The Last City Box Set

by Logan Keys

  But it’s airborne and aggressive. On my side, we have the more regular brand.

  “I almost was,” I tell her.

  Caleb glances over at me from his bunk next to hers where he’s straightening his sheet. His vivid green eyes are serious. “Serious” is Caleb’s default. He returns my wave, but there’s a question in it. His perception is on target as usual. He’s asking without words, Were you really almost a goner?

  I nod that I was.

  For a moment, he and Lucy speak in sign language to one another, then she flutters her hands in the air out of frustration before merely talking instead, facing away from the vent so her words are difficult to make out. Caleb can read lips, but she has to talk more slowly when he does, so she toggles between both forms of communication, depending on how quickly she wants to get her point across.

  Who would’ve thought that you could find love in a place like this? If anyone would, though, it’s Lucy. Sweet Luce, with freckles and chocolate eyes, and that big gap between her two front teeth that’s as charming as a dimple. Lucy, who fell in love with a deaf boy, turning him “puppy dog” in an instant. Her hair, she says, had been bright red, and the sprung tresses are easy to picture; an unruly mop, constantly in the way. She sometimes lifts a hand over her smooth scalp as if the gesture’s ingrained.

  “What day is it today?” she asks, not meaning the actual day, and she laughs when I’m unable to decide. “It’s a Dorothy, then,” she says. “Homesick… ?”

  Earlier in our confinement, I’d explained my father’s surmising that every occasion could be summed up by a Broadway play. Simple really. Each one conveys a certain thing; has an overture and a story. Dorothy just wanted to go home, while Fiddler on the Roof was a common one for us here, being in a sort of holocaust ourselves.

  “Jekyll and Hyde?” Lucy snaps her fingers with a giggle at my shrug in answer. “That’s brill!”

  Fits quite well for today, actually. I’ve become two people since the zombie attack: that same fearful one who keeps looking over her shoulder, versus the more curious one, still picking at the scab of memory. Was it sensationalizing on my part that had given the thing speech? Should I feel sorry for those poor beasts trapped inside rotting corpses?

  Now, Caleb’s gazing over Lucy’s head at me. I’m uncomfortable with his moody, soulful glances. A thinker is Caleb.

  We’re all terminal, my expression tries to convey, so if I die now or later, who’s to care?

  Caleb tilts his head in reply, I care. Be safe, Liza.

  Truth is, as sad as it sounds, staying alive is high on my list of things to do. I’ve proven that on more than one occasion.

  With a soft smile, I’ve conceded his point. Lucy continues on in an animated chirp and Caleb returns to watch her, features slowly metamorphosing from caring to intimate.

  Back in our old life, Lucy would have been that girl standing in front of school, applying lip gloss over and over, perfecting each trace. She’d probably flirt with the boys, instead of staying stiff-backed and completely unnoticed.

  Conversely, I was home-schooled and pale because of my mother’s umbrellas, and my life before would have put a nice wedge between me and someone as enjoyable as Lucy. But… that was the old world and isn’t the new world so much brighter? If there’s anything to thank the End for, it’s my first true friend.

  Caleb works out in his cell, and in another life, they’d have been the popular kids, both charming. His hearing was perfect before the cancer, but no matter how much Lucy tries, he’s never attempted to speak, for fear of what he’d sound like. His silent treatment is a part of him now, and a balance to Lucy’s being a chatterbox.

  Lucy and Caleb are a year younger than me, both fifteen. The most unlikely of friends, all three of us, now the remnants of a decayed society; sons and daughters of yesterday’s kings and queens, ripped from their sovereign hands like a pied piper had come in the night. Our parents are all dead, and what’s left of their progeny rots away as prisoners of the Authority.

  Caleb stares pointedly beyond my shoulder at two guards who’ve appeared at the end of the hall, their stillness menacing, strange, and inhuman. As peculiar as they are unsettling, they give edge to the rumors that they’re trained zombies. Batons in hand already, visors impenetrable but somehow conveying their genuine dislike, these guards are never seen outside of their outfits and helmets. Under that high black collar, long sleeves, and gloves, not a speck of skin is shown. They do speak, however, albeit rarely, but it’s robotic.

  The Authority does something to their guards. Hard to guess what, but my nightmares provide enough vivid imaginings.

  Statues, watching, waiting. Most prisoners would run away, scurry like rats to another room, or back to their bunks. But not us. We stay where we are, chins up, and stare right back at them.

  I’m afraid of the undead, but the Authority is another matter entirely.

  It’s a wonder what we must look like with our shaved heads, missing eyebrows, pointy cheeks, and bruises. We aren’t far from zombies ourselves.

  This angers me. Have these guards no pity?

  My message is clear: I am not a nobody. I’m the daughter of a great dancer and a world-renowned composer. They may be dead, but I am very much alive. My name is Liza Randusky, and I come from a long line of somebodies.

  Lucy and Caleb send similar messages through their own eyes and stances. Though we be children of the damned, we rise up, even if it is only in our hearts.

  Lucy jumps with a start when the bells go off. It’s their turn for lunch, so she scuffs a shoe on the ground as we say goodbye. “You’d better come back and tell me all about it,” she demands before leaving me alone, her hand entwined loosely with Caleb’s.

  Envy is a big pill to swallow.

  Mimi wakes me before dawn, saying she heard that Lucy’s sick from Deborah, who’d heard it from the doctors. Before she finishes, I’m flying down the corridor where the glass at the end of the hall catches me with a bounce.

  “Luce!” I call through the vent. “Luce!”

  Caleb appears. Alone.

  My horror is obvious because he shakes his head “no.” So she’s still alive, then. I can’t catch my breath, and Caleb signs what looks like directions to the sick bay. She’ll still be behind the glass, but if the nurse is off duty, maybe I’ll be able to see her.

  Caleb fans his hands out to stop me from leaving as he searches my face, and cocks his head in question. Oh, Caleb, you perceptive fool. He can tell. He can’t possibly know, yet somehow he does.

  There’s no good reason to share, but my mouth starts before my brain has a chance to catch up. “A man. In the meadow. But I’m okay.”

  He balls up his fists, each finger slowly bending until they’re clenched.

  “The guards stopped him, Caleb. They… beat him.”

  Caleb looks at his shoes, huffing in anger. With a jerk of his thumb, he points to me and then to himself. Some sign of unity. My nod’s short and quick, but he understands.

  If we let go now, if we lose control over our emotions, we’ll fall apart completely. Before that can happen, though, I run toward the sick bay.

  My father told me worry is useless. “It can wait,” he’d say. “Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.” But upon seeing Lucy’s face, I’m a bag of skin puffed up by worry. My heart pumps rapidly as I sense the last bit of twine tighten the noose around my neck.

  Her pointy, wood-nymph features have tethered me to this world far more than I’d realized. She’s one reason out of so few for me to live. When she attempts to sit up and fails, a cracking begins inside of me.

  An “Oh, no” emerges from the depths of my soul.

  She’s not going to bounce back and tell me a funny story with a giggle. She’s not going to come to the glass and tease a smile from me tonight.

  I was twelve the day I met the once sprightly, happy Lucy. Out past bunk curfew, which is a punishable offense (they throw people into solitary for a mont
h’s time for that), I’d ventured near the giant glass separator isolating those forced to live in small cells, prisoners who traveled from one room to be fed, then to another to be bathed, and then back to their bunks each day. No outside time for any of them; a sort of concentration camp inside one already.

  Back then, I’d felt so lost, and when Lucy spotted me, she’d tapped on the glass before gesturing for me to come over, pointing to the vent. But I’d covered my mouth, shaking my head emphatically. She’d nodded back and brought her own mouth close to the metal grate.

  “It’s not dangerous, silly!” she’d said, as if she were much older and assertive than eleven. “If it was, then you’d already be sick.”

  She’d then asked what I was doing up so late, and I’d lied. “There was a spider in my bunk.”

  At this, she’d nodded wisely in thought. “They’re giant suckers, big and hairy. But I don’t think they’ll bite unless squished.”

  Even young, she’d tried to comfort me, and we’d soon become fast friends.

  Now, her hand hangs from a limp wrist when she tries to wave... and I’m thirteen years old all over again, stranded in the corridor, watching Lucy mourn on her knees the day she found out her parents were dead.

  She had clutched a piece of paper—the notification—and looked up at me before screaming. I was at the vent to hear, but her cries had been nonsensical wails of sadness.

  Then, she’d crawled over, and I’d never been more afraid than anything in the world at that moment. Please don’t ask me, Lucy, I remember thinking, because I have no answers.

  “Why?” she’d sobbed, before wiping away snot and crumpling into a defeated ball of little girl. “I want my mommy.” And she’d rocked herself side to side.

  The fist around my heart had woken up just long enough to squeeze even harder. Barely into our teens, not quite done being children, and Lucy wanted her mommy. I’d had no answers for her, so I’d replied, “I want my daddy.”

  We’d both sat back to back against the glass, facing lives without those we’d loved, together. At least we had each other.

  And so, Lucy, my brave friend and confidante, had rebounded... somewhat. She’d revived far better than I had from the ashes, only to live in a bubble. She told me she’d be okay. And I’d believed her.

  Then, Caleb had arrived. Both of them were fourteen when he came to Bodega.

  At once, Lucy was rosy and full of life, and I’d watched Caleb slowly teach her sign language, correcting her hands with his own gentle ones. Sometimes, I’d find them in each other’s arms, performing another kind of sign language—one where Caleb cradled Lucy’s face, and Lucy wove her fingers through his hair until it began to fall out. In a world where everything seemed terrible, I’d seen beauty again.

  But now, my Lucy—my rosy, in love Luce—she’s the color of fresh snow, without a single freckle left. Death is easy to recognize nowadays. Still, my face is brave.

  With my hands at the glass I tell her in halting sign language, what little I’ve learned, that I’ll return. Then, at the vent, I utter choked words. . . just in case. “Lucy, you just get well, okay? Sleep. I’ll be back. I promise.”

  She nods, and a sparkle in her eyelashes rolls down the side of her face into her ear.

  Lucy. My angel. My friend.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Liza

  At my window, I wait for the sun to go down. It’s not like it used to be: a bright yellow dot in an azure sky. No, this one’s blurry, distant, hard to spot through the smoke, and creeping low as the moon finally ascends for its part. One leaves, the other comes, and so goes life in a circular chase no matter how much I need it to stop.

  Lucy and I were some of the first to arrive at Bodega.

  After my father had passed, the Authority came and took me to a place where children cried in their beds, some of them so sad they seemed to be made of paper. I didn’t know grief could claim a person like that until it finally claimed me. Alone was new, death was not, but grief steals away any meager slip of joy.

  I’d gone to sleep the child of a master and woke to find the sparkly edges worn off; a paper girl, too, ready to blow away.

  With both parents having had cancer, I’d been selected first to be checked. Cancer was contagious, but that only got the quarantine discussion started. It wasn’t until they’d found pseudo-scientists to claim cancer patients with their weak immune systems were more likely to change into zombies that the vote was unanimous to remove us.

  Zombies are part contagion, part innate. Needing someone to blame, we sick people got lucky.

  The halls are quiet tonight, but I’m careful anyway, sticking to the shadows. Moonlight, as dim as it is, aids my progress.

  Desi had agreed to the plan, and his secret gift has come essentially at a perfect time. I’ve now got it under my smock, more aware of the risk with each step toward Lucy.

  The nurses have long gone, making me breathe a sigh of relief. Lucy’s propped up in the hospital bed. Seeing me, she points to her ear. She’s wearing the earbud I’d snuck to Des earlier, who’d somehow gotten it through to her side. I’m wearing a matching one.

  I flop the long plastic down in front of the glass and sit crossed-legged on the floor with the panel fanned out. Neat rows of black and white keys, all touch sensitive, light up in answer to my pressing. Sound goes through the receiver and into our ears while it remains silent in the corridor.

  My eyes close at the crystal, resounding note. Digital, yes, but perfectly tuned so you couldn’t tell the difference if you tried. Pressing two more before I hold the third, I open my eyes again to see Lucy grinning. Her naked brows are pushed down in anxious excitement, and a shadow of joy sparks inside of her eyes.

  Pale but pure, the sliver of happiness alights and runs from me to Lucy like the arc of an invisible rainbow.

  My hands take their position in such an organic way, posing as if I’ve never left, even though I’ve been away from it for so long. Deep breaths help me to savor the return; it’s been five years. Has any of it been forgotten? Like slipping into another version of myself, I’m more than certain I’ve not lost a single lesson.

  Instincts cue my next move, and muscle memory gleefully kicks in. My body’s alert, yet fluid. After warming up with a couple of scales, my fingers soon find their own way, picking without thought a song I’d played for my father on that very last day: Mozart.

  Trepidation grows with this memory, but it’s instantly squashed. I’m playing for the here-and-now.

  Still, maudlin thoughts fight their way through nevertheless, because the music harkens memories, moments from before. How can my playing not wake the ghosts of my past? The answer is: it cannot.

  My fingers dance with a direness that’s attached to my very core. The music fills me, touching the empty spaces, and for once, not recoiling; healing me, mending my broken parts, swooping into the void and thickening until I’m full again. From chorus to solo and back, I’m rusty, but what lacks in technique, there’s passion, and then some.

  And something new. Maturity. I’m playing more like a woman now. One who’s seen the world and what it has to offer and has been left wanting.

  I’m on the chase---the hunt for inspiration and the release it renders like never before. Wisdom from age helps make the music honest, like a soul that’s lost and loved, and learned, and wondered. But where’s the hope, Liza? My father’s voice is well imagined.

  Hope. Such a dangerous word. Here in this place it’s suffocated to almost being completely gone.

  I hunch my shoulders against the question, then relax them again for the extra length needed to reach down my digital piano while playing through my thoughts, and for them, too, cathartically, to cope with a world that’s already crashed down.

  I’m beginning to lose control of it. Pain. It’s there. Ready to grip me in its terrible vice.

  Lucy is here, now. Focus on that, Liza.

  Songs plucked from memory come to me like a flood.
Wrists jerking, the sweet-sweet sound that blossoms in my ear like a flower before the old sun, that yellow ball of light and warmth to guide us all. And Lucy’s hearing this, too, as planned. I avoid her gaze, feeling vulnerable, open. I’m also afraid of something else, seeing her . . . missing her already.

  Here and now, Liza.

  Emotions run like a faucet, but luckily it’s rushing into the music and being used, processed, before it can swallow me, made beautiful again before it can form into anything bad . . . like grief. Like hopelessness.

  I’m not here anymore; I’m there, in that distant place. Freedom reigns in a plane of existence where the meditation is perfect—to hide, to learn, to grow, and to see the truth. If I’m there too long, though, I’ll turn back into paper-girl and blow away. I know this and so I’m rushing through it. Taking the solace it offers and not lingering too long.

  My father’s parlor surrounds me in my mind, warm and inviting with the sun through the windows. He’s playing, while I’m standing at his podium with a stick, pretending to conduct. He’s nodding and smiling, and my hair’s spun gold, and I’m the blue-eyed spitting image of my mother, not sick and not dying.

  And Lucy’s not dying. She’s outside of her bubble, free, somewhere making the boys laugh at her joke on the lunch quad. Cheering Caleb on in his games. Eating popcorn at the movies.

  And even if we aren’t friends, we live, damn it. We live.

  And the camps aren’t real . . . not to us.

  No.

  Play, Liza, play.

  The song ends, as all good things must, but another tune comes to mind, something from long-long ago. How the memory remains after so much time has passed is a mystery. But it was mine, written by me in a fancy, a sweeping melody of innocence before growing darker, yet what would a child know of darkness?

  A lot, apparently.

  Panic grips me near its finish, the resounding crescendo crashing down like a great storm, spinning it all backwards. The end of the world; people dead in heaps; the smell of burning bodies; and children in the streets, crying, begging, all of us becoming orphans. Oh, death, why have you come for the innocent?