RELICS
Jon Ray
Published by Language Monster Press
Copyright 2014 Jon Ray
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: BENEATH THE CITY
ONE: NEW YORK
TWO: CORRECTIONS
THREE: THE HAMPTONS
FOUR: THE GARDEN
FIVE: THE PIT
SIX: THE BUNKER
SEVEN: CONTROL
EIGHT: RELICS
To descend into the underworld is easy;
The gates of hell are open night and day.
But to return, to climb back into brilliant skies —
What work, what a mighty labor it is!
— Virgil, The Aeneid
Prologue: Beneath the City
This was the dream. Marion shifted on his bench, asleep and alone, feeling the unsteady deck slip beneath his feet, the tight grip of a hand balancing him against the swaying of the ferry. His mouth moved silently, following the broken maze of his thoughts, praying a vague, half-remembered prayer.
“Look, boy, why don’t you. It’s the last time you’ll get to see her, I can promise you that.”
Marion had never been on a boat before, and never would be again. Perhaps that was why the dream was always so perfect, so far from the truth. In reality, the bay had stunk of chlorine, greenish strands of algae swaying gently beneath the pool-blue water, barely covering the concrete floor of the Hudson. The statue itself had already been half-removed by then, her streaked and chalky robe coming off in chain-winched sections. The blast site was still horribly visible; a furious dark wound torn into her right side, bent and blackened girders clawing outward, an unused and broken staircase marching toward the torch arm.
But in the dream, that distant memory, the water was rough and frothy, whipping the sides of the ferry. The statue was still proud, an imposing steel giant above them, and the wind rushed hard and salty against Marion’s lips. It was a false image, to be sure, but it felt truer than truth.
“Can we go inside, Poppy?”
The older man looks down, his sleek black hair dancing in streaks across his face. “No, Marion, we can’t. It’s not safe anymore.” Poppy didn’t like to argue. “We can watch from here — that’s all. So you’d better look your fill.”
Poppy was one of the few that Marion really remembered — the only one who had seemed like family. A doctor, government-issue like the rest, but also something more. He had been an imposing giant of a man; curt, sometimes unkind, but always solidly there. For Marion’s thirteen years at the Center, this was the only real constant — the closest thing to a father that the forgotten boy would ever have.
And so he had called him Poppy, saying the word as if he knew what it meant, trying to grasp the idea of a real father. Starting the day they first met — Poppy bursting into the orphan’s sixth birthday bash, toting a baseball and a crazy smile — Marion had attached himself to the man like fresh-spit gum to the sole of a passing shoe.
And in the dream Poppy smiles again, crouching over Marion, so much like that first day. “You can remember this, Marion,” he says, seeming taller than the statue itself, filling the dream with his shaggy hair and warm breath. “You can always look back and remember this.” He stands, his hands sweeping out over the artificial ocean. “Another great symbol, destroyed by the foolish people who made it.” He grins against the wind, watching the statue. “But then, symbols are overrated, eh? Statues come and go, and still liberty remains. America will always be America, and Francia… well, the French will always be the French — nobody can stop that.” He laughs, and the boat begins to rock wildly from side to side, the statue moving with it. “My god, who would dare try?”
And then it seems as though the earth itself is moving, the ferry cracking hard against the floor of the Hudson, the statue crumbling into its base. The boy is crying, watching himself cry, his skin lined with sleek, grimy tears. Without warning, the statue crashes toward them, a dark shadow sweeping across the boat like a bird of prey.
Marion struggled awake, the five o’clock commuter wave a distant rumble, pierced by the ominous squeal of an approaching 5 train. He blinked unhappily, wiping his face dry, the bleary outlines of busy people swimming in and out of focus. It’s coming, he realized, fumbling with the balled-up pillow of his jacket, the rapid staccato of the morning rush gradually filling the station around him. He pushed himself up, stumbling though the relatively thin crowd, still half-asleep, cursing himself for oversleeping. He was twenty meters away from his bench before he realized that he’d left his ratty bedroll behind.
No time. There’s no damn time.
Marion had staked out the southeast corner of Union Square specifically to avoid this nightmare. When it was warm outside he could stretch out on a park bench, or sleep on the scratchy fibregrass, but once it got chilly he had to rely on the cleaning crew to block off a chunk of the station for him. For security reasons, they erected a ten-meter barricade around the cop shop every night from midnight to five a.m. Conveniently, this area also contained one of the only sleepable benches in the entire system, so it was one of the few places where — as long as the crew recognized his face, and the third-shift transit cops weren’t in a bad mood — Marion could sleep largely undisturbed. Problem was, once they pulled the sawhorse perimeter and let the morning rush swarm in, the commuting apocalypse commenced.
This was the early morning Midtown-to-Wall Street crowd, after all: low-level analysts, secretaries, surly temp-job hipsters with hangovers, all taking their shift on the subway only because they had to. Marion knew that if these pinstripes and poseurs could bribe their way onto the Aerial, they would. As it was, facing the morning rush on the cattle cars was no better than battling a rampaging horde of Brightlanders — a swelling sea of humanity that was tired, angry, and out for blood.
Even as Marion yanked his windbreaker over his skinny shoulders and sprinted for the exits, he could see the ominous, unbroken wave of sample-sale suits pouring through the turnstiles, meshing seamlessly with the latte-toting hordes rolling off the L ramp, two serpentine tentacles merging into a single, spreading mammalian blob. The crowd oozed unstoppably forward, filling the station like a fast-moving glacier, cutting off all means of escape.
Dez, the morning guy at the shoe shine booth, spotted him and waved, his palm so permanently polish-black that it looked singed. Marion waved back weakly and spun around, realizing that it would be equally bad, if not worse, at the north end. As much as he hated to do it, he made a snap decision to hit the uptown N-R platform. There was a decent-size storage space under the escalator, hidden behind a safety panel cut into the new faux-stone facade. With luck, the cleaning crew would have failed to throw the deadlock as usual, allowing him to sneak inside and ride out the rush hour unmolested. He threw a last nervous look at the swelling commuter line, pivoted sharply and scrambled for the subway stairs.
Marion took the escalator at a running clip, barely looking, his jacket flapping behind him like a cape. For the first five steps he couldn’t even figure out what was happening, his brain still disoriented and woozy, functioning at half-speed. He just kept running against himself, beating his feet wildly against the rising stairs.
I’m not moving, he thought stupidly, a cartoon character spinning in place. And then his confused feet missed a step, almost t
ossing him down that grooved mountain of steel. He spun his arms backwards, long legs kicking furiously, his center of balance swinging back from disaster. And then, sudden and hard, he was splayed against the metal stairs, his teeth biting into his sleepy tongue. His small toolbox shot out of his jacket pocket, crashing open against concrete. A bright spray of tiny screwdrivers, transistors and wire snips flew across the terminal, bouncing merrily in all directions. Marion felt his body being dragged backwards, bumping over the foot guard, a few long hairs yanked painfully from his bruised head.
Who turned this goddamn thing on? Marion crab-walked backwards, furious and dumbfounded. He’d been sleeping in this station for five years, off and on, and he couldn’t recall the escalator working one single day — not one. Of course, it was all too typical that today, of all days, someone had actually gotten the stupid thing running.
As if on cue, the stairs jerked suddenly to a stop, frozen beneath the faint thunder and warm, rushing air of an approaching train. Marion rolled over and up, carefully running his hands along the ground, gathering as many of the delicate tools and electronics as he could. There were feet everywhere, it seemed, kicking hex wrenches, crushing small glass diodes beneath heavy boots. The metal case was useless, broken, the hinges torn in half. Marion cursed, shoveling the tools directly into his pockets, randomly grabbing tiny screws and resistors as he backed toward the stairs.
He took them three at a time, vaulting off the rubber handrail as the clattering of shoe leather and high heels swelled behind him. It was too late to hide now, though, no matter how hard Marion struggled against the flow. The commuters overpowered him at the platform, packed shoulders surging toward an approaching train. Marion felt his body being swept away from the wall, his fingers still struggling with the simple night latch.
Ten more seconds, he cursed silently, taking a stiff blow to the ribs as the crowd crushed relentlessly forward. Ten more seconds and a putty knife and I would’ve been fine.
He was crammed into the uptown N, and of course it wasn’t even a seating car. He protected himself as best he could, deflecting umbrellas and backpacks as he squeezed slowly toward the door. Twice he felt hands pressing against him, although he couldn’t tell if they were trying to grab his ass or his wallet, of which he had neither. He finally broke free at 34th Street, only to find himself sucked into a crowd pushing toward the orange line. His will finally broken, Marion decided to quit fighting and take whichever downtown train he could fit into — anything was better than dealing with the midtown crush. He ended up sardined into a downtown F, and finally managed to push his way out of the sweltering train at West Fourth, counting his meager blessings as the doors wheezed closed behind him.
The crowd pushed and cursed forward, dragging him steadily up and out, his feet occasionally lifted clear off the concrete. Finally, and with almost no conscious movement of his own, Marion found himself slowly surfacing into the air-cooled confines of New York City.
One: New York