The Outsiders

by L. J. LaBarthe

  "I see."

  "Don't you think that'd be an awful death? I want to die surrounded be my family, with my husband on one side of my bed and my children and grandchildren on the other."

  "I'm sure you'll be able to do that," Matty said, not knowing quite what to say.

  "Maybe I could marry you," Linda said. "We'd have nice babies."

  Matty had been taking a sip of his water and choked at that. He coughed for several minutes, pounding himself on his chest. When his coughing fit subsided, his eyes were watering. He stared at Linda and shook his head, not able to speak for another moment.

  "I'm not looking for a wife," Matty said. "I'm not even looking for a girlfriend. I'm just looking to live, that's all. I'm sorry, Linda, if you were thinking of me in that way—"

  "—I wasn't," Linda said quickly. "I was just teasing you. Your reaction was amazing, by the way." She paused a moment, before she asked, "No wife, ever?"

  "Not that I can imagine, no."

  "Are you gay?"

  Matty choked again. "I honestly don't know that that's anyone's business."

  "Fine, sorry for asking. I was going to say that it's cool if you are, I have a gay friend, he's really nice, he loves decorating cakes, that's his job, he's a cake decorator, he has a boyfriend who works in the design sector, making our homes look nice. I'm okay with gay people. Though not everyone is, you know?" Her words came out in a steady rush.

  Some things never fucking change, Matty thought.

  "Anyway," Linda went on, "if you're gay, that's cool, I'm cool with that. I promise I won't out you or anything, that's totally your decision."

  "You're too kind." Matty couldn't help the sarcasm.

  "Thanks." She beamed a bright smile at him. "What are you doing tonight?"

  "Paul, Arkady, and Nisha are visiting."

  "Again?"

  "That's what friends do when they haven't seen each other for a long time—they spend a lot of time together, catching up."

  "Huh. You guys are all so weird. I like you, though," she added quickly.

  "That's a great comfort."

  "I guess I better be off. Say 'hi' to Mr. Paul for me?"

  "I'll do that."

  "Great. Thanks." Linda stood up and bounced over to the front door. "It was good to see you, I'm real glad you got a job. I'll have to tell Dad, I won't tell him about the other thing, you know, the gay thing."

  "Linda…"

  "Not my business, you're totally right." She opened the door. "Have a nice evening, Mr. Matty."

  "You, too," he said.

  She left, closing the door behind herself. Matty groaned, flopping back onto the sofa and closing his eyes. He rubbed them with the heel of his palms and groaned some more, muttering in exasperation to himself. "Linda, you bloody meddler," he grumbled. "What the hell."

  He lowered his hands and opened his eyes, looking up the clock. It was nearly 8. Matty shook his head. He had quite a tale for his friends, that was for sure.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Matty was very glad to see his friends when they arrived. He was even happier when Paul activated his shielding device and they could talk freely.

  "Before we start, I need to tell you all something. Linda was here a little while ago."

  "Again?" Paul asked.

  "That's what I thought. Anyway, first of all, she thinks you're awesome, Paul, she really does have a crush on you. It's very obvious." As Paul groaned, Matty continued. "Also, her father works for the government here. He's thinking about burning the books in the library to use the building as a new agriculture unit. Lastly, Linda asked me to a wedding, said I'd make a great husband for her, and when I declined that generous, ahem, offer, decided that I was obviously gay."

  Silence met his words. Then everyone burst out laughing.

  "A wonderful husband? You?" Nisha said through her laughter. "You are one of the untidiest men I know!"

  "Why did she decide you are gay?" Arkady asked.

  "Because I don't want a wife."

  "Oh, I see. Obviously that makes you gay." Arkady rolled his eyes. "Good lord."

  "Does my sexuality matter so much?"

  "Not to us," Paul said.

  "You guys are who matters. From what she told me, it's clear that prejudice is still flourishing."

  "I know." Paul sighed. "We'll fix things for you so Linda backs off a bit."

  "I can be your pretend girlfriend for a while, if you like," Nisha offered.

  "I don't think we need to go so far as you be my beard, Nisha. It's nothing I can't handle really. It's just fucking ridiculous, the attitudes and the assumptions. God, how would she react if she knew I was really asexual?"

  "She'd have no idea what it meant, ask her father, and you might be in trouble," Paul said.

  "Fuck!"

  "Paul, did you know about her father?" Nisha asked.

  "Not all of it. I knew that he was involved in something that was higher up than what any of us do, not that he was specifically government, though."

  "Her brother works with him, Linda told me his fiancée works in the bank."

  "You're going to have to be careful," Paul said. He was now deadly serious. "How did she react about the books?"

  "I might as well have an open jar of the plague as an ornament," Matty said.

  "I thought you'd get that reaction. They really don't like books here."

  "You think?" Matty leaned back and sighed. "This place is FUBAR'd, you know that, right?"

  "I second that," Nisha said.

  "Thirded," Arkady said.

  Paul heaved a heavy sigh. "Listen, there's a lot not to like, there's also a lot to like. Just give it a chance."

  "Maybe. Arkady, tell him and Nisha what we found out today."

  Arkady nodded and took a deep breath before launching into the telling. Matty listened, watching Paul and Nisha closely. He was far more interested in their reactions—he'd been with Arkady after all, so he knew how the report would go. Nisha's eyes were wide and her lips parted, her expression was shocked. Paul, on the other hand, looked grim, his lips pursed and his eyes narrowed. Every so often, he shook his head. When Arkady finished, Matty wondered what Paul would say.

  It was Nisha who spoke first. "Someone knew this was going to happen. They arranged for certain people to survive."

  "It looks that way, yes," Arkady said.

  Paul heaved a huge sigh that ended on a grunt. "I don't know what to say. I really don't."

  "Okay, well, while you gather your thoughts, do you know who was around North Korea just before I got shot?" Matty asked.

  Paul canted his head to one side. "Let me think. Most of us were scattered around the world. Lucy was having a lot of trouble dealing with… oh. Oh my God. Oh no, it can't be!"

  "Who?" Nisha asked.

  "Don't keep us in suspense, who are you thinking of? Not Lucy, surely," Matty said.

  "No, not Lucy, God no. Remember when we were talking about the plan before we got started, I said that England and Wales weren't there?" Paul's words were tumbling out over themselves as he spoke.

  "Why does the United Kingdom have so many of us?" Arkady asked. "We do not have a spy for Siberia or one for each time zone in Mother Russia."

  "Or one for each state in Australia," Matty added.

  "I don't know, they just do, it's a thing. I have no idea. That's not important, though. England—Peter was their guy—he was dealing with Wales. He called me later and said he was in, do you remember that? He didn't know what the plan was though, he wanted to be a part of it."

  "I vaguely remember that, yes," Nisha said.

  "Right. When I asked him about Wales, he swore like a goddamn sailor. I was impressed actually. He went for ten minutes without once repeating himself. He'd had a huge fight with Kieran—Wales—and they hadn't parted on cheerful terms. Peter warned me that there might be a problem, I didn't think much of it. He and Lucy had always argued. Put in Donal from Ireland and Kieran, too, well, they could fight like cats and
dogs.

  "I got a call the next day from Kieran. He was in Singapore, had just arrived and wanted to meet. I agreed and went to meet him for coffee. We had a talk, he said that there'd been a fight with Peter and it was just another of those things that gets them going, something trivial. Anyway, like I said, I didn't think anything of it. He wanted to know what we'd been meeting about, and I gave him a summary. He said he wanted in. I said okay, that he'd have to restrain himself because he'd in all likelihood have to work with Peter, Lucy, or Donal. He said he'd manage to control his reactions if they could."

  "Okay, we know that Kieran's a hot head. That's not news." Matty looked at Paul in confusion. "Why bring this up now?"

  "Because he was in Manchuria at the time you got shot." Paul waved his arms above his head in what might, in other circumstances, be a comical display of agitation, yet now only served to add to Matty's surprise. "He radioed in from there, said that Donal had been killed in a fire-fight with some soldiers, he was making a run for it. I told him to get out as quickly as possible, though I had no damn idea why he was in Manchuria."

  "And you think he had gone into North Korea and met with their government and made some suggestions?" Arkady asked.

  "He's the only one who was in the right area at the right time."

  "What's his motivation?" Nisha asked.

  "That's a mystery. We'll figure it out." Paul leaned back.

  "Did he know about the cryos?" Matty asked.

  Paul shook his head. "I don't think so, no. I mean, Lucy only suggested it when the war rhetoric started flying and we saw that shit was going down."

  "By that point, we were down quite a few of our number," Matty said.

  "We were not really thinking beyond survival," Arkady said.

  "Well, now we might have our who," Matty said. "We don't have the why or the how, though."

  "Is that computer hooked up to the Internet?" Paul asked.

  Matty and Arkady burst out laughing. "Paul, it's ancient. I was bloody amazed that it even worked. Do you honestly think that the Internet still exists?"

  "I have no idea. I wouldn't have thought half the things I do now, yet here we are. You have to go back down there and try and get the Internet working. We need to know more."

  "Okay, Paul, fine. I'll go back down there."

  "I'll come with you," Nisha said. "I studied cartography at university. I'd like to see the maps."

  "All right, no problem."

  Arkady tapped an index finger on the coffee table. "I think I will come, too. Though it might be a bit suspicious if three of us vanish from sight."

  Paul shook his head. "Leave that with me. I'll tell anyone who asks that you've gone to the clinic to see about some group counseling to deal with coming to terms with the passage of time between going into cryo and waking up. That'll make sense to everyone. Besides, the whole cryo thing is thought of a bit like magic. The clinic takes care of people's health, of course, but the cryo stuff, people here think that anyone that were left in stasis like that were people of great importance and value to society. The paper had an article about it not long after I started working in agriculture."

  "I can see how it might be magic to some. Things are pretty primitive in terms of science down here. Is that deliberate or just due to lost tech?" Matty wondered.

  "Who knows? You know, I never had this many questions, Matty. Now I've got a million of them, and I dread the answers to all of them."

  "Welcome to my world," Matty said. "Oh, Arkady, I found a leaflet in the library from that group you infiltrated before the war when I was recovering from the cryo. Did you ever find out anything from those people?"

  "No, alas. They were more intent on chanting slogans and whipping each other into a frenzy of anger than doing anything. It was a dead end, I had thought it might be. I don't think any of us found out anything when we were infiltrating various groups. Did we?" He looked around.

  Paul shook his head. "Not me."

  Matty did, too. "Nothing here, except that people were tired of being lied to and tired of being frightened."

  "Yeah, there was definitely plenty of that," Paul agreed.

  Nisha however, looked thoughtful. "I may have something now that we're discussing it. I hadn't thought of it until you brought it up, Matty. When I was in Jaipur, the group I was with were talking about a possible nuclear attack. I didn't think it would happen—we are all too well-acquainted with the way of the world's governments and that the threat of nuclear war is more than sufficient to stave off it actually happening. The group members I was with were adamant that something was going to happen. One of the members had been in Tibet a few months prior and had overheard a conversation between a white man and another man he hadn't been able to see. They were talking about how they would destroy the current world order and start a new one."

  "You had me right up to the words 'world order'," Paul said.

  "I know, I know, it's a term that usually accompanies conspiracy theories. What if this wasn't a conspiracy theory but one being formed and organized? The white man, well, it could've been Kieran. Maybe?"

  "No description of this white man I suppose?" Paul asked.

  "No, sorry." Nisha shrugged. "It's thin, I know. But it's something."

  "Better than nothing," Matty agreed. "Though we shouldn't leap to the conclusion that it was Kieran at this meeting you heard about, or even that the meeting happened at all."

  "True." Nisha sighed. "I wish I had more intel."

  "I think we all feel the same way." Arkady paused and continued. "Well, shall we make a start early in the morning?" he asked. "Perhaps if we meet here at 6 a.m., we could get downstairs before too many of the good citizens here are awake."

  "Yeah, the less people who see us out and about the better," Matty said. "I just feel that we should be discreet."

  Nisha nodded. "As do I."

  "Keep Linda at work," Matty said to Paul. "I can't shake the feeling that something's not quite right. She seems like a nice girl, sure, yet my gut's telling me there's more going on with her than meets the eye."

  "Okay, if you say so. I think you're overreacting a bit, though. She's just a girl with a crush and she's lonely," Paul said. "It's fine though, I'll get her to come in early and stay late."

  "Good." Matty stifled a yawn. "Oh, I also nicked a map. I've hidden it."

  "A map of the subway?" Nisha asked.

  "Yeah. That was what we went for, after all. I found a tourist one, you know those fold up maps that every city in the world seems to have?"

  "They are often quite good," Arkady said. "For not just what they show but what they don't show."

  "Can I see it?" Nisha asked.

  "Sure." Matty got up and went into the kitchen to retrieve his butter knife that he'd used as a screw driver. He went to the radio and moved it enough so he could get to the back and remove it. That done, he pulled out the map and handed it to Nisha. He didn't bother to put the plastic backing on the radio again; he figured he'd have to return the map to its hiding place after his friends left.

  Nisha unfolded it and smoothed it out on the coffee table. As Matty returned to his seat on the sofa, everyone leaned in to peer at it, and Paul withdrew a pen from his shirt breast pocket.

  "I'll mark the subways that have been sealed off," he said. "Some of them were done before the missiles and some after."

  Matty wondered how Paul knew the details of which were which, but decided to keep that question to himself for the moment.

  "That's a good idea," Arkady said. "Mark the areas where we are, the boundaries of the city as it is today."

  "I'll use a different color pen for that," Paul said.

  "While you do that, perhaps you can answer a question for me," Nisha said.

  "Hm?" Paul shot her a quick look. "I can try, I guess. What's on your mind?"

  "You have that device that you say you stashed for when you awoke from cryo along with other things. I'm assuming you hid a kit in a safe place, in case it
was needed. What did you hide? What can we use from it?"

  Paul hesitated in what he was doing. "I'm guessing you're asking because you want to borrow some of it?"

  "Yes." Nisha was blunt. "When we go outside, I want to have as many weapons as possible. Just in case."

  "I agree with that," Arkady said. "I don't want to be fighting for my life with something like a butter knife, for example."

  "It makes a useful screwdriver," Matty said. "Though I'd definitely feel better with weapons that weren't also cutlery."

  Paul hummed as he resumed marking out the map. "I hid a duffle bag of guns—several handguns and pistols, four automatic rifles and long arms. I've also got several kinds of knives, you guys should have some of those too, knives are easy to get here. Some hand grenades. Kevlar. Radios, oxygen masks and tanks, four of those."

  "Did you hide half a small armory?" Matty asked in surprise. "You didn't give any of the rest of us the time to do something like that, you know."

  Paul flushed and kept his eyes on the map, refusing to meet Matty's gaze. "I know. Sorry. Bit late for that, I know. It's all I've got. I was in hurry, hell, we all were."

  "I have a few things, too, although nothing like that," Arkady said. "I have a 9mm pistol, my old Kalashnikov and ammunition for both, my old Kevlar, four different knives. That's all."

  "How much Kevlar do you have?" Matty asked. "Enough for Nisha and I?"

  Paul made a noise that Matty thought sounded like a wounded bull. "You're going to take all my stuff, guys."

  "Probably. Answer the question anyway."

  "Fine. Yeah, I can outfit you two. I'll give you all the weapons as well. I want them back, okay?"

  "Done. Keep a radio for yourself, too. We can keep in touch with you that way rather than trying to use these old fashioned short wave transmitters."

  "Use both," Paul said. "I have no idea what it's like out there, I really don't. I might have been out of the clinic longer than anyone of us in this room, I still am pretty much in the dark about a lot of this crap. The only one of us who might know more would be Gina."

  "That is your task while we are in the library tomorrow." Arkady was looking at the map as he spoke. "Find Gina in your database. You're the head of the agriculture sector. You have more access than any of the rest of us, I'm just a journalist on the bottom rung of the ladder at the paper. Surely you can find some mention of her somewhere."