Jodi Meadows: Phoenix Overture

“We’re not selling it,” I said again, and turned on my heel. If he followed, then he followed.

“So what’s your name?” Stef asked as they started along behind me.

“Fayden.”

“Great. Fay.”

“No. It’s Fayden.”

Amusement colored Stef’s tone. “I suppose we could call you Den.”

“Is Dossam letting you call him Sam?”

“He will.”

“That seems unlikely.” But Fayden chuckled and they began chatting about junk they found on the side of the road. Stef was more than eager to talk about old pieces of technology, water systems, and how people could communicate across the world without delay. “Everything was instantaneous.”

Stef whistled. “Sounds incredible. Maybe one day, we’ll be able to have that back.”

Speaking of unlikely things.

We’d all be dead before that kind of technology came back to the world. There was no time to work on that sort of thing; we were too busy just trying to survive.

“There are enormous piles of mysteries,” Fayden said. “Scavengers keep it in pits around the city, because most of it doesn’t work anymore, and never will again. I’d be happy to show it to you, though.”

“You know what all of it was used for?”

“Some.” Fayden’s tone was all casual superiority. He’d been scavenging for three years now, hearing stories from those who’d been doing it longer. “There are handheld devices with cracked screens, round bulbs that used to emit light, and stoves that cooked using only a metal coil to heat pans.”

The best things didn’t need electricity to power them, though. Musical instruments, tiny boxes that played music when the knob was twisted, and books.

I let their discussion become white noise as we rounded a corner, and instead stretched my hearing to catch the edges of other voices around the city: scavengers working, animals skittering through trash, and buildings creaking in the wind. Soon, maybe they’d just fall into the ground and be swallowed up.

Low growling ahead made me pause. I held up a hand, and the other two fell silent behind me.

Another growl came from across the road, behind a wrecked vehicle, its windows smashed out long ago. Then a third growl.

“Dogs,” Fayden breathed. “There’s a pack of feral dogs around here.”

Three lanky beasts slinked out from behind rusted signs fallen to the earth and from behind that vehicle. They were all big dogs, with patchy black fur that had matted around their legs and scruffs. Ribs stuck out like shelves, and ears had been nipped. One of them limped.

“They’re hungry,” Fayden said. “And there aren’t as many as before.”

They were starving and desperate. They’d never have approached three humans otherwise.

I glanced at Stef, who shook his head. “Don’t look at me. I don’t deal with wild animals. Unless you want to trap one.” He took three long steps backward. “I’ll just be over here if you need me to drag your corpses off the road.”

“I’ve never met anyone so brave,” I muttered, and stayed put.

“It won’t come to corpse-dragging.” Fayden moved forward, making one dog bare a set of broken, yellowed teeth. My brother pulled out his sling and snatched up a fragment of shattered pavement. “These guys are supper. Ours, or someone else’s.”

My stomach turned over, and I stopped just short of touching my brother’s arm. “Don’t kill them.”

“They’re going to die anyway.” He loaded the sling and gave it a few turns as he stepped closer to the dogs. The one with broken teeth prowled forward, deepening its growl.

“But we don’t have to kill them. There’s nothing on them anyway. You couldn’t sell their bodies.” My heart pounded as I watched the other two dogs shift behind their leader. Dust coated their fur, and they were all so painfully skinny. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. “Just scare them away and let’s go.”

“They’d bite you if they had the chance.” Fayden’s eyes flashed toward me. “They’d tear open your throat and eat you.”

I said nothing.

Fayden swore. “Fine.” He loosed the pavement shard and aimed just before the lead dog.

The beast barked and lurched toward us, but the other two dogs crouched and ducked their tails between their legs as my brother grabbed a handful of rocks and pebbles.

“Get!” He released a spray of pebbles at the first dog. “Get out!” When he stomped and waved his hands, all three dogs scampered off.

I exhaled relief. “Thank you.”

“Don’t.” Fayden put away his sling. “The dogs hadn’t been that hungry, or a few rocks and some waving wouldn’t have scared them.”

“They looked plenty hungry to me.” Stef frowned in the direction the dogs had fled.

“They are hungry,” said Fayden. “But you saw the scratches. The mangy looks. And I told you: the pack is smaller now. I’ll give you one guess as to why.”

I wanted to be sick as we continued to the concert hall. Maybe they’d find something else to eat. Then again, maybe it would have been kinder to kill them quickly, like Fayden had wanted. They wouldn’t bring much meat or money, but they wouldn’t suffer any longer, either.

I didn’t know anymore. There were too many things I just didn’t know.

MY CHEST FELT weird and heavy as we continued through the old city. I couldn’t stop thinking of those dogs, that sad hunger in their eyes, and what Fayden had said about the pack growing smaller. And why.

I guided the others through the wreckage of the old city, down the only paths of this place that were familiar to me. This part of the old city had been devastated during the Cataclysm. Buildings toppled over. Vehicles had piled atop one another, creating walls of crumpled metal and shattered glass. Shredded rubber dripped from the wheels of overturned vehicles.

“How did I never know this was here?” Fayden said as we rounded a corner, and a white edge of the building shone in the sunlight.

I gestured at all the rubble surrounding the building. “So much of this part of the city is gone. It’s a miracle this place survived. There’s no reason it should have.”

Not only that, but there was a park next to the concert hall, which had mostly overgrown and concealed the building from outside view. The trees and brush were brown with summer and drought now, but I had sharp memories of coming here as a child, when everything had been covered in a hundred shades of green.

Though I knew that nature was simply reclaiming the land, it had seemed to me, when I was very young, that even the trees and earth wanted to protect this sanctuary of music.

“This way.” I guided Stef and Fayden through the maze of junk. Metal poles with busted lightbulbs watched like blind sentinels. A dry fountain crumbled beneath the onslaught of nature and heat. Ancient sculptures of men riding winged horses rested on the ground, vines creeping around legs and outstretched arms.

Once, this place had been loved. Honored. Now, it was a decaying secret, one I was going to expose to people I wasn’t sure I could trust. My injured shoulder throbbed as I heaved open one of the doors, its hinges shrieking, and we stepped into the cool darkness of the lobby.

“What is this?” Fayden asked.

“It’s where Mother took me every time she said we were going foraging.”

I hadn’t come here since she died, and it felt like betrayal, bringing a stranger and my brother here now. The concert hall had meant so much to me over the years.

But I took them through the entry hall, past the collection of art and statues, which Mother and I hadn’t dared touch, lest we break something. Somehow, the portraits and murals and crystal lamps always looked clean, as though someone else came here for reflection or learning, and cared for the artifacts during their stay. Like Mother had taught me to care for the instruments, as well as play them.