“Mom loved the basement. It was cool on hot days, but she’d sit down there even in the winter just to listen to the hum.”
I recognize the street we’re on. I remember stopping to ask directions from two kids named David and Marie. She lives on a corner. Daisy Street and Devil Avenue.
“Dad said it was just the power inverters under the floor, but it sounded so far away, like it was coming up from some deep hole. It sounded like a bunch of different songs playing over each other and there was this vibration…” She shakes her head. “I couldn’t stand it. It made my brain feel numb. But Mom said it was soothing. She said it quieted her thoughts.”
We come around a corner, and I indulge in another memory. A precious scent. A familiar voice drifting down from a balcony. A few tender seconds before the world interrupted.
“It’s here,” she says, staring up at the building with murderous intensity. “BABL is under my house.”
In my memory, her house is a lovely old manor covered in vines and flowers, marble columns leading up to a balcony where fair maidens sigh and pine. My memory is full of shit. Her house is a prison watchtower of white aluminum siding, tiny grated windows, a balcony mounted with sniper rifles.
“Shouldn’t bring them into this,” M says, indicating the kids and the unwell woman leaning against him. “I’ll take them somewhere safe.”
Sprout is shaking her head. “I want to stay.”
“Sprout,” I say, kneeling down in front of her, “where’s your dad?”
She doesn’t answer for a moment. Her chin quivers. “I don’t know.” A tear glistens in her right eye. “He let them take me.”
Julie crouches down and hugs her. Sprout accepts it but remains upright, arms at her side, teary but not crying. “I want to stay with you,” she says, and her voice is firm. “I want to help.”
Behind her, Joan and Alex nod. Addis remains neutral, his face clouded.
“Guys,” M starts to object, but Julie interrupts him.
“Stay out here and keep a lookout,” she says to Sprout, including M with a glance. “We’ll be quick.”
M looks unconvinced, but the kids start scanning the streets with militant squints. Nora mumbles inaudibly.
“R?” Julie says, and heads around the side of the house.
I follow her with our payload in hand.
There is a tiny sunken door in a concrete stairwell. A basement door. Julie takes a deep breath, then a step down—a bullet turns the next step into a spray of concrete chips.
“Welcome home, kids!”
Above us. The balcony.
Captain Balt.
In the weeks since I last encountered this man, I’ve seen stacked mounds of corpses oozing in basements. I’ve seen people shot, eaten, and liquefied, and I’ve crushed a dozen heads with my own hands. None of it filled me with as much revulsion as the sight of this man’s face.
He leans over the railing, pointing one of the sniper rifles at Julie. He swivels it up and down, ogling her through the scope. “Nice view from up here! No doubt about it, Julie, you’re all grown up.”
This man who exploited a young girl’s pain and broke her even further, who remained a leering presence year after year only to join the forces that destroyed her home. This man who has suffered no consequences for any of his vile acts—except for the night I cracked his skull.
Three more soldiers emerge behind him, taking aim at M and the kids.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” Julie shouts up at them, her anger drowning out any trace of fear.
“Oh you didn’t hear about my promotion?” Balt pulls his eye away from the scope and grins, but he keeps the rifle aimed. He looks professional. His Homo erectus jaw is clean-shaven, his hair slicked back and cropped on the sides, his tattoos covered by the sleeves of his beige jacket. “The Axiom Group knows a strong leader when it sees one. I got your dad’s job, so I took your dad’s house.”
Julie’s hands clench. My eyes dart to M, but he’s as helpless as we are in the sights of three AK-47s.
“You left dirty clothes all over your room. You’re a dirty girl!” Balt clucks his tongue. “But if you want to move back in, I’m sure we could figure something out. My boys would be more focused if they didn’t have to hunt for pussy.”
For the first time in my life, I wish I had a gun. I wish I could pull a little lever on a shiny little machine and watch it delete this grotesque mutation from the genome of mankind.
Julie dashes for the door. A bullet blows the knob off as she reaches out for it; she pulls her hand back with a gasp as spots of blood bloom from the side of her palm.
“Where you going?” Balt says. “We’re having a conversa-tion.”
“Fuck the fuck off, Tim!” Julie shrieks up at him. “Are you gonna kill me or what?”
Balt pulls away from the scope and finally quits the performance. “I saw your little activist act on the cameras. The fuck was that bullshit? I know you’re crazy but not that kind of crazy.” He squints at Julie, then at me. “What are you really here for?” His eyes move to my briefcase. Then the basement door. I see it dawning on him. But as he opens his mouth to express his opinion of our improbable plan, a noise interrupts him. A low growl rises to a sustained wail and then falls again—an air raid siren, the universal sound of fear.
I feel a vibration in my feet as massive motors jolt into motion. I see a shadow moving toward us from the far end of the stadium, rushing down the streets and engulfing the buildings like a tsunami of gloom. I see Balt and his men craning their necks upward to take in an incredible sight:
The sky is closing.
The rectangle of blue shrinks as distant roof panels grind toward each other, and I can’t help imagining the lid of a sarcophagus. Even a dull ape like Balt is awestruck by the spectacle, and I notice all the guns pointing at us have drooped.
Julie brushes past me without a sound and races to join M and the others, who are already halfway down the block. I understand what we’re doing just a few seconds before Balt does; I hear shouts behind me and then shots; bullets crater the asphalt close enough to spray me with stinging chips, but then I’m behind a building and momentarily safe, though it’s hard to use that word while sirens howl all around us.
“Due to higher than usual threat levels,” blares a cheerful voice from the stadium’s PA system, “we are initiating enclave lockdown at this time. Please remain where you are and we will provide further instructions shortly. Do not move at all.”
“What’s happening?” Tomsen says. “Is this all for us?”
“They’ve shut the roof three times in the last seven years,” Julie says between breaths. “Once for a hurricane, once for a siege, and once for a thousand Boneys. Whatever this is…” She looks up at the narrowing strip of sky. “…it’s bigger than us.”
The roof closes with a soft boom like far-off thunder. The floodlights kick on, replacing daylight with their pale imitation. People stand frozen in the street, perhaps wondering how literally they should take Axiom’s instructions not to move.
I hear Balt a few blocks behind us, bellowing orders and threats to his men and nearly out-shouting the sirens. Julie points to a gap in the stadium wall leading into its shadowy guts. “There,” she says, and disappears into the hole.
No one lives in the wall. Some of its hollow spaces have become storage rooms, packed with canned goods and building materials, but not even the dull-eyed citizens of this dead-end society were willing to spend their last days in these lightless corridors. I wonder how long before Axiom convinces them.
We are going up. Our footsteps make a pipe-like echo in the narrow stairwell. Julie leads with a confidence that deflects questions. She spent half her childhood locked in the stadium, and this concrete labyrinth was her one escape, her secret clubhouse away from it all. I have no doubt she knows it well.