The Electric Kingdom Read online

  KIT

  purple flowers

  It burned quicker than he thought it would.

  All that old magic, probably. Whatever material those reels of tape were made of. Projectors and screens, ancient fabrics, cloth chairs and carpets. No matter how ornate the carvings in the crown molding, wood was wood, food for flame, et cetera and so forth.

  Kit stood with Monty and Lakie in the middle of Main Street—backpacks on, coats and hats, Lakie with her rifle, Monty with his ax—and watched the Paradise Twin go up in flames. At first the smoke seeped, filtered through cracks in the front door in little spurts. Before long, those spurts were full-on plumes, and where there were no windows, the fire formed them, crumbling brick and ash and pops of light, all that history—the fancy shoes and dresses and suits and smiles, now free to float up into oblivion.

  He just didn’t think it would burn so fast.

  “Kit.”

  He turned to find Lakie and Monty staring at him.

  “You okay?” asked Lakie, and he opened his mouth but couldn’t be sure anything came out. Monty put an arm around his shoulders, and as Kit turned back to the smoke and fire, he thought about that word—okay.

  Certainly, he was not okay now, nor would he ever be okay again, that much was obvious. But when had he last felt okay?

  It would have been five days ago, probably. He’d just finished a pretty decent Spacedog & Computer, hung it on the wall, feeling not great, but exactly okay about things. He’d continued feeling okay as he made his way back to the Paradise Twin, where he’d found Monty and Lakie . . .

  “Where’s Dakota?” he’d asked.

  No one knew.

  And his okay-ness was gone, dissolved like a short breath in the winter air, never to be seen or heard from again.

  At first their search for Dakota had not felt urgent. They’d climbed up to the roof, checked her garden. On the makeshift terrace, the potted plants and soils in which she’d spent all those mornings, they’d found nothing but wilted vegetation. There was one flower in a pot in the back corner of the roof, a little purple thing that refused to die. (Kit knew why: His Dakota had taken care of it. And while all the other plants had moved on, that purple flower was stalwart, which was a word Kit knew that meant stubborn as all get-out.)

  After that, they’d checked her room behind concessions, both projection rooms, the kitchenette and bathrooms. While Lakie had gone to check the State Theater, Monty paced the top of the concession counter, saying the same things over and over. “I knew this was going to happen. The way she’s been seeing shit, the endless coughing and mumbling. Passing out. She hasn’t been the same since the attack.”

  Kit had said nothing. He stood in the lobby, holding the pot with the little purple flower, staring up at the old black-and-white photo.

  She hasn’t been the same since the attack.

  Was that true? He tried to think back. Her close encounter with the swarm had happened this past summer. Or was it late spring? Regardless, she’d been fine, hadn’t she? If it had been an overnight thing—if one morning she’d woken up with a flushed face, sweating profusely, babbling nonsense, hallucinating—it would have been much easier to pinpoint.

  He’d swallowed a lump down his throat, pulled the potted flower close to his chest, and tried to let the old photo stir him. Tried to let it unleash his psyche, to get lost in the magic of how things used to be.

  It wasn’t happening.

  After clearing the entirety of the Paradise Twin, they’d broken curfew and extended their search for Dakota to various pockets of Town, checking the old market down the street, the little public park with its overgrown weeds running up and down the swing set and merry-go-round and slide. They’d checked dumpsters filled with decades-old plastic, stores and buildings they’d combed through a hundred times on scavenges.

  In the end, they’d found Dakota at the very edge of things, where Main Street ran out of Town before winding up into the mountains. She was alive, but barely conscious, babbling the same thing over and over again: “Just sit there. Just stay where you are.”

  It had taken all three of them to get her back to the Paradise Twin. Once inside, they’d helped her to her room, gently laid her in bed. They took turns feeding her (or trying to). Kit had moved into her room that night, hauling blankets from his room upstairs to the floor beside her bed. Monty and Lakie checked in regularly, tried to send him away to get some rest, but he refused to leave her side. Soon a halo of sweat had expanded around her body like a pupil dilating in slow motion, until the mattress was completely soaked through, and as she slipped in and out of dreams, always, she came back to the same set of instructions.

  “Just sit there, Kit. Please. Just stay where you are.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Mom.”

  He’d probably said it a thousand times—holding her head in his hands, recounting histories and geneses he’d never lived, stories of fancy shoes and breezes off the ocean and fantastic adventures in exotic locations like the moon or a jazz club or Texas. Kit had unleashed his psyche, hoping right down to his feet-bones that it might unleash hers. And just when he’d catch a glimpse of his old Dakota—just when he’d think, Maybe it’s passing—she would say, “Just sit there. Just stay where you are.”

  And always, he would respond: “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Two days later she was dead.

  They’d used the wooden barricade as a stretcher, carried her to the old park. Lakie and Monty had said a few words. Kit closed his eyes and imagined the soul of his Dakota transformed into a breeze, free to float and wander and drift from town to town. He wished he knew where breezes went, so he could go too.

  He’d transplanted the little purple flower from its pot to the soil beside her grave—She took care of you, he thought, now you take care of her—and then stayed in that park long after Monty and Lakie had left, until the high sun was low again. He’d told stories and cried and talked about his paintings well into the night. And when he’d finally returned to the Paradise Twin, he found Monty and Lakie upstairs in the lounge between the projection rooms.

  They’d clearly been talking about him, their silence heavy and suspicious. The crystal radio was in Monty’s lap. Without a word, he held out the earphone.

  “Hang on,” said Kit. He went back to his room, dug out the old knit cap his Dakota had made for him, the one that itched his brain. And from his pocket, he pulled out the chain necklace and key his Dakota had always worn, which he’d taken before they buried her.

  He understood now. Lakie’s red bandanna, Monty’s yellow plaid shirts: They were more than reminders. They were monuments.

  He put on the necklace and knit cap, thinking he would never take them off again. My brain will just have to get used to being itchy.

  Back in the lounge with Monty and Lakie, he’d held out his hand for the earphone. “I’m ready now.”

  After listening to the recording twice, he’d handed the earphone back and looked around the room. “I wish we could bury this place, too.”

  “Well,” said Lakie. “We can’t bury it, but . . .”

  They’d spent the next three days planning their route east, packing bags, and telling nostalgic stories of old. Occasionally Monty or Lakie would laugh at a memory and Kit would pretend to smile, but the stories felt like someone else’s life, the Paradise Twin like someone else’s home. Without his Dakota, the place had no soul. Whatever thread had tied him to Town had been cut, and he wanted out. In that sense, for Monty and Lakie, the Isles of Shoals were a destination; for Kit, they were just a means to an end.

  Now, walking side by side down the middle of Main Street, the three of them left Town for good. Behind them, the Paradise Twin went up in flames. Ahead, the mountains loomed. And when they passed the spot where they’d found his Dakota in the road, Kit reached under his coat for her necklace, the cold silver key
pressed against the skin of his chest.

  “We’re gonna be okay,” said Monty.

  A small but loud collection of crows flew high in the sky. Looking up, Kit thought of the buzzing-black fog from his nightmare, a swarm that consumed Town and everything in it. “If you say so,” he said.

  greetings from the Isles of Shoals

  “. . . 42.9880 degrees N, 70.6135 degrees W . . . Isles of Shoals, Carl Meier, radio and communications. Repeat . . . 42.9880 degrees N, 70.6135 degrees W, Isles of Shoals, six miles off the coast of the Maine–New Hampshire border. If you’re hearing this, you are capable and alive, two things in short supply. We’re a cluster of islands, well stocked and organized. Solar power, mostly. Early stages of a tidal power station. One hundred and eleven residents. Maybe the only real community left in the whole godforsaken world. If being part of something like that sounds good to you, come on out. Though be advised . . . we are heavily armed and on guard twenty-four seven. Peaceable entries only. Carl Meier, signing off. May our numbers rise . . .”

  * * *

  —

  “. . . 42.9880 degrees N, 70.6135 degrees W . . . Isles of Shoals, Carl Meier, radio and communications. Repeat . . . 42.9880 degrees N, 70.6135 degrees W, Isles of Shoals, six miles off the coast of the Maine–New Hampshire border. If you’re hearing this, you are capable and alive . . .”

  NICO

  Ideologies

  She was six and the radio was a miracle.

  “But how does it work, Daddy?”

  “I’m trying to explain. See this antenna, here? It catches radio waves in the air, and then transforms those waves into electrical signals, which the radio then, sort of, reads.”

  These were the last days of batteries and generators, and while Nico’s parents had always remained calm and collected, looking back, she thought there must have been a wild-eyed panic under that demeanor, the feeling of clinging to the bottom rung.

  But at six years old, it was all miracle and marvel.

  “Can I turn it?” she asked, and he answered by smiling, scooping her into his lap, and she turned the knob slowly, not wanting to mess things up, knowing if she did it right, she would achieve the miracle. “Is it like the Electronic?”

  “A little bit,” he said, but explained how the Electronic was powered by the sun, while the radio was battery powered.

  Batteries. That such little things could rival the power of the sun . . .

  Her mother joined them in the cellar, and Harriet, too, and they all gathered around that little table, turning knobs, holding breaths, waiting for whispers of news from faraway lands. As they waited, her mother told stories of the old world—movie theaters with friends, professional sporting events, restaurant after restaurant after restaurant.

  “Did they have chili mac?” asked Nico. “Or taco seasoning?”

  Her parents laughed at first, but she couldn’t help noticing their smiles always turned a little sad. “Yes, honey. Some of them had those things. And other things too. Even more delicious than chili mac and taco seasoning.”

  Now she knew they were lying.

  Suddenly a man’s voice came through, tinny and staticky, and they listened for a minute, until her father changed the channel, declaring that the voice belonged to a “prepper fanatic” and that he was “clogging up the airwaves with half-assed conspiracy theories.”

  Airwaves, prepper fanatics, tinny and staticky interruptions—Nico welcomed all of it. Miles away, maybe on the other side of the world, a strange man sat at a desk and spoke into a box, and now, here in their cellar, his voice came out of a different box.

  Miracle of miracles.

  One night, weeks after the tinny prepper fanatic, Nico was in bed when she heard the clunking of her father’s boots climbing the cellar stairs. Urgent whispers emerged from the kitchen, where her mother had been, followed by both of them descending into the cellar.

  Quietly, Nico got out of bed, crept through the hallway, and sat at the top of the cellar stairs. Right away she could tell this particular radio voice was different from any of those she’d heard before. Whereas the other voices spoke quietly, in secretive tones as if communicating just with you, the tone of this voice felt big; Nico imagined an actor on a stage, projecting, making sure everyone could hear.

  She understood very little of what the man said. There was a lot of talk about “rebuilding infrastructure” and “hope for the future,” and every couple of minutes, a very light scattering of applause in the background. From her spot atop the cellar stairs, she couldn’t see her parents—but she could hear them.

  “What a joke,” her father said. “I mean, I get it, hopeful message and all. But how about some practical application, or updates from labs? Surely we’ve learned something.”

  “It’s not like he asked for the job,” her mother said. “No one becomes Secretary of Agriculture thinking the line of succession might reach them.”

  The voice on the radio encouraged a levelheaded approach to the Flies and the Flu. “In time,” said the voice, “this struggle will be cast in the same light as all those that came before. It is an obstacle, no doubt, but not an insurmountable one. Through grit and determination, we will clear this hurdle with room to spare.”

  A slam, as someone’s hand met the table.

  “Honey,” said her mother.

  “Sorry. It’s just—”

  “I know.”

  “He’s using sports metaphors.”

  “I know.”

  “The world has gone dark, most of the population is dead, and he’s encouraging levelheadedness and using sports metaphors.”

  The radio voice kept talking, but it was just background noise now.

  “Where do you think he is?” asked her dad.

  “Raven Rock, probably. Or Mount Weather. One of those underground bunkers built for nuclear fallout.”

  “Far cry from the House Chamber.”

  “Wait, shh. I think he’s wrapping up.”

  “It has always been the American spirit that perseveres, and I believe that spirit is alive and well.”

  “He better not go where I think he’s going,” said her dad.

  “We’ve walked the moon, explored the oceans, defeated every enemy that has come our way.”

  “Don’t do it.”

  “And because of this unyielding and unprecedented spirit, I can stand before you now—”

  “In an underground bunker.”

  “—and declare that the state of our Union is strong.”

  A sudden click, and the voice went silent.

  Nico never heard the radio again. Later, when she asked about it, her mother said, “Oh, that. The batteries died.”

  Plausible as this was, Nico still heard the echo of her father’s hand hitting the table, and she wondered if her mother had answered truthfully.

  KIT

  town after Town

  "This place is strange,” said Lakie.

  Kit agreed, but silently, as his tongue seemed to have frozen to the roof of his mouth.

  His tongue wasn’t the only part of him having troubles: his psyche had shriveled, and his lips seemed to have chapped their way to the back of his throat.

  Life in the Final Frontier was a vast and mysterious existence.

  They’d been out here for two days. Aside from walking and freezing, it was a lot of sleeping on the ground, listening for Flies, watching Lakie take to the woods like a fish to water, while Monty navigated their easterly course to the Isles of Shoals. There was a lot of hiking up one mountain only to find another, and just when Kit had started wondering if maybe What Lay Beyond wasn’t simply more Beyond, they saw it: in a little valley tucked between mountains, a town.

  “Eyes open for any and all consumables.” Lakie swung the strap of her rifle around as they stepped onto the street. “Might even sleep indoors toni
ght.”

  Monty held his ax out, at the ready.

  Good thing I brought my artistic sensibility.

  They entered the town slowly, cautiously. He suddenly thought of a crude model of Town he’d once constructed from old reels and cardboard. His model had everything: a Main Street, a theater, a rooftop garden—he’d even colored little green mountains on the outskirts. But no matter how many details he included, it always felt like something was missing.

  This town was like that.

  Also, there were people-bits everywhere. Marrowless bones galore.

  They walked through a little town square, passed shops with broken windows, and a bar, which was where people had once paid cash-bucks to drink old corn liquids that made them forget their names and problems. Whenever Kit got down about being born in a world where Flies ate humans, he reminded himself that even in the world before Flies, things made little sense.

  The road eventually passed into an area of houses only, strange structures made of synthetic-looking pastels.

  “This is . . . interesting.” A little way ahead, Monty had stopped beside a rusty car. Inside, behind the steering wheel, marrowless bones had miraculously retained the shape of their former person. “You ever see one so intact?”

  Lakie circled the car. “Windows aren’t broken. Must have gotten in through the vents.”

  “Or the person somehow died of the Flu?”

  “While driving?”

  While Monty and Lakie discussed their find, Kit stood in the middle of the road, turned slowly, stared back the way they came. He felt something. It wasn’t new, this feeling, but until now it was a feeling he had no words for.

  All these piles of marrowless bones in tall-grassed yards . . .

  The cars that once went places, now statues lining roads and driveways . . .