The Burning World

  “What did they want this time?” Julie says.

  “They’re still trying to figure you out. Sounds like whatever they’re doing to control the Dead is a pretty crude science. Good for making mules but not much else. They want more sophisticated slaves, like our Nearlies. The ones they think you ‘made.’ ” She smiles darkly. “They want your magic, Jules. Just teach them your spells and we can all go home.”

  Julie shakes her head, unable to verbalize the absurdity. The magic that confounds them is humanity. The naturally occurring, slow acting, unpredictably potent product of conscious minds connecting. These madmen want to synthesize love. They want to manufacture it, weaponize it, and use it to control people. It’s such a ludicrous scheme it would be funny if they weren’t trampling the world in pursuit of it.

  Abram is shaking his head too, but I sense his disbelief has a different target.

  “What?” Julie says to him.

  “I’m just enjoying this so much,” he says, slumped against the wall like an alleyway vagrant. His blood-stained beige jacket is gone; his gray tank top reveals an array of cuts and bruises, some fresh, some old. “I thought Axiom was insane, but they’re only trying to manage the plague, maybe turn it into something useful. You’re the ones trying to talk the Dead out of being Dead.” He looks at me with incredulous disdain. “You’re the ones unleashing a horde and then standing in front of it asking it questions, like a fucking zombie therapist.” He shakes his head again. “What kind of cartoon do you think you live in?”

  I meet his gaze levelly. I won’t apologize to a statue for trying to take a step. “It has to start somewhere.”

  “You were talking to them!” He laughs and throws up his hands. “You think you can cure a plague with words?”

  “Words are ideas.”

  I’m not sure where these ones are coming from. I hear a whisper in my head, like the rustling of pages.

  “Every cure to every plague has started with an idea.”

  Abram lets out a deep sigh and slumps lower. He tugs Sprout against his shoulder but she resists, remaining upright and giving me a curious look.

  “R,” Julie says. “I think that was a new syllable record.”

  I shrug. I haven’t been counting.

  “Stopped fighting it yet?” M asks with a subtle smile, and I’m suddenly uncomfortable in this axis of attention. I stand up and gaze out the exterior windows, hoping to lose myself in a New York panorama. But the view is the brick wall of a neighboring high-rise. A few floors up, a gigantic billboard grins down at me from the roof, the model’s eyes covered by a solar panel like he wanted his identity hidden.

  “So you’re the ones.”

  Everyone sits up. Eyes dart for the source of the voice.

  “The salmon, the zebra, the goldfinch, and the goldfish, right?”

  It’s coming from the adjacent room. A woman’s voice, high and squeaky enough to penetrate the wall with surprising clarity.

  “Why did you get caught? I was rooting for you, whoever you are.”

  “Uh . . . who are you?” Julie asks the wall.

  “Fellow grumbler. Month two of a life sentence. Welcome to Freedom Tower.”

  Abram hops to a crouch and puts his face close to the wall. “Where are the guard stations? Have you found any patrol gaps? What’s your plan?”

  There is silence for a few seconds. Then I hear singing. “Mon ami, mon ami, la la la la la . . .”

  “Hello?” Abram says.

  “Have you seen the city yet?” the woman asks, abruptly cutting off her song. “Densest pop in North America so you’d expect reality to be taut, but nowhere’s more surreal. Streets hold their shape but people don’t. No flying frogs or portal ponds but the place itself is madness. Inverted island, air underwater, everybody clawing at the bubble.”

  We all look at each other.

  “What’s your name?” Julie asks.

  “My name’s embarrassing,” she says. “I go by H. Tomsen. Or just Tomsen. Or just H. What’s your name? Are you the goldfinch or the goldfish or the Goldman? How are things at the dome? I heard them talking about a takeover a while back. God, I miss the world.”

  She speaks with a clipped, rapid cadence that sounds less like conversation and more like the random firing of synapses. Julie waits for an opening, then says, “I’m Julie.”

  Abram returns to his slouch against the wall, apparently deciding we won’t be gaining any intel from our neighbor. M listens with a bemused smile, but Julie and Nora show particularly sharp interest.

  “You have a . . . distinct way with words,” Nora says. “Are you a fan of the Exed World Almanac?”

  “God, I miss the Almanac,” the voice sighs. “God, I miss input and output. Been working on new issues in here but not much to report when the world is a room. Everywhere’s exed and pop is always one—except for that time a spider joined me.”

  Julie and Nora glance at each other with widening eyes.

  “Wait . . . ,” Julie says. “Are you saying you make the Almanac? Are you a member of DBC?”

  A burst of giggling pierces the wall.

  “Tomsen?”

  “Used to be. Now DBC’s a member of me. Hold on, let’s introduce.”

  I hear some metallic clicking. A squeaking hinge. A few footsteps. Then the door to our cell swings open.

  “What the hell?” Abram says as we all jump to our feet.

  “Nice to meet you, Julie,” Tomsen says, thrusting a hand out to Abram. “H. Tomsen.”

  “Uh, hi,” Julie says, leaning in to intercept the handshake. “I’m Julie. Hi.”

  Tomsen looks somewhere between Nora’s age and Abram’s, but her appearance is ambiguous in more ways than one. With her face weathered by sun and scars, it’s hard to say if she’s a hard-worn youth or a well-preserved matron. Her skin is copper, her short curls are reddish brown, and her eyes are bright green, suggesting a heritage mixed beyond labeling. She wears a loose safari shirt and cargo pants whose patina of dirt and engine grease hints at a rough life on the road. Her wiry body seems to hide in their billowy folds.

  “Who are you?” Abram says, moving to shield Sprout. “You’re not a prisoner?”

  “Of course I’m a prisoner,” Tomsen says. “I’m in prison.”

  “You just walked out!”

  “Well I’m not going to sit in prison for two months without learning how to get out of my cell.”

  Her features are fine and her eyes are striking, but pretty isn’t the right word for her. Handsome? Attractive.

  Abram shakes his head, grabs Sprout’s hand, and pushes past Tomsen, scanning the corridor. Except for the one with our Dead family members in it, all the rooms appear empty, though fist-sized holes in the windows hint at earlier occupants. Whoever they were, they have been processed, their useful juices extracted, their husks expelled.

  Abram tries the elevator. It emits a negatory squawk, flashing a red light on a keycard slot. He goes for the stairs.

  “What’s that person’s name?” Tomsen whispers to Julie.

  “Abram.”

  “Abram!” Tomsen calls after him. “Twenty locked doors and twenty floors of beige-coats between us and street. Mixed-use building. Prison slash barracks.”

  Abram pauses at the stairwell entrance.

  “Room service comes every hour. You want to be in your cell when they get here or problems.”

  Abram’s shoulders rise and fall for a moment, then they sag. He returns to the cell.

  “Maybe steal a gun later?” Tomsen suggests. “Try again with a gun? You seem like a gun guy.”

  “Okay wait, hold on,” Nora says, putting a hand out and shaking her head as if to clear away distractions. “We can talk escape later—what did you mean DBC is a member of you?”

  Tomsen shrugs. “It’s me. I write the Almanac.”

  Julie and Nora look at each other, cover their mouths, and squeal.

  “We’re huge fans,” Julie gushes.

  “Huge fans
,” Nora elaborates.

  Tomsen stares at them, startled into silence by this outpouring.

  “But where’s the rest of your crew?” Julie says, glancing into the windows of the other cells. “Did they escape?”

  Tomsen shakes her head. “Don’t know about crews. Never had a crew. Tried to get one back in school days. They escaped.”

  Nora frowns. “But . . . who’s the ‘we’? Who’s DBC?”

  “Dead Beat Cartographers. Used to be the family band, me and Mom and Dad, then just me and Dad, and now . . . just me!” She flashes a stiff smile.

  Julie’s fangirl fervor cools into concern. “You’ve been doing all that exploration . . . alone?”

  “Of course not alone, I’d go crazy! Barbara goes with me.”

  “But . . . Barbara is your van, isn’t it?”

  Tomsen lets out an uproarious giggle. “No, no, Barbara is definitely not a van.”

  “Oh,” Julie laughs uncertainly. “Good. I thought—”

  “She’s an RV. Vans don’t have bathrooms.”

  Julie and Nora exchange another glance.

  “I have to go now,” Tomsen says, looking around for a clock that isn’t there and fidgeting from foot to foot. “Guards coming. Nice to meet you people. I didn’t meet all of you. Only two actually. I’ll meet the rest of you later when the guards aren’t coming.”

  M waves from the back of the room, still sitting against the wall. “Hey Tomsen,” he says. “Where’s the coffee?”

  “They don’t bring coffee. Mostly water and Carbtein.” She cocks her head. “Why? Do you like coffee? I don’t like it. Makes me jittery.”

  M smiles and shrugs. “Just wondering. Marcus, by the way.”

  Tomsen waves at him. She steps backward out of our cell, then pauses in the doorway and looks at Julie. “They’ll probably take your Dead friends now.”

  Julie’s face stiffens. “What?”

  “Uncategorized usually go straight to Orientation. Sometimes here first for temp storage but never more than a day.” She flattens her lips into a sympathetic line. “Sorry.”

  She turns and disappears into the corridor. I hear her cell door click shut, then her shaky falsetto again. “Attention, mon ami . . .”

  Our door remains open. Everyone but M stands crowded in front of it, staring into the hall outside, wrestling the urge to run.

  “Jules,” Nora says. “Don’t.”

  Julie steps out into the dim, flickering hall. She reaches between the bars of her mother’s cell window.

  “You okay, Mom?”

  Audrey stops pacing and fixes her daughter with an inscrutable gaze. Any injuries she might have suffered in the crash are unnoticeable amongst the general ruin of her flesh.

  “I just met the author of the Almanac, Mom. Remember the Almanac? Remember how excited you got when we found the Canada issue?”

  Audrey glances toward the window of Tomsen’s cell. Julie’s face lights up.

  “Yes! That’s her, right there in that room. It’s just one girl, Mom. She’s been out there all these years, searching the world. She even has stories from outside America. Don’t you want to talk to her?”

  The elevator’s light winks on. I hear the distant whir of machinery.

  “Julie!” Nora hisses. “Get in here.”

  Julie glances over her shoulder at the elevator. “Mom?” she says with a trembling smile. “They’re probably going to take you away. I can’t stop them right now, but I promise I’ll come find you, okay?” Her lips tighten. “I won’t leave you like you left me.”

  An emotion creeps into Audrey’s face. I’m almost certain it’s sorrow.

  “Can you say something, Mom? So I know you’re still here?”

  Audrey’s eyes drop to the floor.

  “Can you please just tell me you’re here?”

  “Julie,” I say, watching the elevator doors and grinding my teeth. “Come on.”

  She grips the bars with both hands, pressing her forehead against them, then finally tears herself away. She runs back to the cell and Abram slams the door just as the elevator dings.

  I’m expecting interrogators. Pitchmen. Grinning revenants in power ties. But four bored-looking men in beige jackets emerge from the elevator and go directly to Audrey’s cell with barely a glance our way. They collar the three prisoners—a frail, sad woman and two malnourished waifs—and lead them out on poles.

  Joan and Alex catch my eye as they shuffle toward the elevator. I wish I knew what to say to them, but I know almost nothing. Where they’re going. What’s going to happen to them. What I can do about it. All I can manage is a feeble wave. They wave back, then disappear into the elevator.

  Audrey stops between the open doors.

  “Here,” she says.

  Julie has turned her back, unable to watch the grim procession, but at the sound of her mother’s voice she whirls around. Audrey is looking directly at her, eyes steady with comprehension if not quite recognition.

  “I’m . . . here.”

  Julie claps a hand to her mouth. She squints against a rush of tears, but she and her mother maintain their gaze until the elevator doors sever it.

  There is a long silence in the cell. Julie moves to the corner farthest from anyone and slides to the floor, wiping her eyes into a dry stare. I can hardly imagine what she’s feeling. Her mother may be emerging, but into what? There is no happy outcome ahead. Audrey died years ago, violently and irretrievably. The plague we hope to cure is the only thing keeping her with us.

  I sit next to Julie, but not close. The others settle into their own natural positions, pairings determined by relationship, proximity by intimacy. Abram paces for a while, maybe wracking his brain for an escape plan, maybe just stewing, but eventually he succumbs. We sit in a circle around the perimeter of the room, the overhead fluorescents flickering on our faces like a sallow campfire.

  Julie finally notices my stare, and I jerk my eyes away. An image blooms in my head and I permit it to spread, filling my chest with long-absent warmth. What if we met in a different time? One of the many eras that weren’t like this one? What if I were just a boy in a café ignoring his homework to watch a girl sip her coffee? What if this girl had an ordinary life, worrying about work and school and little else, with a heart that had been bruised perhaps but never burned or blackened? What if neither of us had ever killed anyone, never seen our parents die, never been beaten or tortured or saddled with the weight of an impossible quest? What if she caught me staring and smiled, and I said hello and asked her name, and it was as simple as that?

  Such worlds have existed, I remind myself. Such worlds are possible. No matter how distant they may seem from this one.

  THE WOMAN’S NAME.

  “Like what you see?” Mr. Atvist whispers over my shoulder.

  I am learning not to recoil at the smell of his breath. He says he stopped smoking on the day my father died, but either the fumes have permanently infused his tissues or it’s just the smell of an old man rotting.

  “One of the many perks of working here,” he says, joining me at the visual feast. A blond woman is struggling to navigate her cubicle in a tight red dress. There aren’t many women in the Atvist Building, but the few I’ve seen are improbably attractive and impractically dressed.

  “Who is she?” I ask, not taking my eyes off her.

  “What do you mean who is she?”

  “What’s her name? What does she do here?”

  He chuckles. “You ask all the wrong questions, kid. But then you’re probably still a virgin, right?”

  I glance at him, then back at the woman.

  “Straight from Holy Fire to UT-AZ Internment, I’m guessing you never got much chance to sow your oats.” He grins. “And no, losing your ass cherry to that thug in your cell doesn’t count.”

  Despite my efforts, I cringe a little under his moistly percussive syllables.

  “Listen, R—,” he says, slapping a hand on my shoulder, “this company has its finger
s in a lot of pots, but if there’s one ethos that ties it together, it’s that we get what we want. That’s our mission statement, as a company and as men. Hell, that’s the reason there’s life on this planet, because a few microbes decided they wanted more and did what it took to get it.”

  Unlike most Axiom employees, this woman is wearing a name tag. She must have brought it from another job. I am straining to read it—Raquel? Roseanne?—when she notices my stare. She smiles, and it’s the smile of an opportunity sensed, joyless and calculated, accompanied by adjustments of posture that expose a lush valley of cleavage. Powerful signals boil up from the deep crevices of my brain, cascading over the delicate ones near the surface, and I forget about the name tag.

  “Who is she?” Mr. Atvist repeats, shaking his head. “She’s pussy. She’s prey. And if you’re going to help me run a company that’s going to run the country, I need you to learn to hunt.”

  • • •

  So I learn.

  I sit in on every conference, listening to the old men of Executive snarl and bark. I shadow every operation, watching our negotiators mix their skillful blend of hope and fear and occasionally violence. I absorb it all with fanatical fervor, and I pick up the business so quickly no one even cries nepotism when Mr. Atvist promotes me to Management. For the first time in my life, I have power, a flaming sword compared to the feeble lighter I wielded with Paul, and I begin to swing it.

  “I want this one fired,” I say, and it happens.

  “I want that one killed,” I say, and it happens.

  I am still young and low on the ladder, but I have promise. I have instinct. Mr. Atvist puts me in charge of public relations, and I reach into my angry young self and my grim and fearful family and all the little minds that surrounded us and I think, What do they want? What do they trust? I crouch low to this dusty, moldy shelf of desperate moments, blunt urges and whimpering needs, and I peruse its ugly books.

  I say, “I want to climb to the top of the world and spit into the hole where God was.”