Lust For Tommorow by Dana Sweeney

The Stronghold

The Stronghold keeps us safe. Keeps us alive. To fight for it is to fight for myself, for humanity, for the future. It is the price and the privilege of being here, in the only safe place we know of, maybe the only safe place left on earth. Beyond these walls are zombies, Thrashers, and savages. Within the Stronghold, humanity's last hope can sleep through the night under our watch.

The Stronghold's walls were built by capitalism, of course. Did its creators think they were building themselves an ark to ride out a social collapse? An environmental catastrophe? No one could have imagined the kind of apocalypse that found us before the predictable ones could finish us off.

Before, you could be born inside, buy your way in, have a crucial skill set, or do the menial work that needed doing-the post-industrial equivalent of indentured servitude, not that I'm in a position to judge either side of that equation now.

I wasn't born here, nor was I anyone special. I lived an average life, worked a job that now seems vaguely ridiculous, and was unlikely to ever become wealthy. I'm aware how lucky I am to be here, especially having gone through those first few months in the wild.

I knew the Stronghold was here, of course. At first, the general assumption was that it would fall, if not to the zombies, then to human invaders seeking to claim it from the no-doubt soft inhabitants whose wealth and privilege had ill prepared them to defend their territory.

But the rumors spread that the Stronghold survived and that if you surrendered to one of their patrols, you had a chance of joining them.

There were a lot of rumors back then, and the farther from the Stronghold you were, the wilder and more varied those rumors got: They wanted healthy humans for experiments or organ harvesting; they were cannibals or sexual deviants luring in victims, as if the apocalypse was only going on outside while the rich enjoyed a wanton, decadent lifestyle in here. The rich... it sounds funny now. Money doesn't even exist anymore. Being safe, though, is worth anything and everything. The Stronghold was the province of the wealthy elite; living here was a status symbol as much as anything else. Now its value is tangible and true. Now we are desperately grateful for the Stronghold, eager to keep it safe.

What is now the barracks was once a hotel. Every soldier sleeps in quarters that used to rent for hundreds a night, and while the décor is utilitarian, the furnishings are luxurious to someone from outside, like me. The facility has been retrofitted to its current purposes with a central computer running all the lights to manipulate circadian rhythms. In the residential area hallways, the lighting is universally dim and uses only red bulbs; bright lights and cool colors interfere with sleep. All the windows are bricked over; in addition to increased security, blocking out the light from the outside allows the system to tell us when it's time to sleep and wake. Every moment of our lives is planned for, not that we don't have downtime.

Downtime in the barracks is a bit like college, though the risky behavior carries stunningly little risk. We have birth control implants, and we pass through medical scanners on our return from patrol, so there's no downside to casual sex. And since there are downsides to forming actual relationships, casual sex is pretty much the only kind anyone's having. If soldiers develop a strong emotional connection, they can't be out in the field together.

Threat to unit cohesion, no one person can be more important than the squad or the Stronghold, etc.

But it's more than that, I think. We're all traumatized by the losses of loved ones we weren't able to protect when the world ended. It's easiest to keep each other on the same level now. We're all fellow soldiers, friends, comrades-in-arms. It's safer that way.

And personally, I don't know how to trust that things would stay that way if we got naked. I know that's silly-everyone around me is doing it all the time with no issues. But I fought my way here to survive the apocalypse. I once bought a really beautiful dress that was more than I could technically afford to spend, and I kept that thing zipped tight in a garment bag; I wore it for the intended occasion, dry-cleaned it, and zipped it away again. I always thought of wearing it again... but somehow the idea of ruining it was worse than wasting it. That's how life feels now. I paid so dearly to continue existing, and for now, existing is all I can handle.

Monica, my squad leader and best friend, really doesn't understand.

"I'm not interested," I tell her for the hundredth time.

"Still?" Her disbelief is a little bit funny at this point.

"Yes, Monica, still. I'm here to stay alive. No man has ever made my life less complicated."

She looks at me with vague pity as she says, "It's just sex. No complications required."

She leans back against the wall, arm along the back of the booth, foot casually planted on the velour seat in what used to be a nicer restaurant than we'd ever have eaten in before. She's so chill, and I envy that about her —not that I'd say so, because I'm pretty sure she'd tell me it's a direct result of having been laid in recent memory and I should try it.

"Right, it's all casual. I don't believe in casual." Her eyebrows raise, and I realize my words could be taken judgmentally, so I clarify, "I don't mean like believing in equal rights or something. I mean like, believing in dragons."

"I shot three zombies this morning, Nina.

"Dragons seem less out there than they used to," she points out with a wink, and I laugh. "Maybe what I don't get," Monica says, "is how do you not want him?" Her sultry, rapturous tone at the end of this challenge is accompanied, naturally, by a meaningful glance in Demetri's direction.

I smile in amusement at her total lack of self-consciousness even as I roll my eyes. "I don't know," I say, "maybe because everyone does?"

Demetri's banged his way around the corps, one of the many reasons he's not like his fellow Helmets

—a notoriously standoffish crew that get to order us around out there thanks to their enhanced awareness of their surroundings.

We all test for Helmets along the way in training, but the equipment is a lot to deal with. The bulk, the weight, the decreased maneuverability, but most of all, the heads-up display that overlays your real vision with a video game-like viewpoint. It's too much for most of us, and we fail out. I admit it stung in the moment, I mean, failure usually does, right?

But while the newbie Helmets continue their extra training, the other trainees move in here and start getting to know their fellow soldiers. The first time I saw someone with the helmet on in the mess, I couldn't help staring. A subtle bump against my shoulder and an accompanying whisper of, "Just ignore them. They don't seem to notice we exist," was the start of my friendship with Monica. She broke down the whole helmet head phenomenon for me, and it took the sting out of failing the test. Who'd want to be a Helmet if it means having to get along with helmet heads?

Helmets in general are the soldiers who wear the gear. Helmet heads are the weirdos who never take off the gear, at least not where the lower ranks would see them. They come and go in the halls wearing the helmet. They show up for deployment with it already on. It's certainly possible you've seen them bare-faced out of uniform, in the halls or the mess, but unless they choose to introduce themselves or at least talk, they get to remain anonymous. Maybe the kind of person who goes hard in Helmet qualification is eager to have an extra layer of separation from the world. And it's understand-able, there's a lot about this world worth separating from... but it also adds a barrier between us and them that makes them difficult to trust.

A patrol is made up of four soldiers and one Helmet. The squad of four is constant, the Helmet rotates, and the Helmet is in charge. They can see farther in every direction, even in darkness or fog.

The Helmet has a direct line back to Command, communicating on a secure channel within the gear that not even the squad leader can hear. You have to trust the Helmet with your life... and that's the problem with helmet heads. You never really know who they are underneath.

Demetri's different. He can't wait to get the gear off once we're safely back inside the walls. I figure he would die if he had to hide his handsome face from the world. It's probably why he worked to qualify for the helmet-gotta protect that face out there so he can keep showing it off in here. He's the kind of good-looking that you can tell has carried him with relative ease throughout life, bolstered by his general affability.

Monica finally moves off the topic of my nonexistent sex life and starts bitching about our endless Cooper assignment.

"Seriously, though, has the word 'rotation' lost all meaning? We're going into week five now! Have you ever heard of being stuck this long with a single Helmet?"

"I wouldn't even mind if it was Demetri," I say, and her eyes widen in amusement. "I don't mean it like that, and you know it! He's a good soldier... and Creeper, I mean, she knows her stuff...."

"But: Creeper," Monica agrees succinctly.

Helmet heads wind up with nicknames, generally unflattering. We barely even think of them as people, truthfully. They maintain their distance from us, so we do the same in our own ways.

Demetri laughs about it with us at times, but he is always careful to respect his fellow Helmets. He casually corrects us for our disrespect, but there's usually no heat in his voice. Either he doesn't care, or the Helmet in question is nowhere nearby when we're saying it.

She sips her beer and adds, "There's a new one."

"New Helmet?"

"Helmet head," she emphasizes with disdain, and I'm right there with her. Just another like Cooper, who earned the nickname Creeper because she rarely speaks but has a laugh that sends chills your spine. Or Bruto (Bruno, but he likes violence maybe a little too much), or Graves (Grace, and I actually feel bad about her nickname-yeah, she's depressing to be around, but from what I've heard, her story is especially tragic).

The new helmet head, Monica tells me derisively, is called Alpha.

I burst into giggles and say, "So his real name's either Ralph or Alfalfa!"

She laughs too, but Demetri's nearby enough to have heard, and he answers. "Tom. The new guy's Tom."

Later, alone in my quarters, I stare at the empty ceiling and wait for the automatic lights-out to trigger at eleven. There's a switch on the wall, but I don't like spending any longer in darkness than I have to. Monica would say I should try not being alone for a change, that it makes the dark easier. I know Monica went off with someone tonight. Might even have been Demetri. I don't really know how she does it. She clearly prefers Demetri but is still comfortable enjoying herself with other guys. She clearly lusts for Demetri but doesn't feel jealous when he is with other women. She even talks to me about him the way friends used to tell each other about restaurants or TV shows, like you've got to try it!

The lights blink out, right on schedule, and I force my eyes closed to shut out the relentless darkness.

As I wait for sleep to find me, I think about something else Monica said tonight:

"I'll stop giving you shit, I promise. But I'm beginning to feel sorry for you, 'cause if you'd ever been properly laid, girl, you'd believe in dragons."

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