Still, on that particular day, she was planning to sit and daydream about traveling somewhere west to cool mountain air with that bluest sky as encouragement for such reverie. The Regime couldn’t take away their dreams. No one could take away their nightmares.
Niko was seventeen by then and facing what life would be like for him after he turned eighteen. When they’d met other times, Niko almost always asked about what life was like before. Before The Collapse. Before The Cleanse. Before Villinkash. He always whispered that name. Before the Overseers and Protectors. For him it was like listening to old fables.
He would ask over and over: “Did that really happen?” or, “Could you do that?” and, “There were such things then?” He asked about books and Miriam gave freely from her own library, which she had hidden in a series of battered trash cans in the basement of her building. Only rats used that space, so these books and other remnants of the past remained untouched as if entombed in amber. Niko was a quick study. He absorbed everything she gave him and brought back questions about what he’d read.
But on this particular day, when Miriam sat down near him on the bench and opened her knapsack, he shook his head when she offered to share her lunch with him. He stared out at the algae bloom of rust and green as if looking for some ship on the horizon. Miriam ate in silence, and he just sat and stared. Finally, as she finished lunch and started packing up the trash, he leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees, his head tilted up to the blue sky, and very quietly, as if he’d been thinking about it for a long time, he said, “Tell me about love.”
Miriam had always tried not to show any emotion when he asked naive questions. She didn’t want to discourage their discussions or his awakening awareness. But this question literally took her breath away. She tried to compose herself before blurting out some nonsensical remark. Niko, always alert to every nuance of his surroundings, followed this with a second question.
“You’re probably wondering why I ask that,” he said softly. “I read that play you gave me. Romeo and Juliet. Why did you suggest that one?”
“Well,” she began cautiously, “it’s probably the most read of any of Shakespeare’s plays. And since the two main characters are about your age, I thought it might resonate with you. Did it?”
“What is ‘resonate’?” he asked, so she explained the word to him.
He nodded and sat up straight. “So tell me,” he said. “About love. Does it always end badly?”
At this time, Miriam didn’t yet know about his involvement with Huston or his experience at Huston’s club. If she had, she might have answered in a different way.
“Everything is dangerous nowadays.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you really want to know then? Is this just because you read a play?”
He shook his head. Miriam looked at him and thought she saw the sparkle of tears in his eyes.
“I know this girl,” he began, and she thought he sounded like a normal teenage boy from before The Collapse, with a crush on a high school girl. She imagined what it would be like if he were living in a different time and place where boys his age went on dates and to proms and played on teams and enjoyed their youth. Not this hard time, facing disaster at every street corner.
“Is she pretty?” Miriam asked.
“She’s beautiful. She’s strong and smart. I could watch her all day long.”
And so he told her everything he knew about El. About how he knew her and what he wanted to say to her. Miriam didn’t let on then that she had already met El during her interview with the Sisters of Mercy and understood how he could have fallen in love with her.
Finally, he asked, “Is it bad for me to feel this way?”
“No, it’s not bad. Only . . . you know what the system is like. You could be putting yourself and her in very big trouble.”
They both knew that even choosing a girl was, in a way, prearranged by The Regime.
“If I win, I’ll have it all. If I don’t, then it won’t matter.”
Such was the way young men were forced to approach the future.
“Only, if I don’t win, what will happen to her?”
They both knew the answer.
After that talk with Niko, Miriam had a vague idea to try to steer El in as safe a direction as she could, so she made an excuse to see the girl again. Certainly, it was none of her business to do this, but her maternal yearnings had been stirred, and never having had children of her own, she felt a certain sense of satisfaction, even pleasure, at allowing them free rein. Since she had interviewed the two remaining nuns, she felt visiting the convent again to follow up would seem logical. The nuns didn’t question it when she showed up at their door trailing three young Scavengers who’d arrived with a sack of items to trade.
People looked upon these roving bands of not-quite-children as no more than ubiquitous, innocuous streetlamps. That was how they managed to escape the Protectors, by blending in like old furniture. What they collected was of little value. Yet the old nuns always welcomed them. And in exchange for their paltry items, the nuns gave them food and sometimes fresh herbs or vegetables from the gardens they cultivated behind their converted garage in what had once been no more than a dumping site. Somehow, word of this never spread beyond the Scavenger community.
Over the years, such bands of children expanded to a loosely governed underground, where Niko had developed an increasing influence.
El offered Miriam a cup of herbal tea.
“This is delicious.” Miriam sipped the aromatic mixture.
“It comes from our garden. It’s a special blend of herbs. We grow them along the fence.”
Miriam wanted to ask what El planned to do after the elderly sisters passed away, but the question was answered before it was posed.
“One day the old nuns will pass on,” she said, speaking quietly in deference to them, although they had been left alone at the table. “Sister Angelica is not well. I can see her fading almost every day.”
She was right, of course. Sister Angelica died not two months after that.
“What will you do then?”
“I won’t be able to stay here. It will no longer be a protected space. What will you do with these interviews?” she asked again. This time Miriam had to answer her.
If Miriam was to help her at all, she must trust that El wouldn’t betray her or anyone else. So she moved closer to El and, in almost a whisper, said, “I’m preparing a history. Do you understand?”
She shook her head, but her eyes widened.
“It’s about what life has really been like since Villinkash took over. Since The Cleanse. And how it happened. Do you know about that?”
She looked down at her hands, and when she looked up, Miriam saw fear in her eyes.
“There are books and other things here. Things the sisters kept hidden from everyone. Even me. They taught me how to read and write and do figures. One day I saw Sister Angelica go to a secret room down below.” She pointed to the floor. “I saw her take out the books she used for my lessons. I didn’t like to do it, but one day, I went down there and found many things from long before The Collapse. And after. Magazines and newspapers. And other things I could watch on a little machine. It was terrifying.”
“But you looked at them?” Miriam asked.
El nodded. And then she reached out and took Miriam by the hands.
“It wasn’t always like this,” she whispered. “And there’s more.”
“Yes,” Miriam told her. “Much more.”
By that time, El’s lessons with Father Ignatius were well underway. Behind an old warehouse, Father Ignatius had cobbled together a gym of sorts. There he taught the street kids how to defend themselves. Along with physical lessons, he also taught moral ones, with varying degrees of success. To teach such concepts at that time was like ascending Everest in the dead of winter, such were the headwinds against him. Yet he persisted.
With El, he
began with basic self-defense techniques. She was a quick study, and he found her an eager student. Rather than relying on the brute strength of fistfights or weaponry, he taught her in the disciplines that relied on using her own body’s energy and the resistance of her attacker. She became a model for all his other students, and soon she was also teaching the techniques to others.
They met in secret, usually in the evening after the patrols had gone past. The Protectors never bothered to look behind the warehouse. It had been empty for so long that it caused no suspicion. After darkness came, Father Ignatius burned old oil lamps for light, using cooking oils he had collected around the city from restaurants that operated at the behest of the Overseers. These ranged from dives selling cheap, greasy fast foods to swanky (mostly private) eating clubs that served just about anything the elites could imagine. Such fare was smuggled in from exotic locales around the world, places ordinary people no longer knew existed. One of the more popular dishes at these clubs was songbird wrapped in rare orchid petals, drizzled with a sauce of blood siphoned from wolves.
The Overseers employed a select cadre to travel outside Infinius to hunt down valued prey for these establishments. Songbirds, prized as a delicacy simply because their ranks had been so depleted, were captured by vast nets strung along their migration routes. This type of seine fishing had been used in water forever, but catching songbirds this way was a relatively new development. As songbirds were brought in by the thousands and their numbers decreased, the price on their tiny heads increased exponentially.
The Birders, as the cadre of food smugglers were known, grew in numbers and value to the Overseers, and their hunting fields expanded farther and farther from The Perimeter. They were one link to the world outside Infinius, where the forbidden fruits craved by the Overseers tantalized with their difficulty to reach. And even though the greenhouses and vertical farms of Infinius worked miracles to supply food for the city, some types of food resisted cultivation and could exist successfully only in the wild.
Realizing what El would have to face outside the convent once they were gone, Sister Angelica and Sister Catarina never asked about where she went on those evenings. She would quietly let herself out the hidden back door and climb over the fencing behind the garage. This way she wouldn’t need a key to let herself back in the front door. The small door was hidden. It was half the height of a standard door and designed to be indistinguishable from the wall itself. It had been installed long ago. No one knew who built it or why, although Sister Catarina once posited that it had been meant only as an entry for after-hours deliveries of small machine parts. Nonetheless, especially during The Cleanse, when they had to come and go in secret at night to evade the street cameras so they could tend to the women who were due to give birth, it served the sisters well. In fact, before she had become Sister Angelica, she had been trained in midwifery and had since delivered thousands of newborns. This might have accounted for the babies left at the doorstep of the convent after The Collapse.
One night, not two blocks from the warehouse where she was headed for her lesson, a group of Scavengers rounded the corner like wolves on the prowl for an easy meal and stopped when they spotted her. The only one who stood out was the thug TMan. His hulking body and shifting gaze, with his head weaving from side to side as if from some nervous affliction, caught El’s attention. She figured TMan was the one she would have to take on in order to dispel the group’s energy. She stopped and assumed the stance she’d learned, of “watch and wait.”
They also stopped, eyeing the street and then El. Scavengers were more dangerous than Scroungers. They had almost nothing to lose and were therefore willing to take anything that happened to cross their path. Scavengers usually lived in The Shanty Alleys, and they were routinely raided for contraband by the Protectors. Thus they were used to paying for protection. Every once in a while a small group of Scavengers, who never traveled in less than three, and usually more, would fall into a big score. The Protectors always heard from paid informants about these hauls and swooped down to collect their share.
A beautiful girl like El, just reaching her prime, would be a haul worth bargaining over, but only if she hadn’t been spoiled, as they called it. Rape was always a threat to women—and almost as often to boys—but a girl like El was an unusual commodity. Especially out there on the street alone after curfew.
TMan, his head weaving, stopped to regard her carefully. He wasn’t one to plan any elaborate strategy. He relied on brute force along with the backup of his troupe to overtake a situation. He moved forward, followed closely by the others, who were even less inclined to make a cohesive plan.
When they struck, with TMan out front, it was a grab-and-snatch kind of play. TMan reached for El. She let him get so close she could feel his breath on her neck.
Then, suddenly, she whirled sideways and gave him a bruising kick to the groin so targeted that he doubled over immediately and sank to the pavement.
The others, stunned at this, fell apart like matchsticks. Not knowing what to do next, they stood over TMan, waiting for instructions. One of them tried to get behind El, but she whirled again and flattened his nose with another kick and then chopped at his neck with her flattened hand. He dropped unconscious in front of her.
She took off running and disappeared around the corner, arriving by the alley into the yard where Father Ignatius had set up his oil lamps and the others were lined up for class.
“You’re late, El,” he said, and motioned for her to get in line. “You know it’s important to stay focused. What we do here takes discipline. When one breaks that chain, it harms the others and we all fall behind.”
He looked from one to the other down the line. They had all assumed the starting pose. El fell into line at the end, but her stance was off, so Father Ignatius approached her.
“Your legs are too far apart,” he told her. “And you’re not holding your neck taut enough.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but he could hardly hear her, and then he noticed a slight tremor in her left hand.
“What’s going on, El? You’re always in perfect form.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated.
“Sorry is not a reason.” This time he’d heard her. “Sorry is an excuse. Sorry is an evasion. We must face our fears when we’re here and uphold our high standards.”
El almost said “sorry” again but bit her lip instead. She adjusted her stance and bent her elbows up in the opening position, but she couldn’t get her left hand to stop shaking.
Father Ignatius took her hand in both of his. “What’s this?” he asked. “You seem to be unable to control your body tonight.”
“There were Scavengers two blocks before I got here.”
Father Ignatius dropped his hands and stepped back.
“And you took them on alone?”
El nodded. The others broke their line to move closer to her. Father Ignatius didn’t stop them.
“Do you know who they were?” he asked.
“The big one was that TMan. He came up to me, so I kicked him hard and he fell. I knocked one of the others out with a chop to the neck. And then I ran. They didn’t chase me.”
“I see,” said Father Ignatius. He turned to the others. “This is why we study the art of self-defense. This is a good lesson.”
“Let’s go get them,” a big boy named Rollo said.
“Yes,” said another boy with a wide, flat face and big hands. “Let’s take them all down.”
“I’ll go,” said a boyish girl with chopped-off hair. She was older than El but only by a year.
Then they all clamored and shouted to run after the Scavengers.
Father Ignatius held up his hand for quiet.
“You’ll bring the Protectors down on us all with your yelling. We are not here to become a mob seeking retribution against a few Scavengers. Believe me, young people, the day will come when you’ll need all your training. When that day comes, you must be strong, organized, focu
sed, and, above all, controlled. The Scavengers you meet today may be the army you lead tomorrow. Now get back into formation and let’s focus on tonight’s lessons.”
He turned back to El as the rest reformed their line.
“And El, your future and that of all young people depends on keeping your mind straight and your body prepared. Tonight was but one encounter with a tiny rabble. The next will surely be a more organized foe. Remember: There was a time long ago when the Pope led an army across the continent of Europe. I may be a man of God, but He commands us to be righteous. Each of us must decide what ‘righteous’ means and how we must fight for it.”
Cleaning up after being sick, Miriam began to think. Of course, Miriam had hoped Niko would survive The Race. It was an odd feeling to be rooting for one boy over all the others, knowing what would happen to the ones who lost. But she didn’t know the others. That’s how the system corrupted even its more honorable members: dehumanizing the “other” and making cruelty seem normal.
She’d hoped, if he did win, he wouldn’t be corrupted by it. But Miriam was also a realist. In that situation, in the circumstances of their everyday life, how could anyone, if offered the brass ring, turn it down? And anyway, to turn it down wasn’t an option for the winner. He was expected to continue to play the game by the established rules. Witnessing the winner take all his prizes was one of the ways the Overseers manipulated the population until next year’s Race.
A Place Called Zamora Page 9