niko.

  Once an investigative journalist, Miriam was now an elderly woman with a weak heart who’d been relegated to compiling old newspaper articles and rewriting them from the new slant. Which is to say, propagandizing them and changing history to reflect the Regime’s post-Collapse directives.

  She hated doing this, so she secretly transcribed all the old stories onto a computer no one used. One day she planned to write an honest account of what it had been like before The Collapse. She intended to tell the truth of how the shift had been engineered. For now, safeguarding the history was all she could do.

  That night Miriam had come back for her clandestine work and stumbled upon Niko crouched beside the desk next to hers. Every night the office lights went out automatically just before dark, so she nearly fell over him in the roomful of closely packed desks. The maintenance crew was supposed to be there much later when it was pitch dark outside, after all the streetlights had gone out with curfew. She’d sneaked in so quietly he hadn’t heard her as he riffled through a lower file drawer.

  Watching her in the dim light, his young face was a mix of terror and bravado. Had he been sent by the Protectors to spy on her? They circled each other like a couple of cats. Miriam considered grabbing the sharp scissors from the cup on her desk. But before either of them made a move, they heard something, and she placed a finger to her lips.

  He nodded, and they both knelt behind the desks like two supplicants. He held some papers, which rattled a little in his shaky hands. Realizing he was nervous and that she was in no position to question him right then, Miriam kept her distance. There were no other sounds except the blood thumping in her ears. After the noise ceased, she relaxed a bit.

  “What are you doing in here?” she whispered.

  He looked so young, while she was already old. Her gray hair wispy around her face, she wore thick glasses all the time now and relied on comfortable shoes with rubber soles. She should have quit the paper after The Collapse, but she felt an obligation to the truth of history. It may have seemed anemic by
then, as if she alone could do anything to avert what had happened or change what had been like an avalanche: unstoppable and catastrophic, burying everything they’d known. But journalists’ tools were not powerful enough to hold it back.

  Also, she still needed the salary. They had done away with old-age pensions. And Miriam was alone. The boy, who was a handsome, sinewy teen, stared at her intensely, his dark eyes still narrowed with mistrust and caution.

  “Who are you?” he asked back.

  She told him her name. “I was a reporter. Before The Collapse.”

  She tried to calm herself, taking a deep breath, thinking how she must treat her heart with care. It was an anachronism, still thinking of herself as a reporter. They’d taken over all media long ago, relegating everyone to churning out the most despicable lies glorifying the Regime. That was what made her sick, she reasoned. Living day after day with dishonesty was as deadly as any virus.

  “I know that name,” he whispered. “Are you the one who wrote that story ‘Horror of Life in The Hovels?’”

  It was her turn to nod, and she thought he must have read that when he was very young. This interested her. Many children could barely read these days. The reporter in her wanted to ask him about it. Instead, she said, “But that was before. I can’t do that now. Too dangerous.”

  His expression changed suddenly. He, too, relaxed a bit and glanced around, squinting at the semi-dark room. Some electric light from the streets outside filtered in vague shafts through the windows.

  He came into focus now: a mop of dark, curly hair, piercing brown eyes under steady brows, thick dark lashes, and a muscular frame. It was hard to tell, from his crouched position, how tall he was. But one thing she noted . . . he was dressed in black down to his sneakers, the kind climbers used to wear back when people got out of the city on weekends and such.