Chapter One
Silence Like Shadows
Uploaded on 3/13/07
One Year Later
Boyd was accustomed to being alone.
When he was younger, his parents were paranoid. Even before the war, they had a strange combination of not caring enough about their only child, yet caring too much about his welfare. His mother worked in the government, claimed she knew all the types of shady people out there. What they could and would do to her son. Yet there was no doubt she forgot about him for long stretches of time when she was away at work. When she did not even send him a note on his birthdays or a gift at the holidays.
For the longest time, Boyd thought that was how all families worked. His father, while often home, kept himself busy with writing. Locked doors with lights shining from beneath and the constant clacking of keys. This was how Boyd knew when his father was around, or when he was absent. But unlike his wife, Cedrick Beaulieu made a point of celebrating his son's birthdays, of giving him something on the holidays, of taking him on trips here and there when he could afford it.
And Boyd was fine with that. Those were, truthfully, some of the best days of his life. The only ones better were those spent with his only friend, his best friend, Lou.
Boyd was nearing eight when the bombs hit although the war had been going on for some time before that. It was worst than any World War III they had ever imagined, all of the world powers at each other's throats; the corruption had been rampant, terrorism like a plague, assassinations of every major US official before they decided to against their own sanctions and use nuclear weapons. At that point it wasn't about defending the people anymore and for the first time in a long time, the United States was a battleground. The bombings spread worldwide like a wildfire; no one expected to survive. For the sake of power, wealth, land... who knew what the real reasons were, but when the bombs came they disintegrated all he had known and turned his life upside down. He lost more than stability at that time, but it took him years to realize just how much could go wrong simply from the aftermath.
He did remember the clear blue days, but only barely. More than the memories, he went by words. Even at that young an age, Boyd was antisocial. He was an intelligent boy, smarter than the majority of his peers, but unmotivated to do anything with it. He used his intelligence to let him waste away hours without studying as much as he should, just so he could sit in the dark. Why expend effort when he was positive he would pass anyway?
He had one friend, a single friend, who was more important to him than anything or anyone else. But Boyd's parents were worrisome creatures, and for years he had very little chance to leave his house or let his friend come over.
During those times, he had written in journals. Poetry and diary entries, disjointed thoughts and observations of life... Whatever came to mind was scribbled on those pale lined pages, and soon he had a bookshelf holding just his simple black journals, blank and full, waiting for the day he would reread them. Later, after the sky paled and the clouds became too muddled to be beautiful, he pulled out the few that remained and read them.
And remembered.
Remembered the sun on his face, the clouds like white cut-outs in the sky. The sunsets of gold and lavender and pastel, perfect blue. The sea, ivory and emerald with the hint of salt on the tongue. He remembered days spent at the park, leaning against the rocks as he tilted his face toward the warm wind. Remembered nights scattered through the years spent with Lou, with his stupid curly blond hair growing like a weed and just as unkempt.
He started new entries. Wrote new observations. Now, the sky like muddy water, the wind burning and dry. The clouds too dark for heaven and Lou long ago murdered. No more laughter, just silence in a dark room, the glow of shields keeping out residual radiation pulsing through his curtains. Silence and an empty house with an empty teenager writing empty words.
Silence, but memories.
No more beautiful world. Collapsing buildings and scavenging orphans. Screams and jealousy and raids on the weak. Lawless outdoors and indoors increasingly controlled by the government. Innocent bystanders attacked for no reason. Some shot, some robbed. Some mugged, some left alone.
Lou was like that. Wrong place at the wrong time, and it was his blood spreading filth and nutrients to the weeds in cracked cement. Terror, pain, blood -- a few minutes and he was alone again; this time by the corpse of his most important person with tears streaming down his cheeks.
Hyperventilation and recuperation and isolation. Screams and funerals and silence again, forever.
It was a mess, but it was life.
Boyd had not lost both parents to the war like so many had. But he did lose his father.
Aspiring author or not, Cedrick Beaulieu was in reality still just a journalist. Following the leads as they came, getting as close to danger as he could for the perfect pictures or the perfect story. But that time he was too close to the center, too close to the bombs. An explosion of light and color and sound, and he never made it back.
There was not even a body to mourn. Ashes and debris and blood-covered body parts. All the families who lost someone had the same carnage to look through for their loved ones. To stare at and wonder, "Is that my father? My mother? My son? ...Or is it even human? Leftover meat from a mongrel wandering too close and all I can think is 'I miss the one who's gone.'"
Boyd's mother had been a well-meaning woman, but there was no question that career was her life, not her child. If she had forgotten birthdays and holidays before the war, after it she nearly forgot his existence. At the loss of her husband, Vivienne threw herself into her career with the government more than ever. She was gone far more often than she was home, off doing who knew what, who knew where.
The only way she showed she knew her son existed was the strengthening of the security on her house. The anti-radiation shields installed before she left. Gone nearly two years straight and all she did was ask government patrols to watch her home, to follow her son, to be certain he was safe. She wanted nothing to do with his life, but if he died she would be alone. Would lose her only tie to Cedrick, and she could not accept that.
She needed a life, somewhere, that relied on her. That remembered her. That was not taken away so suddenly.
So Boyd stayed home. Quiet in the shadows, with the memories of his father just behind that door, and the memories of Lou haunting his room. Slowly, it all became more meaningless. One by one, he lost his emotions. Lost his ability to care. Lost everything but the darkness and emptiness he kept inside, protecting the dark heaviness that once felt like a wildly beating, powerfully alive heart.
Maybe his soul was sucked into the shields. Maybe it was lost in the darkness.
Maybe he never had one in the first place.
Whatever the case, there were years of silence until the single note appeared in the mail from his mother. A meeting time, a job description, and a name.
Sin.
Something to do, she said, but the words were passed from higher up. They needed someone quiet and intelligent, emotionless but quick to adapt. Someone to counter a killer they were sending on the loose and it was Boyd his mother pointed to. Her only child, her only surviving kin, but for a promotion and job security she would give him up. He would be safe, and in the meantime... Well. What better honor for a family than to have two lost in duty to the public?
As for Boyd, he felt as if he was a silent statue in his home. Nothing was happening, and nothing would for all his foreseeable future. Life and death were nearly the same to him anymore.
He could not imagine an emptier afterlife than the life he held now. He could not imagine darkness more suffocating than that in his home, which echoed with teasing once passed between friends and family. Or his room, silent now but once holding the quiet breathing of two who cared more about each other than anything else, and their hesitant, questioning movements for more.
If there was a hell beyond what he knew, he would welcome it.
He had no reason not to.
After all, a life without living was simply a death without dying. What more was there to fear or hate but life, endless life, with no end in sight?
Continue to Ch 2 ~ Out of the Box