With the frustrating help of his crutches—left-clack-balance, right-clack-balance, left-clack-balance, right—he could go just about anywhere.
And the whisper always followed.
There were others, he was sure. More than just the one, the woman’s lulling, throaty voice that addressed him and him only. A layer of maybe hundreds. A babbling brook, always just over the next hill. They never clarified and came together quite like they had the day he returned home, but as he’d travel eastward toward the mountain side of town the whispers would grow louder, like a brook building to a raging river.
People—many of the same who made his childhood miserable—would see Reed walking, cocking his head with his eyes shut as he tried to listen for words drifting out of that rambling din, and they’d smile. Sometimes they’d even coyly wave. But their mutterings and snuffed giggles as he passed always gave them away.
They’re laughing at you, the whisper would tell him.
Children yelled from school buses and bicycles. They heckled and threw things. They’d even mimic Reed’s walk.
Doesn’t it make you angry, Reed?
It wasn’t until a drunken confession from an old employer that Reed found out what the townsfolk now called him:
Wobbly Weed.
A few weeks after Nilinski’s death, Reed was out on an errand and decided to stop at the baseball fields behind the junior high school. The Hawks were playing their cross-town rivals, the Indians. He stood at the fence in left field, reminiscing over the few years he played for the Hawks himself. Back when he was young and healthy.
In the sixth inning, Kenny Kane—cleanup hitter for the Hawks and a beast among his twiggy teammates—cracked a low, humming shot along the third-base line. Reed watched it land in the grass and roll toward him to the fence.
The umpire, a young man likely working for next to nothing if anything at all, called it fair. The stands exploded in argument. Before Kane even rounded second, the parents were filing off the bleachers and approaching home plate. Reed made his way along the fence as the left fielder threw the ball in. At the rain-faded line Reed stopped, squinted.
“That was foul,” he muttered.
And the whisper agreed, You’re right, Reed. It was foul.
But while the Indians’ parents yelled at the umpire and the Hawks’ parents yelled at the Indians’ parents, Reed noticed something off about the infield. Due to a dark, deep mud puddle from yesterday’s rain, third base had been shifted a few feet to the right from where it usually was.
The ball was fair, Reed realized. The umpire had made the right call. Reed opened his mouth but then shut it again. Nobody would listen to him.
And he would’ve been too late anyway.
The crowd around home plate had the umpire on the ground. They were pulling off his equipment, pummeling him with their fists and feet. A few of the Hawks came out of the dugout with aluminum bats and sent dull dings across the field with blows to the young man’s bones.
Turning to hobble home, afraid the mob might come after him next, Reed heard, just below the young umpire’s inhuman squeals, the pops of his joints as the parents pulled his body apart.
Talk of the umpire incident spread fast. Panic seeped into Babel. Doors and windows across town were boarded up from the inside. Gun and ammunition sales at Big Jake’s Hunt & Fish Depot—now run by Big Jake’s brother—skyrocketed. The schools closed indefinitely.
Within days, the township supervisor called a town hall meeting, and no one realized how bad an idea that was until after the municipal building burned to the ground. Across the mountainside, savage fights broke out over the smallest issues, from property line infractions to interpretations of traffic right-of-ways. One night, the electricity—lights, sockets, batteries, everything technological—failed and never turned back on.
A small group calling themselves the Babel Peace Unit banded together and patrolled the darkened streets for weeks. On a brisk autumn morning, they pulled Thomas Hampstead from his secluded woodland home and hanged him with an extension cord in his own front yard. Why they blamed Thomas—a kind, unmarried, middle-aged man who never bothered anyone—for all the insanity, nobody knew.
But the insanity continued, well after all but one member of the Babel Peace Unit murdered each other along Main Street.
A few days after winter’s first snowfall, the governor sent in the National Guard. They came as close to town as their technology allowed, then barricaded the base of the mountains. They blocked everyone from coming in. No one could leave, either. There was no word from the outside world as to how long this might last, or what was being done to help the people of Babel.
Nobody knew anything.
Nobody, that is, except Reed Groom.
Boards now covered the entrance to the southernmost mineshaft, which Reed’s grandfather had always called Emmylou. It’d taken Reed two hours to reach the mines. His legs ached. His back roiled with painful spasms. His overworked muscles were taught and twisted from the long frost-slick trek through the woods. Cold sweat soaked his clothes.
This is it, he thought. This is how he’d prove his worth. Show the tiny, ignorant people down there that they were wrong to doubt and ridicule Reed Groom. He imagined the shame they’d all feel when they found out who discovered what was going on and saved them all. It filled him with a euphoric wave of pride.
He’d tried to talk his mother into waiting out the escalating violence inside the cemetery’s mausoleum—an old favorite hiding spot of Reed’s from when he was a boy—but she refused. “This is my home,” she’d said, unfazed by the clatter of gunfire drifting across the cemetery. “The home your father built for us. There ain’t a place safer, Reed.”
While she calmly chopped carrots, he told her about the big, solid doors. The concrete walls. The deeper level, underground. “Twust me—it’s not safe heeah,” he said and grabbed her arm. “It’s only a matta of time.”
“We’re safer here than anywhere, Reed.” She tugged her arm free of his hand and raised the knife above her head with wild heat in her eyes. “I know I’m right!”
But now, standing at the blocked threshold of those endless tunnels, manmade veins and arteries winding through the mountains, Reed knew he was right—despite, or maybe because of, the whisper telling him over and over, There is nothing in there, Reed.
Signs were plastered sloppily across the boards. Over the years, kids had covered most of them erratically with spray paint, but Reed could still make out what was underneath. Graphics of skulls and gas masks and a logo for a company called Tlaloc Technologies. Words: NO TRESSPASSING … FEDERAL LAW … PROJECT: b.E.L.F.r.y.
And it sounded to Reed like that cascade of distant whispers was now just past the boards—a looming tsunami about to break.
Turn around, Reed, the whisper urged. Go back home.
Reed used his crutches to pry free the planks. One crutch snapped in the process.
The cruelty will be over soon.
Inside, the cold, damp air stuck to his skin like swamp slime. He took careful breaths at first. Eyes closed, focusing. But it smelled as most caves would—must, mold, dirt. Nothing he’d figure for toxic or flammable. Still, it took a few moments before he could work up the nerve to flick the butane lighter he’d brought along.
What exactly do you think you’re doing, Reed?
The ground was soft and unsteady under him. His lone crutch would stick or sometimes sink into the muck, throwing off his already poor rhythm and balance. He stumbled to his knees repeatedly.
His flame’s yellow light glimmered off the wet walls as he went deeper. The tunnels forked at times and Reed simply followed the escalating assault of murmurs in his head. With each trudged step, the whispers clarified and amplified and the pressure around that plate in his skull swelled. Sweat and tears fell in streams from his face as he hobbled on. His arm operating the crutch ached and quivered. Again and again he’d stumble, and more heavy muck clung to his weakening limbs.
His face hit the ground and sank into the mud. His arms were swallowed by the muck. He’d managed to tighten his fist around the hot lighter but his crutch had flung out from under him and disappeared into the dark.
That plate may help you hear through our deception, but can you accept the truth when you hear it?
Each syllable thrummed his skull.
You’ve seen what your people are capable of—their cruelty.
Reed tried his best to ignore the voice, but he couldn’t fight those memories from returning. The mocking. The bullying. The laughter, the grins, and the pitying glances.
We have willed the end of man for countless seasons. Yet, each spring you find a new way to oppress us, poison us, and bend us to your will.
He struggled to his knees, feeling through the mud for his crutch.
The men who made what gave us voice thought they could control the weather. They left this place when they thought they had failed. They left behind all their equipment. Their litter. They moved on to new ventures, new ways of oppression and ruin.
Reed’s fingers hit something metallic and he noticed its unfamiliar girth as he began lifting it. The weight of the thing nearly pulled him back down.
Kill them all. He wiped off the lighter and flicked it on. Kill your loved ones. In his other hand, a leg-thick cable rose from the muck. Kill yourself. Its wire-mesh coating hummed in his grip and he realized the words he heard weren’t the woman’s, but those of a cluttered mess of strange voices. They whispered at a blasting volume that made Reed worry his brain might burst—words, names, secrets, and urgings all overlapping and intersecting between his temples. An ocean of voices convincing a sea of simple minds.
… you’re right you’re right you’re right you’re right you’re right …
He dropped the cable. His familiar whisper returned. Again it assured him. The cruelty will be over soon, Reed.
Man’s ignorance will swallow itself.
Reed found his crutch and followed the cable deeper into the mountain. After hours of ignoring the whisper while working his way through the murky sludge lining the mines, he came to a large cavern.
Do you believe they’ll raise you to their shoulders?
The width and height of the space he’d found, he couldn’t gauge—his tiny flame couldn’t reach that far. But the clacking of his crutch as the ground rose and hardened echoed back seconds at a time.
Do you believe they’ll cheer your name?
The cable snaked out of the mud. It thickened as Reed lurched deeper into the cavern. Then more cables crept into the bubble of yellow light around him and converged with the first. He followed them all, that growing braid of humming metal, until he came to the foot of a knotted tower of steel, cable, wire, and what looked like roots and vines.
Do you believe they’ll finally hear you beyond your pathetic speech impediment?
Reed couldn’t tell in the weak light where the technology ended and the nature that’d taken it over began. He reached up and ran a hand along a length of root. The rough bark rippled, the tendril recoiling as the entire knot convulsed.
Imagine how wonderful this world could be again.
A moan jumped from Reed’s mouth as he backed away, the shadows cast by his lighter shifting and gyrating with the massive jumble’s movement.
Imagine a world without cruelty …
He turned, ready to escape as fast as his tired, ruined legs could carry him.
… without ignorance …
Huge wooden fingers reached out and grasped him from behind.
… without hubris.
His crutch dropped and the lighter fell from his hand as the cavern went dark.
Or do you enjoy being shy, pathetic Wobbly Weed?
The vines tightened around him. They lifted him, pulling him into that great thrumming knot. Twig and wire intertwined, fed into his ears and nose, breaking through his canals and soft tissue in brilliant flashes of pain to worm between brain and bone. The plate at the back of his skull blew out from his scalp in an explosive clap and the sharp ends of that biotech webbing stabbed into his cortex and lobes. His mind sparked alive, surging with sensations Reed barely grasped during his time spent on rooftops, standing high above the tiny people of Babel.
It was an odd and awesome feeling—the potent thrill of power.
Then the whispers receded, as if waiting. He heard instead the thoughts and dreams and emotions of every man, woman, and child in Babel.
They are listening, Reed, the familiar whisper then said, clearer and closer than ever. They are all listening.
And they had no choice. He held each of them in the palm of his mind.
Have anything you would like to say?
Dan J. Fiore is a freelance writer from Pittsburgh with fiction previously published by Writer’s Digest, Dark Fuse, and Thuglit, among others. His work won the 82nd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition, LitReactor’s Arrest Us! Crime Writing Challenge, and Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ First Works Grant. He is currently writing his second novel while finishing up the MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University. In his spare time, he also tinkers in music and photography. You can find out more about him at danjfiore.com.
Mean Green
by
James Pyne
Vanderbolt Enterprises was indirectly the cause of the apocalypse, but their latest deforestation scheme wasn’t the culprit. One of their employees beat them to it by kicking apart an anthill out of boredom. The ants had done nothing to him. Not one painful bite, which they were more than capable of doing. It was unprovoked and Mother Nature had enough. She had been keeping tabs on humanity’s offenses every day since she created the Original Two, and that last act of bullying was it. There’s only so much of your skin being shaved off and being tunneled into and jabbed and things exploded off it and poisons injected into you before enough is enough.
It didn’t start quickly—the payback, that is. Sure, there were worldwide earthquakes and volcanoes, and some buildings collapsed with a few casualties, but that’s as far as it went for natural disasters. Basically, the earth shook and cracked open just enough to spray red dust into the air, while the volcanoes did the same. The storm winds gladly carried the dust worldwide. Experts concluded the crimson dust was harmless since no one was dropping dead from it and it wasn’t up there long anyway, not more than a day before sudden storms would soak the lands with the blood rain, or as the religious called it: “holy rain.”
Kayla set up her tripod and canvas along the riverfront where waves slapped the boardwalk. People strolled, roller-skated, ran, or jogged by her. A hippie floral band didn’t do much as the wind scattered her hair all over her polar-bear-covered smock dress. She proceeded to oil paint what was in front and above her, soaking in the beauty of the bloodshot sky. The dust was spreading its squiggly arms over the city; making this, according to the news, the last place in the entire world to be graced with this divine gift. There were reports all over the globe of vegetation growing faster in areas where the blood rain had fallen, with people complaining about having mown their lawn the evening before only to awake to ankle-high grass. It sounded exaggerated, but whatever.
Kayla overheard conversations passing her by:
“Great, here it comes. I hear this stuff stains everything once it rains.”
“Stop being so negative,” a woman said through her gasps for air. “Our lawn could use a burst of blood rain.”
“Everything’s a joke to you. You just wait and—”
Their v
oices trailed off into the intermittent sound of splashing waves.
Kayla looked up. The red dust was almost over her. She brushed in clouds to look like an iris to give the sky a true bloodshot look, as if it were angrily looking down at the city. A city she lived on the outskirts of and only visited for food or when she had a part-time job. She didn’t hold jobs for long. The place was too loud with silence, even with arrogant car horns, random gunshots, and arguing lovers. Everything was horribly dead in it and death to her muse.
“I guess it makes people’s allergies worse,” another person said, as paired-up joggers panted heavily past.
She shaded the city in, giving it an abandoned look. This was the first time in awhile she included the city in one of her paintings. She despised it. Not because of the evil in it—that was everywhere—she loathed it because of its unoriginality. It had no pulse. It was a place where old artists with nothing left to give went to die in obscurity. The buskers themselves had lost their artistic edge and went through the motions. People still tossed change their way, because everything had become routine.
“Doomsday’s upon us,” a man said behind her. It was her boyfriend, Matt. He had dropped her off and then gone to get some errands done, which translated into him sneaking into work and checking up on the weekend crew under his supervision. “Anything that beautiful must be a harbinger of doom.”
“Oh stop it,” Kayla said, not turning around, touching up the skyline. Above, the red dust stretched across the sky like wiggly lines fattening into scarves.
“There’s a spicy chicken sandwich and some fries waiting for you.”
She was basically done, with minute details left that she might or might not include. She joined him at the bench. Even though it was Saturday and his day off, he dressed formal.
“How many of my fries did you eat?” Kayla knew the answer but couldn’t help but needle him some.
“A few. Look at me like that all you want. We both know you won’t eat all yours.”
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