WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story)

by Turkot, Joseph

  “Maze!” I yell as she rolls onto the ground, sparks flying from the open metal wound of Wrist’s neck onto her face. But then I turn from her as I hear the motion—the shifting weight of Wrist’s feet, and watch his hands go to his neck, the handle hanging underneath a shower of lightning spray. He grips it to pull it out just as I manage to heave the entirety of my weight into him, smacking him hard to the metal floor. And then, whatever strength he has left fails him as I rip his hands from their grip on the knife and push in deeper, twisting it into his skull, so that new and strange blue sparks fly, and his eyes bleed red and then begin to cave into his skull, melting backward, just as the roll of electricity funnels through the metal stem of the handle and reaches where my hands have started to pound into his open silver skeleton. A tremor of shock rolls through my whole body until I’m thrown off and blinded, and then, everything goes silent.

  I listen for the music, and eventually, I hear it crackling through over the speakers. It stays on, but there’s no other sound. And nothing else is alive but me. I feel my heart beating and my hand goes to my neck, pressing deeply into the vein. I feel it. The pulse, still steady and strong. I’m alive. When I raise my neck, I see at first a thin gray stream of smoke rising from Wrist, and then, nearby, Maze’s body. Softly rising and falling. Breathing still. And I want to ask her, before I even know how badly she’s hurt, if she planned it all. Every word of it. But all that comes through my head is I love you. And before I can summon the strength to rise, to see what kind of new death awaits us here in the After Sky, I check Wrist again. Just a dead pile of wires. And my head goes back down and my eyes close, and I realize just how awful my body feels. Just a moment, I tell myself closing my eyes. No—get up. Get. up.

  Part 5

  Chapter 21

  As I rise from the floor, blue light bleeding into the orange, the zaps and smoke from Wrist’s body bring me closer—I hover over his body, anticipating his immortal rise, a sharp revolt against his mechanical death. But there’s no more life in any part of him. I press a finger down to his face, the side of his cheek, and push. His head turns but the eyes are gone. Nothing left in him at all.

  I hear her, a soft call of my name. And then when I turn, to see her body, back pressed against the blue-lit steel, and her dark hair and eyes directed all at me, a smile somehow curling on her lips, Maze says it again: Wills. I walk to her, recognizing now that adrenaline has masked some strange sensation caused by the shock of electricity Wrist gave me as his last effort—and then, I’m down next to her. She looks up at me, smiling more, her beauty paralyzing. And it’s her who asks me—Are you okay? I bend close and kiss her. It was all a lie, you know? I tell her yes, I knew—even as I know how much my own words are a lie: that I did believe she’d been convinced, that she’d lost all of whatever feeling she had grown for me.

  Before it even begins, I know that it is happening at last—that I will make love to her, take her now into my arms in this alien chapel above the ring of the world, cold and strange light shrouding our bodies as they prepare to pour into each other. I love you, she tells me. She says it first, and I kiss her. She starts to stand up but I push her down. Are you okay? I ask, hands on her shoulders, ready to pin her, just waiting for the confirmation. But all she asks is if I still love her. And I refuse the answer—like a sadist I can’t tell her anymore. All I can do is kiss her.

  My teeth bite into her lip, and when she softly moans, I feel the wetness of her tongue roll across my lip, and it’s too much—I push her down flat against the floor, and then my legs come across—one then the other—until I’m on top of her. For a moment my eyes return to Wrist. Dead as the steel floor. And the blue light beyond, some unknown waiting for us. A final verdict just a few feet away. But I won’t let her get up—I’ve decided that now. And whatever is coming will wait. The hunger is gone and the thirst is gone. There is nothing but the pulse of touch, the feeling that I believe her—that she isn’t lying at all this time. She really does love me. And my hands work firmly from her shoulders and then softly glide, running along her arms until they tie up with her fingers, pushing them back even as she tries to rise and thrust up into me.

  My mouth works toward her ear and I give it to her: I say I love you. And then, my left hand releases, finds her chin, and turns her mouth away from mine as she tries to kiss me. I push down again, her head flat on its side, so that the line of her neck is all I can see. Dark hair conceals her until I push it all away, and then, against her olive skin I press my face—at first it’s just the smell—to take in that she’s giving herself to me before it happens. I breathe in long and deep, and then I do it again, until I can’t control the urge, and I collapse the full weight of my body onto hers. My lips kiss up and down her neck, retreating from her ear each time I find myself there, and then down to the base of her neck, kissing across the rim of her chest. I push her hair back again, this time from her eyes, because I want to see her. I want to watch her look at me as I come back to her mouth. And she smiles again and I smile, a moment of shared happiness, a pause before instinct takes over again. Then, the carefulness is gone. That quickly everything is dark with my closed eyes and I taste her again—her lips and her mouth and her cheek.

  She pushes into my neck, arching her back, and I shove her back down flat. I can’t stop myself anymore. I kiss lower from the base of her neck, to her chest, and my hand runs over her stomach and then up, finding the place where my hands peel away her shirt. Softly, and then, with the pain of my teeth, hardness poking against my tongue, she moves her breast up, like she doesn’t want me to ease at all, but to commit more to the sin—to taste her where the Fathers would condemn me by greater degrees, where there can be no salvation.

  My right arm releases so that each of my fingers is free to realize the shape and warmth of my fantasy—I trace lightly and then press hard, from her face and down, and feel for a moment the soft heat of her mouth open around my finger, a gentle touch of her tongue, until each hand is locked to her breasts, and my face bound there, until I sit up, my butt down against the top of her thighs, and I grab her hands again as they try to run over my body. I push them away. She moans softly and says my name. I think of her ass and all the times I’ve seen it—wanted it—some animal desire forbidden to me.

  I command her to stand up. At first she’s confused, but I grab her hands and pull her up to her feet and pull her against me. And then, we’re face to face, standing, and I push into her, the most strength I can muster, until she’s squeezed of her breath, and then I turn her until we’re heading into the wall. With force I push her into the wall, and then, when her eyes roll up into her head for a moment, and then open wide again, and her mouth shoots forward, biting my lower lip, I throw her back again, slamming her, and then pushing in my body, making her feel every part, the full excitement, until she responds to my motion, a rhythmic heat vexing the steel, our legs tangling and opening. She repeats my name. That she loves me. So much. And then we’re spun around, and she throws me against the wall. Kissing down my neck to my stomach. I stop her, lift her up, and my hands find her ass. Finally it’s there—I relax my neck and look at the ceiling as she kisses me, my hands up and down the curve of her muscles, over her butt and then her thighs. All thought escapes me—there is nothing anymore.

  When she starts to take off my pants, working as quickly as she can, like we’ll run out of time, I pull her to the ground again. And then, just side by side on the horrible steel, we watch each others’ eyes. My hand teases down her arm to her stomach and leg, and everything slows. The frenzy is gone. But she’s still smiling. I ask her if this is just another dream. I hope not, she says. I tell her, in a rush of feeling, that I could give it all up. My need for security. My need to have a safe, unexciting life. That I could do this. Keep going. Before we even know if that’s possible—as if it were possible, that this quest could go on forever. I say I can do it. I’m not really what Wrist says I am. She just says it’s okay. That she’s not what Wrist
said either. That Wrist didn’t know what he was talking about. And that she could be happy with me. Back home, she says. I wrap my arms around the small of her back and pull her into me again, kissing her, pulling and pulling until we’re pressed tightly. And then, I turn her legs, at just the right angle, and stop everything. Just admire them—their shape, that they’re mine for this moment, that I can do with them whatever I want. It’s no longer a fantasy. It’s real. I raise and lower them, and she laughs, and then, without enough discipline to counter the force any longer, I pry her pants down and off, turning her over completely to rip them away. My mouth comes down and her skin is fire on my tongue, and then each new place lower and new fire, somehow hotter, until I go where my instincts demand. She softly gasps, and then loudly, until I find what my body needs. Her thighs close against my temples and my hands search blindly along her stomach until they reach her breasts and then her hands. I push my fingers into hers to stop her from fighting. Time ceases to pass and there’s nothing but the noise from her lungs, her hips coming up and then flattening again, in time with the motions of my lips and the warm pulse of my tongue. She cries out so loudly I wonder what I’ve done to her. But she just pulls me up, smiling, and grabs the back of my head, pulling me by the back of my head into her mouth again, kissing me, and then, she throws me over, rolling me onto my back, and her hands work quickly until air cools my naked skin. She sits on me and pushes her hand into my stomach and then into my neck. Pinning me against the ground so that I must endure her control. The pleasure is too much when she slides down on top of me, and then it’s somehow increased—each smile and look, and whip of her hair as she moves, and all I can see is the line of her stomach from her belly button to her neck. And then, uncontrollably, it’s all of her—the complete shape—each feature, dark and light, blended into the forceful act of sin she’s chosen to defile me with. But it’s when her voice erupts that I can’t stop myself—the loudness disturbing the dead chambers of the After Sky, waking the dead. My own voice matches hers until she slows down, and then, somehow without leaving me, she lies at my side, our bodies connected, perfectly meshed, with warm panting breaths so closely shared that the wetness of the air paints patterns on our skin. And then, once again, time is gone. Evaporated by the exchange and its conclusion—so that all we are remains in silence, until there’s a soft row of kisses along the back of my neck and then into my hair. And my hand runs down to hers, and over her leg, and then back to her hand. I bring it up and kiss it softly, and then her arm, and then I’m still. Just the occasional movement, tracing a line along some beautiful curve. Listening to the trade of sweet I love yous.

  Clicking wakes us. Maze starts first and I don’t know if she ever fell asleep at all. What’s that? she asks me. And then, it’s a scramble to get dressed, to stand again over Wrist’s dead body and realize it’s not from him that the noise is coming, but from the blue room. My eyes adjust and my brain clears, doing its best to eliminate the euphoria of sex with Maze so that I can take in the problem. Some kind of alarm is going off, I say. Ready? she says to me. Ready to do this? And then, grabbing my hand, the same as before but with a different meaning this time, she pulls me along, past Wrist’s body, and into the blue room.

  Chapter 22

  We walk into the room. Each wall is as bare as the tunnel. Maze walks around, tracing her finger over the emptiness, her eyes eventually scanning the ceiling for the source of the clicking. I walk up to her, run my hand over her back and tell her we should keep walking down the hall because there’s nothing here. Just the lines of blue light against the silver. But she tells me no—something has to be in here. I wait for her, like her force of will could create a sign for us.

  I go around the room one more time to satisfy her, waiting for something to appear. But there’s nothing. And then the clicking stops. My fingers touch the smooth metal, as if another computer will light up. No water here. How many of Wrist’s words were lies, after all?

  She comes to me and puts her arms around me.

  “How much of it was true?” I ask her.

  “I didn’t mean any of it Wills,” she says.

  “No—what he said. What we are. About everything.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe none of it. I don’t know anymore.”

  “Let’s go?” I say. And it’s suddenly I feel that my whole body is leaden, like I’m stuck to the floor and there’s nothing I can do now but go into the final sleep, despite my words to keep searching. Because I know—there is no After Sky—no water or food either. This place is just a wasteland looking down at the planet. And then, when I’m about to lie on the floor and just close my eyes, and think of Maze’s words, her body, and that my life is now complete and I can die, she says something. She says it twice so that I respond.

  “There has to be an Ark.”

  I look at her, her eyes as glazed as mine feel. Fatigue and exhaustion settling in with some final and irrevocable confusion.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. And I almost don’t know why I say it. But part of me realizes that even if a small part of what Wrist said is true, it’s all too complicated now. Our purpose is lost. Some deep part of me, tied to the exhaustion, realizes that humans have gone on for too long. That it’s all too complicated and there is no resolution. There never will be. But I only muster enough energy, when she prods me for an explanation of my attempt to give up, to give her a weak look of old defiance, to tell her that it’s not worth fixing anymore. History isn’t worth our time, whatever of it is left to know. Lie down with me instead, I tell her.

  “No,” she says. She takes my hand and tells me we’re going farther. And I don’t object. Just follow, back out into the orange tunnel. We walk. Down and down. No more dripping, and eventually, no more music either.

  At the end of the tunnel we reach another door. Maze walks back and forth, as if her tattoo will open it for us. Nothing happens. I look at her and then back down the hall. Wrist’s body is now out of sight. And then, off to the side, near the floor, I see a sliver of difference in the metal—some non-orange strip filtering in. Just a few inches high from the floor. I walk to it and lie flat on my stomach.

  “Maze,” I say. She comes and lies next to me. Her warmth is soothing. Makes me want to go to sleep again. I squeeze closer against her so we’re touching. Our heads align and we look out through the sliver of window. The vast curve of the planet stretches out below us. Everything from all of time. The white splotches and lines running through blue and darker blue and in places green and black. Behind it all are the speckled bands of stars. Strange lit dust hanging like frost against an empty black reach.

  “It’s beautiful,” she says. I put my left arm on her back and then crawl with my fingers to her neck, to her hair. I turn my hand around and press the backs of my fingers into the soft strands. For a moment I want to roll her, take her again and confirm twice our love. But the energy of life has been sucked out of me. And there’s nothing I can do but stare at the enormity—the contrast of death and life in some eternal void that we’ve tricked ourselves into assuming purpose within. It echoes like a knife through my head: this has all been to get her. And now it’s over. Everything is too complicated now. There’s nowhere else to go. Nothing more to do. And my eyes start to close. I notice the deep bass thrumming of some electrical circuit, the thing that must be sustaining the orange light all around us. I feel her hand on my back, running in small arcs. And I close my eyes again. They open once more to see it all, and she whispers how beautiful it is. She talks about the Ark, and how it will explain everything that’s ever happened down there—down there. For some reason, I know already we’re never going back. That this is our After Sky. I drift into some warm sleep—inside a warm bed back in Acadia, in some parallel life where Maze fell in love with me without the need to quest out to our deaths. She wakes me up.

  “We have to go back,” she says.

  “What?” I say. And I notice now that she’s behind me, standing up again. Her
hand, her warmth, gone.

  “I checked again. The door, the blue room, the computer. There’s nothing more here. We have to go back, find food and water. Get to the Resistance and tell them. Bring them back here with us.”

  My first reaction dies quickly—an old anger that she’s gone off on her own, exploring down the tunnel without me. And then, the next flame leaps into my chest. To scold sense into her—that there’s no getting all the way back there. Not when we don’t really know the way. Not when the Nefandus prowl the beaches, waiting for us. Not when we can barely move. Barely keep our eyes open. Instead of all that, I tell her no. No, Maze.

  “Stop it. Get up,” she tells me. And just like that, with her hand descended in front of my face, I roll onto my back, take it, and rise to follow her.

  We pass Wrist’s smokeless body. I give him one glance, a look into his eyes, and my head sounds a silent question to him—What was the point? Why make it all up? And if it was true—even more, why? Why work so hard to preserve what we are, if that’s the truth?

  As the door of the elevator comes into view again, I’ve worked through things enough to realize that my thinking had been correct before—that in the end, it will always be chaos. And the more you know, the harder it becomes to maintain the bliss of ignorance. I realize that now, it’s all too much, whether it’s true or not—some tired acceptance washes over me, that it was a mistake to ever leave. That maybe, just maybe, Maze wasn’t worth it. That all of this is blind dogma. My every step. It’s the very thought striking my head when we realize the elevator door, our only chance of survival, won’t open for us. Nothing.