The kids had been turned away. Again, apparently, in Sam’s case. Zephyr couldn’t fucking believe it, especially because he’d spent the better part of an hour convincing the boy to follow him back through the mall to their scouting party with promises of righting some terrible misunderstanding. When, however, he explained the predicament to Roderick, the man examined Sam’s neck and promptly denied him access to the caravan. Just like that. And nothing Zephyr said could convince him to reconsider.
“I told you, it’s not my call. Rules are rules, and if you can’t appreciate that, I suggest you take it up with someone above our pay grade.”
He nearly reminded him that pay scales were obsolete and then thought better of it. Instead, he asked, “What about Nate?”
“Is he marked?”
“No.” He realized, though, that he’d never actually checked. “I don’t think so, anyway. Nate, show him your neck, OK?”
“He’s not marked,” Sam said, emphasizing the last word.
Roderick nodded. “Then we can take him.”
“Is Sam coming?” the boy asked.
Zephyr turned back to Roderick. “Is he?”
The tanned man shook his head. “No, he’s not. And don’t push me again or you’ll be sleeping out here, too. Understood?”
“That’s real big of you, Spencer. Really earning those stripes today. Hero mode all the way,” Trey said.
“Go fuck yourself. Some of us actually abide by the laws we have in place.”
“I want Sam to go. I do—” Nate started to say and then Sam hugged him.
“I can’t, Nate. But you can go if you want, I won’t mind. I swear. I won’t be mad or anything. If you want to stay with me, that’s cool, too. It’s totally your choice.”
The younger boy surveyed the caravan of soldiers and then whispered something to Sam.
“What’s the word, compadre?” Trey asked.
Nate looked to his friend again and Sam shook his head. “It’s your choice.”
“I want Sam to come. If he can’t come, then I’m gonna stay too,” he said.
And that was that.
A half hour later, the trucks pulled out from the battered shopping center and the two boys faded away in the rearview mirror as Zephyr obsessed over the branded ‘X’ and its implications. He wasn’t naive or stupid. Yes, there were bad guys out there and no, they were not allowed access to the city. But Sam was just a kid. And a kid who cared for another at that. A kid who had just displayed one of the most selfless acts he’d seen since the disappearances.
The door to the interrogation room opened and two men Zephyr didn’t recognize stepped out. Behind them trailed Janis, Karen and Alec. Zephyr waved them down, Janis said something to her sister and Karen nodded before rejoining the party down the hall. Janis flashed him a winning smile and then embraced him.
“What can I do for you, Zephyr?”
He was actually surprised she remembered him. Alpha was a city a thousand strong and growing. That was a lot of faces and names to keep on mental file.
She laughed. “I don’t actually recall everybody’s names,” she said, reading his mind. “But your name’s hard to forget. And besides, you and Trey are thick as thieves so you’re something of a celebrity by association. What can I help you with?”
He thought about how and where to begin and couldn’t settle upon an elegant summary. “Where to start.”
“What is it?”
“There’s a lot, actually,” he said. “I guess the short version is that I was on a scouting mission today, we were searching an abandoned mall down on 2nd and we found a couple kids living in one of the restaurants.”
“Inside the mall?”
“Yeah, and I tried to take them back with us, except it turned out that one of the kids—Sam, is his name – he didn’t want to go. Which made no sense because where they are now, they don’t even have real power, and they’re on their own out there.”
“OK,” she agreed.
“The kicker is that it turns out Sam came to Alpha once before and he got escorted out.”
She sighed. “I see.”
“But that can’t be right, though, right? I mean, Sam isn’t even a teenager. He wouldn’t get turned away, right?”
He searched her face and was disappointed with her expression, which hadn’t changed.
“Oh, Zephyr, I love your optimism. I wish I still shared it,” she said. “You know as well as I do that children can kill just as well as adults. There’s no age restriction on this stuff. I know it’s not what you want to hear and I wish I could tell you that it’s not the way of the world. I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes, though.”
He met those eyes, his heart racing. “Are we really burning brands onto people? Onto kids? He’s twelve years-old. You should see the back of his neck.”
When she didn’t respond, he added, “I thought we just turned them away and took their weapons, if they had any. And for adults, not kids. Now we’re mutilating people, too?”
She considered her words and then said, “It’s not ideal, I’ll give you that. But it could always be worse. We could be killing all of the bad ones. The suggestion has been made more than once.”
“Yeah, great way to distinguish the good guys from the bad. By killing a bunch of people,” he blurted loud enough for others to hear. He could feel himself losing control. Could feel himself trembling. “First, you ask the eight-year-old a few questions, then you magically determine he’s ‘bad’ and then it’s off with his head, right? That sounds like a great plan to me.”
“That’s enough.”
“Why even bother with the interviews? Hell, maybe the geniuses upstairs can create some kind of undetectable poison that we can put into milk bottles and we’ll just distribute it freely to all the barely-surviving mothers out there. Get the bad guys before they have a chance to grow up.”
He might’ve continued onward if the back of her hand hadn’t slapped his train of thought right out of him. He’d taken a few punches over the years and hers stung and rattled as good as any balled fist. Before he had any time to recover, her fingers were in his elbow as she marched him down the hall toward the interrogation room.
“That… was not very smart,” Janis said after she had closed the door. The words came unflustered and yet her hands still balled into fists and she drew a long breath before finally facing him again. “Not smart at all, Zephyr. But I shouldn’t have slapped you, and I’m sorry.”
“Whatever.”
“Pouting now? It doesn’t suit you.”
He searched for a witty response but she ignored him and launched into conversation again. “One thing I will not tolerate is public insubordination. If you want to have it out with me, that’s fine. Come to my office, close the door, and get whatever you need to get off your chest. I’m not saying I won’t scream back, but I welcome that kind of dialog. Out in the hallways of my building, though, and in front of my people…” she said, and shook her head. “No. That, I won’t stand for. And you just learned that.”
She stared at him for a moment and then her features softened. “Back to your boy, I want to ask you, do you think we make any of these decisions lightly? Denying the leftovers access? Sending them back out into this damaged world? And yes, even marking them? In case you have any doubt, let me reassure you, the answer is no. Absolutely, unequivocally, no. We all have to make excruciating decisions to keep the ones we love safe. That sometimes means doing things that might keep us up at night. Things that don’t always feel right.”
She paused and sighed. “All we can do is trust in our convictions, what we believe in here, because when everything is said and done, we are trying to do good with the limited tools and skills we have left and I truly do believe by that measure the end always justifies the means. I think there are a lot of people within these walls who would agree, yourself included. Deep down, whether you want to openly admit it or not right now. I really do.”
It was easy to understa
nd why Janis was in charge. Her charisma sparkled and she possessed a nearly-indiscernible deftness for disarmament. That he somehow felt responsible for his recent lashing was proof enough of that. And yet, he couldn’t let go of the simple truth underneath it all, which was that whatever she asserted, and however she spun it all in her favor, she agreed with a fundamental philosophy that denied sanctuary to kids like Sam.
“Zephyr, do you know how many murders we’ve had at Alpha?” Janis asked.
He rolled his eyes. “Let me guess. Zero?”
“No,” she said, and smiled. “Actually, two. Both of them were early on, before we tested. The first — a gentlemen in his forties strangled his girlfriend. Ugly business, but not as bad as the other. That one — a ten-year-old boy. His name was Charles. Only ten. And do you know what he did?”
She didn’t wait for him to answer.
“Let me tell you,” she said and stepped closer. “He stabbed his mother to death while she was sleeping. And why? Because she blocked him from playing video games on the weekend.”
Her hands found his shoulders as her eyes locked with his. “The things we do, we do for the good of the city.”
Zephyr pulled away from her. “The other kid with Sam didn’t have a mark,” he said. “He could’ve come back with us if he wanted to. And guess what? Sam didn’t flip his shit or try to kill anybody when he found this out, either. He just turned to the kid — Nate — and told him that it was OK to go, and that he wouldn’t be mad at all.”
He started toward the door, looked back, and added, “That’s the monster you burned and abandoned. So why don’t you think about that when you’re curled up in your warm bed tonight.”
38
Aurora literally bit her lip and studied him as they sat at their tiny kitchenette table and he spooned watery cereal into his mouth. Milk was now a luxury seldom attainable, at least until the farm and ranch systems were operating at full capacity.
“So?” he finally asked between swallows.
“I dunno,” she said and then plucked at one of her cuticles.
Here we go, he thought, stopped eating and glared at her.
“Fine. If I’m being honest—and don’t get mad at me, because you asked for my opinion— I can kind of see both sides.”
“For fucking real?”
“Baby, how many kids were in gangs and shooting each other before all this happened? Or, you know, when you turned on the news, every so often you’d hear about some crazed kid who killed his classmates or whatever. Or another who strapped bombs to himself and blew people up across the world. I’m just saying that it’s not impossible.”
He realized Janis had nothing on Aurora. She had a way of relating to him and circumventing his defenses when few others could.
“You didn’t see what I saw, though, Rory. He’s a good kid. He’s out there protecting a little boy the same age as Jordan, for fuck’s sake. And he’s been doing it by himself all this time with no help at all from any of us.”
She leaned across the table and placed her hand over his. “OK, so don’t jump all over me for saying this, either, all right? I’m on your side here.”
He sighed. “Go ahead.”
“You said you found some bodies in a freezer up there,” she said and then winced as though the words themselves pained her.
“What?”
“Two dead bodies in a freezer. You said that, right? Because just to play devil’s advocate here, there’s no way those kids didn’t know about them if they’ve been living there as long as they said they have. And maybe they more than knew about them.”
“No,” Zephyr said more to himself than her. She was right, though. She was fucking right. And why hadn’t he made that connection at all? They must have discovered the bodies at some point — the smell permeated the area — so why would they just leave them there? The simple answer was that they never jimmied the doors open.
“OK,” he said. “OK. It’s a little weird. I admit it.”
She slid her flimsy chair closer to his and then wrapped her arms around him. This simple display of affection always overpowered him—words alone never satiated her, and it was one of the reasons he cherished the girl.
“You’re a good person, baby,” she said and kissed him. “You always see the best in people.”
He ran his fingers through her thick hair. “You might be right. Maybe Sam is all messed up, and maybe they were right to turn him away. But they’re still burning kids and leaving them to die without any legitimate proof of anything. If we’re all supposed to be categorized into hard good or hard bad, where does that kind of shit fit in?”
39
Saturday night, almost three weeks after the expedition, Zephyr and Trey found themselves lounging in lawn chairs with a twelve-pack of beer as they studied the skyline from their perch on the rooftop of a newly-appropriated building. It was a hotel, actually. He was drunk and couldn’t remember the name, but it might’ve been The Bittington. Or maybe The Burlington? That was in another life.
Alpha’s expansion teams had secured the structure a week prior and he and Trey ventured over two days after that to determine if the living quarters were more suitable than their own. They were. They all moved the next day. Their little makeshift family had risen higher in the new world and now dwelled in a spacious flat with a view of the city that money could not buy. Literally could not buy, he thought, and chuckled.
“What’s so funny, jackwad?” Trey asked, reached for his bottle, knocked it over, and then cursed. “You know, I had to barter a box of movies to get this and now look what you made me do.”
“Try not to be so wasted and dumb all the time,” Zephyr said.
His friend ignored this. “But maaaan, come on—look at that view.”
It really was magnificent. The sun had already dipped into the ether that separated sky from sea, and rich tones of red still radiated and stretched into the dark blue above.
When the darkness finally blotted out those final stubborn rays, they rotated their chairs so that they could gaze into the opposite direction, the sea and wind at their backs. A great pile of skyscrapers, motionless, but still breathing with electricity, greeted them, and this too was arresting. Except, Zephyr knew that this particular view would not always be there for the ogling— that unlike the rising and setting sun, which would outlast him and millions of his descendants across thousands of millennia, the sparks of power which illuminated this skyline were fleeting, destined to sizzle and pop into extinction sooner than later.
He swallowed a foamy mouthful of beer. “In a thousand years, do you think people are gonna look at these buildings like they do the pyramids?”
“Holy shit, that reminds me. Well, yes, first off. But I’ve been meaning to tell you about this theory of mine and I think you hit the nail right on the head, man.” He held up his index finger. “Hold on a sec. Lemme just…” He popped the cap off a new bottle with a hiss and chugged.
“Well?” Zephyr asked.
His friend let go of a noisy belch complemented by two smaller ones.
“Pig.”
“You know it,” he said.
“Theory?”
“Well, I was thinking about our little… predicament. The event, and what have you. And I was thinking about, why now? And then it occurred to me that maybe this shit isn’t unique at all, but systematic. A reoccurring phenomenon, right? And that made a whole shitload of sense to me.”
“How so?”
“Think about it,” Trey said. “All of these great civilizations just up and disappeared on us. The Greeks. The Egyptians. The Noks. The Mayans. The Aztecs. The Atlanteans.”
Zephyr laughed. “Well, first of all, the Greeks, Egyptians and Mayans are still around. Were still around, anyway. And second, the Atlanteans?”
“Maybe a stretch, but who the hell knows these days? Doesn’t seem as farfetched to me as it once did. And the Greeks, Egyptians and Mayans fell from grace big time, man. In weird ways. Think of Gree
ce. It was the most civilized of all ancient civilizations. Centuries ahead. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, these ridiculous philosophers. And it just faded away. And by the way, Plato wrote about Atlantis, so deal with it. Supposed to be this huge continent with a bunch of kings and a devastating naval force. But then it all died off, too. Sank into the sea.” He took another big swig of his beer. “Egypt, yeah, sure, whatever, but tell me who built the pyramids, and then tell me how.”
“I thought it was common knowledge that they were built by aliens.”
“Anyway,” Trey continued, ignoring him, “I’m just saying, what if something happens at the pinnacle? When a society, a culture, whatever, hits a certain point of advancement, something comes in and stamps it out. Maybe not entirely. Just does some serious damage. Kind of resets the process, you know. Like this whole blood type thing with us. America as we knew it—that’s gone, man. But you and I, we’re still around to tell the story, to keep the history, and maybe there’s something to that. And, I don’t know, but maybe all the Greeks and Mayans still alive today—or, at least they were before all of this—maybe they were the one percent, too.”
Zephyr nodded and contemplated it. It was an interesting theory, but of course they were all fascinating. The problem was that there wasn’t any proof.
He swiveled in his chair so that his feet touched the ground and looked at his friend. Yeah, he was definitely drunk all right. It wasn’t so much the variance in his perception of the world as it was the suspension of low-grade fear that gnawed forever at him. For now, everything felt as right as rain. He sipped at his beer and then replied, “So what you’re basically saying is that a god force or aliens or whatever wipes us out once a millennia or so to make sure we don’t advance beyond a certain point.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“It’s plausible,” Zephyr conceded, and smiled. “Actually, it’s a pretty good theory. Not an iota of proof, mind you, but I like it.”
“Well, thanks for your approval.”
“Let me present you an alternate theory, though,” Zephyr said.
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