Finally, Some Good News

by Delicious Tacos

  They don't need that– it's every credit card purchase. That sounds boring, she said. Do u like t? What is it exactly?

  Jesus Christ bitch– is this fucking Linkedin? he typed, and erased it.

  The elderly never dreamed that they were finding gold coins in the mailbox. That the mailbox was a beautiful nymph. As you got old your mind dried out into a thing that could only fear and suffer, he was learning. Until all you could do was yell at people on the phone.

  His job had not resulted in a single arrest. Terror busts didn't come from incall business. They came from FBI agents asking mentally challenged men if they'd like to participate in terror plots. Arresting them when they said yes. He had job security. Room for growth. He earned a pension. It could start paying out in 35 years. Why won't u tell me, she said.

  Never message a white woman with bright color hair, he remembered. Green means polyamorous. Pink means transsexual game designer. Blue means Type II bipolar disorder but even they can't talk about anything but your fucking job. What if this guy's right. Well how could I leave all this behind.

  All right thank you for the call sir, he said. Please be assured that DHS takes these reports seriously, and your claims will be fully investigated. He went to unmatch the caller and hit the Fuck You Button on the girl before he realized he was turned around.

  **

  I did the right thing. What are the odds they find me. Whatever– I called them. I reported it. I used a burner phone. What will they get me for– corporate espionage?

  I have to go back to work

  I have to go back to work.

  There's a merger but I won't even get fired.

  Maybe they'll hire another cute girl. So every pig in the office doesn't have to get horny for poor Marcy fucking Pendergrass.

  He had a dream about a dying seal in a black ocean with his mother's face. At 4AM he woke up when his computer speakers blasted a Windows notification. Cheerful chimes. A mandatory update had auto-installed. It had enhanced opportunities to make in-app purchases with one click. Erased his Documents folder. His unfinished book.

  He searched for support live chat. Waited for the chat window. Typed. Your fucking mandatory update erased my files–

  Agent–

  Live agent–

  LIVE AGENT

  Did you mean: I'd like to purchase a new Surface Pro, it said.

  Hyper Elite Disrupter

  In the morning he fished around in his trunk. He'd remembered something.

  The now filthy tent tarp covered everything. It was twisted around his old maps and tire jack and half empty 10w40 motor oil bottles. Finally he got it clear. A package of athletic socks from his mother. A genuine Nike product. Red, white and blue in a distorted argyle pattern meant to look “technological”. The label said: Hyper Elite Disrupter.

  His toes were swollen like tree fungus. Smelled like a mildewy basement. The snug new fabric felt like his feet were being dried with a young Japanese maiden's hair.

  **

  He parked the car on the road by the old fence that said CUNT. Climbed up through the spindly black mustard until he could see the concrete platform with the rust color bunker doors over the hilltop. Concrete stairs down the hill. An old rail made of rusty pipes. He walked slowly. Half crouched. It made him hear helicopters from a Vietnam war movie. He kept his hands far from his pockets. But no one was looking.

  When he got to the hatch he ducked down and banged on it. The sound startled sparrows.

  No one answered for a minute. Then–

  WHO GOES THERE. Kent’s voice, echoing up the chute.

  It's me. He said. I’m opening the hatch.

  The hinges sounded like a witch squealing over baby meat. Hard to see down the ladder in the dark but he could make out Kent, pointing the Bushmaster.

  Hey man– I come in peace.

  Kent half lowered the gun. What can I do for you, he said. He sounded like he was talking across a long swimming pool.

  Marcy, are you in there?

  No one here but me, said Kent.

  Where did she go?

  I don't owe you an explanation about anything, said Kent. We've seen what kind of person you are. You won't last out there and you wouldn't last in here.

  OK man. Listen– you, and she, if you're here, have to get out of here. They're coming.

  Coming? Who? Go where? “They” are wherever you’re going to–

  OK you don't have to come. Where’s Marcy.

  You're not taking anything that's in here.

  It's not safe here, Kent. She's not safe.

  Safer here then out there.

  Let's ask her about that–

  She doesn't want to see you, said Kent.

  She can tell me that herself.

  You better get out of here, said Kent. Before I start seeing you as a threat.

  He almost said something.

  Instead he paused and reflected. Prayed for an instant. Like he'd been taught. All right man, he said. Have it your way. Walked away up into the weeds.

  **

  He lay in the grass on the hilltop for a very long time. Just looking down. Finches burbling. Low wet paper color clouds cooling his neck with mist. Then the sun broke out. Finally the metal squealed. The hatch door flew up. Kent's head with the Mitt Romney gray at the temples inched up and up. Looking around cautiously. Like a marmot coming out of its hole in an old cartoon. Squinty eyes.

  He shouldered the gun. Like Dusty told him. Pulled it just slightly away from his face until he could see a magnified head in the scope glass, shaking along with his hands. Weird light effects from the dirty lens dancing around the hair. A black shape like a sliver of moon slid around under the crosshairs. When he moved what felt like a millimeter the black slipped over his whole field of sight. Then when he got Kent's face again a bright beam was hitting it and Kent's eyes got startled and he was moving. Dropping out of view. Red means dead. He pulled. A sound like lightning hitting a house. Like a bomb going off.

  His forehead was numb. The top of his nose. Like one minute after the best coke rail that ever existed. The crack still echoing in the hills as his ears began ringing. Suddenly his eye socket hurt so bad it was... it was... what was the word for it. He couldn't remember. What is this feeling. Did I shoot myself. Did the bullet come out the wrong end and hit me. Am I retarded now....vibrating. His eye bones were vibrating. Now it felt like when your foot falls asleep. There was blood in his eye and his forehead by the eyebrow felt like a strong hand was pinching it. Someone was screaming. Inner ears shrieking with Tibetan bells. He couldn't see.

  When he looked up there was no one in the hatch and it was quiet except the screams. Over and over with big jagged breaths between. He smeared blood off his cheek. Pulled back on the cold gun bolt. A cartridge came flying out, just like it was supposed to. A new pointy bullet popped up and he levered up the bolt and pushed it forward and it stuck. He had to try a couple times. Finally he forced it hard and it went. He walked bowlegged to the cement steps down the hill, pointing the big black rifle at the grass in front of him, half crouched. Feeling like he had no knees. Screaming and screaming echoing up through the hatch. The finches quiet and he got to the ladder, put his shaking finger on the trigger, red means dead, pointed the gun down the chute and looked. Kent was twisted up twenty feet down with his skull gone. Scalp butterflied out with a tuft of white temple hair twitching. Blood pumping and pumping on the floor and on the Fuck Cunt Pussy painted walls like his brains were a wet towel being wrung out hard. He had a memory of running over a hostess Cherry Pie with his Huffy tire. He could smell it. Marcy, he said.

  Oh my God–

  We have to go.

  You killed him–

  He might make it, he said. She didn't laugh.

  YOU KILLED HIM!

  I wasn't gonna fight him, Marcy. The fucking... Morlocks are coming. The fat guys who rape people–

  YOU KILLED HIM!

  Call the cops, he said. Was he good to you?

>   … no

  Then let’s take his shit and get out of here.

  Birds of the Amazon

  By the time they saw the ocean even the dog food was gone. Freeways and surface streets still filled with burnt out cars and corpses. Some fresh. Others just black bones. Every one in a posture of agony. Not one relaxed skeleton.

  The old Mercedes took the vegetable oil fine, as Jamie and Adam had confirmed. But sipping it for calories made their hair greasy. Their guts slippery. The car had sat low on the back tires with weight of the water they carried, but not now. Lighter every day.

  ISIS had thoughtfully annihilated not just Los Angeles proper but the Greater Metropolitan Area. Everyone and everything was gone. Outside Carpinteria the road broke for good. Chunks of asphalt tossed on their sides and scorched. We can't get through, she said.

  We'll turn around.

  All the roads will be like this. We have to walk–

  We should at least try.

  This car is loud. People can hear it. We don't have much left to carry-

  It's a shelter. It can get us to the mountains– he shut off the engine. It kept idling. Guttural cast iron clacking and a smell like a Chinese restaurant on fire. Finally it sputtered out. Silence like a cathedral. She was right.

  You 're attached to it, she said.

  That's not it–

  You have feelings for your car.

  OK I do. I bought this car for 800 dollars. Had her for ten years. I went to the mountains, the desert in this car. Through storms. She kept me safe. I brought my cat home in this car...

  Her?

  I'm sorry. I know it's ridiculous.

  It's not.

  It's hard to leave her.

  I know.

  He turned the key. Waited for the glow plug light to flash. Pushed the gas just as the starter turned over. You had to. It took finesse. The open throttle made the motor whoosh like a leaf blower. He steered to the sand by the roadside. Into the ashy flood ditch between the freeway and the frontage road. There had been a CarMax before the fire tsunamis. One collapsed billboard only half burned. A grinning lawyer could make Mexicans millionaires if only they could get badly maimed. Dial dos dos dos- dos dos dos dos. The old wheel smooth under his palms. Tight turning radius for such a long luxury sedan. Old tires struggling in the sand. He shut it off. Waited while the engine grumbled, for a long time. Saying goodbye. It was his birthday. He was 42.

  She helped him pile chaparral branches and tumbleweeds on the roof and the windshield and the blistered black hood. Took the sleeping bag and tent. He took the water, the sport duffle full of guns and bear arrows. Paused to pat the walnut on the dashboard.

  We'll come back for her if we need to, she said. But you can let her go. She kept us safe.

  She was right.

  **

  The beach looked almost like nothing had happened. Just a few wrecked boats with names from Jimmy Buffett lyrics beached on their sides at the high tide line. Black clouds of flies shimmering around the putrefying seafarers in their cabins. They carried their shoes. Peeled off their damp Hyper Elite Disrupters. The sand felt like a mother blowing cool on the soles of your baby feet. Ocean hissing. 100 yards past the ruins of the state volleyball nets the sand meandered under a cliff. There was chattering in the sky. Green silhouettes racing over them in a loose V formation, crying back and forth. Wings stuttering.

  Parrots?

  They're yellow crowned Amazons.

  Invasive species–

  No, it's a sign. We're going to make it. I let one out at Pet Smart. Maybe he's up there.

  You believe in signs?

  I saw these birds, these exact birds, at the clay lick at the headwaters of the Amazon river. They congregate at a cliff in the jungle to eat minerals that soothe their stomachs. They got here by a guy trapping them and drugging them. Stuffing them in his pants to fly them to America to sell. Most of them suffocate. And the few that live have to live in a fucking cage. But not these ones. They survived. They got out.

  I forgot you went to Peru–

  When I went there I wanted to die. I was 40. I was working as a secretary at a fucking branded content consultant and the kids on the jungle tour with me were 25. They were rich and from Switzerland. They'd been traveling their whole lives. They had girlfriends and 8 weeks vacation. I was an old man who lived alone with my cat. And my cat died. And you know what?

  What.

  I was so glad to be alive to see them. Parrots– yellow crowned, red crowned. Blue crowned macaws, chestnut-fronted–

  Wow–

  I know– you wouldn't believe how many species. You wouldn't believe how beautiful they were. And I was so glad I kept living. I was so glad I was 40 and there were still so many things to see for the first time. And now here they are.

  That's beautiful.

  It means something.

  OK but the world ended. We need to eat. What do we do–

  Whatever the fuck we want. We were slaves. And now we're not. If you tell me you want it, we'll go to the marina, we'll take the nicest boat, and we'll go to fucking Peru. We're going to make it.

  **

  When the cliffs ended there was a row of beach houses. Sheltered by the mountains that sloped right down into the sea. They weren't burned.

  I told you, he said. Made for the first one. A gray Craftsman with a smiling sperm whale weathervane spinning crazily in the sea breeze. But Marcy said: Oh my God, and he stopped.

  I know–

  No, look–

  A quarter mile ahead, behind a high piling of heaped boulders, a cream colored fortress jutted out on a man made sand peninsula. Crow-step roof ornaments echoed the high jagged ridgeline to the East, now dusted with snow. Mock-crenellated walls accented custom arched front facing windows in a facade carefully angled to optimize sweeping sea views. False minarets poked into brilliant blue sky. Hispano-Moorish arches beckoned to an airy and inviting atrium.

  No way.

  It is! she said. That's Ellen and Portia's Stately Moroccan Hideaway.

  Ellen! had provided a video tour of the couple's $22 million faux Moroccan home. Ellen personally highlighted where her hand-selected housewares could be purchased. Staccato jokes about duvets and tea sets. She authored an accompanying photobook. It's a bold play, said Larry, Vice President, Global Sales. You think of Ellen! as a CPG/ QSR mom audience. But she's not only targeting the top 1% of her watch here for furniture buys– I'd say gay and childless 44+ with these 1600 dollar lamps– she's also elevating herself as an aspirational lifestyle brand. Climbing out of the mom ghetto into Gwyneth money. It's branding within branding. I don't know that we even have the tech to measure it– she really is a genius.

  **

  The stone door was hanging open. It had belonged to an Algerian madrassah. He was holding the revolver. HELLO, he said. HELLO. Nothing.

  They must be on vacation, she said.

  The central courtyard had a fountain, now dry, surrounded by authentic tile frescoes and California native herbs. True to the home's Moorish heritage, the tile designs were geometric so as not to present a graven image. A blue bird alighted on the fountain lip. In its beak a tiny pine cone. It glanced into the empty basin, contemplated, then hopped off and across the bricks to the shrubbery.

  Look, she said.

  A Western scrub jay.

  Yes but look what he's doing.

  Trying to get the pine nuts?

  No, he's burying it! Watch–

  The Western scrub jay was a passerine corvid about eight inches long. Its back blue as a tropical sea. Eyes alert. It contemplated the ground. Looked for the right spot. Dropped the pine cone on a dirt lump and held it between its toes and began hammering it into the earth. He pecked and pecked intently until the tip vanished under soft toast-colored soil.

  Are they food cachers?

  It's more than that. They're forest planters. The forgotten caches grow into trees. They create new ecosystems without meaning to. The pine cone will b
e opened up from all the fire–

  We should stay here, he said.

  Is it a sign?

  I bet they have a nice bed. Plus I could use a shave– maybe Portia left her snatch razor.

  **

  The fridges were empty. Ellen's co-branded cheese plates and flatware in the cabinets but every atom of food gone. An engraved thuya wood door from a Berber harem led to the pantry. It squeaked when he pulled it. Heart thumping in anticipation of Ellen and Portia's organic low carb snacks. The shelves were empty. FUCK, he said.

  Anything?

  Nothing.

  Can you fish?

  Yeah but it will take time. We have to find the gear, maybe the boats–

  We have to eat.

  I know–

  There was a click click click click click from upstairs.

  They looked at each other wide eyed. Breathing extra quiet. His hand moved to the revolver handle. Finger on his lips. He motioned for her to hide in the pantry, and she did, and closing the naturally distressed harem door it squeaked. The sound again. Click click click click click.

  He stalked through the sitting room past the L-shaped sectional in white calfskin. Spun around the corner with the big silver gun and tried to say something cool but just wheezed.

  A honey colored teacup dog was stumping down the staircase. Worming down the steps like a slinky on her tiny legs. Dirty pink bow on her collar. Faux lion haircut growing in. She must have heard the pantry door. A sound that meant food.

  J & J had integrated its “Sparkle” trans teen anti-bullying campaign with Ellen!'s segments featuring her newly-adopted Pomeranian, Duchess. Ellen pre-taped selecting and nurturing the rescue after her early life of neglect in a puppy mill. The buy was a success. Segments showed Ellen grooming Duchess. Dancing along with Sparkle's cheerleading. Per her father's Instagram, Sparkle was emotionally abused on social media for wearing nail polish while presenting as a boy. Now she and Duchess enjoyed tandem pedicures. Sparkle had to be angled carefully. Her artificial hormone breasts had grown in lopsided.

  Focus groups indicated high uptick in key axes of brand affinity. Significant effect sizes in Strongly Agree for core questions: