by Weston Ochse
Buckley felt his eyes fill. He lowered his head. He was about to confess his death when the doors nailed to the windows began vibrating. The sounds of scraping and gnawing started in earnest as if they’d finally been discovered and every maggie in the city had descended upon their position. The vibrating increased dramatically until it seemed as if the entire building was shaking. Bennie shouted at the top of his lungs for it to stop. Samuel covered his ears and fell to his knees. Sissy and Rashad began to scream, while Grandma upped her dosage.
Buckley felt it.
The end was near.
This was it.
He walked into the kitchen, laid the shotgun atop the table and opened another bottle of vodka. He was dead anyway. Fuck it. Maybe MacHenry was right with his blaze of glory speech. No more Ben Grimm, it was Johnny Storm time. Flame on. As he spun the cap off the bottle, a clear precise note pierced the cacophony then traveled the treble scales until it found itself. The simple strains of the Rocky Theme from the old Sylvester Stallone movie took hold of the din, and before long, the vibrating stopped. The tune heard at millions of pep rallies, the soundtrack for an Italian-American boxing movie, the symphony for losers everywhere filled the air with its lofty notes. The scraping disappeared. All was silent except for the sound of a lone trumpet playing the ultimate underdog anthem.
Buckley stepped slowly into the living room to find Little Rashad standing in the midst of the adults who were still huddled on the floor in terror at the base of the boy’s feet. His eyes were closed, but not tight enough to dam the tears, just tight enough so his forehead rippled with the strange concentration known to all trumpet greats. Definitely Louis Armstrong, thought Buckley.
When the song faded to nothing, the boy lowered the trumpet and sagged. A small depressed circle remained centered upon his lips like a kissable halo and in the peaceful silence was slowly replaced by a smile.
“What just happened?” Bennie looked around.
Buckley stood staring at the boy. Like everyone else, he was stunned with the outcome. They’d been certain that this was it. Yet they were alive — alive because of a ten year old boy and his trumpet.
“Boy,” Buckley began, striding across the room and scooping him up and into his arms. “I don’t know what you just did, but you saved our sorry asses. Why didn’t you say you had magic in that horn?”
“I don’t know,” Rashad said meekly.
“No shit,” Bennie added. “Whatever you did was a miracle.”
“Wasn’t magic, just plain old music,” the boy murmured.
“Wasn’t nothing plain and old about it, child,” Grandma Riggs said. “And I know me a little about plain and old. Them notes you was playing were the most beautiful I’ve ever heard, more so ‘cause they chased away the boogeymen.”
“Way to go little man.” Samuel slid over and ruffled Rashad’s hair. Then he turned his attention to the hallway. “Oh hell. Now that’s what I call a pig in a blanket.”
Everyone except Grandma Riggs, who was sniffing at the air like a coon hound, followed Samuel’s gaze to where MacHenry stood with a blanket wrapped around his large naked middle. Gert peeked over his shoulder.
“What was all that racket?” she asked.
“You been having sex?” Grandma Riggs craned her neck as she sought a scent in the air. “Someone been having sex? I smell sex.”
Bennie perked up.
“Giving away freebies? When you’re done old man, let me have a go. I’ll show her the difference between a used car and a new car, that’s for damn sure.”
Sissy punched Bennie in the arm. Buckley sat Rashad on the couch.
“Listen here, boy. There’ll be none of that,” he said low and easy.
“But she’s a whore, man. That’s what she—”
Buckley’s fist slammed into Bennie’s nose sending him to the floor. Buckley loomed over the young man who was now cradling his face and whimpering.
“There’ll be none of that, now. There’s only us here and we need to depend on each other. Attitudes like that can get us killed. What Gert did or does is her business and not ours. Fuck, boy. You were a crack dealer and you got the gall to call her a whore? To push yourself on her? If I wasn’t the humanitarian I am, I’d kick you just to see you bleed some more.”
“Hold on now,” MacHenry said, cinching up his blanket. “Don’t hurt the kid, Adamski. He doesn’t know any better.”
Buckley stood there attempting to control his rage. It wasn’t all because of the boy’s remark— no. It was also for his own impending death. He needed to tell them soon. He needed to leave. A traitorous thought crucified his good intention. If he’d never gotten these people together, if he’d refused to help and done things his own way, then maybe he'd have actually survived.
Dead cat in the highway, dead bird in the tree,
Dead rat in the gutter, and little old dead me.
Dead sun up in heaven, dead stream at my feet,
Dead calm all around me, earth full of dead meat.
Everyone turned and stared at Grandma Riggs as she sucked on her glass pipe, grinning wickedly.
“Well, that about sums it up,” MacHenry said. “Dead sun up in heaven, earth full of dead meat. Come on, Gert. Let’s get cleaned up.”
They went down the hallway, the used car salesman’s white ass visible through a rent in the blanket. The sound of the door slamming made everyone jump a little.
Buckley backed up and grabbed a towel from the back of a chair. He threw it at Sissy and pointed to Bennie who held his nose gingerly. “Clean him up, girl. He’ll be all right.”
She immediately moved to help the fallen boy. With Samuel’s assistance, she got Bennie to his feet and down the hall to the bathroom.
Buckley wiped the sweat from his eyes and inhaled the staleness of the room. There were too many people in too small a space. The place smelled like a locker room tinged with the sweet toxicity of crack smoke. He turned to leave but paused as Grandma Riggs spoke.
“I smell you, Mr. Adamski. I smell you right fine.”
"What do you mean, Grandma?"
"You know good and well what I mean."
Buckley sighed. Yeah, he did. “I smell me too, Grandma. I best be finding a way to get clean.”
“That sounds like a grand idea. Maybe Little Rashad here can help you. Go help our Garbage Can Dictator, Rashad. Mr. Adamski’s got hisself a boogeyman problem.”
Chapter 9
She'd heard nothing but her own breathing for hours.
The noise had gone on outside for so long, even when it had died out, she thought she heard things from time to time. Screams. Cries. She’d even thought she’d heard her name once or twice, but a tiny part of her that commanded with her mother’s voice told her they were phantoms, that they weren’t real.
Finally she screwed around her courage and crawled to the door. It was a tortuous journey, across hard cold things she wasn’t familiar with, her imagination filling in the possibilities where her knowledge ended. At the very edge of terror, she finally embraced the metal door and placed her ear against it.
Her mother and father were out there somewhere. Scenarios ran through her mind where they led the white worms on a merry chase, always one step ahead, always safe. Her mother laughed. Her father skipped fearlessly down the street. An image of him feinting left and running right, like he’d done with Uncle Brian during the football game after Thanksgiving last year made her grin, the expression scaring away webs of fear.
But as soon as it lit her face, a frown crept in and replaced it. Her daddy wasn’t going to be playing any more football. Uncle Brian wasn’t going to be coming down from Pennsylvania anymore. There’d be no reason for Thanksgiving dinner, because there’d be no more family.
She suddenly wished she wasn’t alone. She wanted to be with someone, anyone. Her breathing filled the silence. She listened to it for a time and wondered if maybe she wasn’t alone. What if the sound she heard wasn’t her breathing, but someone insid
e the freezer with her?
The very idea made her hold her breath as terror once again engulfed her.
CHAPTER 10
Fifteen minutes after he punched the banger in the nose, Buckley found himself staring at the bottle in front of him. Unopened, it promised the redemption of forgetfulness. The clear liquid cajoled him, its promises of better times stretching through the glass. He felt like Alice — Drink Me all but written upon the vodka.
Rashad sat next to him sucking on a root beer, both of the boy’s large black eyes fixed upon him.
“What made you think to blow the horn?”
“I dunno. It just felt like the right thing to do, I guess.”
“Why that song?”
“What?”
“Why did you choose that song to play? Why not another one? You do know some other songs, right?”
The boy nodded.
“So why Rocky?”
“I dunno.”
“Is it your favorite?”
“No.”
Buckley was stumped. He knew there was something important going on. One of the ideas that’d been pinballing through in his mind was that if there was a God, maybe this wasn’t how he wanted the world to end. Either this was a modern day flood, a nastier way to cleanse the earth and start over, or this had nothing to do with God. Buckley chose to believe in the idea of intelligent design, opting for a supreme being over the Trekkie idea of alien forces, prime directives and intergalactic federations—as if the maggies were an earthly infestation of tribbles. And because of his belief, the single thing he kept wondering about was whether or not God would allow the devil to get the upper hand, for surely this was a thing of devilish doing.
All of a sudden an itch prickled his forearm, followed by tingling, burrowing, a searing pain and then a pop. A maggie squeezed free and began to wiggle, dancing in the air, reminding him of the governor singing The Thrill is Gone. Buckley quickly pinched the beastie with his thumb and forefinger to hold it in place and hid his hand in his lap. He glanced over to Rashad who was staring into space, maybe remembering his parents, maybe trying not to. Buckley glanced at the doorway. No one there, either.
Jesus fucking Maggie fuck!
All Buckley needed was for the others to see him sitting there with a maggie in his hand like he was some sort of maggot wrangler, then he wouldn’t have a choice. They’d shove him out the door with a shotgun up his ass as sure as Grandma had a crack addiction.
He felt a twinge of pain as the maggie in his hand tried to bore through the tough skin of his palm. Slowly, so as not to make a noise or any sudden moves, he reached under the table with his other hand and pulled the maggie out. He grimaced, the corners of his mouth dipping to his jaw-line as he felt it come free like a night crawler reluctantly leaving the sanctity of the cool dark earth that was his skin.
Rashad stared at him, his eyes wide with concern. What was it Grandma Riggs had said? Little Rashad can help you.
Buckley stood, trudged over to the counter and grabbed an empty glass jar. Blocking the view of anyone who suddenly came into the room with his back, he dropped the maggie inside and watched as the creature tried to slide through the container, microscopic teeth no match for glass. He brought the jar to eye level. This was the closest he’d ever been to one-–ever dared be.
Just as he thought, they were eyeless. Unlike a worm, however, which seemed to absorb food, both ends of this little creature had mouths, small oval orifices with tiny teeth disappearing within the creatures’ interior. Buckley imagined that if it needed to, the maggie could use it’s feeding as propulsion, like a tiny jet, shooting through the soft tissue of a human.
He shuddered, thinking of how many others there were cruising within his body as yet undetected. As if in response, he itched. His left hand immediately shot to the spot, but it was a false alarm—a real itch.
Buckley smiled grimly. Yep. He was totally fucked. He grabbed the jar and took it to the table. He set it down in front of Little Rashad whose eyes opened wide, then wider as he realized what had been placed before him. The boy stared hard at the creature. He seemed to be trying to decide whether to run or to smash it or to play with it. But genetics took over, and as all boys do after encountering a strange looking insect, he smiled, rested his chin on his folded arms on the table and watched it through the glass.
“Is it one of them?” Rashad couldn’t keep the wonder from his voice.
“Yep.”
“Where’d it come from?”
Buckley merely stared. He didn’t want to lie to the boy.
Little Rashad turned and examined Buckley with one cocked eye. “You? You got them inside you crawling around and messing you up? Are you going to end up like Sally?” His voice broke slightly at the last.
“Me? Hell no. You see, we have a secret weapon now and we can beat these things.”
“A secret weapon?”
“Hell yes, boy. You and your horn. I’m figuring if you can drive the maggies away from this place, you might be able to drive them from a person’s body too. Kind of like a musical surgery.”
“But I don’t know how to—”
“Hush about that. That’s why I’m here to help. I figure with my brains and good looks and your skill at the horn, we can maybe even save the world.”
Buckley felt more than a little guilty pouring it on thick intentionally. If the boy was to lose faith in him and tell the others, then Buckley was as good as dead. But there was hope now and as long as there was even an inkling of it, he needed to gain the boy’s trust.
He felt a throbbing at his temple, then a pop, followed a spark of pain. A maggie fell to the table. He and the boy stared at it for a second, then grimly went about the task of catching it.
CHAPTER 11
“I don’t want to die.”
“Me neither, boy. And I don’t intend on letting anything happen to you. Look at me. If it comes down to choosing who will live or die and the choice is me or you, I promise that you’ll live. So help me now. Where’s that horn of yours?”
“Right here.”
“Okay,” Buckley said, pinching the Maggie in two then sprinkling salt on the pieces. “Here’s the way I see it. That song you played scared them away. I seriously doubt they’re afraid of Rocky seeing how he’s not only fictional, but an actor of some questionable skill as well. So it must be one of the notes. I read somewhere that every piece of glass has a frequency that can shatter it. There used to be these commercials of a woman opera singer who would shatter a glass with her voice. Are you with me?”
Little Rashad nodded, but his eyes gave away confusion. His mouth was pressed into a firm line though as determination attempted to focus his young mind on the task at hand.
“What I’m saying, boy, is that it’s not the song that scared them. It’s one of the notes. So it seems plain to me that all we need to do is figure out which note is the right one then we’re home free. Are you with me now?”
Little Rashad wiped his nose and reached under the table. He opened up the box, pulled out a beat-up brass trumpet, put the mouthpiece in place, cleared the spit valve on the floor and began to play scales.
Buckley had a few ideas himself. Not only would he cauterize his wounds with salt, but he’d drink salt water until he puked. If he could somehow manage to raise the level of sodium in his body, he might even make it out of this alive. This was one case when ingesting too much salt might actually save him.
After only about thirty seconds there was a reaction with the maggie in the jar as it suddenly ceased its attempt to devour the glass and instead, began to race along the bottom trying desperately to escape. As Little Rashad continued up the scales, however, the nasty little beast eventually slowed then resumed its impossible feast.
“Wait a minute. You had it. You were going too fast, though. Let’s do this. Try a note then wait. Then try another one, then wait. See what I’m getting at?”
Little Rashad nodded and began again.
Sudden
ly, a gut-wrenching scream came from the other side of the apartment, followed by a gurgle of blood-bubbling death the likes Buckley had only heard at a Sergio Argento double-feature. Buckley grabbed the shotgun, rumbled through the living room and down the hall to the bathroom. Instead of a long drawn out scream, the whine of pain came in steam engine gasps. Skidding to a stop, Buckley took in the gory scene.
Samuel straightening up, a knife clenched in his hand dripping blood...Sissy standing beside him in the cramped quarters of the bathroom with an empty bucket in her own trembling hands...Bennie dead in the tub, his throat cut, salt upon his body, a thin trail of smoke drifting up from his open mouth, glassy eyes staring back at a past that fucked him over and a future that would never be.
“Holy Christ! What the hell did you two do to him?”
Samuel stared through Buckley, past him, to a place where murder was common and easy. “Bennie had the maggies in him. Had to kill him before he killed us. Wasn’t a thing I could’ve done for him. That's all there was. That’s all there was.” The large black youth pulled a towel down from the bar above the toilet and began to wipe the blood from his blade. “Wasn’t a Goddamn thing else to do.”
Sissy began to shake. She opened her mouth several times to speak, but nothing happened. Whatever she had to say, her brain was on the other side of it.
“Easy girl. Tell me what went wrong.” Buckley slid beside her. He removed the empty bucket from her trembling grip, placed it on the ground and grasped her hands which disappeared in his own immense right hand like twin white doves in an eclipse. Her skin was alabaster pale.
“I’ll tell you what the fuck happened,” Samuel said. “Boy sat down so we could stop the bleeding that you caused when you broke his nose, then he started shaking and twitching like he needed a fix three days ago.”
Buckley stared at the body. The only place to sit was either on the edge of the old fashioned tub or the toilet.