“The plane’s worthless without him,” Julie mutters.
“Just in the leg. Maybe the dick.”
The four massive engines whir to life, filling the cargo bay with swirling dust. Julie slams a fist against the door-close button.
“So what happened?” Nora asks as we climb the stairs to the upper deck.
“He . . . changed his mind,” Julie says, and the dazed uncertainty in her voice tells Nora enough to let it go.
• • •
Our second takeoff is significantly less harrowing than our first. The only sign that we’re not on a real flight by a real airline is the lack of calming platitudes from the captain. We even have a flight attendant. Once we reach cruising altitude, Sprout walks down the aisle with a tray of Carbtein cubes.
“Do you want a snack?” she asks Nora in the row across from us.
“No thanks,” Nora says.
“Do you want a snack?” Sprout asks M.
M takes one and rotates it in his hand, studying it like a Rubik’s cube, then takes a bite.
“Do you want a snack?” Sprout asks Julie.
Julie takes a cube. “Thank you, Sprout. Excellent service.”
“Daddy said I should do it.”
Julie looks at me. “Really. Well, that was nice of him.”
“I think he feels bad,” Sprout says. “For being mean. Do you want a snack?” She shoves the tray toward me.
I take a cube. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She turns and continues down the aisle.
“Where’s she going?” Julie wonders, then I hear a door slide open and Sprout’s voice from the rear of the plane:
“Do you want a snack?”
I jump to my feet, tensing to run—
“You’re welcome.”
Sprout reappears, striding up the aisle like a seasoned professional, her tray empty, a big smile on her face. She returns to the cockpit to resume her copilot duties.
I sit down. Julie takes a bite of her cube. “What do you think, R?” she muses while she chews. “She can do this a few more years to save for college, then get her degree and move into architecture. Maybe Joan and Alex can be her apprentices.”
I peer into my cube’s chalky white lunar landscape and feel a localized hunger pang, as if just a few inches of my stomach have woken up. I take a bite and chew, grimacing at the dry texture and inscrutable flavor, like a four-course meal blended into a smoothie.
“I know,” Julie mumbles. “It’s not funny.”
I shrug, still chewing. “It’s kind of funny.”
“It’s a dead baby joke.”
I hear something in her voice that makes me stop chewing. That note of disquiet I heard back in the cabin, of disturbed sediment clouding the ocean floor. “Harsh assessment,” I say to the back of her head as she presses her nose to the window. “You don’t think they have a future?”
She’s quiet for a moment, peering into the darkness. “I do. I just wish it didn’t have to be in a world like this.”
“Maybe it won’t be,” I offer, but I’m unable to give the sentiment much weight. It passes through her and out the window like a feeble ghost.
She pulls an in-flight magazine out of the seat pocket in front of her and leans back. She studies the model on the cover, a woman of a species no longer found on Earth, coiffed and painted, nourished and toned, beautiful in a way that’s no longer recognizable as human.
“I used to read everything I could find about the old world,” Julie says, and begins to flip through the brittle pages. “I studied it like mythology. And I always wondered what people I knew would’ve been like back then, when life was just a bunch of choices. Your beliefs, your priorities, where you live and what you do . . .” She pauses on an ad for a garish Broadway musical and smiles bitterly. “Can you imagine having all those options? Being surrounded by that cloud of potential just waiting for your decision?”
She continues flipping the pages. Restaurants. Movies. Museums. She stops on an ad for the University of Michigan, and her smile fades.
“My mom grew up in that world.” She stares at lush photos of libraries and art studios, groups of friends laughing hysterically. “She wasn’t rich or anything, but it was pre-collapse America. She was working with a palette I can’t imagine.” She runs her fingers over the wrinkled paper, the faded ink. “Having that world and then losing it . . .” Her voice falls to a murmur. “It’d haunt you forever, wouldn’t it? How could you let go?”
She stuffs the magazine back into the seat pocket and closes her eyes for a moment. Then she opens them and turns to me. “What was in that cabin, R?”
I don’t answer.
“What are they trying to do?” She’s almost pleading. “How much more fucked is this place going to get?”
I should probably try to reassure her, squeeze her hand and recite some canned comforts, but I’m looking through her into the dark hole of the window and I’m seeing graves and fires, steel bars and brown teeth and—
“Hey.” Nora is leaning out of her seat, watching us from across the aisle while M snores softly against their window. “We might not have to find out.”
“What do you mean?” Julie says.
Nora shoots a glance at the cockpit, then gets up and jerks her chin toward the coach section. Julie nudges me out of the row and we follow Nora through the curtain.
“Take a look,” Nora says, pulling a thin yellow pamphlet out of her pocket and handing it to Julie.
Julie skims the first page. Her eyes dart up to Nora. “Where’d you find this?”
“We went looking for you in the airport lobby and they were taped up all over.”
“Why is DBC still posting in airports?” Julie wonders as she begins to read.
Nora shrugs. “I saw a lot of notes on the walls. A few fresh shits on the floor. Maybe airports are still traveler hubs.”
“Nineteen from BABL . . . that’s last year, right?”
“Yeah. Practically breaking news. Check the last page.”
Julie flips to the end, reads it, and grins. “I knew it. I fucking knew it!” She shoves the pamphlet into my hands. “Can you read this, R?”
The crudely photocopied mess resembles either an old-fashioned DIY “zine” or a madman’s manifesto.
The crazed handwriting is barely legible, but I can read it. Understanding it is another matter.
“What is this?” I ask, handing the pamphlet back to Julie.
“It’s the Almanac!” Julie says, aghast at my lack of savvy. “Even you should know the Almanac.”
“People . . . believe this info?” I brush a finger over the schizophrenic scrawl, the drawings of surreal monsters.
“Beggars can’t be choosers, R. Most people don’t know what’s happening a mile outside their shelters. DBC’s been combing the country up and down for like ten years and they leave a new report whenever they pass through. It’s sketchy news, but it’s news.”
“I got so excited the first time I found one,” Nora says wistfully. “Felt like my favorite band had come to town.”
Julie smiles. “Me and Mom had a secret pact that if we ever found them, we’d leave Dad and run away with them.” Her smile falters, begins to cool.
“But back to the point,” Nora says. “Iceland, right? Sounds promising, right?”
“Right.” Julie hands the zine to Nora. “You do the talking. I’ve pushed him far enough today.”
Nora nods and heads for the cockpit.
“Iceland?” I ask Julie, lowering my voice. “You’re sure that’s the answer?”
She looks at me like I’ve asked if water is wet. “Of course I’m not sure. I just . . .” She turns and looks out a window, her face tinting red in the dying light. “I have a good feeling.”
“Why?”
“Because my mom . . .” She watches the clouds, a flock of little cumuli grazing beneath us. “My mom was half-Icelandic. She spent a couple years in Reykjavík, before she
met Dad. The way she talked about it . . . the culture and the politics . . . it sounded like things just made sense there. I could never figure out why she came back.”
“Maybe because it wasn’t her home.”
She glances back at me with surprise and a little annoyance, but I push ahead.
“Leaving now . . . feels like giving up.”
“On what?” she says sharply. “What do we have here? That shitty house?”
I flinch. I can tell she feels the sting too, perhaps sharper than she expected. But she fights it.
“What do we have?” she persists. “The fucking stadium? Cascadian pride?”
“The people.” I hold her gaze, trying to tether her fluttering thoughts. “Ella, David, Marie, Wally, Taylor, Britney, Zane—”
“I know their names, R.”
“So are we going to leave them all with Axiom? Are we going to run away?”
The look she gives me makes me feel like a bully. Like I’m popping her balloons and pissing on her picnic. But I’m only quoting what she told me a few days ago, when she was quoting what I told her a few months before that. We keep tossing this bit of truth back and forth like it hurts to hold on to it.
She gives her head a hard shake as if to clear it of thoughts and returns to her seat. Nora’s siege of the cockpit is already under way. I’m glad Julie chose to stay out of this one.
“What part of ‘explorers don’t return’ did you not understand?” Abram says, waving the Almanac. “Iceland’s probably one giant hive by now.”
“Who has a better chance of resisting a plague than an island? They probably closed their borders at the first reports.”
“Are you bullshitting me or yourself? Borders don’t matter to the plague. They got it on the Space Station for Christ’s sake.”
Julie jumps up. I sigh.
“Iceland was different,” she says, poking her head into the cockpit entryway. “They did everything different. They wouldn’t have collapsed like we did.”
“Are Icelanders not human? What did they do so different?”
“While we were busy with Civil War Two, they were perfecting renewable energy, food production, pouring resources into education and culture—they weren’t collapsing, they were thriving.”
“So you’re a history buff. Then you know they were halfway underwater when we heard from them last.”
“Yeah, and they were building a sea wall!”
Nora quietly slips out of the crossfire, giving me an I tried shrug as she returns to her seat.
“You know Canada is exed,” Julie continues, picking up steam. “So is Mexico and probably South America. Think outside the hemisphere!”
Abram stands up and moves toward her. Julie backs out of the cockpit doorway, tensing into an uncertain defensive stance, but he brushes past her, steps into the bathroom, and starts urinating.
Julie folds her arms over her chest and glares at his back through the door. “Are we having a literal pissing contest right now?”
Abram lets out a weary sigh as he finishes up. “Listen, you beautiful sunbeam . . .” He steps out of the bathroom and flops down in the front row, looking up at her. “I’d love to believe there’s a beacon of civilization out there waiting for us to find it. But if there’s a beacon, why can’t we see it? Why doesn’t anyone know?”
“You think the last stable country in the world is going to advertise itself? And have all the fuckup countries coming around looking for a couch to crash on?”
Abram seems to consider this.
“They’re probably just waiting for the right time. Building up their resources, developing a plan.”
He nods abruptly and stands up. “Okay, sure. Iceland sounds good.”
Julie’s rebuttal freezes on her lips and she cocks her head, startled into silence.
“And Toronto’s on the way there,” he continues, pushing past her into the cockpit. “So if we don’t find what we need in Toronto, then we’ll talk about going abroad. Okay?”
He sounds so sincere that he must not be. But if his sincerity is sarcastic . . . is his sarcasm sincere? I wonder if he even knows.
He returns to his seat and Julie returns to hers, looking off-balance.
“Hey!” M shouts toward the cockpit. “How much longer?” He’s still blinking sleep out of his eyes but already gripping his armrests.
“Tomorrow,” Abram shouts back.
M grumbles a few curses, pressing deeper into his seat.
I squeeze Julie’s knee, another attempt at comfort, but she is lost in thought and doesn’t seem to notice my efforts. So I turn to the window.
The view is not what it should be. There should be lights down there. Even in remote lands there should be a few specks, then glittering lines and clusters, earthly constellations that finally converge into the ecstatic galaxy of a city, pulsing and boiling with life.
But there is nothing. The earth below is empty darkness. The only constellations are the ones above, old Leo and Cancer and Capricorn, and I find them less dear to me than the ones humanity built, these distant gods who want nothing to do with our fraught little lives. In all their smoke and noise and overheated drama, I miss cities.
The sun finally withdraws all traces of itself and the darkness is complete. I watch it roll by beneath us, an undifferentiated carpet of black, and then . . . light. A few glowing spots, then a few more, then a radiant pool bright enough to illuminate the surrounding hills. The lights form the shape of a city, but they are not streetlamps and windows. They are fires. Hundreds of buildings bathed in the distinctive white flames of Fire Church phosphorus.
“If you look to our left,” Abram says over the intercom, adopting the laconic mumble of a captain playing tour guide, “you’ll see some very sincere people looking for a better world.”
A bitter giggle escapes Nora’s throat. “These fuckers, on top of everything. Candles on the crazy-cake.”
Julie stares past me through the window, watching the hellish death of whatever city this was, burned at the stake for the heresy of surviving. I see memories rushing past her eyes, sadness and pain and anger. Then she closes them and curls up in her seat, her back to the window and to me.
I watch the blaze until it disappears behind us and darkness reclaims the view. Darkness or fire. Are these our only options?
MY MOTHER.
She believes in a better world. But it’s far away and mysterious and we will have no part in building it. The new world will be handed to us fully formed and perfect, dropped from the sky to cover the mess we’ve made of this one. This one’s doom was written into its creation, never more than a disposable stage for a brief drama whose plot no one understands and whose ending no one can revise. The only change we can effect is how quickly the end comes, because we have nothing in us but destruction. We are corrupt from before birth, and if it ever appears we’ve done good, it’s not us but God’s hand inside us, moving our limbs to accomplish his plan. Our greatest sin is believing that we matter.
This is what my mother believes and what she teaches me, so I can’t understand why she works at a refugee camp. Feeding the children of war casualties, finding homes for displaced families . . . aren’t these people supposed to die? Isn’t this the Last Sunset we’ve been waiting for? Why is she trying to pull the sun back up?
I ask her these questions and they upset her. They dim the glow that fills her face when she works at the camp, mending clothes, administering medicine, cooking huge vats of stew. Helping people brings her joy, even though it’s pointless. I decide to leave it alone.
I go with her to the refugee camp whenever I can because my father isn’t there. I get to choose clothes from the donations pile to replace my worn-out rags from home. My father says we have plenty and don’t need anyone’s help, but I think we’re not far above the refugees themselves. At the end of each day, my mother throws a few cans of food into her purse. She says not to tell my father.
Grass-stained acid-washed jeans. A turquoi
se Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. My choices don’t reflect any personal aesthetics. I am ten years old and poor. I take the clothes that fit.
“Hello, Mrs. Atvist.”
“What are you doing here?”
I stop digging through the shoe bin and listen to the two voices out on the curb. My mother’s is soft but stern and I can picture her standing with her hands knotted in front of her, demure but unmovable. The other is dry and smoky, the creak of burned timber breaking. It’s just barely familiar. I must have been a toddler the last time I heard my grandfather’s voice.
“I’ve been trying to talk to my son but he’s balls-deep in this Holy Fire bullshit. I can’t get a word through his skull. Thought maybe I could talk to you instead.”
“What would make you think I’d go against my husband? Or our church? Holy Fire is our family.”
“I’m your family, God damn it. I want to help you.”
“We don’t want your help.”
“It’s a fucking embarrassment. I run one of the last corps in America and my son is living in a shack. My grandson’s pulling piss-stained jockeys out of charity bags . . .”
“Leave him out of it.”
“. . . and my daughter-in-law is stealing canned beans from a hobo shelter.”
“Your money won’t be worth much in a few years.”
“Money’s not the only currency.”
His thin face. His tobacco-stained grin leering through the window of his hulking white Range Rover. I watch him from behind my mother’s legs like a much younger boy.
“Hey, kid!” His eyes dart to me, catlike.
“Go back inside,” my mother tells me.
I obey, but I stand inside the doorway and listen.
“What kind of a mother are you? I could make your kid prince of the new world and you’re gonna let him starve with the peasants?”
“The world is God’s, and he’s about to burn it away.”
“Listen to me. I’ve been working my whole life to put this family on top of the food chain. I’m not letting you or my little bitch of a son turn us back into rabbits.”
“Leave us alone. Don’t come here again.”