The Scavengers

by Michael Perry

  I stop puzzling on GreyDevils and start puzzling on what I’m going to do when I get to the capital. Last night I spotted the faint glow of it against the distant sky. My heart jumped, and I felt a cold ball of fear in my stomach. I still don’t have a plan beyond walking right up and knocking on the door. And even if I did have a plan, it’s one thing to imagine it while sitting all alone in an old car on a faraway ridge. It’s a completely different thing to actually put that plan up against reality. What if they just grab me and no one hears from me again? What if they just ignore me? What if they don’t even have Ma? And for that matter, who exactly is “they”?

  All I know is they want Dad, and I want Ma. I guess my plan amounts to putting one foot in front of the other.

  I don’t have a better one.

  On the sixth day we’re walking on the shoulder of a wider road, and instead of little villages we’re seeing acres of empty, tattered houses. They seem to go on forever, joined by cracked, weedy roads that wind all around and eventually come together. The sound of cornvoy trucks is louder, and sometimes if the land rises we can see them moving back and forth in the distance. And there is something odd: the more closely packed the abandoned buildings become, the fewer people we see.

  We stop to eat lunch. For just a moment I lean back against my pack, close my eyes, and cross my arms over my chest to rest. My wrist brushes the patch of solar bear fur, and for an instant I don’t recognize what it is. It’s weird how just a few days and a few miles can make something seem like it never really happened. Or that it happened to someone else. I could almost believe I dreamed it, except that my head still feels like someone used it for a volleyball. I chew some more willow bark.

  We study the map, then set out again. Last night there was a glow against the sky all night long. Today or tomorrow we will reach the capital. Now we’re seeing a few taller buildings, or what’s left of them. Many of the windows are broken out, and some of the bricks have begun to crumble. There are weeds growing on windowsills. Turkey vultures skulk on the rooflines and flop their wings to catch some sun. Just when I am wondering what they would find to eat around here, a grubby figure emerges from an alley ten feet away. It’s a small man wearing a shapeless poncho that appears to be made of close-cropped gray fur. The poncho is belted at the waist, and several wire snares hang from one belt loop. Two plastic buckets dangle from either end of a wooden bar he’s carrying across his shoulders. He looks surprised to see us, and for a minute it seems as though he might run. Then he smiles a gap-toothed smile.

  “Want some rat?”

  As he says it, he dips a shoulder so I can see into one of the buckets. Ugh. Yep. Rats. Dead rats. Big dead rats. Solar bears I can handle. Rats freak me out.

  When he sees the look on my face he grins.

  “Fresh caught!”

  I look at Toby. He’s just standing there like Toby, although I see he’s quietly moved his fight-stick to the ready.

  “I’ll even skin it for you,” says the little man, “but you’ll have to cook it yourself.”

  “Yeeeah . . . ,” I say, backing up a step.

  “And I get to keep the skin!” he interrupts, patting his hairy poncho. “I sew ’em together. Make these ponchos and sell ’em! Handcrafted! One of a kind! Shed the rain! Tough! Cozy!”

  “I believe every word but cozy,” I say. Probably shouldn’t have, but I did. If it hurt his feelings, he didn’t show it.

  “Nobody wants to eat a rat, nobody wants to wear a rat,” he says. “Until they’re starving and freezing.” His grin grows bigger, and he looks at me expectantly.

  “Not starving,” I say. “Not cold.”

  “Don’t see many people in this part of town,” the little man says. “Usually it’s just me and the rats.”

  “Are you the city rat-catcher?”

  “Me? I work for no one! ’Specially not the guvvermint. I’m a self-employed rat-repreneur!”

  He fishes something out of the pocket of his poncho and holds it up. It looks like a shoestring with gangrene. “Try some rat jerky?”

  I nearly barf on his boots.

  Suddenly I see his face change. He backs up a step and points at my shirt.

  “S-solar bear?”

  “Yah,” I say, real breezy like. “Fresh solar bear.”

  “W-wow . . . you . . . you?”

  “Yah,” I say again. “Me.”

  “And him?” The rat man points at Toby.

  “He did assist, yes.”

  “Does he talk?”

  “Not really.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Ford,” I say. “Ford Falcon.” I say it real firm, so he’ll get the idea.

  “Um, do they still make those?”

  This is not the effect I had hoped for. I decide it is time to move on and start to step around him. He turns to watch us go.

  “Um, no offense—I know you’re Ford Falcon and all—but do you know where you’re going?”

  I just keep walking.

  “You—you and your large, nontalking bodyguard—may be able to handle a solar bear, but I’m not sure you can handle what’s up there.” He points up the crumbled street to a long rise and a hill, where on the distant ruined horizon the old buildings stand tallest of all.

  “Just beyond the rise,” he says. “The Clear Zone.”

  Toby and I just look at him.

  “Nobody crosses the Clear Zone.”

  45

  WE LEAVE THE RAT CATCHER AND WALK ON. IT IS TAKING US MUCH longer than we expected to reach the buildings on the horizon, and daylight is fading. And yet, above the ridge, even as darkness falls, a great white glow is rising.

  Bubble City. The Bubble City. The capital.

  The buildings to either side of us are even taller now, but still cracked and empty and—because of the darkness behind us and the light ahead—filled with long, strange shadows. We are bone tired from the day, and my head is throbbing again. But now that the capital Bubble City is within reach we find ourselves determined to get there. To finally see this place we’ve only heard about. To see if anybody is playing volleyball and eating ice cream cones, like it showed in the brochure and the newspaper photos.

  The higher we hike up the hill, the brighter the light grows, until finally it is just a blinding whiteness pouring between the tall buildings and down the street toward us.

  And then there are no more buildings. Just space. White, white space. Away to the left, away to the right, and far ahead of us, only whiteness. What has only appeared as a dirty smudge against the night sky is now so pure I swear I feel it thrumming with electricity.

  Toby comes to stand beside me. We shield our eyes, and now I can make out a few things—it isn’t one giant light but rather banks and banks of them, mounted on high poles and pointed outward, stretching either way for what seems to be miles. It’s hard to tell how far away the lights are, because the space between is acres and acres of flatness.

  I can hear cornvoy trucks rumbling again.

  “Um,” I say, “it might not be so wise to be standing right out here in the world’s biggest spotlight.” I duck into the doorway of the last building. Toby joins me.

  “Rest. Wait till morning,” he says, using up four whole words.

  I agree. Partly I am itching to go, and partly I realize I have no idea what is next and that I better sleep. I can’t imagine how I’ll get to sleep, but it would be dumb not to.

  “I’ll take first watch,” says Toby. It’s not the way we’ve been doing it, but I’m too tired to argue. I undo my bedroll in a corner of what must have once been a lobby, curl up, and try not to think about rats.

  In what seems to be ten minutes Toby is shaking my shoulder and it is morning.

  I scold Toby for staying up all night. He just ignores me. He looks as tired as I’ve ever seen him. When he reaches for his pack, I say, “No way.”

  He looks at me.

  “You stayed up all night for me. You’re in no shape for anything. We don�
��t leave until you sleep.”

  “I . . .”

  “Sleep,” I say.

  He unrolls his bag and is out in half a minute. When his breathing becomes deep and settled, I study his sleeping face for a moment. I think about his father, and what the two of them have been through together. I think about how Tilapia Tom will get along if Toby doesn’t return. What it would be like to lose your wife and your only child.

  I’ve been thinking about this for the last three days. Toby’s job was to get me here. Arlinda was right to send him—if I had been alone when that solar bear attacked, right about now I’d be reincarnated solar bear poop. But from here on in, this is my battle. I have no right to drag Toby into it. I look at him one more time sound asleep on the floor, his fight-stick by his side. I have no idea what sort of trouble awaits me, but I don’t think it will be the kind that can be solved with a fight-stick. I take my finger and write a note on the dusty tiles: “Stay. If I’m not back in two days, go home. You did your job.”

  Now I step outside and into the Clear Zone.

  In the bleak morning light all the mystery is gone. Rather than a wondrous bubble, I see an endless wall, stretching high into the sky. It was painted white once, but now it is streaked and dusty, and ringed with BarbaZap. What looked like white space before us last night is just plain old gravel, a wasteland with not a weed or plant to be seen. The banks of lights are still burning, but up facing real sunlight they appear thin and weak. I can see a dome, but it sticks up like a tiny little bump. There’s no way it covers the whole giant place. I remember Toad telling me not to believe everything I read.

  I put one foot on the gravel. It crunches beneath my boot, and I stop. Nothing dramatic happens, so I take another step. The noise of the cornvoy trucks seems to be off to my left somewhere, so I angle that way, figuring they are going to a gate of some sort. Inside I admit my stomach feels like it’s full of cold tadpoles, but what else is there to do but keep going? I straighten up and try to walk like I cross this patch every day, but with every step I expect the ground to explode beneath me.

  Moving at a diagonal, I am nearly halfway across the Zone when I hear a soft buzzing noise. Seconds later a tiny object with four propellers hovers above me. I can see what looks like a glass eye. Now I hear engines and see a cloud of dust coming my way. I freeze. My heart is pounding. Toad told me once that anytime a cowboy-book cowboy rode a new trail, he’d stop to look back every now and then so he could recognize the landmarks if he had to return. I spin on my heel and look back to the building where Toby is sleeping and burn the image into my brain.

  And now I turn to face what is coming.

  They stop about a hundred yards away and holler for me to put my hands up. I think, This really is like the cowboy books, and raise my arms. About twenty people in uniforms spill out of the vehicles, fan out in a semicircle with weapons drawn, and slowly walk toward me. I stand stone-still.

  “You are in the Clear Zone,” says one of the security men. He has more stripes on his sleeve than the others. His face is obscured by a mirrored visor.

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I say. When you don’t feel brave, you gotta act brave.

  If my smart-mouth comment makes him mad, I can’t tell, because the only thing I see in his visor is a tiny version of me standing in a field of gravel. We stand there a moment, then I hear him speak. “Paddy wagon: advance!”

  “Paddy wagon?” I can’t help myself. “Paddy wagon? Like for taking someone to jail in an old detective book? That term’s even older than station wagon. Surely you could come up with something more menacing.”

  Nobody so much as twitches. Apparently they aren’t into comedy. A long vehicle with what looks like a square box on the back separates itself from the other vehicles and drives forward. When it pulls even with the security men, they begin walking beside it until they’re ten feet away.

  “Place your hands on your head and turn around,” says Mr. More-Stripes. I do, and immediately someone grabs each of my wrists and lowers them behind my waist. I hear two ziiipp! sounds and my hands are tied behind my back. I wiggle my wrists. Tight. Then Mr. More-Stripes turns me back to face him—or, actually, to face myself in his visor.

  “You have violated the Clear Zone and will be repatriated.”

  “Well, aren’t you handy with the fancy words,” I say. “Nope, you’re going to take me inside the Bubble.”

  “Negatory,” says Mr. More-Stripes.

  I giggle. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. But really, negatory?

  “You got a boss?” I ask.

  Silence.

  “Someone I can give a message?”

  More silence.

  “Well, since you’re all wearing uniforms, I assume you have a boss. You tell your boss I have something you want.”

  Silence. Realizing I haven’t been perfectly clear, I point at the Bubble.

  “Something they want.”

  The man takes me by the arm and pushes me toward the van.

  “You ever hear the story about the man who tied his Security Chip to a red balloon?”

  Everyone freezes. Then they all turn to look at me.

  “That guy is my dad.”

  They stand there like mirror-faced statues.

  “I know where he is.”

  Mr. Paddy-Wagon-Negatory walks away a short distance, then speaks quietly into his helmet radio. After a brief moment, he returns.

  “Come with us,” he says.

  “Kinda seems like the only choice,” I say, and climb into the van.

  46

  IT’S ANOTHER DREAM, AND THIS ONE IS SO MUCH BETTER BECAUSE instead of a stinky solar bear with yellow eyes and big teeth, I see Ma, and instead of assuming the armadillo position and rolling away, I’m running toward her with my arms open, but then the dream is turning because she keeps wavering in and out of sight like a human mirage, and then there’s nothing around her but whiteness, and in the dream I worry that I’m just losing her again, so I holler out:

  “MA!”

  “I’m here, Maggie. Right here.”

  And she is. Ma, in the flesh, slowly coming back into focus. And now I know I’m not dreaming, because my head feels like someone shot it out of a Whomper-Zooka. I grab it in both hands and squeeze, trying to stop the throbbing, then quickly let go when I remember the stitches.

  Except the stitches aren’t there. I feel around again, carefully.

  No stitches. Only a shaved spot on my scalp and a little scar-like ridge where the cut was.

  I must have been out for a long . . .

  “Maggie.”

  It really is Ma.

  I stumble to my feet and stagger across the room to her arms. We fold each other into a powerful hug and just stay that way, as if somehow we can gather up everything we’ve lost and crush it back into our souls.

  I remember being pulled from the paddy wagon. I remember walking down a long hallway into a room with people waiting. I remember bright lights and clean floors. I remember . . . that’s the last I remember. Now here I am, with a raging headache, hugging Ma.

  Ma feels stouter than I recall. Less like a bony bird. She’s no Arlinda Hopper, but her arms are strong around me. She’s been eating well, then. I stand back and hold her by the shoulders, like I am the grown-up here, and we stand face-to-face. Her cheeks are a good color. Her hair is shiny and full and swept up into a knot. Her face is clear and she looks well rested. But her eyes . . . her eyes are a swimming mix of love and sadness.

  “Oh, Maggie,” she says.

  She reaches up and takes both my hands in hers and leads me to a corner of the room, where we sit facing each other on two hard white cubes. Everything in here is white: the floor, the ceiling, and three walls of the room. The entire fourth wall is a mirror.

  “Oh, Maggie,” says Ma again, taking my hands in hers.

  “Ma . . . ,” I start to say, but my voice cracks and fails me. It is so good to see her. So good to hear her voice. I don’t want to sit
there on my cube, I want to crawl right up into her lap and have her hold me in her arms, rock me like she did when I was tiny.

  I am so sick of always being strong.

  I look at us in the giant mirror. Here I am, nearly as tall as Ma, my face all dirt and streaks from woodsmoke and the days on the trail and my hair all ratted, my legs laced into tall leather boots, my arms deep brown from all the time in the sun, the strip of solar bear hide stitched to my shirt. . . . If I jump into her arms now it’s gonna look like some nice lady being attacked by a GreyDevil reject.

  Ma puts me back at arm’s length, looks me up and down from head to toe, and speaks. “You look . . . you look . . .” I can see Ma trying to find the right way to put it. I can imagine what is in her head. How she is trying to look through the image of what it is before her now and see the girl she last saw three months ago. I am taller now, and stronger.

  “You look like a woman, Maggie.”

  “Oh, Ma . . .” I shuffle my feet.

  “A strong, powerful woman.”

  “Yah, who smells strongly and powerfully like she sleeps in the back corner of a solar bear cave and rinses her hair with possum guts.”

  “Maggie, that’s not what I mean, and you know it.” The sharpness in her voice makes me feel like a little girl again, and I guess I had it coming. I straighten up on my cube.

  “Ma, I came to take you back.”

  47

  THE SECOND I SAY I’M HERE TO TAKE HER BACK, MA’S EYES SHOOT to the mirror-wall, and then back to me. “Oh, Maggie, no . . . no . . . I’m afraid it isn’t possible.”