How We Became Wicked

by Alexander Yates

  A short time later Astrid and Hank arrived at the wall. It towered over them, twenty feet high and topped with an opulent crown of razor wire. As with the greenway, Astrid’s grandfather had built this wall. And as with the greenway, it was beloved by the old folks in Goldsport. It represented for them not just a promise of safety, but more important, a promise that had been kept. The wall loomed at the edge of their sanctuary like a silent, loving father outside his child’s bedroom door. But to Astrid, the wall just looked like an ugly heap of concrete and twisted metal.

  The wall had only one opening—a massive chain-link gate that cut across the road. The gate was locked, of course. But they could see through it. The road continued down the leeward side of the hills and into a sucking yellow bog in the valley beyond. Where it went after that, Astrid couldn’t say. In her whole life, she’d never been farther from home than this.

  To one side of the gate stood a watchtower, which rose up into the canopy. To the other was a rusting tank. It was a relic from years ago, long before Astrid was born, back when the singers first flooded into the woods and the wicked first began to grin and jabber and stab. The tank had its gun aimed directly at the gate. There was a word spray-painted onto its dusky metal flank—a name.

  MOTHER.

  “Come on,” Astrid said, making for the watchtower. Hank followed, bringing along with him the little swarm of hungry singers. They climbed a rickety set of stairs and stepped out onto a windswept wooden platform up above the treetops. Layer by layer, the wind stripped away Hank’s cloud of singers, and they swirled off into the night like sparks from a dying campfire.

  “Man . . . ,” Hank said as he gazed out over the harbor. “Totally worth getting out of bed at four in the morning for this.”

  Astrid ignored him. She went to the railing and pressed her binoculars to her face. She could see the rocky shoreline of Puffin Island. The lighthouse was an ivory needle against the black ocean. The lamp up top blazed and spun.

  Per the official story, Puffin Island was uninhabited. The lighthouse had come on a few times before, but whenever it did people would ignore it. Astrid’s dad said that it was automated. According to him, the flickering light was due to nothing more mysterious than the aging, malfunctioning equipment. Failing engines and rat-gnawed wires. The slow death of everything that belonged to the world before the wickedness.

  Astrid didn’t buy it.

  She couldn’t say exactly why she didn’t buy it. She simply didn’t. She had no hard evidence—just a loose collection of odd coincidences that seemed to add up to something more. There was the way people in town would fall silent and drop their eyes to their shoes whenever Astrid asked them about Puffin Island. There was the fact that whenever they went out fishing, people would steer their boats clear of the lighthouse. And, of course, there was that one evening when Klara, Hank’s stepmom, wondered aloud if they shouldn’t bring some of their leftovers to “those poor people out there on the island.” Though that last piece of evidence wasn’t as good as it sounded—half the time Klara didn’t know who Hank was, and the other half she got him and her own husband mixed up.

  Flimsy evidence, all in all. But it was enough for Astrid. She was convinced that the whole town was lying about Puffin Island. Convinced that there were people out there, on that little rock in the bay. And for some reason that Astrid couldn’t fathom, nobody in Goldsport wanted to admit it.

  “You know,” Hank said, joining Astrid at the railing, “it really looks different from up here.”

  Astrid pulled the binoculars from her face and caught him gazing down at Goldsport. They had a view of the entire sanctuary, from the beautiful Gold-family beach house to the empty ruins that littered the north shore. The greenway twinkled. With the domed glass plaza sitting at its heart, the whole town looked like a crystal octopus.

  “I guess I always forget how small it really is,” Hank said.

  “Me too,” Astrid said.

  A lie. Really, she never, ever forgot.

  Hank rested his elbows on the railing, shifting to get comfortable in his bulky suit. His eyes went from their town out to the little shard of light on the horizon.

  “You know,” he said, “even if there is a family living out there . . . I mean, what makes you think they’re true?”

  That was what they called people who hadn’t been infected by the wickedness. It divided the world neatly into categories—wicked and true. Astrid was the only person in Goldsport who didn’t fit into either of them.

  “Well, for one thing,” she said, happy to play along, “if the people on Puffin Island are wicked, wouldn’t they have come for us by now?”

  Hank shifted in his suit, looking askance at Astrid. “Maybe they don’t have a boat?”

  “I don’t think the wicked work that way,” Astrid said. “I think if they saw the lights in town and wanted to hurt us, they’d swim.”

  This was just a guess—Astrid had no personal experience with the wicked. In fact, their sanctuary hadn’t had contact with any outsiders, wicked or true, in decades. The thinking was that everybody out there had either fallen to the illness or been killed by the ill. Which was exactly why Astrid found the prospect of strangers on Puffin Island, living out there on Goldsport’s doorstep, so irresistible.

  “Fine,” Hank said, holding his gloved hands up in a gesture of surrender. Finally, he seemed to be loosening up. “I guess I can accept that. But then explain something to me: Let’s say you’re right and there are people on Puffin Island, and what’s more, they’re true people. . . .” He paused. “Same question. Why are they staying away from us? Why are we staying away from them?”

  Astrid didn’t answer. She’d asked herself the exact same question more times than she could count.

  “I know, right?” Hank said. “That right there is a complication.”

  She turned once more to face the lighthouse. “If I’d known you’d be such a bummer,” she said, “I wouldn’t have asked you to come.”

  “Everybody needs a reality check from time to time,” Hank said.

  “Yeah?” Astrid gripped the railing and leaned back, letting her weight dangle and swing. She felt like a flag, taut in the breeze. As free as a person can feel when they’re tied to one spot. “Is that what you are to me?” she went on, head tipping back and eyes to the sky. Above them the stars were blinking out as the sun rose. “My reality check?”

  To her right Astrid heard the snap of buttons. Hank was unfastening the bonnet of his bee suit. The wind rushed across his cheeks and through his hair and into his big, smiling mouth. Astrid figured out what was happening only a second before it actually did—before she could do or say anything to alert Hank to the fact that it was a truly terrible idea. Suddenly his hands were on her back and his lips were mashing into hers. They were chapped from the breeze, and soft and familiar. Astrid straightened herself up, pressed both hands against the coarse fabric of Hank’s bee suit, and pushed him away. For a second he blinked at her, confused. Then, realizing how badly he had miscalculated, Hank said, “Shit.”

  He popped his bonnet back on and fastened the snaps around the collar and veil. He retreated to the far side of the platform, turning to face the darkness beyond the wall.

  “Shit,” he said again. “I thought that you were . . .”

  “I was absolutely not,” Astrid said. Hank had tried the whole mixed-signals routine with her before, and she was not about to have that conversation again. The signals were only mixed because Hank ignored the ones he didn’t like.

  “I said ‘friends.’ I meant friends. Come on. . . .” Astrid was at a loss for words. She had no desire to yell at him, but she also didn’t know how to be any clearer than she’d already been. “When I’m being nice to you, that’s me being nice to a friend. Because that’s what you are. Or at least, that’s what I want you to be.”

  Other than a mumbled “sorry,” Hank had no response.

  Astrid didn’t know what else to say either.

&n
bsp; • • •

  Talking to each other used to be so easy. Ever since Astrid and Hank could speak, they’d spoken mostly to each other. As children they’d been inseparable, and the greenway took turns being their fort, their space station, and their enchanted castle made of ice. When they’d gotten older, their parents had allowed them to go out to the north shore by themselves, with Hank buckled tight into a child-size bee suit. Together they’d plucked starfish and hermit crabs out of the tide pools and watched seals basking on the rocks beyond the harbor. And then one day, shortly after Astrid turned thirteen, they climbed into Mother—the rusted tank guarding the gates to Goldsport—and shut the creaking hatch behind them. Hank pulled off his mesh bonnet, and they kissed. It was better than a first kiss between inexperienced friends had any right be—which is to say, it wasn’t a disaster. But they got better at kissing over time. In fact, as the years passed, Astrid and Hank did a lot more than kiss in the safe confines of that tank. Not that anything like that would ever be happening again.

  Whenever Astrid tried to retrace their steps, to see where things had gone wrong between her and Hank, her mind always went back to the hours they’d spent making not-great decisions inside of Mother’s metal belly. But that wasn’t the whole story. Really, things began to sour between them once the community in Goldsport realized that Astrid and Hank were courting. That was the actual word they used: “courting.”

  It wasn’t courting.

  It was touching and pressing and not knowing where to look as whatever was happening was happening. It was two friends, stumbling ass-backward together into the great sweaty beyond. It felt good and confusing and brave and stupid. Often, when they left the tank, Astrid would see the smitten look on Hank’s face and feel suddenly queasy. But never mind the details—the old folks of Goldsport were just tickled to have a pair of “young lovers” in their midst.

  At first Astrid had enjoyed the attention. Or, rather, she’d enjoyed getting that kind of attention. People in Goldsport had always noticed her. They’d long been suspicious of her condition and were unsettled by her glowing eyes. Some even refused to touch Astrid, afraid she might carry the disease upon her skin. But once she and Hank were seen as a unit, all that changed. Astrid finally got the Goldsport seal of approval. Before long the investors began to treat her and Hank like some kind of arranged, intended couple. The old Abbitt twins asked her, in that casually morbid way of theirs, if she and Hank ever thought of moving into their big house at the edge of the plaza after the twins both died. Then Mrs. Wrigley began making not-so-subtle hints that her old wedding dress would look just divine on Astrid. She’d even caught Mr. Collins saying, “When you two have kids of your own,” like it was no big deal at all. Like the question of choice was totally out of their hands!

  It made Astrid wonder—had she and Hank been friends only because they’d had no other options? And now that they were the only citizens of Goldsport between the ages of zero and fifty, did that mean they should be engaged by default? Did it mean that, somehow, love would just automatically follow?

  Hell no, it didn’t.

  • • •

  From the other end of the platform Astrid heard a soft sound. She was worried for a second it might be Hank crying, but then she realized that he was only chuckling. It was a quiet, sad, sorry-for-himself chuckle. But a laugh is a laugh.

  “Okay,” she said. “What’s funny?”

  “This,” Hank said, flinging both arms out to his sides. “I mean, here I am. The last guy on earth—or, at least, the last guy your age. And still, you don’t want me.” Again Hank laughed. He must have figured that he’d reached the point of no return, embarrassment-wise.

  Astrid crossed over to his side of the platform and looked out into the empty world beyond the wall. The sun was climbing at their backs, casting a glow across the treetops. “If you were the last guy on earth,” Astrid finally said, “I’d start picking out furniture with you. But, Hank, I promise that you’re not. I promise. Just like I’m not the last girl on earth. I just . . . I just know it. Which is good, right?” Astrid elbowed him in the ribs through his bee suit, hard enough that there’d be no room for misinterpretation. “Isn’t it nice to think that someday you’ll have choices other than me?”

  Hank sighed. “I don’t want other choices,” he said. “I want you.”

  Oh well. Two steps forward, one step back.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Plaza

  ASTRID AND HANK RETURNED HOME without speaking.

  The singers followed close, filling the silence with a swarming serenade. Dawn had come and gone, scattering sunlight across the greenway. Up ahead Astrid could see the boxy quiet room and beyond that the glass-blurred figures of townsfolk moving down to the plaza. She’d been so focused on Puffin Island that she had nearly forgotten that today was Sunday—picnic day.

  Radio day.

  “You don’t have to wait for me,” Hank said. It always took some time for him to get that nasty bee suit off. “No reason for you to miss the show.”

  Astrid waved him off. “I’m the one who dragged you out of bed,” she said. “What kind of friend would I be if I ditched you now?”

  Even to her own ears, it sounded a bit ham-fisted the way she lingered on that word: “friend.” But whatever. Astrid had tried subtle, and subtle hadn’t worked. “Besides,” she went on, “it’s not like we haven’t heard the show before.”

  “Suit yourself,” Hank said.

  He stepped through the heavy outer curtains, into the quiet room. Astrid followed, closing her eyes and pinching her nose. The curtains were doused with quiet every week. The smell made Astrid’s eyes water. Inside the chamber there was a large barrel of foaming blue quiet, with a dipper bobbing on the bubbly surface. Hank filled the dipper and poured it over himself. The liquid streaked down his bonnet and then his back and legs. The popping bubbles hissed.

  “Arms up,” Astrid said.

  Hank lifted his arms and turned in a slow circle while Astrid checked him to see if any singers had managed to avoid the poison. But he was clean. She opened the internal glass hatch, and together they stepped through another set of curtains and back onto the greenway. As soon as they were inside, they could hear a low murmur reverberating through the halls. Everybody must have been at the plaza by now, waiting eagerly to hear The First Voice.

  • • •

  It happened the same way every week. The old Goldsport investors put on their Sunday best and marched on down the glass tunnels like a colony of cheerful, geriatric ants. They gathered together in the plaza, spreading beach towels over the sand and unpacking picnic baskets. They passed around fresh loaves of bread, jars of strawberries, and tubs of soft goat cheese. People took turns manning the omelet station. Sometimes Mrs. Wrigley would even whip up a batch of her famous mimosas—a treat reserved for special occasions, due to a dwindling supply of powdered orange drink. Though Mrs. Wrigley liked to joke that at least they had enough genuine champagne to see Goldsport right on through Revelation.

  The murmur of conversation grew louder as Astrid and Hank approached the plaza. By the time they arrived, it had reached a dull roar. Astrid scanned the crowd for her dad and saw that he’d already taken his place up on the stage with the board. Amblin Gold was shuffling papers and shaking hands. Astrid headed up to the stage as quickly as she could, weaving between the beach towels. Hank followed, his crumpled bee suit still dripping under his arm.

  And . . . was it just Astrid’s imagination, or did something weird happen as she and Hank crossed the plaza? Each little huddle of picnickers seemed to fall silent as they passed, and Astrid caught a few of them staring. She wondered: Could it be that everybody in town had already noticed the lighthouse? Had they all taken a moment before the picnic started to get their stories straight?

  “There you are!” Amblin Gold called, lighting up as he spotted his daughter. “And Hank, too!” Astrid’s dad lowered his notes and straightened up to his full height of five feet a
nd zero inches. To go with that unimposing stature, Amblin had large blue eyes, a gentle face, and skin the color of raked sand. Two fringes of blond hair sprouted out at his temples, which against all of Astrid’s advice he’d allowed to grow bushy to make up for the bald spot up top.

  “A little late this morning?” her dad said, tapping on the bridge of his nose with one finger and giving them both a knowing look. Just about the mildest scold in the history of parental discipline.

  “Sorry we broke curfew,” Astrid said.

  “Sorry?” her dad asked with a dramatic show of skepticism. “Tell me, Hank, do you think for a second that she’s actually sorry?”

  “Nope,” Hank said, returning Amblin’s smile. Astrid’s dad and Hank had always gotten along like this—corny and friendly. When she and Hank had broken up, Amblin had taken it just as hard as Hank.

  “Skipping right ahead,” Astrid said, nodding down at the notes still gripped in her dad’s hand. “Are you going to say anything about Puffin Island?”

  “Puffin Island . . . ? I hadn’t planned on it,” her dad said. “Why would I?”

  “The lighthouse. It turned back on this morning,” Astrid said.

  “Did it, now?” Amblin turned out toward the bay and squinted through the greenway glass. “I suppose so,” he said, sort of bemused. “Who’d have guessed those batteries still had juice?”

  If Astrid’s dad was pretending, he was at least doing a good job of it.

  “It’s been two years since the last time it turned on,” Astrid added.

  “That long?” Her father’s attention was already back on his notes.

  “So . . . ,” Astrid said, pausing. “Maybe we should go and take a look?”

  Her dad dismissed the suggestion with a little snort. “No sense in motoring all the way out there just to visit a pile of rocks,” he said. “Waste of fuel. And the boats don’t need the stress.”

  Bullshit. They had plenty of fuel—brimming underground tanks hoarded from the world before the wickedness. And if their boats couldn’t handle a simple trip across the bay, well, then what was the point of even having boats in the first place?