A Place Called Zamora

by LB Gschwandtner

  Why, Miriam wondered, did the people not rise up and destroy this horrible abomination of a system? Were they under some spell? In a way, they were. Oh, they grumbled and complained, but they also held back. Some of them thought things would right themselves into the normal order. But it didn’t happen, and those who had studied history knew that such governments could last for hundreds of years. In time they got used to the way it was. And accepted it, as people do under extreme conditions. Better to live to fight another day, they must have thought, until the fight had nearly gone out of them.

  By the time El was twelve she knew the city well. Knew where it was safe to forage and scrounge and who had goods to trade, who protected certain neighborhoods and who had street authority. Since she’d been collecting for the sisters for years, she knew how to find what they needed to keep their convent operating for themselves and for the needy who came to their door. Sometimes, out on the street, she’d run into Niko. He’d watched out for her even when she was a young girl. She didn’t question why. She was cautious but grateful, and sometimes brought him a freshly baked loaf of bread or some other item to trade. At the convent, in a vast back room that was half underground, there were still stores of canned goods, boxed foods to prepare, sacks of flour and rice, bottles of red wine, and juices like guava, mango, and pineapple.

  For years before and even during The Collapse, the priests had stockpiled goods. Not that this was a stated part of their mission or that their order demanded it. But Father Ignatius, who was the head priest of their parish, had grown up in the slums. He knew privation and vowed never to be without the means to help those who could not help themselves. Also he was a natural hoarder. Nothing was too small or too big for his basement reserve. He was also a tinkerer. When he wasn’t holding Mass or tending to parishioners, he was fixing, mending, or modifying something he had found or been given.

  There were other things about Father Ignatius that didn’t quite fit the standard priestly mold. He swore like a street thug. Sometimes he’d forgo his clerical garb and wander the streets in jeans, sandals, and a tattered T-shirt. He had never specifically taken a vow of poverty, but he may as well have. And then there was his physical appearance. He was big. Tall, muscular, with biceps that looked more like thighs than arms, and a tough face marred by scars on the chin and right cheek below the eye.

  Yes, Father Ignatius looked more like a retired boxer than an active priest. Yet he was gentle and kind, soft-spoken, and had a hearty laugh that erupted unreservedly and without warning. He’d shadowbox boys he met on his rounds and always told them to come by the church for reading lessons or a hot meal. And they did show up. Sometimes in pairs, sometimes groups. He taught them how to read and write because after the Collapse, the schools were nothing more than recruiting grounds for boys to work for the Protectors, and for girls to work in the factories and assembly lines—or worse.

  One steamy morning, as El was out scavenging just past dawn, she spotted a beat-up chair someone had abandoned near the sidewalk. She was about twelve at the time, and just beginning to look like a young woman. As she turned the chair over to assess its condition and whether it would make a good addition to the convent, a group of teenage boys wandered aimlessly down the street. They banged at dented garbage cans and streetlights with heavy sticks. One of them hurled a rock at a cracked store window that had been taped to hold it up. It shattered and crashed to the sidewalk, and the boys kept moving forward. Then they noticed El, who turned as she heard their racket.

  They stopped. Standing still as a pack of hunting dogs pointing at a quail in the brush, they eyed her. And then, with no discernable signal, they began to move, spreading out to encircle her. But before they could close the circle, Father Ignatius rounded a nearby corner and strode up to the biggest of the boys and clasped his arm around the boy’s shoulder.

  “Well, you boys are out early today,” he said good-naturedly as he spun the boy around to face him, bursting the circle as if it were a bubble.

  The boys stopped as one and turned to Father Ignatius.

  “I remember you,” he said to one of the other boys. “Sam, isn’t it? Sam, who learned to read with me. You still playing the drums?”

  The boy named Sam smiled at Father Ignatius. “Sure. When I can,” he said.

  “Come by the parish house. We jam every Tuesday. Got some real good players. A sax, a trumpet, we even rounded up an old keyboard that works. We could use a drummer.”

  The boy smiled and nodded. One of his front teeth was missing. The other boys started grumbling about nothing to do, and Father Ignatius teased them lightly and told them all to come by and they could play in the band.

  They wandered off then, banging their sticks against whatever they encountered, and Father Ignatius turned to El.

  “Let me help you with that chair,” he offered. “Where are you taking it?”

  “Thank you,” El said softly, almost under her breath. “Why were those boys angry?” she asked as she watched Father Ignatius lift the chair with one hand.

  “Boys who have nothing to do and nothing to look forward to are often angry. What do they call you?” he asked.

  “El.”

  “Where were you taking the chair, El?” He could be so gentle it was hard to reconcile that with the image of this big man.

  “I live at the convent over by The Ring. With the Sisters of Mercy,” she told him as they began to walk in that direction. “Why did you tell them to come to the parish house?”

  “Because that’s where I work, usually. I’m Father Ignatius. Didn’t you know?”

  “Will you teach me how to defend myself?” she asked him.

  He looked sideways at this slip of a girl who was just beginning to grow up. And so began El’s new education.

  The day of The Race had arrived.

  There they were: thirteen motorcycles lined up on that vast roof of the building that was supposed to symbolize the very best the city could produce. It was the ultimate in style and opulence. A feat of glorious engineering.

  Like everyone else in the city, Miriam watched with horror. She admitted to herself that there was a prurient fascination with any gruesome scene. So she sat in front of the InCom in her tiny apartment, transfixed and, at the same time, repelled, in a way she’d never been in previous years. Because this year was different. This year she knew Niko would be up there for all to see on the jumbo screens. So, when the bell sounded and the riders’ names were called and each number matched to a motorcycle, Miriam held her breath and, yes, said a prayer.

  Calling the names and numbers was done with great fanfare, clapping, cheers, and yells. People shook their beer bottles and allowed the suds to erupt. Then they drank the rest and hurled the empty bottles out to the streets below so the sound of crashing glass added to the cheering. People threw fruits and vegetables into the air and from other roofs. These were not commodities ordinarily taken for granted. Huge balls of rolled-up newspapers were lit on fire and sent off the other twelve roofs, roiling through the air as they slowly burned, casting off sheets of flaming paper while descending to the pavement below. This continued as the sun sank lower toward the horizon on that solstice night. It was the last Race Miriam would attend, but she didn’t know it yet.

  A stranger just arriving on this scene might wonder why these young men subjected themselves to what amounted to almost certain death. The law said that when a boy from The Ring turned eighteen, he must register for The Race. He could be taken at any time thereafter until he was too old for the contest, although the cutoff age was never announced officially. If he refused to enter his name or refused if his name came up, he was arrested and never heard from again. People assumed such young men had been sent off to the camps, but no one knew for sure. There were cases of mothers going mad from the uncertainty, of fathers who pitched themselves over the roof in grief.

  People whispered about one man who’d returned from the camps. He’d gone mad, they said, and was of no use anymore.
But really, they’d sent him back because his wife had paid a ransom. She was pretty and young. They’d just been married. They loved each other very much. She had traveled on foot to the site where the camps were located. She had money and jewelry from her family. She had the name of the camp commandant, but he refused to see her. So she saw his assistant, who took her into a dark room with a window. On the other side was her husband. He’d been bound and gagged and hung upside-down. Many guards took turns beating his feet. By the time she’d arrived, the poor man’s feet were dripping blood and his eyes had receded back into his skull. They removed the gag so she could hear his throat gurgling. Then the commandant told her that if she still wanted this wreck of a man, all she had to do was pay the fine and he would be freed to her charge.

  She agreed and gave him the money and jewels. It was then they took her to the room to cut him down. But before they let her do that, they took turns raping her in front of her husband. When they were finished, she lay on the concrete floor, numb and bloodied, and then they cut him down and dragged him to her side and said, “Happy wedding day.” And they laughed as they strapped their belts back on and holstered their pistols.

  So going to the camps wasn’t an option. And a one-in-thirteen chance seemed better than nothing to most of the young men. That one in thirteen was lavished with everything it was possible to have. And the losers’ families were also rewarded: the Regime gave them money, prestige, and a plaque in a place of honor in the center square. The insidiousness of this was that families were convinced they had sacrificed for the good of Infinius and were awarded a new stature as if they had sacrificed in some military campaign to save their people from invaders. It was grotesque, and in any normal society, parents would never have accepted a reward for this cruelest of games. But this wasn’t a normal society, and there were many cases of parents dying from grief. The Regime didn’t care, though, and The Race continued.

  And if a rider balked at the last minute, swerved away from the edge, leapt off his bike onto the roof, such a rider would be shot right there by a phalanx of uniformed guards whose sole purpose was to keep The Race going. And such a rider’s family would disappear forever.

  So there they were. Lined up and ready for the starting gun. The cheering throngs, the screens panning both the crowds and the roof where each boy stood next to his assigned bike. A horn blasted and the boys mounted their bikes.

  Niko tried to clear his mind. Concentrate. No doubting now. No holding back. Face your fate, he told himself. Do I look as scared as Thomaso? What about Gregory on number three; is he convinced he’ll win? Do any of us really have a chance?

  On the jumbo screen you could see each face, jaws set; fingers encased in leather half gloves holding tight to throttle grips; booted feet, one barely on the footrest, ready to lurch into action. There was no going back now. No hesitating. It was full throttle down, go. And the people screamed with excitement.

  Last-minute betting in the Overseers’ stand wrapped up. As the camera panned past the reviewing stand, Miriam caught a glimpse of Huston. Was she the only one who noticed he looked like a man with a winning hand at the card table?

  A second horn sounded, and the engines roared to life like an orchestra striking its first notes.

  As his fingers gripped the handles and he felt the engine’s sudden pulse, Niko stole a glance at the stands and also spotted Huston. At that moment Niko felt a wave of calm wash through him like an ocean breeze. There was no more time to speculate on Huston’s motives or reliability. As he looked straight out beyond the roof, past the viewing stand and the people, past the other bikes lined up like thoroughbreds at the starting gate of a great race, past the course that had been set up for the riders, he marveled at his own calm. Now it was all or nothing. He would live or he would die. With choice eliminated, his mind had gone quiet.

  The riders hunched forward. The crowds hushed. Then there was the crack of the starting gun like sudden lightning close at hand. A roar went up from the city streets and rooftops as the bikes shot forward.

  Screeching tires and screaming crowds. Thirteen motorcycles careened around the track set up as an oblique eight leading to the far edge of the roof and a straightaway to the east side with the setting sun behind them and the street far below. When the shot broke through the city’s momentary silence of anticipation, Niko full-throttled to lead the pack of riders at the start.

  Then the city went wild. By the time the first riders reached the west edge and spun to the east, gunning their engines, some pulled their front wheel high in the air before gunning to the final straightaway. Then they leapt forward, gaining incredible speed on the last thrust to the end.

  So fast did they approach the edge that it all seemed like a blur until the first ones hammered down on brakes that failed and the crowds witnessed the first bike plummet over the edge, flying out from the roof a few yards and then taking an arc to begin its epic fall, followed by the next and then two more and then three, and there was a horrendous shriek of brakes as the others went over and one miraculously stopped just short of the edge in a cloud of burned-off rubber. Its rear wheel spun sideways and the rider’s left foot stomped onto the roof as the remaining bikes flew off in unison, the riders released from their seats like great birds with broken wings in a gruesome flight to death.

  Niko alone had survived.

  That’s when the crowd really erupted. The sight of those poor boys hurtling off into the air, seemingly suspended for a fraction of a second as their momentum propelled them forward and they looked, if you blinked an eye, as if they were weightless and timeless. For that instant there was a gasp from the crowds as if a great wind had created a vacuum that sucked the city of its oxygen. And then that air collapsed as the ground under the riders was left behind. One by one they rolled and dove down and down until they hit the ground, where their bodies lay lifeless among the scattered and mashed metal and wheels splattered with blood now pooling in the gutters.

  One final indignity came with the Collectors and the wide, flat shovels they used to scoop the broken bodies away. But that wouldn’t happen until early morning before dawn, after the sky had turned dark on this longest of days and the people had finished their revelries, collected their winnings, or tossed their chits into the streets.

  Miriam rushed to her toilet, where everything she had ingested that day erupted out of her in a gush of revulsion.

  Part Two

  The Aftermath

  After The Collapse, it was as though all the ugliest parts of people were like roadkill on public display. It was easier to become desensitized than to resist, at least for the older ones. The Regime ignored them. What revolution had ever been fought by old people? And the very young, well, they were ripe for indoctrination.

  The Race was a turning point for Niko. Before The Race, Niko represented a small glint of hope for Miriam. It was Niko who’d begun to restore Miriam’s sense that some people could be trusted or at least engaged in an honest way. She found out later that El was the reason for that.

  After that first night when they’d met by chance at Miriam’s office, Niko would show up occasionally when she least expected to see him. It was an odd sort of relationship, one separated by two generations and a cultural divide as deep as the Marianas Trench. Perhaps Miriam thought he viewed her as an adoptive grandmother, as someone so far removed from him that he could trust her. Trust in anyone was a rarity in those years. Miriam had long ago accepted that anyone could be compromised to turn on anyone else. Yet Niko persisted from time to time and so they seemed to strike an unspoken interlude in the normal wariness of others.

  One day they met in a park at what had once been a boardwalk along the bay that bordered the city to the east. It was pleasantly warm yet not that blistering heat they’d come to expect. The sky was a clear blue, the kind Miriam remembered from her childhood—a clean, crisp blue that seemed to have no end. The grayish brown haze that normally hung at the horizon was absent, and she remembered t
hinking that this was how it should be and wondering how they could all forget normal so quickly. People are like any animal, adaptable to new situations because their lives depend on it. They go about their days the best they can because it’s too hard to fight the system all the time, especially when it’s an impossible uphill battle.

  Miriam was one of the lucky ones whose memory had never been cleansed out. The journalists assumed they were spared because Villinkash realized he could use legitimate writers who had the tools to promote his message and tell his version of the news. Instead of distributors of the news, they became the creators of opinion that passed for news. They realized he viewed writers as a low-level threat. The only thing that really frightened him was the prospect of mass uprisings. Writers were not particularly bold and only wrote about actions. Anyone who claimed the pen to be mightier than the sword had never faced a sword.

  On that clear, bright day, Niko appeared from the darkened doorway of a shuttered building nearby. Miriam remembered a bank and some accounting offices used to be there. The government had long since taken over all the banks and doled out post-tax salaries to individuals. Since businesses had all been absorbed by or made partners with the government, there was no longer any need for accountants or any banks that were not government run.

  As she left her office for lunch, Niko fell in beside her for a moment and whispered, “Don’t say anything. I’ll meet you on the third bench by the old shelter.”

  Miriam had brought a small knapsack with some things to eat. No one ever knew when the street carts would run out of food or have only one thing to sell. Sometimes all they had were drinks, and other times condiments or only bread. There were still benches in the park facing the water, though no beachgoers went there anymore. In the heat the water was stagnant with algae blooms; the lapping tide looked like an undulating carpet of green goo, a vision straight out of some bad drug trip. But Miriam still liked to sit and imagine what it had looked like before the seasons had fused into each other. She sometimes wondered if it was like this everywhere or if only their city suffered under such impenetrable doldrums but after the Collapse they’d been completely cut off from the outside. Anyone operating a ham radio or anything that picked up news from other places disappeared and their equipment was confiscated. So her musings would go unanswered, for she would never leave Infinius.