I am trying not to gawk at the city like the backwoods tourist I am, but something beyond curiosity is gluing my attention to every kerb and rooftop. As foreign as it all is to me, I feel a ghostly sense of recognition, even nostalgia, and as I make my way down what must be Eye Street, some of my stolen memories begin to stir.
This is where we started. This is where they sent us when the coasts disappeared. When the bombs fell. When our friends died and rose as strangers, unfamiliar and cruel.
It’s not Perry’s voice – it’s everyone’s, a murmuring chorus of all the lives I’ve consumed, gathering in the dark lounge of my subconscious to reminisce.
Flag Avenue, where they planted our nation’s colours, back when there were still nations and their colours mattered. Gun Street, where they set up the war camps, planned attacks anddefences against our endless enemies, Living as often as Dead.
I walk with my head down, keeping as close to the walls as I can. When I meet someone coming the other way I keep my eyes straight ahead until the last possible moment, then I allow brief contact so as not to seem inhuman. We pass briskly with awkward nods.
It didn’t take much to bring down the card house of civilisation. Just a few gusts and it was done, the balance tipped, the spell broken. Good citizens realised the lines that had shaped their lives were imaginary and easily crossed. They had wants and needs and the power to satisfy them, so they did. The moment the lights went out, everyone stopped pretending.
I begin to worry about my clothes. Everyone I encounter is wearing thick grey denim, waterproof coats, mud-caked work boots. What world am I still living in where people dress for aesthetics? If no one realises I’m a zombie, they may still call in a report on the stylish lunatic roaming the streets in a fitted shirt and tie. I quicken my pace, sniffing desperately for Julie’s trail.
Island Avenue, where they built the courtyard for the community meetings, where ‘they’ became ‘we’, or so we believed. We cast our votes and raised our leaders, charming men and women with white teeth and silver tongues, and we shoved our many hopes and fears into their hands, believing those hands were strong because they had firm handshakes. They failed us, always. There was no way they could not fail us – they were human, and so were we.
I veer off Eye Street and start working my way towards the centre of the grid. Julie’s scent grows more distinct, but its exact direction remains vague. I keep hoping some clue will emerge from the chanting in my head, but these ancient ghosts have no interest in my insignificant search.
Jewel Street, where we built the schools once we finally accepted that this was reality, that this was the world ourchildren would inherit. We taught them how to shoot, how to pour concrete, how to kill and how to survive, and if they made it that far, if they mastered those skills and had time to spare, then we taught them how to read and write, to reason and relate and understand their world. We tried hard at first, there was much hope and faith, but it was a steep hill to climb in the rain, and many slid to the base.
I notice the maps in these memories are slightly outdated; the street they’re calling Jewel has been renamed. The sign is newer, a fresh primary green, and instead of a visual icon it has an actual word printed on it. Intrigued, I turn at this intersection and approach an atypically wide metal building. Julie’s scent is still distant, so I know I shouldn’t stop, but the pale light coming through the windows seems to prick some wordless anguish in my inner voices. As I press my nose against the glass, their musings go quiet.
A large, wide-open room. Row upon row of white metal tables under fluorescent lights. Dozens of children, all younger than ten, divided by row into project groups: a row repairing generators, a row treating gasoline, a row cleaning rifles, sharpening knives, stitching wounds. And at the edge, very near the window I’m staring through: a row dissecting cadavers. Except of course they aren’t cadavers. As an eight-year-old girl in blonde pigtails peels the flesh away from her subject’s mouth, revealing the crooked grin underneath, its eyes flick open and it looks around, struggles briefly against its restraints, then relaxes, looking weary and bored. It glances towards my window and we make brief eye contact, just before the girl cuts out its eyes.
We tried to make a beautiful world here, the voices mumble. There were those who saw the end of civilisation as an opportunity to start over, to undo the errors of history – to relive mankind’s awkward adolescence with all the wisdom of our modern age. But everything was happening so fast.
I hear the noise of a violent scuffle from the other end of the building, shoes scraping against concrete, elbows banging sheet metal. Then a low, wet groan. I traverse the building, searching for a better viewpoint.
Outside our walls were hordes of men and monsters eager to steal what we had, and inside was our own mad stew, so many cultures and languages and incompatible values packed into one tiny box. Our world was too small to share peacefully; consensus never came, harmony was impossible. So we adjusted our goals.
Through another window I see a big open space like a warehouse, dimly lit and scattered with broken cars and chunks of debris as if simulating the outer city landscape. A crowd of older kids surrounds a corral of chain-link fencing and concrete freeway barriers. It resembles the ‘free speech zones’ once used to contain protesters outside political rallies, but instead of being crammed full of sign-waving dissidents, this cage is occupied by just four figures: a teenage boy armoured head to toe in police riot gear, and three badly desiccated Dead.
Can the Dark Ages’ doctors be blamed for their methods? The bloodletting, the leeches, the holes in skulls? They were feeling their way blind, grasping at mysteries in a world without science, but the plague was upon them; they had to do something. When our turn came, it was no different. Despite all our technology and enlightenment, our laser scalpels and social services, it was no different. We were just as blind and just as desperate.