Newt had never been so thankful for the arrival of a complete stranger in the middle of the night inquiring about his long-lost nephew. Food. Glorious food. The man’s name had finally been revealed as Terry—the most unlikely name Newt could imagine—and it turned out he did have a reason for his rock-salted voice. As a young man he’d had throat cancer, and surgery to fix it. Before the apocalypse. Newt and Keisha found this out and much more as they had their first neighborhood cookout in the Crank Palace.
Dawn had crept in by the time Newt roused Keisha and her son, explained the situation, and then followed Terry to his shack of a home, which was identical to the hut they’d just left. But it was a little more lived-in. Some worn-out old chairs, a few pictures of people nailed to the walls, the lingering smell of body odor. Luckily they ate outside, in the cool air of morning, with Terry and his wife, Maria. She was quiet and fidgety and said stuff that didn’t quite make sense—she liked the word purple , of all things. The poor woman was obviously farther along the Flare track than her husband.
“We thought they’d given up on this place a few days ago,” Terry said through a bite of grilled beef. Their neighborhood cookout consisted of a campfire with pieces of meat placed on the ends of sticks and roasted over the flames. Beef and chicken by the looks of it, although Newt never asked. He also didn’t care. It tasted delicious—he was on his third piece and had no plans to stop anytime soon.
“What do you mean?” Keisha asked as she broke off a chunk of blackened cow innards and fed it to Dante.
Terry shrugged. “You know. This whole getup was originally meant to be a civic service, back in the days when the higher-ups had time to worry about anything but saving their own hides. But once we got full, they stopped dropping people off. Word is they’re just burning them in massive pits on the east side of the city. Maria says it’s over there because the wind tends to come from the west. They don’t wanna smell burning bodies all day long in the city.”
“They’re purple,” Maria said in response, her mouth full. “They’re all purple. Purple when they go in, purple when they come out.”
Keisha’s eyes widened. “Damn, woman. What’s your—” She stopped before saying something she’d regret, as if she’d temporarily forgotten that this was what happened—people lost their minds. “Sorry,” she muttered under her breath.
“Purple.” Maria said it wistfully, staring into the fire. She was a strong woman with calloused hands and leathery skin, her hair turning fast to gray. Terry actually looked just about the same, his hair just a little shorter with a balding patch on the upper deck. If he hadn’t introduced her as his wife, Newt might’ve thought them siblings.
“But then you came along,” Terry continued, ignoring Keisha’s comment. “We saw the truck, saw you get out, saw them acting like jerks. Saw them drive off. That’s when we ran into town to tell people but somehow they already knew. Knew who you were, too. Strange times, getting stranger.”
Newt thought about that, chewing his food like such a thing might never happen again. “I don’t know why they’d give a crap about me. I’m not immune like most of them. They just had me along for the ride, nothing but a bloody control subject. Once I caught the Flare, my days of being important were long gone. Who knows. They probably just need to know how I end up so they can finish off some stupid report that no one’ll ever read.” He wondered about this town Terry mentioned, and what such a place would be like.
Keisha spoke up. “You guys seem pretty early in the game, like us. What about all the people further along, especially past the Gone? Where are they?” She shot a quick and sheepish glance at Maria.
“Things can get… pretty brutal,” Terry replied. He looked at a piece of charred beef that he’d just been ready to plop in his mouth, lowered it with an expression of disgust. Newt didn’t really want to know what knowledge or memory had brought on that transition. “Some are around, and you gotta be careful. Some get taken care of. Some take care of themselves. And once a week or so there’s a group—of people like us, not the higher-ups—who round up some of the worst ones and sneak them out of the Palace. I don’t know where they take them or what they do with them. Don’t want to.”
He tossed the uneaten beef back onto his plate. For a few seconds he fought back tears.
“We live in Hell,” Keisha said quietly, barely heard over the crackling of the flames.
Newt was tired. Terry had come a-knockin’ at their door at least a couple of hours before dawn, and it wasn’t as if Newt had slept like a fat and fed baby until that point, what with the bare wooden floor and unfamiliar surroundings. He closed his eyes, wanted nothing more than to crawl closer to that fire, curl up, and sleep the day away. Mainly, the world of dreams seemed a better prospect at the moment than hearing more from Terry. The look he’d given that meat… The lost tone in his voice when he said a group of them rounded up Cranks past the Gone and took them someplace. It was all so ominous. So depressing. His future.
“You look like you could use a nap,” Keisha said.
Newt just nodded, mumbled something unintelligible on purpose.
Maria screamed.
Newt jolted awake, looked up at her. She’d jumped to her feet, eyes wide with terror, letting out hysterical shrieks as if someone had poured a family of spiders down the back of her shirt, waving her arms about like a gorilla on the rampage.
“Maria!” Terry yelled. He crawled over to her, grabbed one of her flailing hands, tried to pull her back down to the ground. But she brushed him off, smacked him in the forehead.
“She was purple , don’t you get it!” She stilled herself, stood rigid with fists at her side like a child demanding something from her parents, took each of them in with a glare. “I didn’t even have a chance to raise her! How could I? In this mucked-up world? How could I dare? Better purple than crazy! Better purple than eaten by some damned Crank! Better purple than taken by WICKED and thrown in a cage! Like an animal!”
The words had spilled out of her, one on top of the other, until they blended into a long slur of madness. She sucked in a breath, now, then belted out one last roar, her face reddening and swelling up like a cooked grape.
“ PUUUUUUUURPLE !”
Maria dove into the fire. Screaming now from pain more than rage, she slapped at the burning logs, the glowing-hot coals, the ashes turned to gray but still smoldering with intense heat. Newt could see the burns melting her skin, right before him, too frozen in shock to help. Her face grew taut, the pain evident, the indifference plainer.
Terry tackled her with such force that both of them tumbled and rolled out of the fire and several feet away. Newt had to lurch to his left to avoid getting smacked by their bodies. When he looked over his shoulder Terry swatted with open palms at any lingering flames that had sprung up on her clothes. Her hair, too. Singed and sooty. It smelled terrible.
Keisha held tightly to Dante, smothering his face into her chest, her own eyes squeezed shut as if not seeing would make it all go away. Terry had stopped pounding on his wife, now just cradled her body and stared down at her, breathing heavily; tears streamed down his face, but he said nothing. Maria lay still, silent, somehow sobbing without noise.
Newt’s stomach had turned sour, his weariness gone. He didn’t know how badly she’d been burned, but something told him there wasn’t a Crank Palace Hospital up the street, right next to the grocery store and bowling alley.
Terry finally slouched to the side of Maria, crossed his legs pretzel-style, shoulders slumped, forearms on his knees, hands dangling like ornaments. He gave Newt a look that said it all.
Don’t ask.
Not that he needed to. The window onto Maria’s life had cleared a bit, some of the grime washed away. The only thing left to wonder was which had come harder. The madness it took to kill your own child or the madness that resulted from killing your own child. And at what stage did the Flare creep its way into the affair? Newt had no right to know, and swore to himself he’d never ask.
Newt got to his feet and walked around the fire to where Keisha and Dante huddled together.
“You okay?” he asked lamely.
Keisha nodded but didn’t say anything. Dante was quiet as a church mouse, a phrase that popped into Newt’s head unbidden, a thing he’d heard a hundred times in the past from someone he loved but couldn’t remember. But it was coming back. An image was starting to form. An image of a woman who looked a lot like him.
“I have to go,” he said.
This got Keisha’s attention. She looked up at him. “What? Go where?”
“I won’t be long,” was all he gave her in return.
He expected her to argue, but she seemed to understand. “We’ll be okay.”
Newt had already turned around, was already walking away.
