WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) Read online

  A Post-Apocalyptic Story by Joseph A. Turkot

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  Part 1

  Chapter 1

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

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

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

  “With the tower?” I ask.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Which has never been proven.”

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

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

  “The Fathers,” I say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Whic
h Father?” I ask.

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

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

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

  “I don’t want to know any more about how you got this,” I say, thrusting the map back into her hands. “Just tell me what’s so special about this map that we’re going to risk getting mauled again?” She leans down, her hair brushing against me for just a moment, the smell of spring flowers, and she grabs my arms and pulls me up so that I’m standing. Sand falls away from my legs, and before she even starts to tell me, as if she knows that I don’t need final convincing, she starts walking back toward the dunes, tugging me after her. Finally, her hand lets go of me when she knows I’m moving on my own, committed to the madness.

  “See this?” she says, holding out the map again. I look at the mesh of lines on the wrinkled yellow paper. Most of it looks like gibberish to me. But I see what she’s pointing at. It’s a tiny square drawn on with marker. Under it is written sloppily the word mirror.

  “Mirror. What’s that mean?”

  “I’ve been coming here alone for the past week. To watch the tower. And I’ve figured something out.”

  “Alone?” I say, half hurt she didn’t ask me to come with her and half angry that she’s been risking the dunes by herself.

  “I had to. I had a hunch, and I was right. I know I’m right,” she says as we make it to the first line of shrubs, small prickly mounds of tangled roots and grass. We find the thin trail snaking out of the dunes and back toward the heavier forest. I wait for her to keep explaining as we hit the shade, but she doesn’t. I have to prod her.

  “Are you going to tell me?” I ask, but she’s stopped. Her eyes have caught something behind us. She looks back at the tower.

  “What?” I ask, alarmed that she might have seen a wolf, or something worse—one of the Fathers.

  “Look. About three-quarters of the way up, before the clouds,” she says, grabbing my shoulder to turn me so that I can follow her pointing arm. The electricity of her touch runs through my body, and I almost want to pull away before I lose myself in fantasy, but then I have no problem releasing my desire for her—because as good as it feels that her arm is on me, I see what she’s pointing to. A small but bright reflection shining from the tower at a staggering height.

  “What’s that? It’s a reflection from the sun,” I say.

  “No it’s not. It’s a generator.”

  “Way up there, high on the tower?” I say, thinking we’re looking at two different things.

  “And it’s being powered by this,” she says, shoving the map forward again. Mirror.

  “So you think that a mirror is pointing at the tower?” I ask.

  “Not just one. I think there are a lot of them pointing at it. But we need to find one first before we can know for sure, right?” And confident that I’ve seen the reflection, she spins me around and we’re on our way again, deep into the woods.

  “I think I might have seen that reflection before,” I tell her. “I just never paid attention to it.”

  “I’ve seen it almost every time I’ve come. But here’s how I really know—the spot never changes.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask her, somehow finding myself starting to be drawn into her psychosis against my better judgment.

  “Why do you think I’ve been coming every day?” she says, climbing over a log in front of us and jumping off. I race over it to keep up.

  “Because you’re nuts?”

  “No—because I had to be sure. And I took measurements. And I’m right.”

  And then, all of the sudden, it’s like she’s no longer interested in conversation. She’s focused on the trail, taking each stone and log and rock in a quick hopping rhythm. And when we come to the split, the split that only we know is a split—that deep out there in the woods is a crumbling stone road—she looks at me and hands me a knife from her pocket.

  “It’s the best I could do. But it’s better than last time,” she says.

  “Maze!” is all I can get out. The shine alone on the metal produces a gut reaction of guilt. “The Fathers will kill us.” And all I can think about is a scripture verse, the one we learned through rote repetition like all the rest—this one more egregious than the others to violate, a part of the founding principles of the Fatherhood. In a Father’s voice, I hear a sermon—metal is the chiefest instrument of technology. Only the Fathers are permitted to touch it.

  “Don’t be dramatic Wills. We’re climbing the fences, too. What’s the difference?”

  I try to rationalize it and I realize she’s right—there isn’t much of a difference—holding a piece of metal is not such a big leap from touching it for a moment to climb a fence. And then, when I realize the handle isn’t even metal but some other kind of material, I feel at ease again.

  We cut through the overgrown woods until we find the stone road that snakes toward the Deadlands. She stops all of a sudden, and she must be thinking of the risks and the craziness of what we’re about to do, because she looks at me for one last measure of approval.

  “You sure you want to come with me?” she asks.

  It’s like she’s already drawn me into a trap, though—and asking me now leaves me with no choice but to go on. It’s like she’s asking just to absolve her own guilt. But what else can I do? I admit to myself. I’m in love with her. And I try to tell myself that that’s not the real reason I’m following her into the old city as I nod my head and clench the knife in my right fist. We fight the bramble together for almost twenty minutes until the road clears out—a road from ancient history, its stones laid down way before the Wipe. Something only we know about. But I’m not sure how much pride I should really take in the discovery—because somehow, despite the constant preaching of the Fathers to avoid the Deadlands at all costs, we are the only ones stupid enough to actually seek them out. Or should I say Maze is, and I am stupid enough to follow after her.

  Chapter 2

  As we wend our way through the last trees and exit into the field, it dawns on me that it’s Wednesday, the second most important service day of the week. I try to remember which Father is running the service today, and when I realize it’s Father Gold, I start to panic. But we’ve already made it to the edge of the field, and I don’t know how the hell I’m going to convince Maze we should turn back. In fact, I know I won’t be able to—but at least if I bring it up, I can find out how far she’s thought this through.

  “You know if we go all the way into the Deadlands, we won’t make it back in time for the noon service,” I tell her, doing my best to keep up now that we’re on the open road.

  “Of course we won’t,” she says, her head already twisting back and forth to survey the open terrain of the field—a meadow so long th
at we can see all the way to distant forests we’ve never dared to enter or even go near. I know she’s looking for signs of the wolves. The last time we did this, a wolf followed us from its den all the way to the fence. Maze hissed like a mad woman and raised her arms long and wide, and somehow, we escaped with our lives.

  “And Father Gold is giving the service you know. What are you going to do? I can afford to miss one, but this will be three for you in the last two weeks.”

  My thoughts fall back to Father Gold. Something makes me think he must have seen her spying from his roof, sneaking into his house. And he’s just waiting to use it against her, when he has enough ammunition to pull something really awful. My mind starts to go through what could happen to her. A worst-case scenario.

  “I’m not worried about it,” she says, starting a trot along the wide rectangular stones that join together to form the weedy lane beneath our feet.

  “How are you not worried about it?”

  “Because I’m just not, okay Wills?” she says, stopping abruptly and turning to face me. The look of anger, so rare for her, spreads like a virus into my gut. It fills me up with apprehension and anxiety, because I know I’m the source of her rage. But I have to say it.

  “I don’t want something stupid like this—like hunting for fantasies in the Deadlands—to get you into some serious trouble,” I say, trying to maintain a calm, caring voice. But she sees right through me. At least I think she does, because her anger turns into firmness. Her old I’m Maze and I-know-what-I’m-doing and that’s-a-good-enough-reason-for-me-to-do-it attitude.

  “Listen,” she says. “You can go back. You’ll make the service in time if you go now. But I’m going to find this damn mirror, and that’s it. I don’t care about Father Gold, and I don’t care about what he thinks he can do to me.”

  And just like that, I’m settled again inside. I wish I had half of her resolve, her willingness to follow through with something her instinct tells her to do. I’ve felt my gut direct me a hundred times, and I almost never follow through.