The Symbol

The team and I were 25 klicks inside containment zone 32 when I found it. Zone 32 surrounds the ruins of John F. Kennedy plaza in what’s left of Center City plaza. This thing I found, it’s on a silver chain and I wouldn’t have noticed it if I didn’t hit the ground when two muties got the drop on us. The muties are really bad in 32.

So I showed it to the boys and none of them knew what to make of it. Sergeant’s face contorted when he saw it and he acted really weird. I’m not really sure how to describe it other than that his face got really red and he made a really big deal out of it. The rest of the guys just watched in a bit of an awkward silence. He reduced me to a puddle of shit, to be completely honest. I was told to throw it away and the Sergeant ordered us to forget we ever saw it, or else there would be grave consequences.

I acted like I threw it away, but I pocketed it.

Things are getting stricter every day. Even with more frequent mem wipes, we’re still getting into big time shit. They haven’t made an example out of anyone in a week, but I’m sure it’s going to happen again soon. The stump where the fifth digit on my right hand used to be is all the ‘example’ I really need. But I still kept the thing with the chain, even if it might get me buried.

The boys, my core group- Bradley, Dunn, Lincoln, and Singh are ready for mutiny. I know we’d all get slung for even thinking about it, but the things they’re making us do, it’s not right. Plus, how many more wipes are we away from becoming lobots? We’ve all seen it: Sanchez was the most recent to be buried after lobot.

We don’t even know what we’re searching for in these containment zones. We’ve been humping out here for weeks and we’re clueless. Sergeant is the only privileged one and we’re all trusting that he won’t lead us into a wood chipper. Whenever we stumble upon one whatever they’re looking for, Sergeant goes in on his own and either sets fire to something or plants C4 and levels entire buildings.

We’ve run into mild resistance- mostly trashers and muties, but we’re starting to run into normies. Normies, we’re calling them, are people just like you and me, but they’re inside the containment zones, so we’re expected to do them like we do the trashers and muties. We’re weapons hot at all times. Sergeant wants us to mow down anything that moves.

Last night, Dunn let one of the normies go and I wonder if that decision will get him buried.

I digress. This thing I found, it’s two intersecting circles at the top and the sides of each circle curve down to a tip at the bottom. There’s a hinge on the left side and it opens like a book. On the left side it reads “James and Eli Forever” and on the right side there’s a picture of two people. It’s really washed out and damaged, but it looks like two men side by side, one with his arm around the other and they’re showing their teeth.

We’re a couple days away from our next wipe, so that’s why I’m writing this down. Dunn and Signh and the rest of the boys have been writing things down too. Each time we’re wiped, we remember things here and there. There are holes in our memories, but these notes help. We know that it’s dangerous to remember things and if we get found out, we’ll get buried, but it’s worth the risk.

James and Eli forever? Forever what? Singh says it’s pre-Expulsion symbology. He says that he found a book showing people on the cover holding hands and said something about ‘pair bonding.’ Says people used to live together. He didn’t learn much more because the Sergeant had him burn that book and all of the other books we found in that room back in zone 15.

We also depend on triggers. Singh’s memory about the pair bonding was triggered by another book we found. Triggers bring back the more immediate memories after the wipes.

One of mine, more recently, was inside zone 24. I saw this huge picture, still fairly intact, on stilts. The colors were so vivid. Blues and greens. Above the blue was a bright white sun. I guess that’s what the sun looked like before it turned red. Anyway, Sergeant told me that the green bit was called a ‘pasture’ pre-Expulsion. The picture triggered me: I remember being with this woman. She had red hair and her eyes were the same vivid blue I saw in the picture. She and I were close together and our hands were interlocked. This is a much more mysterious and impossible memory because none of us have ever seen a woman in the flesh.

Then there are the triggers that are much more jarring: Dunn for example- when he saw that normie, he was shocked by the memory it triggered. He remembered entering a building housing a dozen or so normies and he didn’t think twice before he opened fire. He said there were youths among them, and despite their cries for mercy, he mowed them all down. Buried each and every one of them. I think this memory is why Dunn let that normie go last night.

The Prime Minister tells the people that the members of the teams entering the containment zones are heroes. She says that we’re fighting the ‘good fight’ and that we’re keeping the ‘people of the new republic’ safe. She says the new world will be built on our graves. She says that we will be immortalized in monuments. She says we’re peacekeepers.

There isn’t anything threatening in these containment zones other than a handful of angry muties who used to be human. Are we peacekeepers or are we exterminators? Or worse, are we murderers?

‘James and Eli forever’ triggers something big that I can’t shake. So does this symbol. That woman- the redhead. I see her face and I see her showing her teeth at me. She’s touching my cheeks and I don’t want her to stop. She’s telling me something that I can’t understand and I feel myself repeating the phrase back to her, but I can’t hear myself speak. Her eyes are leaking fluid. Then I see her buried. Now when I look at this symbol on the chain, it makes me feel cold.