Mayfly Series, Book 1

by Jeff Sweat

  “You’re just going to be a punching bag.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Lady says, “but now you know I can take a punch.”

  Tashia nods and then motions toward the dirt of the corral. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “Just—just a minute.” Her fingers are searching for the hairpin again, but they’re lost in all these curls. In the things that are supposed to make her a girl. She had so much pride in them, the only girl in the Holy Wood with curls. Now they’re in the way. She sees a large pair of shears on the wall, used for cutting leather and rope.

  She fishes out the pin and lays it down, and Tashia seems to understand. The shears are heavy, but she can slice through the curls well enough if she gets a thin hank of them.

  Nothing for the boys to hold on to, when they come for her. Nothing to distract her, to fall over her eyes when she’s swinging her fist.

  The curls are all gone now, in a fluffy black-brown pile in the dirt. For a moment, she feels as if she killed something and she’s looking at its body. Her hair is just long enough to slide in the hairpin, to slide it back out again when she needs it.

  Lady steps toward Tashia, holding her fists up to guard her face.

  * * *

  They sleep in the stables, in an empty stall. Jemma is alone there as evening starts to fall. Even though there are no blankets, Jemma has found she can burrow into the straw to stay warm. Pico is off with Grease, as he’s supposed to be.

  Somehow, being surrounded by the warm smell of horses, the sweet smell of hay, the rich smell of leather, makes it okay that they’re prisoners here. That they’re going to die.

  Then the more she thinks of it, it’s not okay at all. What has she done?

  She tried to find a new life with Apple, and he died. She tried to find an answer to the End, and they’re trapped here with more questions. She wanted to be free of the Holy Wood, and now she’s fighting someone else’s fight. She starts to cry, warm in the straw.

  Lady bursts into the stables, bringing a current of energy with her. “Tashia’s going to fight with us!” she says. “She says she’ll train with us if we—”

  Lady falters when she sees Jemma looking at her hair. Lady looks like a boy. Not like the boys of the Holy Wood, who wear their hair long and shaggy. Not like the boys of the Kingdom, who shave the sides of their heads. But like the boys of the Parents’ time.

  “If we…,” Lady says, and loses her thought. Her ribs pulse in and out, as if she’s trying to hold her heart in place. “When Li attacked me, he held me down with…”

  Jemma stands up. She meant to hug Lady, and instead she touches her hair. Jemma tugs at the roots of what used to be curls. Her fingers slip through. There’s not enough to grab. Her hand rests on the hairpin, tucked into the longest part, above the right ear. The ornamented head is beautiful but the point emerging from the other side is deadly. That’s beautiful, too.

  “It’s perfect,” Jemma says, taking Lady’s head in both hands and pulling it close to her chest. Lady’s head rests just under her chin. This time they both sob. They’ve both broken pieces of themselves they didn’t think could be broken.

  * * *

  While he waits for Grease to find the right wrench, Pico draws out the book the Half Holy had given him. Although the case floated away, Jemma saved his pack. The book is warped and moldy from the water, but he can read it.

  “What’s that?” Grease says. Pico tells him how he got it, and Grease looks increasingly agitated.

  “What’s wrong?” Pico says.

  “Nothing. Maybe something. But I got two of them.”

  Grease disappears and comes back with two books like his. The first is about the movies, which is some kind of Teevee. A way of seeing new worlds. In the first few pages he recognizes pictures from the Holy Motel. Those priests and priestesses—they were people from the movies.

  The last few pages of the book are a different type. Whiter, newer, rougher. Just like his. His fingers quiver when he turns the pages, and he finds himself clenching his teeth. It’s another book about the End.

  The same pictures are there: stacked bodies, panic in the streets. The same bold letters, too. San Diego. New disease. Symptoms that seem like a cure, not a sickness.

  The words are someone trying to make sense of something sweeping the earth almost faster than she can write them down. The fear is there in every line. For all that, there’s only one line with new details. “‘The Wind Plague, as it is now called, is believed to have originated at Camp Pendleton, the Marine base near San Diego,’” he reads out loud.

  The Wind Plague. Because it traveled on the wind? Because it killed as quickly as the wind moves? And Camp Pendleton and Marines. “What are Marines?” he says.

  Grease points to a picture, six bodies laid in a row, rifles at their sides: soldiers.

  “I found these in book places, as if somebody left them for me. I didn’t understand them, but they looked important.”

  Pico’s mind jumps from the clue to the fact that the clue is there in the first place. The Ice Cream Men found some; so did the Half Holy. And they’re picked up by people who understand they’re important. If the books aren’t from before the End, which everything tells him they’re not, then someone is leaving them to find.

  Someone who can read and write. Someone who can work with paper. Someone who knows about the End. Why, though? They pick books that are thick and glossy, that stand out. They add pages—not enough to tell everything about the End, just enough for you to know they’re about the End.

  “Who did this?” Pico says.

  “The Old Guys, obviously,” Grease says, and Pico looks up. The Old Guys are a legend of the Ice Cream Men. Not something someone like Grease would believe.

  “Those are just stories,” Pico says.

  “They’re one of our oldest stories,” Grease says, “but where the other stories fade away, they stay clear … because they’re still there.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The Beginning came and took all the Parents with it. We scavenged from the houses and the buildings, and every day we had to roam farther from the Kingdom into the lands of the dead. We found the cows and horses but didn’t know what to do with them.

  “A year or two later, the Old Guys walked into the Kingdom. They were all colors, boys and girls. Men and women, they called them. They taught the Philosopher King how to tame the horses, how to tend the cows, how to plant the crops that would feed the most people.”

  “Jesucristo. And now they’re gone.”

  “No,” he says. “The stories say the Children got into a fight against the Old Guys, so they retreated to the south. What if they left the books behind as a trail?”

  The books are meant for someone who could read, a chance so slim it’s almost not worth taking. They’re meant for someone willing to explore Ell Aye when most Children never leave their village. But if the right Child read it, if that Child cared about what they read … then that Child might follow the clues home.

  “Okay, there’s something you gotta see,” Grease says.

  * * *

  Jemma had promised Tommy she would talk to the King about his ability to fix guns, but she hasn’t been able to get close to the King. He always passes by surrounded by his Knights, and every time she approaches him, five or six swords leave their scabbards.

  Until the day she sees the King, alone, looking for a skewer of meat between meals. None of the other girls are around, and he doesn’t seem to know where they keep the food. She shows him the place where the kitchen girls, now that they know she is working with Tashia, will sneak her food.

  “Thanks … prisoner,” he says after she hands him the skewer. For once the King looks unsure, as if he doesn’t know how to act without his Knights. He probably doesn’t. “Have we … have we treated you nobly?”

  “I don’t know what that means, but I’m a prisoner, so…” She’s aware that he could have her killed, but she doesn’t think that killi
ng is his first choice. So she speaks as freely as she dares. The more she speaks, the less she’s afraid.

  The King actually looks embarrassed. “It can’t be helped.”

  “We don’t gotta be prisoners. We don’t gotta fight. We could just help you. We’re the best Gatherers in the Holy Wood. We can fight, we can think. Even the Biter”—the King’s attention flares, darkly—“even the Biter could help. He’s their Grease and Pico put together. He got their guns running; he knows things about the world.”

  “He never told us these things.”

  “Because he knows you’ll kill him no matter what. Promise us safety, and he’ll help you. We all will.”

  “No, I, it’s just—” And for once she can see behind the King to the fifteen-year-old who’s still in there. X, Tashia called him. And then he looks even younger. “They won’t let me.” She can see who the “they” is by the way he says it.

  “You’re the King.”

  “It’s hard to be king, you know.”

  “Is it?”

  “I didn’t want to be.” She knows he didn’t, that he fought just to get Tashia back. He ended up with a Kingdom—but without a girl. “I can fight a war. But all of this…”

  “All you got is soldiers in your Round Table,” Jemma says. “You need smart people like Grease, like Tashia.”

  “They have to be strong,” the King says.

  “Look at this place,” Jemma says, pointing at the Fake Place. “Think they built this with strong? They built it with smart.”

  The King starts to speak, shakes his head, speaks again. “They would never let me do that,” the King says.

  “We gotta fix the End,” she says, knowing she may never get a chance to say these things again. “You call it the Beginning, but the rest of us’re just hanging on. Every year, there’s less babies, less food. Ain’t you seen it? Even in the Kingdom, things are falling apart.” She grips his arm. He doesn’t show alarm.

  “Because I say things to you in front of my Knights doesn’t mean it’s all that I believe,” the King says quietly, urgently. “For every person in that room who is my ally, there are two who see themselves as King. I could be King for two years or another day. They have to see me as strong.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s seeming to be strong,” Jemma says, “and there’s actually being strong.” Jemma sees one of his Knights coming, and she drops the King’s arm. “Hope you know the difference,” she says.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE MACHINES

  “This is what I wanted to show you, Peek,” Grease says. He’s adopted Pico’s nickname even faster than the girls. It sounds different on Grease’s tongue, as if it means something new.

  They have finished loading the fuel into a wagon at the skyplane place, and the wagon drivers have returned to the Kingdom. What he shows Pico is a room in the skyplane tower full of dust and maps and books. Grease has seen it on other trips but couldn’t read then.

  They find maps for the mountains north and west of San Diego. The maps are so big and detailed that the mountains turn from green blobs to vast ranges with every canyon and creek marked. He doesn’t need to look long for the place, though—it spans several mountains. Camp Pendleton.

  “What’re them?” Pico points at a wall of shelves filled with black binders, each three inches thick and labeled with four numbers on the spine.

  “Loooog,” Grease says. “It says ‘Log.’ I couldn’t read it until I met you. It’s like a record, I think, you know, everyone writing down everything that happened.”

  “It is.”

  “I think they’re in some kind of order.” Grease runs his finger along a set of numbers: 2024. “What does that mean?”

  “I think it’s the year,” Pico says. “The Parents had so many of em they had to number em.”

  “I never thought to keep track of any years but my own,” Grease says.

  “2025—that’s the highest number,” Pico says.

  “And that’s where it ends,” Grease says. “Look.”

  The first books in the line look ordered by a straightedge. The last books are thrown as if no one cared where they fell.

  “I think they stopped caring about the books. Because of the apokalips.”

  They start reading the books. It isn’t the last page or even the last book when something jumps out at Pico. Two weeks before the last entry, someone wasn’t allowed to land at all. It’s the name that catches him. “Camp Pendleton. ‘Helicopter from Camp Pendleton carrying Marines,’” Pico reads slowly. “What’s a helicopter?”

  “Some kind of skyplane. They used to spy us on when we were just gangs.”

  “Something’s wrong with the soldiers. They wrote down the way they talked to the helicopter.” He reads the rest directly to Grease.

  “These men are sick. They need help.”

  “We know they’re sick. That’s why we can’t give you permission to land.”

  “I got two men bleeding through their nose and their ears.”

  “Can’t allow it, sir.”

  “We are United States Marines. I’m ordering you to let us land.”

  “Sir, we have orders not to let you land. From the United States government.”

  Pico can imagine the frantic shouts to whoever in the helicopter could still make decisions. None of that shows on the paper, but he can hear the panic. He’s seen the End enough to know it.

  “We are landing. We are heavily armed. If anyone tries to stop the landing, we will shoot without warning.”

  “Sir, you are not authorized to—”

  “Aww, shit. That was the pilot. He’s bleeding now.” Another pause, Pico imagines. Resignation after the panic. “It’s the goddamn machines.”

  “Sir? Machines in the chopper?”

  “No, they’re in us. The Wind Plague. The machines are inside of us.”

  “Sir? I’m—I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Just hope the crash kills me first.”

  The book is suddenly heavy in his hand, and Pico puts it down.

  “So … two weeks before people stopped writing, this happened,” Grease says.

  Pico doesn’t answer. He’s reading the last lines over and over. He looks up. “It’s machines,” Pico says.

  “Yeah, they were in a machine.”

  “No, don’t you see?” He grabs Grease’s wrists, holds on, and the words rush out. “Don’t you see! It’s machines. Machines on the wind. Machines you can breathe. Is that possible?”

  “I didn’t think so until now,” Grease says, seeming to notice more the hands on his wrist than his own words. “But they made machines fly. They could do whatever they wanted.”

  “If it was a fection, then there’s no hope. But if it’s machines … maybe you can fix em.”

  “Fix machines you can’t see?” Grease says, shaking away a cloud. “How are we going to fix this when the Parents couldn’t?”

  “Dunno,” Pico says, “but maybe we see things the Parents couldn’t.”

  “Guess we’ll find out at the camp,” Grease says.

  Pico looks at him. Grease seems to be having a tough time breathing. “You—you’d go with us?”

  Grease seems grateful for the question. “All I got here are guns that need oiling, guns to go on a mocycle, and guns to go on a fence.” Just death. Outside, there’s the tiniest chance at life.

  * * *

  “If the End is like any other sickness,” Tommy says, “why’s it still here?”

  “What?” Jemma says. She’s on the ground leaning against the yellow boat. A “sub,” Tommy calls it.

  “Like the flu,” he says. “It comes in, kills a bunch of kids, then it’s gone. But the End—the End, it just kinda hangs out waiting for people to get old? That’s weird.”

  It is weird. She likes the way Tommy looks at things. A little like Pico, but a lot less annoying.

  “Maybe it’s made different,” she says. She passes some salted meat back through the window.

 
; “Like how?”

  “Like, whoever made it wanted—” And then she remembers that it’s Pico’s discovery. Pico’s and Apple’s. And she clamps her mouth shut.

  “Who? Who made it?” She can tell that Tommy can tell she meant to say more, even with her back to him.

  “The gods, I mean. Who else? Maybe they made it different.”

  “Yeah, the gods.” He’s quiet for a few moments. “That’s smart. But you’re so strong, I bet no one ever appreciates you for being smart,” he says, and touches her on the shoulder through the broken window.

  Something in that touch makes her turn, and when she does, there’s something in that face. As if the smile is about to slide off, as if the eyes would rather be somewhere else.

  She’s seen that face somewhere.

  “I don’t think the Kingdom knew what they caught when they got you,” he says.

  That’s the face. From Heather, the Older. The day she came to Jemma, already on her way to being the strongest girl, and asked her to become an Hermana. “You deserve more than what they give you, after all you do for the Holy Wood…” Jemma listened, flattered, until she realized that the smile was not for her. That the voice would promise her the Holy Wood and never mean to give the Holy Wood to anyone but Heather.

  His face, his voice, would promise her everything.

  She gets up slowly. “Better get back,” she says.

  He calls her back. His voice sounds a bit more urgent, a bit more strained. Then she realizes: She’s never heard him strained. A prisoner should feel the strain.

  “I meant to tell you,” he says. “Something I heard about the End.”

  “Yeah?”

  “When people are about to End, sometimes they see things.” And when he says that, she remembers the dream she had when she was hit by Tashia’s whip. How it seemed more real, how she felt like she was inside the haze itself. And the other person inside that haze was Tommy.

  “Like what?” she says carefully.

  “Like the stuff that makes the End happen. Like—like they’re connected to each other.” He wasn’t a dream. He was really there in the haze with her.

  Tommy watches her face, and for long seconds she can’t control the feelings underneath or the memories coming back. Apple said something to her, and she’s tried to forget everything about that night.