Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett Page A

He did this every night, every night, every night, repeat.
    Antoine pulled at him when Adrian slowed. A beat. And you don’t stop. They passed the graffiti practice walls on crumbling buildings designated for demolition with official letters from the city plastered on their doors. No one came to this place anymore. So the kids used the walls to work on their art. On the sides of these broken brick buildings were bold splashes of color. The smell of paint still lingered in the air. Empty spray cans littered the grounds among the other trash that Antoine and Adrian ran through.
    They headed for the foundation of an abandoned apartment building that still stood erect. Adrian followed Antoine as he scrambled down into the basement. Antoine held a part of a boarded-up window open. Adrian didn’t want to go inside. The fear made him crawl down fast.
Don’t push me cause I’m close to the eeeedge,
I’m try-in’ not to lose my head …
    Their bodies were small enough to slip through. Antoine could still get on the bus for a ten-year-old’s price even though he was fourteen. Adrian would be twelve and a half in the fall.
    They landed in the dark. Adrian was breathing hard. Antoine put his hand over his mouth to make him quiet. The thing that was following them growled by the window and paced back and forth, sniffing. Antoine stretched his neck to look behind them through a small hole in the wooden board. The animal was made of flesh and metal. Its green eyes glowed. The silhouette of its master was tall against the moon, with antlers that spiraled up like twisting metal pipes. The thing heard its master’s call. After a time, it padded away. The sounds of its feet grew distant, then silent. Antoine took his hand off his brother’s mouth and Adrian drew in a deep swallow of air because he had been holding his breath.
    “Where are we?” Adrian asked.
    “Shh. Don’t worry,” Antoine whispered.
    “It smells like piss,” Adrian whispered back.
    “I know.”
    “Can we go home now?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “I told you why before.”
    “Maybe Dad got better …”
    Antoine didn’t say anything for a long time. He walked into the light that shined through the large hole in the roof. Adrian went up to his big brother and gently pulled his jacket sleeve.
    “Dad’ll get better, won’t he?”
    Antoine looked down. A beat. “I don’t think so.”
    Adrian knew that it was probably true. He didn’t want to believe it. Everyone that got the disease went strange — grown-ups and children, too. The dust changed people. The disease made them sick. Over the past few days they had seen people change. Folks with scales running up and down their necks gulping for air like fish. Monkeymen with bowed legs swinging from lampposts. The dust was changing their dad. If they were lucky, only his body would change. If they weren’t, he’d catch the disease and he would be crazy, too. It would make him do things that he didn’t mean. He might hurt them. Antoine didn’t want to take a chance, so he ran, taking his little brother with him.
    Adrian began to cry.
    “Don’t worry, Adrian. I got you. You’re my boy . I’m gonna take care of you now. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
     
    They left that basement and walked uptown in the dimness of daybreak. The streets were a deserted mess. Cars stopped in traffic with no one in them. Newspapers and trash flying around. Smashed windows on the storefronts. And silence. Their footfalls echoed off the tall buildings. Behind the gray clouds it was speckly, like a monitor screen gone wrong. A small green dot hovered up there. Adrian watched it for a while as they walked until it blipped out of existence.
    Whenever they heard something or saw something move, they hid. Abandoned storefronts, an old wreck of a house, and alleyways all made good hiding places. Something moved. It could have been anything. It could even have been someone who was still normal. Antoine wasn’t taking any