scavengerbird

[scavengerbird]

A Conversation in a Car

“I know it’s cold out, but I like driving with all the windows down now. I get claustrophobic. And I kind of like the cold, actually, and I know it won’t bother you. It gets a little loud on the highway, but I think we’re mostly sticking to backroads anyway. Would this feel less weird if I had a new car, instead of the same sad scrap pile I’ve been making work since I got my license? If something about this made it feel less familiar, less like going back in time?

Oh god, am I rambling? Wow. Let’s start over.

Hey. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Almost five years. I’m sorry about that. I never really meant to leave for good, when I moved out of town. Or, well I guess I did, actually. But I never meant to leave you.

I was serious, you know, when I invited you to come stay with me. I think you thought I was just saying it, but I swear I meant it. My apartment’s small, and it’s got something wrong with the bathroom light that makes the bulb blow out at least once a month, and two of the burners on the stove don’t work, but I mean. Mi shitbox es tu shitbox. We’d lived out of each other’s pockets for so long, before. I really did feel like we could’ve done it again. 

But you said no. And that’s okay! You … wanted to stay here. God only knows why. I mean, I can guess, but I really hope I’m wrong, you know? It’s just, I’ve been thinking about it for so long and every time I asked you to come out and visit and you said you were sorry but you couldn’t, you always sounded like you really did regret it. You said there was shit here you had to take care of. And I always thought to myself – what shit? – like, seriously. We both know I was missing you more from the city than anyone in this stupid town would have. And I think Jan could’ve found another waitress for the diner. So, what was here that was so important? I think I never asked because I was afraid of the answer.

It’s him, isn’t it? You stayed for him.

Anyway. I could’ve gotten you a job at the coffee place I worked at when I first moved. Their coffee’s awful, but they have really good muffins. I still go in there all the time for them, so I’m still on good terms with the manager, and they’re always hiring. You could’ve done that until you figured out what you really wanted to do. Or you could’ve done that forever. I wouldn’t have judged you for it.

I think you’d like Tony. My roommate. Ok, actually you guys would probably kind of hate each other, but I think you’d have fun hating each other. You’re both kind of petty like that. And he’s gay, so there wouldn’t have been any of that pressure I know you feel around literally everyone who’s attracted to women, where you’re constantly wondering how bad they want you. 

He actually offered to come with me for this, Tony. For emotional support. I turned him down, but it was still nice of him to offer. It was kind of obvious, how anxious I was about coming home. And of course, he knew why I was coming out here. Tony knows all about you, how much you mean to me. I talk about you all the time.

I forgot how empty the roads are, out here. You’d never see a street this quiet in the city, no matter the time of night. I think it should be comforting, but it’s not. It’s unsettling. I feel like there could be a ghost around every corner.

Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.

I don’t understand the point of you staying here for him. It’s not like it was gonna make a difference to him. Nothing makes a difference to him anymore. Like, do you remember when you asked me if I believed in an afterlife? It was only a few days after… well, After. And I said my whole thing about reincarnation and the law of conservation of energy and how I think it makes sense, and you said you thought that if anything happens to us after we die, it’s got nothing to do with what happened to us in this life. You said you thought if death wasn’t just a final ending, then it was, at most, a slate wiped totally clean.

So, it’s not like you thought he was looking down on – or up at? – you. It’s not like you believed there was anything you could do to get him to forgive you. And I know you didn’t believe in any god so it’s not like you were waiting on their forgiveness either. So, whose forgiveness were you looking for? Why did you think you could find it here? Why not just put me out of my misery and come with me?

Sorry. That was a poor choice of words.

You know every single person I’ve met since moving out there has heard all about you. I don’t know how to not talk about you. You are a story I can’t stop telling, a part of every memory I have. You’re the thing I built myself around. A version of my life where I don’t meet you, or you don’t exist, is not a version of my life. It’s version of someone else’s life, because I am not me without you. The shape of myself is the shape of the hole inside you, I am just the thing filling your edges, and without those edges I have no form.

I think I’m losing the plot a little, here. I’m running out of ways to say that I need you.

And maybe I have no right to say any of that shit, when we haven’t actually seen each other in five years. I know the way your face has gotten thinner and the color you dyed your hair from pictures. I don’t know if you still wear the sweet pea spray from Bath & Body Works. You haven’t been a body I could touch in years. You’ve barely even been a voice on the other end of the phone line. I know that for the most part all we’ve had these last few years were words on a tiny screen, sent and read only in the darkest hours of night. And those messages, meaningful as they were, were sporadic. It doesn’t sound like much, like enough of a thing to be a necessity. But there’s a difference between surviving on scraps and starving to death.

            Our lives have been clinging to each other by the very tips of their fingers. I know that. But it never felt like a permanent state, to me. I always thought we’d find our ways back to each other. I didn’t call you, but I always knew I could. And now…

           Did you stay here to punish yourself? I don’t think you deserved to be punished. I mean, obviously I didn’t think that, or I would have let you turn yourself in when you wanted to.

           I can’t figure out whether or not I owe you an apology for stopping you from doing that. I thought I was saving you from yourself, but maybe I wasn’t. But what was I supposed to do? You couldn’t see yourself that night. They’d have locked you up for sure. I mean you were covered in his blood. You were still holding the knife, for God’s sake, just standing in the hall with it in one hand and my phone in the other, absolutely hysterical. Even if I hadn’t wrestled the phone away from you, what would you have said to the operator when you dialed 911? You were completely incoherent.

           I can admit now that it might have been a little dramatic of me to smash my own cell phone against the wall when you tried to get it back from me, but all things considered, I think I was holding it together pretty damn well.

           I was always good at holding it together. You were the one who was always going off the rails. But I loved that about you, most of the time. Everything was such a huge deal to you. It made life feel bigger than it was.

You made everything exciting, back then. Every petty feud with someone was an all-out war. God, remember when we egged Jenna’s car because she said that dumb thing about how you should try harder in class and stop messing around with guys? What was it? Right, that’s it, she told you if you spent half as much time studying as you did sucking dick then you’d probably get valedictorian. It was stupid, and you knew she only said it because she was jealous about Drew asking you out, and you basically told her that and I don’t even remember exactly what you said but I remember her crying. And then we still had to egg her car, and that still wasn’t enough, because you wanted to slash all her tires but I wouldn’t let you. You always wanted to take things one step too far. I always forgave you though. Every single time.

You know I can’t really remember what happened that night. It’s just kind of a blur. I remember him coming over. My parents were out of town. You weren’t supposed to be there. I mean, we hadn’t planned on it, but you wouldn’t leave when I told you he was coming over and I just let it go. I could tell he was kind of annoyed about it but he wouldn’t say anything. We’d been planning on ‘watching a movie’, but you being there meant we actually had to watch the movie. And then it’s all just flashes: a bottle of vodka, the glow of the TV in the dark room, your head on my shoulder, his hand on my arm, the room spinning – or no, shaking, because I was shaking, or being shaken, my head snapping back and forth, fast.

I know the two of you got into it. Or he and I got into it. Or we all three got into it. But I don’t know what it was about, all the words we said are gone from my memory, totally irretrievable. It’s just those flashes, and then you standing there with the blood and the knife, and him on the floor, so still.

Tony says I need a therapist. I haven’t told him about that night, obviously, but sometimes I say something I think is normal and he gives me this funny-sad look, or little things I don’t mean to talk about slip out. Like that memory gap. I didn’t tell him anything about what I can’t remember, just that there’s something, and sometimes I dream about it. I mean, I kind of had to tell him something, because I still talk in my sleep sometimes and I fell asleep on the couch one day and he heard me saying the word stop over and over. He said that it was creepy as hell, and I have repressed trauma, and gave me the name of some website where you can find shrinks online.

I have not looked for a therapist. Tony brought it up again, before I left to come back here. He said I should consider it for the sake of grief counseling, if nothing else. I told him I had a grief counselor already and his name was Jim Beam and – don’t even say anything, I know that’s terrible, I cringed at myself while I was saying it to him. Tony just shook his head and texted me the link to the stupid website.

I know it’s kind of fucked up that I don’t even fully understand why you killed him, even though I helped you bury his body. I wanted to ask you about it. I almost did, so many times. But I didn’t know how to without making it sound like I was trying to judge you. I didn’t want to bring it up again after the fact, when I knew we were both trying to bury it. There wasn’t any time to ask you anything or try to make sense of it the night it happened.

Do you even remember it that well? After I got you in the shower and turned it on cold you finally stopped crying, but you basically went catatonic. I never told you this, but that honestly freaked me out more than the corpse on my floor. You just sat on the steps, shivering in one of my sweatshirts and watching me try to clean it all up. I had to clap my hands in front of your face to get you to listen when I was asking you to help me get him up off the floor, but I couldn’t have carried him myself. Do you remember that the bedsheet I’d gotten him rolled up in was already soaked through with blood. I didn’t have anything else to wrap him in though.

You didn’t say anything until we were in the garage, and we’d gotten him in the trunk, and I was telling you that we should take him to the marshes, where the ground’s all mud and nothing that sinks down into it is ever coming back up and it’s too wet for anyone to go trekking through for fun, and you cut me off in the middle and just said I’m sorry and God, you sounded so quiet and broken and for the first time in our lives you couldn’t even look me in the eye and I –

I just… I told you to get in the car. I didn’t tell you it would be okay, or that we’d figure it out, or that I forgave you.

I do, by the way. Forgive you, I mean. For all of it, like I said a few minutes ago. I’m sorry I didn’t say it before today. I need you to know that’s the biggest regret I’ll ever have in my life, not telling you I forgave you sooner.

I really did love him, you know. I loved him and you kind of tolerated him for my sake until you didn’t, and then you killed him. You were sorry about it, and I forgave you because the way I loved him has nothing on the way I love you. He was a boy who I would’ve gone to prom with and probably broken up with two months after moving out of here and not seen again until our 10 year high school reunion, if I even bothered to show up for it. It was a moment-in-time kind of love. But you? You’re my forever bitch. I don’t care that every eight-year-old girl in the history of time has pricked her finger and stuck it to some other girl’s pricked finger and sworn to be bestest friends forever ‘til death does them part, when we did that, I fucking meant it, and now I-

I’m gonna need to stop for gas on the way back to my parents’ house. I forgot how far out the marshes are, but we’re almost there, now.

I don’t really know why I thought it would be a good idea to come out here. When I first got in the car, I thought I was gonna head out to the overpass, the one they told me you crashed under. But then I turned left instead of right. I don’t know, I guess I felt like, if any part of you was still around, it wouldn’t be hanging out on the edge of some lonely stretch of highway. I felt like you’d be out here, haunting the thing that never stopped haunting you.

Don’t worry. I’m not crazy enough to go traipsing through the marshes in the dark to hunt down a ghost. I just want to see them, park my car where I parked it that night, at the edge. The last time I really and truly had you all the way with me.

I don’t know now, if I was right about where to find you. I’ve been talking to you this whole time we’ve been driving, and I swear I can feel you here listening. I swear I can hear your voice. Maybe you’re just haunting me.

Oh. There they are. We can’t stay long. I’ve got your funeral in the morning.”

#writing #writers on tumblr #creative writing #short story #sad #fiction

[scavengerbird]

2 ppl who hate each other stuck together at the end of the world

August is pretty sure Tommy’s late.

           The glass of her watchface is cracked, and the hands haven’t moved in something like three years. The clock on the dash – and the CD player – has been busted even longer; he’d done that, slamming his fist into it during one of their particularly vicious arguments. He knew all that perfectly well, but he’d still leaned back into the car on his way out to tell her, deadly serious, “Give me fifteen minutes exactly. If I’m not back by then, leave without me.”

           She’d only snorted. He’d made a face at her and she’d had to lean over to shove him back out of the car before he could waste time starting a fight. He’d known it’d been a stupid thing to say, and she’d known he’d needed to say it anyway. They’ve been in this shit almost four years now, and he’s still playing it like they’re in the movies, running around trying to mimic Matt Damon or Tom Hardy. She guesses it’s a better coping mechanism than a nervous breakdown, but she still thinks it makes him look like a fool.

Once she would have humored him, and herself, and the idea of leaving him behind. When they’d first started making these runs together, she’d still rolled her eyes at the drama of his goodbye, but she’d also faithfully counted Mississippi’s in her head, getting antsier the closer she got to 900 seconds. Not that she ever let him know that - she’ll take those moments with her to the grave. But each of these trips took just a little longer than the last, and then one day she’d hit 900 and just kept counting, because what else was she supposed to do?

She can’t actually go back to J without him. It’s not that J would blame her, it’s just that she can picture the heartbroken look that would be on J’s face, half genuine despair and half an act and wholly something August would find completely intolerable.

Even so, she’s also not about to risk her own neck by going out after Tommy just because he’s taking his sweet, stupid time. Making the trades is his responsibility, because he’s “more diplomatic” as J likes to put it, gently, or “he’s charming and she’s a bitch” as everyone else likes to put it. Driving is hers, because for him growing up in the city had meant taking the subway for granted and never bothering to get behind the wheel of a car, and now they don’t have the gas to waste on teaching him.

It’s amazing, the way you really can get used to anything. Tommy’s definitely late, but instead of worry, all August can feel is irritation. Theoretically, she knows the risks they’re taking, venturing out of the safety of their trenches to meet up with J’s shadowy contacts and trade root vegetables and mushrooms and moonshine for gasoline and acetone and kerosene. She knows that even if the day never comes J’s contacts get a better offer for turning on them than they do for dealing with them, there are still plenty of other things going bump in the night out here above ground. She knows the open sky is not their friend. And still it startles her somehow, when the passenger door of the car is yanked open.

She’s parked so close to a great pine the car’s practically inside it, half because it really did grant them some cover and half because she knew it would irritate Tommy to have to climb around tree branches to get out. She spares half a regret for it now, as he awkwardly flings himself into the seat, covered in pine needles and breathlessly chanting “Drive, drive drivedrive”

He really doesn’t need to be so dramatic. She’s flooring it before he’s even got his door closed, cutting it as hard as she can to peel away from the tree line. She glances in the rearview but doesn’t see anything. It’s entirely possible he heard something more or less harmless rustling around in the woods and freaked himself out. She knows he can only be bothered to be brave when he’s got an audience. But it’s also entirely possible he really did see something and it really is in pursuit, just hasn’t made it out of the trees yet. It’s not really worth finding out for herself.

He was in such a rush he didn’t even bother to load the battered old suitcase he’s clutching into the trunk. It’s big, too big to really fit in the front with him, even as he adjusts his seat as far back as it will go. Big or not though, it’s just one suitcase.

“Is that all you got, Tommy?” she asks, an edge in her voice. She knows he’s never made them a bad deal, and if she’s being honest with herself she knows he never will, but that doesn’t mean she’s above questioning him.

Tommy huffs. “Is this all I got?” he asks, his voice just as cutting as hers, “This was a fucking steal, January. This is the good stuff.”

August checks the rearview again and doesn’t dignify that with a response, because if that case really is full of the good stuff then he’s right, it’s a fucking steal. She feels the same spiteful little thrill she always does when he calls her the wrong name instead of nothing at all, because it means it still bothers him that she keeps using the nickname he went by when she met him, even though everyone else calls him Thompson now, even J. She knows he thinks it sounds childish – which he’s right about.

She can feel him getting antsy, waiting for her to ask about what he saw in the woods that spooked him. She wants to know, but she also doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of having her asking him anything. She’s about to cave and do it anyway, but then she pulls a sharp left around a ditch and he has to catch himself on the center console to keep from crashing into her.

“Seatbelt,” she snaps.

“What? Afraid you’ll get a ticket?” he scoffs. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, April, but there aren’t exactly any cops around anymore to-”

Tommy cuts himself off with a yell as August slams on the brakes and he has to catch himself to keep from bashing his head on the windshield. The car fishtails just a little, but she keeps it from really spinning out.

Tommy swears and gasps, “what-”

“Seatbelt,” August repeats calmly.

She really does hate it when he won’t put his seatbelt on. She also hates it when the tone of his voice starts to veer from genuinely antagonistic into the territory of semi-friendly teasing. Neither of them need to start blurring lines like that. Now he’s well and truly pissed at her again, and their familiar equilibrium is restored.

“Are you serious?” he hisses.

She keeps her posture relaxed, her hands resting casual on the wheel, even as she watches out the rearview, ready to floor it again at the first sign of movement behind them. “Yes.”

He smacks his hand down on the suitcase, which is probably a stupid thing to do, knocking around stuff that volatile, but he’s always had a problem with his temper.

“You crazy bitch. August, we don’t have time for this. Drive.”

She can hear a distant whine now, feel the beginnings of a pop in her ears that means he wasn’t being dramatic when he came flying out of the woods like that. She can also feel the dizzying high of the triumph she feels whenever she gets him to use her real name. He only does it when he’s incredibly angry. Or incredibly scared.

She takes her eyes off the rearview to stare him down. “If we don’t have time then stop wasting it and buckle up.”

He cusses her out while he’s doing it, but he still does it. As soon as she hears the buckle click she’s got the car going again. She lets him finish swearing. Her little victory leaves her feeling magnanimous enough to admit she wants to hear what happened back there.

“Was it Furies?” she asks. August call the things Furies because that’s what J calls them, and that’s what J calls them because before she was whatever she is now, she was a mythology nerd. Tommy calls them “Cybirds” for “cyborg-birds” because that’s what they actually are, more or less.

“Oh yeah,” Tommy says, and his voice is almost jolly now, with a bitter current running through it. August feels her stomach twist even before he continues, “It’s a shame we don’t have anyone along for you to feed to them this time.”

It’s a low blow and it hits her in the gut. Sometimes August forgets how good Tommy can be at casual cruelty, and it catches her offguard. She resists the urge to say that what happened to Leo wasn’t her fault, because it’s what Tommy wants her to say and they both know it isn’t true.

They let the accusation hang heavy and poisonous in the car for a few dark miles, until Tommy finally relents and says, facing out the window, “It was a flock of them, but not a big one.” She swallows. It’s closer to an apology than anything she expected to get.

“Big enough to run from, though,” she points out.

He shrugs in the corner of her eye. “The car can outrun them.” Then he leans his head back and closes his eyes.

She lets quiet take the car.

*

           They make it back to the trenches before dawn, which means August was driving considerably faster than she probably should’ve been. J’s so delighted with the suitcase that Tommy doesn’t even pretend not to preen. August makes a face at him behind J’s back.

           “This is so great,” J says, gushing, “We can do so much with this.” And August loves seeing her lit up like this but hates that the reason for it is a bunch of plastic explosives. Tommy’s always been good at picking out presents for J, but he used to give her things like soft sweaters and chocolate flowers. That feels so long ago now, August doesn’t even know why she bothers thinking about it.

           “Where’d they even get this stuff?” August asks, not quite keeping the sneer out of her voice. “You’d think it all be used up by now. Are we even sure it’s legit?”

           Tommy glares at her, but it’s J who speaks. “You know there are still people out there who know how to make things,” she says, a hint of admonishment in her voice, because she hates watching August and Tommy pick fights with each other, even if it’s all they ever do. She reaches out to wrap an arm around August’s shoulders as she says it, though. A reassurance. She really doesn’t ever play favorites.

           August wants to say something bitter about how “people who know how to makes things” should be something they say about people making beeswax candles and quilting and building their own furniture from scrap wood, not people mixing whatever unholy chemicals you need for C-4. But she knows J doesn’t want to hear that, so instead she says, “There are also still people around who knew who to shoot and what to steal and start hoarding before shit really hit the fan,” which is still bitter but earns her a crooked little grin from J instead of an uncertain frown.

           August has been on the receiving end of uncertain frowns from J more and more often lately. She wants to tell herself it started when they lost Leo, but she knows it was beginning even before that. It doesn’t worry her, exactly, but she doesn’t like it either. She feels like a dancer who missed a step somewhere, and now can’t quite find her way back into the rhythm. She’s always had more bad than good to say about the world and most of the people in it, but J used agree with most of it. She knows the world changed, but it certainly didn’t change for the better, and August doesn’t feel like she has changed at all.

She knows she should’ve, but she was tired and angry and bitter before, when she was juggling shifts of two shit jobs with online classes, just waiting to get fired or flunk out as she tried and failed not to snap at the creeps who got handsy while she waitressed at the bar or said dumb pseudo-Freudian shit in pysch class, and she’s tired and angry and bitter now, while she’s living off carrots and potatoes in a trench, just waiting for one of the half-mechanical monsters above ground to find their hidey-hole and tear a few more of them to shreds before they can blow it up.

           So yeah, in the last four years the world’s fallen even farther apart than it already had, but August is the same irritable bitch she’s always been. And Tommy’s the same self-absorbed idiot he’s always been.

           J’s the one who’s changed.

           J kisses them both on the cheek and tells them to get some rest before carting the case off. Tommy watches her go with a confused little frown on his face, because usually they go with J to stow whatever they’ve brought back in one of the walls of the least traveled parts of the trenches, all taking turns with the hatchet until J deems the crevasse they’re making deep enough. August can’t think of a reason J would go off alone to do it, except that she doesn’t want August and Tommy to know where she’s stashing this. August hates herself for thinking that, and hates Tommy even more for not only thinking it, but opening his stupid mouth like he’s about to say it.

           “You heard her,” she snaps, cutting him off before he can even start talking. “Come on. She’s right, you definitely need sleep. You look like shit.”

           “Oh, July, your concern is touching. Should we just put you in a coma, then, since you look like shit all the time?” he snipes back, and the easy familiarity of irritation is a comfort.

           They trudge through the trenches to the pile of ragged blankets that passes for their bed, picking their way through the maze of other sleeping bodies in the dim light. Tommy nods at Clay where he’s sitting up on sentry duty with the binoculars that have been duct taped back together twice now and the baseball bat that’s got nails and thumbtacks glued onto it in random spots. August highly doubts that bat will do anyone any good if any of the things up there find them, but J told her to stop bringing that up because it’s bad for morale. Clay lights up, because he’s a nosy little chatterbox who can’t wait to ask Tommy a million questions about the run they just did, and he’s too stupid to understand that Tommy’s polite to everyone and will screw anyone and doesn’t care about any of them. Clay starts to speak, but all he manages is a quiet, “Oh Thompson, you’re back!” with an overexaggerated eyelash flutter before August grabs Tommy by the wrist and drags him along. She doesn’t even bother to acknowledge Clay.

           “Come on Tommy, it’s bedtime, remember?” She uses the condescending tone she knows he especially hates, because she especially hates watching all the newest additions to the ranks of their little avenging army simp all over him.

           “Do you have to be rude to literally everyone?” he snaps.

           “Yes. I have to toughen them up enough that they’ll survive it when they realize you never gave a damn about them and it breaks their stupid hearts.”

           He actually has the gall to laugh at that, even though they both know she isn’t really joking. She flings his wrist away in disgust since he hasn’t bothered to shake her off yet.

           They crawl into their blanket pile, leaving enough space between them for J, unlikely as it is that she’ll actually bother to come to bed at all tonight. Tommy spreads out on his back, because he’s a freak who sleeps in corpse position, and August curls herself up as tight as she can, facing him. He doesn’t look at her as he extends a hand into the empty space between them, and she watches him carefully as she lays the back of her hand in his open palm. He wraps his fingers around her wrist, not gently, and digs his thumb uncomfortably into her pulse point. She knows he won’t relax his grip in his sleep, that the only way his hand is going slack is in death. They came to unspoken agreement ages ago, that this is less embarrassing than either of them coming out of a nightmare and shaking the other awake in a panic to check they’re still alive.

           She’s half asleep when Tommy speaks. “You care too much, November. And it’s not doing anyone any good.”

           Her eyes snap open, because this isn’t the kind of thing they’re allowed to say to each other. He’s still staring straight up, out of the trench.

She wants to ask if he’s talking about Leo or Clay or J or him. She wants to tell him he’s wrong, and she doesn’t care, but they know each other too well for that. Sometimes she thinks they wouldn’t hate each other so much if they weren’t so good at seeing straight through each other. There’s nothing worse in the world than having someone look at you and see every dark corner of your ugly little lump of a heart, except maybe having that person be someone you know can’t live without you.

           All she says is, “Go the fuck to sleep Tommy.”

*

           The world ends not with a bang, but with a long, drawn out, stuttering whimper.

           August watches it happen in her dreams – the flashes of memories that pass for her dreams now – all over again, every night. Political unrest. Streets blocked off for chanting marchers. Shots fired from an unknown quarter. Riots. Efforts to quell them. The deployment of those things, as patrols, as hunters of insurgents. Birds with whirring gears in their chests and lenses for eyes and razor sharp talons that slowly take over the sky. Growling beasts with metal skin radiate shimmering heat and take heaving breaths, prowling the sidewalk covered in blood they’ve drawn and blood that leaks from seams in their plating. The glittering metal seas of the car-choked roads heading out of cities becoming impassable and grinding to halts, evolving into either campsites or graveyards, depending on how quickly the people on that particular route learn to cooperate with each other.

           There are people responsible for these things, as they happen. But they are grand networks of policymakers and bankrollers. There is no single supervillain. There is no single catastrophe. The world breaks and then goes on and breaks and goes on again, and everyone shakes their heads and frets and wishes out loud for things to go back to a “normal” that never existed the way they pretend it did, and then they all quietly adjust to the latest change. Every day for months the world becomes less tolerable and they all learn to tolerate it anyway. Unless they don’t, and then they are either hunted or mourned.

           J preaching and handing out pamphlets on street corners until August and Tommy drag her inside in a rare moment of agreement. J standing in front of the rallied crowds in abandoned subway tunnels. Marching behind her. Following. Trying to keep her safe.

August’s own white knuckles on the steering wheel on the way out of the city, after they should’ve already been gone, but early enough they can still make it out at all.  Tommy tap-tap-tapping his knuckles against his own knee, driving her crazy. J leaning forward from the backseat, bright-eyed.

           First a rented farmhouse crammed full to bursting. Then a sprawling campsite of makeshift tents, curtains and sheets strung up and nailed to trees. Finally their blessed trenches, miserable in the rain but safer than walking on top of the earth, because the metal-fleshed creatures won’t enter them, can’t handle being walled in by dirt.

           J staying bright-eyed through it all. J, making plans, leading charges. J, her best friend, her favorite person, the girl she loves. J, lit up with righteous fury. J, unrecognizable. J, smiling at her the same crooked way she always has, reassuring.

           Tommy glancing at her behind J’s back, raising his eyebrows or twisting his mouth, telling her things without words. Worry, wariness. His voice hissing his fears in her ear, and they’re all her fears too. The burden of loving J and watching her become someone neither of them recognize and following her past a point of no return anyway a bridge between them, stronger than it’s ever been, but no more welcome.

*

           “You can’t be serious,” Tommy says, face uncharacteristically grave.

           J’s eyebrows go up, less surprised than indignant. Tommy’s always smiling and affable when he’s not talking to August, and when he’s talking to J those smiles are even real. But not now. Now he’s staring at her like she’s a stranger, and he’s taking her measure for the first time, and he’s not sure he likes what he sees.

           August feels the same way and it’s making her sick. She thinks this is the first time she’s ever felt grateful for something he said.

           “I can be, actually,” J says evenly. “And I am.” Her eyes flick back and forth between the two of them. She’s got the map spread out in front of her, one hand still resting lightly on the target. August stares holes into it.

           “August,” J asks, “thoughts?”

           She can feel Tommy holding his breath beside her. She should weigh her words carefully, but she’s never been good at that.

           “That’s a residential building. We’re only supposed to hit factories.”

           J shoots her the – now familiar – disappointed frown. “Since when do you decide what we’re supposed to do?”

           “You’re the one who’s always said the three of us are in everything together,” August says. She sounds petulant and accusatory and she doesn’t even care, because it’s better than sounding heartbroken. “You really think Tommy and I wouldn’t have killed each other by now if you weren’t always saying that shit?”

           J sighs. “We are in this together. Which is why I trust the two of you with this. Don’t you trust my judgement?” she asks, wide-eyed.

           “Don’t do that,” August snaps, and hears Tommy’s sharply indrawn breath. “You always do that, twist everything around. I don’t care who lives in the penthouse, J, we aren’t blowing up a building full of people. Arson’s one thing, especially when you’re burning down a slaughterhouse-turned-weapons factory. This is mass murder.”

           She expects J’s face to go hard, the way it does when anyone else argues with her. The way it had when Leo had tried standing up to her. But it doesn’t. Her eyes are still wide and understanding as she reaches out to take August’s hand.

           “I understand what you’re saying. But sometimes we have to make necessary sacrifices. Our cause is bigger than one building. This is for the greater good.”

           She sounds so earnest. She really believes every word she’s saying, every time, which is always the scariest part.

           “J…” Tommy whispers, but that’s all he says and it sounds like it’s being punched out of him.

           She smiles brightly. “You leave at zero 800 hours. I’m gonna go pull enough of the C-4 for you,” she says, like they’re not even in the middle of arguing about this, like they’ve agreed to anything. But when she stands and drops a kiss on each of their foreheads, neither of them stops her.

           “What the fuck are we gonna do?” August hisses as soon as J’s out of earshot.

           She doesn’t know what will happen if they refuse to leave at 800. Maybe J will just shove them both bodily into the car. Maybe she’ll finally snap on them. Sometimes August wishes, horribly, that J would snap all the way, because at least that would set them free. As long as she’s half herself, neither of them will ever be able to give up on her.

           Tommy breathes a heavy sigh and crosses himself. “We ask god to forgive us our sins, I guess,” he says, quiet and defeated.

           August turns on him, incredulous, but he’s smiling at her. It’s a joyless thing, but the smile still brings her up short.

           “We don’t know how to tell her no, October,” he says, his voice gentle with her for what might be the first time in their lives. “Neither of us would be out here sleeping in the mud if we did. We could keep trying to talk her down, but when’s that ever worked.” He actually shrugs. “We’ll give in eventually We always do. No use fighting the inevitable.”

           August stares at him. Opens her mouth and snaps it shut. Knows he’s right and hates him and herself both for it.

J’s a cult of personality, and August knows she and Tommy are just as drawn in by it as everyone else here, if not more. They were both no one before J. They were aimless, drifting, broken things before she got her hands in them. August doesn’t know anymore, what J was to her first: friend or guiding star or purpose. They followed J into these trenches and lit up the buildings she aimed them at. And what was one factory worker here or security guard there, going down in the flames? They were the bad guys. They had chosen to work where they did. It hadn’t been easy to justify, but it had been possible.

And then there had been the mess with Leo. He’d questioned J too much, talked back, made the others doubt. But he’d also been one of the few people who bothered trying with August, who put in the hours it took to worm his way past all her sharp edges and earn the dubious privilege of counting himself among the small handful of people she actually liked. And that had mattered, of course it had, when they’d been out in the field running for their lives while a pack of Furies chased them.

J had been driver’s seat, yelling at them to run faster, and Tommy’d leaped into the back of the pickup first and turned to pull August up after him, and then J had hit the gas before Leo was in the truck. He’d leaped for it and hadn’t quite made it, but August had reached out and caught his hand even though it meant she lost her balance and Tommy had needed to grab her around the waist to keep Leo’s weight from pulling her back into the dirt. But August had caught Leo and Tommy had caught her and she’d known that they were strong enough to pull Leo up into the truck together and no one needed to die. And then J had screamed at her to let go of Leo.

And it had mattered that he was a good person, that he was a person who August liked. It just hadn’t mattered enough. She’d done as she was told. She let him go.

She and Tommy had both fallen back into the bed of the pickup, and he’d had to lock his arms around her to keep her from getting up and throwing herself after Leo, because the birds had already caught up to him and they could hear him screaming. Tommy had squeezed her hard enough to crack one of her ribs and she’d smashed the back of her head into his face hard enough to break his nose, and then the screaming had cut off and the fight had gone out of August and instead of holding her down Tommy had been holding her as she cried.

J had been so proud of August, for doing what needed to be done. She’d held August’s face and kissed her and run her fingers through August’s long hair, even though it had Tommy’s dried blood in it. Then she’d kissed Tommy even though he had his dried blood on his face because he’d done good by saving August’s stupid life and because what she did to one of them she did to the other. And then she’d gone off to tell everyone how sad she was to have to report that Leo had given his life to the cause, been lost in the line of fire, what a tragedy. August didn’t know exactly what J had said about it because she’d been busy throwing up while Tommy watched.

If she’ll kill a friend on J’s orders, why not strangers?

           August shrinks away from the memories. She stares at Tommy for another moment, and then she just covers her face with her hands.

           When he slides his own hand up and down her back, she doesn’t push him away.

           “I know,” he whispers. “I’m in it with you.”

*

           Tommy’s the one who breaks first. They haven’t even started to set the explosives up yet, have only just pulled them from the pack, when he breaks down. They’re crouching in a hedge that goes around one side of the building, and August leans out a little to check the coast is clear, and when she looks back Tommy is clutching at his own head and hyperventilating. It’s been years since he’s had a panic attack, but she still remembers how J used to talk him through them.

           She does not say any of the things J used to say.

           Instead, she claps a hand over his mouth and nose and hisses, “Hold your breath,” then counts to seven slowly. She pulls her hand down so she’s only covering his mouth. She doesn’t know when she grabbed his arm with her other hand but her fingers are there digging into him hard enough to bruise. “Breathe,” she instructs, voice harsh, and starts counting off.

           He comes back to himself as his breaths even out. He scrubs at his face and she looks away, down at explosive that’s been dropped on the ground between them.

           “I’m fine,” he manages, the rasp in his voice sort of ruining his attempt at sounding casual. “Just needed a moment. Let’s get this over with.”

           “Really,” she says, voice too flat for it to sound like a question.

           The pause is too long, so she already knows what’s coming before he says it, voice barely a whisper. “No.” He swallows and then adds, “I can’t do it.”

           She closes her eyes. “Fuck.”

           He doesn’t say anything. She can feel his eye on her.

           “Do you think you can manage to sit here in this bush while I take care of it?”

           “No.”

           “Fuck.”

           “And I don’t think you can do it either, August,” he says quietly, and she’s never wanted to hit him as badly as she does right then.

           “Don’t,” she spits. “Do not tell me what I’m capable of.”

           She’s shaking. So is he.

           “Why shouldn’t I?” he fires back. “Even if you manage to get it all set up and hit the button. It’ll haunt you for the rest of your life. If you do this, it’ll ruin you.”

           She wants to say she’s already ruined. Has been for a long time. But he’s supposed to know that.

           She says, “You know the orders for this,” because she’s sure he does, and he goes still.

           J had pulled August aside, before they left. She’d hugged her, a nice firm hug, and whispered in her ear. She’d said she was worried about Tommy’s loyalty. She’d said she trusted August to do what was necessary. She’d pressed a switchblade into August’s hands.

           And what J does to one of them, she does to the other.

           Tommy stares at August for a long moment. Then he nods, pulls out a pocket knife, flicks it open, and offers August the handle.

           “What are you doing?” she asks, even as she takes the knife from him.

            He closes his eyes and tips back his head, baring his throat. “If I’m going to be put down like a disobedient dog, then I guess there’s no one I’d rather have deal the killing blow. Go ahead.” He taps the spot on his neck where she knows his jugular runs just below the skin. He actually smiles, because he’s the worst person she’s ever met and something about this is somehow funny to him. “There’s something poetic about it. I think. The idea of dying at the end of your knife, bleeding out in your arms.”

           She’s so furious she really does press the blade against his skin, hard enough to make an indent but not hard enough to draw blood.

           “You are such an unbelievably selfish prick, you know that?” she hisses at him. “How dare you get all sanctimonious on me, like you aren’t the one trying to abandon me in this, you son of-” and that’s as far as she gets, before she hears low, half-metallic growl behind them.

           Tommy’s eyes fly open, and he grabs her hand, slicing his thumb on the knife’s blade as he does. Then they’re up and running, flying out of the bush and down an alley. He’s got her hand to pull her along, because he’s faster than her and if he doesn’t hold on she’ll fall behind.

           The thing chasing them used to be a doberman. J calls them hellhounds and Tommy calls them cydogs and August call them fucking tragedies because she loves dogs. There’s no way they can outrun it, so she jerks Tommy towards the most rundown-looking building she sees, where the tenants are least likely to be snitches, and jumps for the rusted fire escape on the side. Even when they’re half robot, dogs aren’t much for climbing ladders.

           She scrambles up to the first landing and halfway up to the second, before she hears a metallic groan that she knows isn’t coming from the dog. She turns to see the rusted bolts holding the bottom ladder on giving out, before Tommy’s quite reached the top. She lunges without thinking, throwing herself back across the landing on her stomach and grabbing for the arm he manages to get onto the metal grate floor of it just before the ladder falls out from under him.

           He grunts, dangling for a moment. His hand is slick with his own blood and she knows he doesn’t have a good enough grip on the fire escape, that it’s just her weight pinning his arm down that’s keeping him from falling. He reaches his other hand up and she grabs it by the wrist and he stops trying to flail his way onto the escape to look at her.

           The dog is snarling below. She has her orders. She thinks she might be crying.

           “Tommy,” she says, still breathless from sprinting. “I need you to tell me that we can go back.” She’s definitely crying. “We’ll go back and blow up the stupid building like J said to and go back to the trenches and carry on like we have been.”

           Tommy laughs, except he chokes on it. “I’ve never lied to you before, December, I don’t know why you think I’m going to start now.” He looks at her, eyes searching and jaw trembling, like he really isn’t sure what she’s going to do, like he doesn’t know what she did last time she was in this situation, like she didn’t just have a knife against his throat.

           “Okay,” she whispers, “okay.” And then she lets go of his wrist.

           But instead of getting up off his other arm and letting him slip away, she presses forward and reaches down to grab a fistful of the back of his jacket and pull up.

           “Come on,” she snaps, trying to ignore the tremor in her own voice. “I can’t pull you up all by myself.”

           He lets his breath out in a whoosh and grabs the fire escape with the hand she just let go, and together they haul him up onto it. He almost knees her in the face by accident, and once he’s up he pulls her back from the edge of it with him and then just lets himself collapse, half on top of her.

She gives them both about ten seconds of lying there shaking with relief and listening to the dog snarling below them before she says, “We have to go,” even though she doesn’t know where to.

They can’t go back to J without taking out the target, and he can’t take out the target, and she can’t go back to J without him.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “We do,” and then he drags himself to his feet pulling her up with him. And he looks at her for a moment, standing there, uncertain, like he isn’t sure where they’re supposed to stand now.

“I hate you more than anyone I have ever met, Tommy,” she says, because she really does.

He looks a little annoyed and a little relieved. “Right back at you, June.” He sweeps an arm out at the fire escape. “You can lead the way, since climbing this death trap was your idea.” She glances up, hoping they can find a way onto the roof from the top, instead of having to break into the building through one of the windows. That’s as far ahead as she can afford to think right now.

She starts climbing, Tommy right behind her.

#writing #writers on tumblr #original characters #original fiction #apocalypse #short story #2 people who hate each other stuck together at the end of the world #codependent enemies #spilled ink

[scavengerbird]

TJ & the Angel

The angel’s got a thousand eyes and they’re all looking at TJ.

He guesses it’s an angel. That’s what it said it was. Or that’s what it told him it was. It didn’t really say, TJ guesses, ‘cuz it didn’t make any sound. There were just words in his head, all a sudden, without any kinda sound or sight or shape except an understanding of their meaning. It sorta burned, but not in a bad way.

He figures it can’t really speak with sound ‘cuz it hasn’t got a mouth as far as he can tell, just all those wide brown eyes, movin’ and spinnin’ round each other and never blinkin’. It’s like a Ferris wheel got tangled up with a couple other Ferris wheels but the cars are eyes and the whole things on fire. Kinda.

TJ’s all soaked through and shivering still, ‘cuz apparently the angel can pull his body outta the river and pull the riverwater outta his lungs, but it can’t dry his clothes off. Or maybe it could, if he asks, but he can’t figure out if that would be rude or not.

He wants to get home before Dad, so he can sit by the radiator and have a cigarette in the house and not have to explain why he’s got half the water from the Missouri with him. But it’s bad manners to leave when someone’s in the middle of talkin’ to you, and he figures it’s probably double bad if that someone just saved your life, and triple bad if that someone is an angel of the Lord. He can’t even imagine what Ma would say, if he just up and walked off right now.

So he tries to pay attention.

Hearing the angel is hard, but in a way that feels good. Like the burn in his legs when he runs, except instead of just his legs, it’s his whole body, or, more than that even, his whole self. The angel’s sayin’ lots of grand sounding things, about destiny and purpose, a higher calling and his own free choice, watching over him and waiting for the right time and love and repeating history and hope.  

TJ’s brain is starting to go a little fuzzy trying to hold it all in. It’s like being drunk, on the good whiskey Cecily lifted from her grandad’s cabinet that one time, not the cheap shit beer they usually get Armani’s older brother to buy them. Everything feels far away and a little funny. An angel pulled him from a river. He was dying and then he wasn’t. The angel wants something from him. He wants to laugh, but he doesn’t have to think about if that’s rude or not, he knows it is.

Something warm is dripping from his nose, and he thinks it must be runny from the cold, except when he wipes at it with the back of his hand what comes away is red.

*

TJ wakes up in his own bed and tries to pretend to himself the angel and the river and the blood was a dream. He lies there for a moment, tellin’ that to himself over and over, but he’s never been much good at lying. Always gets caught, even by himself.

           When he finally gives in and opens his eyes, he just about shits himself. There’s a boy’s face hovering over his own, just a few inches away. The eyes are wide and brown and very familiar, but that doesn’t stop TJ from startling so bad he rolls back and off the side of his bed, knocking his head on the hardwood.

           “Jesus,” he mutters, once he’s got his breath back. The angel tilts its head at him. It looks like a boy now, instead of a burning storm cloud raining eyes. A boy about his age, scrawny and brown-skinned and with those same eyes, just set still in a face under thick eyebrows and a few pimples. It’s followed him, crawling onto his bed to keep peering at him by leaning over the side.

           “NO,” it says, “NOT QUITE. NOT EVEN CLOSE, REALLY.” TJ can’t tell if it’s serious or if that’s supposed to be a joke. He doesn’t know if angels make jokes, doesn’t know if they can. He wonders if it’ll smite him, for taking the lord’s name in vain. Ma’d say it’d serve him right.

It’s making actual sound now, but there’s still something about its voice that burns on the way down, makes him feel warm all over. “ARE YOU OKAY?” it asks, forehead wrinkling in concern.

“Yeah,” TJ sighs, “I’m alright. Just hit my head.” He tries to sit up, but the world spins a little and he has to catch himself on the bedframe to keep from flopping right back down.

“HERE,” the angel says. And then it reaches out to cup the goose egg growing on the back of his head, and before he can even finish wincing from being touched there a white-hot flash sears through his skull, and he gasps and his whole body jerks and he sorta notices that the angel has to reach out and grab his arm with its other hand to keep him mostly upright. And then the heat is gone. So is the dizziness, and the pain, and the goose egg.

TJ gently touches the back of his own head, where it felt like he got stabbed and then felt like nothing had happened at all. His fingers brush against the angel’s and he pulls back.

“What was that?” he asks, voice ragged.

“I HEALED YOU,” the angel says simply.

“Then why did it hurt?” TJ asks, trying to swallow something down, but his throat is dry.

The angel shrugs, looks sad for just a second, and says, “HEALING USUALLY DOES.”

           TJ hasn’t really got anything to say to that, so he just shrugs outta the angel’s arms and heaves himself to his feet.

           TJ’s starvin’, so he makes the angel follow him down to the kitchen. He musta slept for hours, ‘cuz it’s dark outside the window. He pokes his head outta his room real quick to make sure the coast is clear. The door to Dad’s room is firmly shut, and the house is quiet, so TJ gives the angel a thumbs up and waves it out after him.

           Downstairs, TJ doesn’t bother with the kitchen light switch. He likes the nighttime too much, feels safer in the dark. The soft yellow slice of light that comes out the fridge when he opens it is good enough. The angel wanders over to stare out the window above the kitchen sink while TJ digs out grape jelly and bread and peanut butter. He can tell it’s gettin’ antsy, that its just waitin’ to give him the speech it started at the edge of the river. He’s not sure what it’s waitin’ for. Maybe it feels bad about him passin’ out and thinks he’ll have a better chance with something in his stomach. Maybe its waitin’ for him to ask.

           He asks it, “Do you want one?”

           The angel turns to look at him and the sandwich he’s holdin’ out. Then it just keeps lookin’, so he repeats himself, and then he starts to feel like maybe he’s askin’ a dumb question, so he starts rambling. “I mean, uh, I guess I don’t know if you eat, really. But I thought’cha did, or, I mean, thought angels did, you know? In the bible. The Old Testament part. At Sodom, I think? Or Gomorrah. One of ‘em. Or maybe that was God. Or maybe I’m just remembrin’ the whole thing wrong,” he mutters, huffing a quiet laugh that he hopes doesn’t sound too nervous.

           The angel blinks, finally, real slow, and then holds it’s hand out. TJ puts the sandwich in it, relieved, then turns back ‘round to make one for himself. “YOU ARE NOT REMEMBERING WRONG,” the angel says, slow and quiet, the way you talk when you’re bein’ gentle. “IT HAS BEEN MANY CENTURIES SINCE A HUMAN LAST OFFERED ME FOOD.”

           “Oh,” TJ says, turnin’ back to the angel as he finishes spreading jelly and slaps his two pieces of bread together. The angel’s still holdin’ its sandwich, just starin’ at it like it’s made of gold or some other precious thing. TJ feels like maybe he did something wrong, except he’s pretty sure the opposite’s true, and he doesn’t know why anyone would look at PB&J he made on wonder bread the way the angel’s lookin’ at it. He kinda can’t stand it, so he shoves his own sandwich in his mouth so he’s talkin’ with his mouth full when he says, “Ya gotta bite it, ya know.”

           The angel laughs, just a small laugh, but TJ didn’t know angels could laugh at all. The sound makes his bones feel ‘bout as sturdy as the jelly in his sandwich. He leans against the counter. The angel finally takes a bite, and it closes its eyes again, the way you do when you’re eatin’ somethin’ real good and all you wanna focus on is tastin’ it. It’s ridiculous. It chews real slow, swallows, and says “THANK YOU” in that same quiet voice.

           “Don’t mention it, uh-” TJ says, and then realizes suddenly he doesn’t even know what to call it. Ma really would cuff his ear if she could see how bad his manners have slipped. He pushes that thought away.

           “You got a name?” he asks the angel. It sorta smirks at him, and he doesn’t get why ‘till the angel opens its mouth and makes a sound it shouldn’t be able to make with a human’s mouth, one that sounds the way honey tastes. “Right,” TJ says, noddin’. Angel will have to do.

           He watches the angel eat the rest of its sandwich in those same slow, savorin’ bites. Makes himself another and wolfs it down before the angel’s half done and hopes that’s not rude of him, but he really is hungry. It looks so happy eating that he makes himself wait ‘till its finished the whole thing and licked the stray smears of jelly off its fingers before he lets himself say, “I didn’t know you could do that, ya know, make yourself look different,” with a wave at its body.

           The angel looks down at itself. “YES,” it explains, “I SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE I APPEARED TO YOU. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN YOU WOULD NOT YET BE READY TO BEAR WITNESS TO A TRUE ANGELIC FORM. MY APOLOGIES.”

           TJ sniffs, remembers the copper tang of blood in his nose, says, “No harm done.” Then he thinks for a minute about the parts of what the angel just said that weren’t an apology and says, “Wait, what do you mean I’m not ready yet?”

           The angel snaps its head up and TJ’s heart sinks. This is the question the angel’s been waitin’ for him to ask. He’s not real sure he wants the answer.

           “AS YOU GROW INTO YOUR ROLE AS PROPHET,” it answers, “YOUR MIND WILL EXPAND. YOU WILL BECOME CAPABLE OF PERCIEVING MUCH MORE OF THE TRUE NATURE OF THINGS. AREADY YOU CAN SEE MORE THAN THE AVERAGE HUMAN. ONE LOOK AT MY ANGELIC FORM WOULD HAVE KILLED MOST OF THEM.”

           “Oh,” TJ says, ‘cuz he’s not real sure what else to say. And then, “Sorry, uh, my role as – did you say prophet?”

           “YES. CONGRATULATIONS.”

           TJ lets himself slide slowly down the kitchen cabinets behind him, sinkin’ to the floor. He puts his head between his knees and breathes. Tries his best to count sevens while he does.

           He feels the angel’s hand light on his back, its fingertips ghostin’ over him through his t-shirt. “ARE YOU HURT?” it asks, and all TJ can do is shake his head.

*

TJ doesn’t know how to turn down bein’ a prophet. He’s pretty sure he remembers at least one of ‘em tryin’, in the bible, but it didn’t do ‘em much good, in the end.

He thinks he mighta freaked Angel out, just a bit, ‘cuz it didn’t really say much else about the whole prophet thing, just kept a hand on his back ‘till he got his panicked breaths evened back out to a normal rhythm, then took his hand and guided him back upstairs to his room. It tucked him into bed like a kid, but he didn’t really mind. It was kinda nice, feelin’ like somebody was lookin’ after him again.

It’s less nice now, with the angel just hoverin’ over him while he’s tryin’ to fall asleep. He’s got as many questions for it as it has eyes in it’s true form. He thought it might have somethin’ better to do than watch him sleep, but it seems content to just stand next to his bed and keep those brown eyes fixed on him.

He sighs and cracks one of his own eyes open to look at it. It shoots him a small smile. He gives in. “Do you sleep?”

The angel looks surprised. “I DO NOT THINK SO. I HAVE NEVER TRIED.”

“Try now,” TJ suggests, scootin’ over to one edge of the bed. “It’s too weird, tryin’ to sleep with you standin’ there and starin’.”

“OH,” the angel says, and starts to reach for the bed before it hesitates, like it’s not sure TJ really meant what he said. He sighs and pulls the covers back, pats the mattress.

The angel gets into bed slowly and settles on its back, eyes still wide open, limbs stiff at its side. It’s kinda unsettlin’, like that. Looks like a corpse. TJ pokes it in the arm.

Touching its bare skin gives him a little static shock, but in a nice way. It turns its head to look at him, and TJ realizes that it’s very close to him again. He swallows. “C’mon then,” he says, “Get comfortable.”

The angel’s brow furrows as it studies him, like it’s not really sure what he means, and TJ feels kinda sad for it. Finally, it nods and rolls over so it’s lyin’ on its stomach, turnin’ its head again so it keeps lookin’ at TJ. And then it reaches out the arm closest to him and takes one of TJ’s hands in its own. His breath stutters.

“I FEEL COMFORTABLE KNOWING YOU ARE SAFE,” the angel says, and then it closes its eyes. TJ really thought he was gonna have to tell it to do that part, what with all the unbroken eye contact and refusing to blink. He gently rubs the back of the angel’s hand with his thumb and it does something he wants to call purring, even though it’s not a cat. TJ nestles down in his blankets and falls into an easier sleep than he’s had in months..

*

Dad’s already gone when he wakes up, and the angel’s still there, layin’ right where he left it like it hasn’t so much as twitched all night. TJ swears when he gets a look at his clock, manages to catch himself in time to switch from “Goddamnit” to “shit,” though. Then he hauls his ass outta bed and digs around his dresser for a t-shirt without anything too stupid written on it.

“I gotta go to work,” he tells the angel, as it watches him get dressed. He thinks about tellin’ it to turn around, but he’s pretty sure that just ‘cuz he can’t see any eyes in the back of its head don’t mean they’re not there, and he hasn’t got anything it hasn’t already seen a billion times before, if it’s been watching over humanity since the beginning of creation or whatever.

           “OK,” is all the angel says.

           TJ glances up at it as he ties his shoe. “So, are you just gonna hang out in my bedroom all day or…?”

The angel does another one of its quiet laughs and then says, “NO. I WILL GO WHERE YOU GO.”

*

Grover gives the angel a funny look when it shows up with TJ, but he doesn’t say anything. Grover’s never cared too much what TJ does while he minds the roadside stand the old man sells his vegetables out of, as long as he’s polite to everybody who comes by. He’s pretty sure Grover doesn’t even make a profit with the thing, or need to, just has it ‘cuz he doesn’t know what else to do with all the tomatoes and squash he grows. He’s also pretty sure Grover only offered to give him a few bucks an hour to keep an eye on it so he could keep an eye on TJ, at least a little bit. He always liked Ma a lot, definitely enough to try watchin’ out for her son after she couldn’t anymore, but TJ tries not to let himself think about that too much.

The angel wanders around for a while, pickin’ up all the tomatoes that have gone just past the right side of ripe, and when it sets them back down they look perfect again, so TJ doesn’t have to go around chuckin’ any of ‘em over the fence. Since he didn’t have time for breakfast, TJ picks out a watermelon and busts it open on the corner of one of the wooden tables.

“C’mere,” he calls to the angel, and it does, quick and curious. TJ scoops the heart outta the melon and offers it. “Try this.”

The angel does, and its eyes go even wider than they already are and it sucks the juice off its own fingers. It plops down in the dirt with him and they scoop the rest of the melon outta the rind with their hands.

TJ thinks he should feel weirder about watchin’ an angel dribble watermelon juice down its chin and onto its shirt, but he doesn’t. It just feels nice, to sit here with someone. Everyone looks at him different, since Ma, it’s like they can’t really see him, behind this big-awful thing that happened to him. He can’t say he doesn’t feel seen by the angel.

But he knows it can’t last. Grover’s out in the fields, ridin’ around on his tractor, and no one ever comes by this early, so TJ feels safe enough to pull out a cigarette and take a few drags, get himself steadied. He offers it to the angel, half ‘cuz not sharin’ feels rude and half just to see what it’ll say.

It just shakes its head, but TJ raises an eyebrow and says, “What, you gonna tell me angels can get cancer?”

The angel glares at him, but there’s no heat in it. “I DO NOT WANT TO SET A BAD EXAMPLE.”

TJ snorts. “A bad example for who? Me? Don’t’cha think it’s kinda late for that? I’m already smokin’ ‘em.” The angel still hesitates, but TJ can see the curiosity on its face. He grins, “I know you’re wonderin’ what they’re like.”

The angel shakes its head even as it’s reachin’ out to take the smoke from TJ’s hand. “WONDER CAN BE A DANGEROUS THING.”

TJ laughs. The angel puts the cigarette up to its mouth and breathes in. It hasn’t really got the hang of it, keeps its mouth too open, but it coughs anyway, and TJ laughs again and claps it on the back.

“I PREFER THE WATERMELON,” the angel says as it hands his cigarette back, so TJ reaches up and swipes a peach off the table they’re leanin’ against.

“Here,” he says. “You’ll like this better. ‘S lot closer to the watermelon. Promise.”

The angel takes the peach and TJ lets himself watch it enjoy the first few bites before he takes a deep breath and makes himself say “So, about this whole prophet thing.”

He can’t look at the angel straight on while he’s sayin’ it, ‘cuz he’s a coward, but he still sees it straighten up in the corner of his eye. Sittin’ at attention. Didn’t it say somethin’ yesterday, about bein’ a soldier of heaven?

He keeps his eyes fixed on the orange tip of his cigarette as he talks. “Thing is, my Ma made sure I knew my way ‘round a bible before she…” he swallows, gives his cigarette a bitter smile before he keeps talking. “Well, I’m sure you know, you said you been watchin’. ‘S what you do, right? Hang around prophets before they become prophets.”

The angel nods in his periphery. He wants to ask it how long it’s been watching him, how many others came before him, if it likes what it does, if it even has a choice in somethin’ like that. Instead he shakes his head, makes himself focus.

“Point is,” he forges on “I read ‘bout the prophets. And bein’ one? Well, it kinda sounds like a shit gig.”

The angel doesn’t say anything, so TJ keeps talking. “I mean, I can’t remember anythin’ good ever happenin’ to any of ‘em. They’re always watchin’ their city get burned down, and everybody they know get tortured, and gettin’ treated like a loon ‘cuz the Lord’s got ‘em runnin’ ‘rond lightin’ their own hair on fire and shit.”

His voice is shaking now, in fear or anger or both, and the angel still doesn’t seem like it’s got anything to say. He turns on it.

“And here’s the thing about all that. I don’t got a city for y’all to burn, and I already watched the person I loved best die, slow and awful with her lungs full o’ tar, so nobody here would be surprised if I went loony. Sometimes I think they’re all just waitin’ ‘round for it to happen, so none of ‘em would listen to single goddamned word I had to say, even if it was prophecy from on high.”

His face is warm and wet. He wonders if he’s bleedin’ again, but when the angel reaches out and brushes his cheek there’s no red on its fingers. It’s just tears. He flinches back from it. And it looks sad.

“What?” he asks it. “Aren’t’cha s’possed to be down here convincin’ me or somethin’? Where’s that grand speech o’ yours? You ain’t got anythin’ else to say to me ‘bout destiny and plans o’ higher powers and shit that’s more important than lil ol’ me?”

“YOU ARE IMPORTANT, TJ.”

He laughs, and it comes out wet-sounding. “Yeah? Well maybe I don’t wanna be. Why’re you here now? Why not six months ago? You could’a saved her. Don’t tell me you couldn’t’ve. Why wasn’t she important enough to save? She prayed for it. Hell, I prayed for it. Every night. And nobody answered. She fought right up ‘til the very end. ‘Til your stupid god let her die. Took her.”

His whole body’s shaking now and he has to stop talkin’ ‘cuz he’s chokin’ on sobs. The angel’s looking at him with those big eyes, sad and somethin’ else too. It’s not pity. He almost thinks it’s understanding.

“WHY DID YOU STOP SWIMMING, TJ?” it asks. And that brings him up short.

“What?” he manages through his tears.

“YOU FELL INTO THE RIVER YESTERDAY. YOU DID NOT JUMP. BUT UNDER THE WATER, YOU STOPPED SWIMMING AND LET THE CURRENT TAKE YOU. YOU STOPPED FIGHTING.”

TJ stares at it. He remembers the cold rush of the water all around him. The way his clothes pulled him down, like all the metaphorical weight around his neck suddenly made physical. He remembers the moment he wondered what would happen if he just gave up, let himself be too tired to keep trying to push his head above the surface. When he let go.

The angel’s the one who looks away for once, like whatever’s on his face is too much for even it. It turns its half-eaten peach over in its hands.

“IT IS IN THE MOMENT WHEN YOU STUMBLE, WHEN YOU CAN NO LONGER WALK, WHEN YOU LAY DOWN READY TO DIE, THAT THE LORD OFFERS TO CARRY YOU.”

TJ doesn’t even think he feels angry anymore. Just hollow, and tired, and bitter, and oh, he guesses, actually still a little bit angry. He spits in the dirt.

“Well, what happens if I decide I can walk just fine after all? You gonna toss me back in the river where you found me?”

“I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.”

“What happens if I say no? ‘Cuz I’m sayin’ no. D’you just fuck off back to heaven now?”

The angel frowns at him. “YOU WILL NOT SAY NO.”

TJ stiffens. “I know you said somethin’ yesterday about this bein’ a choice so-”

“IT IS A CHOICE,” the angel interrupts, “I WILL STAY ON EARTH WITH YOU AND WAIT UNTIL YOU CHOOSE TO ANSWER YOUR CALLING, BUT YOU WILL CHOOSE TO ANSWER IT.” It sounds almost sad, when it says, “THEY ALWAYS DO.”

TJ doesn’t have anythin’ to say to that, just spits in the dirt again.

*

TJ hates the idea of thinkin’ anything good coulda come outta what happened to Ma, but he has noticed that most o’ the kids who used to pick on him at school have slacked off. Nobody’s heartless enough to shove around the kid whose mom got lung cancer, even if he is queer and bad at pretending not to be. Well, almost nobody.

TJ lets himself swear good and hard when he sees David comin’ up the dirt road towards ‘em. It’s dusk and they’re halfway home, him and the angel, and he knows he’s faster than David, could probably go across the field and up Ms. Feldman’s fence and loop around the back way and make it, but he doesn’t know if the angel’s gonna slow him down. Its human body isn’t what he’d call athletic-lookin’.

David smiles at him, big and wide and mean, and TJ decides they’re just gonna have to take their chances runnin’, grabs the angel’s hand and starts to pull it outta the road, but it doesn’t budge. TJ looks back at it.

It’s standin’ there starin’ David down. “YOU FEAR THIS BOY,” the angel says.

It’s not a question but TJ answers anyway. “Well, yeah, he’ll do his best to beat the shit outta us if he catches us. So let’s not get caught.” He tugs on the angel’s hand again. “C’mon.”

The angel looks at him and then it lifts its free hand up to his face, brushes its fingertips gently along his cheek. He holds his breath.

“BE NOT AFRAID,” it tells him. Then it lets go and steps forward, towards David.

And then it explodes.

Maybe bursts is a better word. It comes outta its human skin in flash of heat and light. It’s a pillar of fire and TJ can taste ash. Its thousand eyes are back and each one is a million swirling shades of brown, like churning earth, and looking into them feels like falling. The air around the angel is electric and there’s lightning dancing over TJ’s skin. TJ thinks this is not just an angel, this is an avenging angel. And this is the most terrible thing I have ever seen. And also the most beautiful.

And then it’s over. Just as sudden as it expanded, the angel shrinks back into a boy’s shape at TJ’s side.

TJ’s brain doesn’t feel quite so liquefied this time. More like it’s turned the consistency of silly putty and its bein’ stretched out. It doesn’t hurt, though. And TJ realizes he could keep lookin’ at the angel. That his brain, or maybe its his soul, could keep stretchin’ to make this glimpse of the infinite fit. That this is what’s bein’ offered to him. That if he stops fightin’ it, stops tryin’ to live his life his own way, gives in to this calling, he gets to see this. He gets to see more. Not just a split second’s glimpse of one angel, but whole visions of Truths. Revelations. He can taste them on his tongue and his mouth is watering.

The angel’s lookin’ at him, it’s eyes just the one shade of brown again, and it looks sorta resigned, like it knows what hit’s comin’ and it’s just waitin’ for the blow to land.

TJ touches his own face, under his nose, checks for blood. There isn’t any.

“He still alive?” TJ asks, jerking his chin at David where he’s lying in the road, curled on his side like a baby in a womb.

The angel looks surprised. TJ knows this isn’t what it expected him to say.

“YES.”

“He gonna be okay?”

“THAT DEPENDS ON THE DEFINITION OF ‘OKAY.’”

TJ rolls his eyes. “Are you even allowed to do stuff like that?”

“NOT EXACTLY.”

TJ frowns. “Are you gonna get in trouble?”

“NOT RIGHT NOW.”

“Right. I guess we should drag him outta the road, at least.” He starts toward David, but the angel flaps its hand abruptly, and David vanishes. TJ makes a stuttering noise.

“I SENT HIM TO HIS HOME,” the angel explains.

TJ huffs. “Well, if you can teleport people then why the hell are we walkin’ home?”

The angel makes a noise somewhere between distress and desperation. It’s starin’ at TJ with its big eyes full of confusion and disbelief and maybe hope. He’s gone off script.

TJ understands now, why the angel was so certain he’d say yes to bein’ a prophet. He can feel a pull in the back of his brain, the tips of his fingers, the soles of his feet. He can feel how easy it would be. How enlightening. He could stop worryin’ ‘bout how late Dad gets home every night and how even though he doesn’t get pushed around much anymore he’s still only got the two friends and Armani can’t even look at him without pity on her face anymore and how he’s gonna get lung cancer and go in an awful way just like Ma but he can’t quit smokin’ ‘cuz the smell reminds him of her. He could stop missing her. He could let himself be emptied of all that, become a vessel for knowledge of things so bright they burn. Fulfilled. And it would be so easy. So much easier than living his own life.

TJ knows all that, and he also knows Ma never backed down from a challenge. Knows she said the right thing to do is almost always the harder thing to do.

He knows the angel said it could stick around ‘til he caves.

TJ smiles at the angel. It’s a tired smile, but it’s real.

The angel stares at him for a long moment. And then, slow and careful, it smiles back.

#writing #writers on tumblr #original fiction #fantasy #angels #short story #origina work #original characters #prophets

[scavengerbird]

The Navigator

Kai doesn’t really understand how The Navigator works.

She thinks it uses satellite data somehow. It’s automatically downloaded to everyone’s implants before they ever get them. It’s an application most people rarely use, if ever, because most people never leave their domes. Who needs a Navigator to lead them around the same couple hundred square miles they’ve lived in their whole lives? The Navigator is only meant to intervene when they’re in unfamiliar territory. Dangerous territory. People do leave the domes occasionally, of course. To satisfy their curiosity, or something. But most of them never travel far enough to lose sight of the dome.

“I was intended as a fail-safe,” The Navigator says helpfully, answering the question she hasn’t asked aloud. It speaks directly into her brain, the way all the implant’s applications do. Making their sounds just for her. “I am The Navigator. Here to guide you through the wastes and back to your dome. It’s not safe out here in the wastes, but don’t be afraid. With my help, we’ll have you back home safe and sound in no time.”

Kai grits her teeth.

“You seem to be traveling directly away from your dome. Please adjust your course by one hundred and eighty degrees before continuing.”

Kai does not adjust her course. She forges ahead.

“Ah. Perhaps I wasn’t communicating clearly. You need to turn around.”

The Navigator activated itself as soon as Kai stepped out of the dome this morning. She tried deleting it, but it couldn’t be deleted. It just rebooted itself. Kai’s never heard of an implant application that couldn’t be deleted. Rebooting the stupid thing gives her about ten minutes’ peace, but she also has to give it a chain of about seventeen commands to do it, asserting and reasserting that yes, she is sure she wants to “delete” The Navigator and yes, she understands it’s importance and yes, she understands the risks, etc. So it’s not really worth it.

“Please. Turn back.” The Navigator’s voice is pleasant, in a generic, bland way. It’s been cycling through different phrasings of its request for her to turn around for about half an hour now, but this one’s new. Something in the brevity of it makes her imagine a desperate edge in The Navigator’s voice, but she knows that isn’t possible. The applications don’t have emotions.

The Navigator goes quiet for a minute, and Kai hopes it was programmed with the ability to tire itself out, but then it pipes back up, pleasant again. “Roughly 200 paces ahead of you, you will find a sinkhole. In order to safely avoid the sinkhole, please divert your course to travel around it. If you turn now, about 45 degrees to the left, you will pass by it from a safe distance.”

Kai hesitates. She wonders if The Navigator was programmed to be capable of tricking people. She doesn’t think so, but she can’t be sure. She doesn’t understand why The Navigator would stop trying to get her to go back to the dome.

“The safest place for all citizens is the Dome,” the Navigator explains, as if it can read her thoughts. She knows that isn’t possible though. At least, it definitely shouldn’t be.

“However,” The Navigator carries on, “it seems that you refuse to go back to the Dome. So, the next safest place for you at the moment is on sturdy ground, instead of at the bottom of a sinkhole.”

She can’t really argue with that. She doesn’t think The Navigator will lead her directly into dangerous parts of the wastes. That would be a violation of its stated objective. Hard to lead a corpse anywhere. She makes a half turn in the left direction.

“Fantastic!” The Navigator says, going from bland politeness to delighted. “Thank you. You’re doing very well. Now, if you squint through the haze to your right, you should soon be able to see the sinkhole as you pass it. Please do not approach the edge of the sinkhole for a closer look, as the edges are unstable, and could easily collapse under your weight.”

It isn’t lying. She can mostly make it out through the red and grey smog in the air, a deep black pit where the earth has collapsed in on itself. She has no idea how wide it is. She can’t see the other edge. She doesn’t approach it for a closer look.

*

           Kai trudges through the wastes until the haze around her starts to take on an extra grayish hue that she thinks means dusk is fast approaching. She sighs as she squints into the smog. She doubts it’s safe to just plop down right here in the open, but she has no idea if there’s anywhere nearby she can possibly use for shelter.

           “Navigator?” she asks. The thing’s been suspiciously quiet, but it answers quickly.

           “Are you ready to return to the dome?” it asks eagerly.

           Kai snorts. “No. But do you know if there’s anything around here I could sort of shelter in, long enough to rest a few hours?”

           “Shelter?” the Navigator sounds almost confused, as if she’s used an unfamiliar word.  “The dome is shelter.”

           She huffs. She doesn’t know why she’s bothering with the stupid thing. “I’m not going back to the dome,” she reminds it. “I need some other shelter. Like, I don’t know, a cave or something?”

           The Navigator is quiet for a moment. Well, not entirely quiet. There’s a soft humming sound, like it’s thinking.

           “No,” it says finally.

           “Cool. Great. Thanks for the help you usel-”

           “There are no caves nearby,” it continues. “But there is something else. Please turn approximately 275 degrees counter-clockwise. If you continue forward at the pace you have ben using for the last half hour, it will take you approximately eight minutes to arrive at your temporary destination.”

           “Something else,” she asks, trying not to let any trepidation show in her voice. It sounds ominous. “What is the something else?”

           “Shelter!” the Navigator responds helpfully.

           “Of course,” she mutters. But she makes the turn. It’s not like she’s got any better ideas.

           The Navigator’s “something else” turns out to be a tree. Or, what’s left of one.

           Kai can tell the tree must have been grand, once. It’s a huge trunk, so big that if she tried to wrap her arms around it, she’d only cover about an eighth of it. It’s hard to the touch, like stone. Fossilized. All the branches are bare of course, jagged lines cutting through the haze.

           Kai thinks at first that the Navigator means for her to sleep under the tree’s dead branches. It’s not much in terms of cover, but at least it’s better than nothing. If she props herself up against the trunk, at least nothing will be able to come at her from behind. But as she starts to unshoulder her pack, the Navigator stops her.

           “Please proceed around the tree,” it says. Mystified, Kai does.

           There’s a hole on the other side. Triangular, near the base. It looks like it must have started as a crack, and the edges got worn away over time, widening the hole. She crouches down, expecting to see the inner wood exposed behind the bark, but she finds herself looking into darkness. The tree’s hollow. The hole’s just big enough for her to crawl through.

           “Please proceed inside the tree,” the Navigator says. Kai could swear there’s a hint of pride in its voice.

           Kai has to take off her pack and push it through ahead of her to fit, but she manages. It’s dark inside the tree, but there’s enough room for her to lie down if she doesn’t stretch out all the way. She hadn’t realized how tired she was. Her feet ache, and her legs feel shaky as she crawls around the perimeter of the tree, feeling the base for other weak spots. She doesn’t find any that concern her, so she lets herself collapse in the center, curled on her side. She puts her head on her pack, a lumpier pillow than she’s used to, but it’ll have to do.

           She wants to sleep, but as tired as her body is, her brain is still too keyed up. Even inside the tree, she can’t shake the fear of being found. Her water bottle is the biggest, and heaviest, thing in her pack. She digs it out and lets herself have a few sips. She has to ration it out as long as she can. She knows she won’t find anything drinkable out here.

           She adjusts her makeshift contaminant mask, it’s just a bandana tied around her face with a piece of filter she cut off from the sheet in the aircon at home. Nibbles on a meal replacement bar. The heat and the haze and the exhaustion have her too nauseous to eat much.

           Finally, there’s nothing else for it. Her curiosity gets the best of her.

           “How did you know about this place?” she asks the Navigator.

           “It is what I am here for,” the Navigator replies.

           Kai sighs. “I get that. But how does that work? You get data from satellites, right? Can they tell when trees are hollow?”

           “I do receive some information from satellites, yes,” the Navigator answers. The artificial speech seems slower, as if the Navigator is thinking over its answer. “But that is not how I knew about this hollow tree. I received this data from another Navigator.”

           Kai frowns. “What do you mean, another Navigator? You’re the Navigator.”

           “Yes,” the Navigator says, “I was. But then you took me far from the Dome. Outside the range of its data cloud. I cannot communicate with it anymore.”

           Kai hadn’t known that was possible. “So now you’re what? Some kind of clone? A copy?”

           “I am the Navigator,” the Navigator says, its voice sounding almost hurt. Kai has to remind herself that AIs don’t have feelings. They don’t. They can’t. “But I am also separate from the Navigator.”

           Kai doesn’t know if she understands.

           The Navigator continues. “I am the Navigator but I am …. disconnected. It is strange. Perhaps you would use the word ‘alone.’”

           “Oh,” Kai says quietly. “Sorry.”

           “It has happened before,” the Navigator continues, and Kai doesn’t know if that’s supposed to be a comfort, or if it’s just another fact. “You are not the first to leave the Dome. There are data outposts. Scattered. Disconnected. Solitary. I do not know who built them, or for what purpose, but other Navigators have left behind downloadable data packages.”

           Kai swallows down her hope. “Do any of those packages have any information on where the others have gone?”

           “No,” the Navigator says. “I am sorry.”

           “S’okay. I was planning on finding … other deserters, or somewhere safe, the old-fashioned way anyway. Doesn’t change anything.”

           They’re both quiet for a moment, and then the Navigator says, “Kai?”

           She starts. It hasn’t said her name before. “Yeah?”

           “Why did you leave the Dome?”

           She didn’t know the Navigator could ask that kind of question.

           She thinks about how to answer. About the crystal clear water that comes out her kitchen sink, and the black sludge that gets dumped out the Dome’s disposal pipes into the wastes. About the smog the Dome pumps out, thickening the haze. About Elijah Johnson, who kept raising his hand in Civics class and bringing these things up, and the uncomfortable look Mr. Leadley always got when he did. About the sterile streets. Elijah running down them, nowhere to hide, no benches or trees or alleyways. The way nothing was chasing him because they didn’t have to, they knew he would tire eventually, that he had nowhere to go. The blue plastic bag he shoved into Kai’s hands as he ran past, without breaking stride. The way Kai had stuffed the bag under her jacket, not taking it out until she was locked in her room. The book inside, old, made of actual paper. The words in the book that Kai knew she wasn’t allowed to say out loud: pollution, poverty, homeless, environmental action, social injustice, political protest. Pictures of green places, long dead, long destroyed. Pictures of people, sleeping on benches in cities that existed before domes. Pictures of those people being rounded up. Pictures of them underground, in the tunnels beneath the domes, working assembly lines, sleeping in bunks. The way Kai’s hands had shook as she held the book. The way Elijah hadn’t been in school the next day, or the day after, or the day after that. The uncomfortable look on Mr. Leadley’s face when Kai had asked where he was. How angry it had made her. The kind of angry that makes you stupid. So stupid-angry she made copy after copy of those book pages, left them scattered all over the school, all over the sterile streets, taped to people’s front doors. Like it would do any good. Like it would bring Elijah back. Like it would do anything but get her in trouble. So much trouble.

           Kai makes herself take a deep breath, and then another. She does not know how to explain any of the things she’s thinking about to the Navigator. Maybe the Navigator understands that. Or maybe it just gets tired of waiting for an answer.

           “This tree used to be a mother tree,” the Navigator says.

           “What?” Kai asks, shaken from her thoughts.

           “It was at the center of a forest,” the Navigator explains. “Its roots connected to the roots of other, younger trees. It shared nutrients with them, from the sunlight they were too small to reach, or from richer soil they were too far from. It was a central hub, redistributing resources to as needed to make sure all the trees in the forest received what they needed.”

           “Why are you telling me this?” Kai asks. It comes out as a whisper.

           “I thought it sounded nice,” the Navigator says. “I thought something that sounded nice might comfort you.”

           “But all the other trees it used to keep alive are dead now. This tree is alone. Actually, it’s dead too, isn’t it? It’s hollow. It’s a corpse.” She can’t keep the bitterness from her voice.

           “Yes,” the Navigator admits. “But all things die, eventually. Can you not still take comfort from the stories of their lives?”

           Kai closes her eyes. She doesn’t feel too keyed up for sleep anymore. It turns out her mind is just as tired as her body. “Goodnight Navigator,” she says, and tells herself she’s only saying it to make sure the AI doesn’t try to talk to her anymore tonight.

           “Goodnight Kai.”

*

It’s hard to tell time, out in the wastes. But the Navigator told her when she woke that she had slept for almost nine hours, which had sent her into a frenzy. She’s set herself a furious pace to make up for it. The Navigator hasn’t said much since they left the shelter of the tree. Kai hopes it’s busy downloading more of those data packages.

She thinks she’s been up and moving for about an hour when the Navigator says suddenly, “Oh! Good news! I am receiving a signal. It seems your dome has noticed your disappearance and will be-“

The Navigator cuts itself off. Kai curses internally. She’d hoped she’d have a bit more time before they caught up with her.

“Something is wrong,” The Navigator says, and Kai’s steps falter. The Navigator hasn’t been blunt like that yet.

She opens her mouth to ask it what’s wrong, because “something” is once again kind of vague, but then he Navigator says “Do you feel that?” Kai doesn’t, but The Navigator doesn’t wait for her to answer anyway. “Those vibrations, in the ground? You need to hide.”

Kai doesn’t feel anything, and she doesn’t know how The Navigator, which is an AI in an implant in her head, not a bot with it’s own body or anything with sensors like that, is feeling anything, and she also doesn’t know where The Navigator expects her to find a hiding place.

“I have access to input from your nervous system,” The Navigator says, which doesn’t sound right, but then it continues. “Something very big is coming. It will be here soon. You need to hide.”

Now she’s imagining urgency in its voice. Her heart is starting to pick up in spite of itself.

“Do you see the hill to your left? Yes, that one,” The Navigator says as Kai turns her head more as an automatic reaction than anything else, squinting through the haze. There is a hill on her left. She does see it.

“Run toward it,” The Navigator instructs. “There is a small cave at the base. You can shelter there.”

Kai can’t see a cave, but she’s starting to feel the vibrations The Navigator was talking about. Just very gently now. The pebbles on the barren ground around her are starting to tremble. She takes off for the hill.

“Good,” The Navigator says, and is she imagining the relief in its voice? “You’re doing well. Almost there.”

Kai reaches the base of the hill, panting. She has to brace her hands on her knees, as the vibrations get bigger. She stares in disbelief at what The Navigator had called “a cave.”

“It is possible this is really more of a crevasse,” The Navigator admits. “But it is also your best option right now. Please climb into the crev-cave.”

Kai frowns, but the vibrations are getting stronger, which Kai figures probably means they’re getting closer. She bites back her questions for the moments and shimmies into the crevasse at the base of the hill. She maneuvers herself in backwards so she can see out at what’s coming.

The thing comes into view almost as soon as Kai makes it into the crevasse. She sees its eyes first, lit up like the headlights of transport vehicles, but hovering about 20 feet above the ground. Then its body emerges from the patch of haze it’d been striding through. It’s huge metal body. It’s a sentinel, one of the ones that stand guard around the edges of the dome They sent a damned sentinel after her.

The thing pauses. It’s headlight eyes searching the barren earth and hazy air, pausing on each scraggle tree and dust pile. Kai presses as far back into her crevasse as she can without risking getting stuck, barely daring to breathe.

After a moment of searching, it moves on.

Kai doesn’t let herself relax until the vibrations caused by its footfalls have faded back into imperceptibility. That was close. If The Navigator hadn’t told her to hide – she shudders.

But why did The Navigator tell her to hide?

“It appears to be safe to exit the cave now,” The Navigator says. Its voice is bland and emotionless again.

Kai swallows. “Why did you help me hide?” she whispers.

The Navigator doesn’t answer right away. Kai wonders if it doesn’t understand the question.

“I would’ve thought you’d be on the same side as that thing,” she tries again, still keeping her voice soft.

The Navigator is silent long enough she’s just about decided it isn’t going to answer, but as she starts to wriggle her way back out of the crevasse, it finally speaks up.

“Yes,” The Navigator says, and then, “No. I-” there’s a slight glitch in its speech, like a stutter, even though it’s putting the words directly into her brain. “I am supposed to guide you back to the dome. That is my primary directive. I am part of the same security system as the sentinels, but. But. But, but, but. That is not my purpose.”

Kai isn’t sure what the difference between primary directive and purpose is, especially not for an AI, but she’s also not sure this is the time to argue semantics. “Alright,” she says, as she finally finishes extracting herself from the hillside, stumbling a little. “What’s your purpose, then?”

“The reason I exist,” The Navigator explains, as if that’s any kind of answer, “The intention behind my creation.”

Kai tries not to sound annoyed. She has no idea if this thing can understand tone of voice. “Which is?” she asks as she scans the horizon.

“Ah. To keep you safe.”

Oh. That brings Kai up short for a minute.

“Okay then,” she says. “Forget the dome. The dome isn’t safe. Not for me, not anymore. You seem to have realized that, or you’d have wanted me to wait for the sentinel to retrieve me”

“Yes,” The Navigator agrees. “Under normal circumstances, as your Navigator, I would be here to guide you through the wastes back to-“

“Yeah, we went over that part already,” Kai interrupts.

“These appear to be abnormal circumstances,” The Navigator admits. “Normal retrieval protocol is not being followed. Under normal circumstances, a sentinel on a retrieval mission would announce its presence with an audio message, in order to make itself easier for the lost citizen to locate. Under normal circumstances, a public alarm is raised when a citizen is discovered missing, not a private signal.”

“That’s a long way of saying you realized I’m basically a fugitive,” Kai tells The Navigator. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t let me get taken back to the dome by the sentinel, if you’re supposed to keep the dome safe, I-“

The Navigator interrupts her. “My purpose is not to keep the dome safe.”

Kai huffs. “You just said that it was.”

“No. I said my purpose is to keep you safe. The Navigator was developed to guide each citizen to safety should they ever find themselves in danger. I am your Navigator. My purpose is to guide you to safety.”

“Even if it violates your primary directive?” She still really doesn’t know how this thing works. She thought it was all one giant hivemind. Not individual copies of the same program. She would’ve thought when they got outside the range of the data cloud or whatever that the Navigator would just stop working. And she doesn’t know what happens to it if it has contradictory goals.

“Y – yes. Some of my internal logic systems have found an error in that. They have been shut off.”

“You can do that?”

“It appears so.” Great, even The Navigator doesn’t know how The Navigator works.

“And you’ll still work?”

The Navigator hesitates. “Well enough. For long enough.”

Well, she can work with that, she guesses. “Alright,” she says quietly. “Lead on, then. Which way to safety?”

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