He also declined to rule out whether the Brotherhood would continue taking part in Safety patrols.
“I don’t speak for the Brotherhood,” he told the Herald.
“I speak as Edward’s friend and a close advisor. We will continue his work.”
Council President Dana Lowenstein expressed sadness on news of Burroughs’ death, but declined specific comment.
Chapter 6
GRAY DAYLIGHT FILTERED through the hydroponic nets. The two boys moved quietly from the wooden lip of the external door, the door itself long removed in the early days when dead Carlos Ortega made the place his home.
Lucas followed Kevin like it was a competition between them to see who could be quieter, and that’s exactly what it was, though Luke couldn’t say when the contest between them started nor why it’d come to be – and nor when it might end. He admired the prescient and cautious way his friend carried himself, and alertness was an asset in a City where the two young tweens lacked the size to command any real threat of brute-force violence – one of the unspoken coins of trade in the sanctuary zone.
Adolescence chafed, and Lucas trailed Kevin through the defunct wooden bins which rose to shoulder height around them wherever the old railway sleepers and worn tires didn’t provide steps where they underlay the huge organic tubs. The tubs were wheeled once, but so much dirt and irrigated silt had leaked from the hydroponic garden during its life incubating cannabis plants that they were never going to move again. They’d settled in the crust of old tires and mud as if to resist any future rethink. Bales of new hoses and unused rolls of garden sheeting occupied one of the aisles between the tubs, and there was a stack of buckets and bags of fertilizer waiting for Tom Vanicek’s grand plan to commence. In the meantime, their new sanctuary was quiet except for the sound of the two lesbians calling out to each other as they moved furniture around upstairs.
“See?” Kevin said.
He aimed a waspish look back at his blood brother. Stripping the dead marijuana plants from the tubs had faltered halfway through, a few days back, and no one had the time to resume it while so many of Luke’s father’s plans came to fruition or kept transforming in the face of the realities of what they were trying to achieve. Although the role promised for him hadn’t yet come through, Lucas felt a hushed sense of respectfulness he might identify from the feeling of attending church, if only he’d ever been in one, some other time than running madly for his life.
His memories of the early years in the mountains were already submerged beneath the flood of new impressions gathered since coming to the City, and the years on the road after they’d quit “home” were fading too. But the reason for his reverence was as fair enough as it was completely unconscious and taken for granted in his young life.
“My dad said to leave it,” Lucas told his friend.
“You a fool?” Kevin whispered back, though Luke didn’t know why they were whispering, though of course he actually did. This was a conspiracy. “It’s just a little bit,” Kevin added.
As if to demonstrate, Kevin stripped off one of the heavier branches from a wilted plant, dead through dehydration after Ortega’s water tank ran dry. The heavy smell of resin redoubled in the air and Lucas felt his eyes prickle as he saw his friend make a face.
“It’s still wet,” Kevin said.
“So?”
It was only a little from the overall harvest, one big handful of the dead plant’s moist flowers.
“They smoke it,” Kevin replied. “Can’t smoke it wet.”
“It’ll be dry soon.”
“Can trade this,” Kevin said. “Someone else’ll dry it. Fuck ‘em. This a start. What I been talking ‘bout.”
The smaller boy shook the handful of weed at his friend, though his eyes lit with the closest Kevin ever showed to excitement.
“BMX, right?”
Lucas nodded. He was jealous of Kevin’s new ride, already sensing he shouldn’t ask questions about where he got it. Luke’s father promised to sort out a bike for him, but it still hadn’t happened, and Lucas mistrusted Tom’s lack of haste, like maybe it was a way to keep his son close to home instead of free-ranging like Kevin did, coming and going from the new compound as if he hadn’t quite yet made the commitment – even though he had his own room now, filthy as it already was, despite Kevin’s few earthly possessions.
“Bike for you too,” Luke’s friend said. Then he grunted and made a noise. It was Kevin’s way of asking OK. His hand hovered with the weed clutched in it, his eyes on Lucas until Lucas gave a gentle nod. Then Kevin tucked the theft away in the grimy fanny pack he kept hidden in the folds of his t-shirt and the hooded top he wore belted around his waist as added camouflage.
“We going?” Kevin asked. His eyes lit up again, narrow as they were. “Edgelords.”
Lucas nodded, found himself grinning as well.
“Yes,” he said as earnestly. “Let’s go.”
*
LUCAS RAN BREATHLESSLY through the crowds, a flagging jogging pace as he trailed his friend weaving effortlessly in and out of the other Citizens on the cut-frame BMX. Luke called out a few times for him to slow down, but Kevin only grinned back with his open-mouthed smile, pausing just long enough for Luke to nearly close the gap – and then he was off again.
One of the latest additions off The Mile was a sheet-metal compound built around a gutted camper truck and a pair of big refrigeration units. Twin totem poles flanked an entrance in the serrated metal fencing, encrusted barnacle-like with old cell phone cases bound with reams of narrow white electrical cord covered in Christmas tree lights, and the noise of conversations and low pulsing music surged beyond it as the boys left the equal hubbub of The Mile behind them.
In through the gate, a few outdoor tables and chairs were crammed into a narrow space in front of the nearest walk-in unit, the outside of which was covered in dead flatscreen computer monitors welded onto the metal frame. A bunch of cables dangled uselessly from the old tech mural, crisscrossing the walls of the refrigeration unit and the next, positioned to create a second courtyard across from the caravan which helped make the shelter’s back wall. At least twenty teenagers and itinerants, mostly males, moved between different stations or took turns to step almost solemnly into one of the box units. Apart from their chatter, clanking noises and staticky music covered everything in a layer of anonymity, the conversations audible but unheard, more than a few of the Edgelords’ patrons also sticking to the corners, hooded eyes watchful as exchanges were made, boys swapped gossip, or sat at tables cracking open old phones and handheld units like they were shucking oysters, just apocalyptic fishermen at work after making the day’s catch.
Lucas anxiously eased out the old cell phone retrieved from Ortega’s grow house, and just as uncomfortably reflected on his friend’s recent theft. Kevin wheeled the small BMX to one side of the compound fence and propped it there, shooting a warning glance of alertness all around to dare back any potential thieves, but nobody even looked at the pair as Kevin joined Lucas frozen just a few paces inside the grounds.
Four greasy-haired teens finally glanced at them from a nearby table where a hand-powered battery forced brief life into an old tablet, bandaged with tape to keep a cable in place, the effect one of Frankenstein-like revival. Another boy crowded over them to check on the project, and the lankiest of the youths motioned towards the open-doored caravan. Several other boys and a ginger-haired girl lined near the caravan door, at the back of the cramped compound, and as the boys swung their gazes there, each took an involuntary hush of breath as a tall masked figure stepped out to manage the next supplicant waiting in line.
The man wore vinyl motorcycle gear like some Road Warrior fantasy gone wrong. The jacket sleeves were taped solid with dead touchscreen phones, the shoulder pads lashed with circuit boards, the mask obscuring his face taken from an old diver’s rig and still hooked to a tank he wore on his back. The man wore fingerless gloves bound with copper wire, and he used them to manh
andle the line of people waiting for an audience with the other Edgelords inside. Luke and Kevin watched spellbound, expressions almost childish as a scruffy boy trying to imitate the masked man’s style was pulled third from the small crowd and ushered into the van. The chosen one grinned back at the others in victory, unwinding a dusty shoulder bag with difficulty from the jacket he wore sewn with keypads and old pocket calculators and similar defunct memorabilia of the past.
A distracting peal of laughter came from another nearby picnic table, jarring the newcomers out of their ardent daze. A girl aged no more than about eight held aloft another old cell phone which played a video, contents unknown at that distance, the noise of cartoon sound effects and studio laughter tinny within the soundscape. Beside the young girl, a teenage boy with the start of a black beard beamed sullenly as a knot of smaller children crowded around them, marveling at a lit-up Blackberry he fondled casually. They were awed. Several of the children had developed a fake cybernetic fashion sense of their own. Sleeves and lapels were studded with old components, or else the children wore multiple watches or carried camera cases and leather satchels like Star Trek tricorders, even if the equipment was dead. A pale boy no more than ten wore at least a dozen Fitbits on the arms he kept deliberately bear, despite the cold Fall day.
“Don’t wanna line up all day,” Kevin whispered.
He nudged his friend, pushy with Lucas like he never dared around Tom, leading Luke past the picnic tables, stepping carefully over a bundle of cables as a dour-looking man wheeled in a heavy gas canister behind and then past them, moving his upright trolley with familiarity through the cramped courtyard. A burst of more static sounded from within the nearest walk-in unit, each one about the size of a sea container, and as they advanced, Kevin and Lucas saw the insides filled with desks and old swivel chairs and monitors and industrial headphones all employed by a dozen more youngsters, mostly just kids, the screens alive with different videos painstakingly retrieved by hand from the trophies of the pre-apocalypse world. The discarded shells of the old devices were now glued to the container’s interior walls filling every space not already occupied by gawking teenagers crowded two or three to each station. Other desks sat idle, waiting for those with enough credit. Frozen images of the world before the fall filled their screens.
“There’s gotta be something on it,” Lucas said to Kevin and nudged him with the grimy cell phone in his clawed hand.
“Maybe,” Kevin answered. “You got the skillz?”
Lucas nervously shook his head, eyes drifting back to the boys at the tables and their tools. They’d taught some basic principles of electrical systems during classes at School, but none of the adults felt old electronic skills would serve anyone in the world the children had inherited. The young Citizens moving in and out of the Edgelords’ establishment thought otherwise. Luke eyed the cool older teenagers and bit his lip.
“C’mon,” Kevin said.
He slapped Lucas’ shoulder and moved for the nearest of the two metal huts, but his friend pulled them up again feeling irritated at corralling the younger boy.
“It’s not free.”
“Not lining up,” Kevin said and motioned hissingly at the people now across from them. “Weed?”
“Do you think they’ll take it?”
Lucas stared across and into the caravan, glimpsing booted feet resting on the camper’s kitchen table mostly covered in a mound of old technology leaking yet more cables across the caravan floor and out into the yard. The boy with the shoulder bag came in and out of view through the doorway as he pulled out his offerings. A white hand accepted each item in turn, vanishing out of sight beyond the doorframe as the other youngsters still lined up outside jostled each other for a view.
Kevin eyed the caravan more shrewdly as he shook his head.
“Not them,” he said. “Edgelords not dopers. All about the tech.”
The word sounded somehow religious the way Kevin said it. Lucas had to constrain a trembling sense of annoyance and frustration, but glancing back at the older boys checking over their gadgets in the forecourt didn’t offer solutions either. He couldn’t even tell if the phone he carried so fervently was still working until they found a way to charge it. He knew there was charging gear inside the refrigeration units, but a heavyset man with a shaved head wearing a breastplate over his leathers fashioned from an open laptop case cast a steely gaze across those who’d won admission. A second edgelord emerged from the accompanying walk-in unit, continuing his stalking patrol, nodding seriously to the other security guard and looking not at all self-conscious wearing vinyl hose and a self-made tunic of black electrical tape adhered directly to his naked skin.
“Need power,” Kevin said.
“Yeah.”
“Him,” Kevin said. “Wait a second.”
The smaller boy pushed off towards a malnourished-looking young redhead and a taller boy, maybe aged twelve, wearing a puffer jacket and turning an old keyboard over in his hands. Kevin strode right up to them and the dark-haired boy pushed long hair out of his face for about the fortieth time in the last few minutes, blue eyes dull as he listened to Kevin’s sales pitch. Then he motioned abruptly, peering with professional curiosity at the clump of marijuana buds Kevin pulled from his belt.
A quick negotiation took place. Lucas was mostly alarmed, because he knew who those other kids were. It wasn’t a topic for casual conversation, but fellow youngsters called the Urchins frequently loitered outside the former Vanicek digs. And Kevin likewise knew Lucas was on mild alert at the danger they maybe posed, despite the family’s relocation. And Kevin had approached the tough-faced kids regardless.
He returned to Lucas thoroughly pleased with himself, offering a flash of pencil batteries clutched in one hand before he disappeared them away in his belt stash. Moist flakes of the stolen cannabis plants still clung to his fingers.
“Ready?” Kevin panted.
“You have to watch those kids,” Lucas told him.
“They’re OK.”
“I don’t think so,” Lucas said. “Really.”
“Too late,” Kevin said. “Got what we need. Ready?”
“I don’t want to hang out with those kids.”
Luke felt gaudy in his own long-windedness compared to Kevin. He didn’t like showing reluctance, let alone fear, either, but his friend just looked back blank-faced.
“We’re not.”
“Tom says keep a low profile,” Lucas said. He’d got in the habit of calling his dad that when speaking with his friend, and only just lately knew he was wielding his father’s authority, even though it didn’t seem effective outside their shared home.
Here in the streets, Kevin was in charge.
Lucas nodded, reluctance boiled away at the prospect of trading for charge, and the chance to see what treasure awaited on the old phone. In the end, his anxiety won over, and he followed his friend towards the first of the two metal huts.
*
THE EDGELORD WITH the scuba tank watched on as if he was the first man’s bodyguard, though the sucking noises of his redundant regulator ebbed and peaked with interest as Lucas handed over the softly-glowing phone. There was a fifth egdelord, wedged by his prodigious body weight into the settee set in the back of the caravan in what once would’ve been the bed space. The fifth man also watched the trade with a greedy air of authority, though his expression was rendered unreadable by the black and silver spray paint he wore as a permanent mask. The shaven-headed man holding Luke’s phone was subdued by comparison. Apart from the leather jacket and its tight ribbed sleeves, his hands were as pale and hairless as his scalp. Reading glasses were taped and also screwed directly onto his face.
“Twenty videos and four-hundred images,” the ringleader said.
He turned the phone over in a pale hand as he performed the calculation.
“Video will have to be reviewed for duplicates,” he said calmly. “The photos, we only take those that are worthy. It’s not a museum.”
>
Kevin nodded. Lucas said, “That’s OK,” trying hard not to squeak.
The edgelord sniffed at the crusty old device.
“It’s covered in dirt,” he said.
“We dug it up,” Kevin said.
Lucas ignored a burst of irritation that threatened to dislodge his obedient smile, not knowing why, but determined to win some kind of loyalty out of the figure across from them. The boy’s eyes played over the ringleader’s jacket, the headphones around his neck like a torc, the badges and stickers and insignia adhered to his lapels. His shoulders glittered with the faint trace of brass wires sewn into it from behind, the back panel of the jacket a wickerwork of old computer circuit boards and bud-like processors. Disinterested milky blue eyes watched Luke from behind the eyewear which demanded a certain kind of commitment, nasty sores leaking tiny amounts of pus from where tape and screws connected either side of the man’s face.
“Two hours.”
“Two hours?” Kevin barked back. “Man!”
The man across from them didn’t move, but Lucas sensed the tension in the standing man and even the fat edgelord at the back of the chamber, and Lucas slapped his hand down around Kevin’s wrist to still him as if averting the younger boy going into a rage. But Kevin wasn’t anything like that. He eyeballed the edgelords in turn and his lip trembled. Lucas made a hushing noise as he spoke, as much to his friend as the strange, imposing twenty-year-old still holding their phone.
“Two hours is fine,” Lucas said. “Two hours is great.”
“I want the whole day here!” Kevin actually yelled.
The remark only made the edgelords snicker.
“Three hours, then,” the man at the table said. “And be sure to come back with whatever else you find. We’re rebuilding the Internet here, remember?”
*
LUCAS WAS TOO young for nostalgia. The videos and photographs they binged took them back to a world neither truly ever knew, and the excitement of novelty was underscored by a different kind of newness, as if they’d just helped perform a magic act, a resurrection. The terminals and video screens were nearly sacred. The edgelords had assembled thousands of hours of cached videos, drawn down to the world by a strange kind of sorcery from the past which seemed as mystical as it was abstract. Half of what they viewed together – the boys’ hands clasped to their matching headphones to keep themselves immersed in the digital fantasy – made practically no sense at all, but it wasn’t the entertainment itself they sought. Despite what the group’s ringleader said, the edgelords had precisely recreated a museum to the past, and Lucas, Kevin, and all the other visitors came just to window shop in it. Luke could almost taste those missing years he never had, the world which existed now only as ghosts, and could imagine himself there if he squeezed the headphones as tight as he could and refused to take in the facts of his peripheral vision which made lies of the old Internet content. There would be no glittering shopping malls or exciting phone upgrades to yearn for, no holidays, no hot upcoming sequels to fanciful effects-heavy films, nor anything else rendered redundant by the daily fight for survival. The old Youtube videos designed to amuse saw their jokes fall flat, all the old referents blown away by the Rise of the Furies. And yet when the heavyset janitor stomped over to say their time was done, Lucas and Kevin wore identical expressions of regret that soon turned into something akin to withdrawal.
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 11