The Electric Kingdom

by David Arnold

  And she collapsed.

  PART THREE

  IN

  THE

  FINAL

  FRONTIER

  NICO

  Lullabies

  Air was chilled. More than a nip, it was the kind of temperature that joined snow, leaves, and sun on their way down. The hollowed-out whitetail in the tree, miles and hours behind, still hung over them in a sense, and whether from this or the cold, Nico was dreading the night.

  “Last stretch of the day. One more good haul, then we’ll call it.” Harry, sensing the impending finish line, ran ahead, disappeared through a row of hedges some fifty yards up. All day, and he had not tired of the Game. Still—if she had to row in the dark, she was glad to have a blowfish at her side.

  She whistled him back.

  “One. Two. Three. Four. Five.”

  Nothing. She stopped walking, held her breath.

  Around her, the woods seemed softer, the snow quieter. She whistled again, the note echoing. Under her breath, she counted: “One. Two. Three. Four . . .”

  There. A snout through the hedgerow. But only for a second before disappearing again.

  Nico ran ahead, ready to scold him for not keeping up his end of the primordial agreement. (When Human calls, Wolf responds.) But, pushing her way through the hedges, any thought of reprimand melted.

  A road.

  Aside from a dirt road leading to the Farmhouse, and a narrow one-lane deal they’d crossed at one point yesterday, Nico’s entire understanding of true roads came from books. But if those fictional roads were pictures of a small child, this road—with its pavement of cracked skin and weeds growing like unruly hair through every accessible crevice—was the picture of an old man breathing his last.

  Harry wandered up and down the road, nose to the ground, until boredom or satisfaction kicked in, at which point he pawed across it with utter familiarity.

  Running alongside the road in both directions was a symmetrical row of tall wooden poles, as if an endless line of branchless trees had been planted to keep the road company. In the back of her mind, flashes of the old world took shape and dissolved like a photograph coming out of the dark into candlelight, and then, too close, melting. She had no name for these tree-poles. But she had an impression of electricity, and its methods of transportation.

  Kneeling, she ran her hand over the gravelly pavement. Maybe twenty yards up, two automobiles—not on a page or in her mind’s eye, but physical objects—sat in the middle of the street, rusted over, as dead as the road on which they’d died. She walked to the closest one, a smaller black car. At the front driver’s seat, the window had either been smashed out entirely or rolled down years ago. She reached inside, unlocked the door, and climbed in. Both hands on the steering wheel, she asked, “Where to?” and couldn’t help smiling a little, until she saw the bones in the back seat, a small frame the size of a child, wrapped in a coat, lying sideways on the bench as if taking a nap.

  Fun while it lasted.

  She was about to climb out of the car when movement ahead caught her eye. She leaned over the steering wheel, squinted through the layer of grime on the windshield . . .

  “Shit.”

  Instinctively, her hand went for the door—but the car was in the middle of the road, no way she could exit without being seen.

  She crouched lower in the seat, peered over the top of the dashboard, and counted.

  There were eleven in the group. Genders and ages were difficult to say: on the bottom halves of their faces, each wore a metal mask, crude and clearly homemade; a few had scraggly beards poking out underneath the masks; most carried a weapon. Large knives and machetes swung at sides, clubs on shoulders, a couple of guns. As they neared, she sensed an ease and carelessness, laughter devoid of goodwill, eyes with little light, and she understood that neither this road nor this world were new to them.

  In a matter of seconds, they would be right on top of her.

  Harry.

  Low in her seat, she managed a cursory scan of the road but didn’t see him anywhere. He’d never been around other people. She could only hope he’d make himself scarce, though scarcity didn’t seem a very doglike instinct.

  Closer now. Forty feet away, maybe.

  She pushed down the door lock, as if that’s helpful. Nothing she could do about the wide-open window.

  Thirty feet.

  She opened the glove box, some kind of weapon, anything, but it was empty.

  Laughter and voices outside, muffled by the masks, and she imagined how it would go: they would spot her (if they hadn’t already), drag her from the car, and whether from knife, club, or gun, that would be that. She spun, looked in the back seat, something to fight with, but she found only the sad outline of bones . . .

  Fifteen feet.

  . . . a small child who went to sleep and never woke up . . .

  Ten.

  At the last second, Nico pulled the hood of her coat over her head, tucked her hands into her pockets, and lay sideways across the console, facedown in the passenger seat.

  She took a deep breath and held it.

  Animals

  “I don’t know, man. It don’t feel right.”

  “It is the fucking way of things, Herm.”

  The first voice sounded like a small bird; the second, like a slowly squeezing fist.

  “It just don’t seem very—scien-tific.”

  The car shook as someone jumped onto the hood, scaled the windshield, and now the hollow thumps of footsteps on the roof. “Y’all hear this? Herm’s leaving the group so’s he can pursue higher-minded, scientific endeavors.”

  Laughter, cruel and shrill.

  Up top, the footsteps stayed put.

  They’ve stopped. Why have they stopped?

  A different sound now, a dull thrumming against the roof, as if someone were pouring out a bottle of water. “Who wants to remind Herm what we are?”

  A new voice, from the ground: “Dogs!”

  “And you know why dogs piss on everything, don’t you? Let people know, This shit is mine. Humans went and domesticated themselves into oblivion. You wanna make that same mistake, Herm, go right ahead.” The sound of a zipper, and then the car shook again as whoever it was climbed down the back. “Survival is gruesome work. You wanna live, you gotta find out how far the body can go before it dies.”

  Pulses

  All was quiet.

  Slowly, by inches, Nico sat up, looked through the rear windshield.

  The road was empty.

  She waited a few minutes, just in case, eyes to the west.When it was clear the group had passed, she climbed out of the car (watchful for any rogue streams of urine off the roof), made for the cover of woods, and gave a quick, clear whistle.

  Eyes scanning the trees . . .

  “One,” she whispered, only now realizing she was physically shaking. “Two. Three. Four. Five . . .”

  Cold and quiet and silence.

  And it suddenly hit her, the difference between a sense of panic and true panic, the stone-cold dread that settles in the stomach, slowly rises through the chest, chases the heart, tingles and spreads through the arms until the body accepts the fact of death.

  “Harry!” she yelled, not even caring if the Metal Masks heard her. “Come on. Okay.”

  She breathed. Closed her eyes.

  Be the Listener.

  “One.” Breathe. “Two.” She opened her eyes. “Three . . .”

  There.

  Across the road, Harry emerged with a large squirrel in his mouth. And when he reached her, as she hugged and good-dogged him, their consolidated pulse restored, only then did she truly understand the value of his companionship, and how much she loved him. “Good boy,” she said through tears, offering a silent thank-you to God, to the universe, and above all, to that entity who, in gi
ving its life, had most likely saved theirs: a limp, hapless squirrel.

  Stations

  The road appeared to go for miles, dipping into a shallow valley before running up the length of a mountain on the other side. Nico wanted no part of it, but the road ran east, and a little south, and because that was their direction also, they could not avoid it entirely. And so they walked, keeping to the woods, eager to put some distance between this evening’s campsite and the cars.

  As they went, she considered the correlation between the awfulness of a memory and the length of time it lodged itself in one’s mind: You wanna live, you gotta find out how far the body can go before it dies. Violence, in stories, had always eluded Nico, both its purpose and the people who seemed to take joy in it, make it an art form. But for all the creative ways she knew people could be violent, there was something about the functionality of that line that she found truly unsettling—and that she would never forget.

  Before long, they were in the heart of the valley. The trees gave way to a wide-open field, and in the middle of that field, just off the road, was . . . what . . . not a house. Not unlike one, though. A structure of some kind. Nico stopped at the edge of the tree line and scanned for signs of people, anyone who might call this place home. Moving forward, there would be nowhere to hide until they reached the other side of the valley; the grass grew tall in places, but small patches of snow had tamped it down, so if anyone were watching, she and Harry would be spotted for sure.

  One knee on the ground, she put a hand on the back of Harry’s neck, and took comfort in the knowledge that she did not have to tell him to be quiet, just as she did not have to tell herself to be quiet.

  It was: Be quiet. And they were.

  The structure had large windows in front and on both sides, though they appeared mostly broken. Out front, a tall sign read TEXACO, and huddled like small children around the foot of this sign were four smaller structures.

  “A station,” she said. “Fuel. For cars and trucks.”

  They stayed at the tree line for a few minutes, watching, waiting. Nico might just as well be contemplating the wardrobe to Narnia, the hole to Wonderland, or any number of fictional fantasies.

  This could be home to the Metal Masks. Might be more of them inside.

  Or maybe not. Still, the place had a roof and walls, and while it had not been built as a house, someone might now call it home. In which case, walking inside could be seen as an invasion with who knew what consequences.

  Dusk was close. A cold fishgray sky crept over their heads. Soon the sun would be gone completely.

  From her backpack, she pulled out a folding knife, a back-bladed family heirloom. “We should check it out. Could be supplies.” Technically true, though far from the real reason, which was that Nico simply had too much Lucy and Alice in her to pass up such a curiosity.

  They emerged from the woods together, low and fast, and as they neared, she noticed a number of solar panels attached to the top of the TEXACO sign, cords running from there to the roof of the station. She made her way to one of the shattered windowpanes and poked her head inside.

  Waiting, listening. All was quiet.

  Around to the front door now, knife out, she opened it and stepped inside. Head down, listening.

  Not a sound.

  Breathe in—now move. She went fast but lightly across the floor, a quick glance up each aisle as she passed. All were empty. Bathrooms in the back: empty. Now retracing her steps to the front, she leaned over the counter to check behind it: empty. “No one’s here,” she said. Harry’s nose was on the ground, and as with the road, he walked the floor of the station, familiarizing himself with the smorgasbord of new scents.

  Content they were currently alone, Nico walked the aisles again, more intentionally this time. The shelves had been ransacked, a giant pile of discarded wrappers and empty cardboard displays in the middle of the center aisle. “Like the opposite of Midas,” she whispered, standing in awe at the foot of this strange monument. “Everything humans touched turned to garbage.”

  And for the first time since entering the station, she noticed something else: a soft hum.

  At her feet, Harry whined.

  “We should leave.” She stood where she was though, looking around for the source of the hum. And when she saw the sign on the metal door at the back of the station, she knew she’d found it. “‘Cold beer,’” she read.

  Refrigeration. The hum was the sound of electricity, which meant the solar panels on the TEXACO sign outside were still operational. And what had only been a theoretical understanding of her world was one she now felt in her bones: that where power was, people were also.

  Knife out, she walked to the metal door. It was cold to the touch.

  Someone had jammed a crowbar into the door handle, effectively locking it from the outside. “Locked in or locked out?” she said quietly, putting a hand on the crowbar.

  Harry whined again, but Nico had made up her mind. She pulled the crowbar out of the handle, let it clank to the ground, and pushed open the door. With all the busted windows, the station was already cold, but the air that rushed out of this room was a different, manufactured sort of cold.

  “I have a weapon.” Nico stood in the doorway, trying to sound stronger than she looked. “It’s a big gun. With lots of . . . gun bullets.”

  Behind her, Harry turned in circles, a look in his eyes that said, This is all you.

  “Wimp.”

  As with the rest of the station, the goods in this room had been pillaged. Silence reigned. Unlike the rest of the station, blood was everywhere. On the walls and floor, like a child had slung a paintbrush around, covered everything in deep red and maroon.

  In one corner of the bloody room was a bucket. In the opposite corner, a blanket covered at least one human shape, maybe more.

  Fossils

  When the entirety of one’s universe is an old boared-up farmhouse, there is no greater treasure than a dusty shoebox full of photographs. All smiles and kisses and travels and meticulously positioned foods on butcher blocks. Nico’s favorites were the ones from her parents’ honeymoon in Italy. And while plenty of food had been documented, these photographs revealed a shine in her mom’s eyes like Nico had never seen, and her dad’s, too. Beyond happy, their lives together just beginning, they stood on cobble-stone streets, in front of old statues and churches, inside museums full of art Nico could hardly believe had been created by human hands. But her parents had been there, had seen these things with their own eyes.

  They’d also seen the ruins of Pompeii, an ancient town that had been covered in lava and ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In her parents’ photographs, Nico saw the mummified castings of Pompeian citizens in their final moments, mere seconds before being engulfed in lava: how they sat, stood, or crawled; how they burrowed together like birds in a nest; how they held out their hands or covered their pregnant bellies or—and these were the ones etched into Nico’s memory—how some looked as though they were screaming into the void.

  As if screaming would stop the fire-wave speeding toward them.

  But when she asked herself how one should respond in such a situation, screaming into the void seemed as good as anything.

  There were three bodies under the blanket: a grown woman and man, bent in Pompeian fashion around a small girl between them, as if to protect her from death itself.

  Screaming into the void.

  The man’s eyeballs were gone, plucked out, dark and empty sockets. His ears were gone too, his whole head a mess of dark blood and indefinable abrasions. Both of the woman’s arms (wrapped around the young child) ended just above the wrist, frozen blood on bone, the skin raw and far from healed. Between them, the young girl stared up with marble eyes, dollish and horrible. She appeared to be whole, and Nico tried not to guess how she’d died.

  There was no telling how long
this family had been like this—the temperature in the room had prolonged, if not stunted, the process of decay, turning each of their lips blue—but she had a feeling she knew who was responsible.

  You wanna live, you gotta find out how far the body can go before it dies.

  She pulled the blanket back over them, pausing before reaching the little girl’s dollish eyes. “If there’s another life,” said Nico, “I hope it’s better than this one.”

  A blank sheet of a face stared back at her, and she thought of the people of Pompeii, how their final moments had been fixed in time, put on display for history, for anyone, for her, even.

  “No one else will see you like this.”

  Nico covered the faces of the blue-lipped family, and then left the room to fulfill her promise.

  Rainbows

  Like the fires of Mount Vesuvius . . .

  She stood over the trash heap in the middle aisle of the station and flicked her lighter. One aisle over, Harry paced up and down, the consolidated pulse quickened, and she said, “It’s okay, we’ll just need to move fast,” but Harry was already gone. She flicked the lighter again and, in its quick flame, felt genuine potential— not for justice, that was impossible, but for cleanliness. Maybe this place had been home to the Metal Masks, maybe not. But it had been home to their evil, and while she could not undo what they’d done, she could wipe its evidence from the face of the earth.

  At the foot of the trash pile, she found a good, dry box. On the side of the box were the words Taste the Rainbow with a picture of someone who appeared to be doing just that. She held her lighter under this box, flicked it once, twice, three times—it caught—and Nico watched the rainbow ignite.