The Veil (Testaments I and II) Read online

  And yet he has not. Something in him, some conditioning or aspect of decorum fights the chaos of his simpler desires. It’s not religion. It’s the understanding that while there are still three people on earth, while there are still two people, there is society and society has value above his wants. He could be out here alone, supplied well enough to last out his life driving from town to town, but how long before the solitude killed him?

  The man knows the truth about himself and does not deny it. Truth lives within him but it remains unshared. Does that make him a liar? Deceitful? Is untruth as alive in him as it is in the others? Should he even care so much about what people call truth? Who is he to even contemplate its importance? In the old world they would have called him a bad man, if they’d caught him; they’d have removed him from society. Now he is part of all that’s left of society. Perhaps, in this new world, things could be different.

  No. Of course they could not. He is a vehicle for the lies of the old world and he knows it very well. Everything has changed but nothing really changes. What was bad before is still bad now and that is still not enough to prevent it.

  All this he thinks as he shares space and night with the girl, as he breathes her breath and smells her exudations. Nothing he thinks changes the way he feels or what he knows he will one day allow himself to do. He wonders why this is his only constant; the worst part of himself.

  ***

  We eat Bush’s beans and drink black coffee for breakfast but I don’t have much appetite.

  Trixie and I help to pack up the tent, learning a little about how it works as we go. Then we’re driving again. As we rise higher into the hills, my ears pop. The road gets twistier and Trixie gets car sick. We stop for her to puke but she’s just going to have to get used to it. About a second after I think this, I begin to feel nauseous myself. Pretty soon Ike has to pull over for me and suddenly I’m not so pragmatic about how we should cope with sickness. Having seen both of us heave up, I wonder if Ike is going to come out in sympathy but he doesn’t. He just drives. He’s quiet today.

  We’ve filled the truck with gas a couple of times from our jerry cans but Ike is concerned that we need more. The next fuel station we find, he hauls a manhole cover up in the forecourt and uses a rope and bucket to dip for fuel. There’s hundreds of thousands of gallons down there, he tells us. Enough to drive us back and forth across the country indefinitely.

  That evening we’re much higher up. It’s not hills anymore, it’s mountains. None of us smells too great in the confines of the truck and there’s a lingering air of vomit.

  “Let’s find somewhere near water, Ike. We could all do with a freshen up.”

  “Sure. Want to stop soon? We’ve probably gone far enough for today.”

  Trixie nods eagerly. These roads haven’t been kind to her.

  Around a few more bends, like an answer to a prayer, we find a stream flowing fast. Not much farther on, there’s an escape lane for trucks with brake problems and that’s where Ike parks up.

  “Why don’t you make camp while Trixie and I go and get washed up?”

  “At your service,” says Ike. “Want me to make dinner too?”

  “I’ll do that when we come back. You can have your wash while I prepare it.”

  Trixie and I walk back up the hard shoulder and off the road to the stream. I walk a little ways along it to be sure we’re far from the road even though I’m pretty sure there’ll be no one passing by. I strip down naked and dip a face cloth into the water.

  “Brrr.”

  Goosebumps spread top to toe in a single wave before the water even touches my skin. I take some soap and lather up. Trixie looks embarrassed.

  “Come on, Trix. Might as well get used to this. No telling how long we’ll be on the road for. We’re both women so there’s nothing to be worried about.” Trixie starts to undress and the moment she’s naked I feel certain that Ike is watching. I turn to look up the rise. He should be on the other side of it setting up our campsite. I don’t see him so maybe he is. Trixie seems more worried about me seeing her though. She rinses her arms and feet but that’s all. I won’t stand for it.

  “Come on, get yourself clean. Everything, Trixie. It’s important.”

  “You’re not my mother.”

  “No. None of us have mothers anymore. Do as I tell you and make it quick.”

  The zero tolerance approach seems to work and soon she’s soaping everything up.

  “That’s the idea.”

  I’m freezing so I make the wash quick. When I sit down on a rock to wash between my toes I get a shock. There’s something growing off my feet. I stop. My heart misfires once. Twice. I don’t want this to be what I think it looks like. I cross one leg over the other to take a closer look. There are white hair-like tendrils growing from the soles of my feet. I take hold of one and pull. It doesn’t feel like a hair. It feels like it’s part of my skin. I’m nauseous again in the space of a second. Fuck it. Fuck this. I yank the tendril and it breaks off. I breathe in sharply. Pulling hairs out shouldn’t hurt that way. Hairs shouldn’t be growing on the soles of anyone’s feet. And they shouldn’t leak sap when you pull them.

  No. Not this. Not now of all times. I’m pretty sure I’ve got Ike’s child growing inside me. Much as I hate the idea I know that if I take the child to term and it survives that it will be a child for the new world, a tiny fragment of hope for the future. But now, after only a few days of suspecting I might be pregnant for the first time in my life, I see that I’m pregnant in two ways. The new world is in me.

  Somehow it got inside.

  Then I remember the flowers. And I start to cry.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Trixie is so self-conscious about her ablutions that I manage to dry myself and hide my feet inside my boots. The tears, I can’t hide so easily.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  I pull in a breath that goes right to the pit of my guts and let it go. My strength goes with it.

  “Everything. Nothing. I don’t know.”

  She reaches out. Touches my forearm. It’s a very adult gesture; almost motherly. It takes me by surprise. Her eyes are full of knowledge.

  “I know how fucked up all this is. Most of the time I can’t fit the fuckedness of it in my head but sometimes I get a flash of what’s happened to us. A flash of it is all my mind can take, I think. All this time I’ve been so drowned by my old shit I haven’t really noticed the new shit we’re in. It’s like I’ve been playing one bad song off a CD over and over. My song of shit. But getting away from the Station, seeing the world outside and how quiet it is… it’s made me feel different. Like I’ve been acting spoiled this whole time. Now I can see the trouble we’re in better, I know my own troubles don’t mean anything. I might as well forget them. I should be thinking about the future, right, Sherri? Just leaving the bad stuff behind.”

  My tears get worse. I can’t control them. Jesus Christ, if you’re still up there, she’s only a kid and listen to her. She’s had to grow up overnight. What the hell is wrong with this world? I take a hold of Trixie – never mind what she’s lived through before I met her, we need this contact – and I squeeze her to me and weep into her greasy, dirty hair.

  “Promise me, Trixie…” I have to speak between my own sobs. “Promise me whatever happens you won’t let him come near you. Never let anyone hurt you again.”

  God, I don’t want to let go of this girl. I don’t want to let go of this life. Look how we’ve fought. Look what we’ve survived to make it this far. We were so nearly free and now I’m fucked. I hold her so tight it hurts my arms but she doesn’t try to get away from me. I don’t know how long we stand that way. Letting go of her brings fresh tears.

  “You don’t have to worry about me, Sherri. I’ve changed. No one’s going to use me anymore. Anyways, I’ve got a new friend now.”

  I hadn’t noticed it but she’s packing. From her slim, bike-courier’s backpack she draws out a customized shotgun with a snu
b barrel.

  She grins.

  “Meet Barnaby.”

  I giggle through the tears. I can see there’s significance to the name but I stop myself from asking. She sees this. “It was my brother’s name.” I nod. That’s all.

  “Is it loaded?”

  “Eight shells.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.”

  We start back toward the escape-lane campsite.

  “Trixie?”

  “What?”

  “I… it doesn’t matter.”

  “What, Sherri?”

  “Never mind. I was going to say something dumb. For once I stopped myself.”

  She holds my hand.

  How do you tell your only friend in the world you’re not who they think you are? How do you say goodbye?

  ***

  Ike comes out for his watch.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “It’s my turn.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll wake you when I get tired. I want to stay out here a while longer.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s fine.”

  Ike stretches his spine out.

  “Can I sit with you for a while?”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He sits in the camp chair beside me and lights up a cigarette. I hesitate and then reach out for one.

  “You sure?”

  “What the fuck do I have to lose now? I should have taken it up months ago.”

  I put the cigarette between my lips. It feels a lot fatter than it looks. Ike cups the flame from his lighter and I lean in to draw on the cigarette. I’ve seen it done so many times by so many people, especially by him. I pull the smoke in, it bites, I get a head rush and breathe out. My heart hammers and I feel sick. I don’t care. I take another drag. Pretty soon the feelings even out and I’m smoking like I’ve done it all my life.

  Finally, Ike says, “I’ve missed… being with you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Sherri, what do y—”

  “I know what kind of man you are, Isaac.”

  He’s quiet for a moment, then, in a very low tone, “What does that mean?”

  “It means I know you’ve used me to get close to Trixie. It means I know why you would do something like that. Let one more lie come my way and see what happens.”

  He’s quiet. I know he wishes I’d kept my voice down but there’s no way he can say that. Is he thinking about his options? Coming up with a new angle? I don’t care. I don’t give him the chance to spin me any more yarns.

  “Our relationship has become one of necessity. We watch each other’s backs. We work together until we find something or someone out here who can help us. When that time comes, I’m taking Trixie away from you. Far away. And if you try to push this thing with her, I’ll kill you myself, Ike. I fucking swear to God.”

  He’s silent. He drops his butt to the dirt but doesn’t bother to stomp it out. Before he gets to the tent, I say, “Leave me your smokes and lighter.”

  He hesitates and then comes back to hand them to me. “Sleep well, Ike. I’ll be watching over you.”

  I’ve lived in the city all my life so I don’t know anything about the stars. Even when the power went off the city glowed at night time. Sure, I’ve seen a star or two on a clear night but nothing like this.

  Above me the blackness shimmers. It’s almost liquid. Someone scattered diamonds over a pool of tar and now that pool ripples. Except it isn’t like that at all. It’s infinitely more beautiful than any attempt of mine to describe it to you. I don’t know whether to be terrified or reassured by the size of space, whether to have faith in the order of things or be convinced of the randomness of it all. I see my tininess in the scheme – or chaos – of things, even the tininess of our whole planet. The world is an insignificant dot and I am lost upon it. The stars will be up there after I am gone and after the Earth is gone. Shimmering. Reflecting the thoughts of… well, someone, I hope. People, I hope.

  And then I wonder: do the Commuters look up? Do they know about stars? Do they care? Is that where they came from or did we create them ourselves somehow? Before I brought those flowers back to the Station, I’d never have had the opportunity to know the answer to those questions. Now there’s a possibility I will find out. I’m not sure I want that.

  What’s the point of me? What’s the point of my baby? Is it infected like me or is it still a pure person? Does it really matter either way?

  Well, it may not matter to the stars but it matters to me.

  These are my options:

  Leave Ike and Trixie to go on without me, and wait it out. She’ll be safe now, I feel her strength of purpose. She’s become a woman long before her time. I could stay here in the mountains until I give birth. If the baby comes out human I could try to look after it but by then maybe the Commuter-roots will be in my brain as well as my feet. Maybe I’d just turn it into another Commuter the moment it popped out. If it came out Commuter and I was still human enough, would I kill it? Could I?

  I realize I can’t leave Ike and Trixie until I know what’s happening to me for sure. I need them.

  Or I could walk out into the darkness now, somewhere down by the stream, and blow my fucking brains out while they’re still human enough to let me pull the trigger. The old Stopper values coming through; the will to suicide as fresh as ever. But I don’t have the luxury of calling myself a Stopper anymore, do I? I don’t know what I am.

  I could tell the others and see what ideas they have. I know what Ike’s would be.

  Or I could tell Trixie. Let her keep watch over me. Let her decide when I’ve become a danger to them both. Let her be the one to decide what to do with my child. If that doesn’t affirm her adulthood, nothing will.

  The trick with information is how much to give and to whom.

  I think I have an idea.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  No wonder I’m exhausted when morning comes. I haven’t slept all night.

  The three of us eat breakfast in silence. I’m the only one who can’t raise much of an appetite. I spoon the tinned beans and mushrooms around my plate trying to find something that looks good to eat. None of it does. In the end I hand my portion to Trixie. Ike barely looks up from his plastic plate.

  Instead of food, I pull out the nearly empty pack of smokes, shake one out and light it. Trixie’s eyes widen but whatever look is on my face is enough to stop her from opening her mouth. I suddenly wonder what it’s like to roll your own cigarettes with your favorite tobacco instead of smoking something that was churned out of some huge fucking factory. I’ll probably never know the answer to that one.

  I blow out the words “I’m pregnant” on a stream of smoke. The smoke muffles the sound of my voice but both of them look up.

  Ike stops chewing and swallows.

  “What did you say?”

  “I’m going to have a baby. Your baby, Ike.”

  Trixie’s eyes open wider. Ike is motionless. Trixie puts down her plate – my plate.

  “All right!” she says. “Oh my god. I can’t believe it. That is awesome.”

  Ike, on the other hand, appears to have lost the faculty of speech. I hand him a cigarette, lean over and light it for him. He draws. Looks from my face to Trixie’s and back again. Then he looks down. At my belly.

  “Are you serious, Sherri?”

  “I’m deadly fucking serious, Ike.”

  “But you told me you had your—”

  “I lied.”

  He doesn’t look pleased.

  “How do I know you’re not lying to us right now?”

  “You don’t, Ike. But time will prove I’m telling the truth.”

  “You probably shouldn’t be smoking, you know. It’s bad for the—”

  “Shut up, Ike. Just shut up right now and don’t ever start thinking you can tell me how to live. Your position is one of responsibility.
That’s all. You protect me – us – and you make sure we come first in every decision. This is my baby, Ike. Mine.”

  “But Christ, Sherri, I’m the goddamned fath…”

  His eyes sharpen. He gives a resigned, humorless snort. “I don’t know you at all, do I?”

  I say nothing.

  Ike rises and walks away to where he can smoke with his back to us. Smoke and think. Assuming he’s capable of such higher functions.

  “Why are you so mean to him?”

  “Because he’s scum, Trixie. It’s the end of the fucking world and that’s the man we’ve got to take care of us. Anyway, what do you care? You know what he wants. How can you protect him?”

  “I’m not protecting him. I know he’s screwed up. But that doesn’t mean the three of us shouldn’t get along. Otherwise every day is going to be hell. I’m done with that shit, Sherri. Let’s try to be nice to each other.”

  “Be nice until when? When you find him pinning you down in the middle of the night? When I’m gone I won’t be able to protect you anymore. I won’t be able to watch your back. This isn’t about being nice anymore, Trixie. It’s about staying alive and staying human.”

  Trixie is pale.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What?”

  “You said ‘when I’m gone’. What does that mean?”

  I look over to Ike. I think he’s far enough away. Maybe he could hear the first part – I don’t care if he knows what I think – but he mustn’t hear this. I reach over and take her hand.

  I tell her what’s happened to me. I tell her what I think will happen. I tell her what I think that means.

  Suddenly she’s not a young woman anymore. She’s the quiet, broken little girl that I met when we formed the Station all those months ago. She’s the silent girl that clung to me like a baby monkey all through the night.

  And I’m sorry about that. Truly sorry. But we’re way beyond saving each other’s feelings now. We’re in new territory again. And I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

  Ike drives us through the mountains but I don’t know much about it. I sleep right through the day of switchback bends and the views of snow-topped peaks. Even when they take rest stops, I sleep on.