by Joe Hart
“What’s wrong?” Ollie says, coming to lean on the table beside him.
“These pins here that match the housing body, they’re supposed to be one point two five centimeters, not point two five.”
“How’d that get messed up?”
“The one was folded into the crease on the schematic. If these things wouldn’t have been stored like this, I would’ve caught it.” Lee shoves the papers away from him and a piece of steel square stock falls from the table and clangs to the cement, drawing a few looks from the men standing before the dozen machining apparatus against the far wall.
“Look, we’re lucky to even have these. Must’ve been one obsessive-compulsive sonofabitch who held on to these after the digital age.” The older man slaps him on the shoulder. “And we’re lucky you stepped forward when you did. I know not everyone agrees, and I woulda liked to have told those bastards to pound sand too, but it would have meant a lot of dead men floating in the bay. Martyrs are great and all, but I sure as hell don’t wanna be one.”
Lee smiles wanly. “I appreciate the encouragement.”
“Well I owe you one for picking me to help with this,” Ollie says, motioning at the factory. “Sure beats sitting in a house all day staring out at an army surrounding the neighborhood.”
Lee glances at the two guards stationed by the factory’s main door and lowers his voice. “Has anyone looked for a way to get past them and out of the city?”
“Oh yeah. Couple of ours tried it yesterday in fact. These guys are spread out no more’n fifty yards apart, but once in a while they take a piss break or go to get something to drink and there’s a gap. That’s when the guys made their move.”
“What happened?”
“Got caught and had their asses handed to them on a plate. Broken arms, noses, missing teeth. Lucky to be alive really.” Ollie surveys him. “You ain’t thinking of making a break for it, are you?”
“No. Not really.”
“Good. Because like I said, there’s no one else that can fabricate now that Loring’s dead, and if you get shot or manage to slip away, we’ll all pay the price. At least the ones that haven’t gone over.”
“Gone over? What are you talking about?”
“You heard the rumors. That this guy, this Hiraku’s got goofy sperm. Thinks he can father only girls and that he knows about a secret location where they’re keeping some women.”
Lee tries to keep his expression steady. “Yeah, I’ve heard.”
“Well they’re offering everyone the chance to join and come with them to raid the compound and take control. Basically promising to rebuild the old world. My generation might be shit out of luck, but yours and the younger boys would have a chance if girls started being born again.”
“You’re not considering joining them, are you?”
“Thought about it. Not sure I trust them, though. But some of the guys have already made friends with a few of their men and say they’re decent and this Hiraku’s pretty fair.”
“He destroyed half the port and killed hundreds of us.”
“I ain’t defending him, just repeating what I’ve heard.”
“Hey! You two!” They both look at the soldier standing beside the door. “Enough jaw-jacking. Get back to work. Clock’s ticking.”
“Yes sir!” Ollie calls. “Officer shit bag,” he adds quietly, and Lee covers his laughter with a loud cough. He draws the schematics for the brass machine close again, and as Ollie prepares to carry a heavy steel plate across the room, Lee stops him. “Ollie?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t join them. Okay?”
He must have something written in his expression because the other man frowns before nodding. “Okay, chief, anything you say.”
Lee watches him walk away, deeply hoping Ollie was being genuine, before staring down at the exploded diagrams before him. He tries to concentrate on the measurements of the next replacement part, but his mind keeps slipping to what will happen if he’s not able to finish the work in time and what will happen if he does succeed. Either way people will die because of his actions.
He stares at the numbers and designs. They’re the only things that have ever made sense in his life, especially now after having lost his father and Ray. And Zoey. He wishes that everything was as simple as blueprints and measurements. If life was ordered like the schematics before him, he would have no trouble navigating it. But it’s not, and now he feels as he did months ago before leaving Zoey on the mountainside: unbalanced and unsure of anything. It’s as if he’s standing on a barrel floating in the middle of a sea, knowing to a certainty that any decision will push him one way or other and he will fall and drown.
“You gonna stare at that all day or are you gonna get some work done, boy?” the guard who yelled earlier growls from across the table. Lee jerks, unaware that the other man had approached.
“Sorry. Just thinking.”
“Less thinking. More doing.” The guard places a hand on the rifle slung around his shoulder before walking away.
“Yeah. I suppose that’s right,” Lee says to himself, and begins writing a string of numbers on the paper beside the schematics.
19
Zoey gazes through the binoculars as a gust of wind rushes in through the open tenth-story window, bringing with it the smell of the ocean and a chill mist that beads on her jacket and exposed skin.
Seattle sprawls before her, the uppermost stories of the highest buildings masked in leaden clouds and a drifting fog that curls down and scrapes the treetops before moving on through the streets. The building she stands in is a half-dozen blocks from the shoreline, its lower levels blackened and gutted from a fire long ago extinguished. Many of the structures are damaged in this section of the city and she wonders absently what could have caused an inferno here when there is no natural fuel to feed such a fire.
People. Of course, that’s always the answer when something unnatural or unlikely occurs. Humankind, she’s learned, is the factor more times than not when dealing with the inexplicable. People are unpredictable and irrational, to say the least.
“Coming from the woman standing in the last city full of men,” she mutters, and sweeps the streets again with the binoculars.
She’d arrived at the city limits near dusk the day before, ditching the old truck as soon as the first skyscrapers came into view. A small contingent of men stood guard at the road she first approached on, and it took her nearly six hours to find a safer route past them by hugging a desolate embankment made entirely out of cement below a road built thirty feet or more above the ground. Even with the men’s voices echoing to her off buildings and blacktop, she couldn’t help the awe that continued to fill her, forcing her eyes from one place to the next, never able to fully absorb what she was seeing. Such industry and design, it nearly halted her in her tracks every few seconds. The soaring height of the structures so unfathomable to her eyes she barely believed them. Of course, she’d seen pictures of the cities prior to the Dearth in the NOA textbook, but being able to touch the smooth glass and move between the scattered buildings that grew in both size and number until she could no longer comprehend it was something else entirely.
And the ocean. The ocean.
It was more than she was prepared for.
She had gaped at it from the second floor of a house she’d stayed in that night. As the sun fell past the horizon and lit the water in colors of orange and red, she’d simply stared, dumbstruck at the beauty of the way the water moved and how it stretched into the distance forever. Even the massive ship anchored in the harbor couldn’t detract from the majesty of the view. She’d eaten a jar of the old man’s stew cold, eyes never leaving the water until it had become full dark and then, despite the cool air, she left the window open to listen to the soft shush of waves.
Even now as she scans the city streets, her gaze keeps returning to the expanse of cold gray water, the sight moving her more than anything else she’s seen so far outside the ARC’s wall
s. Even the soaring height of the mountains can’t compare to the constant motion of the sea. She recalls Merrill smiling when she’d asked how big the ocean was. Big, he’d said, and now she realizes that he’d explained it the only way he could, for without witnessing it, there were no words to fully convey its size and presence. But maybe it is more than that. Maybe it’s not how immense the sea is but how small it makes her feel.
She comes back to herself even though she’d like to do nothing more than sit and watch the waves until sunset again, because she likes that small feeling, the notion that everything could pass her by unnoticed if she only stays in the water’s presence. Reluctantly she checks the sun’s height and guesses it will be less than two hours before full dark. That’s when she’ll have to make her move.
A revving engine brings her magnified gaze down to the street. A large truck rolls into sight and turns a corner, heading away from her position, its back end filled with several barrels of what she can only guess is fuel. She knows there is a refinery set up somewhere within the city’s limits; Merrill had told her of the many industries still alive within the city, and she hopes that her intuition is correct about what’s drawn her here.
Zoey glances down at the weathered map she found in the house she stayed in the night before. She checks the circled building’s location again before looking through the glass again.
There. The top is just visible above another structure several blocks down. At least she thinks it’s in the right position, but she’s no expert at reading maps. Tia would be able to pinpoint it, or Chelsea.
She pulls the binoculars away from her eyes and gazes down at the drop outside the window, focusing on the vertigo that tugs at her brain until the thoughts of the group fade. She can’t afford to lose concentration now, can’t become distracted, not here. Her hand strays down to the lump in her pocket and traces the outlines of the vial before she leaves the window and makes her way to the stairs outside in the corridor.
An hour later she crouches beside a pile of rotted furniture near the corner of a massive building made of slab stone. She’d traversed the windswept streets slowly and carefully, ducking behind burnt husks of vehicles whenever she spotted movement. Only two trucks had passed while she moved, their lumbering forms hauling more barrels like the ones she’d seen earlier.
Zoey shifts on the balls of her feet, wincing at the sharp pain as she does so. The wound’s healing nicely but it still hurts to put a lot of pressure on it. She rises until she can see over the top of a chair that’s black with mold.
An armed man stands a hundred yards away on the next corner below a blank sign, its paint having peeled completely off. Another fifty yards beyond him is another man smoking a cigarette and cradling a short-barreled machine gun. A scuffling sound comes from the opposite end of the alley she’s crouched in, and Zoey pivots, hand already drawing out her pistol. She just catches the impression of a figure disappearing behind the building beside her, the movements slow and easy, another sentry patrolling the street below.
Something is wrong.
She feels it as sure as the moisture soaking through her coat and onto her skin. She was prepared for guards within the city but hadn’t anticipated how closely positioned their posts would be. And Seattle itself—its stillness is unnerving. She imagined bustling activity, not the solemn atmosphere that grips it now. Maybe it’s always been this way, but she can’t help notice the familiar sensation. The city has the feeling of the ARC, the air of a prison.
Regardless, she’s come this far and isn’t turning back now. Not when she can see her destination a few blocks away.
Zoey watches the closest guard before easing back into the protection of the alley, then moves down in the direction of the sea. At the halfway point she turns right, waiting for several minutes to make sure no one is lingering at the mouth of the passage beyond. Dusk continues to fall as she walks through several puddles that seep cold water into her shoes and socks, soaking them instantly. When she emerges from the branching alley, the guard she spotted earlier is turned to the east, gazing up a long line of buildings parallel to his position. Another man appears as she watches, and he greets the first guard before walking onward down the street she just vacated. The next street to her left is occupied by two men in an open-top jeep who talk loudly enough for her to catch every other word, none of them meaning anything to her.
She exhales, her breath steaming the air as she gazes at her surroundings. She’s at an impasse. There’s no way for her to get to the next street and then up a block to the building she’s headed for. To her right a few streetlamps flicker on, their muddy-yellow glow staining the concrete below in ragged circles. The closest guard huddles beneath the corner’s overhang, glancing her way before turning to the building’s doorstep and relieving himself. She’s about to retreat and circle around several blocks to look for another, easier way through when her eyes snag on something above and to the right of the next structure.
Zoey blinks, eyes flicking down to the jeep and its occupants who are busy unfurling a canvas top over the vehicle’s frame. She launches herself forward and across the street.
One, two, three, four steps and she’s across, a slight twinge of pain in her back that barely slows her. She half expects gunfire to roar from either side and keeps expecting it even as she stops before the building’s doors, hoping beyond hope that they’re unlocked.
She pulls on one of the steel handles and it gives, emitting a shriek that’s loud enough to echo off the walls behind her.
Without looking around she darts inside the darkened lobby, easing the glass door shut behind her. Down the street, the men in the jeep have ducked beneath their shelter as the rain begins to fall in earnest, and the guard on the corner turns, still zipping up his pants, and stares in her direction, turning on a flashlight after a pause.
She shrinks back from the glow, nearly tripping over a steel can that she stops before it can go rolling down a set of nearby stairs. Zoey watches the beam of light catching a thousand streaks of rain. The light doesn’t move from the door she entered through.
“Please. You didn’t hear anything. The wind,” she whispers.
Seconds tick by, her heart beating three times in each one.
The light snaps out.
She peers through the glass and sees the man has retreated back out of the rain. “Thank you,” she says, and turns to face the interior of the building.
Its walls are sectioned into dozens of rooms on either side. Some are shuttered by rolls of linked steel extending from top to bottom while others gape open like black mouths.
Zoey crosses the wide space, eyes flicking to every possible place that could hide a person, her handgun drawn once again. Ahead, two stairways ascend in the center of the building to the second level, and beside them two more rise to the third.
With a steadying breath, she glances back the way she came, assuring she’s alone, and begins to climb.
20
Lee steps into the rainy evening, bone-tired and hungry.
The men who’ve worked with him all day file past on either side. After a moment, the two guards exit the factory and slam the door closed with a bang, locking it before moving to the truck nearby.
“You want a ride to your house there, genius?” one of them says, pausing as he opens the vehicle’s door.
“No. Thank you,” Lee says.
“Suit yourself. Gonna catch your death in the rain.” The man laughs and climbs inside as the engine rumbles to life. Ollie appears beside him, pulling his dark hat down tight.
“I would’ve taken a ride. Why didn’t they ask me?”
“Not sure. Hey, good work today,” Lee says, starting away down the sidewalk.
“Thanks! You wanna go grab a drink down near the market? Pub’s still open.”
“No. Too tired. See you in the morning.”
“Stay dry, chief!” Ollie cries, and hurries away in the direction of the water. Lee hunches his shoulders to the co
ld, part of him wishing he’d taken the soldiers up on their offer. The house he’s been staying in since Ray . . . since the invasion isn’t as high up skid row. He chose it because of the color, blue with white shutters. He tells himself he picked it because it’s closer to the munitions factory, but really he knows it’s because of what his father told him when he was young. He attempts to shut the memory out, walking faster through puddles that line the sidewalk, but it is like shielding himself from the rain with only his hands. The memory slips through.
He recalls how his father used to sit on his bedside and read to him out of a book. The stories he can’t remember now, but they were adventurous: knights in armor, dragons that he’d had nightmares about, and animals that could speak. He’d once asked his father for a story that he knew, not one from a book but something from before, before the Dearth, when his mother was still alive. He had been very quiet for a long time before looking at Lee.
There was a little town on the edge of a bay and it was warm most of the year. It didn’t rain like it does here, not as much. There were fishing boats along the shore and men and women who worked at businesses that made things people needed. The sky was almost always clear and the sunsets lasted for hours and hours.
Lee watched him stare at and through the wall in their room and had wanted to see what he was seeing. That was where you and Mommy lived?
His father had nodded slowly. Down by the docks. It was all we could afford, but it was nice. We kept it nice. The house was blue, like the sky in the early spring mornings, and the shutters were white. They were peeling when we moved in, but I scraped and repainted them in our little garage and she was . . . she was so happy.
A tear had leaked out of his father’s eye then, and it had scared Lee so much he sat up and hugged him tight, afraid something would happen to him because he had never seen him cry before that night when speaking of the past.