Grasshopper Jungle

by Andrew Smith

  I raised my paintball gun.

  I thought about saying something dramatic.

  History, when told truthfully, will show that boys never really do make heroic statements while engaged in battle. Historians craftily pen those things in after the fact.

  I had nothing to say.

  But I did think about Saint Kazimierz. I thought about my brother, Eric Christopher Szerba. I wished he could watch what was happening here on the Kelsey Creek Bridge on satellite television. I thought about my mother and father, too, and I was convinced I would never see them again. And I thought about my balls—Orville and Wilbur.

  I cannot say why I thought about my balls, only that I did.

  All of that ran through my mind in the exact span of time it took for me to pull the trigger on my paintball gun.

  That is the truth.

  Bap! Bap! went the paintballs.

  At that exact moment, Tyler Jacobson sprang toward me.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! went Robby Brees’s paintball gun.

  Robby, naturally, chased after me when I ran from the car. Robby Brees truly was a superhero.

  If Unstoppable Soldiers are capable of showing expressions with their mechanical faces and massive compound eyes, then both Tyler Jacobson and Travis Pope looked at each other in confusion and stunned defeat, possibly horror.

  I shot Travis Pope a third time, a direct hit into his thoracic joint.

  The Unstoppable Soldier broke completely in half.

  “Fuck yeah!” I said.

  I had never killed anything bigger than a freshwater perch in my entire life. There was something exhilarating and pure that rushed through me in that moment. I am almost embarrassed to say that it felt somewhat sexual, and made me kind of horny.

  It is the truth.

  This is why assholes in charge of shit convince boys to go to war, I believe.

  “Fuck yeah!” Robby said.

  Robby Brees felt the same thing.

  Tyler Jacobson staggered away from the front of the guards’ vehicle. As he stumbled backward, he began disassembling—clop! clop! clop!—in detached segments that looked like goat-sized green lobsters flailing around in puddles of cheesy, shimmering yellow goo.

  “Robby?” I said.

  “Yeah?” Robby answered.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  Robby Brees said, “Yep.”

  And I said, “That was probably one of the top-three most bitchin’ things I have ever done in my life.”

  Robby said, “The only way it could have been better, Porcupine, is if we were on our skateboards when it happened.”

  Robby Brees was the brightest boy on the planet called Earth.

  At that exact moment, in a small house across Ealing, on Onondaga Street, the Unstoppable Soldier that had once been Eileen Pope came out into the blue plaid Iowa afternoon.

  She was very horny and very hungry.

  And her eggs were hatching.

  GREAT BIG JAR

  WE TRANSFERRED OUR belongings from Robby’s dead Ford Explorer into the National Guard armored vehicle.

  Robby drove.

  The armored vehicle did not have a cassette tape deck.

  It would have been a perfect time to listen to Exile on Main Street.

  “They should put tape decks in this shit,” Robby said.

  “They don’t even have a lighter for our fags,” I pointed out.

  “What could they possibly have been thinking?” Robby offered. “Anyone knows boys are better soldiers when they can smoke cigarettes and listen to the Rolling Stones.”

  “We are unstoppable,” I said.

  It was just as well. I had matches, and half a pack remained of my Benson & Hedges cigarettes. I lit one for Robby and then reached across and put it into his mouth. I touched his lips. I was still very confused about everything. I cared so much for Robby Brees. I would do anything for him. But at that exact moment, I was worried about Shann Collins, and I needed to get back to Eden.

  What was I going to do?

  I caught Connie Brees watching me when I put a lit cigarette into Robby’s mouth and my fingers touched his lips. Connie Brees smiled.

  “Um,” I said.

  Robby said, “Thanks, Austin.”

  I lit a cigarette for myself and passed the pack and matches to Robby’s mom. Louis did not smoke.

  Ingrid yawned.

  Robby and I explained as much as we could. It was really too much to fit inside one car ride, and who could ever expect Connie Brees and Louis Ah Wong Sing to make any sense of what had been happening in Ealing, anyway?

  It would take time.

  Robby and I smoked.

  Robby Brees sang Let It Loose. I had to be quiet when he sang because the sound of it made me want to cry, in a good way.

  “I ain’t in love, I ain’t in luck . . .”

  After he finished, Robby said, “There are other Unstoppable Soldiers out there somewhere.”

  I nodded.

  I said, “Uh. What can we do, Rob?”

  Robby said, “It is a big jar we’re in, Austin.”

  “It’s a great big jar,” I said.

  Here is what the end of the world looks like:

  It looks like a child running out into the road, eyes focused only on some destination ahead—the future, which is on the other side—and the child fails to notice the speeding truck that is there, on that same road, in the present.

  This is what the end of the world looks like.

  All roads cross here.

  Thu-Thump!

  Robby slammed on the brakes.

  The armored vehicle completely ran over the small pedestrian, front wheels and back wheels.

  “Shit!” Robby said.

  “Uh,” I said.

  We sat there for a moment, not really knowing what to do.

  What do you do when it is the end of the world and you run over some dumb kid who jumps out in front of your armored vehicle?

  “I will go look,” I said.

  I climbed down from the cab.

  In truth, I was afraid to look at the road behind us and come face-to-face with the bloody mess that would be there. This is history. I was standing in the present, looking back at the past with the empty road ahead of us.

  What could I do?

  And in the road behind us, stiffly clambering up onto shaky legs was a dark, confused Unstoppable Soldier that stood no taller than shoulder height to me.

  And it was hungry.

  I ran before the thing realized I was food.

  “Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!”

  Excrementum Sanctum.

  I slammed the door shut just as the hungry beast crumpled its arms against the side of the cab.

  “What the—” Robby began. Then he saw the folded, spiked arms of the Unstoppable Soldier as they scraped against the bulletproof window on my door.

  “Gun it, Rob,” I said.

  This is what the end of the world looks like.

  Leaping and skittering over the strands of barbwire that lined the highway out toward the old McKeon House came dozens and dozens—hundreds and hundreds—of little, hungry and horny Unstoppable Soldiers.

  “Holy shit,” Rob said.

  “Holy shit,” I agreed.

  We drove.

  I lit another cigarette.

  EPILOGUE:

  LUCKY,

  A CIGARETTE RUN, AND THE BISON

  I call the boy Lucky.

  It is only a nickname for the kid.

  In the dead of a bitter Iowa winter when he was born, inside the same examination room where Wendy McKeon filled syringes with Robby Brees’s blood, I gave him the name Arek Andrzej Szczerba.

  I also reclaimed my stolen consonants.

  I write in the library. The walls have been adorned with every imaginable beast and totem: a bison, a two-headed boy, an Unstoppable Soldier, a volcano in Guatemala, praying hands, a Stanpreme pizza, a sign that says Roof Access .

  You know what I mean.


  Today is March 29, but spring has not taken hold above us yet.

  It is also Robby Brees’s twenty-first birthday. We are going out on a cigarette run today.

  I will explain.

  Lucky—Arek—is four years old. We have been living in Eden for a long time. Wendy McKeon made rules about things like when boys and girls can take showers, and there is a new history. The new history is Eden’s.

  What I have written here is not the history of Eden. It is the history of the end of the world. All real histories will be about everything, and they will stretch to the end of the world.

  The end of the world started when Andrzej Szczerba slid into the cold sea as his boy, Krzys, watched and wept and drifted closer and closer to the United States of America.

  Nobody knew anything about it.

  There are more of us now. The citizens of the New Universe include Robby Brees, Shann Collins, Johnny and Wendy McKeon, Connie Brees, Louis Ah Wong Sing, and my son, Arek. Connie Brees also gave birth to a baby—a girl named Amelie.

  Amelie Sing Brees is a real dynamo of an Eden name.

  We did what Dr. Grady McKeon told us we needed to do.

  And Ingrid is here. She lies beneath my feet as I write.

  I continue to be torn between my love for Shann Collins and Robby Brees. But I no longer care to ask the question, What am I going to do?

  Sometimes it is perfectly acceptable to decide not to decide, to remain confused and wide-eyed about the next thing that will pop up in the road you build. Shann does not like it. Robby Brees asks me to live with him. I stay in my own room, which I share with my strong Polish son, Arek, and we are very happy.

  Robby Brees and I ventured out into the world above during a snowstorm, in the first winter after the end of the world. We were correct in assuming the Unstoppable Soldiers would either leave Iowa or hibernate during wintertime.

  We armed ourselves with the blood of God, in any event.

  It was reckless and wild, going out with Robby. It was just like everything Robby Brees and I ever did together for our entire lives. Nobody else would come with us. We began to call these trips our Cigarette Runs.

  Nobody knew anything about them.

  Of course, we had enough cigarettes in Eden to last us for years and years.

  We would be gone for days. It frightened the others, so we came back one time with battery-powered walkie-talkies that had a range of fifteen miles.

  Robby and I always went much farther than fifteen miles.

  One time, we’d gone all the way to Minneapolis.

  Robby and I never found a single human being on the surface of the planet called Earth. I do not believe Robby and I wanted to find anyone else, but we never said that aloud. We did not need to say such things.

  On our Cigarette Runs, we have killed a few Unstoppable Soldiers that stubbornly scavenged during wintertime, and Robby Brees and I always spend our nights together in the nicest abandoned hotels, penthouses, and mansions.

  It is fun and daring.

  It is on these Cigarette Runs that I have uncovered much of the history included in this book. It is the truth. It is my job. From hand-scrawled calendars, newspapers, appointment books, pocket-sized digital voice recorders, bones, cast-off clothing, and inflatable whales, I have put things together the best that I can, and I know that you trust me.

  I have no reason to lie.

  Animals have come back in tremendous numbers. On our last Cigarette Run, just after Arek’s fourth birthday in February, Robby and I ran into a herd of deer standing across the I-35. There were thousands of them. The deer had already forgotten why they should be afraid of human beings. When we got out of the car we’d been driving, Robby and I could walk right up to the animals and pet them.

  Robby Brees and I are the kings of the world when we are out on our runs.

  When we come back to Eden, tired and exhilarated at the same time, Robby and I bring gifts home for the women and babies: new clothes and underwear, diapers, toys, food that does not come in army-issue cans, even sports cars and motor homes.

  I always bring back books for the library. Books have everything in them. After the end of the world, you cannot learn a goddamned thing from a computer or a television screen.

  Nobody ever thought about that—how humanity could only be preserved by paintings on cave walls, or books, and vinyl recordings. Robby Brees always brings vinyl records home to Eden.

  I found an autographed copy of The Chocolate War.

  We own everything in the world, and Robby and I stockpile whatever we might need if Eden breaks down. It is going to happen eventually. Things break down. History tells us that, even if we do not want to listen.

  Shann is quietly pouting; no doubt hiding inside her bedroom. She does not like it when Robby and I go out on our runs. But it is Robby’s birthday.

  We need to do it.

  There is something inside all boys that drives us to go away again and again and again.

  Again is now.

  We have not been out all month, and soon it will be too warm and too dangerous for Robby and me to leave. The Unstoppable Soldiers will come back. They always do.

  Robby Brees and I found a two-man ultralight aircraft in the hangar at Cedar Falls airfield. Just like Orville and Wilbur Wright. Robby swears he is brave enough to try taking the thing up for a flight. We have checked the motor, and it runs fine. I think if I get drunk enough today, or shit like that, I will let Robby Brees talk me into sitting in that goddamned airplane with him and going up for his twenty-first birthday, as long as I can have a cigarette or two.

  He promises we will fly over Grasshopper Jungle in our own airplane, and Robby will sing Rolling Stones songs and I will smoke cigarettes and spit on the planet called Earth and we will shout the names of our balls from the sky.

  Johnny McKeon has never given up trying to contact other human beings. I believe there are others somewhere on the planet Earth. I cannot calculate how long an Unstoppable Diaspora could overrun every continent. I fantasize that my mother, father, and brother are all fat and speak German fluently.

  Maybe Polish.

  Johnny McKeon hooked up spools of flat, twin-channeled wires to the antenna posts on the television sets in the Brain Room. Every day he sits, watching nothing and listening to static, twisting and turning the knobs on the UHF and VHF adjustments. One morning, last summer, Johnny McKeon came running from the Brain Room, shouting, “I’ll be danged! I’ll be danged! I found someone!”

  Naturally, we all ran to see what Johnny McKeon had found on the televisions in the Brain Room. When we got there, there was nothing. Johnny McKeon swore he’d seen a portion of an old episode of a program called Gunsmoke.

  James Arness was the star of Gunsmoke.

  Johnny McKeon has been losing his mind down here in Eden.

  He watches the televisions every day.

  Wendy McKeon makes rules. Robby and I do not follow Wendy McKeon’s rules very well.

  Ah Wong Sing cooks. He is a real dynamo at cooking.

  Connie Brees has a 230 bowling average.

  Before we leave, Robby, Arek, and I take a piss together in the giant Nightingale urinal. It is what we do. One day, I will tell Arek about Krzys Szczerba and Eva Nightingale, and all the rest of our history.

  Arek is a good boy.

  “I will look for a coonskin cap for you when Robby and I are out, Lucky,” I say.

  Arek looks up from where he is peeing and says, “What’s that, Tata?”

  Arek calls me Tata.

  “You will see,” I say.

  Ingrid is up above, shitting in the snow.

  Robby and I make several trips up and down, transporting things we want to take with us on our run. This trip we are driving a BMW X5. We took it, brand-new, from a dealership in Peoria, Illinois, where if anybody was still alive, Robby Brees and I would be wanted outlaws.

  Once the car is loaded, Robby and I say good-bye to the other New Humans.

  Shann is tou
gh. She kisses us both and tells Robby to be careful.

  I still enjoy watching Shann kiss Robby Brees.

  Robby tells her that he will bring her back a Rolex wristwatch.

  Shann Collins has four Rolex wristwatches. It is a joke. I would have a difficult time imagining anything as useless in Eden as a Rolex wristwatch.

  I say we will bring back cases of Cup-O-Noodles.

  That makes everyone happy.

  Cup-O-Noodles is Arek’s favorite meal.

  Arek gets to climb up the ladder with us. The boy has only been outside a handful of times in his entire life.

  Robby is warming up the BMW. I still do not drive very well, although Robby has taught me how to do it.

  Arek forms an icy snowball in his little pink hands. It is a game. All boys do this, just as all boys build roads that crisscross and carry us away.

  “Pow! Tata! You are dead!” Arek says.

  Tata is Polish for Daddy.

  The snowball hits my thigh and I feign injury. I scoop a handful of snow and return fire, purposely missing the boy.

  The hatch is open. Louis and Shann poke their heads above the rim, like timid gophers.

  I light a cigarette.

  Robby gets out of the car and trudges across the snow to say a last good-bye to Arek. Like his father, Arek also loves Robby Brees very much.

  In the swirling fog of smoke that rises in front of my face, I notice a large figure moving in the field beyond a row of parked motor homes and Cadillacs.

  “Holy shit!” I say.

  Robby has a paintball gun at his side. We never go out without one.

  “Holy shit!” Robby says.

  “Austin?” Shann calls nervously.

  Shann cannot see what the three of us are looking at.

  “What is that, Tata?” Arek, who I call Lucky, asks.

  Across the field, I can see them. There are three of them, at first, and then I realize it is an entire herd: massive, dark, horned, and humpbacked. North American bison. The buffaloes have come to Iowa, to Eden.

  “It is a big hairy thing,” I say.

  And that was our day.

  You know what I mean.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have been writing all my life. I never for a moment considered the idea of publication until my dear friend, author Kelly Milner Halls, challenged me into doing it.