The Brave New World - 120 This Way To Paradise

They got on their bicycles and left almost immediately, without eating anything.

“I don’t like the way things feel here,” Harper said. “It’s as if something bad was about to happen. We’ll stop for breakfast once we get out of the city.”

Harper had a point. Li Yang had noticed many envious, and some angry glares when they ate while waiting for the ferry the previous day. In the new reality that took shape following the catastrophe, eating was an activity best done in private, like sex or defecating.

It was very early, and the streets were empty except for the occasional police or military patrol. Their group drew many suspicious glances, but no one stopped them. They made good progress until they got onto the expressway that, according to Harper, was the fastest route to get out of Annapolis.

He was wrong. The expressway was littered with abandoned cars and broken glass. Bobby caught a puncture after just a few minutes. There was no way he could continue without repairing it: his rickshaw carried a heavy load. While Bobby and Olga patched the puncture, Charlene challenged Harper’s leadership and questioned his intelligence in scathing terms.

Looking at them fight, Li Yang had the thought – for the first time ever! – that maybe it was lucky his sister died before she could grow up to be like Charlene. He felt very bad, very guilty when he thought that. He liked to think of himself as a virtuous person.

Jake noticed something was off right away; they’d been very close friends, and knew each other well. This carried disadvantages along with advantages. Jake said:

“Hey. Are you okay?”

He sounded so warm, so friendly that Li Yang blurted out what was on his mind. Jake was silent for a moment. Then he said:

“You know, I’ve often thought that my parents dying was the best thing that happened to me.”

Li Yang stared at him. His mouth had dropped open with shock. He was aware of that, and felt like a moron. He said:

“What do you mean?”

“They were always on my case. You know that. My Dad used to hit me when he was angry. He only stopped when he saw that I’m going to hit back. But that wasn’t the big thing. The worst thing in this whole family bullshit was all the little lies and manipulations. Like twenty, thirty times a day. As they say, you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.”

Li Yang was silent. He was really shocked. He used to envy Jake, simply because Jake had a father. He’d never thought that had his own father been around, he could have turned out to be a total asshole. Maybe it was good he’d never met his father. It was a notion that turned his whole inner world upside down.

Jake added to his confusion. He said:

Jake’s reasoning didn’t convince Li Yang. He simply didn’t know what to think any more. Fortunately, Harper ordered everyone off their bikes, and Li Yang had to focus on a new task. They were to walk in front of Bobby’s repaired rickshaw, making sure its path was clear of sharp objects.

“A bicycle without a rider is light enough to be wheeled across a bed of nails without any trouble,” Harper said. They were all slightly dazzled by this observation: it seemed to contain deep wisdom. Even Charlene was silently obedient, for once.

Wise or not, Harper’s orders meant it took them a good couple of hours to get out of the city. When they finally got off the expressway, they got on their bikes again and rode for a few minutes, until they came to a stretch of road free of any other human presence. They finally could eat without anyone envying their food, and possibly making plans to take it away.

They arrived in Fairhaven an hour later without encountering any misadventures along the way. Jimmy Dow was supposed to own and live in one of the houses on the outskirts of the little town. It was a small clapboard-covered building with a tiny yard and Li Yang found it hard to imagine how they could all fit into that. The rusted, sagging wire fence around the assorted weeds that decorated the property dented his confidence even further.

Unluckily or luckily, it turned out that Jim Dow did not live there any more. No one did. Bobby and Harper spent ten minutes going around the house, and knocking on doors and windows. The house was empty. So was the house across the road – they went there to ask for directions – and the next house, and the next. Fairhaven, like many of the towns they’d passed through earlier, seemed to be a ghost town.

The general mood quickly got ugly and it was very fortunate that they finally encountered a living human. The living human was a black boy of around ten in an oversized football shirt and baggy pants. He also wore a baseball cap with the peak sideways, a sure sign he regarded himself as unique.

Harper slowed down to talk to him as soon as he saw him, but the kid wasn’t to be robbed of his fun. He pulled out and pointed a pistol as Harper drew near, and said:

“Stop right now or I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”

“I’m stopping, I’m stopping,” said Harper, and did. He raised his hands, and smiled at the kid. He said:

“We’re friendly. We aren’t out to hurt anyone. We’re looking, I’m looking for a friend of mine, Jimmy Dow. You know him?”

The black kid grinned from ear to ear and lowered the gun.

“No fucking kidding,” he said. “Everyone knows Jimmy Dow. He’s cool.”

“He used to live in that house down the road,” said Harper, “But it seems he’s moved. Do you know where he lives now?”

“Twenty dollars,” the kid said promptly. Harper stared at him for a while, and said:

“I hope you mean the old dollars.”

“I do,” said the kid. He looked down at the ground and smirked while Harper located and pulled out a twenty-dollar banknote. He took it from Harper with fake reluctance, and said:

“Jimmy’s moved to paradise. He bought the whole property. You lucky Jimmy’s your friend. Everyone likes Jimmy.”

“So do we, so do we,” Harper said. “He’s moved to paradise? That must have been recent.”

“Couple of weeks ago.”

“But he’s alive, right?”

The kid stared at Harper.

“Of course he’s fucking alive,” he said. “He’s moved to paradise, I juss told ya. Go down this road and the next right turn you come to, you’ll see a sign.”

Harper shielded his eyes with his hand, lookout-style, and said:

“I think I can see it. Couple of hundred yards, right after the house with the rusty roof?”

“That’s it,” said the kid. After a short pause, he added:

“You wanna know more, that’s another twenty dollars.”

“I’ll pass,” said Harper. He smiled at the kid. He said:

“I’ve known Jimmy longer than you’ve been alive.”

The kid grimaced and said:

“Aah, fuck you. Just fuck off and die.”

He put his hand on the butt of the gun he’d stuck into his waistband, and Harper turned round to the others and said:

“Let’s go.”

Li Yang obeyed Harper’s order just like everyone else, but as he passed the kid he felt a very strong urge to pull out his revolver – he’d put it, freshly reloaded, in the side pocket of his jacket – and shoot that fucking kid right in the middle of his stupid, sneering face.

He gritted his teeth and focused on pedaling his bike at exactly the same speed as the others. He was forced to stop a couple of minutes later.

“Well I’ll be,” said Harper, sounding blown away.

Li Yang looked up from his handlebar. Everyone was staring at the sign affixed to a pole just behind the turnoff. The red letters, hand-painted on a white background, said:

THIS WAY

TO PARADISE

“Hold on,” Jake said. He got off his bike and walked and bent down to pick up the missing, bottom part of the sign from the ground. It had been painted on three boards that had been nailed to the post, and the bottom board had dropped off. It said:

VILLAS 500m

“This way to Paradise Villas, five hundred meters,” said Harper with fresh confidence. “Thank you, Jake. Let’s go.”

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