Bad Glass

by Richard E. Gropp

“I would have probably joined up myself, if not for all those fucking rules,” Wendell said. “Plus, they really, really hate me.”

  We turned left on Second Avenue and headed east. Slivers of glass glittered everywhere, crunching beneath our feet as we proceeded down the middle of the street. After a couple of blocks, I noticed a group of people crowded around a shattered storefront. It was on the ground floor of an old office building. Before the evacuation, it might have been a chain coffeehouse—maybe a Starbucks or a Tully’s—but since then it had become something else. Changed, repurposed, mutated. Every bit of the facade had been broken down and removed—doors, windows, walls—transforming it into a dimly lit cave, open to the street. All the debris from the demolition had been pushed back from the opening, forming a semicircular drift of drywall and wood. Inside there were tables. The smell of grilled meat wafted out in a cloud of charcoal smoke.

  There was a sloppy hand-painted sign above the opening. It read MAMA CASS AND THE CHAR-GRILLED MIRACLE.

  “A restaurant?” I asked, surprised. I hadn’t expected this level of organization.

  “Yeah,” Wendell replied, suddenly nervous. “Mama takes barter or money. Anything of value.”

  We had attracted some attention. In front of the restaurant, a half dozen people had turned our way, watching as we approached. They were dressed in the same fashion as Wendell: multiple layers of heavy clothing, ragged and dirty. I stopped and set my bag on the ground, debating whether or not to dig out my camera and get some shots of the restaurant and its patrons.

  “We shouldn’t stay here,” Wendell said. “It’s not safe for you. You’re new. You’re carrying all your stuff!” He grabbed my elbow and started pulling me back down the street. I took my time turning around and was surprised when he plucked the backpack off my shoulder. “Here, just, let me carry that … just, here!”

  As I was turning, a figure pulled out of the crowd in front of the restaurant, and a woman’s voice called after us. “WEASEL! What did I tell you? What did I fucking say?”

  And that was when Wendell started to run, taking off with my backpack.

  My backpack, I thought, suddenly terrified. My computer.

  My motherfucking camera!

  Wendell moved fast. He ran north a block, then turned east, jumping the hood of a car parked at the corner. I followed.

  I managed to stay about twenty yards back. My breath was a loud steam-engine rasp, burning its way out of my throat and lungs, but I barely noticed. Even with the duffel bag weighing me down, bouncing back and forth against my legs, the thought of losing my camera kept me moving.

  I was frantic, terrified. All my plans and fantasies were in that backpack. To lose it now, right after I got into the city …

  I tried calling out to him, but he didn’t even look back. The bastard just kept on running, malnourished and scrawny but surprisingly fast.

  There were kids on this street, playing baseball in the center of the downtown block. About a half dozen. I didn’t pay them any heed. For me, the game was just a blur of motion in the background, a dull rumble of raucous, youthful laughter.

  I gritted my teeth and managed a burst of speed, pulling within feet of Wendell’s fleeing back. The sound of our chase had caught the kids’ attention. They were hooting and hollering as we neared, no doubt anticipating some type of violent confrontation.

  I reached out, and my fingers brushed against the fabric of the backpack—my backpack—now slung over Wendell’s shoulder.

  I threw myself forward just as he jigged to the right, his nimble form disappearing through an open doorway. Unable to stop my dive, I collided with the doorjamb, shoulder first, and the weight of my duffel bag slammed me hard into the wall, jolting all the breath from my lungs. The kids in the street let out a loud, sympathetic “Oh!” that quickly broke into disjointed laughter. I didn’t even look their way, instead shaking my head and sucking in a burning lungful of air. My legs were weak from the impact, but I managed to stagger into the building. It was some type of hotel or apartment complex—a tenement, really. I could tell it had been an old, run-down wreck even before the evacuation. I entered in time to see Wendell swing around a wooden banister and up into an open stairwell. I followed, losing ground with every weak and trembling step.

  I thought about ditching my duffel bag on the first-floor landing, just tossing it into a corner where I could pick it up later, but decided against it. Somebody might find it—one of the kids on the street, one of Wendell’s friends—and I just couldn’t take that chance. If I lost both of my bags within minutes of entering the city—well, maybe my father was right about me. No common sense.

  The light in the stairwell was tinted a strange shade of red, as if it had been filtered through crimson cellophane. There was a boarded-over skylight at the top of the stairwell, six floors up, but the light wasn’t coming from up there. It was trickling in from the landings. A low-grade hum filled the air around me: the sound of an engine grinding away in the distance, muffled by plaster and drywall and sheets of plywood. A generator? Whatever it was, I couldn’t pinpoint its location; I twisted my head from side to side, but the sound didn’t get any louder, didn’t change in the least. Is it in my head? I wondered. Is it the sound of blood draining from my brain? The tidal pull of a hard, weak-kneed faint? Did I crack my head against the door frame without realizing it?

  I heard a door slam shut on the fourth-floor landing and continued up the stairwell. I wasn’t running now; I could barely manage a fast stride.

  I didn’t know this building. I didn’t know what might be waiting for me outside the stairwell. A gang with weapons? Wild animals? Wendell, hiding in the shadows with a two-by-four?

  The baseball game out on the street had started back up, and the loud crack of ball against bat rang out like a gunshot, jolting my heart into a stutter. The hit was followed by a loud cheer and the sound of glass breaking in the distance.

  I paused on the fourth-floor landing and tried to catch my breath. My chest was sore from the collision on the ground floor, and I couldn’t stop panting. There were gray spots swimming at the edges of my vision. I pushed forward, opening the door and moving through in a low crouch, just in case Wendell was waiting for me on the other side.

  The fourth-floor hallway was empty. Gray light seeped in through the open doorways along its length, illuminating drifts of crumbled plaster and refuse heaped against the walls. The whole place seemed damp. The carpet—a muddy, threadbare red—squished beneath my feet, and the smell of mold and rot made the air feel heavy and foul. I paused for a second, listening for Wendell. I could hear a rhythmic squeaking—the grind of machinery, maybe? pistons?—but no footsteps, no scrambling at windows or fire escapes.

  Had he gone to ground? Was he hiding in one of these rooms?

  I moved slowly from door to door, easing forward to peek into each room. The first half dozen were vacant. Nothing but stripped dirty mattresses, overturned nightstands, and shattered lamps. There were wrought-iron fire escapes outside each window, but all the sashes were closed, and I could see no signs of attempted escape.

  The squeaking sound was coming from a room halfway down the corridor, and as I drew near, low animal growls and panting started to drown out the more mechanical noise. Bracing myself, I peered around the doorjamb and found a man and a woman having sex on a dirty mattress. They were still dressed in their derelict tatters, and the woman—pinned to the ground—was wearing gloves, her shrouded fingers digging into the back of the man’s jacket. The way they were going at it—it was something brutal and primal. All energy and friction, like dogs in heat.

  Growling. Saliva flying.

  They couldn’t see me where I was standing in the doorway, but even if they could, I don’t think they would have noticed. They were so consumed by their act, by their … passion? No, not passion. Something less human, less emotional.

  Not passion. Drive.

  I watched for nearly half a minute, lost in the spectacle, before
finally noticing the kid in the closet. He must have been about eight years old. He wasn’t hiding; the doors were wide open. Instead, he was just sitting there beneath the hems of abandoned clothing. His eyes were wide, his dirty face an expressionless mask. He was watching me with an intense curiosity.

  And it hit me—that boy’s stare—like a punch to the solar plexus.

  I stumbled away from the doorway, my stomach churning, suddenly very, very dizzy, my head just about ready to fall off my neck. I’m not right, I told myself. I cracked my skull. A concussion, internal bleeding, something serious and deadly.

  I continued down the corridor, away from the room with the fucking couple.

  Away from the child.

  The hallway made a ninety-degree turn, and I found yet more rooms stretching the width of the building. Only one of these doors was closed, and, coming from inside this room, I heard something new. To my ears, it sounded like a seldom-used window rattling open—rain-swollen wood groaning inside its frame, the sound of physical exertion vibrating through glass.

  Wendell, I thought, grateful for the distraction, for the chance to refocus my energies.

  By the time I got to the door, though, the sound had stopped. Now there was only silence in the building. Even the sound of fucking, back along the corridor, had disappeared. Slowly, I eased the door open.

  There were two people in the otherwise empty room. One—a young woman—was lying on her back in the middle of the floor. She was wearing a thin white dress; the material looked insubstantial, far too thin for the cold October air. Her face was pale, and her bright blue eyes stared up at the ceiling. Embedded up there—in the ceiling—was a naked man, his skin a sickly shade of black. The man’s body was spread facedown, reclined back against the ceiling in a relaxed pose. Where his body contacted the wood and plaster, his flesh disappeared, like a mannequin half submerged in a pool of water.

  But this was no mannequin. And the ceiling was not water. This was a human body, and a large percentage of it was stuck—physically stuck—inside that solid surface.

  The man’s right arm extended down, quivering slightly in the still air. His left arm was stuck inside the ceiling, his hand and half of his forearm stretching up through its surface, outside the room—or so I imagined. Perhaps those body parts were simply gone, his form just … halting at the boundaries of the room, becoming nothingness on the other side. His back and buttocks, too, disappeared into that solid surface. His left knee was steepled out in a V, forming an upside-down Greek delta with the ceiling. His left ankle and foot were gone, and his right leg disappeared midthigh. His uncircumcised penis dangled down like a broken light fixture.

  The man was alive. At least his body was alive; I couldn’t say anything about his mind. I could see muscles twitching beneath his skin while his chest eased in and out, taking calm, shallow breaths. His eyes were wide, but they quivered wildly, rolling with the rhythm of short-circuiting nerves. There was no consciousness there, none that I could see. Just autonomous reaction: a body gone mad, without human control.

  And the young woman in the white dress continued to watch, transfixed, lying on the floor beneath the body. She was just a girl, really, no older than seventeen. The man’s extended right hand made it look like he was reaching down, like he was offering the girl a tender caress, or grasping for his own salvation.

  My hand started to shake, and I let it fall from the doorknob. There was a smell in the room, a strong, powerfully human smell. Sweat. Sweat and the sharp copper scent of freshly spilled blood.

  Standing in the doorway, I hunched double, trying to fight back a sudden wave of nausea and vertigo.

  And when I glanced back up, I found the girl watching me. While I’d been looking down, she’d turned her head my way, and now those bright blue eyes slammed into me. Her hand fluttered up toward the body in the ceiling, and she started to speak, her lips quivering weakly. I focused on her fingers. I was afraid she was going to reach up and grasp the dead man’s hand.

  No … that was not what I was afraid of. I was afraid the man would grasp her hand.

  I backed out of the room before she could find a louder voice. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I desperately didn’t want to hear. I retreated back the way I’d come, making it ten feet before I had to hunch over and vomit against the wall.

  After that, I dropped into a kind of autopilot, letting my legs carry me out of the building.

  Wendell and my backpack were long gone. They weren’t even memories in my shell-shocked mind.

  I’m not sure how long I sat out on the curb.

  The rain started to fall not long after I made it out of the building. The baseball game in the street fell apart, and the kids scattered under the cold drizzle. They barely noticed my ashen-faced stupor. Perhaps it was common here, that look, something they saw every day.

  The rain wasn’t heavy, just a light, damp kiss against my face.

  “You shouldn’t do that.”

  It took me a moment to recognize the words, to parse them as human language and riddle out their meaning. A handful of seconds passed before I glanced up and saw a young woman standing before me. She had a black hoodie pulled up over her dark hair, protecting her from the rain, and there was a hard look on her face—smooth, tempered steel cast into human form. A backpack dangled from her hand.

  “Do what?” I finally managed. “What shouldn’t I do?”

  “Trust people.” She lifted the backpack by its strap and swung it back and forth in front of my eyes. It took me a moment to recognize it as my backpack, and when I reached out to accept it, my hand was shaking.

  The steel fell away from her face, revealing a crinkle of concern. When she resumed speaking, her voice was quieter. “I caught up with Weasel down the street, reclaimed your bag. That man’s nothing if not predictable.” She shook her head, a weary gesture of disappointment. “Don’t get me wrong; he’s a good person, but he’s also an asshole. Takes advantage of the newcomers, steals their shit. I’ve tried to get him to stop, but he doesn’t listen. He’s got monkeys to feed.” She tapped a gloved finger against the inside of her elbow.

  I nodded.

  “You should get out of the rain,” she said, pointing to the hotel door behind us. Immediately, I stood up and started shaking my head.

  “Not in there,” I said, backing away. “No fucking way.”

  “Okay. Fine. We’ve got other options.” She led the way to a small one-story building on the other side of the street. It was practically a shack, a run-down shanty, dwarfed by the buildings on either side.

  As soon as we got through the door, I dropped my bags to the floor and leaned back against the wall. It was a huge effort to stay on my feet. The pull of gravity seemed absolutely immense.

  “You look pale,” the young woman said.

  I nodded.

  She pulled a bottle of Pepsi from the pocket of her sweatshirt and offered it to me. “Sugar should help. It’ll keep you from passing out.” I took a deep swig. The liquid went down the wrong way, and I coughed up a thin drizzle of spit.

  After I finished coughing, the young woman offered me a sly smile. “My name’s Taylor. Taylor Stray—Gupta-Stray, actually. And you,” she said, pointing a finger at me, “you’re new here.”

  “What …” I began, but I couldn’t finish the question. I didn’t even know what I wanted to ask. I stopped talking and closed my eyes. “My name’s Dean Walker,” I finally said, keeping my eyes shut.

  “And you’re a photographer?” she asked. I opened my eyes in time to catch a shallow shrug. “I looked in your bag. After I took it from Weasel.”

  “Yeah. I take pictures.”

  “That’s good. There’s a lot to see here. I don’t know what pictures and stories have made it out to the real world, but we’ve certainly got a lot to photograph.” She made an idle clucking sound at the back of her throat. “Not quite sure it’s smart to seek it out, but it’s certainly there.”

  I pushed
myself off the wall and peered out the shack’s front window. The hotel loomed across the street—just a building, really, but suddenly malignant, hard to look at. “What is that place?” I asked. I ran my hand across the back of my skull but couldn’t find any wounds. No bumps or gashes. No concussion. Nothing to explain the things I had seen.

  “The hotel?” Taylor asked. She shrugged. “Just a hotel. Nothing special.”

  I picked up my backpack and fished out the camera. As soon as it was in my hands, I started to feel stronger. My fingers were still shaking as I took off the lens cap, but that wasn’t just fear and shock, not anymore. I was starting to get excited. I had seen something inexplicable. It had been overwhelming and terrifying, yes, but that was what I’d come here to find. That was why I ditched out on my final semester and broke a government quarantine. To capture those images, to capture Spokane.

  And now I’d become a part of it—whatever was happening here, inside this city. I’d become experienced.

  I took some pictures of the hotel’s face, moving from the windows to the doorway, trying to catch some of the foreboding I felt. But the foreboding wasn’t there. It was nothing visual, just a wound inside my head.

  “Feeling better?” Taylor asked. “If you’re ready, I can show you around, help you find a place for the night.” I turned with the camera still raised to my face, viewing the room through its lens.

  And that was when I noticed her eyes. They were beautiful. She was beautiful.

  Outside, the rain was starting to let up, and the setting sun put in a final, last-minute appearance. A beam shot through a hole in the shack’s ceiling, highlighting Taylor’s face. And in that light, those strong, clear eyes practically shone. She was holding out my backpack, trying to get me moving. I took a couple of photographs, hoping to catch the intense look on her face.

  “Just take the fucking bag,” she growled, finally tossing it at my feet.

  “Jesus Christ!” I said. “Watch the fucking glass!”

  “Yeah.” A wide smile spread across her face. “You’re feeling better.”