WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) (21 page)

    “Tell me,” I say.

    “He thinks it’s to get into the tower. That it’s some kind of sign of an implant under my skin. Some kind of metal.”

    “Under your skin?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Fucking bullshit. Why would he think that?”

    “He’s more like me than you think. He’s been stealing from the Fathers for years. And whatever artifacts the Fathers find, in the Deadlands, or anywhere outside their communities, they hide away. They quarantine the artifacts from before the Wipe because—”

    “Because it’s evidence, I know that already.”

    “Yes, evidence against their dogmas. Or at least, things they are still learning to incorporate into their dogma.”

    “So when we saw them in the Deadlands?”

    “That’s why. They salvage. They learn. And they lock it away, make sense of it in the new scriptures.”

    I think of the new scriptures—how every year Father Gold would detail some new scripture that they had just managed to translate correctly from the old languages.

    “So you don’t think they’re translating anything?”

    “No—they’re writing it as they go. And when necessary, they change the interpretations to fit.”

    “Why do they save the artifacts? Why not just destroy it all?”

    “I don’t know that part. But Garren—he thinks it’s because they figured out a way to profit somehow—that somewhere, there is a trade happening.”

    “A trade?”

    “I know—it’s crazier than anything I’ve ever thought up. But he thinks, at the highest level of the Fatherhood, that the High Fathers have a system of trade—a system of wealth based upon valuables from the Old World. Something even Father Gold may not be aware of. For all we know, our Fathers in Acadia send artifacts somewhere else, without asking questions.”

    “The whole point of the Fatherhood is
no questions
, isn’t it?” I say, somehow, in one phrase, relinquishing all of my anger and tension, absorbed suddenly by Garren’s theory.

    “It is,” she smiles, and a quick laugh escapes her.

    “He won’t talk to me about any of this, will he?”

    “He asked me not to say a word to you. He hasn’t really told anyone this but me, he said,” she says, the smile still on her face. And for a moment, with the brief recognition of the extension of her trust, I’m back in my dream. And she’s about to lean in and kiss me. But she goes on, “And here’s the last part—stranger than all of the rest...”

    I want to tell her that nothing could be stranger than the idea of an implant under her skin, or that the Fatherhood is collecting history so that it can be assimilated, concealed, and made to match their dogmas, but she starts to explain before I can say anything.

    “The hanged Fathers. I asked Garren, but he doesn’t think it was the Nefandus.”

    “And it wasn’t Resistance?”

    “No. He thinks that—he didn’t tell me why—but he thinks that it was someone else. That the Fathers are screwing up. That they’ve slowly learned the real value of their artifact collection, and rather than just send them away, they’ve started to become greedy. To horde them for themselves, waiting to profit by their true value.”

    “It’s Father Gold’s office!” I say, picturing all of the ancient artifacts he keeps on display, the strange metallic designs and shapes and boxes that litter his walls and office spaces, the sealed chests.  

    “Exactly. But it’s whoever has caught on, whoever they’re supposed to send everything to, that’s assassinating them. There’s an inquisition, Garren said.”

    “Inquisition?”

    “From some place higher up, an inquisition into the unfaithful among the Fatherhood. Because it is an article of faith, he thinks, that they send old-world artifacts away, being that the artifacts themselves are corruptions of
sin
.”

    As I take it in, I realize that it makes perfect sense, but that it’s not as startling as she led me to believe it would be—as if it’s almost the natural way I should have understood how things are happening. And when it all registers as rational, she drops the last bit—the part that makes me turn to see that no one else is near us, in the window, secretly listening.

    “These assassins—whoever is doing it—Garren thinks they live...are you ready for it?” And it’s only when I nod that she tells me: “In the After Sky.”

    “Bullshit. It’s a fantasy. There is no After Sky just like there is no God,” I recoil, thinking that Garren’s dogmatic side has at last revealed itself, and that he’s envisioned some kind of angel troop descending from the heavens to impart the will of God, and the whole conspiracy has shown itself to be a logical fallacy. But she corrects me as if she knows that’s how I’m seeing it:

    “It’s a place, Wills. That’s what he thinks. That’s his belief about the tower.”

    “That the tower is the After Sky?”

    She nods and lets it wash over me. It hangs in my head until it starts to become rational. Like it must have already done for her. When neither of us say anything, and it seems that there is nothing left to be said, I feel the thought of the Ark crawl up in me. The one real record of what the world really was before the Wipe, what it had become, and what caused the collapse of everything. I think about how I’ve never had a proper explanation from her as to why she believes in it. Because there’s never been an artifact that she’s told me about, or any evidence at all, to hint at a reason for her to believe in its existence. I ask her and she pauses, struggling to answer me. But I can tell, it’s not about trusting me anymore. She really doesn’t know why she believes in it.

    “I think,” she finally says.

    “You think what?” I have to prod her when I realize she’s decided to stop talking.

    “It’s a memory. I can’t remember anything from before Acadia, you know that.”

    “And we always agreed it was the medicine they put you on—that stuff the Fathers made you drink that year.”

    “I know. But there’s been something—Wills I’ve never told anyone—but it’s like…it’s like the only thing I can remember. The Ark.”

    “Like you remember hearing about it when you were little? Before Acadia?”

    “I don’t know. It’s not really words at all that I remember. It’s like—it’s like I remember
seeing
it. And I just knew what it was. Everyone did. That it was all of the real history of humanity—the record of truth—some kind of safeguard against what could happen if things went wrong—against what did happen. Against the Wipe. A way to remember what we knew then so perfectly.”

    As I once again process the idea, an idea that I’ve always suspected but we’ve never talked much about, that the time of Maze’s orphanhood had been deleted, and that all of her memories were stripped away chemically by the Fatherhood, and that they somehow missed one—this memory of the Ark and its impression so strong that the medicine couldn’t destroy it—it comes into my head that we will die. That at any moment from now on, it has to happen. And that it will probably be very soon. And that everything will be permanently deleted—all of it—every memory that ever was, in either of us, gone forever to nothingness. Forgotten to a world that no longer has the capability of history anyway. And the permanence and certainty of the fact that we’ll both come to nothingness compels me to think of her again as the only thing I truly want out of life—that being a friend is not enough at all. Weakness floods through me. It takes the form of the idea that I will have died without expressing every bit of what I feel, as if it could mean anything or make a difference to how she sees me. But the facts check my idea: she already knows it all. You’ve bared everything about how you feel. Extra words amount to nothing. Somehow that’s not enough, I tell myself. As if I need to damage the relationship now. And I seize upon the comfort we’ve built up talking about what I’m sure now is the only form our bond will ever take—the conspiracies revolving around the Wipe—and I press her. As if she owes me more, even though in the back of my head I already know there’s nothing left in her to say.

    “You said that’s enough, before. That’s what you said,” I say.

    She looks at me, perplexed at first, and then it dawns on her that I’m shifting the topic again, just like before, back to myself. Her head turns away.

    “If it’s not for me, would it matter?”

    She says nothing and doesn’t look back at me. The silence goes on and on until I can’t take it anymore, and forsaking all the tough new skin I think I’ve built up over the last few days, I walk out. Right into the fog, leaving her.

Outside it’s night. As it dawns on me that I’ve slept a very long time, the clearest feeling in the world floods through me: the only way to deal with it—with the pain of the truth—is to hate her somehow. The thought strikes me as perfectly impossible. That there must be some other solution. But I wander the moonlit path between the huts and realize there is no option at all. That I can’t really turn my love to hate, and I can’t be indifferent. Only distance myself from her. An impossibility, something I gave up when I decided not to return to Acadia. And something darker comes into me as I watch the dead windows and listen to the quiet beating of the surf by the dock—it starts as a formless sadness, that somehow I’ve been destined to feel this way at all, in the first place, but building upon that self-pity, it turns to anger and the idea again of taking control of the distance. That once again, I have to run. Not from Acadia this time, but from Maze. Because as distracting as this all is—Garren’s ideas and the journey to the tower tomorrow, I decide that I can’t do it. Because it took me years to make my admission of love, as if that waiting had served me well. Like I’d been building favor in her heart, and my patient kindness and hope meant something over all these years. And now, it just dissolves in the clarity of my decision to leave, and I make for the dock in a straight line.

As the sound of the water gets closer, I remember that I need a key to start one of the boats. And that if I can’t find one, I’ll have to head into the forest alone. I make a turn and head back. A thief is what I have to become now. A deserter. The reckless impulse to sneak into one of the huts, as many as it takes, while they all sleep, so I can steal the keys, drives me up to the first door. Part of me seems to know that it’s Garren’s hut—as if I remember him going into this one. But the idea that I’ll be her now—I’ll be the thief that she is—overrides my patience and carefulness, and I open the unlocked door and walk directly into dark space.

Two beds and two people asleep. I watch them, frozen for a moment, just to be sure that their eyes aren’t open. Then, as I adjust to the blackness, I make quiet steps toward a shelf on the wall. Some books are propped on it, and right there, next to them, a set of keys. My hand falls quickly and softly over them, and pressing down to prevent the noise, I slide them off the shelf. When I turn to leave, I see the man sleeping on the bed opposite me. His face is down in his pillow, and on the floor next to him is a glass bottle. A drunken night to forget the slaughter. And then I realize: it’s Garren. Something in me wants to hurt him. I wait for a moment, wondering if that’s what I’m ready to do. The wildness in me starts to cool, and instead of strangling him I walk slowly out. It’s my last look back at him that paralyzes me: A slip of his ankle, hanging out from under a sheet. But it’s the dark marking that pushes me back inside, right up to the bed. I bend down slowly, waiting for him to spring up, knife in hand, and slit my throat, an intruder he has every right to kill, but I can’t stop myself. I hover over the skin and see it clearly—the edge of the tattoo, but enough that I know for sure—it’s the same exact one I’ve seen countless times on Maze’s leg. There, the same black shape etched on his skin. And nobody else here must know what it means. The implant. Whatever he thinks it is. They share it.

Rage builds in me when I leave the hut. No one follows me and no one wakes up, and I know I was right—Maze still isn’t telling me everything—and it’s his tattoo that she’s kept from me this time. It’s too big a detail that he wouldn’t have told her, or that she could have just forgotten to tell me. I want to wake her up to tell her it’s true now, I really do hate her, but instead I go ahead, back to the dock, strangling the keys in my hand.

It’s the strangest thing, when I get to the edge of the dock, and the water laps darkly all around me, and everything out in the ocean is heavy fog, no shred of visibility. I just sit down. I sit down and let it all wash over me. The rejection. The deception. The anger. The love. The confusion. The horrible mess. Every fiber of my being finally compels me to reduce it all to submission—to acquiesce to the Fathers, to pray for help. But the idea of that solution sets me on fire even more, builds my anger—that so many have been damned to look for empty hope in the dogma of nonsense.

I sit for a long time until my mind is raw from too many feelings. I sort and resort them, trying to piece things together, until at last, after what feels like hours, there is nothing left in me but tiredness. I don’t even put the keys back on the shelf in Garren’s hut. Because some new fear is telling me not to try breaking in on him twice. I just drop them on the ground in front and walk back to the floor of my own hut.

She is asleep. An impulse wants me to lift her pants, check her tattoo, make sure it’s the same one I saw on Garren. But I already know. I lie down on the floor and sleep.

Chapter 12

Gala wakes me. I ignore her and look around. Maze is already gone. Sunlight.

    “Time to go. Get up,” she says. And then, she too is gone. Last night rolls over me until I feel sick, and I tell myself to forget about it. When I get there, everyone else is already at the docks. Maze, talking to Garren. I look away.

“Over here Wills,” Gala says. “You’re with me.”

Without a word between Maze and me, I climb onto the boat on Gala’s side of the dock. Garren discusses some last business with Rafe and Rafe walks away. And when I sneak one more glance at her, to see if she’s looking at me, and I find that she’s not, I notice Garren is. Staring hard into me.