Zero Repeat Forever

by G. S. Prendergast

God, I hate this planet.

  I look around at all my friends, and their stony faces. We should all be giddy with relief, but instead maybe this rescue has confirmed what we were all hoping wasn’t true. We’re refugees. And we’ve all seen enough news stories to know how that goes.

  As we arrive at the edge of a canyon, Liam leads us all onto a narrow path downward, so narrow that we have to walk single file. I walk behind Mandy, and Topher walks behind me. After five minutes I’m surprised at how deep the canyon is. After ten minutes I’m amazed. It seems to be going down and down forever.

  “Is this natural?” I say to no one in particular, but Liam, who is clearly eager to show off some more, gamely answers.

  “It was a quarry with a mine at the bottom of it. In the fifties, the government bought the mine and built a military bunker here. It’s pretty big, accommodation for about five hundred, but we have about two fifty now.”

  “And who are we exactly?”

  “About half, like me, are military families who bugged out of a base south of here during the first attack. The other half we’ve picked up along the way. Survivors from the towns, a couple of Native communities, and people like you we’ve found with the drones.”

  “What communities?” I say it without thinking. We’re dipping into a topic I’ve learned to avoid, especially with people I don’t know.

  “Mostly around Calgary,” Liam says. “The villages themselves have been pretty well iced, but some families escaped out onto the prairie, where we found them.”

  Topher puts his hand on my shoulder, steadying me as I stumble on a patch of gravel.

  “What about up north, by Slave Lake?” I ask.

  Liam shakes his head. “We never got that far north. Not sure what’s happening. Why? You got people up there?” He turns, assessing me, eyes narrowed. I imagine him trying to calculate the color mix of blood in my veins. It’s a look I’m used to.

  “Sort of,” I say dismissively. I have no desire to try to explain my stepfather’s family and the Métis settlement full of aunts and uncles who aren’t really aunts and uncles but claim me as a niece regardless. It’s too complicated, and anyway . . .

  “Some of the information we get suggests the attack zones were fairly limited,” Liam says with a shrug. “There’s a chance that up that way things are okay. Word is a lot of survivors were evacuated, we’re not sure to where.”

  That changes things, a shift in outlook so radical I’m rendered speechless. It’s Topher who puts it into words. “How many survivors are there?”

  “In the world?” Liam says. “Hard to say. But there’s no way out of here, east or west. That much we know. And communications are totally toast, so we’re sort of poking around in the dark for information.”

  “Even after all this time?” Sawyer says. “If this is a military base, don’t you have secure landlines?”

  Liam looks uncomfortable for a moment. “Maybe you should talk to the commander about that.”

  By the time we reach the quarry floor, the snow is blowing so thick that Liam recommends we hold on to each other the rest of the way. So we stomp through the dense snow, like a kindergarten class, me with Topher’s fingers crushing one hand and Mandy clinging to the other wrist.

  “This feels like a bad dream,” Mandy says. Then we walk in silence for about five minutes before she adds. “I guess my parents are dead.”

  The word “parents” makes me twitch. The constant rhythm of missing them and regretting the things I said and didn’t say has become background noise to the life-and-death game I’ve been playing over the last few days. Nearly drowning, being knocked out by an alien. And death, of course. Tucker. Lochie. And Felix, who died right in front of me. It all makes setting fire to a park bandstand seem small by comparison. I have to believe that if we’re ever reunited, my parents will just take me in their arms, and we’ll never speak of it again.

  I try to exhale everything, but all that comes out is a cloud of frozen air.

  There are about a dozen people hanging around outside when we reach the entrance to the base. Some of them are heavily armed; the others are smoking or chatting. Two young boys are making a snowman. Watching them, I suddenly understand why Mandy said what she did. Hiding in our little camp in the valley, we could pretend it was all a mistake, that the world outside was just as we left it, with family and loved ones waiting for us to come home. But the last few days have taught us something different. The bad dream is the world. We’re going to live in some kind of underground refugee camp for the rest of our lives. Maybe, if we’re lucky, that won’t be very long.

  From the outside, the entrance looks like an abandoned mine, rough stone with heavy, weathered wooden supports. A rusty rail track leads in. There are even overturned coal carts, adding to the authenticity. But inside the entrance, the outlook changes dramatically. As we enter, automatic lights flick on, revealing a large open area, cluttered with jeeps and other supplies and equipment. Two more armed guards leap to their feet.

  “Only me,” Liam says. “We found them right where the drone clocked them.” He thumbs back at the six of us, now shivering with the change of temperature. It’s much warmer inside than it was outside, but the hike in wet snow has left us damp and disoriented.

  Liam and a guard reach inside their jackets, pulling out key cards on heavy chains. When they swipe the cards there’s a heavy-sounding clang, and they swing open a large door. The door is over a foot thick and solid metal.

  “This is a nuclear bomb shelter?” Emily says. “Like NORAD?” Liam smiles at her in a way that makes me grateful I didn’t eat any breakfast.

  “This is the NORAD even NORAD didn’t talk about. A long-lost deal between us and the Americans against the Russkies. It was a total command center, but full operations shut down years ago. Since then it’s been a bit of a ghost town around here. The commander and a few others had codes and keys. Someone reactivated it when the whole terrorism thing started to look bad, but on a much smaller scale. I’m not sure who that was. Whoever it was, we haven’t heard from him. He’s probably dead.”

  Liam leads us into a long passageway. It’s wide and high enough for a small vehicle, and lit by motion-sensitive electric lights, which flick on and off as we pass.

  “We’ll get you sleeping arrangements, and then you might like to wash. We have running hot water.” Liam looks proud to inform us of this.

  “Doesn’t that waste fuel?” I can’t resist saying.

  “Geothermal,” he says, a prim expression on his face. “The base itself is fully self-sufficient. Only the vehicles need fuel. And we use solar, wind, and hydro for luxuries like music and stuff.”

  Topher and I exchange a glance. I know exactly what he’s thinking. This is as good as he could have hoped for, a safe, permanent refuge. Somewhere we would be fools to leave if he were to disappear in the night. My heart flickers at the thought of following him. Or stopping him. I haven’t decided which.

  “What do you do for food?” Mandy asks. Mandy loves to feed people. She was going to teach camp cooking and permaculture, along with first aid. Mandy may run screaming out of here if it turns out we all have to eat some kind of Soylent Green paste for sustenance.

  “We have a pretty big stockpile, and people brought stuff with them. But it won’t last forever.” Liam looks uncertain again. A tiny chink appears in his bravado, the son of the commander of what might be my last refuge on earth. “This place hasn’t been set up for something like this for decades. So it’s . . . well . . . we’re not that well prepared. I guess we’ll figure it out somehow.”

  It’s a pity, I think, that I might be long gone before Liam realizes that death by starvation is coming for him too.

  EIGHTH

  The dream of the human girl ends up being both terrifying and sensational. I wake up, heart pounding, blushing with shame, and with parts of my body doing things that are not normal, though not entirely unfamiliar.

  It takes several whimpering minutes for the
urgent heat of the dream to wear off and for my heart rate, and other things, to calm down. The humiliation sticks with me though. How could I think of a human that way, even in a dream?

  The disgrace of it makes me want to break something. I spend an hour snapping enough branches to build a hundred fires but feel only a fraction better. Then I light a fire and fuss over it until hunger makes me think of getting up and finding something to eat. Soon I’m crunching the bones of some hapless animal I dug out of its den. I barely register even what it looks like, never mind the taste. But having food in my stomach alleviates the effects of the slug syrup somewhat, and my anger and hate dissipate back to ordinary embarrassment.

  For the first time since she died, I’m grateful Sixth isn’t here with me. I would never tell her willingly what I dreamed, but she would find a way to make me confess. Then she would punish me for it somehow. Whack me behind the ear with her rifle, or maybe just tell me over and over that I’m defective. Possibly she would add the words “perverted,” “disgusting,” “pitiful.” Sixth hated humans more than I ever could. I can only imagine what she would say if she knew I dreamed of one like that. It’s so wrong, I feel sick.

  I reach up and pull a branch down from the pine tree above my head, crushing a handful of needles under my nose. The smell clears my head a bit, then a bit more. I press my free hand into the fresh snow around me and fix my gaze onto the green treetops and the rolling clouds behind them. It’s enough to nearly bring a smile to my face. A fleeting sense of peace and happiness calms my mind sufficiently to formulate one perfectly coherent thought.

  I want to see the human girl again.

  Not like in the dream. Nothing like that.

  Throwing the needles into the fire, I close my eyes and press both my hands over my face. One hand now smells of pine needles, like the girl’s hair. I lean forward, plunge that hand into the fire and hold it there until the skin starts to burn off.

  That’s going to hurt for a few days, but I deserve much worse.

  RAVEN

  We all indulge in sinfully long, hot showers. Emily and Mandy giggle at the state of their unshaven legs and underarms and pay no attention to my own unremarkable nudity, even though I’m covered in some fairly impressive bruises. I take special care with the rings of bruises around my wrists. If not for them I might think that the Nahx I met in the trailer was part of a dream. I let the warm water flow over my wrists, soothing the lingering ache but not easing the disorientation the experience left behind. He could have killed me, darted me, snapped my neck, or smashed my head in. But he didn’t. That changes things somehow. It’s a slight shift, but it feels like an earthquake.

  We dry off and dress in the clean army-issue casuals that have been laid out for us. I twist my hair into a half-assed roll, held with the one elastic band I can find in the bottom of my pack. I end up with kind of a weird puff at the back, but it will have to do.

  The boys have been waiting in the common area for some time when we three girls finally join them. I scan the other unfamiliar faces lounging on drab sofas or strolling in and out, noting with relief that at least I’m not the only brown girl here. But I don’t see anyone else I know. No one from the dojo, no friends from school, no one I recognize at all. Before we had our showers, they gave us a list of people here, but I didn’t see any familiar names there, either. Looking at the friends I arrived with makes me ache over losing Felix and Lochie, even Pip and David, whom I barely got to know. Maybe I shouldn’t make eye contact with anyone new for fear of losing them, too. I stare at my hands instead.

  Liam appears through a door marked RESTRICTED AREA: PASS HOLDERS ONLY.

  “Is someone in charge?” he asks, sitting on the edge of the sofa.

  We turn to Sawyer. Even Liam looks at him, but he is hanging his head, eyes on the floor.

  “We are,” Topher says, pointing back and forth between himself and me. Sawyer glances up, but says nothing. No one else comments, though I notice Xander’s little smirk.

  Liam looks uncertain for a moment, but finally stands up and beckons us to the door. “Come on, then. Kim wants to meet you.”

  He leads us down another long, sterile hallway. Again the lights flick on and off as we pass through a few unlocked doors. It’s disconcerting, like I’m being watched somehow, but Liam seems to be used to it.

  “A lot of the security has been disabled for safety reasons,” he says. “We’re relying on trust to keep people out of restricted areas for now. But I have a pass, so I can go anywhere.”

  Topher glances at me, eyebrows raised.

  At the end of the hallway we reach a set of stairs.

  “It’s nearly twenty stories up. Can you make it?” Liam says, a gloating look on his face. He’s daring us to say no.

  Topher just grunts and takes to the staircase two steps at a time. Liam rushes after him. I could probably keep up, despite my hunger and exhaustion, but I decide it might be more effective to make them wait for me. So, plodding upward, I make my own pace and enjoy the anticipation of their impatience when I arrive at the top. Which I do, calm and unsweaty, about five minutes later. The expression on their faces is worth the climb.

  “Good things are worth waiting for,” I say.

  Topher sighs. Liam doesn’t know what to make of me, I’m sure, which is exactly how I want him. And it feels familiar anyway, something left over from the old world. I’m pretty sure we’ll have the whole what-are-you? conversation sometime soon. Or he’ll want to touch my hair.

  He leads us along another corridor, this one with doors along one side. The doors are all open, and I can see daylight streaming through them.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  “We’re halfway up the mountain,” Liam says. “These are observation chambers. Designed to be bomb and radiation proof, for watching . . .” His voice trails off.

  “The end of the world?” I supply. Liam shows some of that uncertainty again. There are depths to him too, I realize. Perhaps ones I would prefer not to know about, but they’re there anyway.

  Halfway down the corridor he leads us into a room. A woman and two men stare out the bright window, watching the featureless sky, and the jagged, forbidding mountains rolling away to the horizon. It drives home how hard getting out of here will be. I hope Topher has noticed it’s not a journey you’d want to take alone.

  “Leave us,” the woman says to the men. When Liam lingers, she gives him a stern look. He backs out of the door, closing it behind him.

  “Topher and Raven, I hear,” the woman says. “I’m the commander here. I’m a CAF officer, but you can call me Kim.”

  I feel privileged. I was certain she would insist on being called “Your Majesty.” Listening to Kim and watching her makes me think of someone in a vise, as though something is squeezing her together, tightly, painfully, and the pressure is what prevents the pieces from falling all over the floor. She’s fractured, badly. And it takes one to know one.

  She asks us where we came from, and Topher gives her a quick summary. All the while she nods approvingly.

  “I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have some refugees with actual survival skills,” she says. “Most of the people here can barely tie their shoelaces without help. You have weapons training?”

  “Some,” Topher says.

  “Are you willing to use them?”

  “Against the Nahx?” Topher says. “Are you kidding? Tell me when and where.”

  Kim grins. She has the same vaguely parasitic smile as her son. Like someone who might lay eggs in you that will hatch and then eat you from the inside out.

  “And you, Raven? How do you feel about shooting at our enemy?” The hate in her eyes is like a living thing. I’m afraid to answer. Afraid my answer won’t be sufficient. Her hate for the Nahx is in its own category. But when I think of them now, I think of the one in the trailer, and the strength of my hatred wavers. I’m not sure I have that kind of power for any emotion, not even love. Not even for Tucker.

/>   “I’m a terrible shot,” I admit after a moment. I can’t think of a reason to lie at this point. “But I’ll do whatever is necessary.”

  Kim looks at us, both smug and satisfied. “Good,” she says. “I know this looks like a refugee camp, but we are amassing an attack force here. You and your friends, if you’re willing, will see some action. We are not going to lie down and take this, you can count on that. And we’re not going to sit around until help comes either. The fight continues all over the world. We’ll take our planet back.”

  Topher glances at me. “How many survivors are there? In the world, I mean.”

  Kim frowns for a moment, and I catch a glimpse of that intractable sorrow I saw when we arrived. But her face soon hardens, like drying clay, and I can no longer read her. “Most of the coastal areas were relatively unscathed. That’s the report, anyway. Communications have all been cut. We get some videos though, and that tells us . . .”

  “Wait,” Topher says. “You still get the videos?”

  Kim nods. “Some. There’s a landline direct in and out of here, deep underground, and all the way to a base station on the other side of the mountains. We think the Nahx disrupt most of the data with some kind of microwave jammer that knocks out the point-to-point system between that base station and the coast. But the Nahx jamming signal itself gets jammed at least once a day, usually around midday. We don’t know how yet.” She shrugs. “It’s a last-resort comm system built years ago for exactly these circumstances. Disaster. War. It’s working the way it’s supposed to, but the quality of data is still poor because of all the interference. And it’s . . . we’re not sure whether to trust what we’re getting. There are no security codes. It’s not military. We untangle what we can. There are people still fighting all over the world, it seems. Millions, maybe billions, survived. This isn’t over.”

  “Why did the coastal areas pull through?” I ask. “Why didn’t the Nahx take them out? They firebombed the cities around here, didn’t they?”