WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story)

A Post-Apocalyptic Story by Joseph A. Turkot

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  Part 1

Chapter 1

From the dunes I see it. The tower that rises up and up. Way out there on the flat blue sea.

Its silver metal reflects the sun, and it keeps soaring until the highest belt of clouds covers it. A dark and thinning line that slices the sky in half with its dizzying height. A beautiful and impossible view. Something we can never reach.

            “That’s how they’re going to get the Ark,” Maze says. She looks at me and squints to show her seriousness. And I know now why she’s dragged me down to the beach today. To summon all of her logical strength and convince me of her latest theory.

            “With the tower?” I ask.

            “There’s something else, too,” she goes on, ignoring my question.

            “What?” I turn long enough to roll my eyes at her and then I look back to the sea.

            “I know a way out there,” she says. And that’s when it’s too much—I have to look back at her to see if she’s for real. I stare at her, dead in the face, widening my eyes in my best attempt to convey how ridiculous she sounds. But she doesn’t even flinch.

            “Okay, I’ll play along for a minute,” I say. “Someone—your
they
—is trying to get the Ark, and they’re doing it by using the tower. But you’re forgetting—the tower was built before the Wipe.”

            The Wipe has the same impact on her that it always does—the allergic reaction that narrows her eyebrows with impatience. As if I don’t understand what I’m talking about. Her nose pinches for just for a moment so that I fall in love with it. I recover just quickly enough to calm myself down, because she’ll never go for me anyway. And I know that for the next few moments, I have to keep entertaining her crazy idea.

            “No. Listen to me. The tower was built
after
the wipe,” she says.

            “What? No way,” I interrupt. Already I’m getting the sense this is a rehash of her theory from last month.

            “Wills,” she says, her impatience changing to anger.

            “Okay then, why do you think so? Remember—it’s made of metal,” I say. I look back out at the tower. As beautiful as it is, its length rising out of sight, ejecting somewhere into the curve of the Earth itself, I see no reason to believe that anyone has been out there for a hundred years. Or ever, for that matter, if I didn’t know logically that the thing had to have been built at some point in time. There is no movement on the sea. No movement in the sky except the subtle shift of the clouds. Just the dark divide of the tower.

            “If you’ll stop being an ass for a minute and
listen
,” she says. And for some reason, I like it that I can make her mad so easily. As if pissing her off will help me win her affection somehow. As if having control over one thing with her gives me some hope to cling to. 

            “Okay. I’m listening,” I say, watching her face now. Just tell her you love her, I mock myself, hanging on her lips. But as the story begins to come out, I have to stop myself from that train of thought. Lately I’ve been going down it too much, and she’s too quick to notice now when I’m not really paying attention. So I play along just to get by, listening to the latest conspiracy she’s cooked up.

            “Before the Wipe, there was a back-up, known as the Ark,” she tells me. I nod my head, yet at the same time I can’t help but softly voice my standard reply.

            “Which has never been proven.”

            For all of her belief in this Ark, I almost think there’s no difference in her than the Fathers that I despise so much. They believe in divinity, and a supernatural deity that governs our fates. And she believes that there is a back-up of the entire history of the human race—something completely different than the history given by the Fathers. All of humanity’s facts and accomplishments and literature and histories. Held invisibly in some type of computer technology that orbits the planet still. Powered by the sun. Waiting for someone to reclaim it. 

            “Forget that it hasn’t been
proven.
It hasn’t been
proven
because the Fathers don’t want it to be proven. Who controls the flow of information?” she says. And now her eyes have nearly become slits and I know she means business. There’s no more joking around. I have to keep up with her fanatical logic or I’ll be on her bad side for the rest of the day.

            “The Fathers,” I say.

            “Right. And if there was proof that the Ark existed, and that’s what the tower was for, to get to the Ark, then they’d be finished. All of their money, their power, their control. They control the
information
, and that’s what keeps everyone so brainwashed,” she says. And as she mentions the information and the brainwashing and the necessity of the Fathers to keep the true meaning of the tower concealed, I know she’s working toward pulling my sympathies. She knows just how strongly I distrust the dogma of the Fatherhood, but she also knows how much I think her conspiracy theories line up on the same dimensions of bullshit. Still, I continue to play along. Even her beauty takes a back seat to her quick intellect in moments like these, as ill-founded as it is, and I have to keep my eyes locked on hers as long as I can. She has me under her spell and I am powerless.

            “So, if this Ark is real, and it’s spinning around the Earth right now, somewhere in space, carrying everything the human race accumulated before the Wipe, that’s one thing. Let’s just say I accept that,” I say, smiling, hoping she is finding something of beauty in my face. Anything remotely like the perfection I find in hers. “That still doesn’t explain how the tower isn’t pre-Wipe. How the tower is in
any way
related to your Ark.”

            “That’s just it. That’s why I brought you to the beach today,” she says. And then it comes, her gorgeous smile. All the tension in her face slides away, and now I know she really is up to something serious. Because it’s only when she’s up to something completely devilish that she gets the eager eyes and wide grin that melts my better judgment.

            “Don’t tell me you think you’ve got proof,” I say, hoping she’s not planning on pulling me into some back stretch of the Deadlands again. But I’m psychic when it comes to her now. And the word comes out just as quickly as I think it.

            “We’re going to the Deadlands,” she says.

            “
Maze...”
I groan. And suddenly I’ve lost all of the willingness to be under her spell. Because as much as I like her, I can’t deal with another trip to the Deadlands. The last time she tricked me into going, we almost died.

            “It’ll be safe this time, I promise,” she says, standing up.

            “How do you think it will be safe this time?” I ask her. “Do you know ahead of time that there won’t be any wolves?”

            “Look what I found,” she says, ignoring my comment about the wolves and the memory of the pack of gray killers that stalked us into the Deadlands last time. She takes out a crumpled piece of paper and unfolds it and then shoves it into my hands. I take it and open it up and look up at her as soon as I recognize what it is.

            “How the hell did you get this?” I say, alarmed, half-ready to run back to Acadia. Head into the town field and find some people for a game of soccer. Or quietly draw some pictures, or continue the story that I’ve been working on. Anywhere but where Maze’s riptide is taking me. 

            “I took it,” she says, her grin somehow getting bigger, irresistible to me despite the criminality I know went into making it.

            “You’re going to get in
so
much trouble if a Father finds out!” I say, and then quickly I lower my voice, looking out over the dunes, as far back as I can to where the shrubs conceal the beach. As if they know we snuck out to the beach alone. As if they’re watching us right now.

            “Which Father?” I ask.

            “Father Gold,” she says. “I saw him cleaning his relic safe through the roof. Saw how he opens the lock. Saw the map.”

            “
You were on Father Gold’s roof?”
I whisper in disbelief. For as much as I am a logical person, I still do not understand the tug of my emotions for this girl. She is the most troublesome and reckless person I’ve ever known. And it’s moments like this that I question why I hang out with her at all. Why I don’t listen to everyone around me who tells me to distance myself. Why I cling to some stupid hope that one day she’ll suddenly
like
me the same way I like her.

            “Don’t worry,” she says coolly. “He didn’t hear me. And he didn’t even move when I broke into his house.” I have to look away from her. My eyes scour the ripples of sand at my feet. I can’t continue to hear about it. The dropping sensation in my gut grows, the promise that if I go along with her now, I will have kissed the last of my common sense goodbye. Like this is the final straw. But the dropping feeling doesn’t go away, because I know I won’t say no. As wrong and as dangerous as this is, as she is, I know I’m going to go with her again. Out into the Deadlands. So I just let all the things that are supposed to make sense slide away, as if they never existed, and I look at her raven hair and big bright eyes, the curve of her nose and lips, and I find in their beauty the courage to tell her that I’ve caved in again.