by Lavie Tidhar
This particular ebb, current or river consisting mostly of sewage has, by now, with the addition of the water from the level 6 waterfall, rightfully earned the esteemed title of Flood. Mordechai, who was caught off guard, first ran, but soon found out that it’s almost impossible to do so when the water reaches one’s knees. Now he’s flopping around, instinctively trying to keep dry the backpack of precious documents he has stolen from a rival occultist, despite his former loud-spoken denial of their authenticity. He keeps stumbling upon all sorts of trash that should’ve been easy to avoid were it not currently underwater — pots and plants, bags, trolleys, suitcases, toys and abandoned weaponry. He’s trying to get to the nearest heap of debris, not too far ahead, but progress is slow, very slow. It seems to him that each sloppy step in the muddy waters takes forever. Meanwhile he can see other people climbing the heap, people getting there ahead of him, crawling up. It’s frustrating. It’s maddening. Eventually, it saves his life.
There’s a high whistle from far above, crazily ricocheting between the huge walls of the station. Then there’s a groan, as if something big is being moved despite its best efforts to stay inert. The historian looks up just in time to see the front half of a double-joined bus being pushed from the top level, falling right at him.
He’s frozen, crouching there in the stinking water, during the very long half a second of the bus’s fall. He thinks of nothing. His mind is blank. Then it occurs to him that, if not famous last words, he should at least have anonymous last thoughts. Then the bus crashes on top of the heap of debris, about twenty metres away, and squashes it. Mordechai Abir is thrown off his feet and collapses face down in the water. When he surfaces, the bus stands half-sunk in the water, its broken headlights facing Mordechai in a menacing stare. There’s no junk heap. There are no people.
There’s no way up.
*
Sam meanwhile has found a way up. He’s now climbing one of the elevator cables, and prays to God and to any other deity that may be listening that the elevator he can see four stories above him is safely secured in its place. There’s a scary moment when something quite heavy crashes to the ground, somewhere outside the elevator shaft, and the cables begin swaying crazily. He clings to his spot, forcing himself not to move, not daring to look up. He whispers curses to himself. He curses the Prime Minister, the Chief Rabbi, the Service. He curses himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Getting stuck in this hellhole, and for what? Nothing. If he doesn’t die falling from the cable or having an elevator come down on his head, he’ll probably get shot when he gets up.
The movement slows down, then ceases. The agent relaxes his grip, just a little. Nothing happens. He fights a sudden urge to let go, leave it all, fall all the way down, end it quickly this way. He also fights the urge to pee.
Instead he starts climbing up again.
*
The child looks up. There’s a fine web on the ceiling, thin lines emanating from a point right over his head. Bits of plaster are falling here and there, but none of the grown-ups around him seem to notice. Near the centre, a part of the ceiling seems to be pulsating. Maybe the lines of the web don’t really glow in the dark, maybe its lines aren’t silvery beams of light — maybe it looks that way to the child only. Maybe the web isn’t there at all.
As the child watches, it grows.
3.
The historian has managed to find high ground on top of a former T-shirt stall. He sits there, half covered in dirty wet cloth, and considers the backpack he took from his rival. His enemy. There’s a good chance he won’t make it out of here, and he must at least have a glance at these documents. He opens the backpack and looks inside. It’s filled with nylon envelopes, watertight. In each of them are sheets of paper covered in print. It looks like it was done on a manual typewriter. The letters are small, and there’s literally no space between the lines. He reads:
THE FIRST CHILD’S STORY (RANI, APOCRYPHAL)
Shula, our neighbour from the second floor, just flew like Superman out of her window. I saw that because I was looking at the things outside, and she passed right in front of me. I want to fly too, but Mom will shout at me if I try . . .
He reads:
NAAMA — PODCAST II (DIGITAL AUDIO)
My voice sounds weird. I can feel nothing below my neck, but there must be something there, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to talk, having no lungs. Otherwise, come to think of it, I’d be dead. Or am I dead already? Does it matter? Maybe it’s a hallucination — they put something in my food. In my drink, some gas in the air conditioning, some . . .
He reads:
THE FIREMAN’S GOSPEL, PART VI (ELI — APOCRYPHAL?)
It was love at first sight. The moment the disembodied head flew into my cabin, it fell in love with me. Don’t ask me how. Or why . . .
He reads on. The documents are strange. Illogical. What do they have to do with anything? And if they do — how were these testimonies taken? Some of them are by people who are obviously dead. Others . . . or maybe it’s just a sick joke of the historian’s rival, not a mere forgery like his previous trick, but something more complicated, a scheme so ludicrous that it might look true? It’s insane, it can’t be, it should all be thrown away — but he keeps reading.
Meanwhile, another group of attackers enters, this time trying their luck with a heavy machine gun, which they station on top of the ruined bus smashed in the middle of the floor. They manage to shoot several rounds of ammunition before someone up above has enough and a liquid of some sort comes pouring down on their heads. Their screams are terrible. Terrible enough to jerk the historian out of his stupor.
He knows that staying in one place isn’t a good idea. Definitely not this particular place. He needs to get up, and he needs to make it clear that he isn’t on one of the warring sides. That he’s not dangerous. That he comes in peace.
He looks around him, but sees nothing that would be of any help. No way of communicating, and no one to communicate with. Then he glances at his immediate surroundings, and has an idea. He rummages through the pile of shirts, all wet and covered in plaster and ill-smelling. It occurs to him that, at this stage, the same description could well be applied to himself. He’s dripping water, his hair plastered over his head like a wet mop, and . . . well, he just wishes that his sense of smell would go away. He keeps taking shirts out of the pile, throwing them away. Then he finds one that fits his needs. He takes it. Like all the rest, it stinks of sewage.
He wrings some water out of the shirt. He reexamines it. It’s disgusting, but it’ll have to do. His mother, he suddenly thinks, would have beaten him with a candlestick for even touching such a foul thing. Maybe even for being in the general vicinity of it. He almost smiles at the thought. Almost.
He needs this shirt. It’s not really white, but for his purposes it’s white enough.
He spreads the shirt as wide as he can, and holds it over his head. Then he steps, waving it, to the fallen half-a-bus, surrendering himself to whoever may be watching from above.
*
Sam is now right under the metal floor of the elevator, parked at level 6. Before attempting anything else, he’s trying to listen. Are there steps above? Is there someone inside the elevator? There’s no logical reason for anyone to be there — he would bet his ludicrous monthly pay cheque on the fact that there’s no supply of electricity anywhere in or around Tel Aviv — but then, nothing in his experiences of the last two days has been dictated by logic. So he crouches over the lower elevator brakes, hugging the thick cable, and listens.
There’s less gunfire now. Ammunition must be running low on both sides. Instead there’s a steady series of thuds. Somewhere out there things are falling. He guesses that the dwellers of the upper levels are down to throwing projectiles at their attackers. He concentrates again on listening but can hear no steps above, nothing to hint at an ambush. He’ll have to take a chance.
He finds what looks like a small service door in the elevator’s floor. He gives i
t a push. For the briefest of moments there’s the hiss of a sound: the murmur of oil in a roasting tin, the sound of flesh sticking to burning metal.
Sam screams.
*
Traditionally, when a Jewish boy turns thirteen, a Bar Mitzvah is held for him in the synagogue. After he finishes reading his haftarah from the Torah, the newly Bar Mitzvah’ed child is bombarded with a considerable amount of candy, thrown at him by the women and children who watch the ceremony from the place allocated to them, usually on the second floor. This is a sign of festivity.
Right now, the mall looks like a bloated version of a gigantic Bar Mitzvah party that went berserk. All sorts of objects fall down — and are thrown down — from the high levels: stones, scrap metal, bus tires. One imaginative soul on level 7 is pouring burning oil over the edge, just missing a group of attackers on the ground level. The boiling drops of oil-spray in the air, however, can still burn, and the attackers hastily retreat to relative safety behind a broken part of the ceiling, which fell down a little earlier. Occasionally bigger things are thrown down. Nothing as big as the half-a-bus thrown several minutes before, but still they make an impressive impact: motorbikes, refrigerators, toilet bowls, a Coca-Cola dispensing machine.
It is quite a miracle that none of this has hit the historian so far. Mordechai Abir walks slowly, waving the off-white shirt over his head. He feels like a ghost, wandering through this scene of carnage. No one seems to notice him, he thinks. Then something hits him from above.
Mordechai screams and jumps. Then, seeing that nothing has actually happened to him, he looks around. There is a piece of rope hanging from above. He looks up and sees someone waving at him from the upper level, beckoning for him to climb up. He goes to the rope, pulls at it. It seems steady. He climbs.
There is shouting on the floor around him. People are running towards him, some of them waving weapons. The historian was never good at climbing, or at any sport, and now he’s regretting this bitterly. The rope seems to become more and more slippery. Or is it just that he’s sweating? Wild parties of attackers, looters, whatever they may be, now surround the rope on three sides. Some of them throw stones at the historian, who has so far reached only halfway to the upper level. Then, from above, comes a warning shout. The historian almost loses his grip as the rope starts, as of its own accord, to rise, lifting him with it.
When he reaches the level above, strong hands grab him. He’s gasping, there’s blood on his wounded hands, and he’s almost crying with relief. He collapses on the floor. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you!”
“Looks like Mommy plucked herself a little chicken,” someone says, and chuckles, and as Mordechai turns, with quite a lot less relief now, to see who’s talking, a blow to the head knocks him out.
*
Sam is in hell. Or, at least, his right hand is in hell. The heat comes from the metal handle of the trapdoor. It is a searing heat. The smell of his burning skin makes him ill. He kicks at the door but it won’t budge and he screams, in pain and anger.
When the door opens at last it takes him by surprise. It opens downwards. He is captured in large hands. His own hand is now covered in first-degree burns. The pain and the stench of his hand make him gag.
“Watch it!” someone says. Then he is lifted up, easily, and dropped on an enormous shoulder.
It feels a little like when he was a kid, and his parents played Bag-of-Potatoes with him. He is carried without effort. There is something feminine about the figure carrying him.
She says, “Mommy is going to be pleased.”
*
The child is still looking up. The fine web has spread on the ceiling as far as he can see. Now the lines seem to be thicker, and in some places there’s no mortar anymore, just exposed concrete. The grownups don’t seem to notice any of this. Some of them are crying, others are shouting at each other. It’s dark and dusty, but the child sees everything quite clearly. He’s strangely calm. Everything seems to him, now, like a dream.
A stone falls from above, then another one. Suddenly it’s not dark at all. A shining ray of light comes from above, from the ceiling’s centre. Like a theatre spotlight, it illuminates the child. The grownups, instinctively, back away.
“Mommy?” the child says.
Then the ceiling collapses, burying the lot of them.
SHE: THREE
The children retreat to the kindergarten carrying Peretz the Leader, the Oldest Kid in the Kindergarten, with them as they retreat. There is a sing-along of adults gathering, more than they had ever seen, and they are frightened, and Peretz is sick-sick, sick-sick bad, on his way to half-a-Pooh in a hurry-up. They make a fire and let Peretz shit in the sandbox and his shit is all runny and it smells real bad and Danny Small-Small begins to cry. The sky above is lit with loud sounds and flashing lights and over in the Bad Place that rises above them there is a sense of being watched — the Big Choky-Man, they call him, the Old Bad Man of the Mountain, and they’re all afraid.
Simcha Small and Gili Strong keep watch like they always do but suddenly there is a birdcall and it’s Gilad Two-Finger, the lookout running back, and he says, “Www-www-www — ”
“One — ” Gili Strong says. Two-Finger nods. “One www-www . . . www . . .”
“Woman?”
Two-Finger nods. Gili says, “A mother?”
“Dddd . . . dddd . . .”
“Don’t know?”
Two-Finger nods.
There had not been mother incursions recently. The women who periodically try to take the children had mostly given up, or died, become ice creams. They’d been repelled by catapult and cunning. “There are no mothers!” Peretz says and his little hands are shaking. “N . . . no more mothers. Lullaby her.”
Kill.
They’d found a Pokemon that morning, lying by the side of the road, already beginning to smell, on its way to becoming a Pooh. They got a pistol off it, and Gili Strong takes it now and she says — “Lead us to her.”
But there is no need. Because just then Two-Finger lifts his hand, where only the two middle fingers remain, and he points up, and they see the woman, and behind her the mountain seems to shiver, and the sun comes out and the woman seems to be glowing and Shiri Sing says, “Ohhh . . .”
The woman looks at them and they see her face and it’s strange, it makes them feel . . . they don’t know how it makes them feel, but they all share it, that sense, like going back, like remembering something good that had happened, once, long ago, in a place you thought you’d forgotten. And the woman says, “You’re children.”
There is something awful in the way she says it. Two-Fingers bursts out crying, and Peretz sits down in the sandbox and shivers and doesn’t say anything. But Gili Strong, who is the strongest, lifts up the gun they took from the Pokemon and she points it at the woman — and the woman smiles. She has a nice smile. It is a horrible smile. Gili Strong feels her hands shaking. The smile reminds her of a face she used to know, a face that was always nice to her, that held her close and sang to her and rocked her to sleep, and she says, “No!” and she presses the trigger.
There is a loud explosion, and the recoil throws Gili Strong on her back and the gun falls from her hands, and some of the smallers start crying.
When Gili Strong looks up again the woman is still there, and she says, “You don’t have to be afraid any more. Everything is going to be all right.” And she bends down and pulls Two-Finger close to her and he doesn’t resist, and she hugs him. And then Shiri Song goes to her and the woman hugs her too, and then all the kids rise, and they approach the woman, slowly, shyly, and when they come to her she holds them all and she rocks them and she sings to them, and she says, “Don’t be afraid of the Big Choky-Man. Don’t be afraid of the sing-along of grown-ups. Don’t be afraid of the sick-sick and the Pooh and the Pokemon. Everything is going to be all right now, children.” And the woman is smiling, and the woman is crying, and where she cries the tears fall down on the children’s faces a
nd on their hands, and when Peretz, last, comes to her, the tears touch his face and the colour returns to his cheeks and soon he’s smiling and he’s no longer sick, and the woman says, “Hush now, all of you, children, children!”
After a while, the children sit up, and the sun is shining, and they had been sleeping, even the watchers. The woman is gone, but somehow she is still there, too. Gili sees the swings and without thinking she goes and sits in one, and rocks herself, and Peretz comes and gives her a push, and she laughs, and Peretz goes, “Whoosh!” and Gilad finds new crayons and white paper so clean and white it’s blinding and he draws happy faces; and the smallers play in the sandbox, which is clean and full of cool sand. And they build mountains.
THE WAR
4.
Now there’s a lot to be seen, but the sound is muffled, filtered, on the verge of the unreal. This, on the very top floor of the station, is the bay from which people used to start their journeys across Israel — to Haifa and Naharia in the north, to Eilat and Be’er Sheva in the south, to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea in the east. Now no one is going anywhere, and the only vehicles to be seen are the cannibalized remains of intercity buses. The bus-bridge going down from the bay to the ground was blown up earlier, though in the confusion no one can tell who was responsible. The bay looks like a giant wrecked porch, with a nice panoramic view to the south where a wall of dirty, blood-coloured clouds separates Tel Aviv from the rest of the world. Right on the edge, from which one could freely fall the height of four or five floors to the ground, someone positioned weird contraptions made of red leather and cardboard and metal and plastic junk. They look like dust motes the size of small cars. Whatever those things are, they seem to be on the verge of falling apart.