Year Zero (43 page)

Ben was brown as mahogany from the sun. His hair smelled smoky from the campfire. He showed no surprise at seeing them, nor hostility. His face was its usual cipher. He nodded to Izzy, but spoke to Nathan Lee. “You’ve returned,” he said. It was a greeting that presumed a journey of some kind.

“Yes, I’m back,” said Nathan Lee.

Eesho had condemned Nathan Lee and Izzy as minions of the darkness. But the microphones in the yard had also picked up clones discussing whether their two former comrades had escaped, or possibly been executed. The crucifix in the tree still haunted them.

Ben didn’t speak to such gossip. He had already expressed his opinion that late afternoon two months ago when he described Golgotha, and how he and Nathan Lee were alike, travelers who cast themselves into a wilderness of light and shadows. Nathan Lee had gone searching anew, and now he was back. That was enough for Ben. He didn’t ask where Nathan Lee had gone, nor what he’d seen. They could get into those kinds of details another time.

Ben studied Nathan Lee’s face, and maybe his face had changed. Nathan Lee had looked in his mirror, and grief had not turned his hair white nor put more lines around his eyes. Just the same, Ben saw something. “Your journey was hard,” he remarked.

He seemed personally disappointed, as if it might have been the wrong journey or Nathan Lee had been the wrong one to take it. There was nothing mystical nor pointed about it. Nathan Lee had felt the same disillusion himself listening to his father and mother after certain expeditions. Explorers were connected, no matter if they were searching on the sea or in a book. When one of them discovered a treasure, whether it was gold or a summit or a math formula, it enriched them all, because fundamentally they were driven by the same riddle. When one of them came home lost or empty-handed, all felt empty. Sooner or later the quest would resume, often with a new approach or a fresh explorer. The continuation was inevitable. There was no end to humanity’s searching, only the great circle.

Nathan Lee knew the clones would all embark on his same quest once they gained their freedom. They would go to the ends of the earth looking for their loved ones. They would never believe that two thousand years—eighty generations or more—had passed, and that their wives and children were dust. He had no intention of telling them the truth. Passing the torch, that was Nathan Lee’s job, pure and simple. There was no telling what the miles might reveal to them.

He drew the globe between them. “Here is the world. All the land. All the water.” He held his fist to one side.
“Suh-rraa.”
The moon. Further out, he shaped a circle in the air.
“Shim-shaa.”
The sun. He stopped the globe and pointed. “Israel. Jerusalem. Egypt. Rome.
Baavil.”
Babylon.

Ben turned his attention from the globe and its promises to Nathan Lee. “Why show them to me?” But even the flat voice and scarred, stoic mask could not hide his longing and excitement.

“It’s time to give you
gool-paa-n’e,”
said Nathan Lee.
Wings.
“You can show the others how to fly.”

“Wings,” Ben grunted cautiously.

“There is a world out there.” He gave the globe a slow spin.

“Your world.” Ben didn’t look at the globe.

So, thought Nathan Lee, Ben had bought into the tribalism. Nathan Lee was an outsider. Ben didn’t seem to hold it against him. But it was there. “It is your world, too,” he said.

“Pssh,” scoffed Ben. “Words. A trap.”

“This is no trap. When the time is right, you’ll go free.”

“You will free us?”

“Yes.”

“And so you own us.”

“Not me,” said Nathan Lee.

Ben was a tough customer. He kept testing the proposition. “You made us slaves…for nothing?”

Nathan Lee didn’t correct Ben’s choice of words. They were lab animals. It was nothing personal. There was no way to express the lowliness of that. “Ben,” he sighed,
“u-saad.”
Be free.

“You want us to believe again.” In what, he did not say. It was universal. Faith requires doubt, and doubt, faith. Los Alamos was built on just such a foundation.

“I see you walking,” said Nathan Lee. “Looking. Smelling the wind. You said we’re alike. I can tell that you’re getting ready to go.”

And still Ben was not convinced. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because,” said Nathan Lee, “it frees me.”

For the time being, that seemed to satisfy Ben.

Nathan Lee stopped the globe. He placed his finger on New Mexico. “We are here. A city. Los Alamos. All of this is America. Let me teach you about this place.”

Ben followed the lesson for a time, but then he returned to Nathan Lee. “Lead us,” he said.

Nathan Lee faltered. They would trust him for that? But his place was…elsewhere. He’d finished searching for what they would want. “Not me.” He wasn’t sure how to explain himself. “My heart is here.”

Out of the blue, Ben said, “Bring her with you.”

Nathan Lee was startled. He glanced at Izzy, who shrugged. “Who do you mean?” Miranda, surely. Eesho had described her to the others, the green-eyed sorceress.

“Your daughter,” Ben stated.

The walls sagged.

“What?” whispered Nathan Lee.

“The little girl,” said Ben.

Cold shot up his spine. Nathan Lee couldn’t speak.

Izzy entered roughly. He could see Nathan Lee’s shock. “Who told you about his child?” he demanded.

“No one,” said Ben. “I used to hear her singing in the night. But then she changed. She called out. She became wild. Her songs became weeping.”

The ghost of my daughter.
Nathan Lee felt impaled.

“There was nothing I could do but listen,” Ben continued. “It tore at my heart. And then you came. You told her stories. You sang to her. That was the first time I heard your voice. I didn’t understand your words, but I listened. It went on for hours. You cast out her demons, one by one. And in healing her, you healed me, too. The wildness in me.”

Suddenly Nathan Lee realized what he was talking about. Ben must have heard them through the steel walls. He breathed out. “The girl,” said Nathan Lee. “Tara. The Neandertal.” The world resumed.

Izzy relaxed.

“I never told you,” Ben finished in his own tongue. “You gave me hope. That was the first time. The second time was when you brought us out from the earth, into the sun. I knew that was your hand the moment I heard your voice. And now you give us wings. Do you see what I’m saying? You lead us already. So you should come.”

He made it sound simple. Nathan Lee set the can of beans on the table. He handed Ben the can opener. “Here,” he said, “open that.”

O
VER THE COMING DAYS
, they entered the twenty-first century. The room came to resemble a junk pile. Nathan Lee and Izzy brought in whatever might serve the clones in the wastelands of America. Flashlights, voltage meters for every size of battery, binoculars, a Swiss Army knife, matches, a tool box, a pry bar, screws, mosquito repellant, fish hooks, tea bags, ramen noodles, a space blanket, books and magazines, an atlas, plastic bottles, a kit for testing polluted water, backpacks, wire, a box of military rations with heating pouches, chemical lights, a pair of pants with a zipper, pencils and a pencil sharpener, paper. Not everything was necessary, toilet paper, for instance, and clocks. The corners filled with things.

They spent a full day on locks, another on using a compass. Ben got bike riding lessons in a deserted hallway. When he wasn’t fiddling with gadgets, Ben was learning how to read signs, symbols, maps, colors, and expiration dates on food containers. Izzy assembled a small English/Aramaic dictionary with every generic term they might encounter on a street:
Do Not Enter, High Voltage, Hospital,
and even
No Parking, No Smoking,
and
No U-Turn.
There was no sense puzzling over the useless out there. At night, Ben crammed, staying awake in his cell with
National Geographic
magazines, and teaching himself how to write the alphabet.

At last, Nathan Lee decided it was time to go public. One afternoon, Ben appeared in the yard, riding a bicycle. His fellow clones froze like statues. Ben made three circuits of the yard, weaving between astounded men, ringing his bell, then stopped by the fire. As a crowd cautiously formed around the magical device, Nathan Lee watched from the shadows of the doorway. Slowly he became aware he was being watched in return. Crouched low, staring through the curtain of flames, Eesho looked ready to kill.

*  *  *

E
ACH DAY ANOTHER HANDFUL
of people gave up on Los Alamos and descended to the pilgrim camp. They had grown tired of waiting for the inevitable, or the raw Christianity called to them, or they went to alleviate the suffering, or they learned the besiegers included family members they had thought long dead. Each knew the valley was hot and painted orange with poison, and they could never return inside the fence nor gain entrance to the sanctuary. But they went with peace in their hearts, and driving truckloads of food and medicine.

Los Alamos gladly released them. It would have been useless to halt them, for one thing. And the trucks needed drivers. More to the point, people hoped these departing citizens would be received as ambassadors from the city of light. Many took their cellphones with them, and for the life of their batteries, they were able to stay in contact with their friends and neighbors on the Mesa. They usually tried to sound upbeat and resolute. It was, after all, their decision to go. After a few days, their voices broke up and they would dwindle into memory.

These émigrés were treated like assisted suicides. People sympathized with their reasoning, gave them tearful going-away parties, remembered the good times, walked them to the gate, even acted like they were making the heroic choice. For all that, the departures were considered a terrible waste of life, almost a desertion. No one could imagine doing what the expatriates were doing or going where they went.

One morning Izzy announced he was going, too. “I got a message from my brother,” he said. “It’s incredible. He’s down there in the camp.”

“Damn,” whispered Nathan Lee.

“I haven’t seen him in four years, and he’s ill, you know.” He was apologetic. “I know there’s still work to be done. But your Aramaic is good enough. I’m not needed anymore.”

“It’s not that,” said Nathan Lee. This was the end.

“I know,” Izzy said more quietly.

Part of him wanted to talk Izzy out of it. But in his place, Nathan Lee knew he’d be going, too.

“We covered a good bit of ground,” said Izzy. “Two thousand years. Not so bad.”

“At least talk to Miranda,” said Nathan Lee. “You’ve heard of the Sera-III. Let her immunize you.”

“It takes too long to kick in,” said Izzy. “Forty-eight hours. By then my brother could have disappeared again.”

It was Izzy’s idea to take a camera into the camp. The camera was a “lipstick” device rigged to beam a microwave signal across the river and up to the city. Uncertain how a camera might be received among the fanatics, its main works were concealed in a tattered, and hopefully inconspicuous, daypack. The tiny lens was mounted on a flexible cord that snaked up through his hair and along one stem of his glasses. He was wired for sound like an undercover cop. Wherever he looked and listened, they would see and hear.

There was no time for a proper send-off. He was anxious to see his brother, and at the same time afraid of changing his mind. Miranda arrived at the gate just as Izzy was leaving, and gave him a crushing embrace. “Are you sure?” she cried.

“Miranda,” Izzy said dolefully. With a wink at Nathan Lee, he got a second hug, and stole a kiss.

T
HROUGH THE EYE
of Izzy’s camera, they descended down Highway 502 behind the wheel of a big truck filled with supplies. The road stayed empty as the valley floor leveled out. Then in the distance, they saw the bridge and the great stretch of crosses. “Wish me luck,” they heard Izzy breathe.

Over the coming days, the faceless masses gained a soul.

Through Izzy’s camera, a thousand details came pouring into Los Alamos. Until now, it had been easy to imagine the camp as an outdoor cathedral, flush with passion, grubby, but somehow not quite as bad as it was. In fact, conditions were primeval. The living mingled with the dying. Over Izzy’s microphone, you could hear shouts, chanted prayers, howls, pleas and song blending into white noise.

Hairy faces leapt at the lens with wild proclamations. Bodies lay where they had fallen. Others drifted facedown in the Rio.

Izzy wandered for three days, undetected, unable to find his brother. There were over a million people there. On the fourth day, Izzy turned the camera on himself and spoke to the city.

“It seems I made a mistake,” he said quite simply. “Don’t anyone follow me.”

I
t was like watching live cable feeds from Hell.

Izzy roamed the camp with his camera, doomed. He had drawn some of his own blood, and it tested positive. He could have fled the awful camp for some saner place to grow sick and die. Instead he chose to stay and serve the city as their eyes. If not for him, they would never have met the prophet.

A pair of semi-trailers full of food was burning. A mob ringed the heat, watching passively. They were starving, and yet no one tried to save the food. Izzy asked one of the gaunt spectators, who merely smiled.

A distant voice could be heard over the crackle of flames.
“Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country….”
People were shouting amen.
“The Lord will make the plague cling to you until He has consumed you from the land which you are going to possess.”

His lens bobbing, Izzy went in search of the preacher. As he got closer, Nathan Lee started. Even over the television, he knew that voice. But when the camera reached the front of the crowd, he could barely recognize Ochs.

The fat had melted from him on his great, circular journey through the wastelands. Stripped to sinew and bone, he looked more giant than ever. He towered head and bare shoulders above the masses. His beard and hair were tangled in a foul nest. Dogs, or snipers, had lamed him. He used a metal fence post for his walking staff. It looked like a huge arrow. Plague victims welcomed his demands for atonement with outstretched arms. The
flagellantes
were hard at work all around him, whipping their own backs with chains and barbwire. As Izzy backed away, Ochs spoke through a mist of gore.

O
CHS, THEY REALIZED
, had to be the pilgrims’ unrevealed leader. At last, in him, the city believed there was someone with whom they could negotiate. Even though Ochs had been banished from their gates, people took hope because he had once been one of their own. They asked Izzy to approach him and get his consent to speak with Miranda and emergency council.

“He’ll make hamburger out of me,” Izzy fretted, but he finally did as they asked. To everyone’s surprise, Ochs agreed to a video conference late that same afternoon. The emergency council went into overdrive to prepare for the meeting.

Nathan Lee was brought into the council chambers as a consultant. The place was a beehive of specialists, support staff, and officials. Crews were setting up cameras and television screens, and on the far side of the room Miranda was arguing with one of the generals. Of late the generals had become belligerent, challenging her authority in public. Night after night, Miranda had trouble sleeping, convinced her father had installed her as the director merely to lull the city while the subterranean chambers were completed. Nathan Lee did not use her worries against her, not yet. When the time came, he reckoned she would be sick of the intrigues and deceit and would gladly go with him to the west.

A woman in a blue business suit came over to Nathan Lee. She introduced herself as an FBI negotiator and led him to a table away from the bustle. “We have two hours,” she said. “Our survival could depend on mediating a truce with Ochs. You were friends.”

“I knew him.”

“Who is he? What about him is real? What’s not?” She opened a dossier on Ochs and went through it with him. It was the biography of a make-believe man. The photos showed every phase of Ochs’s metamorphosis. Here was the thickly muscled football player, and the art dealer at a museum auction, and the professor before his class, and the explorer sun-bronzed on the Everest archaeology expedition. “That’s where I first met him,” said Nathan Lee. “There’s my father in the background. And me. I was seventeen.” It was unbelievable. For almost half his life, Nathan Lee had been burdened by the man.

Other photos showed Ochs at a Year Zero dig in Israel, and holding forth at some university function, and finally, in a daze, just before his deportation from Los Alamos. Then there was the still image lifted from Izzy’s coverage of the burning trucks that same morning. He could have been John the Baptist in ripped burlap with a bagful of locusts and honey.

“I’m not sure what you want,” said Nathan Lee. “Call him Professor. Or Doctor. Or David. Never Dave. Honor him, that’s important. He’s always thought a great deal of himself.” The FBI lady started writing.

Nathan Lee flipped through the file. Ochs had largely succeeded in ghostwriting his own biography. It was a portrait of ambition. Given the opportunity, he took all the credit and gave all the blame. He boasted credentials he’d never had, hid indiscretions, even lied about his weight on his driver’s license. There was his Neandertal discovery, minus Nathan Lee. For the first time, Nathan Lee saw the newspaper articles celebrating Ochs’s incredible discovery of the ice woman.

Yet Ochs hadn’t managed to completely rewrite his past. An Interpol document revealed at least some of his sins, most of them having to do with antiquities smuggling. It seemed like the least of evils now.

“Will he listen to you?”

“No,” said Nathan Lee.

“Why not?”

“He knows I want to kill him.”

The woman’s pen stopped. “You’re serious.”

“He’s that kind of man,” Nathan Lee answered.

“And you’re not?” she responded.

Nathan Lee had no idea what kind of man he was anymore.

She returned to her clipboard. “What does he want? A ministry? Food for his people? Revenge? Back inside the fence?”

Nathan Lee looked at the last photo of the wild prophet. He remembered the burning food. “I think he’s found exactly what he wants.”

“But we can offer him comfort. We can South Sector him. Give him a hospital bed in one of the BSL-4’s. He could be very comfortable there.”

Nathan Lee thought about it. “It’s too late. There was a time when he would have done anything to get out of that camp. But I saw him on TV. He’s near the end of his journey. He only has a little more to go.”

“He must want something, though.”

Nathan Lee turned the question back on her. “No big mystery. The same thing you want.”

“Clarify,” she said.

“Ochs wants what we all want. Not right this minute, in this warm room with our good health and clean clothes. In the middle of the night, I mean.”

She didn’t write anything. She thought it was a communication problem. “But you see, we have to give him something. This is a negotiation.” The negotiator asked Nathan Lee to go through the dossier again. “If it jogs any memories, anything, I’ll be right over there.” She left him.

While Nathan Lee went through Ochs’s resumes, photos, diplomas, and other documents, he heard three generals talking. “We’ve got snipers,” said one.

“God, don’t martyr the bastard.”

“Would decapitation even work?” said the third. “What if he’s not really their leader?”

At ten before the hour, they miked Miranda and arranged her at the table. The shouting stopped. Their queen was ready.

“We link up at the top of the hour,” the FBI woman was briefing her. “Here’s a set of talking points we’ve worked up. Set a reasonable tone. Treat him as an equal. Don’t talk down to him. Don’t be submissive. Impress on Professor Ochs that we’re working on his behalf. Ask him what they want. More food? Medicine? The messiah clone?”

“Negative, the clone,” snapped the general with whom Miranda had been arguing. They’d already fought like dogs over this. “He’s a ransom asset. Call it mutual assured destruction. Ochs knows the score. He’s one of us, or used to be.” Heads nodded at the Cold Warrior wisdom.

“They want the monster?” one of the civilian deputies argued. “Give him to them. Wrap him up in a big red bow. Send him down.”

“He would never go,” Nathan Lee interrupted.

“But they’re his people.”

“He’s not the one they want,” said Nathan Lee. “He’s a fake.”

“It doesn’t matter. Send them any of the clones. Put a crown of thorns on him. They’ll never know the difference.”

“Ochs would know.”

“Ochs.” It came back to that, to trying to cut a deal with the unknown.

Miranda straightened in her chair. She folded her hands and raised her chin. The negogiator went down her list. “Tell them we’re close to the cure,” the woman said.

“But there is no cure,” Miranda said. “They know that. If there was, we’d be down there inoculating them all.”

Nathan Lee watched the group. They thought she was offering a gambit. “We could try that,” someone considered.

“Too late for that anyway,” said a lab chief. “They’re not going away. They can’t. These are very sick people. They have no shelter, no food, no sanitation. The secondary infections are rampant down there. The die-off’s happening already. For them, this is the end of the road.”

“Stick with the cure,” said the negotiator. “We promised them a miracle. It’s supposed to happen here, on this hill, in our labs. We just need time. They’ll respect that.”

“If we can just keep them stalled another two weeks, attrition will do the rest,” the lab chief said.

“Two weeks?” a man protested. “They could attack in two hours. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

The room fell quiet.

“We shouldn’t be here,” a man called out. “You have to order the evacuation. Immediately.”

Another voice spoke. “We should have been evacuated a long time ago.”

Miranda’s face was grey. Her eyes darted around the room, searching for Nathan Lee. She hesitated. Nathan Lee saw a frightened girl. She was afraid for them, afraid of herself, afraid she might be wrong.

The general charged into her indecision. “Negative, the evacuation,” he said. “The encampment covers I-84 all the way to Santa Fe.”

A scientist stood up. “Offer them the city. They can have everything. All they need to do is let us pass.”

“While we save ourselves?” said the general. “Not one truck would make it through.”

“Then use the back road,” someone said.

“That was built for light traffic. We’re talking about a convoy of heavily loaded, 16-wheel trucks. The back road can’t handle us.”

“We can’t be evacuated?” It was Miranda. She had argued against evacuation for months, and yet was as shocked as the rest of them.

“That option is injudicious at this time,” said the general.

“Injudicious?” she said.

Around the room, the other generals glanced at one another. “It is not timely,” said the general, “at this time.”

“Thirty seconds,” said a man behind one of the cameras.

Ochs appeared on their multiple screens, pacing back and forth, hairy, backlit by a fire. Izzy wasn’t doing a good job following him with the camera. Ochs kept sliding in and out of view. The camera seemed fixed in place. The one constant was a cluster of
penitente
crosses in the distance.

“Just get him talking,” the negotiator told Miranda. “Roll with any punches. Don’t provoke him. Remember, dialogue. Engagement. Today, tonight, tomorrow, next week. As often as possible. We’re here for him, 24/7. Whatever he needs.”

People scattered on every side as if Miranda were in the line of fire. Her solitary image flashed on the screens, then it was back to Ochs stabbing at the earth with his metal post.

“Five, four, three,” said the cameraman. Two fingers, one. He pointed at Miranda.

“Ochs,” she said loudly. “Can you hear me?”

Ochs stalked closer. He peered at a TV set beside Izzy’s camera. “Mystery,” he declared. “Is that you?”

Miranda was thrown off balance. She looked around the table. “Mystery?” someone murmured.

“The mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth,” said Ochs.

They had given Nathan Lee a slate to write messages on. He wrote
Book/Revelation,
and held it for her to see.

“You can use plain English,” she said. “We’ve had enough Bible-speak up here.” The negotiator winced. “You’ve been busy,” Miranda continued.

“Lots to do,” Ochs boomed.

“We’ve been busy here, too.”

“The things I’ve seen,” he muttered.

“Did you hurt your leg?”

“That,” he dismissed.

“Let us help. Your people are suffering.”

Ochs glanced around him. “Seasoning,” he said. “They’re not afraid. Just making themselves ready for the big day.”

Eyes locked on eyes around the room.
Judgment Day.
They held their collective breath.

“When’s the big day?” Miranda asked.

“Soon,” he smiled.

“What happens then?”

“You just told me, no Bible talk.”

“Knock yourself out.”

His eyes gleamed. “Doot eighteen,” he said.

Some people looked at their watches, like he’d given a time. Nathan Lee reached for a Bible.

“Are you going to cross the river?” Miranda asked pointblank.

One of the generals frantically cut a finger across his throat to shut her up. The negotiator muttered, “Don’t provoke him.”
Too late for that,
thought Nathan Lee. Ochs had made up his mind to raise this army the day they’d exiled him. Then he remembered Miranda’s father predicting Ochs’s return. They had known he would go preaching. They’d calculated the arc of his circle. It made no sense. Why set a madman loose in the wilderness if he was going to come back to haunt you?