I stared at him for a minute.
“Thank you, I needed to tell you that, I needed the closure,” he said.
Just then the waitress came over, I had finished my hotdogs. I turned and looked at her.
“Would you like your check?” she asked.
“Yes, please.”
“How about a box for the scallop dinner?” she asked.
I turned back to look at Uncle Elgin, there was only an untouched plate of seafood there, he was gone, or was he ever even there.
“Ah, no, just the check.”
Bob
Every once in a while I take the time to run out to a local BBQ joint for lunch. There is a couple in our area, Little Mark’s which is good, and then there is Bear’s Smokehouse. But Bear’s is takeout only and a little more expensive but so good, definitely worth the trip and the extra money.
Today, I decided that I would pick up some beef ribs at Bear’s, with a side of mac & cheese and slaw, the perfect lunch, and since my monthly royalties check from The Event Trilogy had come in, it was a good day to splurge. After picking up the order I drove down toward the Connecticut River to the area where, in the first book, we made the pick-up of Anne’s parents.
It was quiet, and shady and just a nice day as I settled in at a little picnic table overlooking the water. I could hear the buzz of the powerboats out on the river while I dug into the mac & cheese.
Did I mention that I am a compartmental eater? Yeah, it is what I do, eat all of one thing first, then on to the next, and so on. Today it would be the mac & cheese, then the ribs and finally the slaw. The cornbread that came with the meal would be donated to nature; there were a couple of ducks close by the landing so that would go to them.
As I sat, I thought I heard someone approaching; I took a quick look over my shoulder but saw no one. I loaded up the plastic fork with some more mac & cheese.
“I always like the pork ribs over the beef” a voice behind me said causing me to jump a little. There was a man, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. He was I would say in his mid to late 30s, and he was lean, gaunt actually. I thought the flannel was a little much for this time of year.
“Whoa, where did you come from? I didn’t hear you drive up” I replied.
His response kind of creeped me out, “I learned to get around kind of quiet like. You do that to survive.”
“Ah”
“Yeah, we started eating the beef ribs, and brisket and all the rest of the parts of the cattle that were out on the range around town, but over time that source dried up. There were only about 20 animals. From there we switched to the pigs, we found them easier to house in the barns and keep track of.”
I was kind of at a loss for what to say, I mean a stranger walks up to you and starts telling you things, unsolicited information, it does kind of make it hard to know where to go with the conversation.
“Oh, I am sorry, please continue with your lunch, I have mine here,” and he set a Styrofoam container across the table from me. He opened it and there was a scrawny ear of corn, and a partial rack of ribs, definitely too small for beef and smelled like a savory pork rib, but they could have been lamb too I guess. I never thought about grilling lamb ribs.
We ate in silence for a few moments, and then he said, “By the way, I am Robert, Robert Johnstone, but you can call me Bob.”
“Okay, Bob, I am Tom,” I answered, I figured a serial killer would not likely introduce himself to me, after all, he had his chance to take me out sight unseen long before this point. But I was kind of wishing I had my Smith 9mm with me.
“Are you a local? I mean from the area.” I asked.
“No, I am from out west, great plains area.” He replied.
“I love it out there, well, actually the western end of Kansas and heading into Colorado. It has always been one of those magic places. When I would drive cross country I would see the Rocky’s through the trees and think, ‘I am home’, even though I never lived there.”
“Well Tom, I am guessing that you were never there in the winter time. It gets cold, wicked bone biting cold.” His expression changed as if he was looking at a different place and time, filled with sorrow and pain. “We made it through the fall, and most of the winter, with the food we had. There were about 40 of us. But the food ran scarce……”
I sat and stared at him.
“The cattle were gone, the pigs, the canned goods, we were eating things you can’t imagine just to feel like we had food in our bellies. We made soup, broth really from anything we could find, dogs, cats, bark, anything.”
I did not know what to say.
“We even tried to cook up one or two of those creatures, the humans that had changed; it was not something we could eat.”
It was starting to sink in. He was talking about a part of what the apocalypse would have been like for some.
“When Francine died we did something that we thought was terrible, but Tom, have you ever been so hungry, have you ever seen your kids, your wife so weak and cold……No, you won’t have.”
I knew where this was going.
“We ate her, I had to eat my own mother……” he sat silent, and yet there were no tears, there was almost a defiance in his voice. “It was her last gift to me, to us. She had given me life in the beginning, and gave me, us a little more when she left us.”
I thought about what he was saying, I tried to think what it would be like, and although I like to think I would never revert to cannibalism it was something that could happen, and in the long term of human survival, has, and probably will again.
“After that it was easy. She bought us some time. And once we crossed that line, we, a few of us ….. well….. At first most of the town’s people thought it was odd that we were getting fatter and thought we were just not sharing our food stash. But then they realized what we, my family, were doing. We tried to explain it to them, but they drove us out, they made us go away.”
It fell into place now, Bob, cannibalism, the west end of the Great Plains.
“Bob, you were from Limon, weren’t you,” I asked.
“Yes, but then we were forced out, we had to move to Kit Carson, my wife, my kids, and few others who did not want to starve.”
“And you hunted the soldiers,” I said, feeling now a little queasy.
“We did what we needed to survive.”
I was stunned and silent for a moment.
“Did you ever hear that humans taste like pork? It is true, and with the proper sauce or seasonings it is quite good.”
“I”
“Even some of your characters in the book ate human flesh, and they liked it, well, until they put two and two together.”
I looked down at the Styrofoam container before him, and I knew, I didn’t want to, but I knew, and in my mind wondered ‘who’.
I heard the car driving up, tires crunching on the gravel, I turned to look. It was a pickup towing a boat. When I turned back, he, Bob was gone. There was not sign he was ever there.
He was gone, and so was my appetite.
Cats
I often run up to the local second hand stores, particularly the ones that sell books looking to find what I consider classics or must re-read works from various authors. As some of my friends and readers know I do tend to lean toward the futuristic novels written years ago. Huxley, Orwell, and Asimov all painted the future in a bleak way and it is interesting to read those works to see how close they were to hitting where we are at now. Orwell’s 1984 got the year wrong, but we are certainly heading that way. Animal Farm, I see it as very much on target or applicable to the modern world we live in. On one such run to Savers’ I recently picked up an Orwell novel entitled ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’ and am looking forward to reading it.
It is a warm Tuesday afternoon here at the condo, and thank God, school is out. I live next to a school for behavioral issue kids who spend a great deal of time venting their frustration and excess energy on the swing set that is about 75 feet fr
om my back deck. In a way it reminds me of Huxley’s Brave New World in which the children are left to run rampant with the idea that it will make them better citizens, but at the same time it fails to prepare them for the real world. It is as if they are conditioning the future fast food workers with anger issues and no discipline. They are making gammas, mindless drones.
Anyway, with lemonade in hand, I settled into my swing chair that hangs from the top of my deck area. I love the chair because it is comfortable, but also because it pisses the condo association off. And they can’t do a thing about it.
Quiet, it is quiet, the sun, the warmth, and the cat in my lap, the cat in my lap? I no longer have any cats. After Moo died, and Basement Cat had to be put down I could not bring myself to getting another one. Yet there she was, black, purring, staring at me. Next to the chair, hissing at the black cat was a tortie….It was Moo and Basement, doing what they each did best.
I looked at them both, and thought about them and how hard it had been to say goodbye to them. And yet, they knew it was their time, and that I had been good to them. I had included them in my story, but their part was brief in the story, but for them it must have seemed long.
As Moo snored in my lap, Basement laid down next to the chair. We were together again. I am not sure how but I saw what happened with them after I let them out of the condo to be free, try to go for it on their own. It was not easy for them at first, they had been indoor cats for years, but they knew, they were hard wired for survival.
The part that kind of surprised me was that they stayed together. Basement had always just hissed at Moo, and Moo would finally get pissed off and chase her away. But out there, on their own, they stayed close and soon worked together to catch birds, and mice and small animals. It never dawned on me that house cats would, could be social hunters. I mean we see it in lions, but house cats?
There were some scary times too, with coyotes, foxes, wild dogs, fisher cats, and even raccoons that worked against them and even tried to hunt them. On one occasion Basement was trapped in a corner with a medium sized mongrel looking to finish her off for a meal. Moo came out of nowhere and quickly and aggressively changed the dogs mind and menu.
There were other similar incidents in which they worked together, saved each other and kept on. But in the end, Moo, who was old, had no more to give, she went to sleep one night and then Basement was alone.
The garbage truck rumbled by and woke me. I was alone. I sat and thought about my furry friends, and was kind of sad. I shifted in the chair to get at my lemonade and saw the two mice lying at the side of my chair. I knew, they were gifts, I smiled through the tears.
Sodium and Sulfides
It was a rainy afternoon, not good for the motorcycle so I ended up taking a drive down to Foxwoods Casino. I won a little and was driving back lost in thought, and I am not even sure what the thought was. But I suddenly realized that I should have eaten at the casino, used my points to pay for lunch. Oh well.
I noticed a little diner off the side of the road as I rounded a turn on Route 85, ironically named, the Route 85 Diner. I love diner food and they do generally have the best meatloaf and mashed potatoes. It is a favorite of mine. It might be worth the stop.
As I rolled into the gravel parking lot there were three cars in the lot. The diner itself was one of those kind of art deco metal sided rail car looking things. The corners of the building were rounded, and the tinwork was still quite shiny. The neon ‘Open’ sign blinked on and off invitingly.
I climbed the few stairs and walked into the place. It was not very big, but had eight booths as well as the long lunch counter with about 15 of those little round stools that reminded me of vinyl covered mushrooms. I settled onto the stool at the west end of the eatery. I figured that there was no sense in taking a booth.
The waitress, a rough looking older woman came over. It was sort of a stereo typed flashback to a couple of album covers. She had dark grey streaked hair tucked into a hairnet, a kind of yellow pointed head band and a yellow uniform dress on, with a dingy white apron. She was a little chubby and the uniform was tight. She had a name tag, ‘Flo’, perfect, it made me smile.
“So what will it be there guy?”
I had looked at the menu and on page three was the answer, the meatloaf, mashed and corn. I pointed to it, and asked for the gravy on the side. She smiled; it was a kind of weird, toothy smile.
“Good choice, it is one of my favorites”, then she turned and shouted to the cook through a sort of window into the kitchen. “Sam, one grey mush with the usual, put the mud in a cup!”
Ah, diner talk, I remembered it from years ago, we used to play at it when I was cooking at HOJO’s. Adam and Eve on a raft, wreck’em, side of piggies, yeah, I just smiled.
“And what to drink?” she asked.
“Oh, how about a coke?”
“Is RC Cola okay?” she countered.
“Sure, anything but Pepsi.”
She served up my soda and then headed to the kitchen area. There was another waitress at the other end of the counter filling salt and pepper shakers. She wore the same hairnet and uniform, maybe not quite so chubby and a little on the short side.
A couple minutes later a little bell rang and I saw my lunch sitting in the window. She walked down and brought it over, setting it down in front of me. It looked and smelled great. I did notice that there were some peppers in the two ample slices of meat, but that was okay. I am not a peppers fan, but these were not over- powering.
I think I have mentioned before that I am a compartment eater. So I started with the mashed potatoes. I poured a little of the gravy on them and sampled. They were the real deal, not the powdered mix from the can, awesome. I wasn’t sure if it was homemade because so often the canned stuff they use is kind of tasteless. This was good.
“Excuse me sir, could you pass the salt?” said a voice that was next to me. I had not even noticed anyone sit down next to me or heard him order.
I pushed the salt over toward the voice without really looking up. The hand, the green, scaly hand that reached for it had three fingers, and sort of little suction cups at the end of them. I turned quickly to look at the, ah….guy next to me.
He, it was a gecko, a giant gecko, about 4 feet high, or would it be 4 feet long? I am not sure.
Seeing the surprise on my face he made this sort of hiccupping noise.
“Hi Tom, bet you never expected to hear from me again.” He said.
I starred, then sputtered, “Krezz?”
Again, a hiccupping, “Close, actually I am KHriz”
“I, ah, no, I….” I was kind of speechless.
“So I know there were a couple of fuzzy points that you might need to clear up. So I figured I would help with them.
“I, ah,” I stammered.
“So let us start with the easy one. What happened to the Sky Crystal after I sent the clones to Earth?”
“Ah yes, I thought about that and well, I figured there were several options, but I never really needed to address it in the books,” I told him.
“Yes, and in doing so you left us in what you would call limbo,” he replied.
“I’m sorry, I never considered that,”
“Not a big deal, but what were the options?” He asked.
I had turned away for a second to look to see if the waitress was seeing what I was. She saw me looking at her and walked down. I turned back to KHriz and as the waitress arrived I looked back at her. She was a gecko too.
“Wait, you’re, you’re HYlon.” I gasped.
“Correct,” she hiccupped.
How was this happening, but then considering the other visits I have had, it made sense. I think my mind may be going. But right now, it seemed real. I loaded a fork full of meatloaf in my mouth thinking that if it was a dream I was having I would not taste the meat, but it tasted, it tasted wonderful.
I sat for a moment and could feel the stare of these two.
“Okay, Okay, I came up with th
ree options for you and the Sky Crystal.” I said.
“Yes?” said KHriz.
“The first was that you simply stayed in your orbit, watching and observing the new world order.”
“That might work, I would have maybe considered doing that,” he said.
“Or?” asked HYlon.
“Well, the second option was that you found that the ship no longer had power and after evacuating the clones to Earth you spiraled into the sun and were all killed.” I said.
HYlon looked at me as KHriz spoke, “And I got the feeling that that was what you hinted at in the third book.” Ironically there was matter of factness to his voice, no anger or venom in his voice.
“Yes, well, I did not want to slam that door so I had a third option and if I needed to go with one, it would have been, that yes, you began to spiral in to the sun. But for whatever reason, I guess impending doom was a great motivator, you somehow figured out a means to get the engines back up and working and were able to go home.”
They looked at each other, then at me. Both broke out into hiccups. Finally KHriz said. “I like it. Home it is, I, we will accept and believe in the third option.”
I smiled at them, then caught a glimpse of the dinner plate in front of KHriz. It was corned beef hash, and as I looked at it, KHriz was pouring salt on it, and I mean pouring, not just sprinkling.
“KHriz, I, may I ask a question?”
“Most certainly,” he replied
“That whole canned food, college diet, basically crap food, what was that all about?”
The two broke into hiccups, and finally it was HYlon who replied. “Do you remember what Tom and Asuna had to eat early on when they got on the ship?”
I thought for a moment then remembered, “Yes, it was mushed up bugs.” I quickly looked down at my plate.
The Event Series (Book 4): Filling in the Cracks Page 2