The Conformity

by John Hornor Jacobs

  TAP

  If I could do damn near anything I wanted, I’d be chugging beer on a beach with big-breasted supermodels with Eastern European names and minimal English. I would not be freezing my balls off with a Japanese guy and a one-armed chick who talks too much, a comatose dickhead, and two lovebirds in some abandoned government sweat lodge.

  But there you have it. Everything is ending thanks to the super-blob sucking up all the people and, if what Negata says is true, sending us down a path to destruction. The universe unraveling like a moth-eaten Christmas sweater.

  The end of the world always sounded fun when Megadeth screamed about it. I didn’t think it would be so fucking boring. And cold. I’d strangle a puppy if I could wash my nuts in warm water.

  But whatevs.

  Shreve continues to be useless, conveniently in a coma, and the rest of them, as usual, need someone to take care of business when they’re too weak to do what has to be done.

  Two days now since the plane fell and we fell with it. No electricity, no news. No Conformity or soldiers either (so that’s a plus) but the woodpile’s shrinking. We started with a cord of wood, but this is a big-ass building and the logs are well-weathered, burning like bastards. And there’s no ax in this whole dump.

  I find Negata and Casey with Shreve by the main fireplace.

  “Not long before we start freezing our asses off. I need an ax,” I tell them. I can’t get a handle on Negata. His face is like a mask. That, or the Japanese pack all their facial expressions into the fine art of blinking. “You know, a little chop-socky on the woodpile?”

  Casey’s been in my brain, and I’ve been in hers—all thanks to Dillweed here, lying on the floor. They’ve made him all comfy and cozy for his nap. With my foot, I nudge his leg.

  “Don’t do that, Tap.”

  “Anything from him? Or is he out of action like—”

  “Like Bernard? Or Danielle?” She looks at me like she’s just sucked a lemon. “No, he’s not dead.”

  I nudge him again with my foot just to be sure.

  Her mentioning Kicks and Dani makes me nervous, and for reasons that are strange to me, yeah? I mean, not just because they’re dead. But because there’s some retarded shit going on.

  Like last night, I was coming in from the woodpile—only me and Jack are willing to tote wood—to get the bunk room warm enough so that our toes and noses and nipples don’t freeze right off in the night. It had been cloudy, but the snow had stopped, you know, and without the reflected glow of electric lights nighttime is now absolutely pitch-black dark, so I had to get the logs almost by feel. As I turned back to the lodge, clouds opened up and the moon and starlight swept through the clearing making everything stand out, sharp, you know, like a video with the contrast cranked to the crushing point.

  So as I stood there breathing into the night, my neck hairs began bristling. Something was watching me. There might be bear around here, or worse, mountain lions, hungry as fuck in this bitch of a winter. So I stood as still as I could and peered at the forest.

  Two shapes became clear. One bulky, one somewhat lithe, standing near each other. Other shapes in the trees. Dark fir trees, darkness upon darkness, gray and brown and green blending into black. Familiar faces I could almost make out in the dark. Behind them a taller silhouette.

  I did not wait around to see what they were. I’m sick of this watery, salty, canned soup, and I’ve got the runs now and don’t ever intend on giving the squirts to some bear or mountain lion. Those bastards can eat rabbit or squirrel and fuck right off. God, I hope they haven’t sniffed out Danielle’s and Davies’s and Bernard’s corpses.

  But I’m getting cabin fever. And we can’t stay here forever, so I need to see where we are. Find some other food. Some pasta or canned meat or something. I seriously can’t take any more ketchup and chicken noodle.

  I nudge Shreve’s foot again. “I’m gonna make a scouting run. Look.” I hold up a brochure for Devil’s Throne I found in one of the rooms. “To the southeast is a town called McCall. I fly down there, check it out. Maybe grab some food—canned veggies and shit—and pop back.”

  They look like they’re going to argue. But they don’t.

  “Find a doctor,” Negata says. “Or a nurse. Shreve needs some professional attention.”

  “Right. Gimme your jacket. And those gloves.”

  Negata hands me his jacket and gloves and says, “Take Jack with you.”

  “Nah, I’ll work better alone.”

  Casey frowns. “You’ll take Jack with you. What if you run into a soldier, or one of the Conformity itself? Don’t be stupid enough to think you could handle any of that alone. All you can do is fly.”

  She must have lost her sense of humor with her arm in that car wreck.

  “I’m a pretty good shot.”

  “Not good enough. Jack’s going with you.”

  We’ve all been avoiding speaking mind-to-mind since Shreve collected us into our own little mini-Conformity, but now Casey sends, Jack, Ember, get your asses down here.

  There’s a few flashes of alarm and the dregs of sexual energy and a quick flash of ruffling clothing. Jesus H. Christ, they’re upstairs fucking in one of the rooms, and that pisses me off because it leaves only this one-armed bitch for me and everyone knows anyway that she’s all doe-eyed and dewy-thighed for the Li’l Devil.

  Fuck my life.

  When they finally join us, looking sheepish, Jack and I gear up and do what we can to prepare for the cold. Thank god it’s stopped snowing and the air is still. Flying in winter, in a hard wind, is like saying I want to have my dick fall off from frostbite.

  “I’m going too,” Ember says.

  Casey looks furious and then tugs Ember out into the hall for an estro-con. When they return, both look angry. But it doesn’t look like Ember is going to come with us after all.

  Casey says aloud, for Negata’s sake, “It’s gonna be hard to find us again. We’re in BFE.”

  “I have an uncanny sense of direction.”

  Abruptly, I feel a hand on my chest. Working around my back. Feeling every inch of exposed skin. It’s Casey.

  “If you’re not back soon, I think now I can close my eyes and find you in the dark.”

  “Did you just feel me up?”

  She gives me a withering look. “Puh-lease.” With her one good hand, she holds up her pinkie. “I don’t think so.”

  Ember snorts.

  “So not true,” I say. “And you know it.” She will seriously regret saying that. “Who put you in charge?” I ask.

  Negata stands and takes a step toward me and then stops, his feet apart, his hands free. “I did, Mr. Tappan.”

  I think I can take him. But it looks like Dillweed is going to die if we don’t do something, and I’m seriously getting cabin fever. So, I’m not going to put the beatdown on him today, you know? And fine, I didn’t want to be the ringleader, anyway. I’m a lone wolf. Yeah?

  “Okay. Don’t get all feelings about it,” I say, and I head toward the door.

  I don’t even look to see if they follow.

  I’ve got to get out of here.

  fifteen

  –it’s just a look, that’s all, it is a glance. Mrs. Stevens’s eyes crinkle at the edges like she’s in pain when she sees me, as we walk past her trailer, me holding Vig’s little hand, taking him to where the school bus will pick him up. It’s cold this morning, and our breath is visible in the air, and I’m in short sleeves, hugging myself and trying to keep my teeth from chattering like some cartoon character embedded in an ice cube and Vig swaddled in my only coat, a denim one and thin at that. Mrs. Stevens calls for us to wait, waving a soft, fat hand and waddles inside her trailer and returns with a stained box. Questioning, I open the top and see it’s full of clothes, boys’ clothes in Walmart styles that seem like they were popular a decade ago. But they’re clean and don’t stink of cigarette smoke. And the woman is smiling. Her jowls wobble as she smiles her look-at-how-kind-I-am-givi
ng-these-poor-kids-my-table-scraps smile. And all I can think of is slapping her fat face and the surprise that will blossom on it as her cheek reddens after the impact. I stare at her thinking about it, how wonderful it would be to bitch-slap her fifteen minutes into the future. And maybe my stillness broadcasts to her, because her do-gooder smile withers and dies. I say “Thank you,” and she says “God bless,” and neither of us means it and I think about how I’m going to break into her car tonight–

  EMBER

  It’s like everything is a chorus, the fading strains of a song, repeating over and over again, the afterflash of Kick’s rhythms in my head.

  They lodge in you, these earworms, these aural phrases—the shibboleths—and they repeat and repeat again.

  When I was a girl, my Gram told me about the Mississippi River—em eye crooked letter crooked letter eye crooked letter crooked letter eye humpback humpback eye—and that there were eddies and currents in that great flow that never stopped circling. A body trapped in one, under the surface, would circle and circle again in the eddies.

  Bury ourselves in the flesh to keep from thinking, bury ourselves in our crotches to keep from thought. Our hands, our spit. So much death and devastation.

  All I want, all I want, all I want—get in bed and pull the covers over my head and sleep for the rest of the year. But Jack’s in bed with me too now and it’s easier to forget when he’s pressed against me, his mouth on mine.

  Feel a little guilty—guilty when she talks—when Casey sends, Jack, Ember, get your asses down here.

  Too cold to dress out in the naked air of the room—we don’t sleep in the bunkhouse near the fireplace because … awkward. Snatch up my clothes that are huddled under the blankets at the foot of the bed and we dress, a jangled, disjointed mess, under the covers. We take the still-warm woolen blankets with us, draped over our shoulders like cloaks, soldiers hunting for the bones of the tsar.

  Down in the great room, down into the room so great, Tap sulks and pads about like a caged bear at the zoo. Casey explains the mission to us and then glares at me when we don’t hop to it immediately.

  Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can see that horrendous thing coming for us. That hellish, stinking tower. The weird emanations pouring from it. I’m no halogen bulb, like Shreve, but I can feel it when something stirs up the arteries of air.

  Haunts me, o fearful me, it haunts me, la de da, la de de. Their faces, the misery twisting their features. It’s like a circle of Hell took form and began walking the earth. How Grandma would have loved it. Thank whatever gods there are that she’s rotting in her sanctimonious grave.

  But when I’m with Jack (and—I don’t like to think about this too closely—with Shreve) I don’t feel as terrified. We can lose ourselves in the flesh.

  Casey tugs my arm, pulling me into the frozen hall, away from the others. Her breath smells terrible. But I imagine mine does too. None of us thought to bring toothpaste with us when we fled the campus.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? We’re trying to figure out how to survive, and you’re upstairs with Jack?”

  I don’t think I’m blushing. If I am, I shouldn’t be. The anger and outrage and worry pour off her like a miasma.

  “So? Better than stewing down here, pining for Sleeping Beauty,” I say. The throttled rage crossing her features is, honestly, terrifying. I realize, of all of us, she is probably the most dangerous. Her invisible arm recognizes no wall or boundary or flesh.

  I shiver.

  “I’ve seen how you look at him. You’ve got Jack now, but you burn through them, don’t you?”

  Now it’s my turn to get angry. “Listen, Casey. I don’t know what this is all about, but you need to mind your own—”

  “If you say ‘business’ right now I’m going to fucking kill you,” she says, very quietly. “Staying alive is my business,” she hisses. “And it should be yours too. All of ours.”

  Shitty thing about being called on the carpet is when they’re right. I’ve been hiding from the situation we’re in. Orgasms just helped me forget it all. But I’ll be primped like a pig if I’ll let her see that. She’s obviously wanting to piss in a circle around Shreve. Territorial markings are so insecure.

  Allow myself to nod, as slowly as possible. Can tell by the way the energy pouring off of her has changed that she finds this acceptable. Her furrowed brow relaxes, some at least.

  “Tap’s stir-crazy, and Shreve needs some sort of medical attention.”

  “I’m not staying behind, Casey.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Put my face right close to hers, so my breath brushes her hair from her cheek. “You can go fuck yourself. You might think girls have to stay nice and safe at home, but I don’t.”

  Casey laughs. “God, I’ve always known you were self-centered, but this beats all. I don’t want you to stay here because I think you can’t keep up with those idiots! I need you here!”

  “What?”

  “You’re the only bugfuck we’ve got now. Shreve’s seriously hurt. I need you to try to connect with him, mind-to-mind.” She shakes her head as if clearing her thoughts, and for a moment I can see the panic and worry hiding behind her abrasive facade. She’s scared he’ll die. And even though she’s terrified of me taking him from her, she’d rather risk it than let his state go on like this.

  “Oh, Casey,” I say, but I’ve never been good at sympathy. “You’re in love with—”

  Something takes my breath, stopping the words from leaving my mouth. Casey’s invisible arm.

  “Shut your mouth. All of human existence is on a knife’s edge, and you’re fucking and blathering on about love.” She calms herself and allows the wind to reenter my lungs. “He’s in a coma, maybe. He could be in there, trying to get out, to say something. You’ve got to try, Ember. You can’t hide away from it.”

  Don’t want her to see she’s won so easily. Don’t want her to see that I want to do it. It’s the Li’l Devil. Of course I want to poke around in his head. He deserves that. He’s poked around in mine.

  And in some way, he’s been inside me—yeah you wanna know me, yeah you wanna know me—far more than Jack ever has. Than Jack ever could.

  There’s that to think about.

  “Okay.”

  “That’s it? Just ‘okay’?” She sounds exasperated.

  “Yeah. What do you want me to say? No?”

  She looks like she wants to say twenty different things then, but she manages to get out, “Oh, just shut up. Shut up.”

  We return to Jack, Tap, and Negata. Jack’s sitting by Shreve, looking at him, his face grim and grave. They’ve been through a lot together, and I know how Shreve tugs at him. He’s the only family Jack has.

  The boys have suited up, putting on as many jackets as they can find. Tap’s stoked the fire and now fiddles with his rifle. I hope the armaments will keep him warm.

  “Well,” I say, taking Jack’s hand and pulling him up. “If you’re gonna go fly off like superheroes, you’re gonna need your capes.” I pick up Jack’s blanket from where he let it fall to the floor and draw it around his neck. Thick wool is rough to the touch and heavy but I’m always prepared, and I punch a hole in the fabric with my pocketknife and use a bit of nylon rope to fasten the blanket around his neck.

  He seems surprised and then bemused by it all.

  “Be careful, you,” I say.

  “You’re not going?”

  “No.” I glance at Casey, who watches us avidly. “I’m going to stay here and try to contact Shreve, mind-to-mind.”

  Jack’s eyes widen, dawning comprehension showing on his face. “Yes! That makes sense.” Then he looks like he wants to say something to me, or to Shreve through me, but he just opens his mouth. Shuts it. Opens it again. Looks foolish.

  He’ll stand there all day if I don’t do anything. I kiss him.

  Goes on for probably longer than it should, and with people watching to boot. Negata gives a slight, quiet cough.


  Casey’s flushed and furious when we’re done, and Tap looks like he could strangle a chicken. Negata’s face remains blank.

  “Hey, where’s my cape?” Tap asks, killing the mood. “And my kiss?”

  sixteen

  –at the bus stop, the big one with the nicer clothes, new sneakers, rolls up on me with a kind of expectant grin, hands nervous, and says, “So you’re the bastard.” The word comes out like it’s a bike and he’s taking it out for the first time. So maybe that’s why it doesn’t really register on me and I say “What?” and he says, more confident this time, “A bastard, dude. You don’t know what a bastard is? It’s a kid without a dad” and I stand there blinking, blood rushing in my ears because of-fucking-course I know what a bastard is and then I’m reaching out with my finger to touch him on the nose—no, not my finger, my fist. How did that get there? But he’s big, like his balls have already dropped, and he moves sideways at the exact moment my fist should be touching his face and he’s not there and I’m turning my head and there’s his fist. It closes my eye, and then I’m falling and he’s on top of me and the blows to my face stop hurting after the first five or six and then it’s just the laughter of the boy and his friends that are killing me and then it’s nothing at all except the throb of my swollen face and tightening of my skin as my cheeks fill with purple blood–

  JACK

  Soaring.

  Ground wreathed in snow and fog and the trees standing like forgotten sentinels in some invisible war. Whipping overhead, the wind tears my face. Tears stream from my eyes.

  Flight.

  Gliding over the dark-blanketed forests, skimming my head in the low clouds. Tap racing along beside me and for a moment we are horses, neck and neck. We are salmon leaping upstream.