The Agency had drilled us on the dangers of approaching the corpses—because of the pandemic and other possible infection. And so we’d pull the door shut and back away if we knew there were dead inside.
And we’d seen those who died much more recently. The chip-rippers and squatters who decided to go it alone without the Agency’s help and died outside the Zones. The virus likely got most of them, but there were other causes. Starvation, exposure, murder—the death who stalked us wore a hundred faces.
Some of the dead, I often suspected, simply had insufficient purpose to live. No one can predict the future, but the ability to recall the past can be a strong shield against the vicious blows of future uncertainty. Without that awareness, without any idea of who they’d been, the amnesiac pandemic survivors labored under the wild and shifting burden of the present moment, trapped in that instant, without memories or wisdom to look back on, and no hope to look forward to. Little surprise then that some ended their own lives and others simply collapsed in the street without apparent cause.
And no wonder the living skirted those unfortunate fallen until the hazmat team arrived to sweep them up and carry them away like spilled garbage.
In fact, you could say it had become commonplace in this world to pass by the dead and dying without the wherewithal to mourn or ask after them. But even that pathetic existence hadn’t prepared for me for the evidence of death we saw there in the meadow. The sheer scale of it. And the truth of it—for the first time I knew the pandemic was something actual. Not something abstract or falsified. It wasn’t propaganda or even something historical. Here was a journal of the plague written in an alphabet of bones. Acres of them. The Agency might have been stealing our memories for some sinister purpose, but that did not mean we hadn’t died by the thousands and millions before they took over. How many more graves like this must there be?
Who were they, really? A toddler running through a sprinkler, a teenager driving his first car, an elderly couple sharing a sunset.
Among these bones, upon which fell both sun and snow, were there people I once knew? Or loved?
All at once, the fragility of not just my own life and the people I knew but that of all humanity weighed on me with such force that I grew dizzy, and could only breathe in gasps.
Chase joined me at my side; his face bleak and arms folded.
“So, what they told us is true.” I said.
Chase stared at the ground.
“You’ve been here before?” I asked.
“Not here,” he said. “There are others.”
“So many.”
Without a word, Chase wrapped his arms around me, tucking my head beneath his chin, and we stood there a long time—the only two people alive.
CHAPTER 22
It was night again by the time we made it back to Thrill Harbor. The great spokes of the Sky Dreamer masked the sea of stars in the moonless night. We climbed over the barricades in the icy gloom and walked. The funhouse door was a huge clown’s face with a mouth frozen grotesque laugh which loomed darkly as we passed by.
Soon we reached the tunnel under the Ferris wheel, where I’d first met Glen, and my throat tightened involuntarily. Despite the more-or-less favorable conclusion to that encounter, I all at once recalled the fear that gripped me that day as he stepped from the shadows and put his hands on me. I looked up and saw Chase getting ahead of me and so I quickened my pace.
It had been sunny that day. The icy mud in the bottom of the tunnel must have melted and then refrozen in the night, because the ground was now as smooth and hard as an ice rink. As I walked faster to catch Chase, my boot lost its grip and I fell—the kind of a fall that begins with pin-wheeling arms and a frantic frictionless shuffle, then continues with a feet-in-the-air freefall, and ends with the dull thud of landing squarely on the back with a smart crack to the skull. Electric sparks strobed for an instant behind my eyelids.
I wasn’t sure if Chase had heard my head bang on the ice or the breathless “oof” I emitted, but he stopped and turned back.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I thought about the question for a few seconds.
“Yeah,” I croaked.
“You sure?”
I thought about it.
“No,” I sighed.
He chuckled.
“I’ll help you up.”
I heard him moving toward me and so I lay there on my back and waited.
“You really hurt?” He knelt by me.
“I don’t think so.” I propped myself on one elbow. “Just hurts.”
“Hit your head?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, hang on,” he said. “Stay still a sec.”
He got out his flashlight and clicked it on. I touched the back of my head, squinting at the sudden brightness.
“I don’t see any blood,” said Chase. “But as your doctor I’m afraid I must recommend that you not try out for the Ice Capades this year.”
“Just help me up,” I said, grabbing at him feebly.
“Wait a sec. Hold still. Jeeze.” He took off his jacket, rolled it up, and set it under my head. Then he shined the flashlight into my eyes, first one and then the other, gently holding my eyelids open with his fingers.
“Feel sick?” he asked. “Nauseous?”
“You mean nauseated,” I corrected.
He laughed. It was a curt guffaw, but was good to hear even that much laughter. “Do you feel nauseated?” he corrected.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “I guess not.”
“Okay. Let’s get you up.”
He stood, gripped my forearm, and leaned back to haul me up. I was partway upright when without warning Chase’s feet slipped and he repeated my pinwheeling spill onto the ice. He landed on his back and I landed again on mine. For a long moment we lay there on our backs and neither of us said anything.
“You all right?” I asked after a minute.
“Yeah,” said Chase.
“You sure?”
“No,” he sighed.
I laughed, then Chase laughed. And we kept laughing for a while. It was as though my body could take no more sadness, and though it really wasn’t that funny, I found I couldn’t stop. And it was the first time I could remember having really laughed since I’d been with Arie. It was as though I’d been denying myself the privilege of smiles and laughter, and through that one tiny rupture it came pouring out like a lake through the breach in a burst dam. Tears filled my eyes, I held my sides, and soon I hadn’t enough air to breathe.
When I finally recovered, I looked at over at Chase. His little flashlight had bounced away from him and it lit part of the tunnel wall with its sideways-shining beam. Chase sat on his butt watching me, his folded arms resting on his knees.
“Are you quite finished?” he asked with a weary smile.
“Oh god.” I wiped my eyes and took several deep breaths. “Yeah,” I chuckled. “I’m finished. But if it’s all right with you, please don’t try to help me anymore.”
As I got to my feet on the slippery ground, I saw the graffiti painted in red, which I’d seen the first day I’d come to the amusement park to find Ruby. My eyes absently scanned the crazy lettering, but then locked onto the large symbol sprayed nearby in the same color paint.
It was the figure of a human skull combined with the face of a clock on the forehead.
Chase must have noticed the change in my expression because he stood hastily and came to my side.
“Al?”
“Look!” I cried, pointing.
He read the words and stepped forward.
“Okay,” said Chase, squinting at the crazy writing. “Boats against the current. Great Gatsby. So?”
“The skull!” I said. “That’s the skull!”
He bent down and picked up the flashlight, then shined it directly on the symbol. “Yeah. I’ve seen this. Where have I seen this?”
I tore Arie’s coded notebook from my backpack and nearly shoved it i
nto Chase’s face.
Chase shined the flashlight beam on the red cover of the notebook, then the tunnel wall, and back again.
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
My spine tingled in the damp darkness of the tunnel, and I shivered. For a moment, it was as though Arie had joined us in the tunnel, or we had joined him. I pictured him standing there painting the letters with spray cans he’d found somewhere, crouching and lifting himself onto tiptoes to elongate the letters.
“All these times I’ve come through here,” said Chase. “I don’t think I’d ever really looked at that.”
“Wait,” I said. My heart hammered in my chest. Blood roared in my ears. I grabbed Chase by the sleeve of his jacket to steady myself. “Wait.”
He cradled my elbows and frowned. “What? What?”
I spoke slowly. “What did you say about The Great Gatsby?”
He swept the beam of his light across the wall and the red letters.
“Boats against the current,” he said, suddenly unsure of himself. “That’s—a line from The Great Gatsby. The last line. Isn’t it?”
“Oh, no!”
“What?” cried Chase. I felt as though I might collapse.
“That’s the key,” I said. “The Great Gatsby. The code. The key. I have it. It’s at my house.” I let go of Chase and stuffed the notebook into my backpack. Then I turned back and started for the mouth of the tunnel, nearly slipping as I slung the pack onto my back again.
“I have to go. I have to go right now.”
“Hold on,” he said. “I’ll go with you. Al, wait up. Wherever it is you need to be off to, I’ll help.”
Just then Chase’s radio squawked.
“Mountain Lion, where the hell are you?” asked Ruby.
Chase looked at the radio.
“You need to be with them,” I said. “They’re in mourning. I can get the book on my own.”
Chase pressed his lips together, but then he nodded.
It felt like we needed to be together—all of us—after we’d lost so much. But discovering what could possibly be the key to Arie’s secret diary held an immediacy I couldn’t avoid. I’d been given the chance again to talk to him, and I couldn’t turn down that chance for anything. The red paint screamed out on the wall of the tunnel like a neon sign.
“I’ll get the book, and I’ll come right back,” I told him. “Tell them all how sorry I am.”
I found my bike at the park entrance and I hurriedly unlocked it and then I was off. I stood up on the pedals and rode fast toward home in the frigid night. The icy air rushing across my face made my eyes water, and my hands ached and then turned numb with cold, but I was warm inside from the mixture of hope and adrenaline.
At the time, I didn’t know the significance of my decision to leave Chase there in the tunnel. I didn’t know that it would change everything.
CHAPTER 23
I biked faster than I ever had before. An urgency pressed on my mind, an excitement. Had I ever in the past nine or ten months been so excited? My legs burned and then they ached, but I only pedaled harder.
I knew just where to find the book. It was in Arie’s room. A bluish book cover with a painting of a woman’s face and an amusement park. While I rode I imagined holding it in my hands, sitting on the bed with it and Arie’s notebook. Finding out, at last, the secret words that could be the key to understanding his disappearance or at the very least knowing him more—unearthing another layer of my son who already in my mind was so complex and beautiful. I needed to hear his words in my mind. I needed it.
My hands shook as I ditched the bike in the front yard without locking it, and I scrambled up the porch steps and into the house.
I raced up the stairs and into Arie’s bedroom, which was still in disarray from my earlier frantic searching. But I found the messy pile of books which I’d removed from his book shelf. I knelt and sorted through them. I knew what I was looking for, exactly what I was looking for. Blue cover. Woman’s face. Amusement park.
But it wasn’t there.
Perhaps I’d just missed it. I forced myself to slow down, to pick up the books one at a time. I arranged them in a neat pile, double checked, triple checked.
But it wasn’t there.
After taking a few breaths, deliberately slowed down. I tried to calm myself. It was here somewhere. It had to be.
“Okay, just breathe for a sec,” I told myself.
My eyes surveyed the room. There was the desk, the bed, the dresser. The books had been there. I’d searched through them before finding Arie’s notebook and then—
A sudden sick feeling seeped into my stomach.
I hadn’t given the book to Donna, had I? When I’d gone to get more notebooks—was it one of the books I’d gathered up for her?
It was. It had to be.
I closed my eyes trying to bring myself back to that moment. I had so few memories, surely I could remember. My mind took me back that day—how was it that it seemed so long ago? I remembered the heavy sadness, the way my heart felt like lead, and my urgent need for more notebooks and pens. And yes, there was Donna with her glasses and big eyes and all her cats. I’d handed her the book with several others. I’d handed her the key to unlocking everything.
I cursed myself and grabbed my backpack from the bed. It’d take nearly twenty minutes to get to Donna’s trailer. Every minute I had to wait was agony.
“God, please let her still have it.”
I raced back down the stairs, nearly stumbling, and then jumping down the last three steps all together.
I had no idea they were there, waiting for me.
Maybe it was because I was so focused on getting the book that I didn’t hear them.
Maybe it was because I was breathless and my heart was pounding.
Maybe they’d just been very quiet.
When I opened the front door, I was greeted by six Agency men with their guns trained on me.
Standing behind them was Gary Gosford, looking grim-faced and angry.
“Hi, Alison,” he said.
CHAPTER 24
We sat on opposite sides of my couch—Gary and me.
Gary had folded his arms and he scowled deeply. I sat impassively. Gary could have one of his goons shoot me in the head and leave me there in my living room, and all I was able to think of was where my copy of The Great Gatsby might be.
Two Agency goons stood guard at the entrance to the living room. They were young—early twenties, not much older than Arie—but they looked hardened and mean, like the type that would throw rocks at a cat for laughs. Or maybe I only thought they looked that way because they were here in my house, uninvited, with guns. The other goons were elsewhere in the house, maybe even stationed outside. One of them had taken my backpack and with it Arie’s notebook.
“I’m hurt that you would lie to me, Alison,” said Gary. “I thought we were friends.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure what he knew or why he was there. It was better to stay quiet than to accidentally reveal too much.
I’d seen people beaten by goons, get dragged away. I’d heard that people were sometimes interrogated, seemingly at random. And I knew people who vanished and never showed up again. I tried to keep my face from showing emotion, but my heart began to beat so hard I could feel it in my throat.
Gary stood up. He held his hands behind his back and paced around the room—though there wasn’t much room for pacing—as if deep in thought.
“It’s funny,” Gary said, “there are some people who, no matter how many chances we give them, no matter how many times we erase their memories, they still turn out the same way. Bad apples. Bad seeds.”
I looked up at him. It was the first time I’d heard any Agency man comment on our memory loss as something other than a side effect of the serum. He’d said, “we erase their memories.”
“I’m not talking about you, of course,” Gary continued. He didn’t look at me as he said this. He walked with his chin up,
affecting a countenance of authority. “You just fell in with a bad crowd. They’re like a disease, you know? They infect others—good people, like you. God knows we’ve tried to be humane, given them more chances than they deserve. But we can’t tolerate it anymore. They’re a cancer, and they need to be removed.”
I wasn’t entirely sure who or what Gary was talking about. Ruby and Chase and the others, I assumed? But was he referring to others that I maybe didn’t even know about? Had Ruby been working against the Agency all along? Year after year? How could they fall into the same roles without their memories? Could it be what Arie thought? Did he know? Did he know that we still had all our memories and somewhere, unconsciously, they still influenced our actions?
Gary stopped pacing and looked at me. “I forgive you,” he said. His voice was earnest and steady. “Personally, I mean. I forgive you. And I don’t blame you for lying to me. In fact, I haven’t been completely honest with you, either.”
There was a clock in the living room and as Gary paused for a moment, I heard it ticking. It was solar-powered, a nice little clock that Arie had found in the neighborhoods. And it had kept great time all the while Arie and I had been together, but usually the sound it made was nearly imperceptible. Now it seemed as loud as a drumbeat. Tick, tick, tick.
“I know you think I’m just an Agency supervisor. You call us ‘goons’.” He smiled bitterly but didn’t look at me.
I watched him, my heart still pounding. The clocked went tick, tick, tick.
“I’m actually a recruiter for Lotus.”
Now I was sure I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Have you heard of Lotus? The Lotus Project?” He looked my way. “Ring any bells?”
I shook my head.
“Good. That’s as it should be. Lotus is a very special program that is meant to improve things for everyone. We know things are bad. Things are bad for people here in gen-pop and they’re bad in other places, too. And we all want to make it better. Even your friends, the bad seeds—they think they’re fighting to make things better. Right?”
Among These Bones Page 17