WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story)

by Turkot, Joseph

  If you don’t come, I’ll understand. You’ve got to believe me on that. It’s pretty reckless what I’m about to get into. And people here still like you. You’ve always fit in well with everyone. All of that being said, you nearly beat me to the ocean last night. I could use that kind of speed on a burner like this. Either way, you know I always love you.

  - Maze

  P.S. If you decide to come, be careful getting out. Use the map I drew here. I’ll be at the X until noon. If you don’t come by then, I’ll be gone.

  My eyes study the crude map scribbled underneath Maze’s sloppy handwriting. Her drawing skills are just as bad as her handwriting, but I recognize the lines instantly. She’s gone to one of our oldest haunts—a concrete tunnel from the days before the Wipe—some kind of ancient irrigation or sewer system that we found under the forest that leads away a mile into the woods until the roof crumbles in and debris clogs it. A treasure find from one of our first expeditions off of Fatherhood-approved trails. Nothing too exciting besides the allure of its connection to the old world. Still, it had been enough of a thrill at thirteen years old. Now, Maze is squatting there alone, probably in the pitch black, waiting to see if I join her.

  For the rest of the night, I wrestle with what to do. My head keeps flipping back and forth between whether or not to ditch the house and the town and my mom and everything tonight. Spring right out of bed, get dressed, and meet Maze in the dark—past the north forest trail and then right into the woods—all the way until the mound appears by the rock pond. Wolves or not.

  But a big part of me is scared to death to leave with Maze, to even step foot outside of the house at all. As if there will be Fathers out there keeping an eye on things. I chide myself, remembering that even little June hadn’t been too scared to deliver the letter in the night. How could I be afraid? And everything falls back to Maze in the chapel—how did she escape?

  I fall in and out of fits for the next hour, until I think there is the first changes of light spreading across the early morning sky. But everything stays the same for another hour, and I still haven’t made up my mind. To go might mean to die. And probably to die in the worst kind of way. And as much as I don’t want to admit it—that my mother was right about something—there is an old part of me that feels like it’s known something about Maze for a very long time, something I’ve been blinded from accepting because of my longing for her: that she really is a bad influence on me. More than just reckless. Stupid to a fault. Because I know her patterns, and how she foolishly follows her gut long after logic should kick in to redirect her. Every time I’ve ever been under the knife, it has been because of her. And I can’t help but feel that maybe this is the chance—to finally cut her loose. To move on. Let the obsession go, and sever off the feelings that have only ever caused me frustration. I think of all the other girls in town. How some of them, if I trick my mind over time, might seem as pretty as Maze. But then I realize it’s not just her beauty that has me so tied up—it is her very recklessness. Her defiance of authority. It’s the part of me I wish I had for myself. But I’ve always had to accept that she has it and I never will, even if we do feel the same way about the Fatherhood.

  By the time I get out of bed, get myself dressed, and start pacing through my room, the sun is already lighting the garden behind the house, and the low wooden fence and the trees beyond sound alive with morning birds. Still I haven’t decided though, and it’s eating me alive. You will never see your mother again. But then the other half of my personality rejects the idea: Sure you will. You’ll come back. And who else will you miss here? Who else will miss you? I think of all my casual acquaintances—Roland, Zee, Paul…More pop up in my head. I see their faces, all of them friends, and good friends. I’ve known all of them longer than Maze. Each of them has always been just as loyal as the next, and each of them has been more and more disapproving of my bond with Maze. They’ve grown tired of her antics. Some of them even told me this year that they worry about what they see happening to me if I keep up my close association with her. It’s like I see them all twisting their heads at me, frowning their judgment about the fact that I’d even consider leaving. As if it’s an obvious decision, nothing I should be wrestling with. To go is wrong—it’s that simple. That’s when the knock at the door comes.

  Chapter 6

  Before I even have a minute to react, Father James is in my room. Somehow—either because he let himself in, or because my mother is already awake and I didn’t hear her get up—he’s standing in my doorway, smiling.

  “A true follower of God,” he says, looking me up and down.

  “Can you give me a minute?” I ask him.

  “Dressed so early and ready to go,” Father says on his way out. And then it becomes clear to me—he’s talking to her. She must have woken up early. And they’re both out there waiting for me.

  It’s your last chance, I tell myself. I move over to the window, almost ready to do it, to climb out and flee over the backyard fence and into the woods, but then I see him. Father Rico, doing his ground inspections. My paranoia triggers and tells me he’s come to our house first on purpose this morning—like he knows my plan, that I’m a runaway risk, and he wanted to be right there, in the backyard, at just the time that Father James arrived. Maybe he got to June—saw her in the night and made her talk. I run through the scenario of my escape, and by the time I’ve stalled too long, and he isn’t finishing up his inspection fast enough, lowering his head ten times for every flower by the edge of our yard, I hear mother’s whine.

  “Wills,” she calls. And then, when I turn around again, Father James is back in the room.

  “Are you ready?” he asks.

  With just a nod, and a makeshift smile for mother as I pass, I follow him out into the morning sun.

  We walk slowly along the road, my feet moving steadily over each stone, my gaze following the grooves on the ground and ignoring everything else in the world. I feel as heavy as every stone in the road combined. Absolutely defeated. When I look up, I notice that it’s so early that hardly anyone else is awake. All I see are a couple roaming Fathers, all out doing ground inspections or prayer work or any of the other mindless things they do to earn their special place in society. That’s when Father James speaks up, deciding it would be best to get me prepared for my first special service with Father Gold.

  “Tell me Wills about the first principle of the Fatherhood,” he says.

  “God’s will not ours be done,” I say, summoning the rote-learned mantra to deflect any real conversation.

  “There’s more to it than that, but yes, that is basically correct,” he says after he realizes I won’t say any more.

  “And God’s will is understood through how many tenets?” he continues.

  “Three,” I say, anger starting to build in me again.

  “Of course. Tell me about the first tenet.”

  “That God wills us to refrain from all electric technology, as it replaces him in our hearts and minds.”

  “Yes, technology is a false idol. This is what caused the Wipe, the near destruction of our time on this planet. But as we have learned, time has taught us that the Wipe was really what?”

  “God’s greatest gift. The Gift of Desolation,” I mechanically drone on.

  And then, as the anger swells, and we pass the courtyard, where all the roads of town converge, some pointing away toward the edge of the woods, I notice something. None of the Fathers are here. In fact, there is no one around. It’s just Father James and me. I could make a run for it.

  “Based on your answers here, I think you will do fine today with Father Gold,” he says. “Tell me Wills, as I know he will ask you this—what does the second tenet mean to you?”

  “That metal is the chiefest of implements used in the fabrication of electric technology. Only Fathers are allowed to handle metal,” I say, exactly as it reads in the textbook.

  “Good enough, but you misunderstood the deeper import of the questi
on. I will ask you again because it is what Father Gold will do—What does it mean to you?”

  I want to scream the truth at him—that it means nothing to me. And then, when I say nothing, he just moves on, and starts to ask about the third tenet—the one that causes the most rage in me. I can’t help but hear it rehearse through my head: The accordance of Faith that God’s will comes to the common man or woman through the medium of the Fatherhood, and in the Fathers and God alone must absolute faith be placed.

  Before the scripture he wants even begins to roll from my lips, I do it. Without a thought ahead or another look around, everything stopping me from running finally diminishes—in one crazy blast, I take off. My feet clap loudly on the stones. I glance back to see Father James’s stunned expression. It’s as if he’s paralyzed, that my running away was so unexpected that he doesn’t know how to react yet. I know he’s much too old to give chase. And then, he just shouts. Wills, he calls, over and over. I keep sprinting, as fast as if the wolves are chasing me again, and I look all around. I see the yards with their gardens, the house windows and their bare walls inside, the blur of the side streets. I expect someone—a Father, or just anyone—to see me, to be watching my insane escape. But no one’s there, and I realize that no one is going to see me. I’m going to get away. When I take one last glance at Father James, just before I turn behind a house and into its garden, I see him running as fast as he can. Only he’s not running toward me. He’s heading in the direction of the Head Chapel. In the direction of Father Gold. And now, like never before, I pound the grass. When I get past the garden and reach the fence at the forest’s edge, I leap over in a single bound. And then, in another minute, branches of wide thorny bushes stick to my arms and legs as I weave in and out of the drooping boughs of trees. The thorns rip out of my skin with each thrust forward, but the pain doesn’t bother me one bit. The only thing at all that surges through me, that I feel, is the thought of Maze. And making a mental map of where I must be in relation to the tunnel, I disappear into the woods.

  Part 2

  Chapter 7

  My legs pound into the grass and the trees zoom by in a blur. Everything burns inside me—the very heart of my being screams out. It’s the enormity of the decision—to leave everything behind. Like Acadia’s a giant and bright box that contains the pieces and people that make up everything I know. And the burning destroys it and a new idea surrounds me. I’m completely free.

  Each leg pumps harder as I weave in and out of trees and notice the gnarled trunk, gashed by lightning, where I know I need to turn. I twist and sprint on, my mind descending from the fire into something deeper—something impossible and cold and dark. It’s Maze. Her everything—the new entirety of my world. It crosses repeatedly through me—she’ll be all I know from now on.

  I remember the time before she first talked to me, when I was intimidated by her beauty. But each word rolled easily from her lips, and she looked at me with a steady smile, something like genuine interest in her eyes. An impossibility to me then. And now, she is the only thing I’ll have in the whole world. That, and the outside—the burnt rubble cities, the dark wolf-forests, and the strange, endless body of water that surrounds everything. But it’s the thought of night that terrifies me. I think of all the things that will come to kill us—more than just wolves. Bears, and worse—things my imagination conjures up—monsters left over from before the Wipe. But out of the whole dark madness, not a single thought about the Fathers breaks into my head. It’s as if the fear of them and their system is within the walls of Acadia, not without, and I’m forever past it all. Somehow I forget that I’ve seen the Fathers where they shouldn’t be, inside the Deadlands. For a moment I reel at the possibility of what their presence there could mean. But at last, when I reach the patch of thin woods, trees so sparse that I’m tearing through a meadow all of a sudden, I think of Maze again. Her eyes and her lips and the darkness that always frames them. It’s more than her beauty. It’s her mind. Where she’s taking me with it. Right into the deepest theory she’s ever thrown at me.

  And besides all of that, there’s something else more important. At last, as I run through the final bit of meadow, I start to stitch up with anxiety. Because I know I have to do it. One way or the other. I have to take the chance. The one I blew at the beach. I have to kiss her. Make it happen. Sink or swim. Like love could keep us alive in the world.

  When my forehead is sweating, and I know the old sewer tunnel should be right around the corner, I hear a noise and freeze. Without my feet crashing over high grass, there’s just silence—nothing but light wind battling the branches overhead. I start to question whether I heard anything at all when it comes again.

  “Wills!”

  I twist, the sound registers, and then I see her smile, like a salve, spreading across her face.

  “I can’t believe it—I just took off. Father James was talking to me, taking me to the chapel, and I just ran,” I say. Quiet love sears me inside—the forever question mark. She cuts over to me and without a reply, she hands me the knife again. I grab it from her hand but she yanks back before I can get it.

  “You do realize you’re about to break one of the primary tenets of the—”

  “Didn’t you know they made me a Head Father for ratting you out?” I cut her off, then I snatch the blade from her. “But you could make me step down if you really think we can change the world,” I say, riding the high of her eyes. And she keeps hers right on mine.

  “Do you remember the other day, when I told you I know how to get out there?” she asks me.

  “To the tower?” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  I nod yes.

  “Well I wasn’t kidding. I know a way. We’re going to go out to the damned tower and we’re going to get to the Ark.”

  For a moment, the sheer exhilaration of everything that’s happened vanishes and I’m left with a very brief pang of reality. I see the cold and long and tremendous ocean separating us from the tower. I see the lack of food, and the knowledge that I didn’t bring anything. Like I ran too impulsively and should have prepared supplies. And I see the green-silver slits, wolf eyes, hunting us from the gloom of the brush. The broken spires of the city and the wandering Fathers that chased me. And a quick dread, fast to rise and slow to fade out, surges through me—the mystery of the unseen dangers and darkness that lie in wait for us. The horrible things that have to be out there. Things even she has no clue about.

  In my weakness, just for a moment, the old desires return—timorous Wills, the safe guy I’m working to destroy with every fiber of my being, tells me to return home. Go back now, before I get too deep into this, too far—far away enough that I won’t even know the way back. All of the disasters hidden by time rise before me and even Maze’s beauty does nothing to allay their power for a moment. But I shudder deeply and let it all roll away, and then, in another instant, each and every last qualm combusts into nothingness at her touch. It’s light and quick upon my arm. So fast, but electric. And again, her warmth. I relent. I ask her how the hell we’re going to get out to the tower.

  “There’s a spot. A scrap yard beach. And there’s a trail through it. At the end, there’ll be a metal boat.”

  After I get over the idea she’s been all the way out along the coast by herself and never told me, I want to bark at her—no Maze. We can’t trust some piece of shit rust tub to carry us into the surf. But I stop myself. It’s all part of the leaving. I’m leaving my mother, and the Fatherhood, and every single piece of myself I don’t like.

  “An old, rusted boat?” I ask.

  “No, a good one,” she says.

  “How do we get the boat out to the tower?”

  “It has an engine.”

  For all the surprise I had about the map and the mirror, her recklessness and lack of planning begins to jar me again. She knows no engine is still working, even if we found fuel. Any we’ve ever seen have been browned and flaking and ruined from the rain. Still, I don�
��t tell her how nuts this all is. Instead I walk right into it, a scheme worse than any I’ve ever been drawn into. I feel like I should kiss her now, because I’m sure we’ll die in the water and I’ll lose my chance. But the impulse leaves me as she walks away. I watch her go, and she stops suddenly. As if she knows I’m staring at her. But she just ducks down near a bush and draws out a canvas sack. Then another.

  “You know, I knew you’d come,” she says, turning back at me, smiling. The sunlight breaks through the branches just right, catching her cheeks.

  “How?” I ask. I walk over and she hands me one of them.

  “I don’t know. Just this feeling,” she says, the complete mystery of her flaring up in just those six words. Like a magnet, unable to resist, I touch her arm. Just for a moment. As if to get her attention. But I fumble for words. And then, looking away as fast as I can, I bury my head into the bag, distracting myself.

  I discover why it’s so heavy—there’s water in sealed glass jars and bags of grains and nuts and seeds. I know they’re all stolen from the Chapel pantry so I don’t need to ask. I just study it all and ask her if this will even keep us alive a week.

  “Longer,” she says. “We’ll ration what we have until we find more.”

  More. The idea is strange. That there could be nourishment outside of Acadia. And then, just like that, after a little more conversation about the supplies, we start walking. The walk turns into a hike very quickly, and just about all talk dies off as she leads the way through the tricky lanes of pine. Soon our shoes start to clap on gray and black granite emerging from the pine needles that lace the soil. The dirt wears away completely and we’re hopping from rock to rock, long and angular jags that bear us upward, some tiring ledge, beyond which I already hear the faint crash of the surf.