NOD

by Adrian Barnes

  ‘Look at my eyes!’ I yelled.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘My eyes! I sleep. Just like you. Look at my eyes. I’m not like them.’

  He staggered forward until he was a foot away, only a thin sheet of super-glass between us. It was all I could do to hold his gaze.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ he murmured and wordlessly reached over and unlocked the door. I slipped inside and slammed it shut just as the bandaged head of one of Charles’ men came into view. Within moments all three of them were pounding on the bridge’s door and windows, but to no avail. I felt like sticking my tongue out at them. In fact, if I’m to be honest, I did stick my tongue out at them in a moment of adrenaline-fuelled triumph that only added to Charles’ rage.

  My host reeled backward, groping for a chair, then fell into it, wincing.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ he repeated. ‘I thought I was the only one left.’

  Scattered all around the bridge, covering virtually every horizontal surface, were empty syringes.

  ‘There aren’t many of us. I’ve only met one other Sleeper myself. Except for the kids.

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘There are children in Stanley Park over there,’ I gestured toward the tree line. ‘They sleep. They look normal, like kids from before. But they don’t talk.’

  ‘All the kids?’ His eyes shone.

  ‘No. Not all. Most of them are like those guys out there. In fact, I think the kids who can’t sleep are already all dead. They wouldn’t survive for long out there. But in the park there are a few hundred of these other kids.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  He was getting agitated again, grinding his teeth. Noticing the revolver strapped to his hip, I decided not to press the point any further. After a moment, he looked up at me, something cagey in his eyes.

  ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you, man. Shit, I’ve got to tell someone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was me.’

  ‘What was you?’ I asked, though the answer flashed through my mind even as I spoke.

  ‘I took out Seattle.’

  ‘You launched the missile?’

  ‘Not me, exactly. But it happened on my watch and I was the only one in my right mind, so it was my fault. I was locked in my quarters, sleeping, when the others did it. But I was in command.’ He said this with a kind of tortured pride, the kind I’d never been able to relate to but had the sense to respect: doctor pride, cop pride, mother pride.

  ‘Why’d they—?’

  ‘It was so fucking crazy and every day it got crazier and crazier. A couple of days after the whole thing started, we started having to throw men in the brig if we were going to maintain discipline. Two days later, we ran out of cells to put them in. All sorts of stories started flying around, spooking everyone. Then we had to start shooting them to keep them in line. Control told us the same thing was happening everywhere. Some of the officers rallied around me. They thought I could figure out a solution because I could think clearer. Because I could sleep. But they didn’t really trust me, you know? Yeah, I can tell you know. Anyhow, they launched the fucking missile from one mile out, aimed it straight at the downtown core, at the goddamn Space Needle for all I know. Everyone on deck was killed. I survived the blast because I was sleeping down below. Fuck. The others who survived told me about some plague, how one of them had had a vision of some plague, and they had to sterilize the city to stop it. Bat shit crazy. Then they took over from me and decided to sail up here to repeat the trick. But by then I’d disabled the missile control panels and they couldn’t launch. Meanwhile, we were all getting sicker and sicker from the radiation.’

  ‘And then what?

  ‘And then a couple of nights ago, I took my revolver and finished off the last dozen of them. Bam, bam, bam. Like target practice. They were all just about done for anyway. It’s just me now.’

  ‘So why did you…?’

  ‘Ram the shore?’ He moistened ruined lips with a swollen tongue. ‘After a few hours out there watching the shit going down on this beach I figured I might as well finish the job my men started. Not for crazy reasons, you know, but a mercy killing. Only I couldn’t re-arm the nukes. You need two people with the right codes pressing the same buttons at the same times. So I thought about the reactor that runs the engines.’

  ‘But I just told you, you’re not the only sane one left. There are—’

  ‘There’s nothing left. I can’t even sleep any more myself, man. It hurts so bad. I think I’m turning into one of them. I keep thinking bad thoughts. I just want to sleep. To dream. Damn, it hurts. I’ll tell you one thing: now I know how a goddamned burnt hot dog feels.’

  I choked up a little at that. A joke. The first one I’d heard, I was pretty sure, since this whole mess started. Humour had been the first casualty in Nod, and a humourless world seemed somehow even more tragic than one filled with pain and suffering. There has always been suffering, but humour had helped make it bearable.

  He was speaking again.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Paul.’

  ‘Tyler. Tyler Brown. Lieutenant first class. I was.’

  He shifted stiffly in his chair and winced. A pink tear started to stumble down his cracked cheek.

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Tyler?’

  He laughed and shook his head. ‘You can shoot me, brother. You willing to do that?’

  ‘You’ve got to be in a lot of pain.’

  ‘No, man. No, I’m cruising through junkie heaven. There’s twenty gallons of morphine down below.’ He gestured around the room at the syringes. ‘I don’t feel much except when I pass by a mirror. That hurts a shitload, believe me.’

  We both laughed, but it felt like a wake for laughter. Whatever their other virtues, I couldn’t see the kids in the park trading quips or cracking wise.

  Tyler picked up an empty syringe and threw it on the floor. ‘It’s a joke in so many ways, man. I joined the navy because every kid in my neighbourhood was getting hooked on shit like this. And here I’m going to end my days as a junkie.’ He switched tracks. ‘You hungry? There’s a restaurant down below, you know. Massive chow.’

  By now, the kicking and pounding had stopped. I turned and found Charles staring straight at me. There were wolves in those bloodshot eyes and a gnawing of bones in that grinding jaw. I noted that one of his henchmen was missing, probably sent to get reinforcements.

  I moved close to the glass and winked at him, disappointing myself with my casual cruelty. Charles was on the outside yet again and that had to be unspeakably hard to take—especially for a newly-anointed king.

  Down in the mess hall, I stuffed my face with fried bacon, canned ravioli, and that perennial military favourite, Spam. Tyler had assured me that the ship was locked down and that no one was going to be able to break in with anything less than a blowtorch and a working set of Jaws of Life.

  We’d been down there for a couple of hours, trading stories in between his morphine injections. I was becoming aware of a pattern: Tyler would get more and more agitated and angry, then inject himself and calm down for ten or twenty minutes, dreamy but lucid. He’d taken to jabbing the needle into his forearm without much of an effort to find a viable vein. There was no way he could carry on like this for much longer. What if he overdosed and died tonight? Then there would be no way to shut the ship down.

  He watched me eat with what looked like envy, but took nothing for himself. Instead he sat opposite me, propped in a chair, arms stiff at his sides, taking occasional noisy sips from a juice box. It was hard to imagine how he blinked, let alone walked or sat: he seemed to be melting before my eyes. In fact, he probably was.

  ‘How long until the reactor melts down if you don’t turn it off?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘No idea. As it turns out, I never blew up a nuclear powered aircraft carrier before. Not too long.’

  ‘And are you going to shut it down?’

  He was ready for
my question and belligerent in his reply. ‘Why would I? I’ll be doing us all a favour by speeding the goddamn process up by a few days. You and I get to waltz off into our dreams. And those poor bastards out there will be better off as well.’ He snorted. ‘Pacification of the local populace.’

  ‘Even if you’re right about that, what about the children I told you about in the park? They don’t need to die.’

  He was already prepping himself for another needle, the third since I’d met him. He pushed the plunger down and fell back in his chair, needle dangling.

  ‘It’s bullshit,’ he said dreamily. ‘Pure, unadulterated bullshit. There’s nothing left to save. I’ve been watching this place through my fucking high powered military fucking telescope. It’s a nightmare. Pacification of the captain, pacification of the enemy. We all just want some peace. Well, I’m the goddamn peacemaker…’

  His voice drifted off and I became aware of a distant, hollow pounding—Charles’ people trying to smash their way inside. At dusk, we’d watched them building a bonfire on the main deck. About three dozen of the Awakened armed with crowbars and sledgehammers.

  ‘But why not just let things play out? What if you play God and you’re wrong?’

  This woke him up. ‘God? Don’t start with God, son. If there was a God, we wouldn’t be in this fucking mess. I had kids you know. Three. Amy, Jimmy, and baby Anna. They’re dead. Wife dead, dog dead. Cat, too. Though I never thought much of that cat.’ Here he laughed until a coughing fit cut him off. ‘God? Fuck him. This, whatever’s left now, it’s just a shadow. The party’s over, and the sooner somebody turns out the lights, the better. Am I right?’

  ‘But the kids I’m talking about are different.’

  Tyler stared straight at me with an intensity that I was beginning to find chilling. Suddenly I was aware of how alone we were down here.

  ‘Different from my kids? Better than mine? No they fucking aren’t. Those kids of yours do sound like fucking demons. When I think about them floating around out there in the dark, not making a sound, just watching people? Honest, it sounds scarier than your buddy Charles. Christ, how those kids of yours must torment those poor sleepless bastards.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now, I’m not going to stop you from doing whatever you feel you’ve got to do. Just don’t you try to stop me from…from…’

  He fumbled around for another needle.

  ‘Can you help me get out of the ship so I can go help that girl, Zoe I told you about?’

  He reeled as the next wave of euphoria hit him, and I felt my question had at least been well-timed.

  ‘That’s nothing. There are a thousand ways out of here. You can check out any time but you can never leave…’

  ‘What if I bring her here? Show you? Will you shut off the engines then?’

  He coughed and either shook his head or shuddered as the morphine babbled through his system.

  ‘Such a lovely place, such a lovely place…’

  DAY 15: Goat and Compasses

  A corruption of ‘God en-compasses [us]’

  ‘You sure you want to go back out there?’ Tyler asked dubiously, coherent for the moment.

  ‘No, I’m not sure, but duty calls.’

  I gave him a mock salute, and Tyler allowed himself a smile. It was just before dawn and we were standing on a tiny back deck, down near water level and invisible from shore at this time of day. Above us, the Ragnarok’s hull rose like a cast iron skyscraper.

  A little earlier, back up on the bridge, we’d watched as stooped figures on the deck, lit by lapping flames, moved back and forth. Hammering, prying, burning—looking for a weak point in the ship’s armour. They’d even brought along an acetylene torch, which worried me but just made Tyler laugh contemptuously. Loud voices called back and forth. Weakened as they were, the Awakened must have been finding breaking into a US aircraft carrier a very frustrating venture—something like trying to prise open a coconut with one’s bare hands.

  After our dinner I’d slept for six hours—the most rest I’d had in a week—in a comfortable bunk. Before going to bed I’d even showered and shaved. And now here I was, in clean clothes with a pack on my back filled with unimaginable luxuries: canned food, a knife, bottles of water. And a flare gun.

  During that night’s prelude to the Golden Light, I’d been—not too surprisingly—a missile flying toward some distant city, a fantastical metropolis crowded with towering spires.

  Tyler had promised to wake me before sunrise and he’d come through with a series of sharp slaps to my face that finally did the trick. Then we’d made a deal. If I was able to return with Zoe, I’d shoot a flare from the beach and he’d open the back door and wait for us. I hoped that by bringing Zoe to meet Tyler I might be able to convince him to shut off the engines before they blew.

  The thrumming. By now it was so loud it must have been audible all over the West End. I could only imagine the havoc it was playing on the unravelled minds of the tightly-wound denizens of Nod.

  I climbed over the rail and into a dinghy that hung from a winch. Below me, the ocean churned, waves slapping against the Ragnarok’s backside.

  ‘Take care,’ I said as Tyler pressed a button and the winch began to lower me down to the water.

  He didn’t reply, was growing distant again. He just kept his flashlight beam trained on me as I descended.

  The dinghy hit the water and began to buck as I detached the winch chain and began to row toward Stanley Park. The beach around the carrier was still swarming with fire-lit shapes, but any sound they made was smothered by the noise of the Ragnarok’s engines. Even though I knew no one could see me, I felt exposed. Were those figures locked in another animal bacchanal? And if so, what shape had the Ragnarok taken on in their minds?

  On the other hand, the physicality of rowing and the pre-dawn dampness in the air felt terrific. Out there on the water it was as though the madness on the beach, on the ship, and in the city was all a dream. And so I row, row, rowed my boat. The same waves had rolled along these shores for millions of years; dinosaurs once bathed in the same water I now paddled through. During the intervening millennia mountains had risen and fallen and all the plants and animals had been replaced and reinvented. But the water hadn’t changed.

  When I finally made shore the sun was glowering on the horizon, and it was low tide. I beached the dinghy and stepped through the black, sucking mud at the water’s edge toward firmer ground. The seawall, when I reached it, was only about five feet high, and I was able to clamber up onto the walkway that ran along its edge fairly easily. At my feet a stencilled man marched west toward the Lion’s Gate Bridge while a stencilled cyclist headed east, back toward the Ragnarok. Deciding that both these stick creatures were nuts, I headed north—straight into the woods.

  They didn’t look very welcoming. Before me, titanic cedars stood aloof, with seemingly impassable thickets of blackberry bushes around their ankles. Half of Vancouver’s vegetation had to be blackberry bushes and wherever forest met open sunlight, they took over. Not too far inland from where I stood, however, the woods would deepen and the underbrush thin out in the permanent shade. In fact, the park was riddled with trails; it was just a matter of finding one that would lead back downtown, and given that the park was bordered on three sides by ocean, eventually they all did. So a doable task.

  I found the thinnest section of bramble I could, took a deep breath, and pushed forward. God, it hurt. Death by a thousand tiny scratches. My raised forearm protected my face, but my arms, legs, and neck were ripped and torn. Within a minute or so, however, the going got easier as cedars rose around me, their shade anathema to smaller plants. Soon I was on a well-established trail. I stopped and rubbed my arms, smearing blood everywhere, until the stinging’s volume died down and I could hear the Ragnarok once more.

  After I had walked for a while, there was a rustling in the brush and I spun around, fully expecting to see some demon-hunter, cudgel poised to heave ho into my
skull. Instead, I saw a boy of around eleven, red-haired and freckled, thin and vulnerable-looking. Jeans and a T-shirt hung from his body like afterthoughts as he watched me with an expression of—approximately—mild interest. Perhaps it was my recent stint of stillness out in the dinghy, or perhaps it was my comparatively well-rested state, but I surprised myself. Rather than try to talk and repeat the error Tanya and I had made the first time we had encountered a group of these children, I simply sat down on the hard-packed earth in the centre of the trail and waited. The boy seemed pleased, as though I’d done exactly what he’d hoped, and immediately sat down opposite me. I felt the familiar puppet pull toward speech but forced myself to ignore it.

  During the silent powwow that ensued, the sun rose above us and the world coloured itself in, a little blurry and not quite between the lines. No golden light, just a daydream moment like when we stare at a tree out the window or the lines on our hands and they become so vivid and concrete that time and thought stop.

  And then start again.

  Some sort of impossible abyss is crossed each time we move. I sit still, pencil in hand, and then I begin to write. How does that happen? How does stillness become motion? It’s the Paradox of Xeno: to move an inch, you need to first move a half an inch. But to move that half inch you first need to move a quarter inch. But first an eighth, a sixteenth and so on until we learn that motion is, in fact, impossible. And so the boy and I sat, shadows rolling gently across our faces, disdainful time passing us by.

  Then, simultaneously, we looked up.

  The sun was high in the sky, and all around us were children. How many? Dozens. Silent and observing, just like their sister, Zoe. Soft shadows mottled their heads, and I saw how thin they were. Somehow I’d come to assume that these kids were otherworldly apparitions, phantoms untethered from the trials of Nod. But now I saw it wasn’t true: they were as human and hungry as any child from a World Visions appeal, with eyes as large and round as those of children from velvet paintings. What had they been subsisting on for the last couple of weeks? I stretched my mind across the park. Maybe the contents of a couple of plundered refreshment stands and some muddy creek water. Blackberries and huckleberries. Not much.