How We Became Wicked

by Alexander Yates

  “Do you remember Christmas? Have you ever had a Christmas?”

  “We’re going to have a party to celebrate, we think, probably.”

  “A Christmas party!”

  “We’ve got sandwiches, and we’ve got orange juice, and we’ve got candy.”

  “Want some?”

  “They’re lying about the sandwiches,” Reggie offered. “And the orange juice is powdered. But that candy is for real. It’s honest-to-goodness chocolate. Part of the stash we brought with us from home.”

  Natalie ignored him, but the sound of the word made her stomach turn over. She’d had chocolate only once in her life—a little brown-white brick so ancient and dry that it crumbled to dust in her hands. Still, her mouth watered at the thought. She hadn’t had a thing to eat since leaving Puffin Island. She didn’t want to stop, but neither she nor Eva could make it much farther without a break. The baby was starting to bawl, and if she got much louder they’d have to find cover and wait it out.

  “We’ll rest here,” she announced, stepping off of the road and down the embankment.

  “You are literally the boss,” Reggie said.

  They sat at the base of a large oak. Natalie set the crying baby down in her lap and then pulled the formula supplies out of her pack. But she found it almost impossible to mix up a bottle with just one hand while still keeping the pistol ready in her other.

  “I don’t suppose you’d let me help with that,” Reggie said.

  Natalie didn’t answer. She propped the empty bottle in the crook between two roots and began to tip the powder in. But more spilled than made it in through the mouth of the bottle.

  “Come on,” he said, “what’s the worst that can happen? I drink it?” He grinned at her. His teeth were so big and so white. They were beautiful, like his whole face was beautiful. The sight of it was still strange to Natalie. Was everybody left in the world this good-looking?

  She scooted aside and let him take the supplies. As he mixed up the bottle, she took the opportunity to eat a little herself, shoving two strips of dried fish into her mouth.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” Reggie said. “Had a big breakfast.”

  He passed the bottle back, and Natalie did her best to warm it under her armpit while changing the baby. Then she gave Eva the bottle, and finally her crying stopped. Her little body seemed to vibrate as she ate.

  “Are we getting close?”

  “Closer,” Reggie said. “You know, I could tell you exactly if you let me take a look at my phone. I don’t even need to touch it. Just let me see the screen. And if I try anything tricky . . .” He paused, seeming to think over suitable punishments. “You could shoot me in the face. That’d be more than fair.”

  “Don’t joke about it,” Natalie said.

  “Yeah. I guess I shouldn’t. But do you want me to tell you where we are, or not?” He paused, tilting his head like a bird. “I could even help you shut my friends up.”

  It was an appealing offer. Their grim attempts to lure her back were still crackling out of the phone. Natalie plucked it from her pocket, the screen aflame with cheerful springtime colors. She tilted it in his direction, and Reggie leaned forward so that he could see.

  “That’s close enough,” she said. “If you can’t do it from where you’re sitting, then we won’t do it.”

  “Lucky for both of us, I can,” Reggie said. He directed her to a tab on the side and told her to press it. The moment she did, the voices fell silent.

  “That’s better,” Reggie said. “Now, you see that little picture of a compass? Tap your finger on it.”

  She did, causing the entire screen to change into a glowing image of the coastline. Natalie could see the town of Lubec on the old Canadian border, and the gutted-trout shape of Grand Manan Island. Puffin Island was there as well—a crumb in the gaping mouth of the bay.

  “Do you see a little black arrow?” Reggie asked. “That’s us. The bog will look like a purple dot, farther down the road. We mark breeding grounds wherever we find them.”

  Natalie found the arrow, sitting in the middle of Highway 191. The bog seemed to be just down the road from them, but when she checked the scale she realized that they still had miles to go. They wouldn’t make it until dusk, and by then there’d be no way to return before dark.

  “You find it?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “We’re not even close yet.”

  “Don’t worry,” Reggie said. “I know a safe spot once we get there. We can get your sister bitten, rest up for a few hours, and be back at the cabin in time for breakfast tomorrow.”

  “I never mentioned anything about going back to the cabin with you,” Natalie said, feeling exhausted and discouraged. She tried to switch off the map, but somehow instead she just ended up zooming out. Suddenly there were purple dots everywhere, flashing like storm buoys at sea. They stretched across the entire state of Maine and beyond. But there were also other, different markings. Arrows and flags and Xs in a rainbow of colors.

  “What is all this?” Natalie asked.

  “It’s all our work,” Reggie said, sounding not a little proud. “It’s what we’ve been doing out here for the last three years.” Again he leaned toward her. “Those little blue Xs are our—my—dispersers. And those red flags—those are old radio towers. They’re from the world before, but we try to keep as many of them running as possible. Tell me, you ever hear something called—”

  Natalie cut him off. “The First Voice? That’s you?”

  “Not exactly,” Reggie said. “But without us, nobody would hear it. Whenever we find an old tower, we do what we can to get it running again. That way the old broadcast can still go out. Actually, I’m taking more credit for that than I deserve. It’s Danny who does the towers. He’s one of my friends—the man on the phone who offered to give you chocolate. I promise you, from the bottom of my heart, that he isn’t a bad guy.”

  To Natalie, this news was almost as shocking as the fact that Reggie and his group existed in the first place. But it also made no sense.

  “Why?”

  “Oh . . .” Reggie shifted in his bee suit, making the shiny rubber squeak. “Well . . . there’s a lot of good information in those old radio shows. The recipe for quiet. The news about the vex. I’m guessing that your folks wouldn’t even have known about it if they didn’t hear it on The First Voice.”

  Again Reggie smiled, but this time there was a false, sickly quality to it. He could tell that his story didn’t sit right with Natalie. She wasn’t an idiot. These people traveled open and free in the wicked world. They built things and fixed things. They had working phones, for goodness’ sake. Obviously, if they’d wanted to put out a broadcast, they could have made one themselves. So why were they hiding behind a radio show that had been dead for decades now? A radio show that gave only scraps of information about the vex?

  But there it was—the answer was in the question.

  “You don’t want people to know . . . ,” Natalie said.

  Reggie didn’t answer.

  “You don’t want them to know that it almost never works. You don’t want them to know that most of the kids who get it die.”

  Reggie dropped his gaze to the stretch of dead grass between them. It was a long time before he said anything.

  “This is going to sound . . . not good. You’re going to need to trust me when I say that it wasn’t my decision. I mean, it was made long before I even joined the searchers. But yeah, you’re right. If people knew the odds of the vex working, they’d never try it. And if they never tried it, there’d be no you.”

  With this he forced himself to look back up at her. His expression seemed open, hiding nothing. “You ever meet the wicked?” he asked. “You talk to them or spend some time watching them?”

  “Only a little . . . ,” Natalie said, pleased with how easy the deception came.

  “Well, let me tell you, they can work a radio as well as any of us. So, that’s another reason. My people have always been af
raid to broadcast something new, because we don’t want them to come looking for us.”

  “You mean there aren’t any wicked where you come from?”

  “No wicked. No singers. It looks a lot like this, actually.” Reggie gestured out at the wilted woods all around them.

  For a while neither of them said anything more. The only sounds were Eva’s suckling and dead pine needles chiming as they fell. It struck Natalie, in that moment, that her question still hadn’t been answered.

  “Why?” she asked again. “Why do any of it?”

  “Because of you,” Reggie said. “All of this—the radio towers, The First Voice, my friends and I out here far from home. It’s all been in search of someone like you. And now . . .” He trailed off for a moment. It seemed like he might actually be getting choked up, so profound was his happiness.

  “And now we’ve finally found you.”

  CHAPTER 25

  The Bog

  NATALIE HAD ABOUT A MILLION questions she wanted to ask. She didn’t even know where to start. What the hell kind of place had Reggie come from, this strange land without singers or the wicked—or, for that matter, trees and grass and birds? What had his group of searchers seen in their travels across the country? Had it all fallen wicked? Were there other true sanctuaries, still hanging on behind high walls, or maybe hidden deep beneath the earth? And what were the wicked doing, now that they’d picked the world clean of true people? Had they finally turned their knives and guns and teeth on one another? Had they all slowly starved to death? Or were they still out there, filling the old cities, sleeping in rotting beds, and growing tomatoes on their balconies, like disturbed children playing house? Most of all, what about other vexed people? Natalie could tell from the way that Reggie had reacted to her purple eyes that he’d never seen one in person before. But had he heard rumors? Had some sanctuary out there found success? Or were Natalie and her mother the only two vexed humans on the planet? The urge to ask him these questions was intense, almost physical. But she forced herself to resist it. Reggie hadn’t earned her trust yet. Until he did, Natalie couldn’t risk revealing what she did and didn’t know.

  So they walked in silence, heading down the crumbling highway in the direction of Goldsport. Eventually they passed the last of the dispersers, and the woods around them began to come back to life. Natalie heard a distant trill of birdsong, and when the breeze shifted she could even detect the lilting tune of singers up ahead. Then they rounded a bend and came upon a highway sign that made it official—they had arrived.

  GOLDSPORT: KEEP OUT.

  The words were painted in big white letters across the top of the old sign. When Natalie got closer she could still read the text, faded underneath: PORT EMORY, NEXT LEFT. A few steps later they came upon another sign, this one with more specific warnings. One line read: RESIDENTS OF PORT EMORY WISHING TO CONTEST LEASING TERMS ON THEIR PROPERTY SHOULD REFER TO THE JUDGMENT BY THE SUPERIOR COURT OF MAINE, DATED SEPTEMBER 9. Another said, more directly: REFUGEES NOT WELCOME. TRADERS NOT WELCOME. FEDERAL OR CIVILIAN AGENTS NOT RECOGNIZED. APPROACH THE GATES AND YOU WILL BE SHOT.

  “We’ve seen warnings like this as far away as Boston,” Reggie said.

  “What do you mean?” Natalie asked. “About Goldsport?”

  “Yup,” Reggie said. “All the highways headed in this direction have them.” At this he shook his head, almost sadly. “As though the world isn’t bad enough already. These rich SOBs are the worst of the worst.”

  This struck Natalie as an odd thing to say. The people in Goldsport were only wicked, after all. They couldn’t be blamed for what they did or said. Not any more than her own grandfather could be. She swapped her gun from one hand to another and then shifted Eva’s weight to her free arm.

  “It’s not like they can help it,” she said. “It’s just who they are now.”

  Reggie arched an eyebrow at her. “Um, how’s that exactly?”

  “Well, it’s not like anybody in Goldsport asked to fall wicked.”

  Reggie kept eyeballing her, saying nothing. “You having me on?” he finally asked.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “They’re not wicked,” Reggie said. It didn’t seem to Natalie as though he were lying to her. In fact, when Reggie saw the surprise on her face, he looked genuinely puzzled.

  “Of course they are,” Natalie stammered. “The whole town is wicked. Everybody knows that.”

  “Yeah? Everybody, who?”

  “My mom. My dad. My grandpa.” Little did Reggie know that, in addition to himself and Eva, that list included literally everybody Natalie had ever spoken to. Not counting the puffins.

  “And how would they know?”

  “They used to live there. A long time ago.” Natalie realized that she was giving away more than she should, but for the moment she didn’t care. Goldsport’s wickedness was one of the founding facts of her life—as fundamental to Natalie’s experience of the world as gravity or the changing seasons.

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to say.” Reggie rubbed his gloved thumbs across his eyebrows. “Other than this: Your parents aren’t telling the truth. I mean, you said that you’ve met wicked folks, right?”

  Natalie had spent more time among the wicked than Reggie could imagine, but all she did was nod.

  “And does this sound like the wicked to you?” Reggie pointed once more to the sign. He read aloud, enunciating. “ ‘Terms regarding the duration of all leasing agreements are final and fully binding. They remain in effect until such time as . . .’ I mean—you ever talk to a wicked person who sounds like that? The wicked say shit like: ‘Could you let me borrow your face for a minute?’ ”

  Natalie couldn’t argue. But it still didn’t seem right. “My mother isn’t a liar,” she said.

  “Okay,” Reggie said. “Maybe your mom’s not lying. Maybe she’s just wrong. Totally possible. But I’m telling you, kid, that I’ve got it on very good authority that the people in Goldsport are as true as I am. And more than that, there’s supposed to be a vexed girl living there with them.”

  The words shocked Natalie. Reggie could tell, and he laughed.

  “Damn. I’ll be real honest. I spent a big chunk of today thinking that vexed girl was you. I figured that you were just a damn good liar. But then I asked myself: Why would she come all the way to the cabin looking for singers when she’s got thousands in her own backyard? Also, I thought it was weird that the adults would make you take the baby out all by yourself. But who knows—again, they seem to be the worst. So . . . can we just be a hundred percent clear here . . . ? Are you really not the vexed girl of Goldsport?”

  Natalie could only shake her head.

  Reggie laughed again, louder this time. He turned in a circle, doing a ridiculous little dance.

  “My goodness,” he said when he recovered himself. “Imagine that. Two of you. If only one were a boy, we could put you both on Noah’s Ark.”

  “How do you know?” Natalie asked, her mouth dry.

  “A man on the inside,” Reggie said. “A . . . What would you call it? A real Goldsportian? A Goldsporter?” He grinned, seemingly tickled by everything at this point. “This guy told us all about the sanctuary and the vexed girl who lives in it. That’s why we’ve been hanging around here for so long, filling up these woods with dispersers. My friends and I have been studying the place, trying to figure out how to contact her. According to our source, this girl doesn’t like it there, and she’d be more than willing to leave. We don’t have the numbers to take on the scumbags inside, and it’ll be another few weeks before any help gets here. So, in the meantime, we’ve just been waiting and watching. Honestly, kid . . .” Reggie shook his head, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “You could have saved us all a lot of trouble if you’d shown up two months ago.”

  Natalie didn’t know what to say, or even think, about any of this.

  He doesn’t sound like he’s lying, Eva offered.

  “You’re not
helping,” Natalie whispered.

  Reggie gave her a funny look. He must have thought that she was talking to him.

  “Really?” he asked. “I’ll have to try harder, then.”

  • • •

  Just as the highway sign promised, in a few more minutes they arrived. The road here was covered with tire spikes and barricaded by a bus parked end-to-end. The windows were all shot out, the side spray-painted with further warnings. BE ADVISED: WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO DEFEND OUR INVESTMENT. A human body sat in the driver’s chair, long rotted away to a nest of twigs and leather. One arm hung casually out the window, its stump of a hand missing finger bones. The skull had been arranged so that it would look out at intruders, the scooped-out eyes gazing right at Natalie. She still didn’t know what to make of Reggie’s story, but he was right about one thing. If these people weren’t wicked, they were certainly sick.

  “I’m not going any farther without my headpiece,” Reggie said.

  Fair enough—the singers were getting louder with every step. Natalie tossed the limp bonnet back to Reggie, and he zipped it into place, his pale face once more concealed behind the tinted plastic visor.

  Together they stepped over the tire spikes and around the abandoned bus. From there the road sank into a morass of muddy pools and yellow scrub. This was the bog, filled with more singers than Natalie had ever seen in her life. The insects swarmed over the shallow water like smoke over fire, shaking the air with their song. They glimmered on the tips of the scrub grass, perching in rows along the limbs of trees that rimmed the bog. Up ahead the road surfaced again, scaling the slope of a steep hill. And there, at the very top of the hill, stood the high walls and gates of Goldsport.

  “There’s a watchtower up there,” Reggie said, pointing at the distant gates. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the singers. “We’ve never seen anybody guarding it, but we can’t be too careful. If you’re really going to do this, you should try to do it quickly.”

  “All right,” Natalie said.

  But for a moment she couldn’t move.