A Savage Generation

by David Tallerman

  Everything had been under control. Until this morning, everything had been simple.

  Hellish, but simple. Kyle’s world had spun between two poles, hate and revenge. If rebellious emotions had threatened to intrude – sorrow, guilt, loneliness – he had subdued them with fortitude that bordered on religion. All that mattered was his hatred for Johnson. All that mattered was the thought of one day hurting him.

  Hate has made Kyle stronger. It’s stifled his fear. He thinks sometimes about Austin, about the things that must have sustained him. He has tried to emulate them, but he won’t hide the way Austin did, for he’s seen how that ended.

  The general belief, in as much as anybody discusses the subject, is that Austin killed himself. Kyle, though, is positive that Johnson was the one who pulled the trigger. It’s one of Kyle’s two great secrets, along with the existence of Carlita, her relationship with Johnson, and his conviction that Johnson murdered his father to secure his hold on her. Many nights, Kyle has gone to sleep swearing he’ll reveal one or the other the next day. He’s never certain what stops him. So what if Austin had been infected? So what if Carlita’s affection for his dad had faltered long before they’d come to Funland? Kyle refuses to accept that it’s an urge to protect her that holds him back. Weakness is all that binds his tongue, and night after night he vows to find more strength.

  Now, however, even walking straight feels like an unreasonable challenge. It’s as if his life is a house caught in a mudslide and all the furniture is tumbling past him, impossible to grasp.

  There’s only one thing he’s sure of. Kyle knows he can’t refuse Johnson’s offer. Because the prospect of revenge is no longer a distant fever dream, it’s real and at hand. Yet also, and as thoroughly as Kyle despises himself for the admission, the thought of opening himself to something besides anger is appealing. The logbook brought him the closest to happiness he’s been since they left the city. He’s never forgotten what he found there, the anticipation it brought. Johnson was right about one fact: Kyle does care, whether he wants to or not.

  Everything that had been simple is hopelessly tangled. Where there’d been only revenge, now there’s also hope. And between those two, how can he be expected to choose?

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Doyle tells Contreras first, and the conversation is a brief one.

  “I’m going outside for a few days. I need you to look after things while I’m away. I think I can persuade Aaronovich to take care of Carlita, but I’d like you to keep an eye on them both, as much as you can.”

  “Doyle, are you serious?”

  “It shouldn’t be more than half a week. If it is, I guess that means I’m not coming back.”

  “You are. You’re serious. Doyle, what is this?”

  “Can you do it? There’s nobody else I trust.”

  “You can trust me. Of course you can.”

  “I know, Tito. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “Then…yes, Doyle, of course. Of course.”

  He doesn’t like it, putting Contreras on the spot that way. He doesn’t like it at least partly because he knows he can’t be completely relied upon. Doyle has even considered keeping Contreras in the dark, to avoid any possible repeat of the incident with Plan John. However, he has no other options, and necessity makes difficult decisions straightforward.

  Or so Doyle assures himself. The conversation with Carlita is harder.

  “It’s just for a few days. I’ve talked to Contreras. I’m going to talk to Aaronovich. They’ll take care of you.”

  “I don’t want to be taken care of.” She’s sitting on their bed. She must have known this was coming; he’s never been good at keeping secrets.

  “Still. They will. Until I come back.”

  This time, she doesn’t answer. She isn’t even crying anymore.

  “It’s the only way,” he presses. “I can’t protect you here. You or Kyle or anyone else.”

  She looks up at him. Her eyes are red and fierce. “You can’t protect anybody. God, Doyle, haven’t you learned anything? We’re going to die here. You said it yourself. This is all that’s left. There’s nothing out there, no one coming to help us, no cure, no miracle. Nothing. And that’s okay. As long as there’s us, right up until the end. I accept it. Why can’t you?”

  He wants to say that he can. But it wouldn’t be true. He wants to tell her he loves her, but he knows that love doesn’t mean the same thing to them. He can’t love what he can’t protect, just as he refuses to keep protecting what he doesn’t love.

  He wants to say, because of Kyle. That would be less untrue. Probably they will all die here, perhaps that end isn’t even far off, but Kyle’s time is running out faster, and as a result of crimes not his own. Doyle has reconciled himself to the fact that Kyle’s part in Austin’s death had been entirely unwilling. In truth, of everyone in Funland, he has done least harm.

  So, because of Kyle. Not untrue, not wholly true either. This Doyle realized in the night, lying beside Carlita, sleep at an unattainable reach: he wants to go. He wants to get out of Funland. Even if it’s hopeless or worse than hopeless, dangerous and irresponsible, he has to try. He can’t stand living inside walls any longer, or inside his head. He can’t bear the fog of grief he moves about in.

  “I have to do this,” he says. “For you. For me. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe more for me. But I have to.”

  Carlita looks away, down toward last night’s rumpled bedsheets, piled like driven snow. “You won’t come back.”

  “I’ll do my best to.”

  “No. No.” Eyes still averted. “That’s not good enough. You tell me you’re coming back.”

  “All right.”

  “Not ‘all right.’ Tell me.”

  “I’m coming back,” Doyle says.

  Then she looks at him again. Once more, she’s crying; tear marks track her cheeks, curving about her jaw. Yet something has changed. Her hostility is gone, or lessened. Doyle sits beside her, and when he puts his arm around her and draws her close, Carlita doesn’t resist.

  * * *

  “I have two conditions,” Aaronovich says.

  The look Johnson gives her conveys with abundant clarity that she’s in no position to be making conditions.

  Too bad. If he needs her help then Doyle Johnson is going to hear her out. Aaronovich is amazed, really, by how clear her thoughts are, how they’ve crystallized from murmurs into definite intentions in the time it’s taken him to explain what he’s asking of her.

  “Firstly,” she says, “I want to check you over. When we last spoke, you told me you were suffering from headaches. Headaches can be a symptom of any number of things, or of nothing much at all. At the very least I can help you manage the pain.”

  “They’re gone,” Johnson replies. “It’s not a problem anymore.”

  “I don’t believe you. And I don’t care. That’s condition one. Kyle’s going to be relying on you out there, and if you’re not in a fit state, you’ll put him at even graver risk than you are already.”

  “You don’t think I should do this?”

  Aaronovich sighs. “I see that you think you have no choice.”

  “I don’t have a choice.” And sure enough, there’s no hesitation in Johnson’s voice.

  “I won’t argue with you. Right or wrong, it doesn’t change the facts of what I’ve said, just as my opinion won’t change whether you go or not.”

  “Fine,” he says. “Check me out.”

  “Good—”

  “But,” he adds, with unexpected force, “if there is a problem then it stays between us. I want your word, Aaronovich.”

  Why does the man have to be so damned headstrong? “You have my word.”

  “Whatever the results.”

  “Whatever the results,” she agrees.

  “Okay.” He nods. “Your seco
nd condition.”

  She’d never really doubted he would submit to the checkup, or imagined that her medical opinion could have any bearing on his decision. At least it puts one small but nagging part of her conscience to bed; often she’s recalled their conversation that day and been troubled by the prospect of Johnson suffering needlessly.

  More than that, though, Aaronovich had needed a lead into her second demand, the one she can’t bend on, the one she’s certain he’ll deny. “I can’t take care of Abigail anymore,” she says. She’d thought she had control of herself, but her restraint comes close to cracking as she speaks those words. She pauses, summoning calm. “I can’t. Even if I could, she’s not safe here. This place is not safe. You know as well as I do, it’s not going to last.”

  “I know,” Johnson allows. “Just like you know that one diseased child is nowhere on my list of priorities.”

  “Yes.” Aaronovich holds onto her forced tranquility, with all the resources at her disposal. “But she is mine. And I haven’t looked after her to watch her die here. So my second condition is that you take her with you, far away, to somewhere where there are other sick – preferably women of childbearing age – and you leave her there.”

  For a moment, the rage in Johnson’s eyes is dangerously near to release. She sees in that instant a passage to the molten core of him, to the pain swirling inside, and for the first time, she’s afraid. If that flood of white-hot emotion were to come out then she can’t envisage what he’d do, or if he’d ever again find a way to contain it.

  Yet his voice is, while not steady, at least controlled as he asks, “Are you insane?”

  “It’s my condition.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “It’s my condition.”

  “That thing killed my son.”

  “That’s not true. And even if it was, it’s still my condition.”

  “How do you know I won’t just put a bullet in its head the minute we’re out the gates?”

  “Because,” she says, “I choose to trust you. Because I know that, when it comes down to it, you’re a decent man. And, beyond all that, because Kyle won’t let you.”

  Johnson shakes his head, and if she’d believed him when he claimed the headaches were gone, the manner in which the muscles in his neck knot at even that slight movement would have betrayed the lie. “No. It’s impossible.”

  “It’s not,” Aaronovich says. “It’s what has to happen. If you want me to look after your girlfriend then you have to take care of my—” She almost says my child and catches herself, but can think of no alternative. “You have to do this for me. I can’t do it myself. Take some time to consider if you need to. But Doyle, this is what has to happen.”

  “All right,” he says.

  That catches her entirely off balance. “Excuse me?”

  “Yes. You’re right, it needs to be done. It means we’re no longer keeping an infected child inside our walls. It means you’re not distracted with this, which, frankly, we can’t afford.”

  “All right,” Aaronovich echoes. “Good.”

  “You want to do those tests now?”

  Not understanding, bowed beneath the weight of her reflection, Aaronovich looks at Johnson uncomprehendingly.

  “The tests,” he repeats, with patience.

  “Oh. Yes.”

  He’s agreed. And she hadn’t let herself think, not until this moment, about what that would portend. She hasn’t thought about the possibility of giving up Abigail. Everything she said is true: she has reached the limits of her ability to care for the child, and all her instincts as a doctor tell her she’s doing more harm than good, that she has let her feelings interfere with the wellbeing of her patient.

  But this? Releasing a little girl into the wilderness, like a wounded animal nursed back to health?

  She’ll deal with it. She will have to deal with it. Not now, but she will, somehow, because there’s no choice.

  “Yes,” Aaronovich says, more firmly – though unsure, suddenly, of just what question she’s answering. “Yes, let’s get it over with.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  They leave before dawn, huddled in heavy coats. The Sicker girl is bundled within a too-large jacket lined with fake fur, and Aaronovich has insisted on providing the quilt from her bed, in spite of how the child doesn’t appear to notice the cold at all. She seems frightened, agitated, and Doyle senses that only Kyle’s presence is keeping her anywhere near calm. Doyle hopes that will suffice until they can get rid of her, though he has scant faith. As he takes his place behind the wheel, he feels as if he’s trapped in the vicinity of an unexploded grenade, the pin already pulled.

  Contreras lets them out. The inmates have long since disabled the electric gate mechanism, not willing to be contained by a system that relied on the virtually defunct generator. These days, all that restrains the gate is a heavy chain and a padlock, which Foster holds one key to, Doyle – and so now Contreras – the other. Contreras has strict instructions to hand that key on to Aaronovich. Should the worst happen, at least she and Carlita won’t be trapped within these walls.

  There’s no one else around. Like thieves in the night, Doyle thinks. They take the jeep, the least preserved of Funland’s three remaining vehicles. It’s a badly scuffed matt black, with White Cliff Penitentiary decaled across its sides in white, and has gone neglected in favor of the larger trucks, presumably explaining why it’s been left with the key in the ignition. Evidently someone has been maintaining the vehicle, though, for it starts on the second attempt.

  Only as they pass through the gate does Doyle recollect that, in theory, Funland possesses one more means of transport. The ambulance that brought Carlita, the Silenskys, and Contreras’s nephew still rests on its side, close to the wall. Doyle recalls with perfect, unintended clarity the sight of Carlita as he first saw her, perched upon its flank, blood and rain matting her dark hair. The memory is almost enough to make him turn back right then.

  Instead, Doyle takes it slowly, practically coasting. It’s been a long time since he’s driven, and feels like even longer. Also, he wants to put off the discovery of their absence. He has no idea what the consequences will be, but there will be consequences. Rather than think about that, he concentrates on the twin cones of yellow hovering before him, which acknowledge a triangle of road amid the deep gloom and reject all else.

  Once they break the edge of the forest, Doyle speeds up, while still driving cautiously – until they come to the wreck of the SUV. It has struck a tree, so hard that the entire front is scrunched to one side like balled tinfoil. Both front doors are open. Beside it, brilliantly white in the headlights, molded by decay into the asphalt, lie dislocated segments of a human skeleton. Whatever happened there happened months ago. The SUV’s seats are mostly gone, their stuffing probably absorbed into a hundred nests and animal homes. The nearby bushes have begun to reach inside, as though assimilating the ruined vehicle by slow degrees.

  Doyle stops the jeep and gets out. He considers the bleached bones, many of which are missing, to leave only the abstracted semblance of a human form. “Rachel,” he says. It surprises him that he can look at the final remains of his ex-wife and feel nothing at all, not anger or pain or grief. Then again, the thought of their relationship is now unnavigably distant, not even like remembering another life but like remembering a film of that life watched long ago.

  Kyle, in the rear with the Sicker child, has opened his window. “What did you say?”

  “Rachel,” Doyle repeats. “My ex-wife. Austin’s mother. That was her new husband’s vehicle. Austin’s stepfather. His name was Martin.” He pauses, and more to himself than Kyle, adds, “There’s something I need to do here.”

  “Then do it,” Kyle says.

  “When we come back.”

  Doyle gives the skeleton one more glance, pondering if he should bury it, und
erstanding the futility of such an action. He climbs into the jeep and pulls away again, careful to give the SUV a wide berth, contemplating the vehicle in the rearview mirror until a turn steals it from view.

  They are high up, heading downward, and the sun is rising invisibly behind them, giving the impression that they’re sinking out of darkness into light. There’s little to see, just the road, the trees to either side, and a granite sky supported by columns of weak illumination. It’s a numbing view, and after so long having his reality constricted by four walls, one that makes Doyle faintly agoraphobic. Whatever has motivated him to do this, whatever he’d hoped to feel, he can’t find it in himself.

  By degrees, his driving experience returns. He settles into his seat, working the wheel with the heel of one hand. Increasingly his concentration drifts to the rearview mirror, and to the back seat. He watches Kyle and the girl. Though work on the farm has hardened his body and grief has erased any softness from his face, Kyle still looks young – like a child, or at least not like an adult. The Sicker girl seems to have relaxed; she’s comfortable in his company. For a brief while, she slept. Now they’re rolling a ball to each other across the fake leather seat, and every time it comes to her, she chuckles.

  She killed my son, Doyle thinks. But he can’t altogether bring himself to believe it.

  He turns his regard back to the road. He must have driven this way often, yet nothing feels familiar. The surface is frequently cracked and pitted, particularly toward the edges, where in places the asphalt is crumbling apart in petrified waves. Apart from causing the jeep to buck on the worst patches, that deterioration doesn’t concern him greatly, though in another year or two this journey may be impossible.

  No, the problem is where branches and even whole trees have come down in the recent storms. Older obstructions show signs of having been partially cleared by one of the expeditions, but the trips out have been less frequent of late, the last was almost a week ago, and there were high winds a couple of nights before. For the first hour, Doyle manages by driving around or pushing through the lighter foliage. Eventually, however, they come upon a beech tree fallen from verge to verge, and it effortlessly resists his attempts to nudge it aside with the bumper.