by D Krauss
John hoped.
The moon cleared the horizon and it was a bad moon, Fogarty, grinning at him, the eyebrows down, too much in the way of teeth, the evil moon in cartoons. John peered at the woods and the street and still, there was nothing, but the feeling would not go away, the feeling that he had only, for the last few years, delayed the inevitable, lingered too long alive while things leisurely moved in place to put an end to him. A frustrating and painful end, more so because it would be anonymous.
No, not true. You will be remembered.
Collier is the future, Collier is the future, the chant in his mind, mantra, his ward against despair, the reason he would not go into the house and eat the end of the .357.
John’s end, whenever and whatever the method, would be in defiance, because, if you can glimpse a possible future, then you cannot give up; on the contrary, you are required to strive. Collier was his glimpse, and he was Collier’s. John was the voice out of death, the stirring from annihilation, proof that decay does not win.
If there was no glimmer in the dark, then everyone lies down, everyone dies and is buried by the dust and becomes nothing but vague shapes on the landscape; an uninteresting hint that, once, there was something else.
Collier needed the glimmer so John had to stay, had to fight, resist the coming death because Collier must have something to fight for or he will be swallowed whole. And John could not have that.
The moon was three degrees up now, the illusion of bigness dissipating, as was the gold color. Everything settled back to its normal position. Normal.
The hell with this. John turned, no longer taking precautions and headed towards the neighbor’s, the dogs trotting with him. Time to fire up the Magnum, do a light check, test everything, settle in, distract himself, forget.
Pretend to, anyway.
“Hey, baby,” John said.
He stood beside Theresa’s grave, overgrown like the others down the street, but he had cut a small path through the weeds for access. It wasn’t a tell; intruders would focus on the neighbor’s house, with its trim lawn and orderly yard. Bait.
“Been a weird day. I’m off-schedule, as you know.” He told her about Mrs. Alexandria and the bridge and the dogs attacking the deer and M Street. He described his raging paranoia all the way home, something that still gripped him. For the millionth time tonight, he checked the .357, the .25, and the tanto.
He’d already flipped on the Magnum and done a light check, but not the cables or pool yet. Instead he went inside, to Snuffy’s great joy, and lost a lot of time watching the monitors, expecting any moment to see someone crashing through the neighbor’s door. Nothing.
He stepped quietly outside again, listened for a while, strolled back out to the street and examined the woods now silvered by moon. Still nothing. Hairbag and Lupus were gone, probably running the neighborhood. No barking in the distance, so God knows what they were up to.
It was pretty close to 8:00 p.m. by then, which was the time he normally ended the chores and stood here, so he’d decided to interrupt the flow. You can futz with the chore schedule; you can’t futz with seeing her.
He looked back at the neighbor’s house. “‘Due for its first trim,” he commented. Pain-in-the-ass job that, using a push mower and clippers and moving Theresa’s car a few feet in the driveway to simulate movement. It was getting harder to start her car, probably because of gas breakdown. Not good. That meant the stabilizer was reaching the end of its life, which meant the gas and diesel tankers were reaching the end of theirs, too. Year or so and he’d have those large containers of smelly water. “Eighteenth century in no time at all,” he told her.
She never responded during these nightly talks. She only showed up at odd moments, when he needed a bit of berating, like earlier tonight. Kept him straight, and he appreciated it. Silent the rest of the time, he guessed because she didn’t really have anything new to say. There wasn’t a lot of action around the mound and she wasn’t allowed to discuss Heaven, so, she listened.
He appreciated that, too. He missed her talk, though, how she used to get so wound up about some innocuous event at the school or something Collier had done, until he’d get so tickled he’d start laughing and then she’d punch him and they’d wrestle and God knows what it would turn into.
“You were a fun ole gal,” he chuckled.
Test. He was hoping the use of “ole gal” would get a rise out of her, but, no. It would have before, and there’d be more punching and wrestling and God knows what. He stirred a bit uneasily, recalling his brief interludes with some of the Gate and Family women these past few years. Legally, not cheating, but in his heart it was, even if all he was doing was resurrecting their moments together, eyes closed, seeing her, holding her, remembering her the right way.
Instead of the nightmare way.
When John woke from his coma, she was next to him in bed. Not a pretty sight. It took John three days to actually make it out of bed, three days with her slowly putrefying corpse. He could not move at all the first day, so he spent it staring at her sightless eyes and her opened mouth, the discoloration advancing as he watched.
A corpse’s open mouth had always given John the willies. He’d had an inordinate share of gruesome crime scenes over his career, like the girl up in Plattsburgh, who dealt drugs and one of her competitors used an axe on her head. That girl’s mouth and, he could swear, every other mouth of every other body he’d processed, had been wide open. He’d looked at that silent rictus scream and knew, just knew, all the corruption inside was stealing out and towards his nose, trying to find another home in which to root.
So, there he was, helpless with the Flu, staring directly into Theresa’s crusted, decaying mouth. He couldn’t sleep until he mustered the strength, a day later, to turn away from her. No relief, that, because he crossed into Nightmare Lands, where her dead arms reached out and pulled him to her for a corpse’s kiss, over and over.
Twelve hours and 900,000 iterations of that lovely scene later, he suddenly woke, spontaneously rolled over while gasping in terror, and found himself inches away from the dead face of his slobbering dreams. Must have screamed for five minutes.
John was sure that heart-stopping shock had a lot to do with his very rapid recovery. CDC told him the average was a month to a month and a half and there he was, running around after only two weeks.
That’s why he didn’t see anyone, why he thought “I Am Legend” and able to get a lot of stuff, like the weapons and hardware and Magnums, before anyone else showed up. It also explained why CDC was very, very interested in him. They thought he was a cure, and, with all their blood and other fluid harvests, they almost finished what the Event started.
He tried to tell them about the shock awakening, but they ignored it... there, there, you little peasant, shut up while we take another five gallons of your blood. At least the psychologist listened; seemed genuinely aghast. He gave John the sleeping pills, hoarded in the medicine cabinet now, in case blowing off the back of his head seemed a bit too messy.
“I’m not going to do that,” he assured her.
She’d have gotten a big kick out of scaring him three-quarters to death. John smiled, remembering the pranks they loved to play on each other, from the stupid little whoopee cushions to elaborate phone scams where one tried to make the other think they’d won the lottery or inherited millions. Got so they’d both walk into the house like SWAT, trying to figure out where the next gag was planted.
“You win,” he said. Waking up had been one of the best scares in his life. He could almost hear her chuckling.
And she was chuckling, across whatever these distances were. The soul survives. It just does and hers was still intact. Somewhere. Maybe that was just a plea, but John could not accept the dissipation of so much energy, so much thought, simply because the heart stops. Conservation of Energy, moving on to a different form, whatever, but the soul is the house of everything, and hers remained, and it remained interested.
&nb
sp; There were many years in their twenty-six together when they didn’t get along, mostly because of his self-centeredness. “I am a man, after all,” he told her. But, they were always interested in what the other was doing and they always talked.
Married people get bored with each other when they run out of things to say, but Theresa and he never did. About once a week, one or the other would stumble across something, like land in the Shenandoah Valley, and they’d be on it for a while until something else caught their attention. And they always made each other laugh.
That’s the other big marriage secret. Ya gotta tickle each other, real drop-dead falling-all-over-yourself-peeing kind of helpless laughter, not the fake snickering of those Pre-Event Washington power couples over some poor schlub’s office faux pas. That’s not real humor, that’s viciousness, and a mutual viciousness won’t keep a couple together, unless they’re Bonnie and Clyde.
Funny about that Shenandoah land; if he’d followed up, she’d be alive today. “My fault,” he said.
Snuffy barked a couple of times at that point and John looked back at the house, irritated. Shut up, dog. God, just no sense at all. Shoulda shot him years ago. Well, no – John was way too fond of the little bastard. Funny looking, about the size of a Spitz with a Labrador’s head, white with horribly patterned brown spots and a plume of a tail, like ostrich feathers, curling up over his back. But he was the smartest dog John’d ever had, and he’d had plenty.
He’d taught Snuffy how to crawl on his belly for a treat. Theresa, in one session, had taught Snuffy to shake, roll over and bow. Just smart. He, also, was strong as a bull, had extremely sharp teeth and was incredibly loyal. That’s why he was the inside dog.
They’d left him outside. Didn’t mean to, they just fell so quickly, no thought was given. Snuffy survived on squirrels and rainwater. He couldn’t get at the pool because the cover was already in place. When John finally shuffled over to the door and opened it, fully expecting to find the dog’s carcass, Snuffy came racing over from the back of the yard, falling all over himself in greeting. He was starving and filthy and half-mad with thirst and one of John’s first acts was to feed him a healthy post-starvation doggie dinner of Snausages and Cheweez, interspersed with water bowl filling, three times in as many minutes.
John realized how fortunate it was that no thought had been given. If Snuffy’d been inside, he’d have fed on Theresa’s corpse. Imagine waking up to that.
“I’da run screaming from the house and never come back,” he chuckled to Theresa. Well, eventually, he’da come back. It was, after all, their house, the second one they’d owned in their lives, the one they’d lived in the longest. It wasn’t a bad place, split-level brick with a carport and a weird triangular lot larger than most. The backyard, secluded with a privacy fence, had been his sanctuary. He used to sit in the back patio after dark, watching the Summer Triangle, sipping a beer and periodically jumping in the pool to chase away mosquitoes. Heaven.
Theresa had complained about the place, wasn’t big enough, wasn’t modern enough, but that seemed the way of her, some prod for him to do better, not get complacent. Like he was ever that.
“Could move,” he told her. There was quite an inventory of big sprawling mansions on the market right now. Why, if he was willing to disable all the clever little booby traps left behind by the Secret Service and then spend every day fighting off MPD and Raiders, he could move right into the White House. Less trouble would be one of those toney Clifton or Great Falls mansions. “Waddya think?” he asked. Stoney silence and he chuckled. Leave her behind? Forget it.
Besides, Collier could only find them here. Well, not Collier but the anticipated grandson, kicking down the door and beholding John’s bleached bones wrapped in a blanket before a long-cold fire. More likely before a long-cold TV, but finding him was the point.
Follow my wishes, unknown grandchild, and bury me beside her.
’Course, by that time, the government or whatever will have confiscated the place, bulldozed it, paved it over, burned it to the ground, who knows. They’d have a legal right because John hadn’t paid the mortgage in almost a year and a half. He no longer felt the obligation since the government federalized the Zone. No resale value and no interest exemption so what was the benefit?
The mortgage company still had the nerve, though, to send a foreclosure notice; three of them, to be exact. John got them all at the same time, during some trip to the Gate. Bill gave him a packet of envelopes and the first notice was right on top.
“Can you believe this?” John waved it at him, a big piece of yellow paper with “Warning” in caps and red letters, all kinds of boilerplate threatening all kinds of dire actions and seizures by dates that had long passed.
Bill read it. “What are they going to do? Come in here and throw you out?”
John laughed, “Yeah, if they’ve got those kinds of balls, they can have the place. I’m sure I could find another one.” They both chuckled at that. But, then John had a thought, “Hey, Bill, can they garnish me?”
He pursed his lips and shook his head slowly, “I don’t think so. The Soldier/Sailor Relief Act has been updated and I think you’re immune. Don’t know for sure if it applies to retirees, but, since you’re subject to recall, it might.”
That may or may not be true but John decided to leave well enough alone and not call complaining about the mortgage company. Best to lay low. He hadn’t received any more notices and his pay remained the same, so he guessed the mortgage company decided to lay low, too.
With a rapacious government seeking new and innovative sources of income, it didn’t pay to advertise. Besides, insurance and moneys attached to the Emergency Proclamations reimbursed the company somewhat, so they really didn’t have anything to complain about. They didn’t lose two-thirds of their income, as John did.
Which, of course, was the real reason, moral dudgeon aside, he didn’t pay the mortgage anymore – he simply couldn’t afford it. Pre-Event, John’s military retirement covered the house payment and maybe a part of one utility. His AU salary covered everything else with enough left over to play. Theresa’s salary paid for Fishburne. Now, his retirement was his only income and he needed that to pay for Dish and the cell phone and Fishburne and American Express. There just wasn’t enough left over to pay for the mortgage.
He’d like to upgrade Verizon to get internet, but there was just no way. That his Verizon cell phone worked at all was miraculous, since the microwave towers should all be dead. Further proof of God, but more likely of shadowy government involvement, and he was smart enough not to ask questions and just be grateful for watcha got, especially since Verizon was now charging $400 to $500 a month for 100 minutes, without long-distance, and their cost for internet access was in the thousands. John couldn’t afford it, so he had to leave his contract alone.
Freezing all pre-existing contracts with Zoners was one of the two or three things the post-Event government did right and it kept John solvent. Must chap Verizon’s ass, him paying a little over $60.00 a month for 400 anytime minutes and unlimited nights and weekends, no roaming and long-distance. Nothing they could do about it, though.
He still had to pay for Theresa’s line, which was an irritant, but canceling that would change the contract and then they’d have him. “Besides,” he chuckled, “maybe you’ll give me a call.”
Internet would be great. All the hard lines were down and he never got around to hooking up through Dish before everything happened, so his only chance was Bill’s instructions. Hope that worked because it would certainly make life easier – he could manage his bank accounts better, for one thing.
John had left Theresa’s insurance payout in the savings and, once Collier graduated (and changed his mind about the Air Force), John was giving him the password. It was a little over $100,000, not much, but Collier could pick up a fairly decent secondhand car with that and maybe get about two years of college. Hell, with the colleges now offering every incentive to get stude
nts back, he might make a whole four years, even with a wife and kids. If he’d just freakin’ do it.
“He’s still not listening to me,” John told Theresa. “You should probably start in on him.” She should. She was relentless and could get Collier’s head out of his ass and off joining the USAF. “Better than the army, Dad.”
True, but not much better. Collier was sure his Fishburne background guaranteed a sergeant’s rank and choice of specialty, crew chief, which would put him on the flight line or in the air, far away from the ‘Slams’ murderous human wave attacks, and so drop his mortality from the average of 75% to only 50. “That’s good odds, Dad.”
John knew better. He’d lost enough pilot friends who were riding a mile or more over battlefields. So he’d waved the Surviving Son exemption and urged Collier to invoke it, avoid military service, take engineering or agriculture or computers or something that made him valuable to the rapidly changing government so he could be ensconced, safe, in some Byzantine officialdom, keeping his head low, avoiding the politics and subsequent firing squads. Just work on cables or systems or roads. Just do that, Collier. Freakin’ do that.
“No,” Collier said and John could almost see the set of jaw and hooding of eyes, marks of intransigence. “It’s payback time.”
Which John had to admire. Everyone wanted payback. “After all,” he said to Theresa, “we are Americans.” But not at the cost of Collier’s life. Whether the kid accepted it or not, he carried everything that preceded him – John, John’s father and grandfather and beyond, ad infinitum.
Not that the Rashkil’s were so noble they should be preserved. On the contrary, if a bloodline were due for expiration, it would be this bunch of car-thieving, cousin-marrying, rapist druggie crapheads. But, so many families were now lost, names erased, posterity vanished, that it was sinful even for the lowlifes to go.
“Speak to him,” John urged Theresa, “or, at least, make something work out.” She was in a good position to elbow God a bit, get Him to get Collier married in a year, take advantage of the government bonuses and have a million kids, stay in the Provos, linger in college, make himself valuable to some government toady, avoid the service. He might come to his senses or the wars might end.