Bad Glass

by Richard E. Gropp

  Taylor was nodding, a gentle, sympathetic gesture.

  And a sly, knowing smile slid across Charlie’s face.

  God.

  Sitting here, now, writing this shit down, I marvel at the depths of my stupidity.

  Sneaking into the city, I wasn’t being noble. I wasn’t chasing down an elusive artistic ideal, shunning corporate anonymity for art and passion.

  I was just being stupid.

  That’s it. End of explanation.

  For all of my romantic notions—bullshit self-betterment, reaching for my potential, making a name for myself—what I did, what I pursued—leaving my life and sprinting blindly into the dark—was nothing but death and confusion and insanity.

  I was running in the wrong direction.

  I was fleeing the wrong things.

  We had makeshift jambalaya for dinner: canned sausages and rice cooked in crushed tomatoes and seasoning. Served with crackers on the side; Sabine had been adamant about that. We gathered around a sturdy dining-room table and smoked pot between bites. It was a good meal. Maybe it was just the pot, or a reaction to what I’d seen earlier in the day, but I felt genuinely comfortable here, surrounded by these people.

  While we ate, Floyd and Sabine took turns telling me stories, dishing dirt about everyone in the room: how they’d found Charlie in the southern district, Amanda in the park, Floyd skating lazily through an abandoned shopping mall. And Devon, half naked, yelling at the top of his lungs. I felt a bit self-conscious being the center of attention, but they seemed happy spinning these tales, transforming their individual ordeals into humorous quips. Even Devon got into the act, surfacing from his stupor long enough to curse out everyone in the room.

  Halfway through dinner, I glanced up and found Sabine taking pictures. She was holding the camera above her head, aiming it down the length of the table. Just random, blind shots, not even glancing through the viewfinder or checking the images in the LCD screen. I told myself that I’d have to clean off the memory card once I got it back.

  There was a lot of laughter. The pouring rain, the quarantine, the hotel—these things seemed worlds away. It was just the eight of us, here and now, floating through this warm candlelit haze.

  After dinner, we returned to the living room and once again built up the fire. It was quiet now. The food and pot had taken their toll, and it wasn’t long before people started to retreat upstairs, toward beds and blankets. Amanda and Mac left together; I gathered that they were a couple. Then Devon stumbled away, followed by Charlie, then Floyd. And then, reluctantly, Sabine.

  Leaving Taylor and me all alone.

  We sat in silence for a couple of minutes, me on the sofa while she warmed her hands at the fire. I listened to the crackling coals. In this perfect calm, the long day finally caught up with me, and I let my head loll back against the sofa cushions.

  “Why are you here, Taylor?” I asked. I rolled my head back and forth, basking in the drugged, comfortable motion. “I told you my story, but what about you? Why do you stay when everything’s so …?” And I thought for a moment about the body in the ceiling.

  She let out a loud sigh, and I looked up to find her watching me carefully. “Family, I guess.” She paused for a moment, then nodded up toward the ceiling and the people gathered in their rooms upstairs. “I can’t abandon them. Not now. I … was dealing with some shit when the quarantine hit, and I couldn’t leave. By the time things settled down, I had Sabine and Mac here with me. Then Amanda. Then Floyd and Charlie and Devon …

  “I think they need me. And I’m not going anywhere, not if that means leaving them behind.”

  I grunted, and she flashed me a smile.

  Family.

  Her heart must be huge, I thought, to have room for so many. She turned back toward the fire and added more wood to the hearth.

  I drowsed off for a moment, and when I opened my eyes, I found her standing over me. She was holding out a quilt. It was an old quilt—squares of faded color, its hem ripped into ribbons on every side. “You should sleep here tonight, in front of the fire. Tomorrow we can make you up a room … if that’s what you’d like.” Her voice rose, twisting the words into a gentle question.

  “Yeah,” I managed, still half asleep. “That would be good.”

  She nodded, handed me the quilt, and turned to go.

  “And … Taylor?” I said. “Thank you. For everything. Without you … if you hadn’t—”

  “Don’t sweat it,” she said, keeping her back to me. “It’s what I do. In that, at least, Devon’s got me pegged.” Her words were soft and distant. It was as if she’d already left the room.

  Later, as I drifted off to sleep, I wondered if she was seeing anyone.

  And I wondered if I was her type.

  I jolted awake, chased by nightmare.

  Just brief images. My hand reaching out, touching the trunk of a tree. Watching as my flesh sank in, all the way up to my forearm.

  I didn’t know what time it was. The room was dark, and the fire had burned down to embers; it was nothing but a dim bed of orange crackling to itself in the hearth.

  Still late, I thought, or very, very early.

  I pushed the quilt aside and stood up. My entire body was trembling. I paced from one end of the room to the other, trying to shake the remnants of dream from my limbs.

  I was still high. It felt like my head was filled with cotton and loosely wound balls of yarn. My mouth tasted like bread and ashes.

  The house felt different somehow, and for a long moment I couldn’t place the change. Then I noticed the silence. The pounding rain had stopped.

  I moved to the window and found the street out front bathed in moonlight. The wet asphalt reflected the crescent in the sky, illuminating the upscale houses in shades of gray. All still. All deathly silent.

  Then an animal appeared from the east, trotting down the middle of the road. It was a large dog or a wolf—some type of canine. At least it seemed very doglike. But not quite. The way it moved was wrong. There was something wrong with its legs. An extra joint, maybe? It seemed like each time it took a step, its legs went through an extra motion—paws violently clicking down, toward the road, at the height of each arc. Almost curling into fists. The animal looked powerful, strong. The way it moved … it was attacking the ground with each whirl of limbs.

  It stopped in front of the house and turned its head toward me, as if sensing my watching eyes. It presented a wolfish silhouette, outlined against the gleaming asphalt.

  Its eyes caught the light, shining a faint, glimmering blue. And even from this distance, I could see its muscles quivering, a barely restrained tornado of motion, trapped in animal form, straining to break free.

  And then there were more, following in the animal’s wake, moving with those odd, violent steps. A whole pack of canines—fifteen, twenty, twenty-five—flowing down the street, parting around that initial animal as if it were a boulder in the bed of a stream, its head still turned my way, watching.

  They moved in complete silence, a graceful play of shadows, gliding through the night.

  The animal watched me until the last of its pack had disappeared down the street. Then it turned and followed, those odd, explosive legs carrying it out of view.

  “You saw them, didn’t you?”

  It was a breathy whisper coming from the room at my back.

  I turned and found Amanda standing in the doorway, a dimly lit ghost, lost in shadow. Her face was a pale crescent, only one eye visible in the moonlight. That eye was wide, hopeful.

  I nodded—yes, yes they were there—and she returned the gesture, providing me with the same assurance. Then she faded back into the darkness.

  I didn’t hear her footsteps carry her back through the house. I didn’t hear the stairs creak as she climbed up to the second floor.

  I was high. I was high and still half asleep, and I wasn’t sure what I’d seen. Maybe just some dogs.

  But what did Amanda see? I wondered, remembering t
hat breathy, hopeful whisper.

  I should have had my camera, I chided myself. It was the second straight time I’d been caught empty-handed.

  At this rate, I’d lose my sanity before I ever managed to get a useful shot.

  Video clip. September 7, 11:35 A.M. Press conference:

  There’s banner text running across the bottom of the screen, recounting headlines from around the world. In the bottom left-hand corner, an artful blur obscures the cable news channel’s logo—it’s a minor edit, somebody trying to avoid litigation, but it looks like a tiny thundercloud or a fogged and smudged piece of glass. The date and time are printed in the upper right-hand corner: September 7, 11:35 A.M. PDT.

  The video starts in midsentence—a man at a lectern, talking over a gaggle of shouted questions. He is standing in front of a pale blue background, and the Spokane city seal hangs on a flag behind his head. The man’s conservative blue suit is sharply pressed, and his gray-white hair sweeps back from his forehead in a perfect, unmoving wave. There is a pinched look on his face. He is starting to perspire. The words MAYOR JEFFREY SLOCUM are printed above the banner at the bottom of the screen.

  MAYOR JEFFREY SLOCUM: … be assured we are investigating every violent incident. I am in constant contact with our elected officials at all levels of government—including the president of the United States—and military intervention will only be considered as—

  VOICE FROM OFFSCREEN: (Unintelligible) … reports of hallucinations and possible terrorist attacks?

  MAYOR JEFFREY SLOCUM: We are certainly investigating all possibilities at this time, but it’s important for everybody out there—both inside the city and all across America—to know that all of our initial tests have turned up negative. And these tests have been quite extensive … and, we’ve … uh, we’ve seen no signs of chemical or biological foul play—

  A VOICE BREAKS THROUGH THE GAGGLE OF QUESTIONS: (Unintelligible) … water?

  MAYOR JEFFREY SLOCUM: As I said, we’ve seen no signs of that. We’re still checking the water and air, but at this point, those don’t seem to be … uhm, credible vectors. (Uncertain, the mayor glances to his right, offscreen.)

  A SUDDEN, LOUD VOICE: How many dead, Mayor?

  MAYOR JEFFREY SLOCUM: At this time, we don’t have a firm number to give you. We’ll be releasing those numbers when the time is right.

  THE SAME LOUD VOICE: Have you finished counting?

  MAYOR JEFFREY SLOCUM: Now that … I do not appreciate the tone of your question! This city’s local government is doing extremely well given these trying circumstances—with all you jackals, all the national media, watching and salivating. Let me tell you … things are starting to fall into place, and normalcy is being—

  Without warning, the mayor disappears.

  In one frame, he is standing at attention behind the lectern, hammering his finger down to make a point. In the next, he is gone. There is no break in the tape, no sign of a splice; there is no hitch of digital editing. Just, suddenly, a vacant lectern set in the middle of the screen, the words MAYOR JEFFREY SLOCUM still superimposed beneath.

  Now, where the man had been, there is nothing but pale blue background. And the city seal, swaying slightly in the air-conditioned breeze.

  The mayor’s disappearance is greeted with a sudden silence. Then the entire room reacts. Some of the handheld microphones withdraw in surprise, and others suddenly jerk forward. Somebody bumps the camera, and the image shakes for a moment. After a couple of seconds, one of the mayor’s staff moves slowly across the stage, glancing back offscreen every couple of steps. Stricken, the woman looks back and forth, then down, beneath the lectern. Finding nothing, she turns back and shakes her head, her eyes wide.

  The video ends.

  I heard them moving about the house while I dozed. Morning sounds. Footsteps and creaking bedsprings. Quiet voices and running water. Doors opening and falling shut. The smell of cooking tickled at my nose, but my sore muscles and foggy head kept me under the quilt. Finally, a beam of sunlight found the sofa, shining orange-red through my eyelids, and I managed to pull myself awake.

  By then, the house was once again quiet. The voices were gone, and there was no sign of movement. Maybe they all packed up and left, I thought. Or maybe, in the early-morning hours, I’d managed to dream them all away.

  Still half-asleep, I got up off the sofa and went looking for signs of life.

  I found Charlie in the kitchen, sitting at a table in the breakfast nook. The room looked different in the morning light: the sun poured in through the open curtains, bathing everything in a blindingly bright haze. Charlie was tapping away at a tiny notebook computer. When I stepped through the door, he cast a quick glance up, then went right back to work.

  “Do you have a Gmail account?” he asked, still typing away.

  “Gmail?” I grunted, wondering if I’d stumbled into the middle of someone else’s conversation. I rubbed at my sticky, sleep-blurred eyes. “You can’t possibly have Internet access here—no power, no landlines, no cell signal. The military’s got that all wrapped up tight. Right? Communication blackout … all that happy shit.”

  “I cobbled something together,” he said with a sly smile. He spun the computer around and showed me the program on its screen. It looked like a simple email program. There was a tab at the top with my name on it (next to separate tabs for Charlie, Taylor, and everyone else), and then, down below, there was space for account information, an address line, a subject line, and a large text field for the body of a message. “If you fill in your stuff, we can smuggle it out. It’ll also capture your incoming mail.”

  I stared at the computer for a moment, then, suddenly struck by what I was seeing, spun it back around and checked its rear panel. “The battery … it’s charged? Where are you getting the power?”

  “We’ve got a source.” Again he flashed that sly smile.

  My shoulders slumped, and I let out a disappointed groan. I’d spent over a hundred dollars on an external grip for my camera—one that took disposable batteries in lieu of rechargeable power—and I’d stocked up on a shitload of AAs. Not to mention a second battery for my laptop.

  I turned the computer back around and stared at the mail program for nearly a minute. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, tense, itching to write. But who could I contact? Who would understand? My friends in California? My father? Not bloody likely, I thought. At this point, there probably wasn’t a soul in the world who had even noticed that I was gone.

  As I was thinking, Taylor stormed into the house. She moved in a loud rush, crashing from the front door, through the hallway, into the kitchen. She saw me at Charlie’s computer and let out a deep cluck. “No time for that,” she said. “No time. I told Danny I’d be there at noon.” Charlie pulled the computer back across the table and resumed typing, faster now, trying to get something finished.

  “Next time, Dean,” Taylor said. “Next batch.” She pointed toward my bags in the living room. “Now, get dressed and ready to go. You’ve got a lot to see here, and I figure we should start at the top. Which means moving … fast!”

  I’d slept in my jeans and a sweatshirt, so getting dressed just meant swapping my shirt for a fresh one and unrolling a new pair of socks. Sabine had left my camera on the floor next to my bags. I slipped it into my backpack and slung the bag over my shoulder.

  “You can’t take that,” Taylor said, nodding toward my pack as I came back into the kitchen. “Leave it with Charlie. He’ll keep it safe.”

  I shook my head. “No fucking way! I came here to take pictures, and I’ve missed enough already.”

  “That’s not the way it works, Dean. Unless you want it confiscated, you leave your camera here.”

  I studied her for a moment. There was absolutely no give in her eyes. Reluctantly, I set the backpack down on the table. I dug out a PowerBar, then pushed the bag toward Charlie. “I can take some fucking food, right?” I growled, showing her the foil-wrapped energy bar. “Or do you wan
t to tell me how to eat, too?”

  “It’s not like that,” Taylor said, a pinched, hard look on her face. “I’m not on some power trip here. It’s just the reality of the situation.”

  Charlie finished typing on his notebook. He pulled a thumb-size RAM drive from the USB port and handed it to Taylor. She gave him a satisfied nod, then turned back my way. “You’ll see,” she said. “It’ll be worth it. I promise.”

  I was in a funk all the way across the river. The morning sun had burned away the dark October clouds, transforming the city into someplace new; it was no longer the gray, oppressive maze I’d run through just the day before. The streets seemed wider somehow, the towers overhead not quite so tall. And everything had been washed clean by the torrential rain, wisps of steam curling up wherever the sun touched the damp concrete. Unfortunately, I couldn’t enjoy this new, sparkling city. I felt naked without my backpack, without my camera.

  I shoved my hands deep into my pockets. Empty, my fingers felt awkward, useless.

  Taylor gave me time to sulk. She stayed silent as she led me south, walking a couple of steps ahead but glancing back every now and then to check my mood. After a while, those glances started to weigh on me. I felt stupid. Here I was, pouting like some petulant child.

  “Where are we going?” I finally asked, trying to regain some dignity.

  “The heart of downtown,” she said. “The best place to start.”

  After crossing the bridge, she took me west on Sprague. The street here was deserted, but I could hear voices and laughter to the south.

  “Mama Cass’s place,” Taylor said, nodding in that direction. “It’s right down there. She gets her food from the outside. Always has fresh-brewed coffee. If you ever need company, day or night, that’s where you want to go.”