The Pedestal

by Daniel Wimberley

  I know what I’m doing is ill-planned and blatantly stupid—but I don’t care. I take the stairs two at a time down to the ground floor, cinching a torn bit of t-shirt around my face as I go. It defies logic that anyone would intentionally go out into this nightmare, yet something tells me that’s precisely what Mrs. Grace has done. Reaching the bottom of the stairwell, I see that the exit door is ajar. The lobby is dark, but I sense long before I slip inside that it isn’t void of habitation. I tighten my grip on the pistol, and I must admit that I feel powerful with it under my command.

  I hear a rustling of fabric and from nowhere a man materializes, holding a bit of nail-studded lumber, winding up to whack me. I raise the gun and shake my head. I’m prepared to shoot him, and I realize this doesn’t disturb me as it once might have. On the contrary, I feel emboldened to step out of the shadows and into full view of danger. I’m desperate, and I’m armed.

  Bring it.

  The man falters and then slows to a halt. Now that he’s close enough to get a look at, I’m surprised to find that he’s not a man at all, but a boy—no more than twelve. He looks at the gun with what can only be described as lust. He wants this power so badly, and his willingness to attack me evidences that, even given his shortage of years on this planet, he’s more ready to pull the trigger than I am.

  “Get back,” I say. He takes a single step back, and then waits. For a moment, I think he’s just testing his boundaries—isn’t that what kids do? But his face is in constant flux, quaking under the stress of inner battle. He’s not just testing me, he’s psyching himself up.

  He wants to kill or be killed.

  “Where are your parents?” I demand, as if it makes any difference—maybe I’m hoping a question or two will distract him from his fool’s errand. “Are they alive?”

  “Fifth floor, dead.”

  “How long ago?”

  He shrugs, and though it might be a gesture of defiance, I believe him—time has nearly lost all meaning in this new world, with no power or clocks. No nexus.

  His hands tighten on the stick again, and everything about his body language says that he’s poising for another rush.

  “C’mon, kid. You don’t wanna do that,” I chide.

  But apparently he does.

  To my eternal shame, I don’t even try to outmaneuver or strong-arm him; I just pull the trigger. He drops to the floor with a rustling thud. It’s so easy to end a life. My heart is racing now, but I know the real blowback will come later, when I look in the mirror and cringe at the monster I see there, wearing my clothes. I turn toward the front door, and there she is. Leaning against the door, as if waiting patiently for a tram that will never come.

  “Mrs. Grace?”

  She doesn’t respond, but I know she can hear me, can see me. I know she has witnessed the carnage of what I just did back there. She’s seen it, and even if she’s already half-mad, her body still has the sense to cringe at my approach.

  “It’s okay, now. I’ve got you.” I’m reaching out to her, wanting to comfort her, to protect her. But as my hand nears her, I realize it’s still holding the pistol. I balk and shove it in my belt. Her eyes are molten, brimming with contempt.

  “Don’t you touch me,” she growls. “Whoever or whatever you are, you stay away.”

  “It’s me, Mrs. Grace—Wilson.”

  She squints at me, scrutinizing the man before her with disbelief.

  “No you aren’t,” she insists. “You’re an imposter. You’re a cold-blooded murderer.”

  My mouth drops open; I’m armed for battle, yet I have no defense against this sort of weaponry. She turns her back to me with an indignant swoosh and—just like that—pushes through the door. Before I even register what she’s done, she’s already vanished into a cloud of spores.

  I cry myself to sleep later with Mitzy at my side. Though he’s reluctant to draw attention to himself under the circumstances, Truman is clearly beside himself. He wants so much to go home, away from this carnage. Even if it’s just an empty building, he’s invisibly tethered to it and longs to return.

  The sky is clear in the morning, the sun bright and full of promise. Truman has convinced us to relocate to his building; not only will he be in his element and closer to his roots, there’s considerably more room there for me and Mitzy.

  As we step outside the building, all three of us notice it at the same time, but Mitzy is the first to speak of it.

  “Is it just me, or do the blood plants look—sick?”

  They do. On the street, smaller plants have shriveled into dried spiders. The larger ones have slackened, and many have lost much of their color. Everything is coated by a mysterious powder. Whatever substance the planes dropped on the city, it seems to be working. It’s too early for hope to have any room to grow—but it’s something.

  We reach Truman’s building in no time. Along the way, Mitzy and I often struggle to keep up with him—he may be old, but he’s as spry as they come. With smiling relief, he leads us down the alleyway and into the back door of his building. Glancing up, I think about our brush with death the last time we were here.

  “We probably ought to fix that window, don’t you think?”

  Truman grunts, and Mitzy giggles with a half-smile.

  The planes are at it again. I wish I knew for sure how effective their efforts have been, but I’m willing to take anything at this point. We watch from the upstairs window facing the street—which isn’t painted or boarded up, unlike the back side. I don’t know if my optimism stems from any reasonable expectation or not, but to my eye, the plants really do look to be dying off.

  Before bed, Truman brings an old shoebox out of a closet. Inside are hundreds of old printed photographs of him and his deceased wife in their younger years. There truly is a resemblance between Mitzy and Mildred; now that I’ve seen it for myself, it’s easy to understand the depth and rapid development of Truman’s attachment to my wife.

  I fall asleep dreaming of Truman’s pictures. Visions ebb and flow in and out of sequence like a wad of filmstrip, and over the course of the night, I experience a lifetime through Truman’s eyes. Mitzy wakes me in the morning with a kiss that tells me she’s had similar dreams.

  I hope we make it through all this. I’d give anything for a chance to make my own memories with this woman, memories that aren’t burred and stained by the only existence we’ve had in common thus far, which can only be described as ongoing trauma. I want to share romantic sunrises holding hands, and dinner at Gizi’s on Friday nights, and late-night old-movie marathons when we should be sleeping. I want to give her flowers for no reason, to deliver kisses so deep they solder our souls into one.

  I want to love my wife in a world that isn’t conspiring to eat us.

  I’m thinking about this well into the morning, beyond breakfast and right up to lunch. I’m thinking about it still when something amazing happens.

  The power comes on.

  Well, it really just flickers on for a second, and then back off again—but you can’t imagine the chain reaction of glee in that room. Truman jumps to his feet and shouts for joy. Mitzy covers her mouth and has some sort of bouncing spasm. I’m cautiously optimistic, because one of us has to remain pragmatic, but when it flickers again—this time lingering for a full thirty seconds before losing its grip—I feel my heart bulge with hope. Mitzy is crying, but it’s a happy sort of crying. I wrap her in my arms and she collapses into me, a tide of sobs swelling through her and into me as if they are my own.

  The power’s been on for a few days now. We lose it now and then, but it returns fairly quickly. Still, each time it vanishes my heart seems to stop beating for fear it’ll be gone for good this time. My NanoPrint has hummed to life a few times—which implies that somewhere nearby, a nexus hub is powering up–but it eventually gives up connecting to anything and quiets down again. Truman doesn’t have Viseon walls, but he does have an old plasma television that still works. None of the broadcast stations are fully up
and running, but a couple of the regional networks periodically air updates; the trick is to be sitting there when they happen to come along.

  From what we can gather—so far all the news has been continental, so we’re left guessing about anything local—the blood plants have been nearly eradicated. I have a sneaking suspicion that Fiona may have a hand in our salvation. I’m reluctant to award her any credit, though; she brought this plague upon us, after all. There’s been a lot of speculation as to which chemical the government used against the plants—sodium chloride, sodium hydroxide—but whatever it was affected more than the blood plants. I can’t speak for the world, but just about every plant on this continent has died a similar death. As hopeful as we’ve all become, we can’t help but wonder what future awaits us; without crops, we’re on borrowed time.

  Just like everything else, the death count is merely a guess—one hundred and sixty-five million, last I heard—but I have no problem believing it to be in the ballpark. I don’t know how the calculations have been reached, so I have to wonder if I’ve been mistakenly included in that count. Realizing this possibility gives me a little hope that we—the survivors of the blood plant plague—might very well amount to more than anyone dared to hope for.

  The governor of Illinois has dispatched military installments throughout the city. There’s some sort of martial law in effect, but to be honest, I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean. We’re still afraid to go outside for more than a few minutes at a time, anyway. Whatever curfews have been placed over our heads are moot.

  Our food is nearly gone, and we’ve begun to ration it—we should’ve been doing this all along, I suppose. One benefit of the military installments is that food and medical rations are expected to be distributed regularly—though to where remains an unanswered question—starting in a couple of days.

  I keep waiting for the floor to drop away, for everything to fall apart again. Our nation is on the mend, yet there are so many who didn’t make it. And though I try very hard to forget it, the life I took will surely haunt me forever. I know I shouldn’t complain—I deserve it, after all.

  Truman and I have begun fixing up his building. The pawn shop downstairs is in extraordinary disarray. I don’t have any idea what I’m doing, but Truman is quite the handyman. He mocks my fruitless efforts at construction, yet he doesn’t speak ill of my work ethic or my willingness to learn. I’ve come to think of him very fondly; he’s not really a father figure, but I have an enormous amount of respect for him as a man, and as a survivor. Because when you think about it—and despite his claims to the contrary—he has never needed us. He was doing just fine before we came along and disrupted his solitude.

  There’s no question that the blood plants have caused more destruction, more death, than any other plague in human history. Yet in the wake of this destruction, a rainbow is bleeding through the dust. Though the plants fed on man and earth alike, it was the nexus that suffered the most incalculable loss. If reports are to be believed—and I must admit that I hope they are—the nexus won’t recover. At least, not in my lifetime. The entire network of nexus infrastructure—which took over a hundred years to amass—has been completely destroyed. I admit I have mixed emotions on the subject—but overall?

  I’m relieved.

  There have always been dodgers out there, weirdos who abandon the data stream to get back to nature and whatnot; and guys like me have always had a good laugh at their expense. But you know what? There’s something undeniably fulfilling in learning to be self-sufficient—to not only consume, but contribute. Maybe that’s what family has always been about. I never got that impression in my home, but that doesn’t count for much. I’m tired of looking down on my family, though. My parents tried hard; they failed in so many ways because they didn’t know any better. I’ve decided—better late than never, I hope—to learn from their mistakes rather than cling to them.

  I’ve decided to forgive them.

  That’s important, too. Because in the midst of all this craziness, I plan to have a family of my own. I know—who would do that, right? Who would bring a child into this flailing civilization? I suppose I feel something coming, something that will rise above the rubble. Something worth living for. Something worth sharing.

  It’s a steamy morning—barely eight o’clock and already in the upper eighties. It smells like rain, though no storm clouds are in sight. I sip my coffee and stifle a yawn. My patio is ridiculously small, but it’s not bad, considering how little I pay for it. I gaze into the morning sky where the moon is still perched in a waning gibbous against a sea of blue. I look upon its sickly surface, mottled with splashes of pink and brown, ulcered with red sores, and I’m reminded of just how precious time is—and just how close my species came to extinction.

  Nobody’s completely worked out how the moon came to be infected, but I don’t suppose it matters much. While global leaders caucus over the trivialities of politics and commerce, scientists everywhere are screaming at the tops of their lungs that the moon isn’t that far away. They’re viewed worldwide as zealots, as crazy people who can’t bear to let go of the past.

  I hate to be negative, but I agree with them. One day, I fear, a little red plant is going to pop up on someone’s driveway or something—if one doesn’t, something equally life-threatening, and probably of our own making, will pop up in its stead—and the world will be scoured of life once again.

  In the meantime, I mean to make every moment count.

  “Come inside, Wilson,” hollers a voice from downstairs. I sigh and obey dutifully. Inside, I brush my teeth, comb my hair, and dress in comfortable shorts and a t-shirt. Two days ago, every active NanoPrint on the planet was wiped clean.

  Well, one might’ve slipped through the net.

  With an enigmatic smile, I wink at the man in the mirror, abstractedly running my fingers across the ragged stitches on his wrist. I think about how much the world has changed in my lifetime, and it never ceases to amaze me.

  These days it takes me a little longer to descend the stairs, but I’m in no hurry—I have all the time in the world. The aroma of bacon and eggs sends my stomach into a rumble and I cry out, “Feed me, woman!” Mitzy chortles and greets me with a good morning kiss and an affectionate pat on the rear.

  “Not bad,” she says with a giggle. “For an old man.”

  At the kitchen table, my son groans. “Can you guys put a lid on that while I’m here?” He looks so handsome in his suit. I wish he had more time for us, but he’s a man now—he’ll be twenty-seven tomorrow—and with his own home and career to cultivate, I feel privileged to be a priority at all. Just like me in my younger years, Arthur isn’t a huge hit with the ladies. But I know there’s a young lady out there with his name written all over her. In the meantime, I’m honored to have him here for breakfast, even if it’s a pastime he humors purely out of a sense of duty.

  “Now why in the world would we want to do that?” I say.

  Arthur chats us up about work, where he’s a key player in the restoration of the nexus. I don’t agonize over his choice of career paths anymore. It’s his decision, however much my paternal instinct seems to whisper otherwise. Mitzy and I raised him to follow his heart, and I’m doing my best to let him.

  Besides, admonishing a man at his age will only push him away.

  I’d be lying if I said it didn’t tear me apart to watch him do what he does. The world is systematically hoisting mankind back onto that precarious pedestal—blindly repeating a mistake that nearly sucked us dry of our ability to be self-sufficient, to be human beings rather than mere consumers. And knowing that my son is subjected to daily propaganda—cleverly packaged, portraying those of us with colorful opinions as crazed radicals—honestly, it drives me nearly mad.

  But I believe in my son, and to believe in him is to know that he’ll brave the truth, once it’s revealed to him.

  Mitzy lowers a gift bag onto the table like a crane; expertly curled projections of colorful, tissue�
��thin cellophane peek through the opening like volcanic ash frozen in time.

  “Aw, c’mon, Mom. We agreed you guys weren’t going to do this.” His words are firm, but they don’t really chafe, because his eyes are sparkling with mischief. You can never take the boy out of the man—and birthdays have never lost their importance to us. He rips into the bag like the little boy I’ll always cherish.

  “Wow, Mom. It’s beautiful.” It’s a matching titanium pen and pencil set engraved with his name, and a leather-bound journal. The pages are of thin, slightly transparent polyethylene, but they’ll outlive us all. In a world of virtual keyboards and voice-activated word processing, writing by hand is truly a lost art. Naturally, we’ve become pretty fond of it in this house. Nothing like a near end-of-the-world experience to bring one back to the basics.

  “It’s just a little something, hun.”

  Arthur leans across the table and kisses her cheek. “Thanks, Mom. You really shouldn’t have, though.”

  “Uh-uh,” Mitzy rebuts. “I’m not giving up birthday presents, no matter what you say. It’s my right as your mother, so get used to it.”

  I smile at this petty exchange; it’s not only their annual ritual, it’s mine, too—watching from the sidelines, I mean. When it’s over, it’s my turn. Taking a deep breath, I gingerly lay a small box on the table in front of my son. I’ve painstakingly wrapped the box in blue, metallic plastic, encircling my handiwork with a silver ribbon. Mitzy rewards my effort with a smile; she’s a keeper of the “it’s the thought that counts” principle, so the gift-wrapping is as important as the gift itself.

  Arthur tears through the wrapping and opens the box. As he reaches inside, I feel my heart flutter nervously. This is a moment I’ve at once been looking forward to and dreading. For a split second, I doubt my decision to do this and nearly snatch it from his hands to throw in the garbage. But then I feel Mitzy’s hand seeking out mine underneath the table, and I know she’s apprehensive, too. That we’re in this together, no matter what.