Matthew Tysz - The Last City of America

Morgan grinned very slightly.

It amazed him how desperation could motivate a pack of recluses to treat everyone around them to dinner. But the proposal enticed Morgan in a different way. He wanted in. Something was pulling him back to that place he’d dreaded all his life. It was pulling him hard. And he already wasn’t scheduled to work the next day.

“I’ll go,” he said.

The people in the room turned and looked at him. He didn’t like that, but it was to be expected. They’d probably start clapping soon.

“You’ve just gone today, and for the first time,” said Adam’s father with a low tone. “Are you certain, my friend?”

Morgan was running his finger around the rim of his drink, trying to make a paper cup sing. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“I think that will be enough to start. Thank you, Morgan.” Then Adam’s father sat down and joined the crowd’s applause.

The guy on the right patted Morgan on the shoulder.

Dinner ended and people started to leave, thanking Adam’s father as they did. Morgan sat patiently as the table emptied, left quietly when only a few remained. He stepped out of the building and walked across the small plot of dirt that lay before it, keeping his head down as the last thing he needed now was some type-A personality to run him down and talk about nothing.

“Hey!” a voice ran Morgan down as he reached the road.

He turned.

“I just wanted to thank you,” Adam came and shook Morgan’s hand. “You made everyone real happy tonight, especially my father. And I think it’s gonna be real great working with you.”

“Well, you’re welcome.”

“Hey, stranger!” another voice called to Morgan as he tried to leave.

Morgan turned and saw a blonde in a pink dress walking up to him. It was the sweet one… Maggie?

“I always knew you were handsome,” she said to Morgan. “But I never knew how brave you were!”

Morgan faked a smile. “That’s sweet of you.”

“Yup,” Adam put his arm around her. “And that’s all you’re ever gonna get from this one. Nothing but the sweetest, just like I told you.”

“My father would never let me go to the LIM,” said Maggie. “But I would go. To make things easier. And I’d love to go with you guys. I know I’d be safe.”

“You sure would, but we’ll be okay on our own,” Adam patted Morgan on the shoulder. “And we’re gonna get as much food as we can. Medicine too. I’ve been working on some ways to fit more items in those dinky baskets they give us.”

Maggie brushed a fallen leaf from her dress, looked out into the night, sighed, looked back at Morgan, smiling. “Well, I wish you both the best of luck. But I’m sure a pair like you won’t need it. I’d better get back before daddy gets scared. Goodnight, you guys.”

“Night, sweetie,” Adam lifted his arm to let her go.

Morgan said nothing. Curiously, he eyed her as she walked away. Nothing of interest back there either. Then he looked at Adam, who was already looking back at him.

Adam smiled as he glanced at Maggie one more time. “She’s the best, aint she?”

“Yeah,” Morgan put his hands in his pocket and turned away.

Adam was still smiling. “You don’t like to talk a lot, huh?”

“I love talking,” Morgan turned back. “To myself.”

“Well, what do you and you like to talk about?”

Morgan grunted. Eleven at night and this rock-climber was the same man he was at noon. Maybe a proper answer would end the conversation. “We talk about what kind of person I would have been in the old world. Then we’ll talk about how useless it is to think about. The apocalypse took away the rules. I’m probably freer now than I would have been then.”

Adam crossed his arms, smiled again. “Well, I think you’re both wrong.”

He was tired. “Oh yeah?”

“Temptation to do bad things is just as restricting as any law ever made, the way I see it,” said Adam. “With rules, it’s like… restrictions and temptation wash each other out. And all that’s left is you.” Adam put his hands in his pockets and turned his head to the sky for more words. “I think Old America was starting to fail at that balance. When society collapsed… it was like our parents had more say in how we should be brought up.” He looked at Morgan, shifting his weight to one leg. “I was raised well, and I think you were too. We’re in the perfect position to decide who we want to be. So, in a way you’re right about the freedom, but not because there aren’t any rules.”

Morgan hated being rude. And the only way to avoid being rude now was pretending he was interested in Adam’s lecture. But maybe, in a way, he was. He looked into Adam’s eyes from across the bit of road and ground that separated them. “And what do you want to be?”

“I don’t know exactly,” said Adam. “I’d love to be a daddy, if I can, with lots of daughters and a son. If that doesn’t work out, or whatever, I don’t know. But I live by what my father always says: that whatever you do, you do it for love.”

Bugs were stirring all around them: in the trees, the patches of crab grass, the buildings. Aside from that, the only sound in earshot was the sound of Morgan chuckling. “Love didn’t make this world,” he said. “It isn’t what destroyed it. And it’s certainly not the thing maintaining what’s left of it.”

Adam shrugged. “What do you suppose is?”

Morgan started home. “Someone with a twisted sense of humor.”

One would think a villain out to destroy the world would feel some sense of satisfaction having done so, spending the rest of his days before a warm fire and a splendid view of his work. But if one imagined Barnabas Vulcum in such a setting—if one imagined any sort of contentment at all in this man who accomplished so much—one would be mistaken.

“I ruined it!” It was twenty-five, twenty-six years ago that Barnabas said this to his colleague, Dr. Iris. “So many things I could have done and I ruined it!” he paced the lab, passing old diagrams, data, layouts of his plans for the world.

Iris stood still, his lips flush against one another.

Barnabas was never satisfied. It didn’t matter what he did, he found a reason to not take pride in it. One time, the team had made an incredible breakthrough in their research, discovering how to make a virus form tissue like cells do. But they only happened upon this because Barnabas had botched the calibrations, leading to an altered formula. When Barnabas found out that this was the reason for the breakthrough, he destroyed the data and erased every traceable step of what they did to get it.

“Nothing should be that easy,” he had said.

It took the team six years to get that data back.

In his pacing through the lab those twenty-something years past, Barnabas came before his favorite diagram. It was his trademark. His seal. The man and the world—though it was really just a stick figure and a circle. But everyone knew what it meant. Barnabas stopped before it, gazed in admiration. He put his hand on it. “Have I ever told you what inspired this, Richard?”

Of course he had. Barnabas had told the story countless times, and he would tell it countless times again. Iris always hated it, but he didn’t want to anger Barnabas any further. “Tell me, Barney.”

Barnabas stepped back, but held his wide-eyed gaze at the icon. “I was by myself on the streets of Queens in the nineteen-eighties. Five years old, and I remember it so vividly, but I can’t remember what I was doing there. A high school. A chain link fence. A baseball field. Adolescents having a small game. Just a hangout. A boombox playing. They joked, laughed, cuddled and kissed. Some of them were dating, some were related, others had been best friends all their lives. Their relationships brought them together one beautiful summer day, the brightest of any I can recall in all my years. I knew, as I stood there, watching them, that I would be the one to take their smiles away. Five years old, Richard, and I knew my destiny. And then the opportunity came.”