Among These Bones

by Amanda Luzzader

  I decided then that I would throw Arie a birthday party. There wouldn’t be cake or balloons of course, but I’d figure out some way to make it special.

  Arie fast-forwarded through a few DVDs and then plugged in a memory card.

  “Ah, here we go,” he said. I got up from the radio and went to Arie’s side. The video showed a man lying in a hospital bed. He was damp and pallid. A young woman’s voice narrated.

  “Wave to the camera, David!”

  David flipped the bird.

  “He’s not feeling too hot,” said the woman. “We’re going to get some fluids in him and the doctors are doing some tests and he should be home soon. Anyhoo, toodles!”

  She turned the camera on herself to wave goodbye. Her eyes were brown and her hair was blond. She wore makeup. She smiled, but you could tell she didn’t mean it. She was tired. The video ended.

  “Time stamp is February 15th,”Arie said grabbing his pencil and notebook.

  “Day after Valentine’s Day?”

  “Psh,” said Arie. “No. I mean this is the first wave.”

  “Oh, right.”

  He selected the next file. It showed the blond woman holding the camera on herself again, only now she wore a white paper hospital mask and no makeup. She pulled it down to her chin and sighed.

  “I haven’t been very good about recording,” she said. “I can’t believe what’s going on.”

  She looked to have aged several years. Worry showed at the corners of her mouth. Dark circles under her eyes.

  “David’s in quarantine; they won’t let me visit him.” She turned away from the camera for a few seconds, then she was back. “School’s canceled. They won’t say for how long. I haven’t been out of the house for three days.” The woman stared down for several seconds at something off camera, and then shrugged.

  The video ended.

  “Now we’re at March first,” Arie said pointing at the list of files. “That takes us to—what? Two weeks out?”

  Arie selected the next file.

  The lady with the camera again. “Guys, I’m really scared. This is serious. Like serious-serious. People are dying and—”

  She covered her eyes and sobbed. The camera wandered away from her face for a while. Then she pointed it at herself again.

  “They think it’s spread through the air. We don’t even know if they know, so how can we—”

  There was pounding on our front door and shouting outside.

  “What’s that?” Arie asked. He paused the video.

  More pounding. It had to be a goon squad. No one would be pounding on the door like that at this hour.

  “Turn off the television!” I shouted. “Turn everything off! And hide!”

  Arie frantically shut down his electronics. I ran through the house shutting off the lights, first upstairs and then down, and then my pulse accelerated as I crept in the darkness toward the window at the front of the house.

  A heavy curtain was drawn across the window. I parted it just enough to see the porch.

  There was a young woman there. She had a gash on her head and her nose was bloody. Blood trailed down her face and neck.

  “Help!” she shouted into surface of the door. “Please help me!” She glanced back over her shoulder then pounded with increased intensity. She knew we were inside. She’d seen our lights.

  Arie reappeared. In the darkness, I could barely make him out.

  “Are you going to let her in?” he whispered.

  “No,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.

  “Well we can’t just leave her out there,” he said, gesturing at the door. “We’ve gotta do something.”

  “We have to protect ourselves, Arie. You know that. Whoever she’s running from will end up in here.”

  “But, but we have to help her. Hide her or—”

  “No, Arie, you go hide.”

  “But—”

  “Go!”

  As he left, I sat in front of the door, my back against it. The woman pounded on the door, and could feel the impact in my ribcage. I thought she might break down the door. A few moments later, I heard men’s voices. The young woman screamed and ran off. There was shouting somewhere down the street, and then it was quiet again.

  I shut my eyes. Arie was disappointed and hurt. I could tell. He always wanted to help everyone, but he didn’t know how dangerous that could be. Sometimes it seemed risky to go and collect our rations or even just step out of the house. There was never enough food or fuel or clean water. I’d heard that we lived in one of the safer Zones, but still we saw fights in the streets in broad daylight, and when it was dark, the desperate and murderous preyed on the unsuspecting and the weak.

  The Agency sent goons to patrol the Zones, but they weren’t disciplined or even trained, and they were known to cause as much trouble as they prevented. If we got involved every time someone cried for help, it would soon be us pounding on some random door and disappearing in the middle of the night. I wanted to help people. Of course I did. And I was proud of Arie for wanting that, too, but we had to take care of ourselves first. That was the world we lived in. Why did the woman have to come to our house? Who was she, and what would become of her? I tried to drive her from my mind, but she wouldn’t go easily.

  In the morning, I woke up on the floor in front of the door. The electricity was off again, and Arie was asleep. I went quietly out onto the porch with a wet rag and wiped away the blood.

  CHAPTER 4

  Arie and I didn’t talk much that morning. He had powdered eggs and tea for breakfast, then busied himself in the den, reading and filing the magazines he’d found. Arie had amassed hundreds of magazines and newspapers just in the previous nine months, to say nothing of the videos and computer documents and all the electronic devices he’d found. He kept diaries he’d found, too, and appointment books, photos, and letters. Anything about the year or so before the pandemic—he read it, collated it, curated it.

  There were documents at the Agency depot that told the official history of the pandemic, but they were unsatisfying, suspiciously vague, and—as Arie had discovered—frequently inaccurate. So, Arie devoured any scrap of information he could find. He filled one bookshelf and then another. Now his magazines and materials nearly filled three floor-to-ceiling shelf units in the den, and still he searched the neighborhoods outside our Zone boundaries whenever he could.

  I had tried several times to make him give up the searching, but he wouldn’t. I tried to make him search less frequently, but at times it was all he ever wanted to do. And so we fell into a kind of rhythm. I insisted on moving quickly, quietly, and being as careful and safe as we could. Arie agreed to that at least. Some days I almost felt safer out there in the empty neighborhoods. There were certainly fewer people to deal with, fewer riots and enforcement sweeps, but the stakes were undoubtedly higher—the lone patrol we saw and that pack of dogs would probably be enough to keep Arie home for at least a couple weeks. I was glad for that.

  In the afternoon it was cloudy and cold, but the chores were done. We had water and supplies to last a few days, and so Arie continued working quietly and intently, indexing and cross-referencing his findings. It was as if he thought he could construct a printed, freestanding memory of everything that had happened before Year One.

  In a way, we were searching for ourselves, too. There was always a chance that we’d walk into a house and see dust-caked portraits of our younger, happier selves. We had no idea where we’d come from originally—it was said that the Agency had corralled all survivors into a system of Zones; we could have come from anywhere. But the minuscule chance of happening upon the house that used to belong to us was one of the few things that kept me going along, despite my fear.

  That evening, as I was making soup for supper, Arie came into the kitchen and sat in the bay window with his knees drawn up nearly to his chin. He opened the girl’s flowered diary I found, holding it close to his face and straining in the failing gray light to read the forme
r owner’s squiggly cursive. I stayed quiet, waiting for him to speak first. I stirred the soup, and the room gradually filled with its aroma.

  “The Sky Dreamer,” Arie blurted.

  He looked up from the diary. And I looked at him.

  “The Ferris wheel we saw,” he said. “That’s what they called it.”

  “Sky Dreamer,” I repeated, nodding.

  “She rode it,” he said, holding up the diary. “She went with her friends.”

  “Anything interesting?” I asked. “Anything important?”

  Arie shrugged. “Nah.”

  “Soup’s ready,” I said, turning the handle on the little propane burner we used to cook. It was just old canned tomato soup, but it steamed invitingly as I poured it into bowls. There were a few half-stale flour biscuits. Now that winter was approaching, we had to dress warmly, even indoors, with sweaters and scarves and fingerless gloves. The soup would warm us up.

  “You should write down what happened with the dogs,” Arie said.

  I shrugged.

  “You’ll want to know how you got those scars,” he said, gesturing at my bandaged leg. “You’ve got to write down the everyday things, too.”

  It was Arie’s idea to keep journals. The Agency said we didn’t need to. In fact, they gently discouraged it, said it would only confuse us when we woke up again each year. They said it was their job to keep our important information for us, stored on the microchips beneath our skin. Name, address, family, allergies, medical conditions. Every year, when we forgot, they gave it all back to us. But we lost everything else. Things we did, people we met, our experiences. We had one year of memories, and then we started over again. That is what they told us.

  Arie said we had to write every day, that it was important. He said it would be a way to get to know ourselves again after waking up. He said it would put us ahead of the game, too, that it would help us survive in the harsh circumstances of life in the Zones. And that was true enough—there was so much to know, so many shortcuts and tricks to get by. But Arie thought it was more than that. He wouldn’t say what it was, but I knew he had other reasons for keeping his journals.

  I had a hard time with it, though. It took time, for one thing, a commodity that often ran short, and Agency couldn’t resupply it. It was also hard to believe it would make any difference, and the Agency personnel were always announcing that they were close to fixing the memory problems of the serum.

  “When was the last time you journaled, anyway?” asked Arie when I handed him a bowl of the soup.

  It was so like him to check up on me that way. As though he were the one in charge. There was so much in his personality that was different from mine—he could be bossy, stubborn, and sometimes arrogant. Where did that come from?

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I will.”

  “Mom. Promise me.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said taking a spoonful of soup. “I will.”

  “Okay, but really do it,” he said. “It’s everything. What’s the point of doing anything if we’re not going to remember it? Having a family? Living a life? How can we know who we are without memories? Really, how can you love someone you don’t even remember?”

  I blew on my soup. “It’s worked all right for us.”

  Arie sighed and sipped his. “Yeah, but it’s like we die every year. We’re not the same people; we don’t exist anymore, but we keep on living. Whoever we are just disappears, but we don’t die. This started with a plague, a sickness, but it’s the zombie apocalypse now. We’re all just mindless zombies doing whatever the Agency tells us to.”

  “It’s not gone,” I said. I took his hand. “You said yourself. The memories are still there. We just have to unlock them. And we will. But until then, we still have each other, and that’s what counts, whether I recognize you next year or not. Some things you know even when you don’t remember. Some things can’t be erased.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you think we ever rode one?” he asked.

  “Rode what?”

  “A Ferris wheel. The Sky Dreamer.”

  I shrugged. “I probably did. But I’d never take you.”

  “What?” He lifted his head. “Why not?”

  “You get woozy just turning in a circle,” I said. “You’d probably barf all over me.”

  He laughed a little. I chucked him on the shoulder.

  “I wonder if that ever happened,” he said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll remember next year.”

  There was a familiar knock at the door. Two quick taps, a pause, and then one more. It was Gary Gosford, the Agency man. He always knocked that way. I went to the door and opened it.

  “Hello, Alison,” he said, his thick eyebrows knitted. “I heard you got hurt.”

  Gary wore a long coat of gray wool and a dark felt Homburg. He had a round face that was friendly but with a touch of melancholy. Around his waist he carried the spread of middle age, and his shoulders were rounded.

  I held up a hand, tried to wave off his concern.

  “Why didn’t you have them fetch me?” he complained. “You still have no idea what a difference it makes having a friend in the Agency. I’m sure I could’ve helped.”

  Unlike the other Agency enforcers we knew and had heard about, Gary treated those of us in the general population like real people—especially, it seemed, when it came to Arie and me. He occasionally brought us extra rations, and sometimes he’d help us with big chores and heavy lifting.

  Gary and the others who worked for the Agency had been certified as being in remission and no longer needing the annual serum treatments. Because he could move freely among those who carried the virus, and because he’d been able to keep the memories he’d accumulated since being Remission Certified, Gary and others like him were culled from the general population to act as Agency supervisors, liaisons, and security personnel.

  Gary was a senior supervisor in our Zone, some kind of middle administer and probably very busy, but he took time once in a while to check on Arie and me. Maybe he knew how difficult it must be for a single mom living in the Zones, and he really just wanted to help, but I often suspected Gary was interested in more than just friendship. It could never happen, of course—he was Remission Certified and I was in gen-pop, but I had to admit it was mildly flattering.

  “We’re fine, Gary. Really. You’re busy. There was no reason to bother you.”

  Gary stepped onto the threshold. He didn’t come all the way in, but he touched my shoulder. “You’re really all right?”

  “Completely. Just cuts and scratches.”

  “What happened?” he asked. “Dogs, I heard?”

  Gary was, technically, the same as the thugs who rough-handled us at the infirmary and the rollers in the armored vehicle we crossed paths with the day before—those we called goons. Gary was a goon. He dressed much better, but he did work for the Agency. Still, I trusted him. He knew about Arie’s collection, which he could probably find a way to construe as against the rules, but he’d never said a word about it. Aside from Arie, he really was the best friend I had.

  “This is unacceptable,” said Gary, shaking his head. “I’m gonna order up a few extra teams this week. It’s bad enough dealing with some of the people in gen-pop. Now we’ve got rabid dogs running around?”

  “That’s nice, Gary, but it was our fault. We were down by the river bottoms, looking for asparagus. Not a big deal.”

  “Oh, not a big deal? You could have been killed.”

  Arie sidled up next to me. “Hey, Mr. G.”

  “Hey, Arie. How’s it going?”

  “Pretty good.”

  Gary’s eyes went to the bandages on Arie’s hands and arm. “You, too? Your mom was just telling me you guys got into some dog trouble.”

  “She told you?” asked Arie, one eyebrow lifted.

  “Yes, Arie, I told Mr. Gosford—”

  “Gary.”

  “—that we were down in the river bottom looking fo
r asparagus and we got jumped by those dogs. Good lesson learned, right? But we’ll live, right?”

  Arie’s eyes narrowed for a nearly imperceptible, but then he nodded.

  “Yeah, but you guys are lucky,” said Gary. “Coulda been much worse. Next time you get an asparagus craving, let me know.” He chuckled. “I’ll come with you.”

  Arie nodded, then gestured at Gary’s hand and the cloth sack he held. “Whadja bring us?”

  “Arie!” I chastised.

  Gary smiled. “As a matter of fact, I bought a few things.” He held out the sack.

  “Gary, you know you don’t need to bring us anything.”

  “Eh. It’s no trouble.”

  Arie snatched the bag from him and peeked inside. “Yes. Peanut butter!” He rummaged the sack as he went to the kitchen.

  “I know you don’t like peanut butter, Alison, but there’s some other things in there. Some soap. It’s lavender, I think. And some flour. Oh, and sugar—a cup or two at least. And some other stuff.”

  “You’re spoiling us,” I told him. “But thanks, Gary. For everything.”

  “I gotta go,” he said.

  I was almost glad—I couldn’t wait to get my hands on that soap. It might be nice to smell good for a bit, but we’d probably end up trading away most of the items—there was no sense in having luxuries when we could trade them for necessities. May I could just smell the soap, then trade it for eggs. But Arie was probably already halfway through that jar of peanut butter.

  “I’m just glad you guys are okay. I gotta run. But I am gonna send a team or two to find these dogs. Or maybe I’ll just have to go after them myself.”