Lexicon

by Max Barry

  “How do I do that?”

  “How do you think? With the gun!”

  He wound down the window. The cop car was right there, nudging and whining like an animal in heat. He decided to shoot a tire. But the moment he got the shotgun out the window, the cop car’s engine vented and distance opened between them. Wil retreated inside. “He doesn’t want to get shot.”

  “Not compromised,” said Eliot. “Good.” Ahead, Wil saw BROKEN HILL 8 and NO ENTRY and QUARANTINE ZONE and DANGER DEATH. Beyond that, on the horizon, twin sets of twinkling lights like early stars. “Keep him back.”

  “How badly are you hurt?”

  “Badly.” Eliot’s eyes flicked to the rear mirror. “Fucking shit Wil you fuck!”

  He jerked around. The squad car had slipped lanes and was making a run up the driver’s side. Wil tumbled into the rear of the car. By the time he got upright, the cop car was alongside them. There was a soft thump of contact. The rear of the Valiant began to slide as if it were on ice. The world spun. Wil lost his grip on the shotgun. The Valiant performed one complete revolution and Eliot gunned the engine and it leaped forward again.

  He retrieved the shotgun. The cop car was moving up for a repeat performance, a second round of spin-the-Valiant, and there was no time to lower the window, so Wil planted his feet on the side door, aimed the shotgun down his legs, and squeezed the trigger. The window blew out. The cop car jerked as if stung, its engine jumping half a dozen octaves, and fell out of view. Wil leaned out the shattered window into the blast furnace of air. There were two cops in the squad car, their faces pinched with anxiety. He brought the shotgun around, settled on the radiator, and pulled the trigger. The car’s hood popped open. It veered off the road, tires smoking. Wil crawled back inside.

  When he reached his own seat, the lights ahead had resolved into two shining squad cars, one in each lane, barreling toward them. “They’re not . . . kamikaze, are they?” Eliot didn’t answer. Wil groped for his seat belt but couldn’t find it. Surely Eliot was about to swerve off the road. The cars ballooned in the windshield, low-slung and powerful. “Eliot! Eliot!”

  One squad car dropped behind the other. They flew past Eliot’s window, their sirens dopplering. Wil breathed.

  “Load that gun,” Eliot said.

  He dug around the footwell for shells, broke open the shotgun.

  “They’re coming around. Keep them back.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t talk about it. Do it.”

  “I’m doing it! I just shot a cop car, did you notice?”

  “Next time, shoot the driver.”

  “Fuck!” he said. “What’s the difference?”

  “You shoot the driver, no cop comes within five hundred feet of us, that’s the fucking difference! You shoot the car—”

  “Okay! Okay!” He got his elbow out the passenger window and levered himself up. The wind tore at him. Way back, a column of white smoke rose from the car he’d shot, stark against the blue sky. Closer, the two new squad cars were eating up the distance between them. Wil steadied the shotgun. He had hunted, once. He’d cleared land like this of rabbits and roos. When was that? He couldn’t remember. But this feeling, the shotgun nestled in his shoulder, an endless landscape of pressed dirt spread before him, was familiar. He waited. The cops would surely see him and stay back. He did not want to shoot anyone.

  The Valiant coughed. The car shivered, lurched. Wil clutched at the window frame to avoid falling out of it, almost dropping the gun. “Hey!” he shouted. “What the fuck?”

  “Gas! Becoming an issue!”

  “Why are you shaking the car?”

  “To extract gas from the tank!”

  “I nearly fell out!”

  Eliot said something he couldn’t hear over the roar of the wind.

  Wil leaned inside. “What?”

  “I said it’s important to keep moving!”

  “I know that! Just give me five seconds of driving in a straight line!” He pushed himself out the window. The squad cars were closer than he liked. At this range, he’d pierce the windshield. They could see that, right? They could see he had a shotgun. He waited for them to back off.

  “Shoot!” Eliot yelled.

  He aimed at the car on the left and squeezed the trigger. Shot spattered across its hood. Its windshield cracked. Both cars’ noses dipped to the blacktop. Smoke burst from their tires. He watched until there were a good couple hundred yards of road between them. Then he wriggled back inside. “They’re backed off.”

  “Good.”

  Eliot didn’t ask why he’d fired at the hood. Maybe he didn’t realize. He probably assumed he was a terrible shot. He didn’t know that Wil had hunted. That is, that he remembered hunting. “We seriously need to get you to a hospital.”

  “And how does that work,” said Eliot. “How exactly do we get me to a hospital, in this situation.”

  “I don’t know. But you can’t fucking die, okay? It’s not good for anyone if you die.”

  “Hold on,” said Eliot. Wil saw a turnoff rushing toward them, a dusty blacktop guarded by red and black and yellow signs promising NO ENTRY, ROAD CLOSED, QUARANTINE AREA. As they leaned around the corner, the car coughed explosively. Wil felt a softness enter their momentum. The engine gargled. The Valiant lurched back onto the straight and muttered angrily.

  “That’s not good.”

  “No.”

  He glanced behind. The squad cars had slipped into a single file. They followed at a distance, taking the turnoff with ease. “They’re going to just sit back there until we run out of gas.”

  “They’re not.”

  “Let me float something,” Wil said. “We stop, they arrest us, we get you some medical attention.” Eliot didn’t say anything. “Then you talk us out. With the word voodoo.” He leaned forward, searching the sky for choppers. “Don’t you think the priority here is you being okay?”

  “The bareword is the priority.”

  “Right. The bareword.” He peered ahead. “There’s something on the road.” A chain-link fence stretched away from either side of the road, but whatever lay between was lost in the heat haze. “Is that a gate?”

  “Just loose wire.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Are you really sure?” he said, but by the time he got the words out, the answer was clear. It was a solid red and yellow barrier. The Valiant plowed through it and a yellow block flew at Wil’s face and ricocheted off the windshield with a light boonk.

  He looked out the rear window. Colorful blocks rolled slowly across the road.

  “Plastic,” said Eliot.

  “You said it was wire.”

  “Last time I was here, it was.”

  The police cars were shrinking. “Hey. They’ve stopped.”

  “That’s because they believe what they’ve been told about Broken Hill. They don’t want to die.”

  “So no one will follow us in here? We’re safe?”

  “Regular people won’t. Proles will.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Wil said, dismayed. “Proles.”

  “Also EIPs,” said Eliot. “You haven’t seen those yet. When they show up, we’ll need the word.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. “I’m going to pull over and let you drive for a while.”

  The car coasted to a halt. Wil ran around the vehicle, hunkering down in case of cops with sniper rifles, or helicopters, or whatever. He didn’t know. It could be anything. The engine stuttered and he thought, Please don’t die, you cock. He pulled open the driver’s side door. Eliot was sitting in the passenger seat like he’d been dropped there. One hand rested on his abdomen. His face was made of paper. The driver’s seat was wet with blood. “Holy crap,” said Wil.

  “Get in.”

  His butt pressed into the wet seat. The smell was rich and loamy, like a vegetable garden after rain. “This is seriously bad, Eliot.” He pulled the door closed and set the car to moving before it could capitulate.
“Is there a hospital in Broken Hill? A clinic, at least?” He glanced at him, abruptly fearful that he’d died in the past five seconds. But Eliot was still there. “Maybe we can do something for you there.” Maybe Eliot had medical knowledge. Maybe Eliot could dig a bullet out of his body and administer the correct doses of expired medicines. He’d stuck a needle into Wil’s eyeball; he must know something. The engine coughed three times. A structure rose in the distance: something old and industrial. “Are you listening?”

  “Yes. It’s a good plan.”

  “Is it?” But Eliot’s expression suggested otherwise. “Fuck! Then what?”

  “We get the word.”

  “And?” Eliot said nothing. “What . . .” he began, and forced himself to stop peppering Eliot with questions. He should let Eliot concentrate on holding in his kidneys. A house came up on the right, a squat thing with sun-blistered paint, but he’d seen more run-down places in Portland. It didn’t look abandoned. It was the windows, he realized: They were intact. And there were no weeds, no overgrowth. The sun sterilized everything. He spotted gray-white clumps scattered here and there and thought, Anthills? One was on the road, more distinct. He swerved. “Fuck!”

  Eliot grunted.

  “Skeletons,” he said. Of course there were skeletons. But still. Skeletons. On the road. A lone gas station came into view. A skeleton hung halfway out of a burned-out station wagon. He glanced at Eliot, to see if Eliot was getting this and was at least a fraction as freaked out as he was, but Eliot’s eyes were closed. “Eliot.”

  His eyes opened. He began to shift himself up the seat like he was arranging something heavy. “Don’t. Let me. Close my eyes.”

  “That’s why I said something.” He slowed. There were more skeletons here and he didn’t want to drive over them. He didn’t want to hear the noise. The industrial structure he’d seen earlier was identifiable as a refinery, crouched above the town like a wrecked spaceship. Like it had descended to Earth and murdered everybody. That he could believe. A death ray. A creeping light that spread through the town, disintegrating people. He could understand how something like that could wipe out a town. Not a word. “Eliot!”

  Eliot opened his eyes.

  “We’re almost there.” The street signs shone, wind-scrubbed. SULPHIDE STREET. OPEN CUT MINE #3. It was like they’d wanted to be the site of a toxic catastrophe. Except that hadn’t happened. That was just the story. Something tugged at him, inside his mind. Some memory. “Where’s your word?”

  “Hospital,” Eliot said.

  He glanced at him. “You want the hospital, now?”

  “Word. Is in hospital. Emergency room.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Just do,” Eliot said.

  He slowed further, because the road was littered with bones now; there was really no option, and he drove over a gray lump with a sound like splintering tree branches and winced. He saw a library with its steps converted to a ramp by a year and a half of windblown sand. It was hard to believe the skeletons were people. He knew but didn’t. He peered ahead for signs to a hospital. On the right, a fire truck sat embedded in a storefront. Whatever happened out here hadn’t happened quickly. People had had time to flee. Or try. He rolled the car up and down blocks. Some of the skeletons had things. He didn’t want to notice this but it was unavoidable. Flesh rotted but things didn’t. He caught glints of light from rings on finger bones, and belt buckles, and gold hoops, bracelets, earrings. He saw a skull on the sidewalk, a small one. He didn’t want to be here. The feeling rose very suddenly, from somewhere primal.

  He saw a café and a real estate office, both of which felt familiar in a far-off, muddied way. He convinced himself to stop avoiding Oxide Street and rolled the Valiant over a thicket of bone. What if a femur splintered and gashed the tires? It probably didn’t matter. The car was near death. Like Eliot. Like himself. They were all very fucking close to death at the moment. It was on all sides.

  He saw a blue sign with a white cross. “Eliot! I found it. Stay with me.” The street was a snarl of vehicles, which he threaded the Valiant through. The damage here was worse, every window broken, the bones like snow. Whatever kind of building had been across the road from the hospital was a charred ruin, and this was increasingly the case farther down the street: Maybe half of the little business district had burned. “You say the word is in the emergency room, right?” He was. He didn’t need Eliot to tell him that. He was just trying to keep talking. He saw a sign for EMERGENCY and squeezed the Valiant between two burned-out pickups. A white paramedic van lay splayed across the curb. Beyond it, he could see wide glass double doors and a red sign. He yanked on the hand brake. Before he could euthanize the car, it burbled and died. “Eliot. We’re here.”

  Eliot’s head bobbed. “Good.”

  “You want me to help you inside?” He shook his head. “I forgot. You have to stay here. I’ll go look for the word.”

  “Don’t . . .”

  “Don’t tell you anything about it. Got it.” Eliot nodded. He had been forced to take Wil’s advice: He had loosened up. He had relaxed control. Eliot was no longer in charge. “I’ll be right back.” Wil climbed out.

  • • •

  He wasn’t prepared for the silence. He shut the car door and the sound evaporated. His shoes crunched sand. Hot air closed around him like a fist.

  He circumnavigated the paramedic van. The glass emergency room doors were a strange kind of black. Not painted. Stained. He slowed without knowing why. Well. He did know. It was because he was not incredibly keen to face whatever had reduced three thousand human beings to belt buckles and bones. The paramedic van’s rear doors were open. He glanced inside. A flatbed trolley, cloth straps, equipment, little bottles; nothing he wouldn’t expect. But it made his brain crawl. He felt another tickle of familiarity. He hesitated, thinking. Eliot could benefit from some of these supplies. He could use some water. Wil climbed into the van. He gathered anything that looked medicinal and returned to the Valiant with his arms full of supplies. Eliot’s eyes were closed. “Eliot!”

  His eyes popped open.

  “Stay awake.” He dumped his load of bottles onto Eliot’s lap. “I got this stuff for you.”

  Eliot stared.

  “Some medicine. And water. You should drink the water.”

  “What . . .”

  “You know, I think you’re right. I did live here. It’s starting to feel familiar.”

  “The fuck,” said Eliot. “Word.”

  “I haven’t gone in yet. I thought you could use this stuff.” Eliot’s eyes bulged. “All right! I’m going! Jesus!”

  He walked back to the emergency room. He got close enough to see shapes against the dark glass. He knew what they were. There had to be two or three dozen corpses jammed up against the glass. And they were just the ones he could see. He wondered if it was airtight in there. The air could be toxic. It could actually kill him. He jogged back to the car.

  “Fuck!” said Eliot.

  “Hang on one second,” Wil said. “I just want to ask this. Are we sure we want to open this box? Because what’s inside, you know, it killed a lot of people. We are talking about something incredibly dangerous. It’s striking me as kind of stupid to walk on in there and try to pick it up. That seems like a big risk. You know? You say I’m immune, but do you know that for sure? What if I just avoided it somehow the last time? I lay in a ditch and it passed over my head? I’m just saying, that emergency room, it’s wall-to-wall dead people, Eliot. It’s wall-to-wall. And there’s, I don’t know, something about a room full of corpses that makes me think about whether I want to go in there. Don’t look at me like that. I know. I know.” He shook his head. “I’ll go in. I will. It’s just . . . you’re asking me to maybe die, Eliot. Give me a second. Give me one . . . I know you’re hurting. I’m going. But appreciate what I’m doing. That’s all I want. I want you to acknowledge . . . for one second . . . the simple fact that I’m about to die. All right? I’m probably
about to die. I’m happy to do it. I’m going. It’s fine. I only wanted . . .”

  He turned away. He walked. The glass was so dark. His feet scuffed. He reached the emergency room doors. His fingers touched the door plate. It was warm. Like there was a beating heart inside. It wasn’t that. It was just the sun. Everything here was warm. He looked back at the Valiant but couldn’t see it behind the paramedic van.

  “If I don’t come out, Eliot,” he shouted, “fuck you!” His voice shook. He pushed open the door.

  [III]

  And I, methinks, am gone astray

  In trackless wastes and lone.

  —CHARLOTTE BRONTË “Apostasy”

  From: http://mediawatch.corporateoppression.com/community/tags/fox

  I just think it’s missing the point to get upset about bias in Fox News or MSNBC or whoever. I see this all the time: I mention to someone that I watch Fox and it’s like I just slaughtered a baby. They ask how can I watch that, it’s just propaganda, etc etc. And they know this not because they’ve ever sat down and spent any time with it but because their favorite news channel, i.e. a Fox competitor, sometimes plays a clip from a Fox show and it makes Fox look really stupid.

  Well, you know what, Fox does that, too. If I only watched Fox, I’d think you must be really stupid, watching that other show I see clips from on Fox sometimes.

  But I don’t just watch Fox, because the way to beat biased reporting isn’t to find the least biased one and put all your trust in that. First of all, they’re all biased, from the language they use and the framing down to the choices they make about which stories to report. The gap between the most biased news show and the least is pretty small, all things considered.

  But more importantly, relying on a single source of information means you can’t critically evaluate it. It’s like you’re locked in a room and every day I come in and tell you what’s happening outside. It’s very easy for me to make you believe whatever I want. Even if I don’t lie, I can just tell you the facts that support me and leave out the ones that don’t.