Matthew Tysz - The Last City of America

Morgan took a knife from the counter and slammed it into the wall. No one would ever notice the hole in a building like this.

He went back out onto the stoop and waited for his mother. She wanted him there when she got home from work. Wouldn’t be too long, and Morgan had nothing better to do.

It was early evening, and the sky was turning yellow over the decaying neighborhood where only three buildings were still in use. There also stood a shack built on a vacant lot out of boards that used to cover windows. A man and his young daughter occupied it. They lived well.

“Hey!” Morgan was startled by an unfamiliar voice. He turned. He recognized the face and blond hair. They belonged to a man Morgan’s age, maybe a bit younger. He lived in one of the other buildings with a couple of families. He carried a black backpack. “I saw you at the LIM today. You took the last can of olives. I had eyes for those.”

“Sorry,” Morgan kept his gaze ahead. “My mom likes them.”

“Nah, that’s okay. Maybe we can do some trading? Morgan, right? I’m Adam Velys,” he offered his hand and Morgan shook it. Adam’s grip was obnoxiously tight. He opened his pack. “I’ve got lima beans here. Both my parents are allergic and I hate ’em to hell. Maybe your mom could use ’em for soup. I hear Miss Veil can make a great eat outta damn-near anything.”

“She cooks well. Thanks.”

Adam Velys was wiry, like the rock climbers of the Appalachians, who collected water from the icecaps to trade from big trucks throughout the east. He had short hair, like the climbers did, a gaunt complexion, a black tank top and pack. He had an annoyingly bright smile, the kind a horse would laugh at.

Morgan and probably Adam had lived in this neighborhood since they could remember. They had never met because people from one building usually didn’t mingle with people from another except to trade. Morgan’s mother was considered sociable—she knew three out of the twenty people in Adam’s building, and four out of the God-knows how many Mexicans were crammed into the other. She also knew the man and his daughter in the cabin on the vacant lot.

“They like chess, the both of them,” she once said.

Morgan realized that he had never put that can of tuna in the cupboard, like it didn’t belong there. It was still in his pocket. He presented it to Adam. “Will this cover it?”

“Out there, man! My father loves tuna!” Adam put two lima bean cans on the stoop next to Morgan, and put the tuna in his pack. He seemed to hesitate as Morgan kept staring blankly across the road. “Was this your first day at the LIM?”

Morgan nodded.

Adam sat beside him on the step. “Some people want power so bad and just… don’t know what to do with it. My dad always says nothing good comes from power.”

They shared a silence Adam might have thought awkward, but Morgan didn’t care. In fact, he preferred the silence, whether Adam wanted to hang around or not. Morgan needed to think. Surely it was getting hard for Adam to keep a conversation with a man who had no interest in it.

“Anyway,” Adam shifted on the concrete step. “Pops hasn’t been feeling at his best lately. Bad back. So I’ve been taking care of most of his chores, like trading. You’ll probably be seeing more of me and the others. Probably for the better, right?”

Morgan nodded.

Adam tapped him on the shoulder and rose from the stoop. He whispered, “And that little angel over there as well. That’s Maggie.”

Morgan raised his head and looked across the ruined street at the decrepit apartments, where Adam’s building was. A girl was spreading grass seed. Morgan had seen her plenty of times before, just never knew her name. Maggie was a nice-looking girl—not the kind you’d kill to see dancing on a pole, but nice.

“Sweetest thing there is,” said Adam. “Thought so all my life. If there were a church nearby, I’d marry her for sure.”

Morgan put his head back down. “Does she feel the same?”

Adam shoved his hands into his pockets. “Nah, I’m sure she doesn’t. But she loves everyone. I’m sure if I begged hard enough, she’d love me too.”

A breeze came over them, and brought with it a small whiff of smell that Morgan would have never recognized before today. It even had the power to change Adam’s disposition.

The rock climber sighed heavily. “So, I’d better get going. Got a few things to do before dinner. I’ll see you, Morgan.”

Adam left and Morgan heard the sound of a vehicle. He knew it was his mother. Bella Myer, the local landowner’s wife, was the only person Morgan knew who owned a car. She was always nice enough to drive his mother home when they were done knitting for the day. It was a nice little employer-employee relationship they had, and it made things a lot easier on his mother.

The ramshackle station wagon sputtered onto their street, shaking its way in front of Morgan’s building. His mother would usually say goodbye to Bella with a smile. She didn’t this time, and Morgan was sure that Bella understood. She slammed the door shut and ran across the dirt lawn and broken walkway, her long brown coat dangling carelessly about her. She hugged him tightly, showering him with concern.

“How was it? Did they hurt you? Did you get a lot?”

“I got more than enough and I’m fine, mom,” Morgan hugged her back. “How was work?”

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“They didn’t touch me, mom. It was quick.”

Lilliana Veil was a good woman, beautiful at fifty. She was a single mother since Morgan’s father died. She worried a lot, but always gave Morgan his space. But the moment it was suggested that her son be sent to the LIM, things changed.

“Alright,” she half-smiled. “Maybe they just like you.”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” his mother passed him into the house. “Get dressed. We have a big evening on the way.”

“How come?”

She turned, confused at first. “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry, honey, I forgot to tell you—all the buildings are having dinner together tonight. Casey’s son Adam suggested it.”

Morgan grunted when the door was closed. Eating with his own building was a pain as it was, especially when he needed to be alone. Well… it could be worse…

“At least we’re not in Chicago.”

He was forty but he looked younger: a tall man with broad shoulders, not a single gray in his raven hair. Many students would mistake him for a young orderly on those rare occasions they caught him out of his lab coat.

He sat, legs crossed, at the bedside of his master, listening to him speak. His master wanted to see him as often as possible to make sure he was ready. Because the master was dying. But the broad-shouldered, well-dressed apprentice couldn’t help sharing some of his attention with the room’s only window, and the city it displayed.

It was evening: time for the lab assistants to leave the university in white vans to seek material for testing, time for the skyline to glow like none of the other six as the last trace of daylight clung to the edge of the sky: a beautiful sight through the window of that small room.

And beneath the window, the master.

Over a century and a quarter old, the man in the bed was younger than he looked. The only thing his body kept from its youth was his teeth—aligned like a razor’s edge and unnaturally white. “He brushes with power and flosses with hatred,” some of the scientists would joke. Everything else seemed appropriate for a man ready to die: long thin hair that stuck to his face, sunken eyes, skin so loose it almost needed rubber bands to keep from sliding clean off the bone. He could barely lift a pencil anymore.

“Harold…” his whisper was hoarse. All the water in Lake Michigan couldn’t moisten his throat. All it did was flood the bedpan.