A Savage Generation

by David Tallerman

  “She’s been sleeping,” Aaronovich announces. “But I’m sure she’ll wake up soon. She never sleeps for long.”

  She goes first through the reception room and her own private office, making a point of locking the intervening door behind them. That done, she leads the way to the second door, the one to her apartment.

  “Wait,” Johnson says, “she’s in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it safe?”

  Aaronovich resists the urge to just say Yes. “She’ll be nervous of you. Don’t make sudden movements. If I tell you to get out, then get out, and lock the door after you. But if you keep your distance then, yes, I think it’s safe.”

  Johnson doesn’t appear convinced.

  “You’ve changed your mind, haven’t you?” Aaronovich asks.

  “What?” His brow furrows with incomprehension.

  “About Abigail.”

  “Tell me what you’ve found out,” Johnson says, “and we’ll discuss what happens next.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Tell me,” he says. “Take me through whatever it is you’ve found. Then we’ll talk.”

  Aaronovich considers him with unveiled distrust. “I think your mind’s made up. I hope you’ll listen at least.”

  “I’ll listen.”

  “All right.” She doesn’t believe him, but even this brief exchange has wearied her, and she needs her strength for what’s coming. Aaronovich turns the key in the lock of her apartment door, draws it open, enters, and waits as Johnson follows before closing the door and listening for the click of the latch.

  Abigail is indeed awake. She’s squatting in one corner, balanced on her heels, arms wrapped tight around her knees, rocking gently back and forth, something Aaronovich often finds her doing when she’s been left alone.

  Now, though, she looks up. Normally when Aaronovich comes in she will scamper forward, eager for contact, or immediately try to initiate some game. This time she ignores Aaronovich altogether. She sits rigidly in that same position, closed against the world, her gaze locked upon Johnson. It’s been weeks since she’s seen anyone other than Aaronovich and Kyle.

  Aaronovich kneels, careful to make and maintain eye contact. “Abigail,” she says softly. “This man is Doyle Johnson, and he’s going to be your friend.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Somehow it’s all become twisted. Somehow it’s gotten turned backward. It wasn’t so long ago that Austin had everything under control, and now….

  He no longer feels safe in his hiding place. He blames Kyle for that sometimes, as if the act of allowing someone else in there has made it insecure. He blames Kyle for plenty. Austin had trusted him, and what happened? Kyle had got scared, so scared that Austin thought he would piss himself. He’d told himself that was okay, because hadn’t he wanted Kyle to be scared? Wasn’t it good that someone was afraid of him? Except, not like that. Not just then. Austin had let slip a little of what he’d been holding inside for so long, and all he’d got in return was fear.

  Austin hurries across the yard. There’s no one about; still, he feels eyes on him. He fights the impulse to look around, to seek those invisible observers. Austin knows that perhaps they exist only in his imagination, that probably no one much cares what he does. Even his dad doesn’t come searching for him anymore. Nevertheless, Austin feels them watching, and refuses to look up, as though by not seeing he can stay unseen. And sure enough, he makes it across without being accosted, with no one shouting to or at him, with the lone sound the tap of his sneakers on the asphalt.

  He’s going to give Kyle another chance. He’s given Kyle plenty of chances, too many, but he’s willing to give him just one more.

  Who are you kidding?

  Austin almost stops short, so furious does the intruding thought make him. He forces his feet into motion, covers the remaining distance to the administrative wing, nearly tears the doors wide, and then, at the last moment fearful of the noise, opens them gently instead.

  Does he really need Kyle more than Kyle needs him?

  Damn, it’s all got so twisted.

  Austin has his hiding places. He has his secrets. He knows, for instance, that his father is screwing the woman, Carlita. Austin has heard them in the depths of the night, their grunts of passion echoing through the silver conduits of his kingdom, drilling their ugliness into his mind. He knows plenty of things, but they are no use. Secrets are no good when you’re alone.

  And Kyle has his own secrets. That makes it worse. He’s disappearing for hours, and Austin has no idea where. That ignorance infuriates him. Maybe this time he’ll ask, just ask, and maybe he’ll even be able to read the truth from Kyle’s face, from beneath whatever lie he tries to mask it with.

  Austin is afraid that Kyle will be off somewhere right now. He hates making this journey, exposing himself like this, for nothing. But to his relief, Kyle is in his room, sprawled on his bunk, staring at something balanced on his knees.

  “What you doing?”

  Austin knows the answer: that stupid book. And when Kyle doesn’t reply, Austin sidles closer, staring at the pages over Kyle’s shoulder.

  “I give up,” Kyle says. “It’s bullshit.”

  For some reason, this admission of defeat rouses Austin’s attention more than Kyle’s enthusiasm ever has. “What’s so hard?” Kyle flicks between two pages, marking paragraphs with a thumb. “These two use the same code,” he says. “A really easy one. Only, it doesn’t work for the others. He must have used a load of different codes, and all of them work differently. Figuring them out could take years.”

  Austin considers. “How far apart are they?”

  Kyle turns through the pages again. “Um, thirteen…no, fourteen paragraphs.”

  “So it’s something with fourteen. A pattern.”

  “Maybe,” Kyle agrees, without interest. But he moves on a couple of pages, to squint distractedly at the lines of text. Then, abruptly, his face lights. “Fuck,” he murmurs.

  “Told you.” It’s so obvious, Austin can’t believe Kyle hasn’t thought of it. Yet the fact that Austin himself has gives him a thrill of satisfaction the likes of which he hasn’t felt in longer than he can remember.

  Kyle turns more pages. His smile widens. “Holy shit,” he breathes.

  Austin lets him check another couple of paragraphs and watches his smile broaden. Then he says, “So…do you want to hang? Unless you’re too busy with your secret missions.”

  Kyle becomes immediately shy, all his excitement evaporating in an instant. “It’s not a secret.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean…it is. But from everyone. Not just from you.”

  “Great,” Austin says.

  The conflict in Kyle’s face is plain to see. Finally, his voice dropping to barely a whisper, he urges, “You won’t tell anyone?”

  Austin shrugs. It hardly seems worth pointing out that he has no one to tell.

  “I need to hear you say it.”

  This is starting to piss him off. “Fine. I won’t tell anybody your little secret.”

  “Okay.” Kyle nods shakily. It’s clear that he’s still in two minds, that whatever this is actually matters to him. “Okay,” he repeats. “Well, you remember when my dad brought back that girl?”

  Austin is puzzled. What can he be talking about? Then realization dawns. “The Sicker.”

  Kyle looks uncomfortable, though he hides it quickly. “Yeah. The Sicker.”

  “They shot her,” Austin says. He recalls the funeral pyre. He had watched from a spot upon the walls, gazing at the flickering brightness amid the dark, all the while wondering what other eyes might be observing from the toothed silhouette of the distant trees.

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “What?” This truly is a secret, something Austin could never have gu
essed at.

  “They kept her alive. Doctor Aaronovich made them. Abigail…that’s her name…she’s living with the doctor now, and I help look after her.”

  That’s it? Austin is stunned. A Sicker? That crazy bitch doctor is keeping a Sicker, like a pet? He thinks he’ll retch. Who would do that? An image fills Austin’s mind with utter clarity: the figure of a man, head tilted in listless curiosity, his posture hinting at brokenness.

  How can anyone not see what they are?

  “It’s okay. It’s safe,” Kyle says, surely reading Austin’s reaction from his face. “We keep her locked up.”

  “Locked up?” Austin echoes with disgust. As though a locked door can stop a monster.

  “Your dad even made the doctor have a gun.” Kyle sounds defensive, shaken by the force of Austin’s revulsion.

  “A gun?”

  “I don’t think she’d ever—”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s in her bedroom. But—”

  “I need it,” Austin says. “I really need it. Just to borrow. Just for a few hours.”

  “There’s no way.” Kyle is flustered; his voice has grown thin and quavering. “Look, I’m sorry. I can’t. Listen, the door’s locked, and Abigail’s in there.”

  “No,” Austin retorts, “you listen.” But having said that, and with such violence that Kyle actually flinched, he doesn’t know if he can continue. He’s never told, not any of it. He doesn’t know if he has the words, if there are words. The memories are like a single noise, a drone too loud to hear.

  But this is his one chance.

  “My stepdad’s out there,” Austin begins. He can feel bile rising in the pit of his throat. “He’s sick.” A recognition: “He was always sick.”

  And after that, there’s no turning back. Then it all comes pouring out.

  * * *

  Afterward, Kyle can’t think about what Austin told him.

  He can’t even feel sorry for him. And while Kyle understands now why Austin acts the way he does, he feels no gratitude for that insight. He’s already regretting agreeing to Austin’s plan.

  Yet can Kyle deny him what he wants? The chance to revenge himself on someone who made his life a living hell, someone who’s barely even human anymore, who would be better off dead? And if Kyle did back out, what then? Their tenuous friendship would be over, of course. But more than that, he knows without a doubt that Austin will pursue his plan alone.

  Kyle could warn someone. Only, the doctor can’t hide the gun, not forever. That it be easily accessible is its entire point. They can hardly lock Austin away, and who would be interested in trying, when even his own father seems to have given up on him? Exposing Austin’s plan to anyone besides Johnson would mean revealing the existence of the gun, and therefore the reason for it being in Aaronovich’s apartments. More than anything, Kyle must ensure Abigail’s safety. If he goes along with Austin, at least he might be able to do that.

  It’s impossible. Kyle wants to slam his head against the cinder-block wall, to pacify the whirling of his thoughts. It’s impossible, this decision that’s been forced on him, and there’s no right answer.

  Then, as though a haze has cleared abruptly from his vision, Kyle sees the logbook resting in his lap. A rush of gratitude flashes through him, mingled with relief. He turns to the last section he managed to make sense of, flips past thirteen paragraphs to the fourteenth. He’s sure by now that this paragraph will be the same as the others. Still, he can’t help but smile when the words start to cohere. That’s one fourteenth of the logbook cracked.

  But would Plan John have come up with fourteen different codes? Wouldn’t that be too much to remember? On a whim, Kyle turns to the previous page, tracing back five, six, to the seventh previous paragraph. A to B. B to C.

  Yes. It works.

  Seven. Seven. And there must have been a key; something Plan John could look at easily. Something that wouldn’t be immediately obvious to anyone else.

  A to B. B to C. And M to O.

  As in Monday.

  But that would mean that the next paragraph works the same, T to U, and he’d have been able to decode it. Kyle checks, to be certain, and the result is garbage. So if not T to U, then maybe U to T? Sure enough, that produces two words in order: If they. For the next paragraph he tests W to E, a migration of eight characters. The word north is ample to satisfy him. Next is T back to H, all of twelve characters. Water. F to R. S back to A. S to U. It works. And Kyle can imagine Plan John sitting before his radio, staring at a calendar hanging above, running the conversions in his mind, scribbling his gibberish-like notes.

  A degree of serious effort and he would have figured the logbook out in no time. He can see that Plan John probably never even intended his codes to be difficult, just to hinder inquisitive glances. Kyle had been so convinced that Plan John had sunk his mysteries deep out of reach, when all he’d done was dig a shallow hole and scrape earth across the top. If only Kyle had really tried, he might have uncovered the logbook’s secrets weeks ago.

  That thought spurs him on. He’s already taken far too long. Now, right now, he’s going to work through the whole damn book. If it takes all night, he doesn’t care. Better, anyway, than contemplating Austin, better than torturing himself with the promises he’s made. But he won’t wake another morning without knowing the secrets Plan John buried in this shallow grave.

  Chapter Thirty

  The Sicker girl doesn’t go near him, and Doyle doesn’t approach her. Yet Aaronovich plays with her and even at one point holds her, like you would any normal child. One scratch, Doyle thinks. One bite. That’s all it would take.

  However, when he looks carefully, he can see that the child’s nails have been meticulously pared, and that the doctor is always cautious, always aware of where those small white teeth are in relation to her. She’s wearing a lab coat of heavy fabric, sealed tight at cuffs and collar. It’s not that she doesn’t recognize the danger.

  But it’s still a risk, he thinks. Still a hell of a risk.

  After five minutes, Aaronovich gets up from where she’s been kneeling on the floor. To the Sicker child she says, “We’re going to go away for a little while. But we’ll be just outside.”

  When they’re back in Aaronovich’s office and the door is again closed and locked, Doyle asks, “Do you think she understands you?”

  “Truthfully? I think she mostly responds to the intonation of my voice. Her language skills are severely arrested. Generally she’s extremely quiet, far more so than a normal child her age would be.”

  More of an answer than Doyle had anticipated. He senses that this is a subject Aaronovich is eager to talk about, but also that an edge of panic is threatening to overwhelm her. She’s afraid of him, afraid of what he might decide.

  Doyle wishes he could reassure her. Instead he says, “She seems healthy. Physically, I mean.”

  “I’ve never pretended there’s anything I can do for her from a medical point of view,” Aaronovich says, catching his connotation. “I don’t have the knowledge or the resources. I’m mostly limited to observation, and even then I don’t have half of what I’d need to do a proper job. You have to bear all that in mind, Johnson.”

  “So you’re no closer to knowing what it is? Where it came from?”

  “How can I be? This is hardly a CDC. Do you want me to guess? Perhaps it was some insane bioweapon. Perhaps it mutated from something else. Does knowing matter in the end? The sickness is here, and it represents the future of the human race. Unless the infected are sterile or too mentally damaged to raise offspring, in which case this will be our final generation.”

  Johnson shakes his head, feeling as though he’s trying to clear it after a physical blow. “Christ,” he says.

  “Well, what did you expect?” she demands, almost angry.

  “No, you’re right. It’s jus
t, hearing it like that….”

  Aaronovich sighs. She sinks into her chair. “I know,” she agrees. “Yes.”

  Doyle considers the second chair, props himself against the corner of her desk instead. “How are they surviving out there?” he asks. “Can you tell me that?”

  “Maybe. Yes, I think so. I’ve given some thought to the question, at least, enough to believe that it’s essentially meaningless. Humanity endured perfectly well for millennia with none of the trappings of civilization. And the infected have basic advantages that, for example, Cro-Magnon man never did. They have domesticated livestock available and buildings to shelter in.”

  “You think the Sickers are like cavemen?”

  “Actually,” Aaronovich says, “that may be exactly what they’re like. My empirical guess is that that’s what the sickness has done, caused such damage to certain zones of the brain as to effectively strip away millennia of development. Is the idea so unrealistic? Society has never existed anywhere but in the human mind, Johnson. Damage that mind sufficiently and society is gone.” She pauses, allowing him to digest what she’s said, or else because this is the first time she’s put these thoughts into words. “Anyway, there’s more to it than that.”

  Doyle doesn’t want to hear more. He’s regretting this entire conversation; everything she’s telling him is disturbing on one level or another. Yet he understands that she needs to get this out of her system, and that perhaps he needs to listen, however he might desire not to.

  “Go on,” he says.

  “Abigail doesn’t seem to feel pain, not like we do. I suspect she has a higher than normal resistance to infection, though I can’t prove it. Once she tripped and banged her head on the edge of the bed. I had to sedate her to stitch the wound. But she didn’t cry, hardly reacted at all. I don’t know how it’s possible, but there it is.”

  “So they won’t just die out,” Doyle says. “That’s what you’re implying.”

  “I’m not implying anything. If this was caused by a virus, it may mutate into some more fatal strain. There might be a secondary epidemic; it’s hard to imagine that something like bubonic plague wouldn’t severely deplete their numbers. On the other hand, they appear to be spreading into the countryside rather than clustering in the cities. Based on the evidence we have, I’d say that, no, they won’t die out anytime soon.”