The Only Light Left Burning, page 87
Dedication
For Michael Miska, and the family we choose.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Andrew
Jamison
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Erik J. Brown
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Jamison
I USED TO LIKE SILENCE. THOUGH MAYBE like isn’t the correct word for it. Appreciate would probably be more appropriate. I appreciated the silence of my house before my mom came home from work each night. She didn’t appreciate it so much; she preferred to have music playing at all times. As soon as she got home, she’d connect her phone to the linked speakers in the house—the kitchen, living room, dining room, bathrooms, her bedroom, but not mine—and her favorite playlists would begin to pipe out. I could always tell how her day went from the music she played.
I wish I had streaming music now. Something to fill all the silence.
“Stop that.”
I look up from the gears and metal fasteners on the boat deck to see that Cara is scolding me without even looking my way.
“Stop what?”
“Everything you’re doing right now. Moping or whatever it is.”
“It’s not moping, it’s thinking.”
“About what?” She glances at me as she uncaps the OneDrop winch oil.
“Music.”
Cara recaps the winch oil and ducks into the cabin of the forty-two-foot sailboat. I hear a door open and a switch flip, and then the speakers built into the cockpit seats crackle briefly. She pulls herself back into the cockpit and points at the helm.
“See if Blanca is broadcasting,” she says.
I smile as gratitude fills my chest. Cara knows perfectly well that I wasn’t thinking only about music, but she already said she wasn’t getting in the middle of whatever’s going on between Andrew and me.
She doesn’t want to have to hear about our issues every time she’s with one of us. It’s bad enough that Andrew isn’t on the boat crew anymore and so she only gets to see him for a couple hours on the weekends and at the monthly socials.
I stand and turn on the radio. Static. Blanca broadcasts on the same channel every time, but the hours are iffy. There’s no set schedule, and even if she’s said there is, we don’t really understand it because Daria is the only one on the boat who speaks Spanish. She’s translated a few broadcasts while we listened, but so far it’s just been radio DJ stuff—making announcements for the Cuban settlement, music requests or dedications from people on the island, and once a guest who played guitar and sang live in the studio.
I flick through the AM stations that bookend the one she broadcasts from, hoping to hear her come through even just a little bit. But there’s only static on every station. She must not be on the air right now.
Like us, she’s probably working on something else at the moment. In the apocalypse, the job of radio DJ is appreciated, but not necessary. She most likely only gets to broadcast when she has downtime.
I lower the volume but leave the radio on so the crackle of static drones in the background. It’s better than the silence.
“It was worth a shot,” Cara says, and goes back to rebuilding the winch that’s been sticking.
We’re supposed to leave on Sunday morning—the day after my birthday—and we’ll be gone for seven whole weeks.
Seven weeks without seeing Andrew.
When he got kicked off the crew a couple of weeks ago it seemed like a nightmare. I told Admiral Hickey right away that I didn’t want to be on the boat if Andrew wasn’t there, too. That’s when Andrew freaked out. He spoke for me and told Hickey I was staying on the crew, even though I didn’t want to. That night we had a big blowup. He was pissed at me because I was so willing to give up on the boat mission; I was pissed at him for minimizing my fears of being separated from him. After that we got quiet, and the quiet—something I used to enjoy—has now grown into awkward stiltedness. So at first I was scared about being away from him, but the closer we get to the day, the more I think the separation might be a good thing for us.
I hope it might be a good thing for us. That the absence truly will make our hearts grow fonder—or at least make his grow fonder, because he’s the one who snapped at me. The one who didn’t talk to me for a whole day and has been staying late with the kids to avoid me.
“You’re doing it again,” Cara says, rubbing a gear with grease and placing it in its spot in the winch.
“I’m just tired,” I tell her. “Didn’t sleep well last night.” It’s not a lie. I haven’t been sleeping well any night for the last week and a half. I wake up in the middle of the night and can feel how far apart Andrew and I are.
He used to yell at me playfully—he made it clear that he thought it was adorable—because he says I sleep like a goldfish grows, expanding to take up whatever space is available to me. So each morning I would wake up half on my side of the bed, half on his, with him pressed up against me.
“I’m looking forward to the winter when your furnace body will be helpful instead of making me sweaty and gross,” he said.
I told him to just push me back to my side, but he refused, giving me a devilish grin. “I like your furnace body making me sweaty.”
But every time I’ve woken up these past few weeks, he’s been hugging his edge of the bed as if he’s trying not to touch me.
He says he isn’t mad at me and he was just upset in the moment that he was kicked off the boat and that I would give up on the trip north to bring back Amy’s mom. But the crew can do that without me. And I don’t understand why staying here with him would be such an issue. So I didn’t press any further, but it still doesn’t feel like we’ve gone back to normal.
Across from me, Cara lets out an annoyed breath through her nose. She opens her mouth to say something, but the radio crackles and finally Blanca’s voice comes through the speaker. My heart leaps and I stand, reaching over to turn up the volume.
I’m happy for the distraction, and Cara seems to welcome it, too, giving me a wan smile. But then the smile drops.
Blanca is speaking quickly, her voice fast and higher than it’s ever been. It’s not her usual, almost sensual radio DJ voice. It’s panicked—at least it sounds that way in between waves of static.
Maybe it’s excitement? For all we know she could be announcing a new guest who’s in the studio with her. I turn to Cara, who crouches near the speaker, listening intently.
“Do you know what she’s saying?”
Cara doesn’t speak Spanish, but she can understand some. A word here or there that she can pick up and piece together into some semblance of context clues that she’ll repeat to Daria. Then Daria will nod or clarify. But Daria isn’t here. She, Admiral Hickey, and Trevor are all at a Committee meeting going over the plan to head north on Sunday. To scavenge the coast and return with Henri, the woman who is the reason Andrew and I found the Key Colony in the first place.
“She’s talking too fast,” Cara says.
More static. Then Blanca comes back and yells something we can’t comprehend. In the background there’s more shouting followed by a high-pitched whistle. The static returns, cutting through her voice like waves crashing against a shoreline.
Movement from the dock catches my eye. Hickey, Daria, and Trevor are on their way back. I cup my hands to my mouth and call out to Daria.
“Something’s going on with Blanca! Quick!”
Daria, a Black woman in her late forties with her hair in locs, runs the rest of the length of the dock—Hickey and Trevor following behind her—then jumps onto the boat. I hold my hand out to help steady her and she grabs it, leaping into the cockpit. Her face clouds as she tries to listen. Hickey and Trevor come to a stop at the end of the dock, and we all listen to the static in silence.
Blanca’s voice breaks in with another shout, but the whole sentence doesn’t come through.
Daria shakes her head. Then another man speaks. He gets a few words out before the static returns.
“A hundred and ninety kilometers?” Daria says.
Cara and I share a look, trying to figure out what the 190 kilometers could mean. She seems just as puzzled as I am.
The man’s voice returns, speaking faster, sounding more desperate.
Daria gasps and covers her mouth.
“What is it?” Hickey asks behind her. Hickey is an old navy admiral from before the world ended—and one of the reasons Andrew isn’t on the boat anymore. Daria holds up her hand to quiet him. When there’s a longer stretch of static she speaks.
“The Cuban colony got hit by a storm. Hundred and ninety kilometers is the wind speed.”
Hickey does the calculations in his head. “That’s almost a hundred and twenty miles per hour.”
“Then it’s not just a storm,” Cara says. “It’s a hurricane.”
The static disappears and Blanca returns. Her voice comes through loud and clear for a few moments before static takes over again.
“The island is flooded,” Daria translates. “Pray for us, pray for yourselves.”
We listen to the static, but neither Blanca nor the other man comes back.
Andrew
LISTEN. I UNDERSTAND THAT WHEN THE WORLD ends, society collapses, and we as a species want to make an attempt at civilization, round two, we’re going to need people who do the jobs that no one wants to do.
But why do I have to be one of those people?
I know this makes me sound like a piece of shit, and I’m only saying it because I’m having a bad day—seriously, catch me on a good day and I’ll talk your ear off about how amazing work is—but being a babysitter is not exactly my postapocalyptic dream job.
It’s not that I have delusions of grandeur. I don’t want to be a doctor or a scientist or the New American president. Honestly, I’d rather be a farmer. The agricultural people in the Keys are figuring out how to get a handle on sustainability and pest control. This time last year everyone was thinking about short-term survival. Now, though, we’re feeling the full-on collapse of the bird link in the food chain. There are still birds—we all look up and point them out when we see them—but they’re like us, few and far between. Maybe a couple million of them, at most, across the entire globe. And that means more insects and pests to destroy crops. And more rodents that might have otherwise been hunted by birds of prey. But the Key farmers are trying their best to deal and evolve with the times. It wouldn’t hurt if I learned how to grow crops. Embraced my destiny as a Plant Gay.
I stop daydreaming to count the kids on the playground, and damn near have a heart attack. I regroup and count again. But I still come to the same number. Twelve. My lucky number thirteen no longer lucky. Which means one of the kids has gotten away from me. Again.
And I know exactly which one.
My heart races, somehow to the beat of Daphne telling me that kids can drown in seconds. But back on the beach side of the playground I still don’t see him. Daphne’s voice in my head goes from lecturing me about drowning to giving advice on looking after them.
Kids are creatures of habit. They’re going to keep doing the same thing, even when you tell them not to.
Let’s see, when was the last time I yelled at the Kid for disappearing?
“Dammit.”
I sprint to the playground equipment, because Daphne has already been gone for fifteen minutes and could come back at any moment. I whistle hard.
“Taylor!” I shout at the top of the monkey bars. Thirteen-year-old, too-smart-for-her-own-good Taylor looks down on me—I mean, what else is new? “I need you to watch everyone for a second, okay?”
“Did you lose him again?”
“Okay, if we’re going to place blame, you should have seen him wander off from up there.”
“I’m not an adult.”
“No,” I mutter under my breath. “Just reincarnated Damien from The Omen.” I bet she has a 666 birthmark hidden under that braid.
“What?”
“Keep an eye, please? I’ll owe you an extra cookie tomorrow.” Shit, wait, did she just call me an adult? I’m only, like, three years older than her, what the hell?
Mustering the best impression of my own little sister I’ve ever seen, Taylor gives me a “sigh-fiiiiine,” then, Satan love her, counts the kids playing around her. I sprint in the opposite direction toward the water park.
But it’s not a water park anymore. The engineering folks still haven’t figured out water treatment given the limited amount of power we have, so the fountains and the flower-shaped sprinklers are still turned off.
That also means the pool is empty. But there’s no reason the Kid would need to go to the pool, so he isn’t there. He can’t be. Because I definitely won’t be able to live with myself if I have to look over the edge and see him lying at the bottom of a concrete pool.
He’s six. He knows better than that. I have to give him more credit.
But the closer to the pool I get, the more anxious I am.
Then relief—because there he is, on the sky-blue painted floor of the water park, under the nonfunctioning daisy sprinkler.
“Kid!” I call out with enough authority in my voice that I know my dad is looking down on me with a twinkle in his eye. Every time Andrew uses his big-boy voice, an angel gets their wings.
The Kid looks up from the stuffed hippo in his hands. I call him Kid because he’s never told anyone his name. He has no parents or family to tell us who he is, and when we ask him his name he won’t answer—even the name game doesn’t work on him, and the other orphans eat that shit up. Daphne was vehemently against calling him “Kid,” but even she’s broken down and uses it when talking to me. Not to his face, though.
It seems to be okay when I do it because whenever I shout it, he answers.
When he sees me, the Kid immediately looks guilty, and it breaks my damn heart. I hate yelling at these kids. I understand why we need to, but it’s not fair that I’m the one who has to do it. I mean, technically there’s four of us swapping off the responsibility, but I do like to hand it off to Daphne as much as possible. Probably because she yells at me enough.
I come to a stop next to him and crouch down. “Dude. You can’t run off without telling me.”
His attention returns to his hippo. “Bobo needed fresh water.” He makes a splashing sound.
Bobo’s a stuffed animal, Kid; the less water he gets, the better. Instead of saying this aloud, however, I nod. “Well, now that he’s had his fill, we need to get back to the others, okay? Ms. Daphne will yell at us if we’re late for lineup.”
That gets his attention, so he takes my hand and we head back to the playground. When we arrive, Daphne still isn’t back—thank God—but Taylor is down from the monkey bars again, talking to another adult.
There’s three full seconds of anxiety before I recognize the tattoos covering every inch of flesh visible around a cutoff denim vest littered with pins and buttons, and I relax a bit.
“Rocky Horror,” I say when we reach the edge of the playground. “I’ve never been happier to see another human being in my life.” That’s extremely untrue, but I do love me some Rocky Horror.
He smiles wide and holds out a tattooed fist for me to bump. All the other kids have suddenly noticed Rocky Horror’s arrival and the bravest of them are coming forward to ogle him.
Yes, his name is Rocky Horror. No, not first name Rocky, last name Horror. His first and only name is Rocky Horror. Like the Kid, he won’t tell anyone what his legal name was before what he calls “Teotwawki”—the End of the World as We Know It—and honestly why should he? Rocky Horror’s a great fucking name.
After our fist bump, he leans in and we make a loud show of kissing each other’s cheeks. He puts on a Moira Rose lilt as he speaks. “Andrew, wonderful to see you as always.”
“Isn’t it?”
He goes back to his normal, gruff voice. “No. Where’s Daph?”
“She ran to the loo.” Bathrooms don’t really exist when there’s no running water, and calling them outhouses is boring, but it’s not like I can say “brick shithouse” in front of the kids. Loo is whimsical.
One of the kids steps forward. Uh-oh, No-Filter Frank. Wanna guess why we call him that?
“What are those?” NFF points at the pink scars on Rocky Horror’s bare, hairy, tattoo-covered chest. The scars being the only part of him—at least to my knowledge—not covered by tattoos.
He opens up the vest so the kids have a better view. “That? Just some scars from surgery. But they’re old, so it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Especially since they put titanium over his ribs,” I add with wide eyes.
He puffs up his chest and lowers his voice. “Now no one can hurt me!” He lets out the air in his lungs and adds, “Physically, I mean. Emotionally, on the other hand . . .”
Before NFF or one of the other kids can ask any more questions, Rocky Horror heads over to one of the benches. As soon as he’s out of the vicinity of the playground, the kids disperse—probably realizing Rocky Horror is not going to go down the slides or play tag with them like I do. I bend down so I’m eye level with the Kid and Bobo the hippo.
