smokeSCREEN : book6.0

"Somethin' never sat right with me, when Drac came back," he says, leaning against the wall. "He was stronger than ever. Why? I can do things my father could never...

It matters because I can do this –" He reaches out his hand, and a shotgun flies off the wall into his glove. "Just like everyone else who breathed the air from that bunker. Something got through, but it didn't kill us. It gave us something."

"...all of us?" Martha whispers.

"If you practice," he nods. "It's your job to teach them," motioning to Crow.

"What about you...?"

"They have more people than us – we'll likely loose," he shrugs. "But they'll try to kill me this time – they've got all they need from me."

"What do they want?" Crow asks.

"To repopulate the United States – let's go. Is everybody ready?"

"Set!" Crow and I bark. Cypress creases his brow and looks past us at the others.

"What's the problem?" he says.

Martha speaks up;

"Things are good now." "Say that again?"

"We're... happy."

"Good? Do you know what they're going to do with you? They're going to harvest your organs for transplant."

They stare blankly.

"If hey can't use you for procreation they're gonna' cut out your insides – your heart, your lungs, your stomach, your guts, and put them in the old ones that are dying. Do y'understand?"

"That's impossible."

"No – Brie, the woman, she knows some kinda' old science about putting people back together. She can do it – she reattached her own arm! And it works – mostly."

"I'm not fighting," Martha says.

"What?"

"They're not taking any more of us – they're not yelling at us – we eat all we want, we can smoke, get high, and we're warm all year around – what's the problem here? They're taking care of us."

"We're sheep to them! When they've gotten all they need from you, they'll kill you – all of you. Do you wanna' die like sheep? Thought you were soldiers. What're you?"

"A soldier," Crow sounds off.

"What're you?" he snaps at Martha. She narrows her eyes at him and drops the machine gun she'd grabbed – it clanks heavy on the concrete floor.

"A seamstress – let's go smoke a bowl, girls."

As they file back up the ladder, he turns to Crow and I.

"Michelle and Lisa are alive," he says. "Lisa barely. They're using Cat as a servant, and Anze's in the kitchen."

"What do we do?" I say.

"Will you fight?" he asks, climbing the ladder out of the secret room.

"Do the death," I pipe. I've found four large-calibre handguns, a backpack of clips and a nice big assault rifle. Crow's found herself a satisfactory pump-action shotgun with a pistol grip, but she slings a long sniper rifle on her back as well. "Let's just get the floor back together and get the fuck out of here," Crow grumbles.

"You could live with that?" he says.

"I don't know – maybe."

I purse my lips and listen – they talk the entire way out – Cypress seems to know where the security cameras are, and he's adept at avoiding them. He leads us down into the old sewer system – it's cracked and blocked off, but we find ourselves on the banks of a river shortly.

"Where are we?"

"Not far from where they're keeping the guys. They have them building guns and cars."

"Why?"

"Michelle wants Richard out – and I think we should bring anyone who'll come with him." We start down the river – south, I think, and Cypress explains everything;

"Brie tortured me for a while – made me watch... anyway, eventually I started forcing nightmares on her. Every night, I told her how strong I was – how weak she was – and in her dream I killed her. Don't look at me like that – she took Sophie's fuckin' eye!"

My eye looks to the floor. Funny, I've been thinking of my eye as plural lately – strange that I'd need reminding.

"When she couldn't take it any more, she came to me and told me everything in the hopes of getting me to join her side. She walks in the room, turns on the light, and unchains me. Sits me down on a nice chair and says, 'your name is Om Sakura'."

"...is it?" Crow says.

"Yeah," he nods.

"You remember?"

"Yeah, I do – my dad named me, my mom named Jessie." "'Om'... How did she know that?"

"They came looking for me," he says. "'Cause my Mom's technically an American."

"Why you?"

"Let's sit down, have a smoke," he grunts, swinging his pack from his shoulder.

I pull out some cigarettes, and he takes one before saying;

"And a real smoke."

Crow pulls out her pipe, and begins packing it as we sit and smoke and Cypress talks:

* * *

The day the world ended, Toshio Sakura was on his way home from Australia. Business took him far and wide – though don't ask what his business was, because he'll lie to you. But Mr. Toshio Sakura, businessman, was on his way home from Australia, and waiting for a connecting flight in southern California – he would have to hit Chicago, and then Calgary before finally arriving in Winnipeg.

But the world ended. All planes were grounded. They hit the most populated portions of the States with nukes – New York, Chicago, L. A. He barely got out of the city in time – had to kill a driver and steal a car. He met a family that was having trouble keeping the neighbours out of their bunker – in return for removing the unwanted guests, the family allowed him to hunker down with them in the five-foot-tall space and wait. The nukes hit before the bio weapons – the air got real stuffy real fast – oxygen tanks didn't help much, and they emerged after only a month. After that he met his first nomads – relations didn't go well, and he continued north with what few friends he could make in the dim hopes that perhaps his wife and family would still be alive. Of course, he found nothing in their little suburban house when he and his comrades finally arrived in Winnipeg. But he found even less than he thought – his sword – the one his father had given him – the one that he kept very well hidden, from all but his youngest son Om William – was missing.

He knew his son was alive, and he and his friends searched the city, but this was back in the kids' "hide-and-hush" days (a variation on hide-and-seek). Due to the children's excessive dedication to this new "reality video game" the men were closely watched, but found nothing. Together, they men decided to return to the United States and try to find a suitable new population. What they found were the Patriots. A lot of Americans – particularly in the south – had bunkers, and a lot of them survived the war, only to be subjected to radiation poisoning. But few of them died – most just became sterile, with small, insidious cancers that will only become active and fatal in some unforseen future They themselves were led by a Hollywood plastic surgeon by the name of Catlin Brie. Soon after the war, she fufilled her lifelong dream of being a surgeon who saves people's lives, as opposed to sucking the fat from their thighs. As people began to die all around her, she picked up a dirty butcher knife and cut them open, fixed them, and moved on to the next with an excited horror. As the only proficient doctor, she became responsible for the group, and one by one confirmed that none of them could bear children. They refused to accept that their ideals, their way of life, the American spirit would die. They set it upon themselves to find a way – find a way to repopulate the United States with Americans. They search state by state for other survivors, but most of those who survived believed New York was the place to congregate, and fell victim to the radiation. One day, they happened upon Toshio Sakura and his friends – they too were slowly dying from radiation picked up on their travels, but Toshio presented what seemed like distant, dim hope; He had a son, who he knew was alive, somewhere north of the border, and there seemed a chance that many other children had survived. If, indeed, these surviving kids had remained untouched by the radiation...? Perhaps could achieve their goals after all.

* * *

Cypress passes the bowl to me, exhaling a thick cloud.

"That's bullshit," Crow says. Cypress nods,

"My dad wouldn't be helping them," he says.

"Your Dad's name was Toshio Sakura?" I ask, holding the smoke in.

"Yeah," he nods.

"But you're not like, Asian," Crow points out.

"Half Japanese, actually."

"You don't look it. "

"The Priest's name was Shuji Sakura," I interrupt.

"What Priest?" Cypress says.

"A skinny guy."

"He looked kinda' like you," I say as I pass to Crow.

"Shuji... I dunno about anyone named Shuji," he shakes his head. "That doesn't make sense. And if my dad were here, I know I woulda' found him – felt him, something by now."

"Can I ask...?" I raise my hand, for some reason. "What kinda' name is Om?"

"Om is uh... a word some people use when they meditate," Crow tells me.

"Not quite," Cypress says, but discontinues the subject. Instead, he returns to his explanation;

* * *

People have been focusing energies for years – people who dedicated themselves to it. The Zen masters. Bhudda. Christ. Christ learned from and taught to the Zen masters – they shared ideas and understood the very simple principals of life. Energy.

If you'd like a scientific explanation, simply consider the laws of conservation of energy. We don't die. We cannot die. We are alive. We are energy. And you cannot destroy energy – you can only transform it. And there have always been those among us that understand this. Toshio Sakura, for example, was a dedicated Bhuddist. Perhaps you would not know to look at him, for he presented himself in a rather sharp, well-groomed way, and spoke confidently, but in his times of solitude he would retire to a quiet room and sit peacefully, eyes closed. And he would try to find his center. Toshio Sakura was desperate for balance. Business pushed him to the edge, and he wasn't sure he could continue at his present pace. Ask him what his business was, and he'll lie. To begin at the beginning, Toshio Sakura was the middle son of a low-level Yakuza household. When he came of age, he was officially introduced to the back-room dealings of his house, and discovered his niche in the family business.

When the family was wiped out and he alone was left alive, he began forging a new life for himself, peddling his services on the international market. It was a challenge to get started, but soon enough he had a growing roster of steady clients.

The stress got to him, though. He kept up his meditations.

One day, while on business in Montreal, he met a charming young Canadian woman named Isabelle, who (among several other languages) happened to speak fluent Japanese. She improved his English and he improved her Japanese and Cantonese – the honeymoon was two weeks in Maui and two weeks in Europe – Paris and Florence. They had two sons – Jessie Tatsuo (Isabelle picked the first name, Toshio the middle) and Om William (Toshio chose the first name, Isabelle the middle) – and Toshio was quite proud of them both. In his desire that they should see the world, he often took his young family on business trips at his own expense. That practice came to an end, however, when during their stay in Panama young Om William saw him. When I say, 'saw him', I mean to say that he did not stay at the restaurant across the street with his mother like he promised he would. Om William was unusually energetic and inquisitive for his age, and he slipped away from her while she was in the bathroom stall. It is, of course, not to be expected that a three year old should make it across a busy street in Panama all on his own – even less to be expected that he would wander right through the front door of their small hotel, right down the hall, and (in complete disregard of the DO NOT DISTURB sign) right into the room where his father was mercilessly stabbing another man.

Of course, after exceeding all expectations, the child reverted to more natural behavior – simply staring, frozen, as the man died. As his father wrapped him up in the plastic.

Not until Toshio was on his way to the old incinerator did he spot his small son, balled up in a corner, staring at the spot where it happened. He dealt with business first, then returned to his trembling child and slowly, in language the infant might understand, explained the nature of the family business. After he was finished, Om William seemed satisfied, because he wiped his face and smiled and reached out for his father to scoop him up. They went back across the street together, where Isabelle slowly recovered from her episode of panic, and finished dinner. Om William was even allowed seconds on desert.

But very shortly afterward, the child began exhibiting signs that everything was not okay. Instead of becoming violent, as his father feared, he withdrew. Not to a quiet room, but anywhere he could. Let him loose in the back yard, and a half-hour later there would be a knock at the door and a neighbour, who found him at the Seven-11 two blocks away. He didn't have A.D.D. – nothing was physically wrong with the boy. There wasn't a medication for "having a lot of energy", as the doctors put it, and Isabelle resorted to a child leash. It wasn't as if he was running away – he was just running. Climbing. Seeing everything he could – and he was always happy to come home. Isabelle was never told about the incident in Panama, and in his quiet thoughts Toshio believed his child was simply conscious of his own, tiny mortality. He wanted to live, and that was all. He may have been right, but it brought him no closer to solving his dilemma – what to do with little Om William. The straw that broke the camel's back was Om William himself, as he plummeted from a cypress tree he had decided to climb one day in their own back yard. Along with his tiny leg, he shattered Toshio's resolve to keep the secret of the family business, and he confessed all to his wife. She knew most of it already, but was unimpressed with Om William's involvement. Together, they decided the best thing they could do was try religion, and Toshio began teaching his infant son Zen. The child grasped it – mostly – and slowly began to show signs of normality again, so long as they now called him 'Cypress'. Despite the cast, he himself was thoroughly entertained with his little adventure up the tree. He worked well in guided meditation, and quickly progressed to sitting alone in the yard, his eyes closed – for hours. He was a happier, calmer, brighter child. He excelled in school, and was soon moved forward two grades, just before we shot at them – or they shot at us – and the world ended.

While Toshio was stranded in California, Cypress, along with everyone else in the first, second and third grades at his school, was safe and sound in a bunker in Canada. Well – mostly. The air filtration system mixed fresh O2 with thoroughly filtered air from the windcatchers on the roof of the facility. What got through to the lungs of the children was fresh and clean and laced with one billionth of the poison they would have faced on the surface – the poison twisted at the tiniest level. What the children breathed was harmless – it had no effect on its own. The girls unlocked the potential first. They had separated from the boys, and were scouring the downtown area for food. They found a variety of things, but in a great many of the houses and apartments they discovered caches of a herb that when smoked, releases an abundance of chemicals into the body. One such chemical threw a switch inside the girls – awakening trackwork set by the filtered poison years before. It wasn't for thirteen years that Om William, or Cypress, finally smoked it, and still near a year longer for him to realize his potential. All those long years, he had tried to keep up the meditation his father taught him, but dedication came in bursts. It was months after he smoked before he reapplied himself, and discovered something new.

People have been focusing energies for years – people who dedicated themselves to it. But Cypress found it came naturally now. Like all the world before him, he always had the ability, the doors were simply locked. Now they gaped open, and he found himself with more power at his disposal than he was comfortable with –

though it came at an opportune time.

* * *

* * *

my mind's done with this / so hey, i've got a question / can i throw it all away? / take back what's mine / so i take my time / driving humbly down the line / each cut, closer to the vein

this state is elevating // as the hurt turns into hating // anticipating all the fucked up feelings again

* * *

* * *

In the darkness across from me, Crow cuddles closely with her love. Cypress has suggested we give it another half hour before heading for the factory. "How come you never told me any of that stuff?" she asks.

"I didn't know. Brie filled in some blanks but lied in places – the science stuff I believe her on, and as for my dad – I do remember the stuff in Panama now."

His arms are folded around her, and she leans her shoulder-length spikes against him, smiling as if he's an old, precious blanket. All the world's gone to shit and she's happy as a pig in... whatever. I smoke my cigarettes and Crow is so Goddamn comfy she falls asleep on him. He smiles down at her for a while, but soon looks up and says softly;

"So this really sucked for you."

I draw a blank.

"What...?"

"You're so different, Sophie." "What, you're reading my mind?"

"I wouldn't do that-"

"But you could."

"Sure. So could you. But that's sorta' an invasion of your privacy, so I stick to reading your aura."

"My...?"

"Nevermind."

"I could say you're a little different too there, Cypress."

"Think there'll be a point?" he says now. Cocking his head at me.

"No – it's not like... what are the chances, right? All this shit that's happened to us – it's just God fucking with us. Yeah, I believe in God, but-" "Now how did you know I was talking about God and fate?"

"Well I-" and I draw a blank. "You said God-"

"Never brought up God," he shakes his head. "I said something about if there would be a point – but you knew what I was thinking. You just didn't know you knew it." He taps his head and grins. "If you're so scared of the power you've got, why would you want me – the rest of us to have it?"

"Because you do have it. We are... a chance for something new, Sophie. Imagine, if all of us stuck together, the generations of children we would have. A total second chance, with an extra leg up." He doesn't grin now, he lowers his head and shakes it. "I've never seen God, I just see the energy," he says. "But all this shit did happen to us. I mean what are the fuckin' chances of the air filter thing?"

"But Cypress, stuff like that happened all the time – it used to rain frogs sometimes."

"Frogs?" His eyes go wide,

"Rats too," I say, before they narrow at me.

"Where'd you learn that?"

"We usta get the Discovery channel. Did you know killer whales will drown a baby grey whale by jumping onto its back?"

"Let's get moving – you've totally missed the point," he sighs. "Sweetie – wake up." Crow opens her eyes to the gentle shaking of her perfectly perfect shoulders, and she grins up at him and stands, perky and bright. I love Crow, it's true – but lately a splinter has been growing in my mind. She doesn't understand how I have suffered, keeping hope alive. Her hope is Cypress, and she is blind to all other sources. And Cypress isn't what he was. He's something new – I expect he'll die before the end. Give me this power, and I would not slink around in the shadows, hoping to sneak a few of the boys out. I would crush Brie and her army without raising a finger. I would have them bleed from their eyes and fall to their collective knees, gasping for collective breath. They imprison us. Torture us. Rape us. And Cypress would spare them.