World After

36

ONCE WE enter the building, the noise and wind quiet down. Instead, there’s a low moan that echoes off the walls. Not just the moan of one person but the collective moans of a building full of people.

I am in hell.

I’ve heard about the horrid conditions of some foreign prisons, places where human rights are a distant dream seen only on television or read about by university students. What I didn’t realize is that the guards, the awful conditions, and being trapped are only part of the hell.

The rest of it is in your head. The stuff you imagine about the screams you hear from parts unknown. The image you make up of the face of the woman who cries non-stop a few cells from you. The story you piece together incorporating the gurgling, clanging, and the high-pitched sound of what can only be some kind of electric sawing.

We’re crammed into old prison cells decorated with rust and streaky paint. Only, they don’t hold one or two of us per cell the way they were designed to. It’s standing room only.

Good thing the cot takes up space, otherwise, the scorpions probably would have crushed more of us in here. As it is, a few of us can sit on the cot at a time, which lets the injured take a break and will come in handy when we’re calm enough to rotate for sleep.

As if this place isn’t hellish enough, an alarm goes off at random intervals, echoing through the building and putting us all on edge. Also, every few hours, a group of us gets marched down the hallway, which is even more nerve-wracking.

No one seems to know what happens to those who are taken away, but none of them come back. The guards who escort these groups are a couple of humans with a couple of scorpions as backup. The human guards are stoic and talk as little as possible, which makes them even scarier.

Over these fear cycles, I lose track of time as I doze in and out. I don’t know if we’ve been here for hours or days.

When a door clanks, we know another group is leaving.

As they march past us, I recognize a few of the faces. One is the father who was separated from his son. His eyes search frantically for his boy among those of us left behind bars. When he finds him, tears stream down his face.

The boy is in the cell across from mine. The other prisoners gather around him as he shakes with tears, watching his father march away from him.

One of the men starts to sing “Amazing Grace” in a beautiful, deep baritone. It’s a song whose words many of us don’t know, including me, but we all recognize it in our hearts. I hum along with everyone else as the doomed group walks past us.

CIGARETTES. Who knew they’d be such a problem at the end of the world?

There are a few smokers in our cell, and one of them passed them around. We’re jammed together so no matter how hard the smokers try, they can’t help but blow into someone’s face. In California, you might as well spit on someone as blow smoke on them.

“Seriously, can you please put that out?” a guy asks. “Don’t you think it’s bad enough in here without you polluting the air?”

“Sorry. If there was ever a time when I needed a cigarette, this is it.” The woman squashes out her cigarette against the wall. “A double latte sounds great too.”

Two other prisoners continue smoking. One of them has tattoos on his shoulders and along his arms. The designs are intricate and colorful and were clearly done in the World Before.

There were gangs here in the Bay Area before the angels came. Not many and they stayed in their small territories, but they were here. They’re probably the reason the street gangs grew so fast. They were already organized and established. They were the first to take over the stores and then they started recruiting.

My bet is that this guy was one of the original gang members. He gives off an air of the ‘hood that Silicon Valley engineers just can’t copy, regardless of what they’ve done on the streets in the past couple of months.

“What you worried about, vegan boy?” asks Mr. Tattoo. “Lung cancer?” He leans over to the other guy and fake-coughs in his face, exploding smoke all over him.

Everybody tenses up. People shift out of his way, but they can’t get far. We’re trapped so closely that if there’s a fight, we’re all going down. It’d be like being caught in a blender. No matter what you do, you can’t help but get sucked in.

As if the tension isn’t thick enough, the alarm goes off again, scraping our nerves.

You’d think that if there was a real gang member in the group, everyone else would back off. But you’d be wrong.

The valley isn’t just filled with mild-mannered, smart engineers. According to my dad, who was once a mild-mannered engineer before he became the most educated convenience store clerk around, the valley is peppered with high-risk, high-octane CEOs and venture capitalists with mega-alpha personalities. Movers and shakers. Entrepreneurs on speed. The kind that the President of the United States came to visit for dinner.

Now, we live in a world where those Ivy-league-educated mega-alphas are jammed up behind bars with the likes of street-schooled gang members like Mr. Tattoo, arguing over who has the right to smoke. Welcome to the World After.

Mr. Alpha is a big, blond, thirty-something guy who probably worked out regularly back when gyms were worth visiting. I’ll bet he has a charming smile when he wants, but right now, he looks like his nerves have been stretched about a foot farther than they can go, and the only thing keeping him from breaking is his sheer willpower.

“I’m allergic to cigarette smoke,” says Alpha. “Look, we all need to work together to survive this.” He grinds out the words between his teeth, clearly trying to keep things cool.

“So I should put out my goddamn smoke for you? Piss off. No one’s allergic to smoke. They just don’t like it.” Tattoo takes a deep drag off his cigarette.

The third smoker quietly stubs out his cigarette, looking like he hopes no one notices him.

“Put the cigarette out!” There’s real command in Alpha’s voice that can be heard even over the shrieking alarm. This is a guy who’s used to being heard. A guy who used to matter.

Tattoo flicks his still-glowing stub at Alpha. For a moment, everyone relaxes. But then Tattoo pulls out a fresh cigarette and lights it.

The alarm shuts off but the plunge into silence feels worse.

Alpha’s face and neck turn a bright red. He shoves the other guy, looking like he doesn’t care if he gets beat to a twitching pulp. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe this is an easier out for him than what the angels have in store for us.

The problem is, he’s making that decision for the rest of us too. A fight in a cell the size of a coffin means a whole lot of injuries for everyone at a time when we can’t afford to have any.

People start backing up.

I’m in the front corner, beside Clara. Bodies are already jostling us against the bars. If the panic gets aimed this way, we could be crushed against the metal bars. We won’t be killed but bones could be broken. Not a good time for broken bones.

In the center of the cell, Mr. Tattoo whales on Alpha. Alpha, though, is not to be underestimated.

He grabs a guy’s jacket and swings the bottom of the zipper at Tattoo’s eyes. It hits a woman in the face.

Tattoo swings his arm back for a sloppy hit and his elbow smacks into an old man’s neck.

The man falls back into Clara, making her bang her head against the bars. I’m trying to mind my own business, but this is not going to end well for any of us.

I weave my way to the fighters and grab Tattoo’s shoulders.

I jam my knee into the back of his. I’m careful to make sure that I shove his knee straight forward so that I don’t knock it out. A broken knee in our situation is a death sentence.

As he collapses down to my height, I pull his shoulders toward me and grab his head in a sleeper hold. I grip his forehead with one arm and clamp his neck with the other.

I squeeze my arms, letting him know I mean it. I’m not trying to choke off his air. Choking off the blood to his brain is faster. He has three to five seconds before he loses consciousness.

“Relax,” I say. He instantly does. This man has been in enough fights to know when it’s over.

Alpha boy, on the other hand, doesn’t know when to stop. By the look of his bulging eyes and crimson face, his fear and frustration are still slamming around inside him. He swings his leg back, kicking someone else in the process, and gets ready to kick Tattoo like a soccer ball as I hold him.

“You land that kick and I swear to God I’ll let him eat you alive.” I lower my voice and try to sound as commanding as I can. But Mr. Tattoo is most likely thinking about how skinny and short my arms are. It’s probably registering right about now that my voice is female.

I’ll be in a world of hurt if I don’t establish control while he’s on his knees. Because when he’s towering over me and looking down at the top of my head, he might start getting ideas.

So I do something I would never do in the World Before.

Even though he gave in, I choke him out anyway. His body crumples to the floor, head listing.

He’ll be out for a few seconds, just long enough for me to take care of Alpha boy. And when these two come back to their senses, lying helpless on the floor with me towering above them, they’ll get the message loud and clear: I am dominant here. You live or die at my mercy and I say when you fight and when you don’t.

It all sounds good in my head.

Only it doesn’t play out that way.