Year Zero

by Jeff Long

  “Right. Things will feel a bit tight once you’re sealed in. Add heat, hunger, and dehydration, and by the end of the day you’ll want out of the rig. Whatever you do, do not remove your equipment. We take care of that for you at decon. Sometimes a troop will lose it in the field. All it takes is one bad second. Take off your helmet and that’s all she wrote.” The rigger tugged hard at his straps. “We’ll know if you break the seal on your helmet. Be your own master. Don’t self-destruct.”

  He laid out the contents of a field kit: a quart bottle of bleach to splash on any punctures, a roll of duct tape to patch any holes, a hand pump to siphon fuel, and a GPS receiver to track his coordinates. The kit held no first aid equipment. The message was clear. No casualties allowed. One cut, one nick, and you were a write-off anyway.

  “Hey,” a soldier shouted over, pointing at his ears, “channel four.”

  “You got a private call,” said the rigger. He switched Nathan Lee’s wrist dial to channel four. Nathan Lee wanted it to be Miranda. Instead it was Ochs.

  “Ready for the abyss?”

  “Where am I going?”

  “Patience, son. Let’s not spoil the suspense.”

  Everything was wrong with this. Ochs was setting him up, he was sure of it. But what choice did he have? Ochs had the power of a secret over him, and Nathan Lee was helpless against that. “You could have sent me off months ago. I would have gone.”

  “I told you, it was too soon.”

  “Too soon for what?”

  They had been through this. “It’s like the old days. Trust me. Stay tuned. Obey me, and the world will be right again.” Ochs cut the communication.

  The rigger duct taped Kevlar gloves to Nathan Lee’s wrists and the boots to his knees, and layered plastic armor over his elbows and chest and knees. Finally he sealed him shut inside the helmet. There was a slight rush of air. Nathan Lee’s ears popped. He could hear over the radio, but the external world was muffled. When the rigger patted his head, he felt far away. Nathan Lee gave a thumbs-up. The rigger saluted him.

  Three troop carriers and a big cargo helicopter waited. The pilots wore moon suits, too. They looked like astronauts ready for motocross. Passing the cargo bird, Nathan Lee saw empty cages in the cavernous bay.

  The helicopters plunged north off the high mesa. The soldiers sat strapped in the hold and the air turned chill. They passed high above the valley. Nathan Lee saw the pueblo he’d gone through on his way to Los Alamos, long ago, it seemed. But the tank was gone, and the square looked deserted. Further on, he spied campfires along the Rio Grande. People were walking along the highway.

  “Pilgrims,” a voice said over his headset. It was the crew chief. “Word spread fast. They started showing up yesterday.”

  “Where are they from?”

  “Locals. Out of Chama and Española and Tres Piedras. Milagro Beanfield types.”

  The helicopters sprinted between ancient volcanoes and across old seabeds, then took a right through the Rockies to follow the front range. Not a car moved along the black thread of I-25.

  They swept past Colorado Springs, and the dawn spotlighted towering mountains and glassy office towers. Red sandstone fins flashed beneath. Nearby, Nathan Lee knew, the seat of federal government was burrowed deep inside Cheyenne Mountain. Like King Arthur, the President and his administrative heads and Congress and the Supreme Court were hibernating until the day their dead nation came to life and called for them again. On his way to Los Alamos last summer, the place had been a beehive of trucks passing through battalions of sentinels, stocking democracy’s keep. Now it was still.

  The aspens were turning. The hillsides blazed with gold and red leaves. Past the Air Force Academy, they came to a flat hilltop girdled by tank traps and razor wire. Small white radar dishes tracked their approach. The helicopters landed to refuel.

  As the fuel tanks filled, so did Nathan Lee’s bladder. He knew better than to ask. No potty breaks in the plague zone. He looked around at his stoic companions, and recalled stories of sickly Crusaders who kept riding even with diarrhea leaking down their saddles. He sat in his warm urine without expression.

  Then they were airborne again, hurtling due north. Denver, he guessed. The sun inched higher upon the flat plains. As far as his eye could see, unharvested wheat and corn and rampant tall grasses had gone to seed. Their rotor blast flushed animals. A herd of horses galloped with their shadow like dolphins leaping. Denver it was. They made a beeline for the neat, geometric skyline. Soldiers began checking their weapons and suits. The door gunner grew alert.

  They flashed east across vacant suburbs. White bones lay scattered on the streets. Dark flocks of birds were circling for food. Nathan Lee’s dread crept. It was no longer summer here. America had become Asia. What was Ochs sending him into?

  A dozen plague victims stood clustered on a golf course by a pond. Their pilot broke from the group and looped lower for a view. Bodies floated facedown in the nearby water like balloons resting on the surface. None of the living took notice of the helicopter. Most had unconsciously shed their clothing in the heat of past days. On this cold morning, they dumbly faced the light.

  From this height, Nathan Lee could see paths worn in the grasses. Then he saw the dogs. They were house pets, mostly bigger breeds: golden retrievers, dalmations, black labs, sturdy mutts. Packs had taken up residence on different sides of the human herd. Fido had deep instincts. Nathan Lee had seen hyenas and wild dogs in west Kenya set up shop the same way, picking off the strays at whim.

  The pilot hovered thirty feet off, scanning the faces. Through the chrysalis of infected tissue, their teeth showed like famine grins. Nathan Lee could see the dark clumps of viscera.

  “No kids. No pregnant,” said the pilot. “Am I missing anything?”

  “Nothing here,” the crew chief verified.

  The helicopter sprang onwards.

  For the next twenty minutes, that was the pattern. They would spot a group standing in a parking lot or playground or among the crashed cars, descend, scrutinize, and move on. They reached Coors baseball stadium, skeletal, but pretty with its iron lattice work. Crossing America, Nathan Lee had learned that stadiums across the country had been used to quarantine tens of thousands of victims. But Coors stood empty, except for a few slumped bodies in the bleachers. Either Denver’s collapse had happened too quickly for authorities to react, or they had seen the futility of quarantine. Nathan Lee’s helicopter came to rest in center field.

  It was a busy place. The soldiers knew what they were doing. Sentinels with machine guns scoped the outside streets from the top bleachers. One team set up a satellite dish and uplinked with Los Alamos, another cleared bodies and debris from the delivery gate. Nathan Lee loaned a hand where the chore was obvious. Otherwise, he stayed out of the way. He listened to the radio chatter over his headset, then tried channel four.

  Ochs’s voice was waiting for him. “Welcome to the Mile High City.”

  “It’s bad here,” said Nathan Lee. He wanted encouragement.

  “If it wasn’t bad you wouldn’t be there,” Ochs said. “They learned not to bother with the early-stage cities. Too much insanity. Gun nation. Weirdos. Survivalists with a beef. Family groups trying to defend their loved ones.”

  “You said Grace was alive.” In fact, Ochs had not said it. Nathan Lee wanted more.

  “Stay with me,” Ochs said. “I’m tracking your coordinates. I’ve got a map. We’ll find them together.”

  The soldiers left the pilots on guard and departed. Carting jerry cans of gas, the platoons exited onto the streets and went carjacking. Denver was SUV heaven. In pairs, the soldiers fueled and hotwired their vehicles of choice, and drove off.

  Nathan Lee was left alone. From high above, papers floated out of shattered skyscraper windows. He found a Toyota with a good battery and keys in the ignition. The engine turned over with what was left in its gas tank. There was enough headroom to accomodate his helmet. It would do. He got out and poured
part of his jerry can into the gas tank. All told, he had enough fuel for a round trip of sixty miles or so.

  Ochs played navigator with a computer map. Nathan Lee followed his directions. Where the avenues were clogged with dead cars or had flooded with water, Ochs found him alternate routes.

  Together they reached a cozy neighborhood landscaped with poplars and Japanese blood grasses. Compared to the tangle of highway metal and burned malls, this was a quiet haven. A car lay overturned on one lawn. Another stuck partway out of a closed garage door. To the very end, men had needed the feel of a steering wheel in their hands. If they couldn’t drive fate, at least they could drive a Ford.

  “1020 Lakeridge Road,” Ochs spoke in his ear. “Used brick, split level. A weathervane with a rooster.”

  “There it is.”

  “Tell me what you’re seeing,” said Ochs. “You’re my eyes.”

  Nathan Lee was grim. “What am I doing here?” In two hours of tortuous driving, there had not been one sign of healthy survivors. Carcasses and wandering angels, yes. Otherwise, it was a wild goose chase. Or a trap.

  “Go inside,” Ochs said. “Talk to me. I want to know everything.”

  Nathan Lee turned the voice off. He went to the front door between waist-high Kentucky bluegrass. A nylon flag with a butterfly jutted from a porch mount. A terracotta sun hung by the door. Wind chimes rustled. Home Sweet Home, said the mat.

  He knocked on the door. His gloved fist didn’t make a sound. His motions were dense and slow. He heard himself breathing.

  The door was unlocked. Inside, the house looked ready for Better Homes and Gardens. Lydia’s touch. Flower petals had fallen to colorful powder on the white doily under a vase. The house looked lived in, but not lived in enough. It was too tidy. There were no daily messes. No temporary piles. No pairs of little sneakers shucked by the door. Everything was arranged. Like a shrine.

  The Suzuki book on the piano had Grace’s name printed on the cover. Her fingers had touched the keys. Nathan Lee could barely hear the notes under his gloved fingers.

  The evidence mounted. Artwork from Alameda Elementary was taped to the refrigerator: a bird, a tree, a house with little girls watering flowers. Her signature in capital letters. The freezer held melted popsicles.

  Nathan Lee’s breathing grew louder. He tried not to think. She had been here.

  A bulletin board on the wall: family snapshots. There was Lydia beaming her 100-watt smile beside a sturdy burgher of a man with a prosperous belly. Lydia had landed herself a provider, no more globe hoppers. No more losers. The husband even resembled her brother. They looked self-content. Nathan Lee scanned lower.

  Grace was missing two lower teeth. A straw hat shadowed her eyes. Nathan Lee’s hand moved over the snapshots, finding all the Graces, speaking her name each time inside his helmet. By a waterfall, at the swimming pool, on a mountain trail with a basket of tiny strawberries. She had her mother’s smile and Nathan Lee’s narrow face. For the most part, she was her own woman.

  He stood by the bulletin board. His heart felt caved in. It should have been him in those photos. Those should have been his shoulders she was sitting on, his hand receiving the bouquet of dandelions. That should have been his head bearing the silly pointed birthday cap. It was the one reality he’d really ever wanted, and here he was viewing another man who had lived his life.

  Nathan Lee went into the basement. That would be the most logical hideout. He would have taken her into the mountains or desert. But if you were going to stay, you would probably burrow deep. Absurdly, he imagined a whole warren of tunnels connecting the suburbs, and families of survivors faring happily beneath his feet.

  The basement was finished with flowered wallpaper and a tiled floor. There were no trap doors, no mounds of dug dirt. He climbed the stairs to the second floor and found Lydia’s husband in the master bedroom.

  The suicide was nothing ugly. The man had overdosed himself, laid down on the coral and beige down comforter, and gone to sleep. Lydia was not with him. She was a mother. She would be with her child.

  Nathan Lee went down the hallway and came to the last door. It was going to be her bedroom. Full of dread, he saw his hand reach for the knob. The door opened.

  The bed was empty. It was her room, but Grace was not here. His hopes zigzagged. She’d done it again! he thought. Lydia had cheated her man. He could see her fleeing with Grace, leaving the dumb husband to put himself down. For the first time, he was grateful for Lydia’s treacherous ways. She just may have saved Grace. His quest was not over.

  He sat on the bed. Her walls were pink. There were dozens of dolls neatly ranked on shelves, mostly blond. He reached for a hairbrush on a small vanity and unwound a long golden strand from the bristles. Slowly his eyes strayed back to the dolls, and their unnatural tidiness. Not one thing was out of place. Not one doll was missing. He went to the window and looked into the backyard.

  It was like dying.

  From the kitchen window, he had been unable to see them, hidden by the high grass. But from here, the two white crosses were prominent. Lydia’s husband had buried them before taking his own life.

  Nathan Lee found himself among the grasses with no recall of descending the stairs nor leaving the house. He knelt by the cross that said, “Grace.” He turned on his radio.

  Ochs was livid. “Where have you been?”

  “I found them,” said Nathan Lee. “I found their graves.”

  “Graves? Thank God.”

  “They’re dead, Ochs.”

  “Of course they’re dead,” Ochs said. “It’s Denver. But they were buried. That’s the important thing.” He sounded overjoyed.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Nathan Lee shouted. His rage welled up. Ochs was the least of it. God. The cold lizard. This abyss.

  “How do you know it’s them?” Ochs calmly asked.

  “The markers. He woodburned their names.” Nathan Lee could scarcely hear his own words.

  “You’ve done it!” Ochs said. “Easy, now. We’re almost home.”

  Lydia’s husband had placed the graves on a slight rise in the backyard. It had a view of the Rockies. He had mounded the graves and seeded them with flowers. Nathan Lee’s jealousy dwindled. The man had been a good father to his daughter. He had done a credible job here.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen to me, Nathan Lee. Are you listening?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Do you love Grace more than anything in the world?”

  How long ago had they died? Nathan Lee wondered. The paint on the crosses was blistered from the elements. But the sunflowers and daisies were immature. They had not gotten a full season to grow. The seeds must have been planted midsummer or later. August, he guessed. There would have been time for him to reach her, if only he had known.

  “You need to love her with all your heart,” Ochs was saying.

  “You could have just told me,” said Nathan Lee. “I wasn’t after you.” Now he saw it. Ochs had baited him to his death. The soldiers would leave without him. Ochs was free.

  “I told you, it was too soon,” Ochs said. “I didn’t want to waste you.”

  “Waste me?”

  “I tried to bring them in. Six months ago. I did everything possible. I bribed. I threatened. I begged,” said Ochs. “My own sister. And niece. But the council said no. Miranda, I’m sure of it. Revenge. And then you showed up.”

  August, thought Nathan Lee. He could have held her one last time. He had no strength to be angry, though.

  “Don’t fade on me, Nathan Lee. We’re almost home.”

  Nathan Lee felt like a leaf ready to fall.

  Ochs’s voice was stern. “Go find a shovel, Nathan Lee.”

  “What?”

  “We’re going to bring them inside. It’s safe inside the fence. But you need to work fast,” Ochs said. “The helicopters leave in three hours.”

  What was he talking about?

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sp; “Nathan Lee?”

  “Dig her up?

  “I know,” said Ochs. “But you have to be strong. We’re going to bring them back. You’ve seen the technology.”

  That’s what this was all about? “You mean clone them?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “Grace?”

  “You know what we’ll need. It won’t be pleasant, but it’s nothing you haven’t done before. A finger from each of them. Or teeth. Look for some garden shears.”

  Nathan Lee tried to recoil, but the voice was inside his head.

  “There was no other way to get them inside,” Ochs said. “They had to die in order to live. Now we can offer them a place in the sanctuary. My sister. Your daughter. Out from the storm. Talk to me, man.”

  Nathan Lee was numb. Ochs had sent him to root up his own child?

  “You’re the only one who can save her,” coaxed the voice. “She needs you.”

  “No,” said Nathan Lee.

  “Yes,” argued Ochs. “Or else you kill her.”

  “She’s already dead.”

  “Dig down, Nathan Lee. Dig into your heart. Find the strength. Bring me what I say. Miranda will raise them up.”

  “She won’t do that.”

  “For you, Miranda will do anything.”

  For a moment, Nathan Lee saw the grave open and her little body lift from the dirt. He saw her straw hat. The outstretched bouquet. He groaned.

  “It’s late,” snapped Ochs. “The helicopters will go without you. After that, you’re dog food.” He went back and forth, from threats to temptation. “You have the power of life over death. There’s no reason Grace has to end like this. She was the sweetest girl. A second chance. You have the power.”

  Nathan Lee’s horror mounted. How could he open her grave? How could he not?

  “Do it,” snarled Ochs.

  Nathan Lee searched through the wreck of his memory. He remembered a storm. Grace was a baby, asleep in his arms. The blizzard howled at the window of their Washington townhouse, and he hardly dared to breathe for fear of undoing her sleep.

  Ochs railed at him. “The helicopters will leave soon. They won’t wait. They don’t fly at night. You’ll be alone.”