by Jeff Long
Even as they watched, a few replacements were boosted up to take their turns on the crosses. The “crucified” men pulled their arms from the ropes and got down. Again Los Alamos found a comfortable logic. “They’re nothing but stunt men,” a council member commented.
“How can they stand the cold?” someone remarked. “I can almost feel the splinters.”
“What will it lead to?” a woman asked.
“It’s harmless,” her neighbor said.
“It’s violent. Even if it’s violence to themselves.”
“It’s only theater,” a sociologist pronounced. “Their suffering is a form of entertainment. The crosses are a stage.”
Nathan Lee disagreed, but kept it to himself. Couldn’t they see that the occupied crosses faced Los Alamos? The encampment was sending the city a message in flesh.
The radical few became many. In the warmer hours of midday, all of the crosses along the river came to be inhabited. Nathan Lee was reminded of accounts of the aftermath of Spartacus’s slave revolt and the Jews’ rebellion in Jerusalem. Men writhed on crosses perched among tents and wrecked cars. Families wept at their feet. Smoke drifted up in mean curls.
MAYBE ESCAPE was his natural condition. With every passing hour, Nathan Lee imagined the footsteps of fresh plague victims joining the siege, sealing off the valley. It seemed increasingly unlikely the city could ever be evacuated to the WIPP sanctuary, which he shunned anyway. He kept looking west. The headless volcano beckoned. The temptations came on the afternoon breeze. Take your love, they whispered, flee into the desert.
There were hundreds of Anasazi cave dwellings in the Four Corners region. With the Captain’s help, he’d plotted them on a map. He could flee with Miranda, hole up, outwait the fanatics streaming toward Los Alamos, and then run loose through the world with what was left of their time. It would mean betraying her father, to whom he’d promised to deliver Miranda, or trying to betray him. Nathan Lee took it for granted that Paul Abbot had his every move under the tightest surveillance. He was more of a prisoner than the prisoners in Miranda’s basement. Even if he could escape Los Alamos, Miranda would never agree to leave with him. Her devotion to the city—her utter faith in it—baffled and frustrated him. She acted as if she’d been born here.
And so, for now, Nathan Lee resigned himself. He did the next best thing to making his own escape. He devised the clones’ escape.
The notion gratified him. He despised what had been done to them. They and their sacrificed brothers had been used a thousand different ways by Los Alamos, from serving as lab subjects to titillating the city’s mystical itch. Now they could be used one final time, as his surrogate for breaking free.
“I’m thinking the boys should get turned loose,” he announced to the Captain in the quiet of one afternoon. They were watching the yard over cameras. Over the weeks, the prisoners had slowly begun to trickle up from their cells and brave the sun again. Ben was the stalwart, first every morning, last at dusk, walking, feeding the fire, walking, walking, getting those muscles ready. Nathan Lee could see his mind at work. Ben had not missed a day. For weeks he’d had the place to himself. Now it was inhabited again. The burnt sacrifices of birds and squirrels resumed, though the season was getting cold and they’d largely hunted the place out.
At the moment, Ben was walking the wall circuit. Big, loping strides carried him around the yard. Men followed behind, the earnest ones matching his pace, the slower ones yakking away.
By the fire, Eesho was holding forth about the coming armageddon. It had been over a month since Ochs had kowtowed to him, but the encounter continued to whet his appetite for disciples. Borrowing from Revelation and from the War Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls, he had patched together a hybrid parable about a giant demon, one of the Sons of Darkness, begging him for forgiveness, and a queen of the dead, a woman with green eyes and hair like red gold whose name was Miranda, and her slaves, who were Nathan Lee and Izzy. Each day his sermons became a little bolder and more intricate.
“About time someone brought that up,” the Captain replied.
Nathan Lee was surprised. “Then you’re not opposed to them going free?”
“I wouldn’t treat a dog the way we’ve had to treat those men.”
Nathan Lee was astonished. “But you’re their keeper,” he protested.
“Better me than most,” said the Captain. “Anyhow, I had this hunch someone like you might show up. And then it would need someone like me to be where I am, doing what I’m doing, who could nod his head yes.”
Nathan Lee guessed that was one way to view the universe. “You’re going to let them go?” he reiterated.
“Not yet. And not me,” said the Captain. “But when the time’s right, I’m all for you.”
“Well, all right then,” Nathan Lee said, trying to believe his luck. “So when is the right time?”
As it developed, the Captain had put a great deal of thought to it already. For the next several hours, they might as well have been discussing the release of zoo animals into the wilderness. The clones were too wild, and at the same time too tame. They were dangerous, but habituated. They couldn’t be freed anywhere close to the city, or they might try to return and prey upon it. Sending them down to the pilgrim camp would be like throwing them into quicksand. It was a pit of despair and deprivations down along the river. If the deck sweeps had not been called off, they could have been transferred by helicopter to some distant place, but now that wasn’t an option either. After Miranda’s directive shutting down human experimentation, Los Alamos had ceased the harvesting of cities, which were probably finished anyway.
Their release, in short, would have to wait until E-Day, their fabled evacuation date. Nathan Lee worried that if and when that day ever arrived, there would be so much chaos the guards might forget to open the cells. In crossing America, he had heard stories of prisons and zoos filled with the carcasses of captives who had starved to death. The Captain took the job of programming the cell doors to automatically open an hour after the city emptied.
In the meantime, Nathan Lee wanted to prepare the clones for alien times. They knew how to quarry limestone, sow wheat, work leather, smith iron, and herd goats. But survival in the ruins of America was going to require different skills. One can of spoiled food could wipe them out with botulism. One wrong highway could land them in the Canadian winter. The cities might be dead, but they were still mechanically alive, and deadly. The clones needed a crash course in the twenty-first century.
“You’ve got your work cut out,” said the Captain.
Nathan Lee went to Izzy, who thought it was a terrible idea. “I told you, they know we’re the enemy. Eesho’s got them ready to kill us if we show our faces.”
“We’ll select just one of them. Educate him. Show him the ropes. When the time comes, he can lead the rest.”
Izzy balked. “Why would any of them trust us? They’re onto us now. In their shoes, I wouldn’t trust us.”
“They’re prisoners. They have no choice.”
“Fine,” grumbled Izzy. “We’ll pick one. But which one?”
“Someone they’ll listen to.”
“Not his bloody lordship,” Izzy protested. “I’m not about to hand Eesho the keys to the castle. He already thinks he’s God almighty.”
“Not him,” Nathan Lee said, “Ben.”
Izzy chewed on his moustache. “I thought you wanted a leader. He’s a loner. Last time he had the chance, he bolted off all by himself.”
“That was different. He saw the chance and took it. And look, now, they follow him whether he wants to lead or not.”
Izzy grumbled. “Better him than most, I suppose.”
Class began next morning.
Ben was taken from the yard and led to the same spartan room where Ochs had asked Eesho for a miracle. Nathan Lee and Izzy waited for him at a table with the day’s lessons arranged on top. There was a globe of the world, a can of beans, and a can opener.
Ben
was brown as mahogany from the sun. His hair smelled smoky from the campfire. He showed no surprise at seeing them, nor hostility. His face was its usual cipher. He nodded to Izzy, but spoke to Nathan Lee. “You’ve returned,” he said. It was a greeting that presumed a journey of some kind.
“Yes, I’m back,” said Nathan Lee.
Eesho had condemned Nathan Lee and Izzy as minions of the darkness. But the microphones in the yard had also picked up clones discussing whether their two former comrades had escaped, or possibly been executed. The crucifix in the tree still haunted them.
Ben didn’t speak to such gossip. He had already expressed his opinion that late afternoon two months ago when he described Golgotha, and how he and Nathan Lee were alike, travelers who cast themselves into a wilderness of light and shadows. Nathan Lee had gone searching anew, and now he was back. That was enough for Ben. He didn’t ask where Nathan Lee had gone, nor what he’d seen. They could get into those kinds of details another time.
Ben studied Nathan Lee’s face, and maybe his face had changed. Nathan Lee had looked in his mirror, and grief had not turned his hair white nor put more lines around his eyes. Just the same, Ben saw something. “Your journey was hard,” he remarked.
He seemed personally disappointed, as if it might have been the wrong journey or Nathan Lee had been the wrong one to take it. There was nothing mystical nor pointed about it. Nathan Lee had felt the same disillusion himself listening to his father and mother after certain expeditions. Explorers were connected, no matter if they were searching on the sea or in a book. When one of them discovered a treasure, whether it was gold or a summit or a math formula, it enriched them all, because fundamentally they were driven by the same riddle. When one of them came home lost or empty-handed, all felt empty. Sooner or later the quest would resume, often with a new approach or a fresh explorer. The continuation was inevitable. There was no end to humanity’s searching, only the great circle.
Nathan Lee knew the clones would all embark on his same quest once they gained their freedom. They would go to the ends of the earth looking for their loved ones. They would never believe that two thousand years—eighty generations or more—had passed, and that their wives and children were dust. He had no intention of telling them the truth. Passing the torch, that was Nathan Lee’s job, pure and simple. There was no telling what the miles might reveal to them.
He drew the globe between them. “Here is the world. All the land. All the water.” He held his fist to one side. “Suh-rraa.” The moon. Further out, he shaped a circle in the air. “Shim-shaa.” The sun. He stopped the globe and pointed. “Israel. Jerusalem. Egypt. Rome. Baavil.” Babylon.
Ben turned his attention from the globe and its promises to Nathan Lee. “Why show them to me?” But even the flat voice and scarred, stoic mask could not hide his longing and excitement.
“It’s time to give you gool-paa-n’e,” said Nathan Lee. Wings. “You can show the others how to fly.”
“Wings,” Ben grunted cautiously.
“There is a world out there.” He gave the globe a slow spin.
“Your world.” Ben didn’t look at the globe.
So, thought Nathan Lee, Ben had bought into the tribalism. Nathan Lee was an outsider. Ben didn’t seem to hold it against him. But it was there. “It is your world, too,” he said.
“Pssh,” scoffed Ben. “Words. A trap.”
“This is no trap. When the time is right, you’ll go free.”
“You will free us?”
“Yes.”
“And so you own us.”
“Not me,” said Nathan Lee.
Ben was a tough customer. He kept testing the proposition. “You made us slaves…for nothing?”
Nathan Lee didn’t correct Ben’s choice of words. They were lab animals. It was nothing personal. There was no way to express the lowliness of that. “Ben,” he sighed, “u-saad.” Be free.
“You want us to believe again.” In what, he did not say. It was universal. Faith requires doubt, and doubt, faith. Los Alamos was built on just such a foundation.
“I see you walking,” said Nathan Lee. “Looking. Smelling the wind. You said we’re alike. I can tell that you’re getting ready to go.”
And still Ben was not convinced. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because,” said Nathan Lee, “it frees me.”
For the time being, that seemed to satisfy Ben.
Nathan Lee stopped the globe. He placed his finger on New Mexico. “We are here. A city. Los Alamos. All of this is America. Let me teach you about this place.”
Ben followed the lesson for a time, but then he returned to Nathan Lee. “Lead us,” he said.
Nathan Lee faltered. They would trust him for that? But his place was…elsewhere. He’d finished searching for what they would want. “Not me.” He wasn’t sure how to explain himself. “My heart is here.”
Out of the blue, Ben said, “Bring her with you.”
Nathan Lee was startled. He glanced at Izzy, who shrugged. “Who do you mean?” Miranda, surely. Eesho had described her to the others, the green-eyed sorceress.
“Your daughter,” Ben stated.
The walls sagged.
“What?” whispered Nathan Lee.
“The little girl,” said Ben.
Cold shot up his spine. Nathan Lee couldn’t speak.
Izzy entered roughly. He could see Nathan Lee’s shock. “Who told you about his child?” he demanded.
“No one,” said Ben. “I used to hear her singing in the night. But then she changed. She called out. She became wild. Her songs became weeping.”
The ghost of my daughter. Nathan Lee felt impaled.
“There was nothing I could do but listen,” Ben continued. “It tore at my heart. And then you came. You told her stories. You sang to her. That was the first time I heard your voice. I didn’t understand your words, but I listened. It went on for hours. You cast out her demons, one by one. And in healing her, you healed me, too. The wildness in me.”
Suddenly Nathan Lee realized what he was talking about. Ben must have heard them through the steel walls. He breathed out. “The girl,” said Nathan Lee. “Tara. The Neandertal.” The world resumed.
Izzy relaxed.
“I never told you,” Ben finished in his own tongue. “You gave me hope. That was the first time. The second time was when you brought us out from the earth, into the sun. I knew that was your hand the moment I heard your voice. And now you give us wings. Do you see what I’m saying? You lead us already. So you should come.”
He made it sound simple. Nathan Lee set the can of beans on the table. He handed Ben the can opener. “Here,” he said, “open that.”
OVER THE COMING DAYS, they entered the twenty-first century. The room came to resemble a junk pile. Nathan Lee and Izzy brought in whatever might serve the clones in the wastelands of America. Flashlights, voltage meters for every size of battery, binoculars, a Swiss Army knife, matches, a tool box, a pry bar, screws, mosquito repellant, fish hooks, tea bags, ramen noodles, a space blanket, books and magazines, an atlas, plastic bottles, a kit for testing polluted water, backpacks, wire, a box of military rations with heating pouches, chemical lights, a pair of pants with a zipper, pencils and a pencil sharpener, paper. Not everything was necessary, toilet paper, for instance, and clocks. The corners filled with things.
They spent a full day on locks, another on using a compass. Ben got bike riding lessons in a deserted hallway. When he wasn’t fiddling with gadgets, Ben was learning how to read signs, symbols, maps, colors, and expiration dates on food containers. Izzy assembled a small English/Aramaic dictionary with every generic term they might encounter on a street:Do Not Enter, High Voltage, Hospital, and even No Parking, No Smoking, and No U-Turn. There was no sense puzzling over the useless out there. At night, Ben crammed, staying awake in his cell with National Geographic magazines, and teaching himself how to write the alphabet.
At last, Nathan Lee decided it was time to go publi
c. One afternoon, Ben appeared in the yard, riding a bicycle. His fellow clones froze like statues. Ben made three circuits of the yard, weaving between astounded men, ringing his bell, then stopped by the fire. As a crowd cautiously formed around the magical device, Nathan Lee watched from the shadows of the doorway. Slowly he became aware he was being watched in return. Crouched low, staring through the curtain of flames, Eesho looked ready to kill.
* * *
EACH DAY ANOTHER HANDFUL of people gave up on Los Alamos and descended to the pilgrim camp. They had grown tired of waiting for the inevitable, or the raw Christianity called to them, or they went to alleviate the suffering, or they learned the besiegers included family members they had thought long dead. Each knew the valley was hot and painted orange with poison, and they could never return inside the fence nor gain entrance to the sanctuary. But they went with peace in their hearts, and driving truckloads of food and medicine.
Los Alamos gladly released them. It would have been useless to halt them, for one thing. And the trucks needed drivers. More to the point, people hoped these departing citizens would be received as ambassadors from the city of light. Many took their cellphones with them, and for the life of their batteries, they were able to stay in contact with their friends and neighbors on the Mesa. They usually tried to sound upbeat and resolute. It was, after all, their decision to go. After a few days, their voices broke up and they would dwindle into memory.
These émigrés were treated like assisted suicides. People sympathized with their reasoning, gave them tearful going-away parties, remembered the good times, walked them to the gate, even acted like they were making the heroic choice. For all that, the departures were considered a terrible waste of life, almost a desertion. No one could imagine doing what the expatriates were doing or going where they went.
One morning Izzy announced he was going, too. “I got a message from my brother,” he said. “It’s incredible. He’s down there in the camp.”
“Damn,” whispered Nathan Lee.
“I haven’t seen him in four years, and he’s ill, you know.” He was apologetic. “I know there’s still work to be done. But your Aramaic is good enough. I’m not needed anymore.”