Afterland Read online

  Liz is humming along to the Beach Boys on the CD player, leaning on the table with one hand, and setting out Christmas crackers next to the dessert spoons. In the glare of actual electric lighting, Cole can see the droop to the left side of her face. She beams, lopsided, when she sees them.

  “There you are! I’ve been saving these for a special occasion. It’s strange, isn’t it, all these silly indulgent things we might never see again?”

  “Cocktail umbrellas,” Cole says. “And feather boas and those sequined cowboy hats. Can I give you a hand?”

  “If you could carry the chicken to the table? It’s heavy. I know what a growing kid’s appetite is like.”

  The food is glorious, even if the sweet potato is singed around the edges. It comes drowned in thick dark brown gravy and cranberry relish, and Liz brings out home-brewed apple beer in a plastic Coke bottle. It fizzes sharply against Cole’s teeth, and Mila gets giggly on half a glass. They don the paper crowns, layered on top of each other, because there’s a dozen crackers between the three of them. Tragically festive, Cole thinks. Not unlike normal family holidays.

  One Christmas Billie showed up with a model-slash-professional kitesurfer she’d picked up the night before, both of them high as balls behind their sunglasses and barely able to maintain a conversation. They snuck off to have loud sex in the guest bathroom while everyone else sat there in excruciating embarrassment, with her dad asking, “Where’s your sister got to?” and his girlfriend rolling her eyes. Devon had to turn the music up until they emerged disheveled and reeking of sex and even higher than before.

  The last straw had been when Miles, all of four years old, came to tell them fairies had been to visit: he knew because they had left fairy dust on the bathroom windowsill. Cue panic about whether he’d accidentally ingested any and how the fuck were they going to explain that to the hospital staff in the emergency room, without having him taken away by Child Services, even while he insisted, sage and patient, “No, Mom, of course I didn’t touch it. Fairy dust can make you fly and you know I’m scared of heights.”

  Cue Billie being defensive: “It wasn’t even coke, it was cat. It’s natural.”

  “So is puffadder venom!” Cole yelled. Billie and the kiteboarding model boy left in a huff, and Miles was fine in the end, but Cole didn’t speak to Billie for seven months. The worst was Devon trying to moderate between them. The importance of family. As if they’d never done drugs themselves. But not around kids, not around her kid, not when she should have known better. It was so selfish, so perfectly Billie. Didn’t she say the same thing at Ataraxia? “What’s the big deal? I knew you would freak out. Just relax.”

  Ataraxia. The tire iron. No, don’t go there.

  But the memory is like a buoy. She shoves it underwater and it pops back up again.

  “Honey? Do you want some more?” Liz touches her arm, and Cole heaves herself back to the present. “There’s plenty of food.”

  Mila burps appreciatively. “’Scuse me.”

  “Thank you, but I think we should get going. It’s late. We’ve still got a ways to go.”

  “Oh, but you can’t leave. I’ve made up the spare room for you. It’s much more comfortable than camping. I’d love to have you.”

  “Oh no, thank you, we have to go.”

  “But I insist. It’s no good out there. No place for a young lady. You should stay. Please stay. As long as you like. God knows I have more than enough food. I can look after you both. It would be no bother.”

  “We are going to go,” Cole says. “Now. Thank you for everything.” Mila is already pushing her chair away, moving in tandem to unspoken signals—the outlaw symphony, she thinks, getting better every day.

  “Oh no. Oh no, please! Please stay. What about dessert?”

  Baby, it’s cold outside.

  “We really can’t.”

  Mila is ahead of her, pulling on her jacket, both of them making for the door. “Thanks so much! The food was amazing. It was nice to meet you!”

  But as they reach the front door and she turns the handle, she realizes it’s locked. Of course it’s locked.

  “Mom,” Mila says. She turns to see Liz is holding a shotgun that has materialized out of nowhere, not pointed at them, it’s true, but ready to be.

  Liz voice rises to a wail. “You mustn’t leave. You can’t.”

  Cole pushes the car keys into Mila’s hand. “Go. I’ll catch up. Find another way out.”

  “Mom. No.”

  “I’ll use it. Don’t make me use it.” The dull click of the safety.

  She turns to face the woman and the gun. “Liz, I know you don’t want to do that. Open the door. Put down the gun. You have to let us go.” She’s moving toward her, closing the gap between them, slow and steady, soothing.

  “You stay back. I’ll shoot you!” Liz hefts the gun.

  Cole jolts forward and grabs the barrel with both hands. She’s counting on the woman not letting it go, and she doesn’t. She pulls down, dislodging the butt from Liz’s shoulder, and jerks it hard into, and toward Liz, using her full weight to drive the stock into her chest.

  The woman makes a sound like a water tank overheating, a pained breathless hiss, and falls backward onto the floor, hands still grasping for the gun. Cole steps on her chest, pressing hard enough to hold her down, twists the shotgun out of her hands. She feels calm and cold inside, but it’s black ice, the kind that cracks under your feet, sends you plummeting into the depths.

  “You hurt me,” Liz gasps.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to. Give me the key.”

  “I didn’t mean it. I wasn’t going to.”

  “Where is the key? I don’t want to ask you again.”

  “Here. It’s here.” She reaches into the pocket of her jeans, her hand shaking, frightened.

  “Thank you. Stay here. Don’t follow us. I will shoot you.”

  She turns, still holding the shotgun, to find Mila watching her from the entrance hall, eyes dark and face inscrutable.

  25.

  Miles: Indecent Proposal

  A WEEK AGO

  The night after Irwin in The Cornfield, Miles dreams about Cancer Fingers for the first time since they left the military base. He’s wandering their house in Johannesburg, but all the bedroom doors are closed and he can’t find anyone until he gets out to the pool and the creepy shed where they store the chlorine and the pool acid is standing open, and he knows he has to go inside. But when he does, it becomes the wine cellar of Ataraxia (topside, where the tourists used to go) and the white bloated thing is hunching there among the silver tanks and the sharp reek of fermentation. Disgusting little faggot pussy boy, it says with a soft mouth like moldy white bread.

  It leaves him reeling the next day, furious and sick to his stomach and he can’t get rid of those words, stuck in his head like the dumbest techno chorus. And so what? Like that’s even an insult! He doesn’t want to see Ella either. He doesn’t want to talk about it and he knows she’s going to want him to do something about it. But he only wants it all to go away.

  He’s alone in the apartment they share with Aunt Billie on level minus seven. Mom is off at breakfast or chores or one of her endless courses, but he doesn’t feel like going up to the dining room and dealing with other people.

  He checks the oven, because Billie is always making something, and there might be muffins. There are no baked treats. But there is a dirty black plastic tub with metal rings on the inside like the screw-on lid for an oversize flask. Or something to do with a car, maybe? Weird. Maybe they were washing it and needed to dry it in the oven. Or it’s part of Mom and Aunt Billie’s secret scheming. He takes it out and puts it on top of the stove, so they know he’s seen it, that he knows there’s something going on that they’re not damn well telling him. Well, he’s got secrets too.

  Faggot pussy boy.

  He grabs a breakfast bar from the top cupboard (they’re gross but in an addictively chewy kinda way), and his sketchbook, an
d takes the four flights of stairs weaving up through the bunker, topside.

  But his plan to be left alone fails on the first move. As he steps out the back entrance, by the kitchen, he smells hand-rolled cigarettes.

  “It’s you,” Aunt Billie calls down to him, from where she is standing on the wrought-iron balustrade of the balcony that runs the length of the dining room, leaning on her elbows and smoking a cigarette, her blond hair loose on her shoulders.

  “It’s you!” he calls back, hoping this will be the end of it. He tries to wave her off but she’s already moving toward the stairs.

  “I was hoping to talk to you.”

  “I’m a bit busy.”

  “Places to go, friends to mission with. Scary asshole convicts to avoid?”

  “You know about that?” He sags.

  “I heard him come stomping into the building yesterday, swearing about stupid kids, and I saw you running. Not hard to work out something happened. You all right?”

  “No.” His eyes burn and he blinks hard against it.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “I made death-by-chocolate brownies. Would that help?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “How about a drag of a cigarette?”

  “No,” he says. “Maybe.”

  “Okay. Wait there, we’ll go for a walk.”

  She comes down the stairs and they stroll past the medicinal herb garden to the greenhouses. Billie draws him around the back, out of sight, and hands him the cigarette. There’s her red lipstick on the tip, like a blood stain. “You want to draw it into your lungs, but not too deep.”

  “I know how to smoke,” he says. He doesn’t.

  “Whoa-kay. You might not be used to hand-rolled tobacco, all I’m saying.”

  He’s not. He chokes so hard, it spasms his whole chest, bends him double, his throat scorched, and he’s coughing and sobbing.

  “Dude,” Billie says, whacking him between the shoulder blades, which doesn’t work, because you can’t Heimlich smoke in the lungs or a burned throat.

  “I’m okay,” he says, but talking irritates his throat and sets off another round of coughing. Billie watches him, unconcerned, the cigarette dipping to her lips on the hinge of her elbow. When he’s finished racking, she reverses her grip to offer it to him.

  “Want another shot at it?”

  He waves it away. “I’m good. Hey, don’t tell my mom, okay?”

  “She won’t mind. Our dad pulled the same stunt on us when we were kids, except he insisted we finish the cigarette, wouldn’t let up till we puked.”

  “Did it work?”

  “For your mom, yeah. She only smokes when she’s really, really fucked-up drunk.”

  “I’ve never seen her smoke.”

  “Then you’ve never seen her really, really fucked-up drunk. Dad’s trick didn’t work for me, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just the rebellious type. And my first job, waitressing at Cantina Tequila, the smokers got smoke breaks. But older sisters have to be responsible. The babies in the family get to be the crazy ones. We have way more leeway.”

  “What about only kids?”

  “Guess you get to be whatever you like.” She takes a long drag. “Not here, though.”

  “I want to kill him,” Miles confides.

  “Seems like a lot of trouble.”

  “Still.”

  “You want to get out of here?”

  “Don’t joke.”

  “What if I wasn’t?”

  “Is that what you and Mom have been talking about?”

  “When?”

  “All the time!” He’s indignant. “I’ve seen you. And the plastic thing in the oven.”

  “The distributor cap? Shit, you weren’t supposed to look in there. Yeah, all right, you got me. It’s true. We’ve been planning our great escape. But…” She lets the sentence dangle, watching him like she’s wondering if she can trust him. To see if he’s man enough.

  “Tell me.”

  “Shit.” She exhales a long stream of smoke through her nose. “Your mom would kill me.”

  “That would be one way out.”

  “This is serious, Miles. I’m not fooling.”

  “I’m not a little kid.” Pussy faggot.

  “So, maybe you noticed that things have been a little tense between me and your mom these last few days.”

  “Yeah. I have noticed that.” He didn’t. Not even a little bit. “I didn’t want to ask. I thought it was sister things.”

  “In a manner of speaking. And hey, you know, I can’t blame her.” Billie shrugs. “Not really. She’s trying to protect you.”

  “I don’t need protecting.”

  “No, she’s probably right. You’re not old enough. It was a dumb idea. I guess we’re stuck here for the duration. Not so bad though, huh?” She leans her head against the greenhouse glass, sweeps the hand holding the cigarette in an arc, indicating all this. “Worse places to be trapped than paradise.”

  “I can make up my own mind. You know what Mom is like. She’s overprotective.”

  “Like a tiger.” Billie wrinkles her nose in a snarl, bares her teeth, claws up. “Rrrrr.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Nah. Not even a little bit. But you might think it’s gross.”

  “Just tell me!” But he’s got an inkling. A nasty little seed of an idea of what she’s talking about.

  She takes another drag of her cigarette, and holds it out to him. He makes slashing ixnay gestures, and she laughs. It feels good that she’s taking him seriously. That someone’s actually telling him what’s going on.

  “All right, all right. See, I came in with a plan. A good one. There’s a car waiting for us on the outside, friends of mine who are going to help us get away, back home, if you want, or anywhere in the world. But they want something in return and it’s not a big deal. Your mom thinks it is, but it’s nothing.”

  “I don’t care. I want to hear it.”

  “No backsies,” she says, “pinky swear.” He rolls his eyes, and she laughs again, a throaty huff. “You’re all right, kid. Okay. How do I say this. It’s a risk.”

  “Life’s a risk,” he says.

  “Wise-ass, huh. Then you know that sometimes you have to do ugly things.”

  “Like murder someone?”

  “No. God no. Nothing like that. It’s not even that ugly. Some people will tell you it is, but it’s perfectly normal. That’s why it’s so messed up, right? And it’s not like the doctors aren’t going to take samples and why should they benefit, why do they get to decide, when it’s your body? You know what I’m talking about, right?”

  “Sperm.” His face is on fire. And worse, someone has dipped a hot spear into the base of his spine, a molten lava feeling that tugs at his groin. Nope. Nope-nope-nope.

  “There’s no need to be embarrassed. We’re family. It’s normal, that’s what I’m saying. And we can let the doctors do what they want to do, or we can use this perfectly normal thing to get us the hell out of here, on a golden ticket to whatever kind of life you’ve always dreamed of. Where’s somewhere you’ve always wanted to go? Name a place. Anywhere in the world.”

  “Antarctica?”

  “Sure. Why not. One first-class trip to the ice lands, please.”

  “But…”

  “You know how no one is having babies right now, right?”

  “There’s a ban. The reprohibition to stop the virus—”

  “Right, right. And you know how no prohibition in history has ever worked out? Not in the twenties with Al Capone, not the war on drugs. It makes it worse. You can’t stop people doing what they want to do. They’ll find a way. And this isn’t drugs, this isn’t some people wanting to get drunk or take Molly or shoot up, which people are allowed to do because life is hard and we need to cut loose, especially now, I guess. That’s been in our history forever, since ancient time. Hell, animals get high, eating fermented b
erries or magic mushrooms. But this isn’t about that.”

  “It’s the future of the species, I know, I know.” All those animated videos. He’s still flushed.

  “No. Listen to me. It’s about the freedom of choice. It’s about the right to life. It’s the most basic and most fundamental human right, to have children, and these people, these governments of ours, are trying to control it, they’re trying to control us. Does that sound fair to you? Does that sound right?”

  “What?” This conversation has taken a confusing turn, a sharp left-right-right off the road, through the barrier, hurtling down the mountain pass.

  “It’s not right, and like any prohibition, it’s not working. I have friends on the outside who are willing to help us; they can get us out of the USA, back home or wherever we want. Antarctica. But your mom—your mom is being squeamish and, shit, I hate to say this about her, but she’s being a fucking prude, excuse my French. So I’m asking you, because you have agency, you’re a person. And it’s your choice, isn’t it, what to do with your body?”

  “Yes?”

  “So my friends. They need to know. And remember it’s no big deal, and this is for all of us, buddy. I have to ask. Are you jerking off yet?”

  They’re whisper-fighting, which is worse than yelling. Mom is playing Nine Inch Nails at rock-out volume, and the shower’s blasting while she and Aunt Billie have it out in the bathroom, where, they hope, the home-assistant software installed in the rooms can’t hear them. He’s got his headphones plugged in, playing Breath of the Wild on an old Nintendo Switch. There probably won’t be a new model. ’Cos priorities in the world and new game consoles aren’t high up. But he’s turned off the sound, and he’s straining to listen. He shouldn’t have said anything. He’s mortified. Why did she ask him that? About sex and jerking off and sperm. It’s so disgusting.