What Came After (21 page)

He kicked his way through trash and squeezed between the projector and the wall to get near the square window, through which he could see everything below. He saw the fire going in the center of the auditorium and he saw something big roasting on a spit over it. Someone in heavy skins giving the spit a half turn now and then. A halfhearted half turn. The person was small and he figured it was a child but it didn’t move the way a child moves. It moved slowly and as if it were in some kind of pain that was offering it constant resistance. Like an old person, although how a person would get old out here he didn’t know.

The smoke from the fire burned his eyes and the scent from the roasting animal made his stomach growl. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast and he didn’t know when he’d eat again. Not with his supplies gone and the men from out in front of the theater bringing them in now and storing them among the various piles of wreckage and salvage and trash down there. His tent and his sleeping bag and everything else. Dividing everything up and distributing it all with the rest of the junk they already had. His pack and his satellite phone and his Black Rose rations. Arguing over one thing or another with their hands. He watched long enough to see the small figure give the spit another half turn and then he began searching his own cell before the sun went down and the light died entirely.

*

The main thing was that the door opened in, so the hinges were on this side of it and he could get to them. They were rusted from a leak in the roof, but so what. He just had to find a tool. Something to work at the pins with. A spoon or a screwdriver or a knife or just about any stiff piece of metal that was flat enough and thin enough.

The problem was that there was nothing. Nothing made of metal but the stacked film cans and the projector and the hinges themselves. The film cans were too perforated with rust to hold up and the projector was monolithic and he got filthy hunting through the rest of the garbage. Bat shit and rat shit. Slime from the corpse of a possum or a woodchuck or something along those lines, a corpse whose bones were too weak and flexible to be of any use although he tried because he didn’t have any other choice. The leg bones were too fragile and the ribcage was too soft and the skull just crumbled. He stood against the door and watched the bits sift down onto his shoes. Dropped the skull and searched some more. In the gathering dark he blundered into an abandoned hornets’ nest and the papery dried mud from it stuck to the slime on his hands and his clothing and everything else. Got in his nose. If it had been a bees’ nest he could have broken it open for honey, but not a hornets’ nest. A hornets’ nest was just an impediment.

He went to the window and watched the last of the light fade from the little circle of sky and watched the fire below take over. Its orange light rising and shapes flickering on the walls. Accidental shapes that lurched and wavered. Black shapes against black walls filmed with soot. He imagined how this auditorium must have been in the old days, the days before the collapse of the economy and the Great Dying and the exodus of the survivors from cities like Greensboro. When families would have come here in the evening and filled this place up and a different light would have flickered. A bright light from up here, making images on the screen opposite. He turned his head and sized up the projector, now just a scattering of little gleaming points and arcs reflecting the variable dark like the burnished weapons of a distant army, and he decided that one of those parts would have to come loose and serve his ends tomorrow. Wishing he’d started there instead of digging through everything else, but knowing that he’d been reluctant to tear apart anything so beautiful and complete.

He smelled meat from below and thought about calling out for some in case they’d forgotten about him and he imagined how his voice would sound to the people down there. Coming from the high dark. It would be the voice of a god in a world that didn’t have room for gods. Better to stay forgotten. He pushed the pile of film cans toward the door by way of an alarm and kicked a place clear in the middle of the floor and went to sleep. Thinking of Penny and Liz. That old rhythm returning. Sure that with the dawn he would come up with something.

*

A child arrived in the morning. A soft rap on the door and a plastic plate pushed through the lower ventilation slot. The plate hanging there balanced and a presence outside waiting for him to take it. He scrambled awake and went to the door. Thinking at least they let him eat. At least they ate from plates themselves. They hadn’t lost that. It could have been worse. He leaned against the tower of film cans and wiped his fingers on his pantlegs and dug in. Cold meat cut cleanly with something sharp. His own knife or some other knife. The presence outside lingering. He leaned forward and narrowed his eyes and looked through the slot and saw it was a child. Girl or boy he couldn’t say. An animal child looking at him as at an animal. Fascinated but afraid. He leaned back on the pile of cans and the child stayed put. The meat tasted good and he said so and the child didn’t respond. He said thank you for bringing this to me and the child just stared at him through the slot. Blinking but that was it. He finished the meat and licked the plate clean and slid it back through the opening in the door, saying are you trying to fatten me up or what. Smiling. The child taking the plate and turning its back and running like mad.

He didn’t despair. He had two aims for the day. First to work some likely bit of the projector loose, and second to mind the schedule of the people in the auditorium. Family or colony or whatever you’d call them. Tribe maybe. He did his best to identify individuals by size and demeanor and the particular rags and skins they wore. The one who’d brought him up here at gunpoint still seemed to be in charge, judging by his manner and by the subservient pose that others fell into when he was around. He kept Weller’s gun clipped to a leather thong tied around his waist and he wore the bandoliers as if they signified his status, which Weller guessed they did. He’d need to keep an eye on him.

They left the premises early and they stayed gone, keeping the kind of schedule any working person kept. The child went with the rest. Two by two and three by three they passed through a fire door close to the front of the auditorium, up by the stage. A couple of them staying behind to finish up one chore or another and then those two going as well. Only one stayed behind for good, the one he’d seen turning the spit. The one who’d moved so slowly and painfully. Left behind here to circulate all day, sorting this and that, tending the fire. Clearly of no use in the harsh green woods and perhaps revered in some way for his or her age. Her age, he thought. But he couldn’t say for sure.

He worked silently and steadily on the projector. Freeing the housings and prying the metal trim loose. Mice lived in each of the housings and they scrambled away at his touch in a shower of sawdust and shit that turned into a torrent when he pulled the covers away. The decorative trim was thin chromed metal too weak to be of any use. It broke when he folded it forward and back on itself enough times, but a short length of it doubled over and flattened on the concrete beneath the hammer of his boot-heel made a good flat-bladed screwdriver, which was something. The spool on the top of the projector was vacant but the spool on the bottom had an empty reel mounted on it, a skeleton of galvanized steel that looked useful. It was held on by a locking mechanism that had seized up a long time ago, but the mechanism was held together by screws and now Weller had a screwdriver.

He had the reel off and taken to pieces and had begun filing one arm to a sharp edge when he heard the fire door open down below. He stood and went to the window and watched. People coming back in, silent as monks, bearing skinned animals and scrap wood and salvage. A stringer of fish. Dropping everything and settling in and signaling to one another with those hand motions again. The old woman, for he had grown certain that an old woman is what she was, put more wood on the fire. Weller counted them all again just to be sure.

The child appeared at his door again, carrying another plate. Slipping it through the ventilation slot and balancing it there until Weller took it and then waiting. Weller ate and burped and said I feel like Hansel and Gretel in here or don’t you know about Hansel and Gretel. Nothing back from the child. The gingerbread house and all, he said. He finished and licked the plate clean, wondering if he could make this child a friend. Saying come on now, didn’t anybody ever tell you that old story. The woods and the breadcrumbs. The wicked witch and the gingerbread house that turns out to be just a trap in the end. The child listening, drawing ever so slightly nearer. Blinking. Weller deciding that it was a girl after all but not being able to put into words why he thought so. Thinking of Penny. Maybe that was all.

The girl took the plate and tilted her head to one side and didn’t move otherwise. Weller got the idea that she was waiting for something else. For some word. He came slowly to his knees and the girl pulled away again. He held still and the girl didn’t come back. She was just a shadow out there against the dusty light that rose up from the lobby. Come on, Weller whispered. Leaning forward slow. Cat got your tongue?

At which the child came forward and showed him. Showed him through the slot. Came near and opened wide and let him see the reason that she hadn’t spoken. She had no tongue at all. Just rotten teeth and the black pit of her throat and a hard wet knot pulsing. Weller drew breath. She clamped her mouth shut and dropped the plate and ran.

*

Later the old woman came. She stood outside banging on the door with something hollow as if she were demanding that he open up when she was actually warning him back. And back he went, as far away from the door as the little room permitted, dropping the metal arm that he’d been working on into his pocket. Hearing the hollow banging on the door and seeing her legs blocking the lower ventilation slots but not seeing anything through the upper slots at all and guessing who it was. He hollered all right come on in I won’t try anything. For all the good talking to her might do. She sprang the lock and pushed the door open a crack and slid through. The door opening hard and the old woman stronger than she looked, using her shoulder. She kept an eye on him and put down a red plastic bucket. Just inside. Closing the door behind her but not locking it and giving Weller a look like don’t you come near. Like don’t you dare. The red plastic bucket a warning and its missing wire handle proof that someone had been circumspect. Weller felt the arm from the take-up reel in his pocket and wondered who. Who had been careful about what he might do with a length of heavy wire and who knew she was up here and who might be waiting for him to make a mistake and push his luck.

The woman leaned forward in a crooked way that made her seem both smaller and more threatening, and she looked Weller square in the eye. Steady and unafraid. Almost taunting. She was bent and wizened and lined all over like a map of someplace nobody had visited for a long time. Filth in those lines and puckers. Every pore and cut and eroded place plugged up with dirt. But she looked at him evenly and calmly and with serious intent. Holding out an accusatory finger. He thought she might begin signaling something to him the way he’d seen them signal to each other down below and he felt at a loss on that account, ignorant, but she didn’t signal anything. She just held out her finger quivering. And after a moment, in a nearly inaudible voice that hissed and creaked from disuse, she said, “You leave my grandchild be.” Five words that took all her breath.

“Your grandchild.”

“Shhh.” Her finger to her lips. “I still carry a little weight around here is all.”

Nothing from Weller.

The woman backed up and unlatched the door and toed the bucket toward him. A peace offering or something. Who knows. “We can save you for the cold weather or we can eat you right now,” she said, “it’s all the same to me.”

“I’m—”

“That child’s got troubles enough.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sure she does.” For what child doesn’t.

*

In the morning he rose and went to stand by the square window, patiently rubbing his bit of steel on the cinderblock and watching the day unfold below. Work details forming just as they had yesterday. The old woman tidying up and not looking toward the projection booth even once, as if he weren’t there. A couple of the men, the leader and one other, kneeling together over what looked from his elevation like one of his road maps, poking at it with their fingers, disagreeing about something from the way they looked at each other and the way their hands flashed. Tight little movements at chest height. Something belligerent about them. A disagreement. Weller thought he knew who would win.

The other man folded the map and put it in Weller’s backpack along with a few other things. The leader took some of those things back out and the other man let him. He didn’t look happy about it, but he acquiesced. He knelt and dug around underneath a pile of junk and located the bag with Weller’s spare pistol in it and the half-carton of ammunition, and the leader shook his head. No. He patted the weapon hanging from the leather thong around his waist as if he were the only person in the world entitled to wear such a thing. The other man shrugged and hoisted the pack onto his back and they both made for the door. Separating once they were outside, the leader going left and the other man going right and the fire door clapping shut behind them.

Soon everybody was gone except the old woman. The granddaughter leaving with the rest of them. Weller made a point of watching her go and he saw no sign of affection pass between those two. No sign of any connection whatsoever. Just two animals. Not even animals. Animals showed affection or something that you could mistake for affection, particularly with their own young. Dogs and cats, foxes and deer. No doubt even bears, which he’d thought these people were when he’d first seen one of them. He got thinking about that moment and about the narrow column of smoke he’d seen rising out over the forest earlier that morning. He’d thought then that the smoke was from a lightning strike, but now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe they’d been watching him all along. Maybe he should have been more careful. It was too late now. Standing alongside the wall scratching his bit of steel against the cinderblock and checking his progress and watching the last of the people in the auditorium below filter out. Like bees, he decided. Like some kind of insect. Insects working together toward some automatic aim. They’d made themselves that way.