by Keys, Logan
After I realize Cory’s not coming back, I walk the way he’d said to go. I’m still unsure of … everything.
These tunnels seem endless. How long have I been walking? A minute? An hour? Footsteps muffled by the damp earth are the only sound. I’m turning my third corner left—or is it the second?—into another never-ending passageway, and this with an even lower ceiling that forces me to bend.
I follow my flashlight’s round beam of light darting across the dank, pockmarked walls. Tree roots hang from above, their winding back into the dirt gives the image of giant snakes.
Just when I’m ready to turn back, an outline of an arm from a distant tunnel catches my eye. Someone’s leaning between the two adjoining paths, and the back of their helmet partially shows, too.
I call out, but they don’t answer; they remain still—too still. Approaching slowly, I draw the pistol from my belt. My flashlight’s beam lands on a neck that’s grey and chalky. I’m prepared for some kind of dormant stiffie, but even with me standing a foot away, he doesn’t move.
My breath whistles slightly through my nose from the dust. This underground passage is the worst place to be with my transitional ability. What happens if I do, and get stuck?
I’m close enough to touch his arm with my pistol, so I do.
Nothing.
I move past the tunnel that splits off and turn to face my new friend who’s been dead for a long time. His jaw hangs open at an angle, showing crooked grey teeth. His Vietcong uniform sags on his wasted body that’s nothing but bones and paper-thin skin.
“Tommy!”
A distant call echoes down the tunnel. It isn’t Cory. It sounds more like … it can’t be.
“Tommy!”
I race in that direction, calling back, “Joelle!” This tunnel’s smaller than the previous. I’m struggling to get through. “Joelle!” What in the hell is she doing on a training mission?
Something’s tangling around my head. My hand comes away from my face with silver strands. Spider webs. Dirt clods rain down on me while I fight to remove the threads; the stuff’s in my hair, covering my mouth—thick, like stretched cotton—and it’s sticking my arms down to my sides, having wrapped around my body during the struggle.
“Tommy!” Joelle calls, and I try to answer, only, when I open my mouth, webs slip inside.
The passageway’s grown tight, and the ceiling is close enough to scrape my helmet.
“Jo!” I yell once I’ve spit out enough silk.
A tiny light flickers ahead, and then grows smaller as I move to a crawl when the space forces me onto my hands and knees. Since I’ve lost my flashlight in the fight with the webs, the dot of light ahead is my only guide.
My hands burn, more pricks sting my neck and arms, impeding my progress. I have to stop and swat frantically at spiders crawling over any bare skin they can find. Some are small, but others are larger and hairy. A few have pushed underneath my helmet, too. I roll to the side, dumping it off as more bite my face. Panic rises while my body stretches inside the hole that’ll be my grave if I transition.
Sweat drips off of my face, but the end of the tunnel is just before me, and somehow I wiggle toward it, inching closer, needing to be free.
“Tommy!”
“I’m coming, Joelle!”
I’m blinded by the light as the tunnel opens up. It dumps me from high above into a large area. I’ve landed in an underground barracks fully lit by old lanterns, and I’m still punching myself, trying to remove arachnids.
My eyes adjust, and I stand to take in the scene. Joelle’s tied to a chair across the room, soaked and dripping with something while Murphy stands over her with a torch.
With a gas can in his hand, the dawning of what’s playing out weakens my knees.
“No!”
Before I even finish saying the word, he drops the lit piece of wood into her lap and the flash of ignition instantly blazes. Joelle screams a terrible sound, engulfed in flames. Her binds pop, and she lurches forward as a human fireball for only a few steps before dropping to the floor. There’s nothing to extinguish her with. I’ll be too late.
At last, I find a tarp and leap over to her now-quiet, still-burning form on the ground, wrapping her small body into it. I’m repeatedly yelling her name, even though her own terrifying screams of agony have stopped.
Jo lies slumped to the side while I continue to rock her, mumbling nonsense.
Once the smoldering has lessened, I brave a glance down. She’s gone. Her lips have burned off, revealing long canines, and her lids are burnt away, leaving only black eyes bugged out, glaring at me in accusing silence.
That look will be forever branded on my Jo-Jo’s face. I watched it happen and could do nothing.
I gently lay her down before I turn on Murphy, who’s in Vietcong fatigues, too, like the dead officer in the tunnel. His hair’s longer, like Cory’s had been, and his face is full of fear.
“I’m sorry, man! Please!”
I lift my pistol, point it at his head. He drops to his knees, still pleading.
I don’t hesitate.
I squeeze the trigger.
A slow clapping snaps me away from Murphy’s crumpled form and Joelle’s fire-ravaged body. I turn to find Cory standing there, smiling.
“Bravo,” he says.
Then, the world begins to spin, though I’m not on the axis of the turning. Instead, I’m a marble caught in the centrifugal force. It speeds faster and faster, around and around, and when I finally get it to stay still, the tunnels are gone, Cory’s back in his normal ACUs, and I’m again holding my M4 in the live-fire training, back in the hut. He’s watching me with a gleeful expression, as if there’s some joke I’m supposed to get.
I search in optimistic confusion to find no Joelle at my feet. The air leaves my lungs in a relieved rush, but I continue to look anyway. And sure enough, there in the corner, is Murphy’s head blown off.
“What did you do?” I whisper.
“Me?” Cory holds up his hands, coming forward. “Are you serious? You went crazy. I couldn’t stop ya!”
I sag against the table, feeling the blood drain from my face. “What did you do to me, Cory? What did you do!”
“Hey, man, look. It was an accident, right? You don’t tell on me for using my Special during the mission, and I won’t tell on you for … for …” Cory laughs, slapping a hand on his thigh. “For icing that little idiot, all right? Deal?”
Already my body’s tightening in that familiar coil. The horror of what I’ve done, the trick I’d fallen for, and how it’s cost an innocent man his life … it all knocks the wind from me.
Murphy’s blood is still running across the floor in a long trickle. It’s pooling at a dip in the dirt. I feel like I should call a medic. I consider Vero, but no, she can’t fix dead. I remember one time she told me she’d almost died trying to heal people past their expiration.
My shoulders hunch against the sudden realization that this cannot be fixed. The fabric of my uniform tears at the seams as I stalk toward Cory. I snag the front of his shirt and twist it until it’s tight enough to choke. “You killed him! You sadistic piece of—”
And then I have nothing in my hands, because I’m standing on a beach, all alone. Cory’s shipped me off again, but what he doesn’t know is that it’s too late. I smile at the waves lapping at my feet. He’s sent me on a vacation, and the view is much nicer this time. But really, it won’t matter.
Back wherever they are, my body’s already changing. An important factor that sets me apart from the other Specials: there’s no way to control my transition.
I should know.
I’m on a beach, and a surfer babe takes a curl on her board, the ride making her body jiggle. I’m semi-conscious of what’s going on back at the mission. Cory’s giving me a great view as I rip him to pieces.
He can trick the mind.
But the monster doesn’t need the mind.
I sense the beast pummeling him. Filtered i
mages of Cory’s fearful face blink in front of me. They’ve broken through the hut and out into the village, and now it’s pounding him into the dirt.
Yells, cries for help, echo back, and the view shimmers as Cory takes a hard knock to the head, messing up his mental juju.
Others arrive to watch the fight while I keep an eye on my surfer girl who’s riding a second wave. Cory has good taste, I’ll give him that. Her tan body is a ten, the water runs enticingly in rivulets down her—
“Hatter!”
I feel a current.
Electricity won’t work, but it gets the beast’s attention. “Hatter!” Vero’s voice breaks through to my place here.
It cuts through the water sound and the wind like I’ve got a speaker system rigged to this world.
Familiarity works, too, at times. They have her approaching me, and I worry it’ll kill her. But I’m already feeling the pull to return. My recent transition from that night with Joelle is too close to this one, so the monster can’t stay to play anyway. He only gets his full freedom when I’m well rested, and I haven’t caught up.
I say goodbye to my dream girl only moments before I fade and am looking at glowing hands. Vero’s used her touch on the monster, so not electricity, but her Special, had zapped me back. Smart girl.
“Did I kill him?” I ask with hope.
She bites back a grin. “No.”
“Murphy,” I say, my stomach turning.
“I know.” Vero’s stormy eyes are sad while she helps me to my feet. “Nolan’s on his way.”
Each night, Jeremy met me on the roof. He’d taken to calling me Liza, and I’d grown to love hearing my name come out of his mouth. Some strange agreement was struck about not tilling up freshly turned dirt from the past, so we talked mostly about writing and music, and other vague subjects.
The rebel was a yo-yo, I quickly learned. Some nights, he’d pace in a fury, fists punched in the air, arms spread wide in the fullness of his anger.
And I’d listen to him rant about the Authority, mesmerized.
Other times, he was somber, thoughtful—a side of him that drew me into the vortex of his mania.
He’s fascinating in the way you’d find the midday sun too bright to stare at. Still, at least once in your youth, you’d shade your eyes and squint into its fiery depths for as long as you could stand.
Even with so many burned in the trail of Jeremy Writer’s life—reading between the lines, it was obvious no person was left unsinged—my path led me back onto the roof each and every night. He’d say ominous things, like: “I’ve had to go my own way most times,” or: “People don’t get me like you do, Liza.”
But all sense melted away when that purple haze lingered for a beat too long. Those eyes, they were my own kind of madness.
After he’d leave, I’d write music. All at once, my room was littered with pages. Here was my father’s hope on every sheet, my place overflowed with newly composed masterpieces.
My muse was incredibly reliable. Jeremy Writer: a lyrical intoxication, passionately infused with the serious contemplation that both great men and tyrants alike shared on their sleepless nights; his driven demands for change, feeling or dreaming, always plotting, all while casting long shadows on the people nearest to him. But which way would he tip?
Inwardly, I’d disagree at times with the utopia he predicted we’d have once we overthrew the current government, but I’d bite my flapping participle in half, because to argue with Jeremy was a practice in futility.
Even if it’s his hatred for the Authority that keeps him warm at night, it’s easy to lose myself in this boy. A tiny violin plays in the background for the destiny of our feelings.
Other days—black days, he’d show up looking stricken, faded, like he’d just taken a beating, and he’d barely speak or even write. He might talk about the purge, and I’d have nightmares after. Purging is being tortured for months by the Authority until pain is no longer felt. The result? A guard. They’re not soulless, he said, but maybe really screwed up, and most definitely brainwashed.
Jeremy rarely spoke about his anarchy group, too. I suppose he surmised it’d be safer for me to know as little as possible.
We’ve gotten good at spreading out the favorite topics, but how long can we retell our same stories?
He never says why he comes so often to see me. And the reason I always wait for him is left hanging, as well. Can we abide the silence, knowing it will bring intimacy?
Time magnifies the surreal until it just becomes … real.
Upon my broaching the subject about his maybe needing a break when he seemed burned out, he wouldn’t come visit for two whole days after.
When he finally returned, he sat with me and told me how I’m a still water, a balm to his soul … that he’d missed me. He told me I balance his life right now.
This is worrisome.
What I don’t tell him is that he’s like four people in one and I’m in no position to balance that type of chaos.
What I don’t tell him is that he cuts me deeply by punishing me with his lack of visits for asking him the tough questions a real friend might.
Or how I’ve never been so angry in all my life when I’d realize that’s what he’d done.
What I don’t say is, “How dare you!”
And what he doesn’t say, I notice, is that he’s sorry.
A train filled with the sick passes next to our place on the roof tonight. It chugs on, back to the Island, with its heavy load.
Jeremy’s livid when he sees it. Then, he’s staring at me, clearly considering my prior imprisonment on Bodega and hating them for it. This makes me soften toward him even more, if that’s possible.
In the quiet after the train passes, I ask, “What was it like? I mean, when they purged you.”
Jeremy shrugs. “There isn’t enough pain in the world to purify me. The Authority had to pull out all the stops during my purge. I was half dead when they let me go, but who needs a soldier with free thoughts still left inside his fried brain?”
Who, indeed.
“What about you, Liza? Did you dream of things, back there on the Island? How they could be?”
“It’s a prison, Jeremy, not a vacation. I rarely dreamt.”
“But when you did?” Jeremy asks.
My smile’s dry. “It was peaceful. Everyone was dead.”
Visibly shaking off my description, he asks, “What about the prisoners? Didn’t anyone fight?”
“That place is full of dying people.”
He nods in sympathy. “Same as here, then. It’s like everyone’s asleep. Pisses me off how they obey the Authority, no matter what. Stand by and watch. Disgusting.”
I shrug. “They are asleep. But to wake them the wrong way … “I gesture toward the sign above us that had been slashed in half from the last uprising.
Jeremy tells me the slaughter from that time was such a great loss, you had to wear rain boots for the puddles of blood on the streets. He’s fine with such lengths for freedom, but he has nothing to lose.
“There are still angry, willing people out there,” I tell him, “but maybe they have a family, or maybe they just know it’s futile. If my family were still alive, nothing would be worth losing them again. Nothing.”
But he’s not going to concede my point. He rarely does.
Back at Bodega, we’d pictured people living perfect lives here in Anthem City. Seemed like we were the prisoners, and the mainlanders lived in prosperity. But that had all been a dream. Every place is a camp now, and if there’s a free man left among us, it’s Jeremy. It pains my heart to think of just how short his life will be for that fact. The leader of the rebellion sits not two feet from me, and at any moment he could be caught. His outlaw status is “kill on sight” for the last round of pamphlets. No more hearings. Kill. The urge to hide him, even though we’re completely alone, is ever-present.
Jeremy sadly shakes his head. “Your hair’s barely grown back. I can’t imagine what
it’s like to be sick, rounded up, then forced to get busy dying. To them, you were already gone. They fear it, because they want something to blame for what’s wrong with us.”
My hands cover the scars hidden under my shirt. “No, Jeremy, they fear it, because they might be next.”
He sighs and starts to write. I try to see what he’s working on, but Jeremy hands me another pamphlet. “This new one might be of more interest to you.”
Island Duppy Returns
And beneath that: An inmate of the Authority tells a story of a survivor from Cancer Island. She holds the power of life and death.
My stomach tightens. “I thought you said you wouldn’t write about this.”
“I know,” he replies guiltily. “But it doesn’t have your name, and the people need things like that. Fairytales. Imagine the impact it’ll have on the poor lost souls going there. Someone got out, so there’s still a chance for all of those people on that train.”
“I suppose….”
He always makes good points, but permission would have been nice.
Jeremy continues, “I met an interesting inmate recently who’s been telling the story of a girl who died and came back. Jamaicans have folklore of the duppies—or ghosts, evil spirits who walk this earth—although he never called you that. His cellmates now have their own version.”
“Inmate…? Desi?”
“That’s it. So you do know him?”
My fingers pet the page. “Yes,” I reply, feeling my throat constrict.
“Did you, Liza?” Jeremy asks, drawing my name out long. “Did you … die?”
The jerk of my shoulders is swift. “I was just really sick.” Then, I change the subject. “Jeremy, have you ever thought of translating these?”
“For what?”
“Kiniva. The people in the black market don’t all speak English. Manda told me the purge makes you live forever, but they don’t take anyone from Section. I wonder who started that rumor.”
“Well, half of that’s true,” says Jeremy.
Disgust makes my voice rise. “What?”
He nods.
“I wonder why. Strengthening the divide, maybe? Turning one class against another? Eternity for the wealthy; protection from becoming a zombie, but only for the few, breeds hatred.”