Afterland

by Masha Leyfer

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Sorry, that was extremely confusing. Today is the...the seventh, right?”

  “I honestly have no idea.”

  “Well, let’s pretend that it’s the seventh. Yesterday was the sixth. So on the sixth, when we said ‘tomorrow’, we meant the seventh. But on the seventh, when we say ‘tomorrow’, we mean the eight. The seventh has become ‘today’ and the sixth is no longer ‘today’ but ‘yesterday’. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah, I guess it does now.”

  “So that’s what I mean. There is no such thing as today, tomorrow, yesterday. Every day is all three. There is only then, now, and after. What you do ‘today’ defines ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’, but it never limits you.”

  “Wow, that’s deep.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “I think I’ve figured out my sentence,” I say after a moment of consideration.

  “Well?”

  “It’s, I’m still waiting. All my life I’ve been waiting and changing. I don’t think I’ve ever been static. So I’m still waiting. I’m waiting for my dreams to come true, I’m waiting to become whole, I’m waiting for tomorrow and I’m waiting for today. I’m waiting until the truth is what I want to live. I’m waiting for happiness. But I’m not waiting passively. I will fight for everything that I want, but I am willing to be patient and bite my lip until they happen, because it’s really just the only way I know how. And I know that I’m waiting for things that never will and never can happen, but it’s the waiting that makes them real.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Nathan and I walk to the oak tree. We are not playing guitar or training this evening. Just talking, without anything to distract us from it. My mind wanders in various directions but it quickly settles on one thought. There were...some—Smaller Sally’s mysterious unexplained words.

  “Hey, Nathan,” I say. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Um…”

  I’m not sure how to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t seem suspicious or immediately bring back bad memories. But the blunt truth comes straight out of my mouth.

  :There was an accident, wasn’t there? In the beginning? On a raid, something went wrong.”

  “Why do you ask?” Nathan says cautiously.

  “Smaller Sally said something about it. It doesn’t really matter. But it did happen, didn’t it?”

  “Well...yes. There was a...an accident.”

  “And? What happened?”

  “Well…” He swallows. “I’m not sure where exactly to start. Um...her name was Nora. She would have been twenty-six now. She was nineteen when she...when she died.” He pauses there for a moment and swallows again. “It’s still kind of shocking, to this day. She was just so young, so full of life. I mean, I’m nineteen now.” He hovers over those words a little, as if trying out the taste of the words nineteen and death together. “To have life end now, with an entire lifetime ahead of you, is… I can’t even imagine it, in all honesty. It’s like starting a sentence and never getting to finish it. You spend the rest of your life wondering how it was supposed to end and with the distinct feeling that things would have been different if it had been completed. And she was three weeks away from her twentieth birthday, too. She used to say that if she made it to twenty, she would have lived enough. All she wanted was to make it to twenty. Was that too much to ask? But… Well, um, anyway, it was in the very beginning, maybe a year after Mike took over. It was one of our very first raids. I wasn’t there when it happened, because I was too young to go on a raid. It was an important one. It was the first powerline we had found. So they went to sabotage it, and they sabotaged it okay, but on the way back they were attacked by bandits. They started shooting and Nora didn’t duck. She was insanely proud. Insanely. And I think she felt a sense of responsibility to protect the rest of them. Mike and Smaller Sally were there with her and she was the oldest. But in any case, she didn’t duck. She took out her crossbow and began to shoot back. She went against guns with a crossbow. And somehow, she managed to take out most of the bandits out. She saved Mike and Smaller Sally’s lives. She was shot all over her body. She kept shooting, even though she was bleeding out. She didn’t stop until all the bandits left. Maybe, if she had ducked on time, she would have survived, but there were too many bullets for one person to take. Her death was rather quick, as I understand. And not too painful. I don’t know if you can still feel anything after being shot that many times. Her last words were ‘get back home’.”

  “Get back home,” I repeat.

  “Yes. Get back home. Those words have become the unofficial motto of the Rebellion, because...I mean, if they’re important enough to spend your last breath on them, then they must be worth something. And Nora’s last words were especially important, because she was the first casualty of the Rebellion. My mother had already died, but she was a victim of nature. Nora was a victim of the war we were starting to wage. Nora’s were the first last breaths and the first last words, so get back home were, in a way, the first words of the Rebellion. And you have to understand, also, that we’re stationary now, but back then we moved around a lot. We rarely stayed in the same place for more than a week. It’s still likely that she was referring to the camp, but I think she was thinking about something else. This world isn’t home. It’s a shadow of home. And the last promise that we ever made to Nora was that we’d get back home. So wherever home is, that’s where we’re heading.”

  I stay up late that night, thinking about home. I try to define it, but I can’t seem to settle on any one definition. The first that comes to mind is, home is where you live. But that would make Hopetown home and that certainly can’t be true. Or can it? What if home is, a place that shapes you? That would also qualify Hopetown as home. It may have been a terrible home, but it does meet the requirement of my definition. Does home have to be good? I don’t know.

  Besides, if Hopetown isn’t home, then what is? Our little house on the riverside? I barely remember it. Even the memories that I have are skewed. If I were to walk through it again, I doubt I would recognize it. That may have been the home of a different life time, a different person. So that can’t be home either. What about the Rebellion camp? I’ve spent several months here now and it certainly did shape me. But somehow, the word home doesn’t sound right about here, almost like it’s being forced upon it. This place isn’t ready to be home. It might be someday, and I’m ready to wait for it. Just not yet.

  What if home isn’t a place? What if it’s too abstract of a concept to be tied to a place? What if home is a person or a time or an object? I look at the purple bunny, my oldest possession, but instantly dismiss it. I think of all the people I’ve ever been tied to, but they, too, don’t fit. Can home be a time? The past, yesterday. Why can’t that be home? This is the closest I’ve come to identifying a home, but it still isn’t perfect. It’s the home of someone I could have been. But what about a home for someone I’ve become?

  Maybe I’m still too grounded. Perhaps home isn’t anything specific, but just a unifying concept. Maybe home is an answer to a question. So what’s the question? I muse a little and come up with, Where would I go if I was falling apart and needed to be put back together? The only answer that comes to mind is away. I guess that means that I don’t have a home. Unless away can be considered home. But actually…As I think that thought, something clicks in my mind. What if away is home? Why not? Away from all the troubles and terrors of society, somewhere where everything is beautiful and built only for you.

  Away.

  So that is home? I delve deeper into that concept. Maybe away is home not because it isn’t a corrupted society, but because when you’re away, there is only you. So home is yourself. Home is the deepest canyon and the highest mountain of your inner landscape. Because if you do break, the only person who can put you back together is yourself.

  __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

  Mike and I walk back to camp
from the Field of the Fallen.

  “Hey Mike,” I say. “Remember how you once told me that my greatest enemy was myself? What about you? Is your greatest enemy yourself too?”

  “You’re getting more philosophical,” Mike says with the tinge of a smile. “I’m not sure anymore, to be completely honest with you. It definitely was, for a long time. At your age, it certainly was. I lead a battle with myself for many years. But now, I’m not fighting myself anymore, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still an enemy to myself.”

  “If not yourself,” I say carefully, “Then what is your greatest enemy?”

  “That’s a difficult question.”

  “You expected me to answer it for myself.”

  “I have higher standards for you than I have for myself.”

  “That’s just not fair.”

  “And,” Mike adds, “if I remember correctly, I ended up answering for you anyway. And you seemed to be very impressed with my answer, no?”

  “That’s true,” I concede, “but why can’t you answer for yourself, then?”

  “It’s much easier to understand others than it is to understand yourself.”

  “What I think, if you want to know, is that you hide a lot of yourself. You pretend to be fearless and painless, but I think deep inside, you’re afraid and in pain. I can see it in your eyes. But you keep it locked so deeply within yourself, that it rarely even rises to the surface. I think also you have regrets. That’s why you never talk about the past. It’s painful for you, isn’t it?”

  “So I see you’re providing the answer now.”

  “An answer for an answer, right?”

  “Mh.”

  “Was I right?”

  “In your analysis? Well, you weren’t wrong. But you didn’t answer the question: my greatest enemy, what do you think it is?”

  “Oh. Um...I suppose it isn’t exactly yourself, but what you’re not. Your desire to be invulnerable is harming you. You can’t deny your true nature.”

  “That’s very good,” Mike says softly.

  “Um, thanks.” We walk without saying anything for another minute before I ask, “You like to analyze everything. Why?”

  “Why do you?”

  “I don’t. You force me.”

  Mike laughs.

  “That’s fair enough. And the answer to your question is simple. I like to understand things. Analyzing them is the easiest way.”

  “What if some things aren’t meant to be understood, but just accepted?”

  “Of all people who could have told me that, I didn’t think it would be you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t believe that, do you? You think things are made to be understood.”

  “Well, yes. But it’s a theoretical question. You don’t believe all of the things you tell me either, do you? But think about it: if things aren’t meant to be understood and we begin to understand them, what happens?”

  “I don’t think it’s ever wrong to understand. Not understanding is a form of slavery. How can you know something is wrong if you have never known what is right? How can you understand how significant you are if you don’t first understand your insignificance? If we understand things that we aren’t meant to, we begin to change the world.”

  I frown.

  “What if that’s what happened with the Blast? Have you ever thought that they might have understood something we didn’t and they solved it?”

  Mike pauses.

  “I don’t know.”

  I pounce of Mike’s acceptance of the idea. Nathan was so quick to dismiss the idea that we might be on the wrong side that I started to forget that I ever wondered it at all. But the uncomfortable feeling on my chest that always accompanied that question remained. Maybe Mike will be able to lift it..

  “So what if we’re the bad guys?” I ask eagerly.

  “Maybe it isn’t about right and wrong anymore.”

  “Then what is it about?”

  “Meaning.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Yes. Human beings have a tendency to want to leave a mark. Whether we are right or wrong, we want to be remembered.”

  “Isn’t it better to be remembered for the right things?”

  “Is it? In several thousand years, if people of the future uncover our story, do you think they’ll care who was right and who was wrong?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I don’t. The way they’ll tell the story is ‘there was a fight’. Who was right and who was wrong will be completely irrelevant.”

  “So you’re saying that nothing we do matters?”

  “No, not at all. I’m saying that in the future, right and wrong will be irrelevant. When they are relevant is now. Live for yourself today, not someone else in the future. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The next month passes uneventfully. We continue training as usual and by the end of the month, Mike announces the plan for the next raid.

  “Is everyone listening to me?” He says during lunch. After everyone affirms, he begins to lay out the plan.

  “This is one of the bigger raid we’ve done in some time. Most of us will be going. Hannah, it falls on your shift, so you’ll be staying. Big Sal, you’ll be here monitoring what needs to be monitored through your computer. I need three more people to stay.” Matt, Nicholas, and Anna raise their hands.

  “Good. The rest of us will be going. That make eight of us. We’ll be going two to a snowmobile. So. Here’s the layout. We’ve found a base of the CGB. It’s not the main base, but we think it’s one of their more frequented meeting places.” A murmur of excitement goes up from the crowd at this. “We’ll be installing cameras in and around the building. We need four people to go in and four to guard the outside. I’ll be making exact arrangements over the week. But hopefully, we’ll gain useful information about their plans and possibly another hint at a location of their base.” Another wave of excitement goes up at this. If we get the main base, we can almost guarantee victory.

  “We’ll be going a week from today,” Mike says. “Get ready.”

  Unlike the first time Mike announced that I would be going on a raid, this time I feel excitement. I’ve gotten over the original fear of failure and the freedom is addicting. I really do want to go on this raid, and I find the possibility of taking a step closer to success exhilarating.

  The rest of the week is all preparation for the raid. Mike is busy working out the logistics, so we don’t train as usual. I find that he’s recently been more relaxed with our training schedule, allowing days to slip by. I spend part of the empty time with Emily and part with Nathan. We train for hours on end, not letting the dark stop us. I collapse in my bed, exhausted in more ways than I thought possible, and fall asleep immediately every night.

  The day of the raid approaches quickly. The day before, we rest, casually languishing around the fire.

  “Make sure you’ve chosen someone to share a snowmobile with!” Mike shouts. “We’re not spending time on that tomorrow.”

  I turn to Nathan.

  “Wanna share a snowmobile?”

  “Sure.”

  “And make sure you decide which one of you is driving, because if that holds us up tomorrow, I swear on the voices of my dead ancestors, I will skin you alive.” Mike adds before disappearing into the forest.

  “I’m not driving,” Nathan says. “I’ve spent too much time on those demons of hell.” He grins. “I want to see somebody else suffer.”

  I punch his arm and laugh.

  “Okay, fine, but with my driving skills, you’ll be suffering more than I will.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  We spend some more time talking and around nine, we head off to our tents. We leave at five thirty in the morning tomorrow and nobody wants to be underslept. I drift off quickly and sleep a dreamless sleep.

  Adrenaline wakes me up the next morning. My feet itch to start moving. I pull on my boots and
pants and stumble out of the tent, rubbing my eyes. Mike is already out of his tent and Smaller Sally is pulling on her boots. They both nod to me. Mike unlocks the shed holding the snowmobiles with a key tied around his neck. The three of us pull four snowmobiles out. The racket wakes the rest of the Rebellion and soon everyone is up. We take our places at our chosen snowmobiles. All of it happens in silence and in under five minutes.

  I settle down in the seat, sliding forward to allow Nathan room. He wraps his arms around my waist and pulls his glasses down. I do so as well, letting go of the handlebar for a moment to wave to those who are staying behind.

  Mike puts his glasses, down, turns around and shouts, "Let's move." The four snowmobiles touch off, leaving behind the familiar distinctive tracks in the dirt. We ride in a similar direction as we did on my first raid, but we turn off before we reach the field that smells of life.

  We ride for several hours nonstop, finally settling down in the middle of the woods to eat breakfast. Big Sal packed us egg and mushroom sandwiches. I devour it ravenously. My hunger has grown over the course of the ride.

  I sit down next to Nathan against our snowmobile. Facing us, Desmond and Kristina sit against theirs.

  "Do you think this raid will really help us defeat the CGB?" I ask between bites.

  "No," Desmond says.

  "Yes," Kristina replies simultaneously. Kristina shoots him a look.

  "Shut up, Desmond, of course it will. Every raid we execute helps us defeat the CGB."

  "That's what we tell ourselves, isn't it?"

  "That's the truth."