A Savage Generation

by David Tallerman

  “Silensky!”

  The call comes from behind him. Ben spins to face it, hating his son in that moment for this calamitous delay.

  “You’ve got to give that back,” Contreras shouts. He has a baseball bat now, one of those lightweight metal ones, and he’s waving it in the air. “You give back what you’ve stolen, or so help me, I’m going to beat you until you can’t stand up.”

  * * *

  Doyle hears the truck come in, and is glad, not of the fact that the search party have returned, not even of the thought of more supplies to bolster their dwindling stocks, but only of the distraction. The rattle of the gate as it opens and closes, the complaint of the truck as it grinds to a halt in the yard, the fainter sound of voices, excited or disappointed he can’t judge – it’s a respite to have the night’s silence broken.

  He’d never appreciated until today how the changing of words could change the thing itself. At the beginning of the day, it had seemed conceivable that he might put down a violent monster. Now he can’t imagine executing a sick child. One is a reasonable, if distasteful, step toward maintaining their safety; the other is an abomination.

  At the same time, nothing Aaronovich said has reassured him. He believes her when she says that the sick are not about to die out, that probably no defeat will persuade them to relinquish their newfound grip upon the earth. Yet he can’t share her faith in the possibility, however distant, of peaceful cohabitation. Indeed, he fears the Sickers more than ever. A day ago they’d been scarcely more than animals. Now they are damaged human beings, of the kind Doyle has spent all his working life around.

  He’s never entirely accepted the notion of rehabilitation. In so much as he rationalized his work, he had convinced himself that it was enough to keep the scum off the streets for another month, another week, another day. So what do you do when the scum have made every street their own? What do you do about a child who could kill everyone in Funland? And what, tomorrow, is he going to tell Foster?

  When the shout reaches him, Doyle is almost relieved. Even trouble will be a diversion. Had that bellowed cry been a name? In an instant, Doyle is on his feet, and is halfway to the door before he remembers the battery-powered flashlight he keeps on his bedside. He rushes on, down the stairs, through the corridors and out. He slices at the night with the flashlight beam until it settles on three figures, near to the stores entrance.

  “What is this?” Doyle calls. Rather than run, he starts toward them slowly, pinning them with the light. He recognizes Contreras, wielding the bat that Foster gave him, Ben Silensky – Doyle had been right in thinking he knew the shouted name – and who is that with them? He finds himself hoping it might be Austin, that here is a chance to confront his errant son. But no, it’s Kyle, Silensky’s boy. Is he going the same way as his father? He’d always seemed like a good kid.

  “He’s been stealing, Johnson. This scumbag.” Contreras is choked with rage. “This pathetic borracho. Stealing whiskey from me.”

  Doyle pauses, a few feet from the gathering. If he holds the flashlight high, its beam covers all three of them, confining them like the spotlight on a stage. And what a pathetic little drama this is. Silensky’s face is haggard, drawn with sleeplessness and sunken with abuse. Contreras, despite the chill in the air, has his shirt off to reveal his shallow chest, the body of an older man. And the boy Kyle just looks scared, scared for his dad.

  “Let him go,” Doyle says. “It’s one bottle, Contreras.”

  “Johnson—”

  “If Foster gives you shit, tell him I made the call. Get out of here, Silensky.”

  Silensky doesn’t have to be told twice. Before the last syllable is spoken, he’s scurrying into the darkness, as though the torchlight is acid on his skin.

  While he’s still within earshot, Doyle adds, “But next time, Contreras, don’t hesitate. If he sets one foot in the stores again, take that bat and cave his goddamn skull in.”

  “Yes,” Contreras agrees. “With pleasure.”

  “Okay. Now, get back there, will you? Before someone cleans the place out.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Then Contreras is gone too, leaving only Kyle.

  Doyle takes a step nearer, training the flashlight beam away from them, and waits for his eyes to adjust. Kyle’s face is pale and anxious. Doyle can see that he’s clutching something to his chest.

  “It’s all right,” Doyle says. “You don’t need to worry.”

  “Are you going to punish him?” Kyle speaks the words plaintively, in the manner of a much younger child.

  Doyle shrugs. “No. Foster might.”

  “Will you tell him?”

  “No.” Doyle hadn’t been sure of his answer until he said it. He despises Silensky, but he can’t find it in himself to hate the man. Ben Silensky is weak and he’s coming apart. Probably he’s beyond anyone’s help, and if he isn’t, who would try? “What’s that?” Doyle says, noticing how defensively Kyle is clutching the object he holds.

  “Oh.” Now Kyle sounds bashful. “It’s—”

  But Doyle has reached the answer for himself. “The logbook. Plan John’s book.”

  “I figured it out.”

  “You broke the code?”

  “There are seven different codes. But, yeah.”

  “And what does it say?”

  Kyle takes a deep breath. “That there are other survivors. Back in the city.”

  Doyle realizes he’s suspected all along, that the answer is practically inevitable. Why else would Plan John have kept the logbook with the radio? Whatever had been occurring in the outside world, whatever last-ditch efforts at self-preservation were being made, he would have been angling for his share.

  The issue has never been whether there were survivors, or whether Plan John had been keeping track of them, or why. “When?” Doyle asks. “When was he talking to them?”

  The question takes Kyle by surprise. “I’ve only worked out a handful of pages. And there aren’t any dates.”

  “So all we know is that there were others out there. That doesn’t mean there still are.”

  “But….” Kyle protests, the beginning of an argument he clearly has no idea how to progress.

  “The logbook might be from the first few weeks,” Doyle says. His mind is working quickly now. What would happen to Funland if they stopped believing they were alone? If Foster, for instance, should be persuaded that there were enclaves to be found, with their own food, fuel – with women, maybe. Doyle can see no outcome that won’t hasten their end, that won’t drive them nearer to the abyss. “There’s no point getting anybody’s hopes up yet. Who have you told?”

  “My dad,” Kyle says. “He wouldn’t listen. I don’t think he even understood.”

  “Okay. You’ve done good with this, Kyle. You keep at it. But it needs to stay between us. Once you decipher the rest, come to me and we’ll talk about what happens next.”

  “Right,” Kyle agrees. “Sure. I’ll do that.” Then he too is gone, eager to escape back into the night.

  Did the boy believe him? Doyle has never been a good liar. In the long term it won’t make a difference; he’ll talk Kyle around, even enlist Carlita’s help. But in the short term….

  Winter is close. Their supplies are running out. Funland is a heap of kindling waiting for its spark. And as much as there’s a part of Doyle that could happily stand aside and watch the place burn, it’s foolish to pretend that he doesn’t have a stake in its endurance.

  This thing with Kyle, he’ll need to keep on top of it. He’ll need to make it a priority. Something else to worry about, as alarming – maybe more so – as the situation with the Sicker girl. Either of them has the potential to be the ember that sets Funland alight.

  Only then does that fact give Doyle pause: its strangeness, its absurdity, and for all of that, its absolute reality. Can
it really be that, somewhere along the line, two children have become the most dangerous people in a prison?

  * * *

  Ben had planned to make the whiskey last. But the run-in with Contreras and then Johnson has left him more wired than he was already, and as soon as he’s around the corner he finds himself gulping from the bottle, the liquid flaring in his throat.

  He remembers distantly that he’s never liked whiskey, not even the good stuff, which this surely isn’t. Strange to think that there was a time, not long ago, when his likes and dislikes mattered. It isn’t as if he’s come to like the things he once abhorred. But he has learned tolerance, because there’s been no other choice.

  Perhaps he should resent that. Rather, the simplicity is nearly as comforting as the fire working its way down through his innards. If it mattered that he didn’t like whiskey, even this small consolation would be denied him.

  Ben hides for a while, in the crook where the Big House and cellblock meet, mindful of the dark. If anyone spots him, they’ll take the bottle from him. For the same reason, he can’t return to the cellblock. And the night is cold; the whiskey’s warmth fades the moment he stops drinking.

  When he’s confident that Johnson and Kyle have gone, Ben skulks back around the corner of the Big House. There’s no one about. Still, he moves cautiously, embracing the bottle as though it’s a newborn he’s been made responsible for. A brief, mad urge makes him want to seek out Carlita. Ben manages to push it aside. She’s speaking to him now, at least. If she sees him like this, she’ll despise him, and he’ll hate her for doing so, and then who knows what will happen?

  But of course they both know, and that’s precisely the problem. She’s speaking to him. Without that, without the bottle he cradles, he has nothing.

  Instead, Ben creeps into the library. As he glances between the high racks of shelves, barely discernible in the meager glimmer leaking from narrow windows, his position seems almost funny. He had never imagined he’d choose to spend so much time in a library, and a prison library at that.

  Ben stops at the first table he stumbles into, finds a chair mostly by touch, sits down, and places the bottle before him. He unscrews the cap and takes a tentative slug.

  Yeah, almost funny. But, in the end, not quite.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  He hasn’t cried in weeks or months, hasn’t cried, in fact, since the first week after they arrived in Funland, when his terror had been all-consuming. But the moment Kyle gets back to his room, he falls onto his bunk and drives his face into his pillow and weeps. Hopelessness could never have done this to him. Only having hope and then losing it so immediately could have shattered him like this.

  His dad doesn’t care. His dad is a useless, screwed-up drunk. Doyle Johnson, that bastard, he doesn’t care either. He just wants to make sure that what Kyle has discovered stays hidden. Kyle hasn’t trusted him, not ever, and now he knows he’s been right not to. “Bastard, bastard, bastard,” he hisses into the pillow, already wet with tears and spittle.

  Nobody cares. They’re none of them going to escape Funland. There might be people out there, whole villages, whole towns, and those cowards would rather remain here, in a prison, until every last one of them is dead.

  After a while, Kyle’s tears start to abate, not because he feels better but because he’s exhausted himself, and because even crying seems purposeless when there’s no hope and no chance of hope. He flips the pillow to its dry side and lies snuffling in the darkness, the logbook still clutched to his chest.

  When he wakes, he knows there’s someone else in the room. He knows, too, who it must be. “Austin?” Kyle asks the darkness.

  “Come on,” Austin’s voice says. One shadow detaches and approaches the less-black rectangle of the doorway. Halfway there, Austin hesitates. “It’s time. Time to do the thing we talked about.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You promised. Come on.”

  Austin’s voice, which began as a whisper, is rising now. Foster sleeps in one of the nearby rooms. Aside from Kyle, and the doctor and Abigail of course, he’s the only other person living in the administrative wing. There’s a chance that, if Austin raises his voice enough, Foster will hear.

  Kyle rolls off the bed. Already fully dressed, he pauses to snatch up his coat. Passing close to where he believes Austin to be, he mutters, “Follow me.”

  Kyle leads the way toward Aaronovich’s office, but at the last moment, rather than turning right, he goes left instead, pushing through the outer doors, ignoring Austin’s muted grunt of protest. Kyle keeps going around the building, stopping once they’ve placed its end between them and the yard. Then he says, “This is a bad idea. Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

  “Just one person. As soon as I get that gun.” Kyle can detect no doubt in Austin’s words.

  “Wait a few more days. We’ll come up with a really good plan.”

  “We don’t need a good plan. You talk to the doctor, you get the keys. You said she doesn’t sleep in her room anymore. You know where the gun is. Get the keys, we get the gun, it’s simple.”

  Austin’s right. Phrased like that, it is simple. Kyle even has the perfect excuse to give Aaronovich, a pretext that’s hardly a lie. He wishes he’d prepared a better argument, one that might have been convincing.

  “Listen to me,” Austin says. His voice is different, less obviously hostile, but also somehow less trustworthy. “I know something. About your dad and my dad. About your stepmom.”

  “Carlita’s not my stepmom.”

  “Whatever. The point is, I know something. Something important. Something you’d want to know. Help me and I’ll tell you.”

  Kyle recalls his dad looking at him as if he was a stranger. There’d been no affection in his eyes, scarcely even recognition. He remembers his visits to Carlita and how she’d talk at him rather than to him, barely registering a word he said. He remembers Doyle Johnson. It needs to stay between us.

  “I don’t want to know,” Kyle says. “It’s not my problem.”

  “Fine. Then I won’t tell you. I’ll tell someone else.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell Gecko, or Soto. What do you think will happen to your stepmom then?”

  Kyle clenches his fists, nails gouging his palms. He wants to say, Didn’t I explain how she’s not my stepmom? He wants to hit Austin, knock him to the ground, smack that arrogant surety from his face. Kyle doesn’t even believe him, not really. Nevertheless, he can’t shake a sense of accountability, as though the course of the future is being forced into his hands. Going along with Austin is dangerous. Refusing is dangerous too. It would merely propel Austin onto some yet more drastic course.

  The choice is Kyle’s, but it’s no choice at all. He can’t avert disaster, only affect its probable course. And, as much as he hates Austin in this moment, it’s true as well that he made a promise.

  “I’ll help you,” Kyle says. “But you’ve got to listen to me, okay? We do it my way.”

  * * *

  In the dream, Aaronovich knows she’s dreaming. She knows, in part, because this dream is familiar. She’s had the same one on many, many nights before.

  While she understands that this is a dream, and that, if she chooses to, she can wake, Aaronovich allows it to continue. She opens the door as she always does. She’s distantly aware that it’s her responsibility to do so.

  The room is in darkness. But she feels this rather than sees, as if the dark is a presence: she knows it’s there, yet it does nothing to restrict her vision. Aaronovich recognizes her own bedroom, though not as her bedroom is here. This is her and Daniel’s room, from a long time ago or never, for even then the details don’t quite add up.

  Except it’s also like her room now, at least in one detail. Abigail is sitting on the bed, propped on her haunches with hands tucked in her lap, her favorite pose. Noti
cing Aaronovich, she smiles, and even in the choking gloom, her smile is perfect – despite the mask of blood that cakes her jaw. Abigail leans forward, bending impossibly, to plunge her face deep into the mess of fur and ragged flesh spread out upon the covers before her: what was a dog, maybe, or a raccoon. Aaronovich can hear the slap of her tongue exploring its red cavities, her teeth scratching against ribs. Finally, after much too long, Abigail withdraws her dripping face. She licks her lips. And she laughs and laughs and laughs.

  Then, as always, Aaronovich wakes. What she feels is not fear, nor even horror, but cold acceptance, and perhaps that’s worse, when all is told. It’s a residue from the dream, because in the dream that’s what she feels, that and pleasure. In the dream, Abigail is happy, so she’s happy.

  Staring at a ceiling she can’t see, Aaronovich wonders how far she will take that maxim in her waking life, how far she’s already taken it.

  At first, she thinks the noise is something out of her nightmare. In the infirmary, where she’s slept ever since Abigail’s arrival, the darkness is all-consuming. She maintains to herself that she’s used to it, yet no amount of self-assurance can fully still the whispers of primitive terror it evokes. The steady tapping, issuing from somewhere above, unsettles her where the dream did not.

  Then she catches – very faintly, muffled by layers of cinder block and concrete and metal – the sound of a voice. The second time, she’s certain. Someone is calling her name.

  Aaronovich slips to the floor, fumbling there for the battery alarm clock she uses in lieu of a flashlight. Its pasty glow is sufficient to find her clothes by. She lets the light go out while she dresses and then uses it to reach the first door. Climbing the stairs, she unlocks the upper door. She can hear the knocking clearly now, steady but urgent, and the voice repeating her name, “Doctor Aaronovich,” over and over.

  As she opens the door, she responds, more heatedly than she entirely intends, “What the hell do you want, Kyle?”

  “Sorry for waking you,” he says.