Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

“A hundred gold pieces, right now,” I said. “And I’m not going in the water.” I didn’t say that, even if I got as dumb as a boy, I couldn’t swim.

“We’ll talk about that,” he said. “Fifty. Any more will get you and your friends killed.” He was suspicious, maybe frightened after what he felt me do.

We settled on seventy-five, and he said shooting began in a few days. Tag counted the coins out for me in a little room near the front door of the studio. He whispered, “I followed you around and took those shots of you and your crew. I got him interested.” He looked at me, curious and scared, like he guessed my secret. I nodded and kept quiet, but now I knew Depose had nothing to do with my getting hired.

In that huge front room, an owl showed humans how to make posters of Jackie look old and how to tell tourists they had found them in old trunks. I knew that even the ones who said there had really been a Jackie Boy also said Caravaggio kept him chained like a dog and only let him out to make movies, until he escaped.

The bear and the truck waited for me outside. As we drove away I looked back: the lights, the guards, the street with people standing outside their buildings talking, little kids playing after dark, was magic and I wanted all of it.

Riding home I was cold, and the only light ahead of us was the glow from the Tourist Zone way uptown. I thought about the city Caravaggio showed me and remembered how my mom died when the superflu was killing everyone. The UN medics couldn’t stop it. Some of them died. They told me I must have good genes and wanted to know who my father was, but I couldn’t help them.

It was then that I met Dare. Her mother was dead too, so we had that in common and she was tough, took me under her wing, protected me until I got able to take care of myself. She had done gold diving but gave it up when she saw what happened to older kids. Together we worked out the deal with the boys.

The truck stopped in Madison Square, which is semi-wrecked buildings around a park that’s a jungle nobody wants to go near. We have a lair in the cellar of a building that still stands on the west side of the square and has water, and we’ve got the entrances booby-trapped.

Lott, who’s too sick to dive, guards the place night and day. We brought in Rock as his replacement. Ursus made the truck wait while I rattled the gates and said the password, and Lott let me in before they drove away.

The Indians at the clinic say Lott’s got a few things wrong but it’s lung cancer that’s going to kill him. Dare thinks it’s because we got him too late and if we’d been looking out for him sooner he’d be okay.

The boys were behind the curtains at the back of our place, laughing about the way we’d stood down the bike boys and Regalia. I could hear Lott’s heavy breathing.

Dare said, “I don’t much trust any of them.” I didn’t either, but it was the best deal we’d ever had. I wanted to show her the studio, but when I tried, what I found in her was fear that she was going to lose me.

So instead I told her about Caravaggio and Tagalong and the studio, made it funny and had her laughing.

Once we started shooting, I spent more time in the deadly sun with less protection than I had all that summer. One morning I stood on a rusty fire escape ladder just above a flooded street with the tide coming in and waited for Caravaggio’s signal. He and the camera crew were on the roof of the next building.

Three times I’d climbed four stories to the roof of this burned-out factory building where Astasia X99’s boyfriend was being held by alien pirates. Each time, something went wrong and I had to do it again.

Dare was angry at what I was doing, but she tested the ladder herself and cleaned every rung before she’d let me go near it. After each take I got dowsed in purified water. The long T-shirt and shorts clung to me; my hair was wet and flat on my head.

All my life, pimps, militias, and gangs were on the prowl. A lot of any kid’s life in this city is not getting noticed. Now I’d given that up to bring in money.

Earlier in the morning, before the shoot, we went up to the UN clinic in the big temporary building that’s been standing ever since I can remember in the empty space people call Times Square.

Everyone in line was tense but nobody knew anything. Dare told the medicos what we needed. The Indian guy at the counter gave us double orders of salves, lotions, water purifier pills. “Just in case,” he said, but didn’t know much either.

I was thinking about that when someone said, “Action!” Just like before, I grabbed the handrails, held my breath, shut my eyes, ducked under the water, jumped out like I’d just swum there, and ran up the ladder to the roof.

Caravaggio was slumped in a chair but he raised his head and said, “Great!” I knew what was great was me coming out of the poison muck. For my crew I was doing stuff I didn’t know I could do. Up on the roof Dare led me behind a blanket in the shade, got my clothes off, doused me in clean water and oil, and put me in a robe.

Mai Kin stood maybe thirty feet away under a metal awning, surrounded by guys in protective gear. Her character, Astasia X99 , gets made over and rearranged in every installment. We watched a bunch of episodes. She has a boyfriend, Anselm, that she always has to rescue.

The actor who plays Anselm spent most of his time coming on to Rock. The other boys were jealous.

The episodes always take place in danger spots like New York. Mai Kin and company go in and shoot for a few days when it’s quiet, then get out and finish the thing somewhere safe. There’s always some other guy Astasia gets involved with before going back to Anselm. But that would get shot somewhere else.

Fighter planes streaked over the city. Mai Kin glanced up, then looked at one of her handlers. His head-shake was so slight as to be invisible. Looking away, I went inside him; found he was getting news every couple of minutes. The UN had Liberty Land and Northeast Command negotiating. Touch and go was the thought on his mind. I got out before he noticed.

Mai Kin wore a silk robe decorated with pictures of the planets. Dare said that up close she looked old and mean and way over twenty. Mai Kin was wired like most tourists, spoke into an implant in her left hand, and shook her head at something she heard. She never spoke to me or smiled, but never took her eyes off me.

I didn’t have to get in her head to know that she hated me for looking like I did, for being alive in the same world she was. She slipped out of her robe and, wearing clothes identical to mine, walked to the spot where I’d come off the ladder onto the roof. Shooting her, Tagalong said, was like filming a robot.

When the light was gone and shooting stopped, we headed home, moved fast in the moonlight. Rock had disappeared.

“Making it with that actor tourist—that whore,” Not said. Dare was pissed but sorry to lose him.

Not far from our place there was an explosion up ahead. We’d heard enough of them to know this was small, a grenade, not a bomb. We sped up and I tried to scan, to find Lott and see through his eyes, but I couldn’t.

Turning the corner we saw our lair with the locks and bars and door all blown off. Smoke drifted out. “Lott!” Dare yelled.

Regalia came out the door with a couple of her crew. She had an AK474 knockoff. The Peacekeepers would have shot her for carrying it, which meant they weren’t around. She leveled it at us and said, “Drop whatever you got—weapons, money—and you won’t get hurt.”

Dare held our gold. She stared back at Regalia and didn’t move. I went into Regalia’s head. The first thing I saw was all of us standing, eyes wide staring at her. She thought that was funny because she was about to shoot us down one by one. For her the sight of Lott’s bloody corpse was funny.