WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) (42 page)

Chapter 25

I wake to a hand extending over my face with a clay cup. Without thinking I take it and drink. Fresh water. The cold liquid runs down my throat, tearing down cracked lining into my stomach.

            “More,” I say. And then the hand and cup are gone, and I register the colors: It’s the same outfit the Resistance wears.

            The young boy returns. I recognize him. The same boy who fixed my wound in Garren’s camp. I ask him what’s happened. Why he’s here.

            “I had no choice,” he whispers. And then his nervous eyes glance to an open door. “They tracked you to us. And then, they…”

            I take the cup from him and drink as he fumbles for words. I think I hear his voice moan into sadness, and then he firms everything up and says that it was a slaughter. Worse than the Nefandus. It was the wrath of God, he says. And then, there are footsteps. He shudders, leaves the cup, and rushes out of the room. White fills the room. The long flowing robes of Father Gold. There is a single speck of blood on him. Around his neck hangs a strange ornament of metal. He closes the door and sits in a chair across from me.

            “God requested you,” he says. By his face I can tell that he disapproves. My first instinct is to launch forward, to strangle him, gouge out his eyes. I start to remember—Maze is dead. She’s dead. The thought echoes, but my body is too weak to focus on anything. And then, with some sudden and strange clarity, I restrain myself. I remember her perfectly. And I think about everything as if she’s alive and right next to me. Doing this all with me still. How she would play her words now. I hold back the urge to kill them all one by one until I can finally speak.

            “Why?” I ask.

            “Your mother is dead,” he says. His face rolls up into a quick smile. “It wasn’t that you ran away that did it.”

            “How?” I say, struggling to contain my rage.

            “She hanged herself. It was when she discovered the truth about you.”

            “What truth?” I say. But I can’t stop it. For as much as Maze meant to me, I haven’t shed a single tear yet. Haven’t had time to. But it starts, a welling in my eye so heavy that I feel as if he knows my every thought and emotion.

            “Your tattoo.”

            I almost say it—what tattoo? That’s Maze. But I don’t. And I wonder, as my mind wraps around his assumption, if he’s read as much on my face. But his smile dissipates and he waits for more words to come from my mouth. I say nothing.

            “You see, God is all-knowing and benevolent. In his infinite wisdom, he doesn’t want you dead yet. It is said, in the Great Scripture, that he who struggles with the old forms of sin shall be pardoned, and he who gives in to them shall be granted true mercy, for it is the weakness of man that is most ready to receive God, not the strength.”       

            And then, as if he’s satisfied, he leaves the room. He closes the door and I sit for a long time, waiting for something to happen. But there’s nothing but the rocking of the boat and the constant moan of the engine. I try to make sense of it—how they could think I am the one with the tattoo. As if to discover that I’m dreaming, I lift up my pants. My ankle is bare. Nothing.

After an eternity, the boy walks back into the room. He asks if I want more water, but his eyes dart around, as if he’s come for something else. I wave for him to come in, and he obliges, leaving the door open.

            “Why does he think that?” I whisper. “Why does he think I have the tattoo?”

            “It was Rafe,” he whispers nervously. “They tortured him, and he confessed that it was you who had a tattoo. I don’t know it means.”

            And then, as footsteps come from the hall, he grabs the cup quickly and tells me that he’ll be back with food. In ten minutes he returns, places a bowl of mush on the stand alongside the cup, and leans into me closely.

            “They’re going to kill me too,” he says. “The Father told me. I don’t know what to do.”

            I see the fear of death cross his face. Utter fear, and then, with the sound again of footsteps, and the call of a name somewhere overhead, the boy races off.

I eat and wonder why Rafe would have told them it was me. And how if he’d told the truth, known the truth, it would be me dead atop the tower. I think of Garren’s whispers. That somehow it was important that he lie to them all. A voice talks in my head. It’s Maze talking to me.

            “It’s you…You have to
think
.”

            I remember the look on the boy’s face—how certain he was he was going to die. That it was somehow an obvious consequence of his subversion. How Rafe was tortured and killed. And how they’ll only keep me until they’ve learned that I don’t really have the tattoo after all. And then they’ll be back to the tower, bringing down Maze’s body to defile her.

            It hits me at once. I take the fork from my bowl and pull up my pants. I graze the skin with the metal. The metal—as if all the scripture were one great measured hypocrisy, some pacification of the flock living in Acadia, that everywhere listen to the words of the Fathers and take them as divine truths from God. The deity that has requested me. I tell myself this is what Maze wants me to do as I grate the points of the fork against my skin until the blood runs freely. But I keep going, harder and harder, up in strokes and then horizontally, dragging deeper and at every angle, shaping the same thing I’d seen so many times on Maze’s ankle. In the end, the shape is lost, and there’s nothing but a bloody swollen lump the size of my hand. I pull my pants down and use a corner of the bed blanket to wipe the blood from the floor. And then, I wait forever for someone to discover what I’ve done. When no one comes, I eat the mush. My body stops feeding on itself and instead finally finds nourishment to live. The water slides down my throat. I know now what I must do. Carry out the lie, and kill God. Carry out the lie, and kill God.

Chapter 26

Father Gold only appears one more time, just to tell me that we are nearing land, and there will be a long march to the Holy Chamber. I whip my injured leg behind the other, hoping it will conceal the blood that has seeped through. He scans the room, as if he smells my wound, but then, without a word, he slips back out. I lie down and think of God. And then, as I fall asleep, I think of Maze.

In my half-sleep, she looks at me from the floor of the tunnel. I am somehow aware of the fact that I’m asleep inside some rusted hull. But the dream is vivid and alive, and Maze is there. We look out the sliver of window. It’s her perfect weight again. I lie on my stomach, and she’s on my back. I see only the curve of the Earth and I feel only her weight lying on top of me. I know it’s her by the weight, long before she speaks. And it’s like there’s a deep, recessed part of me that says she’s dead, but that that’s not important.

            “The door’s open,” she says. “Look.”

            I look with her for the first time and realize in shock that she’s right. The door is open. Another blue room. We rise together. She looks at me, kisses me, as if she knew all along we’d find the Ark. As if the mysteries of the past would be here after all, and all we had to do was wait for the door to open, and then the mysteries would work on their own to right all of the terrible things that befell the beautiful world below. Like truth itself will destroy the ancient and complex systems by which humans deceive themselves. As if Gala had been wrong, and there could be a single thing to believe in, something so certain that it obliterates every view of life.

We walk into the blue room and Maze screams at the sight of the Ark. She starts in cloudy tones to read the inscription on it. This is the Ark! she tells me, her voice ebbing in and out. All I can do is look out the giant glass window. The strange balcony leading into space, below it the vast spread of the world. Somehow this is more important than that. And then I tell her:

            “This is more important, Maze,” I say. She comes over to me, dropping her fascination with the discovery of the Ark. “Just look down there.”

            She stands next to me and we look out together. I put my arm around her and together we fall into a trance. We watch the beautiful colors swirl rapidly into each other. As if the planet is set into fast-forwarding motion, and all of time passes before us. Until the planet suddenly goes dark—the blues disappear, and the greens turn to dark gray and black. One by one, we look up to the sprinkled light of stars and watch them each, in turn, disappear. Burn out before our eyes, until everything is dark. There is only the vague outline of a darker sphere set against the illuminated black of space.

            “That used to be our world,” she says. “We used to live there.”

            “We did,” I say, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to witness the ending of a planet’s life, to see it all happen in a matter of moments, to speak as if our lives had come to pass so long ago. The thought of each life form growing and dying, its natural historical arc compressed into a moment, brings me back to the record of it all—the Ark.

            “It’s all preserved here,” she says. “It’s okay, because it’s all here.”

            “You’re right,” I say. “It means that nothing dies, doesn’t it?”

            “No. Nothing dies if this survives,” she says. “A record of everything.”

            I want to ask for whom the record survives. But it’s too dumb a question. Too true. So true that it will spoil our victory of finding it. I know that I can’t ruin her smile. I can never again tell her that the Ark doesn’t matter in the end if we’re not here to receive it.

            “But it’s not the record that counts, is it?” she says.

            “What?” I watch her turn to me, pull my body into hers. Behind her I see the glass case. The black cylinder housing all of history and truth.

            “It’s not. I think we know now, Wills. It’s what Gala said. The Ark’s one probability. Just one way things happened. We can’t miss this—we can’t miss
this…
” And to show me what this is, she kisses me. She touches me. She drinks in every part of me and then grabs my head and turns it to the balcony. Let’s go, she says. Go where? I ask. Outside. And then, I think, there’s nothing else that could make more sense. And as I follow her, and the glass slides away without hesitation, the color roars back to life. The planet’s alive again. The stars light up. And we’re together. Should we go back? she asks me. Down there? I ask. For a moment it seems absurd, to not just take the elevator and sneak through the forest. But then, I just agree. It’s the best way. We start toward the edge. She tells me that she loves me. I say I love her too. Each breath comes as naturally as if I’m drawing in the shade by my favorite fence at home. Well, are you ready? she asks. I nod and smile and she smiles back. Wait, I tell her. Do you remember when we first left? When I met you in the forest? Yes, she smiles. I was so glad you came. So was I, I tell her. I wanted you to know that. It was the first time I felt alive. When I ran from Acadia, when I found you there. The very first time in my life. Then this is all worth it, I think, she says. But come on. Let’s not wait too long. And then, she pulls my hand and we step off the edge. We fall and I see everything gain definition again—the clouds, the mountains, the forests. It all becomes clearer, until I know we’ll make it down safely. Make it home. Somehow it’s a memory of a home—a home I’ve had with Maze for years and years. A place where we’ve already shared our lives together and grown old, found the time to suck from life everything it offered. Small things run around frantically. I know they’re our children. The knock comes. And then, I rise. Maze’s face dissolves and the color of the children disappear. The white envelops me, pulls me, until I’m sitting up again on the bed.

            “What’s this?” Father Gold says.

            “What?” I say, hardly able to wrest myself from my dream.

            “What have you done to it?” he says again, and then, his hand reaches out and the sting of his slap hits my cheek. “What have you done?”

            “I cut it out,” I say.

            The slap comes again and I rock down on the bed.

            “God has requested you, and you have destroyed it?”

            “I didn’t destroy it, I cut it out,” I say.

            His eyes look to the ceiling of the room and he stands back. Small words come out of his mouth, some old prayer of patience.

            “It was only my task, God, to bring him to you,” he says. “Give me faith.”

            “God will not like that you didn’t watch me closely enough,” I say. “That you allowed me to cut it out.”

            “I restrain the urge to kill you only for the sake of the divine lord,” he says.

            “Did he tell you what it is?” I say. “Did God tell you what the tattoo is?”

            “God wrote the tattoos upon the flesh of men! And it is only he who knows their true purpose. Do not pretend to think you can corrupt me, child, with your lies!”

            And then, using his lapse in judgment, as he turns his back to leave, I charge at him. Some final burst of energy, cultivated from the mush and the water and the sleep. He falls to the floor and I engulf him, pounding the back of his head. My fists come down in crushing blows and I hear the scuffle of feet in the hall after his screams. I dig around his face with my fingers, turning his head, hoping to find his eyes. I think of Maze dying. Everything in me works to destroy him. Sets of hands rip me away and I’m thrown back into the wall. Two Fathers pin me down and I watch Father Gold rise. He grabs at his neck and looks at me.

            “You will meet God barely alive,” he says. “Barely alive.”

The first punches cause my eyes to swell until I cannot see. And then, the blows hit my gut and my neck. The pain shoots through me, and I bite my lip until the salt of blood runs along my tongue. He pounds and pounds until I can’t focus any of my consciousness any longer. A warm numbness envelops me and then there is nothing but soundless thuds as he beats me, each hit devoid of pain. When I think I’m finally nearing death, he suddenly stops the beating and they all leave but one. Father Gold whispers something I cannot understand. A single set of eyes remains, a calm-faced Father to watch me from the corner. But I can barely see any longer, and I close off my mind to everything and lie still.