The Amateurs by Liz Harmer

Author:Liz Harmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2018-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

9

THE GUILTY PARTIES

So, he was a fool. The only thing Brandon had not divulged before Doors ushered him out, though it was likely Doors knew it anyway, was that he was going to leave PINA, with or without permission.

Zahra’s pity was on him like a sweat stain, spreading as he bolted from her room to his own, where he mashed things into his backpack. Batteries, compass, and above all, water were his main concerns. He’d find maps later, in gas stations along the way. He left the room and stopped for more water, filling steel canteens and clipping them onto the hooks on either side of the bag. He used up every last ration coupon, even the ones he’d been hoarding, and when the woman at the dispensary clicked the tap down with an eyebrow raised at him, he gave her the stupidest smile he could manage. Didn’t say Been so thirsty lately or Just stocking up for a not-so-rainy day like some kind of amateur.

Then he went down to the latrine access, a long hallway leading to a door at what had once been the back of the building, several floors directly below the boardrooms. It was the only point of exit to the wilderness outside the compound. He walked past the guards, pretending his bowels were cramping, though they weren’t anymore. He nodded his way past them—Jedi mind trick; they nodded back—and out to the back forest, where dozens of port-a-johns had been set up on their deeply dug holes, far enough out and downland so that they could not interfere with the groundwater of the wells.

Because he could not think what else to do, he stashed his backpack behind a tree and went inside one of the vacant blue pods and closed himself in with the dim air, with its excretory smells and heavy chemical air freshener that seemed to singe the nostrils.

For the time it took to do his business, but no longer, he put out of his mind the way it felt to be this far from the security of the compound, whose sleek walls were unclimbable, whose doors were thick and impenetrable. And manned. After, hiding like a frightened child, he saw the truth of the situation. If the world was gone, if people had disappeared like Doors’ experimental rodents and raccoons walking into what looked like total annihilation, then they—he—had done it. They who remained were here because they were in on it, even him, Brandon, Brandon-the-guileless, Brandon-the-fool. And what they’d done had made it so that their compound was free-floating and lonesome as a space pod, and the world outside as vast and indifferent as deep space. Doors had stepped up and become what he now was—false source of calm and happiness, supplier of endless platitudes—precisely because others were inclined to terror and worry.

How long could things remain stable? What happened when they ran out of resources, ran out of booze, or of water? They’d have to expand outward, and for all their technical knowledge, they knew nothing at all about how to do that.

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