by James, Guy
Jack looked to be deep in thought for a few moments, then he turned to Alan. “Do you think I could be a cleaner one day,” Jack said, “like you?”
“Like I was, you mean,” Alan said. “There aren’t any active crews right now, and I’m not sure there will be anytime soon.”
“Why not?” Jack said.
“Well… You see, Jack—” Alan glanced at Senna, uncertain. She nodded, as if to say ‘Go for it. Why not?’
“At first,” Alan went on, “you had to be on a crew if you were a certain age. But, after a time, the crews were stopped because it got too dangerous.”
“What do you mean,” Jack said, “even more dangerous?”
Alan sighed. “I mean it became dangerous to the survival of the human race. We were losing too many people trying to burn the virus out, so we had to stop, and go back to the settlements. All the crews were disbanded, and I don’t think that we’re in a position to start them up again because the human population hasn’t recovered enough.”
Alan had left the crews too early to know firsthand, but there had been spotters and cleaners who’d refused to disband, some of whom he’d worked with, had fought with, side by side before he and Senna went off on their own way. They’d left before the official end of the crews was announced, but it had been obvious already.
They’d taken out tens of thousands of zombies, but it was only a small fraction of all the zombies out there. By contrast, the number of human survivors who’d died doing it was not at all a small fraction, more like a very large and bloody chunk of the pie, which had already been made too small by the outbreak.
After the government ordered the crews to scatter, vigilante teams formed, and they’d continued to fight the virus. Alan felt a pang of shame for having left the cause, even though it had been officially shut down soon after he left. He’d wanted to start a life with Senna, not a normal life, of course, but some kind of life, all the same.
They’d tried to convince their best friend on the crew, Charlie Moody, to come with them, but he’d refused to give up the fight. They agreed they’d target New Crozet as their retirement spot and meet there someday, after Charlie was satisfied that he’d done his part. He’d never come. On market days, Alan had for some years been in the habit of asking after Charlie, but no word ever came.
The traders only confirmed what everyone in New Crozet had experienced: no one who’d joined a vigilante team had ever made it to any settlement. Perhaps that didn’t mean they were all dead, although it was hard to imagine what else it could mean.
Alan couldn’t believe that men and women so skilled would all have succumbed to the virus. He was certain that some still lived, somewhere, in a faraway settlement, maybe, having joined it after realizing that the battle they were fighting was unwinnable.
Jack didn’t need to know about that. There was no sense putting wild ideas into his head at his age.
Jack looked uncertain. “So you had to stop,” he said.
“That’s right,” Alan said.
“We will get the world back soon, though, won’t we?” Jack asked.
Alan pursed his lips, looked at the boy and said, “Of course, Jack. It’s just a matter of time. We’ll regroup and…” He trailed off.
While Alan was regaining his composure, Senna said, “We’ll regroup and get rid of the rest of the zombies. We’ll burn them up in a huge bonfire and then we’ll be able to take down all these fences and run in the forest and be free again. Just you wait, Jack, there’ll come a day soon when the virus is gone, and all of us will be around to enjoy it. You, and me, and Alan—” she glanced at Alan, “—we’ll go pick berries in the forest and meet people from other settlements, and you, Jack, you’re going to have a large role in rebuilding the world. You too, Sasha. You both will.”
“Me?” Jack said, his eyes growing wide and onion juice pooling at the corners of his mouth.
“Yes,” Senna said, “You’re going to help rebuild civilization, and you’ll have children one day, and you and they will be the future of the world. You’re very important, Jack.”
Jack smiled shyly. He stared down at his hands. “Wow. I hope I can do all that stuff.”
“You can,” Senna said, “and you will.”
Sasha looked like she was considering the grandeur of what had been said. Then she popped the sectioned onion bits into her mouth and began to chew.
The conversation was starting to make Alan uncomfortable. He’d gone over many of these points with Jack before, and although he understood that repetition was necessary for Jack to learn and remember, the conversations dredged up memories that Alan preferred to keep in the cobwebbed recesses of his mind. He would have to go through this again with Sasha when she was older and he wasn’t exactly looking forward to it.
Repression is bliss, he thought. Then he said, “I think I’m going to take a walk through the farm.”
Senna and Jack both looked up at him, surprised. Sasha was preoccupied with chewing and swallowing the last of her breakfast, intent on chewing each bit of onion ten plus ten plus ten times, a technique that Jack had taught her.
“Unless you have any more questions for me, of course,” Alan added quickly.
Jack shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“Bye Alan,” Sasha said, piping up suddenly. A masticated piece of onion popped out of her mouth. She caught it in her hand and peered at it skeptically. Escaping bits of food weren’t to be trusted.
Alan said, “See you later, Sasha.” He smiled and began to walk away.
“Alan?” Jack called after him.
Alan turned around and looked at the boy. Doing his best to smile he said, “Yes, Jack?”
“Uh, why do they call it a Voltaire?”
Alan pressed his lips into a line, then took a deep breath. “I think that’s a story for another time.”
Without waiting for a reply, he turned and walked around the back of the house, leaving the children with Senna. A cool breeze greeted him there, and he was grateful for the way it washed over his body, seeming as it did so to sweep some of the unease from him.
It helped to get his mind off the rec-crews where he’d been a cleaner and had overfilled his mental image bank with blood and death and burning. He knew that he’d be thinking about the past a great deal this evening when he went through his pre-market ritual, and he wanted to at the very least put ancient history out of his mind for the present moment. The daytime should be filled, to the extent it can be, with the present.
It wouldn’t leave him, however.
How had they all been so stupid to think they could root the virus out? It had taken hold of the planet, there was no getting free, and that should have been obvious back then. It was obvious, but they ignored it. All the lives that were lost, Allie’s and Charlie’s included, were for nothing.
So many of them should still have been alive, and in New Crozet. The wisest thing to do would have been to admit defeat and go into hiding earlier, much earlier. Was there shame in that? Was there shame in giving up to the virus if it meant surviving a little while longer?
It doesn’t matter, Alan thought. None of that matters. There’s only life and prolonging it.
Worse than considering the past was imagining the future. Would Jack and Sasha ever rebuild the world? Would anyone? It was an unknown. For now, there was only the present, with Senna and the children and the other townspeople. The present was real. The future, on the other hand, was just a bleak and mostly hopeless blur.
The world sent the wind to rustle its leaves, drawing itself up to prepare for the transition to the latter part of the morning. To Alan, it was a world alive, though it dwelled in the shadow of the virus, it did live, steeling itself in a stance of primeval resilience, in which it would remain steadfast until the final moment, awaiting the virus’s ultimate mutation.
24
Suddenly, Alan felt loopy, as if he were looking at the world not from within the confines of his own body, but from the viewpo
int of someone or something that was at the same time larger and smaller than he, a being that was neither alive nor dead, existing in a space without space, seeing the world and its disease for what they truly were. It was like being somewhere else, and apart from everything.
In that place of detachment where he found himself, seeing the human events of the world from an inhuman distance that imparted triviality to everything people did, he saw Senna and himself, and what there was between them, and for some reason it couldn’t be made small or unimportant. It—they, were burning with a fire brighter and hotter than any inferno he’d ever set.
The flames representing their love shone mightily upward from the surface of the world, as if the planet was proud of them and wanted all of the universe to see. Then Alan’s focus broadened and he moved away, taking in the larger picture as clarity increased by degrees, illuminating dark corners and their unique arrangements of dust.
They were marvelous dust piles, meticulously placed to give the illusion of randomness, but that was all they were: clever ruses, deceptions. He felt that he was a mere inch away from understanding, from stepping into that awareness of the meaning behind the struggle he’d endured, the moments he’d lived, the family and friends he’d lost, the great love he’d won, the…
25
“Are you okay?” Senna asked.
He stepped back into himself without knowing it, and it felt like what daylight must feel in the final moments of dusk, fading away into nothingness.
“Yeah, I…yes,” he said, without turning to look at her. “I’m fine.”
He looked around. All the colors seemed to be gone from the world, to have been drained out of it. He squinted up at the sky, then at the farm, then up at the mountains. Everything had lost its luster.
Then he turned to Senna and swallowed hard, his eyes going wide in disbelief. She was radiating all of the world’s brilliance, as if she’d absorbed it all and it was inside her. He’d always thought she glowed, but not like this.
Senna was on the verge of asking Alan if he was alright again, but she stopped herself and locked eyes with him instead, smiling a warm inviting smile with a hint of coquetry that reminded him of the previous night’s activities. He grinned, and the hues of the world and Senna restored themselves to their normal states.
The odd things he’d just seen left his mind, sweeping up their trails as they went.
He walked farther from the back of the house and surveyed the farmland. Senna grew turnips, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, peaches, corn and sweet corn, snap beans, cucumbers, apples, and grapes. She’d picked the produce for the farm herself after talking to the other townspeople about what grew best there. When she’d made up her mind about what she would grow, that had been the end of the story. She was a very willful woman.
Not all of the willful had survived, but all of those who’d survived were willful. Smiling weakly, he thought on how he was a passive sort compared to most of the others, and especially compared to Senna.
His gaze roamed over the farm, its crops arranged in neat rows with blackberry bushes scattered between them. The blackberries made Alan think of the preserves Senna made, and he pictured her in the kitchen, in her old, flowered apron, crushing and sugaring the fresh fruit, sometimes wearing something under the apron, and other times not. The thought put a lump in his throat.
“Jack’s left to do his chores,” Senna said, startling him out of his reverie, “and Sasha’s gone with him.”
He turned and saw Senna standing beside him, looking up at the Blue Ridge Mountains. Grey clouds were brooding just over their tops, the many shades of grey coalescing as if in contemplation of an alliance.
“Not storm clouds,” Alan mumbled, “just…” he trailed off.
“What?” Senna said, looking at him with a quizzical expression on her face.
He shook his head. “I have no idea where I was going with that.”
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I’ll make us some breakfast soon. I need to start using up that honey I got from Nell. Better to eat it while it’s fresh.”
Nell Rodgers had a house at the western edge of New Crozet. She kept bees there, whose honey she harvested. She was New Crozet’s premier trader, and probably the only reason the town got any traders for market at all. Besides the honey, which was prized by all within trading distance, Nell also made a number of protein-rich products, most of which Alan found disagreeable.
“I’m getting there,” Alan said. “Whenever you want to eat is fine by me.”
Senna smiled. “No protein slurry for you this morning?”
He cringed. The idea of eating insects mashed up in a paste of corn, honey, and mushrooms made his stomach turn.
“No, thank you,” he said.
“It’s not so bad, really, once you get over what’s in it. The one with the dragonflies and beetles that she’s made this month is actually very tasty. I don’t like the one with the bees as much, though.”
“It’s not the taste that bothers me,” he said. “You know that.” Nell’s bug and insect products could be surprisingly satisfying. They had an earthy attribute that Alan found pleasant, but it was the concept of what he was eating that made him uncomfortable.
“I know,” Senna said. “But it’s one of the healthiest things in town. Just look at what it’s done for Nell’s son. Rad’s already the tallest person in town, and he might grow to be even wider in the shoulders than Tom.”
“I’m trying to eat more of it, really.”
“It’s a good thing you’re a fully grown man already.” She grinned. “My man.”
“And you’re my woman, woman,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “Now and forever.”
She sighed and her back muscles relaxed, giving her stance a deeply contented look. Turning to him she pressed her body against his, then took his free hand and placed it on the curve of her hip and squeezed his hand there and sighed again, more lightly this time. He caught the scent of her hair, decadent, as always, and he found that the lump in his throat had grown. Then her hand was suddenly in his pocket, reaching for him.
She let out a slight moan. “Looks like you’re good and ready to earn that breakfast.”
“Uhuh,” he managed.
She grabbed him and led him after her into the farm. Between the rows of corn, Senna pulled Alan down on top of her in the wet grass. There, on the uncovered ground, they expressed their open love for each other, while above the Blue Ridge Mountains, the gathering clouds set a course for the rising sun.
26
Senna and Alan were lying in the grass, panting, their perspiring bodies keeping the ground underneath them and the dew that they’d trapped there warm. Senna’s left palm was resting on the lower part of her belly, her fingers making small, contemplative circles on her bronzed skin.
Alan made a move at pulling away from her, wanting to stand up, but Senna stopped him, wrapping her arms around his chest and holding him tight.
“Not yet,” she said. “Just lay here with me for a while.”
“Alright,” he said, and picked his arm up so that she could slide under it and put her head on his chest. She did.
“Let’s lay here forever,” she said.
“We’d freeze,” he said, smiling.
“I know a couple ways to stay warm.”
He looked over at her and saw that she was biting her lip. He laughed. “You’re insatiable, you know that?”
“Only when I’m around you.” She raised her head and grazed her teeth against his bare chest. “You bring it out in me.”
Alan put a hand on the back of Senna’s neck and drew her closer to him.
“I love you,” he whispered, and kissed the top of her head.
“I love you too,” she said. She closed her eyes and sighed, pressing her head into the space between his shoulder and neck. “So much. With all my being.”
After a time, they pulled their clothes back on and stood up. Alan walked toward the house and Se
nna followed. He stopped at the border of the farm and turned around. There he looked at a spot where an apple tree had once stood, until lightning had split it down the middle two years earlier.
There was a sapling there now, one of Senna’s many attempts to get her apple production up. The saplings hadn’t been taking, and Alan doubted this one would either. The land was tiring out. Perhaps it was blighted now. Perhaps the virus was finally in the plants, too. Perhaps this was the last—
“Will you tell me?” Senna asked, an imploring note in her melodious voice.
He looked at her and knew what she was asking about. She was persistent in all things, and this was no exception.
“You promised that you would…eventually,” she said. At once she regretted having used the word ‘promised.’ She didn’t want him to feel like she was pressuring him, like she was prying into memories he didn’t want reopened.
“I just want to know,” she said, “to know you better. I want to know more about you. I always do.”
He knew what it had been like for her because she’d already told him, and he remembered how disappointed she’d been when he didn’t share his own story. She’d confided in him, she’d told him something so personal, and he hadn’t been willing to reciprocate, at least not all the way. He’d told her bits and pieces, so she knew much of it, though not all.
He’d held out for years, but now felt different for some reason. Now he almost wanted to tell her. It wouldn’t be everything, he didn’t want her to live with the full weight of what was in his mind, but it was time to share some more, to share the burden, perhaps.
Senna took his hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry I keep asking,” she said. “I just…I just want to know what it was like for you.”
He nodded, and, looking beyond the sapling he saw where he thought the wild indigo was, growing at the farm’s outskirts just past Senna’s great magnolia tree. The blue flowers crept closer each year, as if they were waiting for a proper invitation to come inside. Go go indigo. In-di-go. He looked for the spots where they’d flowered in the spring, but without the bright coloring of the petals to show him the way, he couldn’t find them.