The Divide

by Jeremy Robinson

  “Good enough for me,” I say, and I reach for the girl. Everything about this is a breach of tradition and protocol. While Plistim and his family are all about breaking laws—pretty much all of them—they must have been worried that I would have objected to the marriage.

  “Really?” Salem blurts, confirming my suspicions.

  “You’re the bastard son of the shepherd called Eight, and a man called Bear, who is the son of the most reviled villain in New Inglan.” I smile at my son. “It would have been stranger for you to follow tradition. Though I must confess my sadness at missing the ceremony. I’m sure it was beautiful.”

  “It was raining,” Dyer says.

  “I was covered in mud,” Shoba adds. “Fell in a puddle.”

  “We were both ill,” Salem adds, growing more comfortable.

  Del’s smile looks more authentic now.

  “You shoot?” I motion to the quiver and bow.

  “I hunt,” the girl says, adding confidence to her grin.

  “Can you eat what you kill?” I ask. “Without the flame?”

  “How else does a predator eat?”

  With that, I give in and step toward the girl. She meets me halfway and we embrace as mother and daughter.

  “Well, this is frikkin’ adorable,” Dyer says, “but the floor is still shaking. Since I don’t want to be buried alive, or eaten outside, how about you tell us where the hell we are and what we’re doing next.”

  I nearly respond, but it’s my son everyone is looking to for an answer.

  “C’mon,” he says, stepping toward the darkness. “I have something to show you all.”

  “Did you find something?” Shua asks, the first one to follow.

  “I’m not certain yet,” Salem says. “But I think it’s a message. From our ancestors.”

  28

  The ancient ruins, which look neither ancient nor ruined, are revealed in flickering orange light, one torch after another. Unlike the other Old World structures I’ve seen—or what remains of them—this place was clearly designed to defy time itself. The concrete walls are intact, showing no signs of degradation. The rough surface has been covered in a smooth, tan substance Shua tells me was once called paint, similar to dyes, but thick enough to color solid objects.

  We’re in a central room, fifty feet across and several hundred long. The walls are thick, the doors metal, and the feeling ominous. The ceiling is arched, perhaps twenty feet tall at the apex. I would have had trouble imagining a space so large and solidly built just a few days ago, but I’ve now seen Boston. This cavernous room is small in comparison to those megalithic buildings.

  There are rooms to each side, their doors propped open. Closed hallways are at either end. We entered through the hall to our rear, but the hallway ahead has yet to be explored. Salem spent most of the previous night and day going through the large central area, trying to make sense of everything. He’d intended to search the entire structure, but got distracted by whatever it is he’s taking us to see.

  “What is this place?” Shoba asks, as we’re led across the room, inspecting signs we can’t read and equipment for which even Shua and Salem can’t guess the purpose.

  “It was the headquarters for an organization called FEMA. It’s an acronym for Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

  “Anyone else understand less than fifty percent of that?” Dyer says.

  “Less,” I grumble, feeling a little intimidated by my son’s command of a language I thought I spoke fluently.

  “Their job was to provide emergency relief. Like if a storm destroyed a town, they would provide temporary shelter, water, or food. There used to be buildings above us, too, but they’re long since gone. This…” Salem motions to the broad space around us, his voice echoing off the solid walls, “…was a bunker designed to survive far worse than natural disasters.”

  “Like the Golyats,” Shoba says.

  “Not the Golyats,” Salem says, looking solemn. “But just as bad, if not worse.”

  “What could be worse?” I ask. Having many of my fears about the giant destroyers of humanity confirmed, I can’t imagine anything more fearsome.

  “They had weapons…” Salem shakes his head, and looks around the room, eyeing the ancient, now dormant technologies around us with disdain. “They could have destroyed the world. The whole planet could have burned in toxic fire.”

  “They were used against the Golyats?” I ask.

  “No one knows,” Plistim says. “But they weren’t created to use against the Golyats. They were created to use against other people, in other countries, on other continents. They moved around the world faster than we can move around a single county. Wars spanned the globe, and when they used their weapons, their bombs, hundreds of thousands of people could die faster than you could thrust a sword through an enemy’s chest.”

  The group falls silent. I’ve never heard of such nightmarish things.

  “Actually,” Salem says, “They used the bombs against the Golyats, too. And they worked, but they also killed people and poisoned the earth. But the Golyats spread too far, too fast. To kill them all would be killing everything, and everyone.”

  “How do you know this?” Plistim asks, more excited by the information than horrified.

  “It’s all here,” Salem says, approaching a door. The room ahead juts out into the large space, walling off a portion of it. Unlike the walls all around us, these walls have a large, shiny rectangle embedded in them. I glance toward the flat surface and flinch when I see someone staring back.

  Dyer catches me, “C’mon, you’re not that funny looking.”

  In the flickering light, I see the person looking back is myself. It’s like a pond has been frozen vertically. I place my hand against the smooth surface. “Is this…glass?”

  Shua knocks his knuckles against the clear wall. It bongs with each strike, the sound not entirely unpleasant. “Glass windows. Now picture this covering all of the open spaces in those Boston buildings.”

  “How is it made?” I ask.

  Shua shrugs.

  Salem stops in the doorway. “Melted sand.”

  I rub my hand over the surface. Even after all this time, it is smooth to the point of being flawless. “This is sand?”

  “Our ancestors had many achievements,” Plistim says. “Many of them are marvels beyond our comprehension. They could have been great if they were not also fools.”

  Plistim’s contempt confuses me. I thought the Modernists all but worshiped the Old World and the people who had built it. But it seems his admiration for their greatest works is tempered by revolt at their most heinous. Having lived among people my whole life, I’m not convinced humanity would do much better with a second technological golden age. Self-destruction is part of who we are. Since the Cull, Plistim and his family should know that better than most.

  We filter through the door into a room with limited space. There are three chairs along the back wall, facing a table, behind which is another, larger chair. A map covers the back wall. I’ve only seen a few very crude maps. This one is massive, and detailed. Given the size of the text I can’t read, I think the land it covers is vast.

  The desk holds several hard objects with unnaturally smooth surfaces, curves, and textures. I touch it all, trying to feel a connection with our ancestors and guess at what these things would have been used for, but they resemble no tool I’ve seen.

  Salem sits behind the table and picks up something that makes a little more sense. “This is a journal. It was left behind by a man named Lew. I don’t understand some of it, but I understand enough.” He flips through the pages revealing handwritten text and crude sketches. “While Lew had nothing to do with the Golyats’ creation, he was part of a group that tried to save humanity from them. We know how that turned out, but for him, it was all in process. A lot of it is vague, though, written from the perspective of someone who knows more than we do. Listen…”

  He flips through the pages, finds what h
e’s looking for, and reads, “‘Fi spent the last week creating the Divide. She’s exhausted, but the job is done. We held the line, and Kingsland is secure. Fi is now en route to Alaska where S and Z await. I think she’s being pushed too hard, but desperate times…’” Salem looks up from the page. “The tools used to create the Divide are never revealed, but someone named Fi oversaw the project. I think we have her to thank for New England’s continued existence.”

  “New England?” I say. I understand he’s saying New Inglan, but he’s pronouncing it strangely.

  “That’s how our ancestors said the words,” Salem says. He stands and moves to the large map. He points to a small section, tracing his finger in a circle. “This is New England.” He draws his finger in a straight line, carving the circle in half. “This is where the Divide is.” He taps to the right of the Divide. “This is Essex.” He taps to the left, barely moving his finger. “This is where we are now.”

  My eyes shift left, following the map across a vast and forgotten land, ending at another ocean. We’ve traveled so far over the past few days, but according to the map, we have barely moved at all. The Earth, our planet, is far more vast than I had thought.

  I can feel my mouth opening in astonishment, but clamp it shut. Since I’m the only one asking questions, I assume this is common knowledge to the others. But I can’t keep myself from asking more questions. “And the other land Lew wrote about? Alaska?”

  Plistim steps up to the map, raising his finger far to the left and as high as he can reach. “Here.”

  “That would take a summer to reach,” I say.

  “Years,” Shua corrects.

  “Alaska is not our destination,” Salem says with the uncompromising confidence of a leader. He turns the book a few more pages, close to the end, and reads, “‘We’re leaving today, for Pinckney. We’ll work on a way to stop the Golyats for as long as it takes. God willing, we’ll take the planet back. If not, at least we’ve got the five safe havens protected.’”

  “Pinckney,” Plistim says, taking a seat. “Is there any mention of where? Specifically?”

  Salem scans the page, turns it, and then stops. “He mentions a Fletcher Mountain.”

  “You know where it is,” I say. “don’t you?”

  Plistim looks on the verge of tears, or rage. He dips his head, and I’m not sure if it’s a nod or not, but then he says, “I do.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll go,” Shua says. “Perhaps the solution we’ve been looking for will be there.”

  “The solution we sought was within reach all along,” Plistim says. “But no longer.”

  “I don’t understand, Father,” Shua says, crouching down in front of the man, who appears to have aged ten years in the past few seconds. “Why can we not go to Fletcher Mountain?”

  “Pinckney was once a town,” Plistim says, “in Grafton.”

  A kind of weighted silence descends over the room and everyone in it.

  Grafton county is one of five counties that border the Divide, located in the mountains. It is hard to reach for much of the year, and from this side of the Divide…impossible.

  “We came all this way, sacrificed so much, and so many, only to discover we should have never left.” Plistim lifts his head and looks to each member of his family. “I’m sorry I brought you here, to this horrible place.” His eyes meet mine. “I should have left you behind.”

  In an odd-feeling act of compassion, I place my hand on Plistim’s shoulder. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Then you’re a fool like the rest of us,” he says.

  “No one here is a fool,” Salem says. “We made it this far, we can make it back.”

  “How?” Shoba says.

  Salem mimics his father’s shrug and then his mother’s way with words. “I have no fucking idea.”

  29

  Since the discovery that the answers to the world’s Golyat problem lie in our unreachable homeland, the group has dispersed throughout the firelit ‘facility,’ a word Shua taught me. We’re all sifting through ancient relics, trying to decipher a use or meaning that might help us figure out our next step. For those of us who can’t read, the task is doubly hard.

  Despite Salem’s confident proclamation, and the group’s subsequent decision to at least attempt a return trip, not one of us believes it is possible, at least not any time soon. Our best bet is to recover one of the balloons and repair it, but there are several problems with that plan. First, most of the balloons would have caught fire or been damaged upon landing. Without animals to hunt, we’d lack furs. Without a knowledge of the land, and what grows where, other natural resources will be hard to collect. Winter is just months away. If we cannot cross before then, we’ll need to have stores of food to last the winter. While the FEMA bunker provides shelter, we’ll need to find edible plants and make a lot of squirrel jerky if we’re going to survive the cold.

  No one wants to be here that long, though I have yet to point out that we will be hunted upon our return to New Inglan. Without a true home to return to, winter in the mountains of Grafton will be harsh. But at least there will be animals to hunt, and furs to keep us warm. Surviving in either location means taking action now.

  Which is why I’m feeling frustrated by going through a box of unrecognizable junk. Several of the facility’s rooms are filled with metal boxes. Some of those boxes hold endless amounts of fragile paper. Some, like mine, hold objects that might have served a purpose five hundred years ago, but have no place in the present age. I suppose if we can uncover some ancient technology or knowledge, perhaps it will help, but I’m not holding out much hope.

  The object in my hand is solid, and constructed from metal. Its two halves come together in a joint that moves when I squeeze it. But one metal side just taps against the other and nothing happens. “Stupid…”

  Shua sits on a box next to me. The grin on his face says he knows what I’m holding. He digs through a nearby box and slides out two pieces of paper. He looks over the pages, reading their contents. “We’re not interested in the work schedules of people who have been dead for five hundred years, right?”

  I shake my head, but I am interested.

  So is Shua. “Looks like eight hour days, five days a week.”

  “Five days a week? Eight hours?” I’m incredulous. “What did they do for the other one hundred twenty-eight hours each week? Sit?”

  “Most of them did that while working,” Shua says. “And they were able to get a lot more done in a lot less time. They had machines capable of doing jobs for them.”

  “What’s a machine?” I ask. “A slave?”

  “A non-living slave, perhaps.” Shua holds out his hand, asking for the strange object I’m holding. I give it to him and he holds it up. “Like this.”

  “That’s a machine?”

  He hands two pieces of paper to me. “Can you attach these to each other?”

  I fiddle with the pages, trying to fold them, and then lick them together. But I cannot devise a way to join them with what I have on hand. “I would sew them. Like skins.”

  “Or…” He slips the two pages inside the ancient object’s open end. Then he squeezes. The two metal sides clack together. Shua squeezes a little harder and one side compresses with a click. When he moves the device away, a thin grey line is left on the pages, which are now held together. He moves down the paper, squeezing again and again. It takes just two seconds for him to fully join the two pages.

  He hands the paper to me. “It was called a stapler.”

  I inspect the seam. “Less work, but more completed…”

  “Right,” he says. “They had machines that could sew seams even faster and with more skill than a person could achieve. There were devices that could freeze and preserve food, even in the summer months. They even had things called toilets. They would defecate into them—”

  “Inside?”

  “Yeah, but they would push a lever and water would carry it away.”

 
“Where?”

  He shrugs, and this time I don’t mind. “Someplace we never want to discover would be my guess.”

  I squint at Shua. “You seem…upbeat. And aren’t you supposed to be up there?” I nod toward the ceiling, which in this long, rectangular room is flat and gray. I’m surrounded by metal shelves and metal boxes. Everything in this place seems designed to survive the ravages of time, but for no good purpose. Even the stapler.

  “Dyer just started her watch. Yours begins in six hours. You should probably get some sleep.”

  Since dozens of family members are still unaccounted for, we decided that one person would keep watch. It took an hour for us to risk opening the door, but the large Golyat was nowhere to be found. The female was very dead, torn asunder, scattered about and, where its digestive fluids spilled, lying in a puddle of fetid gray sludge.

  As disturbing as her mutilated corpse is, I still see it as a victory. She is proof that a Golyat can be killed, and that there is no allegiance between the beasts, at least not while they are ravenous, which appears to be all the time. My thoughts drift to the charred bear with its glowing stomach. It was smaller, and not human in form, but it was a Golyat, and Shua and I might have very well killed it after all.

  Despite what we’ve learned, I feel discouraged by it. If our ancestors had enough power to destroy the world, how could they have failed to defeat the Golyats? There is still much to learn about the monsters. That is for certain. Knowing they can be killed is a start, but learning how to kill them all is the key.

  Shua hands the stapler back to me. When I take it, my hand lingers on his for a moment, triggering memories of his gentle touch. I twitch back, dropping the ancient device to the concrete floor where it snaps open, spewing tiny metal strands.

  “Sorry.” He quickly bends to pick up the stapler, cleaning up the mess no one would care about.

  “My fault.” I watch him, feeling an uncomfortable affection for my once long-time friend, one-time lover, and now…what? My discomfort grows to the point where the part of me that is fierce can’t stand it anymore. “What are we?”