by Chris Weitz
But wait, you’re saying—that’s all very well, but what about the kids in Bangladesh? What about the workers in China? What about the factory smoke that paints the insides of their lungs and the foremen who whip them and the factories that fall on top of them? The standard answer is that it’s all very sad but the money that they get improves their lives; they are upwardly mobile in the magical economic hierarchy of being.
But I know the real answer—the answer is this: Fuck the kids in Bangladesh. Fuck the Chinese workers committing suicide. I like this phone. I like this dress. This phone is here. This dress is here. Those kids aren’t here. So fuck ’em.
And fuck the kids back in New York, the system says, because we don’t have a use for them. According to Chapel, anyway. My tribe back home is fighting and dying, and here I am loaded down with shopping.
The thought kind of puts a sour endnote to my shopping expedition. I’m glad when my phone buzzes at me to tell me somebody texted.
Me: “What is it, babe?”
Charlie: “Uh… somebody sent you a message.”
If the buddy was set for standard efficiency, he would tell me, but as I have my jailbroken, five-year-old-boy plug-in, it doesn’t get to the point.
Me: “Uh-huh. Who, honey?”
Charlie: “Um… what was his name?”
The phone pauses. Then—“RAB!” It practically shouts at me.
Me: “You like Rab, huh?”
Stupid question to ask a phone, but I enjoy feeling out the AI.
“YEAHHH!” shouts the phone.
I take all my crap back to my rooms. Truth? I don’t actually wear it or use it. I just put the beautiful bags and boxes on shelves or in closets. Like, it was enough to keep the lifeblood of capitalism flowing or whatever. The point of it was that magical endorphin rush of getting, not having.
Wordsworth says:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
Which, if I am honest about it, I don’t totally understand, but I think is 100 percent right. Anyhow, I hide the evidence of my private little ecstasy of consumption before I join Rab in the library.
Michael and Soph are there, too, as usual. Like me, they look hungover and mopey. I sit down at their table and, in a sudden flip of feeling, go from appreciating how wonderful it is to be able to just sit and read books and think, to feeling resentful of the books, the quiet, the privilege, angry at myself and angry most of all at the government. From punting to pouting in less than a day.
I slap my book shut.
Me: “This is bullshit.”
Michael: “What exactly is bullshit?”
Me: “All this. This library. This college. This country. Us. The Safe Cities Act. The Shock. The government.”
Rab and Sophie and Michael all look at one another with a sort of confiding air, as if there’s something they know that I don’t.
Rab: “Interesting you should say that.”
IT’S OUR DAMAGE THAT MAKES US INTERESTING, I figure. Which means, if I’m right, I’m pretty damn fascinating. Back from the dead and all.
Actually, ipso facto, I wasn’t dead—only left for dead. Which I intend to address, down the line.
Anyway, I’ve seen a few things, I’ve done a few things, I have a certain tolerance for extremes of behavior.
Still, I draw the line at Abel peeing on dead kids, which for some reason he likes to do. Some reason? Well, if I’m to stretch my mind around it, I guess it would have to do with a sense of dominance, a defiance of mortality, and a canine habit of marking covered ground.
But he needs to learn how to behave. So I slap him upside his head. He zips up and says sorry.
“Can’t find good help these days,” I say to him and the others, and as usual they look at me with doggish incomprehension.
There’s the blond twins, Abel and his sister, Anna, angelic and sky-blue-eyed and dangerous. And Curtis, latte-skinned and wiry and probably not the most emotionally grounded kid even before the apocalypse.
The rest of the kids from Plum Island are either dead or fled. Probably some of them have filtered back to that Extreme Haunted House of a lab and are, without the command-and-control presence of the Old Man, busily rotting away when I emerge from my coma, slowly starving to death.
These three were the ones I found after I woke up, or recovered, or whatever you want to call it, with tears of blood streaking laterally across my face like some kind of couture runway makeup look and a raging pharmaceutical hangover.
Out in front of the lab, the concrete was churned up by machine-gun fire and splattered with human roadkill, a few of the Islander kids having gotten on the wrong end of a firefight.
I thought to myself, not for the first time, What is the point of it all in this butcher’s shop of a universe? And my mind came back with the usual answers, to wit, Why not stick around to see what happens? You must have survived for a reason, and Get some.
Get some. Action, that is. Revenge.
But there was nobody to take it out on.
And then I noticed Abel and Anna and Curtis—I didn’t know their names yet, of course; at that point, they were just some of the kids who had imprisoned and tortured us—hiding out in the bushes like the proverbial shy woodland creatures. This was a change from their demeanor during my stay as a mandatory guest of the lab, when they had acted like smirking tween sadists.
They didn’t seem to be up to much in terms of hostilities—if anything, they looked like they had had the bejeebers scared out of them—so I wasn’t overly fussed. I looked around for something to kill them with, and shortly found a near-mint AR-15 with an almost-full mag.
Get some.
So I raised the gun and sighted them, but, unexpectedly, they didn’t scatter. They just sat there like the headlight-dazed rabbits we used to see on the drive home from East Hampton at night.
Reader, I did not kill them.
Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age. Or maybe my cured condition—which is what I realized, I was cured—gives me a love for all life, like that hot android dude at the end of Blade Runner when he spares Harrison Ford.
Anyhow, I tell them to shoo. Except they don’t. They sort of lurk while I go about finding something to eat, and, finally, I just throw them my leftovers and they have at it. It’s like having a dog follow me home, except instead of a dog, it’s three murderous and probably insane thirteen-year-olds.
What’s that? You thought I was crazy? That’s soooo unfair. Sure, I’ve killed a few people, but nobody who didn’t have it coming. If that dude Keith had done to you what he did to me, you would have shanked him, too.
Anyhow, you can’t blame me, because I never knew love.
Which is my second priority after food, which is to say, where the hell is Jefferson? I was pretty damn sure that we had a moment there, that, in fact, he told me he loved me. Okay, so I asked him to, and okay, I was dying at the time, so it wasn’t like he felt he’d have to marry me or anything, but still. I think maybe he does. Love me. And just doesn’t know it. He was ready to move on from Donna to the harder stuff.
He must have thought I was dead. I mean, I thought I was dead, and I’m me, so you can’t blame him for that one. Can you?
Or can you.
I mean, he didn’t even bother to bury me. Which, if I had been dead, would have been kind of lame of him not to. What was he thinking?
I want some answers. Which I guess is an answer in itself, the answer to “why bother to stick around when you could put a bullet in your head?” How’s that for a Hamlet reboot? The answer is: because answers.
I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for why Jefferson left me on a slab, comatose and alone. And if it’s a good explanation, I definitely won’t kill him.
That’s the word of the day: mercy. Which is why I spared the three pathetic little psychopaths who are currently my entourage.
As time passes, I get the feeling that, once you’
ve gone through a certain identity-annihilating level of trauma, your allegiance quickly attaches to anyone you encounter who has a stronger will than yours. Which explains why these three kids, formerly my captors, are suddenly my followers and I am their new Mama Bear. It’s actually kind of amusing how devoted they are, how quickly they skip to it when I tell them what to do. Ransack that house! Get into the car! Kill that guy! Take his food! Yes, ma’am! Right away, ma’am! I could get used to this.
I aim to get off Plum Island and then go west on Route 27. I intend to get out of the sticks just as soon as possible and make my way back to the big city. Way I see it, the world is my oyster. The world is my gift card.
The world is my bitch.
I send Abel and Anna and Curtis on a scavenging expedition, then have them load into one of the boats they used to take the ship, back—weeks ago? Months? Days? Who knows. Feels like I’ve been out of it for a while. My cute poochy stomach is all gone, and my tits aren’t as pow! as they used to be.
I’m all George Washington crossing the Delaware on the way back to Long Island, looking for signs of life. Here and there, a bonfire, a silhouette flitting on the edge of the water.
I think about maybe diverting to Shelter Island to hang out at the Sunset Beach like in the good old days, but I just don’t feel like the company is right. These three aren’t much fun.
“What do you think?” I ask Abel. “Should we down a few mojitos?”
“What’s a mojito?” says Abel.
“Never mind.” Honestly. Nobody is any fun anymore. Back in the day, we could take a seaplane out to East Hampton, then it was maybe fifteen minutes by taxi to the ferry. Cocktails and a few bumps on arrival, lay out, party, a few zannies to round things off, sleep in.
If everything and everybody fell with the Sickness, consider that some people fell further, and pity me. I had it made. Sure, other people lost more emotionally speaking—that is to say, it wasn’t like I loved Mom and Dad, so I guess there’s that, but I mean I had been kind of expecting to benefit from their finally kicking it, not to be turned into an extra in some shitty video game.
One thing I know is, I was not made to be an extra.
I am above the motherfucking title.
We make landfall, if that’s what you call it, in Sag Harbor, by the long wharf. Main Street is all jacked up. Honestly, people just go too far. Broken storefront windows, moldering skeletons, crows, rats, whatever. The American Hotel is burned out. Pity.
We manage to start a fashion-statement pickup truck and begin making our way east, my minions sliding around in the truck bed like doggies.
Twenty-seven is jammed, except everybody’s dead and there are no cops to arrest you for driving on the shoulder. I use the truck to bash through whatever’s blocking the way, and we’re making decent progress, the old familiar names slipping by, Bridgehampton, Water Mill, when I hear something impossible—I look up—
And a helicopter makes its way west, stuttering through the sky.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Here’s where I get the sense that I’ve been missing out during my little vacation from reality. Because last time I checked, there were no more helicopters. That is, sure, there were helicopters, but there were no helicopter pilots, on account of they were dead.
My curiosity is aroused.
I determine to track down the helicopter, which is a bit of a challenge, given, you know, it’s flying and I’m on the ground. But, fortunately, the South Fork is only, like, five miles wide, and the helicopter is making a line for the city. I keep on 27 and, when the helicopter ducks left in the distance, cut down to Old Country Road. Eventually I come to the fenced border of an airfield. I stop the car and listen, and I can’t hear the chopping of the blades anymore. Either it’s passed west, out of sight and hearing, or they’ve landed somewhere nearby.
Anna pokes her angelic little face through the window to the truck bed. “What are we doing, Mommy?”
“We’re getting some answers,” I say. “And I’m not your mommy.”
She giggles, like I’m just joking.
Down from the bed of the truck, they stretch their legs, rub their bruises, and look to me for orders.
“We’re going to find that helicopter,” I say. “But we’re going to do this stealthily.”
No response.
“Like ninjas,” I say.
Now they get it. So we start along the fence, then cut over to a parallel street when the outbuildings give way to a clear runway.
Nothing indicates life. Impotent old fighter jets, rusting Cessnas. Wind-whipped tarps.
I’m not too keen on ambushes, having walked into some, most notably when my three teen zombies and their friends took us in the water off Plum Island, so I decide that watch and wait is the best strategy for the moment.
Outside the southeast corner of the airstrip, there’s an old Mexican restaurant. In the kitchen we find, amid the festering chaos of years-old guacamole and sour cream, some cans of pinto beans and salsa. They’re only a few months past expiration, so we dig in.
Just picture me, the paleo girl, the Dr. Junger’s Clean girl, the juice faster, hoping against hope to find a can opener. Finally, Curtis comes up with the goods, and the look of pride on his face is downright pathetic. He hands it to me and waits for a pat on the head or something.
We class it up with bowls and flatware, and I fish some lukewarm Coronas from behind the bar. As I hand them out to my peons, I feel like the old dude kids used to waylay in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven. “Can you buy us some beer?” I wonder if I should feel guilty, then remind myself that these kids have murdered people, so my being concerned about their ethical development and long-term life prospects is probably beside the point. Cheers.
In the decaying, exquisite light just after the sun sets, the tacky cantina deco looks strangely cozy, at least for half an hour or so. I take up a spot near the door and see if my hunch is going to pan out.
The lineup of hangars and sheds on the edge of the strip is, needless to say, not particularly riveting, and I find my gaze straying to the sky, which is going all yellow and pink and purple as the rays of the sun take their last gasp from past the horizon. I guess it’s beautiful, but I have no time for it. Getting hung up on that kind of thing is dangerous, like any form of luxury. I could miss something important.
But a voice—actually, it’s my voice, just coming from an unasked me inside my head—tells me that there’s no point living without beautiful things. Why else am I preoccupied with seeing Jefferson? Isn’t it because I experienced something that was bigger than pleasure?
I shake the voice silent. We are just animals stuck with unnecessary organs of sentiment. We squeeze what we can in and out of ourselves, sustenance and sensation, but at the end we are just flesh puppets jerked by the strings of our DNA.
And at that moment, as if conjured by the idea of a double helix, I see a curving brushstroke of smoke easing out of a vent in the side of a hangar about a hundred yards away.
I yank the kids down below the window ledge, though by now it’s so dark in the restaurant that most likely we can’t be seen from outside.
“What’s happening?” asks Anna.
“I don’t know. Yet.”
So we wait. Anna and Abel and Curtis mooch around and nap like dogs while I keep my eyes glued on the hangar. I’m convinced, now, that the helicopter must be inside it, though I can’t say why.
After a couple of hours, a silhouetted figure comes out of the hangar. He pulls someone else after him. There’s something wrong with the second guy—his hands are tied behind his back, but that’s not it—
It’s the gray hair. And then I see the other guy—
A beard.
Suffice it to say that I haven’t seen many beards lately, since everybody dies from the Sickness around age eighteen. So this can’t be right. Except it is. The dude has a full-on Al-Qaeda, not some fuzzy undergrowth.
The fuh.
I’ve o
nly actually seen one person who survived the Sickness other than me. That was the Old Man, who was some kind of genetic anomaly patching himself together with epic doses of steroids. His face was crawling with blotches, and his body was racked with twitches. Not these two. They appear to be in full health.
One guy who shouldn’t be alive pushes the other guy who shouldn’t be alive into a shed near the hangar. The way I read it, an outhouse visit.
I rouse the kids and tell them to get moving.
“What is it?” says Anna.
“Answers.”
SOMETHING HAS TO GIVE. The police have to charge us or we have to charge them or something—we’ve been staring at each other too long. I’m tired of seething back and forth against the bodies of the rest of the crowd as they push us tighter and tighter together.
It’s called kettling, for some reason, and it works like this: The cops gradually block off all the streets around the route of a protest march until the crowd, like a rat slithering through a pipe, is finally bottled up from behind. Then the cops just hang out, with tea and sandwiches piped in to them from outside, while the demonstrators are stuck without food, water, or a place to pee. It’s kind of a sad testament to human frailty that this method works. Like, people can say they’re willing to die for their beliefs, but when they’re denied access to a bathroom for long enough, all they want to do is go home and take a pee.