The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

shit,” he says. “It’s lonely. All my friends are on the other side, and I’ve got to stay here.”

“They also serve who stand and wait,” says Fahima, quoting from something she barely remembers. She grabs the boy’s hand, and the motel room blinks out. She’s in a living room indistinguishable from the one in the house where she grew up. The acquisitional clutter, the protective accumulation of random objects as ballast, marks the home of an immigrant family desperate to anchor itself to its new country with the weight of things. Alyssa supports Bishop, although she looks shaky herself.

“Clenching your stomach does nothing,” she says.

“That’s why we got the bucket,” says a young woman in the doorway to the kitchen. She’s tiny, her dark hair cut with a dull razor, wearing a faded Aladdin Sane tour shirt long enough to function as a dress. Her arms are sleeved in blue and green ink, and she chews on a toothpick that glows like a purple ember. A trio of teenagers stand in wait behind her, eyeing them warily. They look like a band prepped to shoot their album cover. This is what the revolution looks like, Fahima thinks only half ironically.

“You’re the ones from the school?” says the razor cut.

Bishop steps forward like he’s greeting alien life on behalf of Planet Earth. “I’m Kevin Bishop,” he says, taking his cane from Fahima and extending his hand. “From the Bishop Academy. And this is—”

“Ji Yeon Kim. From Dedham Street,” she says, ignoring the proffered hand. “I’m the one all the fuss is about.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Kim,” Bishop says. “Are your parents here?”

Ji Yeon throws back her head and laughs in quick, bright barks. The glowing toothpick hangs precariously from her bottom lip. “No, officer, my parents are not here,” she says when she recovers. “I sent them to Boston to stay with my aunt and uncle. They’re safe.” She cocks her head toward the couple to her left. “This is Adnan and Yana, they live on Furness. Hassan just got here. He found us through the Hive.”

“Hey,” says Hassan.

“I don’t know what they told you or what you read,” says Ji Yeon, “but we’re not looking for Martin Luther King. The time for speeches passed when the tanks pulled up.”

“I’m not here to take the lead,” Bishop says. “I’m here to help. What do you need?”

Ji Yeon sizes him up, then shrugs. “National Guard gummed up the sewers, and it’s been raining the past four days,” she says. “Can you dig a drainage ditch?”

Fahima shakes her head at him.

“If you have shovels,” says Bishop.

“I’m a doctor,” Alyssa says. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Know anything about Resonant biology?” asks Ji Yeon.

“She knows a thing or two,” Fahima says, smirking. Alyssa swats her on the arm.

“We’ve got triage over on Mountain Avenue,” Ji Yeon says. “There’s a boy came down from the Commune to help out and got some kind of infection. But he’s basically a lizard person, and no one knows what to give him.”

“I’ll take a look,” Alyssa says.

“Adnan, you want to take her over there?” Ji Yeon says. The oldest boy in the group steps forward and offers his arm like he’s taking Alyssa to the prom. She wiggles her eyebrows at Fahima as they leave.

Fahima could invent them a rain collector that would produce potable water or a way to shunt runoff into the ocean. She could walk around their camp and find a hundred problems to solve. Or she could grab a shovel.

“Come on,” she says to Bishop. “Let’s get digging.”

—

Fahima never gave much thought to the phrase in the trenches until she spent her first day digging one. Hours ankle deep in mud and clay make her think the entire world is nothing but mud and clay. She feels like she’ll never be clean again. Mud forms a subdermal layer; dirt that appears on the skin hasn’t accumulated from outside but seeped out like sweat.

Bishop is having a ball. The tiny sexy genius machines amplify his Resonance enough that he can hold back the cancer with telekinesis left over to help his frail body hoist a shovel. They’re teamed with Hassan, a geopath who sweeps dirt up the embankments with waves of his hand.

“Home I would wander off,” Hassan says. “You’re from Lebanon?” he asks Fahima.

“Buffalo,” Fahima says.

Hassan nods. He taps his chest.

“Morocco,” he says. He’s bright and chatty. His cheer shines through the layers of mud like a jewel half buried in earth. “Fez is massive, but we lived on the outskirts. You can walk a mile into Moulay Yacoub prefecture and you’re in a desert, like a movie. I would shape turrets three stories high. I would conduct whirlwinds of dirt and sand. Hidden and alone, I was a god.”

“Did your parents know?” Bishop asks.

“Everyone in the quarter knew,” says Hassan. “It made no difference to them. I was the same boy they’d always known.”

“If only it was always so simple,” Bishop says.

“Americans have not enough things to worry about,” he says. “How do they have time to fear something new? How do they have fear to spare?”

When their crew goes on a break, another takes over, a dozen young people, bending and rising in rhythm like worshippers at a mosque. Fahima catches a bit of melody, a pop song from a couple summers ago broadcast into her head, barely audible. She spots Lynette Helms in the group. Lynette looks like she’s grown a half foot since she left Bishop, most of which is a matter of standing up straight rather than stooping to avoid being seen. None of these people know her brother. She’s flourished outside of his shadow.

Bishop points at a young woman near the barricade. She spits in her hands, silvery goop she molds into balls and uses to plug chinks in the wall.

“She was one of ours, wasn’t she?” he asks. He’s losing days and months as his ever-burning Resonance scorches the neighboring parts of his brain.