tended and bare in patches. Still, the vivid green of the grasswhere the grass is actually managing to assert itself through the dirt—seems out of place. This seems like a place where nothing should flourish or grow, where the sun should never shine: a place on the edge, at the limit, a place completely removed from time and happiness and life.
I guess, technically, it is on the edge, since the Crypts is sitting right on the eastern border, flanked on its rear by the Presumpscot River, and beyond that, the Wilds. The electrified (or not-so-electrified) fence runs directly into one side of the Crypts, and begins again on its other side, the building itself serving as a seamless connective bridge.
“Hey.”
Alex is coming down the sidewalk, his hair whipping up around his head.
The wind is definitely chilly today. I should have worn a heavier sweatshirt. Alex looks cold too. He’s keeping his arms folded across his chest. Of course he’s just wearing a thin linen shirt, the official guard uniform he wears at the labs. He has his badge swinging around his neck, too. I haven’t seen him with it since the first day we spoke. He’s even wearing a pair of nice jeans, crisp dark ones with cuffs that aren’t totally ragged and stepped on. This was all part of the plan: to get us both in, he needs to convince the prison administrators that we’re on official business. I take comfort in the fact that he’s still wearing his scuffed-up sneakers with the ink-stained laces, though. Somehow that little familiar detail makes it possible to be here, with him, doing this. It gives me something to focus on and hold on to, a tiny flash of normalcy in a world that has suddenly become unrecognizable.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says. He stops several feet away from me. I can see the concern in his eyes, even if he manages to keep the rest of his face composed.
There are guards circulating the yard and standing just beyond the gate. This is no place for us to touch or reveal any kind of familiarity with each other.
“That’s okay.” My voice cracks. I feel like I might have a fever. Ever since Alex and I spoke last night my head has been spinning, and my body has been burning one second and icy the next. I can hardly think. It’s a miracle I was able to get out of the house today. It’s a miracle I’m even wearing pants, a double miracle I remembered to wear shoes.
My mother might be alive. My mother might be alive. That is the single idea in my mind, the one that has supplanted the possibility of all other rational thought.
“Are you ready to do this?” He keeps his voice low and toneless in case the guards will overhear us—but I can detect the note of worry running underneath it.
“I think so,” I say. I try to manage a smile, but my lips feel cracked and dry as stone. “It might not even be her, right? You could be wrong.”
He nods, but I can tell he’s sure he hasn’t made a mistake. He’s sure that my mom is in here—this place, this above-ground tomb—has been there all this time.
The idea is overwhelming. I can’t think too much about the possibility that Alex is right. I need to concentrate, focus all my energy on just staying on my feet.
“Come on,” he says. He walks in front of me, like he’s leading me on official business. I keep my eyes trained on the ground. I’m almost glad that the presence of the guards requires Alex to ignore me. I’m not sure I could handle a conversation right now. A thousand feelings swirl through me, a thousand questions whip around my mind, a thousand suppressed hopes and desires, buried long ago—and yet I can’t hold on to anything, not a single theory or explanation that makes any kind of sense.
Alex had refused to tell me more after his declaration last night. “You have to see,” he kept repeating dumbly, as though it was the only thing he knew how to say. “I don’t want to get your hopes up for nothing.” And then he’d told me to meet him at the Crypts. I think I must have been in shock. The whole time I kept congratulating myself for not freaking out, for not screaming or crying or demanding an explanation, but when I got home later I realized I had no memory of the walk at all and hadn’t been keeping an eye out for regulators or patrols. I must have just marched stiffly down the street, blind to everything.
But now I get the point of shock, of numbness. Without the numbness I probably wouldn’t have been able to get up and dressed this morning. I wouldn’t have been able to find my way here, and I wouldn’t be taking careful steps forward now, pausing a respectful distance behind him as Alex shows his ID badge to a guard at a gate and begins gesturing to me.
Alex launches into an explanation he has obviously rehearsed. “There was an… incident at her evaluation,” he says, his voice icy. He and the guard are both staring at me: the guard, suspiciously; Alex with as much detachment as he can muster. His eyes are steel, all the warmth drained out of them, and it makes me nervous to know that he can do that so successfully—become someone else, someone who doesn’t have any attachment to me. “Nothing too severe. But her parents and my superiors thought she might benefit from a little reminder about the dangers of disobedience.”
The guard flicks his eyes over me. His face is fat and red, the skin on either side of his eyes protruding and puffy, like he is a mound of dough in the middle of rising. Soon, I fantasize, his eyes will be concealed behind flesh altogether.
“What kind of incident?” he says, snapping his gum. He shifts the enormous automatic rifle he is carrying to his other shoulder.
Alex leans forward, so that he and the guard are separated through the gate by only a few inches. He drops his voice, but I can still hear him. “Her favorite color is the color of sunrise,” he says.
The guard stares at me for a split second longer and then waves for us to pass through. “Stand back while I get the gate,” he says. He disappears into a guard hut, similar to the one at the labs where Alex is stationed, and after a few seconds the electronic gates shudder inward. Alex and I start across the courtyard, toward the building entrance. With every step, the hulking silhouette of the Crypts looms a little larger. The wind picks up, whirling bits of dust across the bleak yard, sending a lone plastic bag tumbling and skipping across the grass, and the air is filled with the kind of electricity that always comes before a thunderstorm—the kind of crazed, vibrating energy that makes it seem like something huge could happen at any second, like the whole world could just dissolve into chaos. I would give anything to have Alex turn around, smile at me, and offer me his hand. Of course, he can’t. He strides quickly ahead of me, spine stiff, eyes forward.
I’m not sure how many people are confined in the Crypts. Alex estimated it to be about three thousand. There’s hardly any crime at all in Portland—thanks to the cure—but occasionally people do steal things or vandalize or resist police procedurals. Then there are the resisters and sympathizers. If they aren’t executed immediately, some of them are left to rot in the Crypts.
The Crypts also serves as Portland’s mental institution, and while there may not be much crime, despite the cure we have our share of crazies just like anywhere else. Alex would say because of the cure we have our crazies, and it’s true that early procedures or procedures gone wrong can lead to mental difficulties or a kind of mental fracture. Plus, some people are just never the same after the procedure. They go catatonic, all staring eyes and drool, and if their families can’t afford to keep them they get shoved into the Crypts as well, to molder and die.
Two enormous double doors lead into the Crypts. Tiny panes of glass, probably bulletproof and webbed with dirt and the residue of smeared insect parts, give me a blurred view of the long, dark hallway beyond, and several flickering electric lights. A typed sign, warped from rain and wind, is taped to the door. It says ALL VISITORS PROCEED DIRECTLY TO CHECK-IN AND SECURITY.
Alex pauses for just a fraction of a second. “Ready?” he says to me, without looking back.
“Yes,” I choke out.
The smell that hits us as we enter nearly jettisons me backward—out the door, through time, back to fourth grade. It’s the smell of thousands of unwashed bodies packed closely together, underneath the stinging, burning scent of industrial-strength bleach and cleanser. Overlaying it all is the smell of wetcorridors that aren’t ever truly dry, leaking pipes, mold growing behind walls and in all the little twisty places visitors are never allowed to see. Check-in is to our left, and the woman who is manning the desk behind another panel of bulletproof glass is wearing a medical mask. I don’t blame her.
Strangely, as we approach her desk, she looks up and addresses Alex by name.
“Alex,” she says, nodding curtly. Her eyes flicker to me. “Who’s that?”
