A Savage Generation

by David Tallerman

  Abigail isn’t in the bed. For one terrified moment, Aaronovich can’t see her. Then her gaze descends, and there she is in the corner of the room, huddled, staring back with those dark-speckled eyes.

  Kneeling, Aaronovich places the tray on the floor. She shuffles forward, sliding it in front of her. When she’s crossed two thirds of the distance between them, Aaronovich retreats and sits with her back against the end of the bed. She looks aside, at nothing. For no other reason than to relieve the tension in her own mind, she starts to count beneath her breath.

  At sixty-three, she hears the scuff of movement. She doesn’t look up until she knows Abigail has reached the tray. Abigail is sitting before it on her haunches, appraising the bowls suspiciously, nose crinkling. As she feels Aaronovich watching, she tenses, as though readying to bolt.

  “It’s all right,” Aaronovich says. “It’s for you.” She doesn’t look away.

  The seconds slip by. Then Abigail grasps the first bowl with both hands and scoots backward. Having doubled the gap that separates them, she slides onto her rear. She considers Aaronovich again, this time more with curiosity than distrust, and begins to eat, scooping with the fingers of her left hand, keeping the bowl close to her chin. Once it’s almost empty, she runs her tongue over the inside.

  I’ll have to disinfect it, Aaronovich realizes, and the thought saddens her.

  She had expected Abigail to drop the bowl when she finished eating, as a toddler might. Instead, she creeps forward and replaces it on the tray, exactly as she found it. Noting the second bowl, the one full of water, she picks that up and laps experimentally. Satisfied that it’s innocent, she drains it, and replaces the second bowl just as she did the first.

  Then, to Aaronovich’s total surprise, Abigail scuttles around the tray on all fours and flops into her lap. She yawns cavernously, encircling Aaronovich’s thigh with frail arms. Her head sinks down to rest.

  Aaronovich drapes her arms about the child, holding her gently. She has to struggle against the tension that threatens to calcify her limbs. She knows that what she told Johnson is true. This small creature is a human child. She knows, too, that she is more dangerous than any child has a right to be. It may take very little provocation to turn her into something deadly, or perhaps none at all. In that sense, it’s as if Aaronovich is cuddling a living bomb, not sure if or when it might detonate.

  Yet there’s more to her unease than mere foreboding. Aaronovich sees herself with sufficient clarity to recognize that here is a boon she’s longed for, and that she’s already afraid will be taken from her. She’s been alone and now she isn’t. She’s been useless; now she has purpose. Here is what she wants, and she’s so likely to lose it. Aaronovich knows that she’ll do everything in her power to defend Abigail, from Foster, from Johnson if need be, from her own sickness. But that might not, probably will not, be enough.

  It’s that knowledge, more than anything else, which threatens to paralyze her. Maybe nothing Aaronovich does can make this child safe, or keep her safe from others. Regardless, she has to try. In this moment, she can feel her choices narrowing to a vanishing point.

  Aaronovich sits, as the candle burns to a flickering stump, as cramp makes her thighs smart and throb. And only when she hears the snuffle of soft snoring does she dare begin to relax.

  Part Four

  Contagion

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Carlita is gone when he wakes, as always.

  Doyle tries to be glad. It’s what he insisted she had to do, a rule he set after that first visit. No one can see you come and go. Silensky mustn’t know. You come here when you need to, only if you need to.

  He’d been disgusted with himself for whispering unkind words amid the graying of a new sunrise, when all he’d ached to tell her was that in the night he’d begun to want his life again, for the first time in longer than he could recollect. In her touch, in the drive of her body against his, he’d remembered what it was to care, about someone else and about himself.

  He’d thought she’d hate him, with his rules, his lack of tenderness, his packing her off like some cheap whore before the sun was even over the horizon. But Doyle had already given in to weakness once and he couldn’t bring himself to compound that error. If he’d let himself, he would have asked her to move in with him there and then, gone out onto the balcony and shouted the news to all of Funland, and dared Silensky and everyone else to oppose it.

  Of course, Carlita had no way of knowing that.

  He’d felt certain she wouldn’t come back. And she hadn’t, not the next night or the night after – not for five days. Doyle had been in bed, not sleeping but not willing to waste candlelight when he could think of nothing useful to do. He’d barely heard the knocking at first. When he had, a potent instinct, something like vertigo, had nearly kept him from answering.

  Once might be a mistake. Twice was a choice, and there was no returning from that.

  This time, she was dressed in jeans and T-shirt instead of the sweater; the night was warm, particularly for so late in the year. She looked like she’d been crying and had attempted to hide the fact. “I’m sorry,” she’d said. “You told me to only come when I need you. But I need you now, Doyle, I do.”

  He could have cried too, with shame. Rather, he’d led her to the bedroom. He’d held her for a long while before they made love, sat behind her with his arms wrapping her waist, her head rested against his shoulder. He hadn’t apologized or made excuses for what he’d said. He’d tried to believe she somehow knew already. He’d slept deeply, and hadn’t stirred even when she left.

  There had been three more visits since then. They didn’t talk much. The sex was rapid and desperate, muted because he couldn’t shake the fear that someone, through layers of brick and metal and plaster, would overhear. It felt almost like an obligation, and part of Doyle was glad when the deed was done and they lay overlapping in the clammy silence. Yet he knows they both need it, and Carlita perhaps more than him. The months of captivity and isolation have built a terrible energy in her.

  But keeping himself in check isn’t getting any easier. None of it is getting easier. The feelings she woke in him that night haven’t gone away, have only grown stronger. They don’t mitigate his guilt and shame, but they make them seem worthwhile.

  Doyle drags back the sheets, stale with last night’s odors. He has no idea what the answer is. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe the answer is that there’s no good end to this, not for them or Funland, and he should be grasping whatever pleasure he can before their fragile existence finally caves in around them. Either way, thinking too hard will make him crazy.

  Doyle slides from the bed and washes himself, standing naked and sponging water from the bowl with a facecloth and refusing to wince at its coldness. He can smell Carlita on him, fresh and sharp unlike the sour musk from the bed, and he hates to wash off that scent. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, till the next time – if there is a next time. If Carlita doesn’t decide that Doyle can go to hell, or that ultimately Silensky isn’t so bad a bet, that at least he doesn’t drive her away, won’t expect her to creep like a thief for the barest scraps of attention.

  “Christ!” Doyle had meant the word to be only a thought until it slipped from his lips. Why does he feel this need to torment himself? And today of all days. A headache is probing at the edges of his mind, just a promise right now, but Doyle has no doubt that the promise will be kept.

  Because today is the day he said he’d talk to Aaronovich. Today is the day he promised Foster he would settle the question of the Sicker child once and for all.

  * * *

  Kyle gives the ball a hard shove and it tumbles across the tiled floor. His aim is skewed, but Abigail flops onto her side and catches it easily. Batting it toward him with both hands, she rocks back onto her knees.

  Abigail never seems to tire of games. It’s one of the things that remind
Kyle she’s sick. She hardly tires at all. She rarely sleeps, and when she does it’s in bursts, an hour or two at most.

  She loves the ball. It’s made of cheap plastic, striped in red and blue, somewhere between a soccer ball and a baseball in size. The game, such as it is, involves Kyle rolling the ball across the floor to her and Abigail rolling it back, an act she performs with surprising precision and clear delight. She struggles to catch the ball, but returning it she manages effortlessly.

  The ball came from his dad. Kyle had pleaded with him to bring some toys back, without admitting who they were really for, and had been certain he wouldn’t until the moment when he did. Kyle had been so sure his father would let him down that he hadn’t known what to say, and before he’d finished hunting through the carrier bag of assorted junk, Ben had slunk away, not even waiting for thanks.

  Kyle knows some rupture has occurred between his father and Carlita, but he doesn’t know what and doesn’t dare ask. His dad has rarely done worse than shout at him, yet there’s something in his alienation and in his obvious self-torture that Kyle finds himself afraid to trust. He keeps his distance, wishing he could help, wishing his dad would snap out of it, and recognizing day by day that maybe he won’t.

  Kyle deliberately aims awry. He’s getting bored. There are times when Abigail seems to him like a little sister and he feels hopelessly fond of her. There are others when he can only see the sickness. He keeps his distance from her. Whenever she shows signs of anger, or even agitation, he will back off, getting out of the room as quickly as he can. These are rules Aaronovich insists on, and in truth Kyle is glad to obey them. He can only mistake Abigail for a normal little girl for so long, and no amount of familiarity has stopped those surges of insight, the ones that tell him with utter clarity that he’s in the presence of somebody no longer absolutely human.

  With slightly more effort, scuttling briefly on all fours, Abigail recovers the ball. She doesn’t appear to be perturbed that Kyle isn’t playing properly. She never is. She shoves the ball back toward him, and her aim is unerring, as always.

  On occasions like this, when Abigail’s company bores him or else disturbs him, Kyle often chews over how his friendship with Austin has come to nothing. Partly he blames himself. Perhaps Austin really had wanted them to be friends, that night when he’d revealed his hiding place, and Kyle ruined his attempt by letting on how frightened he was. Yet he’d bitten inside his lip to conceal that fear, and Austin hadn’t seemed to notice, or to be paying him any attention at all. Easy as it would be for Kyle to make himself accountable, the truth is that there’s something terrible going on in Austin’s mind, a dark and winding process that he may not even be aware of.

  Kyle pushes the ball, not aiming, missing Abigail by a wide margin. She scurries after it, making a weird, high chuckling in the depths of her throat.

  If Kyle hadn’t already had enough, that would have sufficed. Before she can try and return the ball, he’s on his feet and retreating toward the door.

  “See you later, Abigail,” he says. And she looks round, but at the noise, he thinks, more than from any comprehension of the words.

  Kyle is careful to shut the apartment door behind him until the latch triggers. The doctor is sitting at her desk, a large hardback like a textbook open in front of her.

  Glancing up at the click, Aaronovich asks, “How is she?”

  Kyle nods, knowing she’ll deduce that this means there’s nothing to tell. They seldom speak, particularly when it comes to Abigail. Her existence is straightforward and follows simple rules, which they both understand. Likewise, there’s no need for him to explain to the doctor that he’s tired of Abigail. She seems to appreciate intuitively that he has his limits, even though she herself apparently has none.

  Aaronovich goes into her apartment, closing and locking the door behind her. Kyle considers going back to his own room, or wandering over to the farm to see if Singh and Torres are interested in help. Aaronovich has persuaded Foster to allow Kyle time off from his responsibilities there, and there’s not currently a great deal to do in any case, but he finds that he misses the physicality of the work. Now, though, he’s lethargic, for the day outside is stifling and gray, and the glow through the skylight feels like a weight. So instead, Kyle settles in the doctor’s chair and stares up at the metal joins that break that heavy light into misshapen diamonds.

  After a while, he grows uncomfortable. When Kyle shuffles, he realizes what’s digging into his ribs. It’s Plan John’s logbook. He’s been carrying it around for days, maybe weeks, without once looking at it.

  Kyle takes the book out and lays it before him on Aaronovich’s desk. He opens it at a random page. Not quite awake, he stares at the crabbed text, deliberating not so much on its hidden message as at why it should even exist. He saw so little of Plan John; his memories are hazy. Who had he been? Why had he gone to such trouble to create Funland, only to let the place kill him in the end? What secrets did he go to this extreme effort to keep?

  Kyle starts when he hears the door open and close. Perhaps he’s been drowsing after all.

  “She’s asleep,” Aaronovich says. Then, “What’s that?” She pauses behind his shoulder. “Is this that book of Howard’s again?”

  Kyle wonders why she refuses to call the man Plan John as everyone else does – and at how long it’s been since anyone spoke his name at all. These cramped lines of text are one of his last legacies, and they are practically meaningless.

  “His logbook,” Kyle agrees. He doesn’t feel like discussing it.

  But Aaronovich remains behind his shoulder. “And you think it’s in some sort of code?” Scanning a few stray lines, she adds, “It certainly looks like a code.”

  “I thought it was going to be easy at first,” Kyle admits.

  “What happened?”

  She’s genuinely curious. He isn’t going to be able to evade an answer. “There are paragraphs on every page, you see? Sometimes just one or two, sometimes five or six. I found one I managed to work out. It was really simple.” He flicks to that page, where he’s scribbled notes in the margin. “See, here? All he did is swap each letter for the next one along. A for B, B for C, like that. I thought, it can’t be this easy.”

  “And it wasn’t.”

  “Yeah. The same thing doesn’t work on the other paragraphs. It’s not one code. I think it’s loads of different codes. What if every paragraph’s different? How are you supposed to figure that out?”

  Aaronovich takes a moment to digest this. Then she says, “Howard wasn’t a man to do something for no reason. Maybe you’re just not looking hard enough.”

  He knows she doesn’t mean her observation as a judgment. Still, it’s sufficiently close to irritate him, perhaps because, if it had been intended as a criticism, it would be deserved.

  “What does it matter anyway?” Kyle says. “Plan John had a radio and kept all these notes, pages and pages, and he thought they were important enough to write in code. But who cares? There might be people out there, people who could help us, but no one gives a shit.”

  His voice has grown shrill. Kyle is disgusted by how much he sounds like a child denied his own way.

  It only makes it worse when that’s how Aaronovich responds to him, as if he’s on the verge of a tantrum and needs calming. “Kyle,” she says, “you shouldn’t get your hopes up. Johnson tried to use the radio and there was never anything except static. Probably there were plenty of survivors in the early days, but we have advantages they don’t. Even if the sickness isn’t waterborne, there must have been secondary plagues once the sanitation began to collapse. Typhoid. Cholera. Even flu could be catastrophic without medical infrastructure. In all likelihood, whoever Plan John was talking to succumbed long ago.”

  She describes horrors so calmly, as though they’re hardly significant. Maybe everyone out there is dead, everyone Kyle has known, maybe they’r
e dead and no one is ever coming to help them and this is all there’s ever going to be, until the food runs out or the Sickers get in.

  Kyle wants to scream. The sensation has been growing in his chest for a long time, building and building like a snowball. This must be how Austin feels always. How does he live with it? How does he keep it in? Kyle pins his lower lip between his teeth, sealing his mouth against the swell of noise and rage and pain. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, it subsides.

  When he’s sure he can control himself, Kyle stands, slaps the logbook closed, and stuffs it back into his pocket. “Then I guess we should all just give up,” he mutters. And even the hurt and surprise he sees fleetingly in Aaronovich’s face only stoke his anger as he storms toward the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  They hear the sound once more: a gentle rapping like the drumming of rain, which gains in speed and volume to become nerve-janglingly rapid and loud. Then it’s gone, and too quickly for Ben to make sense of it. That noise could as easily have been a loose plastic sheet caught in a stiff breeze or the patter of running feet.

  “Why don’t you go first, Silensky?” Gecko suggests, and seems happy at the prospect.

  Ben looks to Oxendine, who holds the sole weapon they were permitted to bring with them, Funland’s one remaining shotgun. Ben tries to appeal to him without daring actually to say anything. But Oxendine only shrugs, his features impassive. “I’ve got your back,” he declares, though nothing in his voice implies that he could care whether Ben is alive or dead.

  They have explored the main space of the warehouse together, to no avail. There’d been food in the small kitchen once, but animals had got into it, raccoons or squirrels, and the spoiled stench of what was left had nearly made Ben retch. The vodka they’d discovered yesterday, which they’d consumed in an upstairs room of the house they’d barricaded and spent the night in, hadn’t helped. Ben had drunk more than he should have, and the other two hadn’t seemed concerned. Later in the night, he’d listened to them fucking, briefly, without passion. Everyone found their own ways to deal.