Convulsive Box Set

by Marcus Martin

  They retreated downstairs to Manuela’s empty apartment. As Lucy clicked the lock open, she ducked as a startled pigeon flew wildly around the room, flapping frantically until it flew straight into the window and stunned itself.

  “Grab the hamster cage!” yelled Lucy as she pounced on the bird, tenderly picking it up, securing it between her gloves.

  Dan disappeared from the room, returning a minute later with the empty cage. He lifted the metal mesh up and Lucy placed the dozy bird inside, Dan quickly locking the frame again before it could escape.

  “Looks like we’ve found our new canary,” said Lucy, watching as the drowsy bird began dragging itself into an upright position.

  “Technically it’s a pigeon,” replied Dan, grinning. “No wonder you dropped out of veterinary college.”

  Lucy gave him a spectacularly sarcastic smile through her mask and led the way back to their apartment, carrying their new ward.

  ***

  The power hadn’t come on in several days, and from their day job she and Dan knew why: the workforce was dying out quicker than it could be replaced. “System knowledge is dying with them,” Dan surmised that night in bed. “We’re going to have to start thinking longer term.”

  The death of Elvis the pigeon further complicated matters. Elvis succumbed after just two nights, his crumpled form signaling the danger within Manuela’s apartment. His demise renewed their conviction that sleeping in the hazmat suits was critical, while forcing them to move to apartment 403.

  “This is keeping us alive,” Lucy reassured herself the morning after Elvis’s passing, as she carried a bucket of her own excrement down the stairwell and outside the building. Now that their former dumping ground – Manuela’s apartment – was contaminated, an alternative arrangement had become necessary. Lucy reached the bushes by the bike lock-up area and dug a small hole. She tipped the waste in then covered it over, unperturbed by the incredulous expression of a passer-by across the street – instead relieved to see another survivor around. The sapling she’d seen when they’d first stolen the suits had disappeared without a trace, along with the translucent-mustard gloop.

  She replaced the bucket in 403 and agreed to wait for Dan while he quickly hunted for batteries upstairs in their actual apartment.

  He returned breathless and pale.

  “We’ve been robbed,” he panted from the threshold.

  Lucy hastened after him back up the stairs. The door of their home was wide open, the wooden frame splintered and smashed where the lock had been forced open.

  “They took the food,” said Dan, leading the way inside.

  Lucy followed, registering the faint footprints on their polished wooden floor. One set was much smaller than the other.

  “Check this,” said Dan, passing her a note. “I mean, what the actual fuck, right?”

  SORRY

  “They left this?” said Lucy, reading the one-word message.

  “On the kitchen table,” nodded Dan. “The audacity! Robbing someone then leaving an apology note? Maybe they’re just straight up mocking us?”

  Lucy studied the message again: large block capitals, written with a red sharpie, on lined notepaper.

  “At least they didn’t get the antibiotics,” said Lucy, glancing towards the bathroom. “I packed them – in our evac bags.”

  “Bastards!” he cried, thumping the wall. “We obviously can’t ever stay here again – not with the door like that, and not when we’re on someone’s goddamned map!”

  Lucy did a sweep through the apartment. The kitchen was a mess of open drawers and cupboard doors, but the bedroom and living room were exactly as they’d left them.

  “Did they take anything else?” she asked, re-joining Dan in the corridor.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Dan. “Think they just grabbed the food and left.”

  “Thank god we weren’t sleeping here when they broke in.”

  “They might’ve robbed us in daytime, we can’t be sure,” he grumbled, kicking his boots against the skirting board.

  “Think positive. Thanks to you we’ve still got half of our rations,” said Lucy, rubbing his back. “We’ll work through what we’ve got in 403, and when we’re done, we’ll get the rest from Manuela’s.”

  “And then?” he challenged.

  “Don’t be like that,” replied Lucy.

  “Like what?”

  “We got robbed, Dan, not shot. Get over your pride and stop taking this as some kinda personal failure – we don’t have the energy for that.”

  Dan said nothing and stepped outside, leaving Lucy room to exit too before he pulled the broken door shut behind her, wedging it against the splintered frame.

  “What’s that?” she said, eyeing up the crowbar in his hand.

  “Protection,” he replied.

  “You’re bringing it to work?”

  “What? No! I’m leaving it downstairs – in case anyone does try to rob us in the night.”

  As they retrieved their backpacks from 403 a noise, something between a long moan and a whine, pricked Lucy’s ears.

  “You hear that?” she asked Dan, pausing his rustling. “I think it’s coming from the elevator – sounds like something’s trapped in there.”

  Dan joined her by the doorway and listened. “Sounds like a cat.”

  “Yeah – which means the owner’s probably trapped there too. We need to check it out.”

  Dan groaned, dropping his backpack again and fetching the crowbar. “This is exactly why I’m not a cat person.”

  They followed the wails downstairs to the third floor.

  “Here!” said Lucy, training her head lamp on the elevator doors.

  “I wish I’d never bought this stupid thing,” complained Dan, wedging the crowbar between the elevator doors and leaning into it heavily.

  “Watch out!” cried Lucy.

  As Dan prized the elevator doors apart, water spilled out through the inch-wide gap, splashing out onto the hallway and down into the elevator shaft below.

  “What the hell?” gasped Dan, stumbling backward and shaking the water off his suit.

  The gushing stream quickly subsided to dripping. Lucy peered through the slit, her light illuminating the dark void beneath the elevator base, which was suspended around five feet above the floor – stuck between levels.

  “Gimme a hand,” said Dan, dropping the crowbar and placing his fingers along one of the door edges. Lucy copied, lining up against the opposite one. “Careful you don’t fall inward. Alright, heave!”

  As they each pulled a door back, a mangy cat darted from the elevator with a cry, landing on the floor and immediately springing down the dark stairwell out of sight.

  “There’s your cat,” said Dan.

  “I think we found the owner, too,” said Lucy, looking upwards.

  As they both stepped backwards, their beams illuminated the pile of rotting flesh and crumpled clothes on the dripping elevator floor.

  “Flies. Gross,” said Dan, switching off his head lamp. “What? I don’t want them flying at me – you should turn yours off too.”

  Lucy frowned but covered her light, dimming it substantially. She could only see glimpses of the shiny, golden-shelled flies, which quickly dispersed.

  “Come on,” said Dan. “Let’s get the bags and go. We’ve got work to do – and rations to earn.”

  ***

  “Whaddup! You guys must be my new colleagues!” cheered an unfamiliar garbage-truck driver as he pulled up that morning, throwing the passenger door open.

  An upshot of working garbage duty was that they didn’t have to ride the buses to City Hall anymore; they could walk a few blocks to the truck’s route and get collected.

  “They said you’d look weird – you guys look super weird!” yelled the driver from behind his face mask. “Get on up here now, don’t be shy!” He beckoned them up and slid back over to the steering seat.

  “The other guy died by the way, sorry about that, thought you
should know. I’m Marco, who are you?”

  And that was the beginning of the questions. Marco never really seemed to engage with any of their answers – and Dan never really engaged with Marco, preferring to let Lucy shoulder the brunt of the conversation. Not that she had to do much talking. Marco was like da Vinci’s machine of perpetual small talk, happily filling all silence with never-ending observations and banalities – interspersed with very out-of-tune rock karaoke as he incessantly looped AC/DC live albums.

  Reticent as Dan was, the driver’s humor lifted both of their spirits a little during the long, arduous shifts. Unlike his predecessor, Marco didn’t view their hazmat suits as a reason not to talk to them both. Rather, he found them a regular source of amusement and good fodder for his irrepressible chatter.

  “You guys are so funny looking!” he would say every day, several times, before laughing happily. He’d then invariably be distracted by another ransacked burger joint that he used to love or – often – the outfits of the dead people they were about to collect. “Check out that guy’s shoes – who even wears those, man!”

  Marco’s profoundly cheerful detachment from (or denial of) reality served them all well, but Lucy found herself studying him while listening. All of his conversation was in the present tense, and consisted of light-hearted tip-offs about where to get the best salami in town, or his buddy’s tapas bar on Eighth. He spoke as if none of it had changed, and never once referred to the fact that they were stopping to collect human bodies instead of trash.

  Lucy suspected he wasn’t entirely sober. Fortunately the streets were devoid of other traffic or pedestrians, meaning it was just she and Dan who had to hope for the best as passengers.

  The chatty reaper was also a well-connected man in the new world, it turned out, and was able to procure two living gerbils for Dan and Lucy in exchange for some of their rations.

  Meanwhile the number of bodies was increasing faster than they could remove them. It meant they were stoking the incinerator with plenty of fuel each day, but presumably the power generated was being routed directly to hospitals and prisons – or at least, that’s what Lucy assumed. She didn’t know because they hadn’t been able to tune into KGO 810 for over a week, and her military ‘sources’ had been replaced by the chatty AC/DC gerbil man. Maybe they weren’t generating power at all, she considered, as the days passed; maybe they were just burning bodies.

  “Eugh!” cried Lucy, leaping back and dropping her end of a corpse one afternoon.

  “What the hell, Luce!” said Dan, still holding the heavy torso end.

  “The body,” said Lucy, staring at the corpse. “I felt the legs move!”

  “Move?” said Dan, dropping the torso and stepping back.

  “Not move, but … slip. I … Look!” she said, carefully sliding the dead man’s trouser leg upward.

  “What the …” said Dan, crouching for a closer look.

  The leg had disintegrated to a hideous sloppy form.

  “How long’s this one been here? What is that, gangrene?” asked Dan.

  “I’m not sure,” said Lucy, pulling the trouser further up. “It’s some kind of infection. Eugh, tapeworms! Boy has this one turned. Let’s get it in the truck before I barf,” said Lucy, bending down and clasping the hems of each trouser leg.

  “On three,” said Dan, putting his hands under the armpits again. “One, two, three!”

  Lucy and Dan both stood up, lifting the corpse off the ground. It sagged heavily in the center.

  “Ready to swing?” she checked as they shuffled closer to the back of the garbage truck.

  “Yup,” replied Dan, leading the swinging motions. “One, two … Ah, shit!” he cried as the body tore in the middle, sending both him and Lucy off balance.

  Lucy yelped in disgust, dropping the severed legs she now held and looking in horror at the writhing mass of rotting guts that lay on the road before them.

  “This is too much!” yelled Dan, hurling the top half of the body into the garbage truck, sending flecks of rotten flesh through the air.

  Lucy looked at the human entrails that had spilled out from the dead man’s midriff and choked back the vomit. The entrails writhed with the activity of the worms feasting among them.

  “This is too damned much!” said Dan, again, as he grabbed a shovel from the back of the truck and scooped up the festering remains, slinging them into the back.

  “Luce?” he said, impatiently, storming over and negotiating the legs onto the shovel in a vile balancing act.

  She ignored him, returning to where they’d found the body and staring at the lone squirming tapeworm left on the tar. She stepped on it, hard, twisting her foot from side to side and feeling the worm turn to pulp beneath her.

  “You done?” called Dan, walking back to the front of the truck.

  Lifting her foot back off, she looked at the yellow-brown mess that was left.

  “Yeah,” replied Lucy, “I’m done.”

  “Wait!” came a muffled voice from behind.

  Lucy spun around, startled. Myles was limping towards her at speed from the other side of the street.

  “Oh shit!” cursed Lucy, turning and hurrying back towards the truck.

  “Lucy, I know that’s you!” Myles shouted through his mask. “Those suits are my property! Get back here!”

  She reached up, pulling open the passenger door.

  “Lucy! Gimme my fucking suits!” yelled Myles again, closing in.

  Lucy scrambled up the steps into the cockpit and threw herself into the passenger seat. “Drive, Marco!” she yelled.

  “Say what?” he asked, nodding his head to the blaring heavy metal.

  She leaned to pull the door closed, but Myles’s hand wrapped around her forearm, dragging her from the vehicle.

  “Dan!” she cried, falling hard on the asphalt.

  “Lucy, I don’t wanna have to do this,” implored Myles. “You know that. Just gimme the goddamned suit – please! I’m begging you! It’s mine, you know it is!”

  Lucy squinted up at him, silhouetted against the bright blue sky. He was crying. That’s when she saw the knife.

  “I don’t want this. You know that, right?” He pointed at her with the blade. “We go back a long way. I … Just … gimme the damned suit!” he yelled, lunging towards her.

  Out of nowhere a shovel drove into the side of Myles’s head with a clang, sending him plummeting to the ground. Before she could say anything, Dan lifted the shovel again and smashed it down onto Myles’s skull. He struck again, and again, until Myles’s brains were dashed across the street.

  Lucy sat sprawled on the floor, shaking, flecks of blood covering her suit.

  Dan stood up and dropped the shovel, staggering backwards. The rock music blaring from the truck stopped.

  “He was gonna stab you,” said Dan, swaying. “He was gonna stab you!”

  “It’s … Don’t,” quavered Lucy, climbing to her trembling legs. “I know he was.” She took Dan’s visor in her hands. “I know he was. It’s OK. Shhh, it’s OK.”

  “We need to get rid of his body,” panted Dan, looking wildly around the deserted street.

  “OK,” said Lucy. “We can do that. Just … just be calm now. It’s over.”

  As she turned and looked at the body again, dizziness swept through her. Dan wailed with anguish.

  “I’ll take the … You take the legs,” said Lucy, placing a hand under each of Myles’s armpits, more blood spilling onto her suit. “Dan? Dan!” she shouted. He was beginning to go into shock.

  She dropped Myles’s body and stepped up to her partner, shaking him hard. “Hey! Look at me. Look at me! You’re OK. Right? You’re OK.”

  She resumed her position.

  “Take his legs,” she ordered, fighting to keep her voice flat. “One, two, three!”

  They staggered backwards with the decapitated body, its heat radiating through their gloves.

  “Again on three,” said Lucy, as they lined up level wi
th the back of the truck.

  Myles’s body landed in the refuse area but rolled back towards them, his arm flopping back over the metal lip.

  “Jesus Christ,” winced Lucy, gagging as she flipped his hand back into the dumpster.

  She grabbed the control box and hit compress. Myles’s body vanished into the churning folds of humans. The squelching and cracking of flesh and bone projected over the mechanical groans of the dumpster.

  Dan stared, transfixed. Lucy led him back to the cockpit, where she helped him up the steps.

  “Buckle yourself in,” she said, lifting his trembling hand onto the belt, before hopping out again and retrieving the shovel. She clipped the bloodied implement back into place on the rear of the truck and re-joined her partner, who was shaking too much to push the seat buckles together.

  “I’ve got it,” she said, leaning over and finishing it for him.

  “The hell just happened?” said Marco.

  “Someone tried to kill me,” replied Lucy. “Please take us back to the depot, Marco.”

  “Gotcha!” he said, hitting Play on the CD deck and pulling away, singing loudly and cheerfully as Lucy’s eyes glazed over.

  ***

  “That’s three hours,” said Dan, lifting his head from the mattress in 403 and checking the clock on the wall.

  “Thank god,” heaved Lucy, tearing off her hazmat suit and taking a deep breath of unfiltered air. The sweat on her skin chilled, sending refreshing shivers across her body. That 403’s gerbil was still alive had been the only mercy of the day. Lucy couldn’t yet vouch for the one they’d left in Manuela’s place, but there was an outside chance they’d be able to use her toilet safely if it was still alive too.

  Dan slammed his palms against the wall, leaning into it, his head dipped. The half-unzipped hazmat suit hung around his waist.

  “You OK?” questioned Lucy, pausing her wet-wipe shower. “Sorry. Stupid thing to ask. Of course you’re not.”

  “I’m fine,” snapped Dan, not turning around.

  “What happened to Myles. That wasn’t your –”