After the Zap

by Michael Armstrong

  “Jonah . . .” the guy said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “In the Bible,” he said. “Surely you know the Bible?”

  “The one book,” I said, hoping I didn’t insult the Oracle. The Bible was the only book anyone after the Zap tolerated, the only book that could not be burned.

  “Ruby recites it to us every night,” he said. “Jonah gets eaten by the whale.” He sighed, shook his head. “You can read, I guess. I suppose you have a real name, then?”

  “Holmes,” I said, nodding. “Holmes Weatherby, Aye-Aye-Aye.”

  “I’m Nike,” he said. “I run this ship. And I’m the head of our order.”

  “Order?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Order,” Nike said. “The Order of the Atom. Do you know what we do?”

  I shrugged. “Fly around in a blimp?”

  “Fly around in a blimp? Yeah, we fly around in a blimp. But we do a little more than that. Haven’t you ever heard of the Wonderblimp? Haven’t you ever heard of the goddamn Order of the Atom?”

  “The Order of the Atom?” I shook my head; the name still didn’t mean anything.

  Nike snorted. “Where you from, boy? Down south?”

  I nodded. “Way south, south and east, from a finger of land that sticks into a great ocean—”

  “Spare me the geography,” he said. “But you traveled to Kodiak. Surely you’ve heard of the Nukers?”

  “The Nukers?” I stared at him. Recognition must have dawned on my face, for Nike smiled.

  “You know the Nukers, then,” he said.

  Yeah, I’ve heard of them, I thought. They gave out nukes. But who had nukes? And who would want to give them out? It had never made sense to me. Nukes were madness. Nukes had put us all in the mess we were in today, nukes had caused the Zap, and the Zap had fried electronics, scrambled brains, and taken away half my memory. Who would give out nukes? I’d heard of the Nukers, sure, but I had also heard of men who had two heads, and women with four breasts, and I had never seen things like that.

  “I’ve heard stories,” I said. “You give out nukes?”

  “Give out nukes?” Nike laughed. “We don’t give out nukes. We find nukes. We find the nukes left over from the Zap.” He started talking faster. “We find the nukes the crazy Americans left buried all across the country. And then when we find the nukes, we take them apart and put them back together so people have to die to use ’em. We put this little code thing in the hearts of small children, and if someone wants to blow a nuke, they have to cut out the kid’s heart.”

  Nike’s face got red, and his voice got deeper. He rose from the chair, began pacing the bridge. Levi looked nervously at Nike, tried to concentrate on steering the blimp to a blinking light on the top of Pillar Mountain.

  “We’re nuke anarchists, Holmes!” Nike yelled, raising a gloved right fist. “We put the nukes back in the grubby little paws of the people who should have had them all along. We’re goddamn nuclear pirates!” He lowered his voice, stopped, stood inches before me, and glared into my face. “Anyway,” he said calmly, “that’s what we do.”

  I nodded. “Sure,” I said, like I’d say to some nut case who had cornered me in a bar and wanted to know if fish could really fly. “Sure,” I said. “That’s swell.”

  “Swell,” Nike repeated. “Swell.” He shook his head, walked back up to his seat, sat down. “Blue, Blue, Blue, what am I going to do with you?”

  Blue Braid smiled. “Let him stay.”

  “Stay?” Nike looked at me, up and down, the way he might look at a horse or something. “How much you weigh?”

  “Maybe 175 pounds,” I said. “Haven’t seen any scales in a while.” I smiled.

  “Hmmm,” he said. “Can you read maps?”

  “A little,” I said. “I helped Orca Captain navigate up to Kodiak. ’Course, we didn’t have great maps, but . . .”

  “The KOMs were after you?”

  “Uh-huh. Would have fried me for breakfast if not for Blue.”

  “Levi here”—Nike jerked a thumb in his direction—“he can read maps, but not too well. Can’t read anything else. We could use the help. I’m not exactly sure where Kachemak is.” He clapped his hands. “Okay. Okay, you can stay.”

  Blue smiled, hugged me. “Oh, Nike!”

  “But,” he said, raising a finger, “but only as far as Kachemak”—Blue’s face dropped—“unless he proves to be worthwhile.” He stared at me. “You have to navigate for us, and you have to do Blue’s reading.” He shook his head. “If you can get a name for her, it would be worth it for me. Damn woman pesters me all the time.” He smiled. “So is that okay with you?”

  I bit my lip, tugged at my mustache. “Um, one question: which way is Kachemak?”

  “Which way?” Nike asked. “Heck, the only way. North. We’re going north. Kachemak, then we keep going until we find . . . well, until we find what we’re looking for, is all.”

  “North . . .” I said.

  “Something important about north?” Nike asked. “It’s only a direction.”

  North, though. North . . . That direction pulled me. I thought north might be where I was from. North might be my home. And if I found my home, well, I might find out the one thing that had been bugging me since the day the Zap rearranged the neurons of my brain and took away most everything in my mind except the power to read.

  I might find out who the hell Holmes Weatherby, I-I-I, was.

  “North is kind of special to me,” I said. I told him what I told the bartender, how I was a wipe, and how I kept feeling drawn north, because I thought something north might tell me who I was.

  “You’re a wipe, huh?” Nike asked.

  “Yeah. Don’t remember much from before the Zap. Not enough to help me figure out who I am.”

  “Hmmm,” he said. “Well, maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

  “How far north are you going?” I asked again.

  “To the Mountain,” Nike said. “Until we find Denali.”

  Denali: In my mind I saw a huge massif of snow and rock, a massif like a pyramid, and before that massif was a great glacier, and a muddy river. I could feel more memories flowing from the river, rising up to the mountain. Maybe the landscape would trigger my memories. Maybe my past would unfold before me as the land crawled below. Kodiak did not tug me, but Denali . . . The word itself was recognition.

  “The Great One,” I whispered.

  Nike whirled around. “Yes, the Great One,” he said, looking at me funny. “Well? You want to go with us?”

  As if I really had a choice. Ah, heck. If going with them led me to memory . . . I smiled, nodded. “Sure,” I said. “That’s fine. If you drop me at Kachemak . . . well, I guess I’ll find some way to keep going.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Nike said. “Okay, you’re our reader until Kachemak.” He reached out, and we shook hands. Nike patted me on the shoulder. “Welcome aboard.” He turned to Blue Braid. “Blue, I think we can dock at Pillar Mountain without your help. Why don’t you show Holmes to a cabin. I think the spare one next to yours . . . ?”

  She smiled at that, crooked a finger at me, and wiggled it. “Follow me, babe,” she said.

  Like the Ching advised, I followed, even if the path wasn’t well lit. I followed. Perseverance furthers, right?

  No blame.

  * * *

  The Wonderblimp had been hovering over the mountain while Nike talked to me. After we left the bridge, I felt the blimp bank slightly, heard the engines thrum down to a low rumble as the blimp redocked at Pillar Mountain.

  Blue Braid took me to a cabin on the upper deck, the first cabin on the port side across from the stairway. A lounge and dining area spread across the bow of the nacelle, and in a corner of the lounge was a galley. Cabins were on either side of the passageway aft of the lounge, and at the end of the passageway I could see a railing that looked over the hangar bay I’d come up in.

  Blue opened the door to my cab
in, right next to the galley. Just large enough for a single bed, the cabin had a small closet on the outside bulkhead, a chest of drawers built into the aft side, and two more doors, one next to the chest, another next to the closet. Blue opened the door on the port side of the gondola. Cold air rushed into the room, and we stepped out onto a promenade deck that ran along about a fourth the side of the nacelle. Blue closed the door behind her.

  “Pretty neat, huh?” she asked.

  I held my breath, tried not to look down. Blue hung onto the edge of the railing, loose hairs around her face rippling in the wind. I could see some sort of landing field to starboard, but got dizzy.

  “Pretty neat,” I said. “Can we go in?”

  “You scared of heights?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Scared of edges.”

  “Okay.” She walked aft, past a porthole and to another door. “That’s the head,” she said, pointing at the porthole. “The door inside connects your cabin to it. This is the best part.” She opened the second door, motioned me inside. “We share the bath. My cabin.”

  Blue had a swell cabin, a little bigger than the double bed in it, but like mine, with a small chest of drawers and a closet. There was a shelf next to the bed and one thin book on it. I walked over to the bed, sat down, and picked up the book: Little Monster Grows Up, by someone named Mercer Mayer.

  “I thought I was the only reader.”

  She smiled. “I like to look at the pictures.”

  I sat on the bed, riffling the pages. Blue sat down next to me, her braid whisking around on her lap. I smiled at her. She smiled at me.

  “You want something to drink?” she asked.

  I gulped. “Yeah.”

  She got up, went over to the bulkhead below a port next to the door, slid back a panel. “Beer?” she said, holding up two brown bottles. I nodded. She slid the door shut, handed me a nearly frozen bottle. “Our own brew,” she said, “But it’s okay.”

  “Pretty neat fridge,” I said.

  Blue lowered her head a little, batted her eyes, looked back up. “Built it myself. Doesn’t work a damn in the summer, unless we’re cruising high up. I like to tinker.”

  “Yeah?” I said. I twisted the cap off, took a taste of the beer. It tasted pretty good for homemade, not like battery acid at all.

  “Yeah.” The braid swished over to my thigh, wriggled around against my jeans.

  “You saved my life, I think,” I said.

  She shrugged. “I wanted a reader. And I couldn’t let the KOMs get you.”

  “They really would have eaten me?”

  “Nah,” she said. “Just slaved you. They only eat readers when folks are starving.”

  “Swell,” I said. “Still, I owe you.”

  “You do,” she said. “You want to pay me back?”

  I looked at that braid, watched it as it danced over to my crotch. My mouth got a little dry. I quickly took another sip of beer. “Uh, how?”

  She raised her head, stared at me with those deep blue eyes, and looked like she was going to ask me to father her children. She slipped off her tunic, pulled a tattered card from a small pocket on her turtleneck.

  “Would you name me?” she asked.

  I squinted at her. “You don’t like Blue?”

  “It’s just a nickname,” she said. “It’s not a real name. I need to know my real name.”

  “It’s been five years since the Zap,” I said. “How come you don’t have a name by now?”

  “Not a lot of readers around.” She shrugged. “Well, besides, I didn’t have any words on me after the Zap. No wallet, no names on my clothes, nothing. I’ve been looking for words, but I never found any that looked right. Until this.” She handed me a card. “A memor gave it to me at Sea-Tac Int’l Airport.”

  I took the card. “A memor?”

  “Like Ruby. You don’t know what a memor is?”

  “It’s a little rustic down south.” I said.

  “I guess. Memors are these people who seem to know everything, and remember messages until they give it to the person it’s for.” She brushed a strand of hair back from her face. “We picked Ruby up about a year ago. She’d been trying to pass for dumb, because they didn’t like memors where she came from. You can always spot memors—they look young but have gray or white hair.”

  “So a memor gave you this card?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “See, they remember messages, or sometimes hold packages, and if they ever run into the person the package is for, they give it to them. If they meet another memor, they dump their memories on the new memor. That’s how Ruby got the knowledge of the Bible.” Blue smiled. “Hey, maybe Ruby will have you read that Melville book to her.”

  I looked at the card. “But how do you know this card is yours?”

  Blue squinted at me, shook her head slightly. “It has to be. Why else would a memor give it to me? See, this memor didn’t know where the card had come from, but as soon as she saw me she knew it was mine. Read it. Please.”

  At the top of the card in big letters were the words “Electrolux Vacuum Cleaners,” and below that, in smaller letters, “Your Salesman: Bill Johnson, 555-9875.” Bill didn’t sound right, I thought. I had the feeling it was a man’s name. But the Electrolux . . . I knew this wasn’t an identity card, like my card. It was something else, and I didn’t know exactly what, but it was enough for a naming. “People ever call you anything else?”

  “Just Blue,” she said. “Not real names. What does the card say?”

  “This doesn’t have your picture,” I said. “So it may not be your card.”

  “Yeah. But the memor gave it to me. It has to be my card. Is there . . . a name?”

  I nodded. “It says . . . It says, Electrolux.”

  “Electrolux,” she repeated. Her cheeks got flushed, and she began to smile. “Electrolux. It . . . it feels right. I like that.”

  “You could be Lucy for short,” I said. “I’ve heard women called that. Electrolux, Lucy. Lucy—”

  “Lucy,” she said. “I am Lucy.” She reached up to me, put her hand on my cheek. “I guess we’re even, huh?”

  I gulped. “Yeah, even. . . Lucy.”

  “Lucy,” she said. “Oh, a name is so wonderful. Lucy . . .” She laid back, her braid wiggling around on the bed. “Holmes,” she said, “I feel like I should do something nice for you. Have any ideas?”

  “One or two.”

  “Tell me,” she whispered. The braid flicked its way toward my crotch.

  “We could . . .” I took her beer, set it down on the deck with mine; I hit a switch by the door and dimmed the lights. Lucy reached an arm up to me and pulled me down to the bed. She kicked her boots off.

  The braid slid down my neck, down my chest, following her hand as it unbuttoned my shirt, slipped my vest off. She paused at my pants, undid the top button, and the braid wriggled down under my underwear. The tip of the braid tickled my penis, wrapped around it, gently squeezing me. I sighed, reached up, pulled her turtleneck over head. Lucy sat up, slipped her bra off.

  “Well, we could . . .”

  “Make love,” she said.

  I grabbed the waistband of her tights, peeled them off her, smiling at the tuft of blue pubic hair under her pants. Lucy stretched back, letting me yank the tights over her ankles, then she sat up, reached for my jeans, and pulled them off me. I took off my shirt, and we sat there on her bed, staring at each other’s naked bodies in the dim light. She pushed me back on the bed, leaned forward, and with hands, tongue, and braid explored my body. I smiled in increasing ecstasy and let myself be washed away by her touch.

  * * *

  In the morning I heard a shower going next door, and then heard it stop. I rolled over, found a little divot where Lucy had slept, found some strands of long blue hair on her pillow. The door creaked open and she walked in. All the make-up was scrubbed clean and the blue braid was a mass of wet, writhing tendrils. She looked good. Under the mask of makeup she had tanned
skin that made the whites of her eyes glow. Her irises were a deep blue that made me feel all weird inside when I looked at them. A white towel was wrapped around her, just hiding the nice parts, and then she casually undid the towel and threw it on the bed.

  She had the black glove off. Her left hand was pink and smooth, her right hand ridged with calluses. Her shoulders were like swimmer’s shoulders, broad and well muscled. Her pectorals had good definition and her waist and hips were lean and trim. There was a scar running down her chest, down the sternum between her breasts, breasts big enough to hang onto but small enough to cup with one hand. The scar was about as wide as the nail on my pinky, about as long as my forearm. The scar was white, an old scar, the kind of scar you get from open-heart surgery.

  “It’s a good idea to share showers,” she said. “But you were dead to the world when I tried to wake you. Anyway, I left you some water.”

  I squinted at the bright light streaming through the porthole. “We up on the mountain?”

  She nodded. “Not for long. You want to shower, do it now. We’ll probably leave after breakfast.”

  When I came back from the shower I couldn’t find my clothes. Lucy had put on a blue coverall, a turquoise turtle-neck, and a pair of canvas boots. She had combed her hair and arranged it in a simple braid, but she wasn’t wearing any make-up, no jewelry, and no cheek plugs. She had a blue coverall like hers spread out on the bed. Next to it was my vest of all things.

  “Your clothes were a little stinky,” she said. “Wash day is next stop.”

  “Blimper blues look fine,” I said. I slipped the coveralls on and the vest over it.

  Lucy had put that leather glove back on. I’d noticed all the other crew had leather gloves on, one glove, either hand.

  “What’s with the glove?” I asked.