We Can Save Us All

by Adam Nemett

  6. It’s not a house. It is The Egg.

  When David woke the next morning, Mathias had scrawled an additional entry:

  7. WE CAN SAVE US ALL.

  iii.

  Before he became David’s grandfather, László Ffodor was a scientist. He was also one of the two hundred thousand Hungarians who marched through Budapest in October 1956 to proclaim their unrest to the free world. The rebellion was crushed. Thousands of unarmed students were massacred at the foot of the parliament building. But László and his wife, Rivkah, were among those who escaped, preferring exile to incarceration or death.

  Layered in three woolen blazers, László carried suitcases of personal effects and engineering textbooks through a fifteen-mile border expanse the Soviets had flattened into wasteland. Machine-gun turrets were installed every mile. Here was László’s plan: hope no one was manning the turrets.

  So László began his plod, shielding Rivkah, wondering if it would ever end, wondering which step forward onto the tundra might be met by the distant popcorn sound of gunfire come to claim them. Exhaustion and hallucination eventually took hold, and when three distant spires finally broke the horizon, he assumed they were dead, and here was Lucifer’s pitchfork heralding their arrival in Hell.

  As it turns out, it was Austria.

  David inherited one of László’s storied wool blazers, an honorable cape, and liked to think he inherited his grandfather’s work ethic as well, that he came from good stock, that if shit truly hit the fan, David could be counted on to suck it up, steel himself, and survive.

  In 1957, several Ivy League schools offered scholarships for Hungarian refugees. Grandpa László did well at Princeton, was among the top two or three engineering students in his class. But the fact remained: he was not among the two or three thousand students killed in the massacre. And for that, he never forgave himself. László took to the bottle and to new intravenous poisons. He died of a morphine overdose, when he was fifty-two. David’s dad never failed to mention that he died the same week and at the same age as yippie revolutionary Abbie Hoffman, as if these two unrelated suicides somehow conflated the scientist with the activist.

  Before he became Spider-Man, Peter Parker was a scientist. Sure, that radioactive spider bite was lucky, but the bite occurred only because Peter was poking around a science fair one day. And the powers of that spider bite were unleashed only because of Peter’s tinkering know-how, installing those cool web-blaster things on his wrists. Knowledge is power, David realized. When it’s organized and systematically tested and applied, that knowledge can become a superpower.

  David wasn’t a scientist, but he liked to experiment.

  Blink. A power surge rolled through his body and David remembered that moment in Stony Brook, when he first tasted that Big Bang pill under his tongue.

  A synthetic smell of garbage bags. Dots of warmth tickled his back like bubbles rushing to the water’s surface. He fell backward, body paralyzed, and David recognized he was afraid, that this was what feeling really afraid felt like. His eyes shut, and from the chestnut warmth behind his lids came layers of tracing paper scrawled with penciled animation. His ears went blank underwater, but his vision stayed strong. His eyes homed in on a star—one nameless pinprick of light above him. He fastened on and wouldn’t let go. But David had not chosen that star. The star had chosen him. He felt watched. Like some disembodied head reading David’s thoughts and being displeased. Maybe it was László.

  With the oomph of a nuclear cannon, David shot from the water, and now he was flying or falling or flying, yes, flying down a tunnel, with the star at the center drawing him in, and everything else was periphery and the periphery danced red. The star opened its tiny aperture in the blue sky, and from its center the star began to flower. A circle of fingers spewed from its center—over and over again—petals blossoming and wilting and re-blossoming and curling back like gas fire.

  It was microscopic and it took up the entire sky, all at once.

  David was watching a supernova. He was sure of it. Billions of years ago this star exploded and the visual news was just reaching Earth. He was Hubble. Privy to the swan song of a world.

  Beautiful. Perfect.

  But then the aftermath. The chain reaction.

  Earth spins faster and begets the flood, which begets the power outages, the food shortages, and then money is gone, electricity gone, water gone, all the hours gone, but still there is this star.

  There was no room for interpretation, disbelief or suspension thereof. He’d stumbled into a vision. Was this what his parents warned him about? Was that a sky-snake feeding or just a line of birds?

  David reached for a single rational thought: I am a man floating down a river. Gently down the stream. Flying forward, he broke through the brilliant flower membrane to the sound of Saran Wrap crinkling. As if stepping into a new room, there before David were small, clownish beings. Their faces were masks, like those cheap Halloween things for kids. Without words, David asked if they’d take them off, they were scaring him. And so they did. Clothes and costumes fell away, too, and underneath were reptilian bodies, part organic, part machine; part sweet, part sinister.

  “This will end,” they said, over and over. “This will end.”

  iv.

  When Christmas came and went with still no power and no ERA, they realized most residents of Pennington—especially those with fewer provisions than The Egg—were out of time. So the Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes would provide their power. Four hours was all it took for the five of them to get the MaxMobile unstuck and the driveway clear enough. An hour later they got the Intex raft situated on top, with a hundred feet of rope tied to each end, for pulling.

  David unclicked his belt buckle and plucked out a Zeronal. The rest of his Infrared costume he’d have to pull together, but the belt and blazer were Infrared’s now, they stayed. Up top, he’d shaved a sideways Mohawk, ear to ear, spikes like the Liberty crown. It was a bold call, maybe a mistake, but also a preemptive strike on his impending hair loss. Zeronal was worth its side effects.

  Owen/Peacemaker wore his camo and football shoulder pads, just like Haley’s drawings, which had finally arrived in David’s inbox after their time at sea. Lee/Dr. Ugs had a white lab coat. It would suffice until he could find a black one. Mathias/Ultraviolet didn’t have time to make his whole straitjacket getup, but he was still a piece of work: purple hoodie, purple beret, purple-tinted aviator shades. As a last touch, he’d fashioned a Santa beard out of cotton balls. White beards provide comfort in dark times.

  Lee’s Super Soaker flamethrower was the accessory that made David nervous, the thing most likely to win them a dubious Darwin Award. He’d filled the backpack-mounted water tank with tiki torch/kerosene mix, added the CO2 tank from their SodaStream along with a bunch of valves and fittings and a diesel nozzle, and positioned a pilot flame directly in front of the nozzle.

  “CO2 is inert and the pump-action mechanism has valves that prevent the flame from shooting back through the gun and making the whole damn thing explode,” Lee assured David. “Do you get that?”

  David didn’t. Anyone else, he would’ve vetoed the idea outright. But this was Lee’s thing and it likely wouldn’t work, and he’d be way out in front of the van anyway should it backfire, and so fuck him.

  “You’ve all been good children this year,” said Santa-bearded Mathias, divvying out Zeronal.

  “Kiss the pill,” they said, swallowed. David didn’t want to be rude so he swallowed another.

  When you’re on Zeronal, complex movements seem preordained. Fu/Golden Echo had rigged an amplification system in the van, and to watch him slink from the passenger seat through the cargo space of the MaxMobile, tweak his sound system, climb onto the roof, deliver the mic to Mathias in the Intex raft, tie Owen’s snowshoes tight, then scurry back down again through the passenger-side window… it was like watching a practiced soldier dismantle a rifle. Moves tight and fast like pow! He was the Michael Jack
son of everything.

  “You’re like totally fieldstripping life right now,” David said to Fu from the driver’s seat, adjusting the rearview. Fu reached over and honked David’s horn twice. On cue, Lee fired up his flamethrower and a thin plume of orange excellence shot forth into Main Street’s remaining sheet of snow. It was slow as hell to melt anything, but it looked pretty badass. Meanwhile, Fu wielded two iPhones like six-shooters, mixing music on the fly. Overtop this wild audiovisual experience, Mathias spoke.

  “Good people of Pennington!” poured his voice from Fu’s speakers. “Don’t be afraid. Our fiery Rudolph makes way for a sleigh full of food, fuel, firewood, first aid, blankets, batteries, a partridge in a pear tree. We’re here to help. Give us a signal and a life raft will deploy to your door!”

  With Lee in the lead, firing his fire thing at the ground, David pressed the gas and inched forward onto this trench between two walls of snow. The top of the van was level with the snow-shelf that stretched from Main Street across the lawns to the houses on either side. Neighborhood roofs peeked out from this pristine whiteness like kids hiding under covers. When the guys caught sight of a flashlight shivering frantically inside a split-level on the west side of the street, David parked as close to the snowdrift as possible. Owen-in-snowshoes hopped off the roof onto the snow. He’d transformed his football shoulder pads into a kind of harness attached to a rope, which was attached to the Intex, and he pulled Mathias-in-life-raft toward this door of citizens in need. Owen was really strong. The bottom of the raft was smooth. And they were on performance-enhancing drugs. So the whole operation happened efficiently.

  David was not privy to the conversation or physical maneuvering that occurred once his heroes reached this first house. Maybe Owen was patching holes in ceilings and accepting bartered survival tools. Here, take this sheet cake, the homeowners might say. We have thousands of them. Soon, Fu got a message from Mathias on his BaoFeng radio and sprang into action, gathering requested materials from the cargo space. He climbed to the roof and used a separate rope to winch back the now-empty raft, filling it with supplies like a tree-house bucket for Owen to pull back to the house. While David waited for this whole thing to play itself out, he thought of that silver-haired guy—Martin, was it?—who lived on 88 North Main Street and hadn’t adequately shopped for the last two isolated weeks. David wondered if the MaxMobile could make it all the way to his place. Would Martin’s family still be okay? Would Martin remember him? Would his wife be grateful? Beautiful?

  They must make it there, David decided. At all costs.

  In time, Owen and Mathias returned with reinforcements: newspapers (kindling?), an armful of tennis rackets (more snowshoes?), and two additional humans, a balding guy and his teenage son (they crossed themselves and hugged David in thanks).

  “These guys are here to help!” announced Owen. He made the introductions, but David immediately forgot their names. He had a job to do. He put the MaxMobile back into drive.

  “Owen!” David yelled into the back. “Is everyone settled on the roof again?”

  Owen clamored to the front, his eyes embarrassed. “Dude!” he hissed. “Call me Peacemaker.”

  — Ø —

  They continued like this—for hours? days? moments?—until they passed the barely visible HADDIE’S HABERDASHERY sign that marked the crossover from South to North Main Street. At each stop they deployed tools for survival. And at each stop they picked up new consumables and human resources alike. The MaxMobile was filled with people and a dozen more joined on foot, helping Dr. Ugs clear snow, taking turns dragging and pulling the raft ropes back and forth to citizens in distress. Their small but growing army consisted of only a few women. One was a surgeon, Maria, dispatched to a dozen doors to check vitals and, in one case, dress a grizzly shin wound.

  Medicine is the best way to be a hero, David decided. He might’ve liked to be a doctor. He certainly had the sleeplessness gene; if only he could’ve handled the math and blood and lifestyle and pressure and science. Oh well. As David drove through that fiery white trench, he couldn’t help but think of Moses parting the waves, leading his followers through the Red Sea. He imagined that bearded Jew, that iconic movie poster of Charlton Heston raising his staff and guiding the Hebrews to the Promised Land. Here in blizzarded Pennington were citizens trapped on the wrong sides of frozen waves. Now it was David who orchestrated their transport from isolation to fellowship, their conversion to the middle way. And it was easy! Find an inflatable rowboat. Tie a rope to both ends. Use it to convey people and stuff back and forth. And in the process, achieve saviorhood.

  But that’s not what he was! No, he wasn’t even really doing anything, was he? He was just driving a van. Slowly. David shivered. He felt so stupid, so embarrassed, to catch himself equating himself with the likes of Moses and even Charlton Heston, these icons with their own Wikipedia pages, and here was dorky David Fuffman with a stupid haircut and some determined friends, shoveling suburbanites out of the snow a few months before the world would end anyway, and so who really gave a fuck? But they did give fucks, didn’t they? These scared folks with nowhere else to turn? And maybe Owen—no, Peacemaker!—was the brawn, and Dr. Ugs’s flamethrower was the most visually spectacular, and Ultraviolet was the vocal leader, and Golden Echo was a stone-cold ninja, but wasn’t David/Infrared something, too? Wasn’t he both literally and figuratively driving this whole thing forward?

  David shivered at the thought: what he was creating—his thesis—was not merely his latest entrepreneurial circus but rather the beginnings of an organized religion, the finest and most lucrative business known to humanity. What else do you call something that captures the zeitgeist of a world on the edge, provides comfort in times of need? This moment might be the creation myth that future biographers would biograph about—Lo, and it was the Great Blizzard of 2021—followed by the introduction of mythological figures—and from The Egg birthed five heroes, the Light Men—and then a liturgy of rituals, beliefs, instructions for psychotropic meetings with whatever lay beyond the end of time—And thus spake Ultraviolet: “Kiss-the-pill.” It felt right, yes. The way it felt right when he got accepted to Princeton (his congregation) and when he met Mathias (his prophet) and when he fell in love with Haley Roth (his…). Good god, was he in love with Haley Roth? Fuck it. Yes. Yes. To all of it. Yes. Let’s do this. All rivers lead to oceans! All plagues to salvation! To clear an area, you must build barriers and incite people to claw their way through them like mad and yes I said yes I will yes!

  David glanced at the rearview mirror and saw a dozen silhouettes pointed toward him. Had he been thinking out loud? What had he said? What was happening right now?

  “Everyone okay?” David mumbled at this assortment of faceless spectators.

  “You were chanting, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’” said one of them. “We were hoping you were okay.”

  “Fine,” said David. “I’m good. Really, really good. Everyone else good? You good?”

  The word hung in the air: David was good. Was David capital-G Good? He was certainly juiced up by this whole search-and-rescue stuff. His eyes shot again to the dark figures in the rearview. These were his shadow: the Anointed. If Infrared was a hero of seeing and doing, the Anointed was a villain with eyes averted, body paralyzed with performance anxiety, seated in an unearned throne. The Anointed was the delusional boy-king, an entitled cheater. Power-hungry yet powerless. Stupid! He’d fallen right into its trap. Evil is good in costume.

  “What’s his name?”

  It didn’t matter what you called them, David thought, so long as you knew which was the bad guy.

  “David, what was his name?”

  “I call him the Anointed,” said David. “But I am Infrared, and—”

  “No. The guy. The guy with the birthday cakes.” Fu was grabbing David’s head, shaking him. Fu forced eye contact with David and spoke in slow, low tones. “What. Was. His. Name?”

  Fu/Golden Echo pointed out a house, nearly burie
d, with its mailbox unearthed: 88 North Main Street. “I think we’re here, right?” said Echo.

  “Oh,” said David, coming back to earth. “I thought we were somewhere else.”

  — Ø —

  Outside was another world where humans moved like zombies and nobody spoke. The cold hit David hard. He turned up László’s collar and sat in the rear of the raft, hunkering behind the mountain of Ultraviolet’s back whenever the wind picked up. Five neighbors pulled them forward, their bodies and faces hidden under parkas and ski goggles. David figured, Here are more superheroes who just haven’t figured out their costumes yet.

  Martin wore pajamas when he greeted the Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes at the door, candle in hand, like some eighteenth-century nursery rhyme character. David shook his hand.

  “You cut your hair.” Martin pointed at David’s head. “It’s just awful.”

  Martin looked awful, too. Circles under his eyes and silver hair going everywhere.

  “Is your family okay?” David asked.

  “Our daughter is sleeping. But my wife’s in the bedroom,” Martin said, smiling oddly out of one side of his face. “She, um… she thinks you’re here to kill her.”

  “No, tell her not to be afraid! Our fiery Rudolph makes way for a sleigh full of food, fuel—”

  “Come in,” Martin said. “Tell her yourself.” And he walked them up a set of stairs.

  The house smelled like shit. Not gross, in a general way, but actual feces—human and animal, old and new, a throat-stinging mix of life and decay. Ultraviolet covertly radioed for Golden Echo to load the raft with trash bags and kitty litter so they could dispose of any biohazard inside.

  When they reached the upstairs, Martin led them into what might’ve been a den or office or guest room in its previous life. One wall was covered in books—a library surrounding a dark TV—with a mandala-like rug at the center of the room. David saw the machines before he saw the human. A stack of electronics stood dormant beside an IV stand, twinkling with reflected candlelight from the doorway. When David peeked over Ultraviolet’s shoulder, he found a tiny person in an adjustable hospital bed, propped against a dozen pillows. David thought it must’ve been Martin’s daughter, that he’d mixed up their bedrooms. But as the candle shed light on her face, David saw it was indeed an adult woman, emaciated and bald. Her shoulders were sweaty or polished looking. Two painted-on eyebrows added stripes to her gray face. Deep half-moons cradled her eyes. David thought she looked like an alien, some otherworldly being with skinny limbs, and inside him something jumped when he imagined stepping into her extraterrestrial craft, the sort of voluntary abductions southwesterners never fully remember yet can’t possibly forget.