While I spent my days supervising labor gangs, the boys were invited to join the "Pups." It was never quite clear how much room that invitation had for polite refusal, and so after breakfast they marched off towards Grey Wolf Lodge to "assist and train."
That first evening I grilled the boys on what had happened, and was met with ambivalence. "It's like JROTC or something," Jackson said with a shrug, as if that were any kind of explanation.
"I get the feeling," chimed in Caden, "that a lot of the kids showed up at the refuge without… well. I don't think they came up for many seminar weekends, you know?"
Jackson chortled from where he'd collapsed onto the couch. He deepened his voice, obviously impersonating someone: "Damn fools wouldn't know the business end of a gun if it shot their thumbs off!" Caden guffawed in response.
"So it's gun safety?" I asked, skeptical. "Every day?"
"Gun safety, drilling, fire control, survival, stuff like that," Caden explained with a shrug.
"ROTC stuff," I repeated softly, despite the uncertainty coiling in my belly.
"And it's just the mornings, not the whole day every day. But you know. Stuff these kids should know."
"Certain," Jackson bobbed his head.
A moment later both of them were making excuses for the evening, touching up their hair in the bathroom, and heading out the door to hang with friends. Good to know, at least, that the apocalypse didn't change teenagers very much.
But the next day I got my work crew started and stood there, half-helping and half-lost in thought.
I could, if I wanted, head over to Grey Wolf Lodge and see what the Pups were doing for myself. My crew was perfectly capable of working on their own. In fact, they seemed more comfortable with that than with me hanging around, insisting on doing my fair share.
I didn't want to be that kind of sweetie, though. I'd resolved to work side-by-side with my work crews as much as posible; it only seemed fair. But I worried after my boys.
And no doubt the boys, if they saw me snooping around and spying on them, would be more than a little perturbed. Not for the first time I reminded myself that they were close enough to grown, especially in this new dark age we lived in, that I should get used to treating them as adults.
Still, something about their dismissive description of the Pups struck me as off. Too casual, too flippant. As if there were some aspect of the day they didn't want me to know about. Or my mothering impulses were cranked so high they were delivering false positives.
An hour later I was excusing myself from my place on the harvesting line. I had been so distracted I'd fallen two beds behind the rest of the team. No doubt they'd tell the rest of labor pol that I didn't think I had to work as hard as anyone else. I resolved to go get a peek of the Pups and then come back with redoubled effort, my suspicious and fears hopefully allayed.
Grey Wolf Lodge was a brutal brick of a building, part of the original camp. Abernathy had done his best to retrofit and improve the place, but there was little to be done. In the evenings he'd swear the building was Frank Lloyd Wright's first draft for the apartments that would lead their occupants to kill each other.
It was all hard right angles and on the edge of a small clearing, a sore thumb to an observer in the sky. Its green roof had been supplemented with green rag netting draped over each side, pulled out like a tent. The Wolfpack often lounged in the shade underneath.
Not wanting to look like the spy I was, I walked down to the lodge through the trees rather than down the gravel road. From a hillock just a stone's throw away I found an excellent view of the Wolfpack and the Pups.
The Grey Wolf barracks had been thrown together on the opposite side of the clearing. In the ensuing months the space between had been trampled flat. I'd learn later that they called it the Yard.
Unsurprisingly, the mercenaries had turned the place into a military camp. Supply dumps under air camouflage nets formed a low perimeter around the Yard. Soldiers in fatigues but not their flak jackets lounged on a few picnic tables and some of the crates. They joked and pointed at each other, as well as throwing the occasional taunt at the kids drilling in the Yard.
Because the Pups, some forty or so teens, were lined up in columns, standing at attention. A pair of drill sergeants stalked back and forth, inspecting postures and grips on weapons. Each kid held a semi automatic rifle in their hands.
Jackson and Caden stood among them, spaced apart either to hide their familial connection (if they'd chosen their spots) or to suppress it (if they hadn't). Of all the kids there, my boys were among the most comfortable with the guns in their hands, and I beat down a sudden surge of pride in their comportment. This wasn't the time.
One of the sergeants shouted out a question. Her back was turned to me, so I couldn't hear the particulars. As one, though, the Pups answered thunderously, "Sir Yes Sir!"
"There ain't a lot of us real soldiers and most of your parents are pretty much shit with a weapon," the other drill sergeant took up the tirade. "Which leaves you as the second line of defense. If you can pull your shit together long enough to prove we can trust you. Otherwise, this place is gonna topple over the first time it's hit by a stiff breeze. Are you going to let that happen?"
"Sir No Sir!" came the response.
There was a great deal more of the same after that: a relatively transparent program of denigration and scorn alternating with the promise of redemption with compliance. Your typical "tear them down to build them back up again" mantra.
The world they came from, they were told, had collapsed under the weight of its own bullshit. I couldn't really argue with that. I did take personal exception to "your parents sold you out for a quick buck, they just hoped they'd die before it came to this." Some of us had tried, although given who most of those kids' parents were, the charge might have been true in the main.
The drill lasted a good while longer and then the Pups were dismissed to their fire teams, to practice their weapon maintenance. Jackson headed directly into the lodge along with most of the kids, but Caden and a couple others reported to a knot of soldiers lounging under the air-camo's shade.
A few words were exchanged, but a moment later the soldiers were handing over their guns. The kids set down and methodically field stripped the weapons, cleaned them out, and reassembled them. This was something that I'd seen Caden do before, had learned how to do alongside him, in fact, on a seminar weekend long ago. What surprised me was the brisk efficiency of the other kids who, one presumed, had not been up here for vacation every few months for years. The Pups had been quick learners.
After the guns had been cleaned, the teens went through all the pockets on the soldiers' flak jackets. One Pup disappeared inside and came back out again with full hands; she and another teen packed whatever she had fetched into the same pouch of two different harnesses. Restocking, I assumed.
It seemed like a petty thing, foisting off such a menial task to the Pups. But would the soldiers trust their poolies with such a job? Did they want poolies even touching ammunition, let alone guns? Easier, surely, to let the sweetie kids do it, and tell them it was a privilege and an honor to apprentice themselves to the mighty warriors.
My brain was boiling over with these cynical but sadly likely scenarios when the tableau below was interrupted. Into the drill yard sauntered two young ladies–Zoe Cole and her roommate Cynthia Clark. They greeted the soldiers with casual familiarity but went straight for where Caden was zipping up a tactical vest. He scrambled to his feet.
I couldn't hear the conversation, but I didn't have to. Miss Clark teased and unbalanced Caden while Zoe flirted with him. My boy struggled to maintain his poise, respond to Zoe's advances in kind, and not appear overeager to talk with the pretty girl. By the ladies' body language and the tinkling of laughter that did reach me, he enjoyed mixed success with all three.
Nevertheless, when the girls turned to go, Caden went with them. Zoe took one arm and Cynthia the other, steering him away towards the rest of the compound. Their giggles faded on the crisp mountain air.
—
Later that week, my team and I were picking soybeans. The poolieswere still eyeing me uncertainly as I bent over to get my hands dirty, when Aubrey found me. "A word, Soza."
I dusted off my hands and glanced up and down the length of the walipini. Four poolies worked their way down the rows, by this point well practiced in the task at hand. I didn't give them any parting directions; they needed none. I followed Aubrey outside.
I kept meaning to poke my head into the infirmary or find Aubrey at First Mess, but hadn’t yet. Either I was swamped with learning how to fill my new role without oppressing anybody too hard, or else I was just scared. Or both.
The last time we'd spoken, Aubrey had pulled rank on me and left me sobbing on the ground. I could see the same little copse of trees from the door of the greenhouse. Now there was no difference in our standings. Would that change anything? By the set of her shoulders and the absence of any sashay in her hips, she'd come here for a confrontation, not to make amends.
She stalked off some distance from the walipini wall and then turned slowly to face me, hands on hips. "What have you been telling your children?"
I managed to restrict my reaction to a lift of my eyebrows. "Quite a few things. I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific."
"About you and me," she hissed, even though no one could possibly hear.
"Oh," I could feel my cheeks color. "They figured it out on their own. Months back."
She looked at me like I was crazy. "And how did they do that?"
"By the fond looks of affection I used to give you," I snapped back. "Before you started acting like this."
Either the protestation of affection or the rebuke seemed to knock her aggression down a few pegs. It was a few minutes before she said, "Your younger kid, the one with the floppy hair, he came at me all goofy smiles and shit after breakfast. Said he was happy that I was in the refuge. For your sake."
I smiled softly. "Caden. He's sweet."
"That's not sweet. That's a problem."
I suspected why, but I wanted to hear it in her words. "How so?"
"They can't go around telling stories," she said warningly.
I nodded. "You're closeted."
"Yes, I'm in the closet," she grated. "But it's more than that."
I raised my eyebrows, inviting her to elaborate.
"I'm not here on my subscription," she explained. "I'm in my Father's suite."
"I see."
"…in Mountain Lion Lodge." Now she lifted her eyebrows for emphasis.
I groaned in response. "Now I do see." I took a deep breath. "I take it your father toes the party line?"
"He's a deacon in Park's church," she said miserably. "If he finds out, Susan, if anyone finds out, I won't be tossed out in the cold to work with the poolies." She wrapped her arms around her shoulders. "They'll marry me to some man who thinks it's his God-given duty to rape me straight."
My whole body wanted to crush her into a hug, but I moderated the impulse down to putting my hands on her shoulders. She leaned in, allowing me to hold her tight for just a moment before staggering back. She cast teary eyes around, making sure that no one saw.
I held her out at arm's length. "Okay. We're not going to let that happen, Aubrey."
She gave me a glare between withering and hopeless.
"The boys know better than to out somebody," I assured her, making a mental note to make sure they knew better. "Your secret is safe. You're safe."
"No one is safe in here," she responded miserably.
"Well then it's time we changed that," I answered with a careful balance of care and heat.
She scoffed and broke free of my grip. "Good luck with that."
"Hey, if we don't make each other safe, nobody will." She didn't answer, and so I pressed, gently. "Like someone I know who's making sure a certain poolie is getting the medicine he needs."
She turned away, turned back, turned so she was only half-facing me. "You don't think I'm running drugs any more?"
"I never thought you were running drugs," I said, too quickly. "Not when I had a chance to really think about it. Teddy doesn't have anything you want."
She arched an eyebrow. "Not that you believe in my moral character, but because there's no profit in it."
I shrugged. "I am an economist; some assumptions come to me quicker than others." We both fell quiet. "Do you need me to keep delivering?"
Aubrey squinted at me uncertainly. "You don't mind? I don't want to get you in trouble, now that you've got something to lose. And your kids in the balance."
"I don't mind," I told her. "I trust you. If you say Teddy needs it, he needs it. I'd be a bad sweetie if I didn't take care of my poolies, right?"
She fished into her vest and produced an envelope crumbled around two long bumps. Vials. "You'd be a stand-out sweetie if you gave a shit about them at all."
I slipped the envelope into my vest. "Here's to low bars. Teddy's not in my work group today, but I'll get it to him soon."
She nodded. "He should have a couple days before his current supply runs out."
I nodded, too. Both of us stood there, heads bobbing, not knowing what else to do. "So," I hazarded. "See you at Mess sometime?"
"Yeah, I guess so," she answered, and only then caught the implied invitation. "Um. I have breakfast and supper with Father, and lunch with infirmary staff…"
"Then I'll wave from across the room," I smiled, backing off as quickly as possible. I took a physical step backwards, too, and made a show of looking to the nearest walipini. "I should get back."
"Yeah. Right," Aubrey agreed, backpedalling herself. "No telling what those poolies will get up to without supervision."
"They're probably nearly finished with their rows," I laughed. "I should be in there to help."
"Okay. See you at Mess." And with that she turned and hurried away. I watched her go. After a few minutes she slowed her pace; I couldn't be sure, but it looked like her rear swayed side to side.
I chuckled at myself and made for the nearest greenhouse. Still closeted. What had I been thinking?
—
Esther Bukhari was the product of a rarified world of inescapable duty, necessary stewardship, and transcendent music. Her musical prodigy was identified so early that she had no memories of a life that was not defined by the bars of musical notation, a relentless practice schedule, and the ever-escalating value of her hands.
"Even lovers," she confided with a groan, "all fellow musicians, of course; music is entirely incestuous. But did they want my ass, my pretty face, my sparkling personality? They only ever lusted after my hands."
Her hands were insured for a ludicrous sum even as a child. When she turned eighteen and the policy turned over to her, it promised her seven figures if her hands–and musical career–were crippled. Every year the number grew as her career soared.
She performed locally as a child and regionally as a teen. When other girls her age were contemplating college, she was choosing which symphony to join. Her own educational dreams were sharply limited by which school would let her tour and perform, interrupting and interfering with her studies constantly. Music programs were happy to have her. No other program really understood.
Esther could have abandoned music for college, at least technically. She was an adult. But the very idea was unthinkable, a possibility her parents never even presented her. They had supported her, chased her through her meteoric ascent, even discarded their own careers to better shepherd her talent. In the end, their role as parents-of-the-prodigy eclipsed everything else about them.
When she moved out for symphony-and-school across the country, they followed her, to "manage her affairs" so that she could focus on her music, the music, the ever-present, inescapable music.
Esther did love to play. When she tucked a violin under her chin, she entered a world that made perfect sense. Everything fell into beautiful order. Music was for her as water is to a fish. She breathed it, she swam in it, it held her up, and it swept her away. Sometimes she wondered about the world beyond music, but her parents and teachers and fellow music students all assured her it was not worth her concern.
She had an incredible gift, everyone told her, and it was her duty to share it with the world. Her duty to hone her talent endlessly. Her duty to shape her life around the demands of her career.
If she had been allowed to pick her life, she would have picked the one she had. She told herself that this was just as good as picking it herself.
At twenty-four, Esther signed onto the Metropolitain Philharmonic. The symphony's prestige and reputation were the lesser half of her reason to join; the greater portion was one of their inducements: custodianship of an authentic Stradivarius. The exquisite instrument would remain the property of the symphony while in her possession, of course, but the legalities didn't matter. She could play it every day, whenever she liked; she kept it by her side at all times.
It was the first thing she touched that was worth more than the hands she held it with.
The world was falling apart outside her gilded cage, but she hardly knew. Audiences were down. Tours grew short. When she asked why Sydney wasn't on next season's schedule, she was surprised to hear that the city was under martial law. The symphony dare not risk the riots, the food shortage there, the brewing civil war.
How strange, she thought, that such a thing was happening in Sydney, of all places. It never occurred to her that it might be happening elsewhere. She didn't think to check; she didn't think to ask why catastrophe had befallen Australia. It wasn't music, so it wasn't her concern. She'd learned that a long time ago.
Her subscription to the refuge had been a gift from a longtime fan. "Your talents must be preserved, no matter what happens," he told her. She could never figure how to stop the notifications that kept invading her email.
Every time she would open a refuge email to delete it, she would be assaulted by apocalyptic doom. Refugees fleeing the inner cities. A bewildering tangle of little wars in countries she'd never performed in that somehow added up into some global crisis. Mercury poisoning the rice harvest. Too many pictures of children, scared or hungry or dead. Her email was full of nightmares.
I remembered Cole's missives from years ago. I had found them a mish-mash of old news and cynical encouragement to maintain your subscription. I'd shut down those notifications before things started getting bad, though. If Cole's doom and gloom was Esther's only access to the collapse of civilization, I could only imagine how terrifying it must have seemed.
And then the tour's last leg was cancelled and the tour manager disappeared. The quartet she was travelling with were politely informed that check out was at noon. No, the front desk did not have any record of travel plans arranged for the musicians. Home was a continent away.
The apocalypse had come home–leapt out of the refuge emails and into her life, her inviolate world of music and beauty. The Philharmonic was cancelling engagements and if that wasn't the end of the world, Bukhari didn't know what was.
She told the front desk she needed a car. They called a livery company, but the driver refused to drive fourteen hours into the mountains. He wasn't very interested in leaving the city at all, in fact. But he would take her to a car rental.
Compared to most subscribers, Esther's journey to the refuge was uneventful. The roads were clear. Every gas station she stopped at gladly took her credit card, although one or two were out of gas, anyway. She made it all the way to the winding mountain roads before she encountered trouble.
In retrospect, slowing down and pulling over for the two ladies and their flat tire had been a mistake. She asked if she could help; they asked if she had a tire wrench. When she told them it was a rental, they suggested a wrench might be tucked away with the spare underneath the trunk compartment.
The guns game out as soon as she opened the trunk for them. Esther's sudden fear was matched only by their growing disappointment. The only thing in the trunk was her rolling suitcase. No computer bag, no tablet, no electronics besides her outdated phone. Hardly any cash.
Esther watched as they ransacked her few belongings, feeling numb more than anything. Did any of these things really matter if civilization was falling apart? All she wanted was to get to the refuge safely. Her stick-up artists might need these things more than she did if they didn't have somewhere to go. She could just let them take it all.
And then one of them pulled the Stradivarius case out of the front seat. "What's this?"
"No!" the words flew out of her throat. "No, that's–"
The bandit smirked triumphantly as she opened the travel-scuffed but bulletproof lid. "Oh wow. This looks… old and valuable."
"No, please," Esther gasped. "It's… it's nothing, it's just sentimental. It was my grandfather's."
"Well Grandpa's violin looks like the only thing you've got that's worth anything," she sneered, and snapped the case closed. "Now get back in your car, girly, and drive the fuck away."
"You don't understand," Esther pleaded with them. "I'm– I'm a violinist, it's what I do, it's everything that I am, and– and nobody's going to make violins for a very long time. You can't take that away from me."
"I just did," the woman grunted, and swung the case behind herself. "Now get in the damn car before I waste a bullet on you."
"Please, that instrument belongs in a–"
The gun made a noise louder than anything Esther's ears had ever been subjected to. She fell backwards onto the open road, legs going out from underneath her in terror. Frantic, she patted her shoulders, her neck. No blood. No holes. A warning shot?
"I mean it, get in the damn car!" howled the bandit as she rounded the vehicle. The heavy black gun seemed to stalk her like a tiger.
Esther wrenched open the driver's side door and climbed into the seat. The keys were still in the ignition, and one frantic twist later, the little rental came to life and screamed down the mountain road.
She kept her head low as she sped around curve after curve, until the woman and the guns (and the Stradivarius) were out of sight.
To this day, Esther doesn't remember the next twenty-four hours very well. By the time she reached mile marker 1723, night was gathering. A family of subscribers sat parked on the side of the road, bedding down to make the hike to the refuge in the morning. They say she was raving, wild, barely coherent, but they convinced her to sleep, and escorted her up the trail the next day. It was really only in quarantine that she finally came back to herself.
Abernathy welcomed her into Ponderosa lodge, bringing her to her new suite personally. She was the lodge's third subscriber to show up. She was the vanguard of the oncoming tide–or possibly just one of the paranoid who'd mistaken tough times for the apocalypse. Back then, even the Hosts weren't sure if the recent surge in subscribers was the real thing or a false alarm. Even the satellite television still worked then.
But night after night, the only thing on television was bad news. She watched the world fall apart sitting next to Abernathy in the Ponderosa lodge. Every night they were joined by more new arrivals, watching the news with desperate eyes.
Until one night, the satellite feed just blinked off, right in the middle of a broadcast. The sudden, blue-tinged darkness in the room seemed to press up against them, smothering with the warm summer air. They were alone, cast off all together like a lifeboat kicked away from a sinking ship.
No one said anything; they all just went to bed.
Esther didn't think about how her purpose in life was gone. She hardly thought at all, in fact. But she did not really need to think about it; she simply knew it. Without a violin in them, her hands and her gift were worthless. What was left, picking soybeans?
But the sun kept rising in the morning. Chores to do, meals to eat, even soya to pick. Life went on with or without a purpose.
The lodges filled up. There was talk about splitting the suites. Esther felt vaguely ill at that; what would she do if someone invaded the funereal air of her rooms? But then the other lodges started turning their storage garages into bunkhouses, which were comfortable enough. Only temporary, of course.
And new faces every day, each one more clueless than the last. Hands to hold, bearings to get ahold of. The same damn conversations over and over again. It was the end of the world and everyone had to be told three times over that no, there was no cell service, not anywhere in the refuge.
Abernathy had her pick up new poolies when they got out of quarantine; he had other details to worry about. Like organizing labor crews, now that there were just too many Ponderosa subscribers to all work together on one task each day. And then the old hands who'd been in the refuge the longest, the ones who'd been with Abernathy in that suddenly blue-dark room, were parceled out poolies to direct, and why not? They knew better than anybody how things worked around here.
"All of which was going just fine until some mouthy poolie told me I was going to do the decent thing because I used to be a decent person," Esther concluded, eyeing me with baroque frustration. I had found her in the lounge, more than a little tipsy on somebody's hooch.
"Well you were," I insisted, "and I think you still are, when you take the time."
But she slowly shook her head, staring into the smoldering fireplace. "I don't think I ever was. A decent person. Not really. What good did I do anyone?"
More drunk than I thought, apparently. "You were, and still are, a custodian of incredible music," I assured her. "And when you met those ladies on the road, you stopped to help."
"Yeah, that turned out so well."
I stood up with a yawn. It had been a long day. "I didn't say you were wise," I squeezed her shoulder as I passed her en route to my rooms. "I said you were decent."
If you’d like to see more like this, please consider subscribing to my patreon at http://patreon.com/miriamrobern
Thanks for your support, whether it’s becoming a subscriber or posting comments online. It’s people like you who let people like me make stuff like this!