The Living

by Isaac Marion

  In this town, in the next town, in abandoned places from one coast to another, the Dead are waiting. It was months ago when they heard the first call, like an immense bell tolling across the world, announcing the arrival of…something. They woke from their sleep and cocked their heads, hearing a certain suspense in the bell’s lingering resonance. A promise of more to come.

  So they continue to gather, in all stages of plague and cure, some contemplative, some hungry, all following the same subterranean current. They fill buildings and swarm in streets, forming vast populations not far from Living enclaves, but not even the hungry ones hunt. They listen to radios and stare at televisions and gaze up at the clouds, waiting for a signal to emerge from all this noise.

  We have been dreaming of this moment. The world is not a closed cycle, endlessly resetting to zero. There is accretion. With every rise and fall, there is increase. We slip one rung down the ladder and climb two back up, and after so many epochs, from unquestioned bestial cruelty to a clumsy but fervent reach for progress, we are surely approaching a plateau.

  We are ten thousand generations of humans and millions more of simpler things, a vast history of lives and experiences condensed like an ocean of oil, growing deeper and more refined with each new moment of beauty.

  We want to ignite. We want to be heat and light. After billions of years, we are running out of patience.

  WE

  The wound is so small. Two arcs, barely an inch across. Reddened skin, mostly unbroken, more of a welt than a wound. Abram refuses to believe this is enough to bring the change. This insignificant nip from a child’s little cuspids? Four tiny holes in his wife’s soft skin, barely even bleeding? After all they’ve survived together, this can’t be what tears them apart.

  He closes his eyes. His mind races backward, searching for answers in the moments that brought them here.

  “You all know what’s happening,” Branch Manager Warden says to the assembly. “Axiom is a walking corpse and we’re all in its belly. We have to cut our way out before it digests us.”

  A hundred feet below Pittsburgh’s humming HQ, thirty-six young men stand crammed into the subway staff office, gathered to plan a revolution. Abram hovers at the back, near the door, listening.

  “I know a lot of you grew up in this company,” Warden says. He’s older than any of them and probably stronger, his hairy forearms corded with muscle, but his eyes are sunken and tired. “Some of you were even born in it, and maybe it’s hard to imagine a life outside. But if we’re going to do this thing, we all have to be committed, so let’s hear it, guys. What scares you the most?”

  There’s an uneasy silence.

  “I know nobody wants to answer a question like that but I phrased it that way on purpose. I don’t want any macho bullshit compromising this mission. They train you to pack down your feelings and seal yourselves off, but that’s how you build a bomb. If one of you goes off we all die. So come on now, let it all out there if you’re man enough. What scares you?”

  The assembly squirms, struggling to grasp this inversion of bravado.

  “Is it the combat?” Warden prompts. “Afraid of getting hurt? Maybe dying?”

  Still nothing.

  “Is it punishment? What they’ll do to us if we lose?”

  Abram stiffens his chin. “No,” he says over all the heads in front of him. “It’s what happens to us if we win.”

  A murmur of nervous agreement passes through the assembly.

  Warden nods. “The instability. The unknown.”

  “I have a family,” Abram says. “I know the company has problems or I wouldn’t be here right now, but Axiom puts food on my table. How do I tell my daughter there’s no dinner tonight because Daddy had to chase a dream?”

  The wave of agreement intensifies and all eyes turn to Warden for his response.

  “I hear you,” Warden says. “I’ve got kids too, and yeah, that’d be a very tough thing to tell them. But I can think of tougher things.”

  Abram crosses his arms but says nothing.

  “How do I tell my kids that food is all I can give them? How do I tell them they have to spend their lives working in the dark to keep a broken machine running, sweating and bleeding for insane men they’ll never see? Men who don’t give a shit what happens to us as long as nothing interrupts their party?” His eyes are bleary and haunted in their deep sockets, glistening with emotion. “Ask that question, Kelvin. How do you tell your daughter her future will be a nightmare because Daddy didn’t chase a dream?”

  Abram’s mouth tightens and his hands clench into fists. He turns and marches out. He’s heard enough poetry from weepy idealists. No matter how unstable Axiom may have become, it has to be a safer bet than this.

  So Abram returns to his post. He collects his weekly rations and smiles as his wife cooks them. When he receives a new assignment, he follows it, even though it doesn’t quite make sense. Even though it relocates them to an outpost that’s off the supply route—the route will connect soon, Management assures him. Even though the convoy lacks adequate defensive support—the territory has already been cleared, Management assures him. Even though Management doesn’t answer his calls on the day of departure and his stomach is boiling with unease, he puts on a smile for his family and he follows his instructions.

  They find the outpost abandoned and crumbling. No water source. No perimeter fence. The first messenger they send to HQ returns with a brief reply: Out of office for holiday weekend! Will get back to you next week!

  The second messenger never returns.

  One by one, the promises collapse. No supplies. No reinforcements. And no, the territory is not clear.

  These last six months pulse through Abram’s brain like poison, congealing into a conclusion he can’t bear to face, a guilt too heavy to carry all at once. So he focuses on the wound in front of him. He can’t even call it that; it’s a nick, a poke. Kenrei’s skin is creamy soft and Abram has left worse marks than this in their lovemaking. Perhaps it won’t be counted. Perhaps the judges of this hideous sport will look the other way and give them both another chance.

  “It’s happening,” Kenrei says flatly.

  “No it’s not,” Abram mumbles. “Your eyes are normal, I don’t think it…” He trails off. The trickle of blood is darkening. Purple. Blue. Black.

  “Abram.”

  Gently, lovingly, she touches the gun on his hip.

  He shakes his head. “There has to be some other—”

  “There isn’t.”

  “If we can keep you safe for a while…maybe they’ll figure something out…maybe something will change.”

  “Daddy?” Sprout calls from behind the bathroom door. “Can I come out now?”

  Kenrei gives him a hard look. “I won’t let her remember me like that.” Her voice used to be timid, her gaze always downcast and demure. Where is she getting this sudden strength? “I’ll do it if you won’t…” She slides the gun out of his holster and places it in his palm, pressing her hands around it like a gift. “…but I want you to.”

  The barrel is still hot. Abram squeezes it until his hand burns. Then one by one, his fingers slide down to the grip.

  “She’s yours now,” his wife whispers as her brown eyes pulse gray. “Find her a better life than this.”

  • • •

  Abram stares down at Sprout’s head as she rests against his shoulder, twitching and whimpering in her sleep. Most children are eager to share their nightmares, but she’s always kept hers locked away, crawling into his bed without speaking a word of the visions that haunt her. Where did they come from? Did he put them there?

  Her eyes open at the grinding squeal of the stadium gates. When they boom shut behind the SUV she jolts upright, peeling her sweaty cheek away from Abram’s arm.

  “We’re back here again?” she croaks.

  The
simple observation slides into him like a dull knife. Without malice, without calculation, she cuts through his denial like paper.

  “It’s no Manhattan,” Abbot says as they climb out of the SUV, misinterpreting the defeat on Abram’s face. “Or Nashville for that matter. But it’s secure, and it has certain strategic assets, so I’m told. When I’m told anything.”

  Sprout looks up at Abram with an expression he’s never seen on her. Tight lips and jutted chin, her eye like a sharp probe penetrating his skull. And the other eye, covered by the patch but not blinded by it, disregarding barriers in ways he’s never understood—what does that terrible orb see when it fixes on him? Does it judge him harshly for hiding it from the world?

  “Abram!”

  He whirls toward the sound of his name before he remembers it’s not his name anymore. Half a block away, his former friends—no, travel partners—are being unloaded from their van, wrists cuffed behind their backs. Four more sets of eyes join his daughter’s in hard appraisal.

  “Are you really doing this?” Nora shouts as a guard prods her forward with his rifle barrel. “After everything you’ve seen, you’re just running right back?”

  “Shut up,” the guard tells her, but she doesn’t register his presence.

  “You’re really gonna feed Sprout to these people?”

  Abram finds no suitable response. Instead of trying to distance himself from the prisoners, he just stands there, blank-faced, waiting.

  The Dead boy with the gilded irises emerges from the van, and Sprout’s attention shifts away from Abram; he feels it go like a hot iron lifting from his skin. The two children watch each other from across the distance, their thoughts unreadable in the ever-evolving language of the young.

  “Maybe you can’t help us,” Nora says as the guards march her and the others toward a doorway in the stadium’s concrete wall, “maybe you don’t even want to, but for fuck’s sake, man, get your daughter out of here.”

  The guard jabs the butt of his rifle into the back of her head. She topples forward and grinds her face into the dried mud. A strange noise comes out of the boy, a little howl that’s not part of the usual human repertoire, and then it’s drowned out by shouts as Marcus head-butts the guard behind him and kicks Nora’s abuser in the back with such force the man flies right over her and ruins his face on the steel steps.

  The ensuing scuffle is short-lived but brutal, and Abram finds himself wondering if there is anything besides his daughter that would make him fight like that. There was, once. He was not a meek youth. It took many harsh years to cut him from the Kelvin tree and graft him onto Axiom. Many Physical Disincentive sessions before he learned to obey his father-boss. Countless cold nights in those dark, dripping tunnels, sketching visions of airplanes and jetpacks and wings.

  And Kenrei. He fought for her. He fought so hard he never quite stopped.

  But that was all a long time ago. Today, there’s only one cause he believes in: this girl at his side. This girl who’s staring at him, into him, through him, filling his belly with fear.

  He jumps when Abbot’s meaty palm claps onto his shoulder. “Listen, ‘Jim,’” the older man sighs, “we need to talk.”

  Abram stiffens. Did he imagine the scare quotes?

  “I’m going to settle into my new office,” Abbot continues. “The triple stack on Gun Avenue and Rooster Street. Why don’t you drop your kid off at Foster Care and meet me there in twenty.”

  Abram struggles to remain professional. “Yes sir.”

  Abbot nods and strolls away, relaxed and avuncular, but his final glance glints with a warning, like the flash of a weapon beneath a coat.

  • • •

  Abram rarely dreams. He wakes in a lukewarm blankness, the night a perfect nothing, and resumes exactly where he left off. The dreams he does have are always the same: misplacing something, failing someone, forgetting who he is. He wonders if he’s dreaming now as he leads his daughter through these narrow streets to a crooked tower full of children without parents. Is Sprout one of them? Is Abram already gone?

  “I don’t want to go here,” she whimpers on the doorstep.

  “Just for a little while. I have to go to a meeting, but then I’ll come get you.”

  “And then we’ll leave?” Her eye goes round with hope. “We’ll escape and go find our friends?”

  Abram’s mouth is a flat line. He should shower her with lies, tell her whatever will make her feel secure, but it won’t come out. He can feel the eye behind the patch burning into him like a laser, sealing the lies in his throat.

  “When it’s the right time,” he croaks. “When it’s safe.”

  The door opens and the foster mother takes his daughter and he walks off into the city, refusing to wonder if he’ll see her again.

  “I’ll make this quick,” Abbot says. “I did some digging. I know who you are.”

  Abram’s eyes roam the bare walls of Abbot’s office, a cheap movie set, a faded drawing, a memory of a memory.

  “I know you were on the list a while back for some serious infractions. I know you helped some assets escape and may have been involved in a branch break.”

  Abram wonders where he’ll be when he wakes up from this dream. Will he still be father in that distant reality? Will he find himself napping on the couch while Dad reads books and Perry builds blocks? How much of his life will vanish?

  “I also know that you came back,” Abbot says. “I know you realized your mistake quickly and did your best to undo it. But more importantly, I know you’re a talented pilot and an effective acquisition assistant with a long and impressive record, and Axiom can’t afford to throw away resources in times like these.”

  Three figures hover behind Abbot, gray shirts, colorful ties, gazing down at Abram with cheerful grins.

  “We would like to offer you your former position,” the woman in the yellow tie says.

  “All we need from you are assurances,” the man in the blue tie says, “that you resonate with our mission statement.”

  “We need to know that you feel good,” the woman says with a radiant smile. “That you feel fantastic. That you’re ready to give a hundred and ten percent twenty-five hours a day so we can live in a world of certainty.”

  “And we need to know that you care about your daughter,” the man says. “That you want her to be safe and stable and untroubled by dreams and urges.”

  “Imagine such peace of mind,” the woman says, “to never worry again.”

  “To never see her take risks or rebel or run off with some degenerate.”

  “To never see her grow up,” the woman says softly. “To never see her leave you.”

  Abram closes his eyes. Dry. Burning. The building sways in the breeze; the floor heaves like water.

  “…so what I’m saying,” Abbot says, “is that I can offer you a probationary position, but I’ll be watching you closely until I’m satisfied that you’re not a liability. You did good work at the Fire Church compound, but that goat-fuck is far from over. Scouts haven’t been able to locate their…”

  The floor is the deck of a storm-tossed ship and he’s staring down into dark water, catching glimpses of something huge rising from the depths.

  “…attack any day now, so we need…”

  It’s opening in the green-black below, a vast mouth, a throat.

  “Well, Roberts? Are you onboard?”

  He looks at Abbot. He swallows hard, holding back the nausea. He nods. He says something affirmative. Abbot smiles. Then Abram excuses himself, runs down the stairs, and vomits into the street while the buildings dance around him and helicopters hum overhead.

  I

  We emerge from the forest like remnants of an earlier age, man and woman, dirty and bloody, clothed in tattered rags. Below us is the city. The suburbs where we once tried to start a life. The urban center beyond
it, a mirage of crumbled buildings rippling on the horizon.

  “So this is home?” I wonder aloud.

  “Well…” Julie squints. “It’s the closest thing we’ve got.”

  We descend the hilltop, following the same trail that brought us through the woods. Julie recognized it as a route once used by the stadium’s salvage teams, safer and more direct than the highway, and we have indeed reached Post in half the time I expected. Just enough time to make a plan.

  At the bottom of the hill, we’re greeted by the familiar ruins of our old neighborhood, and I’m about to indulge in some sweet nostalgia when I notice the smell. I glance at Julie; her wrinkled nose says she smells it too.

  “Wow,” she mumbles. “I don’t remember it being this bad.”

  “It wasn’t.” I sniff the air, detecting faint notes of pollen and rosemary, but mostly rotting flesh. And then I notice we’re being watched.

  Every window. Every room. Every home in the neighborhood is filled with silent, motionless figures, like the world’s dullest block party. Rounding a corner to the main thoroughfare, we find that the gathering has spilled out into the yards. There are thousands of Dead here. Perhaps tens of thousands. Mostly Dead, Nearly Living—whatever their level of life, the important thing is they’re not trying to eat us. They watch us with muted curiosity in their monochrome eyes, a hint of childlike wonder like we’re a two-person parade.

  “B has new friends,” Julie whispers.

  I glance into our neighbor’s open door and see him sitting exactly where we left him, ensconced in his easy chair in front of his TV, watching the flickering gibberish of the LOTUS Feed. But he’s not alone now. His house is full.

  Ands ours has a few guests, too. A young couple sits on our couch, staring through the hole we never finished patching. A man stands in our kitchen, slowly pouring one of Julie’s beers into the sink and watching the foam like it’s a miracle. We move through the house carefully, trying not to disturb whatever strange process they’re in, but Julie draws the line at the four boys huddled around the bedroom dresser, digging through her underwear.