The Sound

by James Sperl

  “Yeah,” Cesare said through a hesitant, sideways smile. “I'm not totally comfortable with it, but I think it's all we've got, Andrew. I hear your concerns, and I mostly agree, but time may be of the essence here. I think we owe it to Jon to be expedient about this.”

  Jon dropped his head as if feeling the weight from being singled out. He peeked up at Andrew.

  “You all feel the same way?” Andrew said.

  Silent nods came back to him. He looked at Elenora, who sat calmly away from the others. She bobbed her head once in the firelight.

  Andrew stared at the ground then met everyone's gazes.

  “Then it's settled. We'll head out at first light.”

  He smiled before he peeled away, but it was joyless. Instead, his barely upturned lips communicated defeat, and it was a defeat that didn't appear to sit well. Since joining forces with people he barely knew, his role had gone from solo survivalist to accommodating team player. He never shied from voicing his opinion, and he willingly accepted the group's decision even if it differed from his. He might not have agreed with it, but he tolerated it. To Clarissa, though, it seemed as if his tolerance was beginning to wear thin. If she and the others weren't careful, they might drive away the one person who had been the unifying glue in their merry little band.

  When time permitted, she promised to voice her concern with the others, but for now, she needed to get some sleep.

  They had a big day tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 33

  The trading post turned out to be less a post than it was a thriving mini-city. Comprised of trailers, campers, and thrown-together structures made from everything from corrugated metal sheeting to reinforced cardboard, the “post” bustled with anti-apocalyptic vibrancy.

  Clarissa peered through the truck window at the trading shantytown that emerged from out of a dusty haze. Located on land that appeared freshly cleared of timber and debris, the ramshackle pseudo town looked like a version of the desert festival, Burning Man—if said festival had been designed by a hallucinogenic mental patient with violent tendencies.

  Andrew followed hand-painted signs to a crude parking area. From the passenger seat, Clarissa stared bug-eyed at the various scowling inhabitants in the lot, all of whom clustered around rows of motorcycles and souped-up off-road vehicles. They stared at Andrew's truck from behind pitch-black sunglasses as he pulled in.

  “I'm starting to wonder if we made the right choice,” Rachel said from the back seat.

  Valentina, who had been sitting cross-armed and cross-legged for most of the twenty-minute drive, glanced from the window to look at Rachel. “At least you got to make a choice. Some of us weren't even there to vote.”

  “Oh, please,” Rachel said, snarky. “Like it would have mattered. And like you aren't secretly champing at the bit to be set loose in this place to see what you can find.”

  Valentina attempted to feign insult, but it fell flat. “What's that supposed to mean?”

  Rachel dropped her head to her shoulders. “I think you know exactly what that means.”

  Valentina's eyes swelled to malevolent globes. She opened her mouth to speak, but Clarissa jumped in ahead of her.

  “Well, it's too late now,” she said. “We're here.” She flitted her eyes to Andrew. “Feel free to say 'I told you so' at any time.”

  Andrew guided the truck into a weed-choked patch of tire-trampled ground and killed the engine. The denim-and-leather-clad men that had been glaring at them returned to their conversation.

  “We're not quite there yet,” he said. “These are the sort of folks I'd expect to find in a place like this. Doesn't necessarily mean trouble, but it does mean we should stay alert.” He looked at Clarissa and deadpanned, “I'll take a rain check on the 'I told you so' though.”

  Clarissa smirked playfully. “Har har.”

  Cesare pulled up beside Andrew, as he, Clarissa, Rachel, and Valentina got out. No sooner did the SUV come to a halt than Evan and Jon opened their respective doors to join them.

  Andrew approached Cesare. “You still okay with hanging back?”

  “Somebody's got to stay with the vehicles,” Cesare said.

  “And you've got, uh, reinforcements?”

  Cesare glanced about to verify no one other than he and Andrew were within eyeshot. When he was certain, he pulled back the edge of a blanket to reveal a Ruger 9mm, which he had found under the floor mat of a Chrysler during a gas run.

  “Yeah, I'm set.”

  “Ugh.” Elenora uttered from the backseat. She grimaced at the sight of the weapon. “I just hate those things.”

  “I don't love them either, nonna,” Cesare said. “But this is how things are now.”

  “No, I know. Doesn't mean I have to like it.”

  Clarissa could name off a grocer's list of things she didn't like these days, but doing so wouldn't change any of them. She understood where Elenora came from, though—sometimes it just felt good to complain.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Cesare said, as he scouted the various crews of rough-looking and scruffy-faced men that dotted the area, “I don't think we'll get the chance to use it even if anything should happen. I feel like we brought a peashooter to a tank fight.”

  “Surprisingly,” Elenora began, “that brings me no comfort.”

  Andrew slung a rucksack over his shoulder. “You'll be fine. Places like this couldn't exist if there were rampant lawlessness. An unwritten code of ethics is likely in place. It may not be what we've known in the past, but it's stable enough to allow these posts to prosper. As long as you stay to yourself, you shouldn't have any problems.”

  Cesare covered the gun with the blanket. “Let's hope you're right.” He stuck his head through the open window and wrenched around to look at Jon. “Last chance. You're more than welcome to take guard duty if you'd rather rest that arm.”

  Jon straightened. “We're here because of me,” he said. “There's no way I'm just going to sit on my ass while everyone else pokes around this hellhole on my behalf.”

  Cesare shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He found Andrew again. “But just in case you're wrong about unwritten rules and all, hurry back.”

  * * *

  They divided into groups: Jon, Evan, and Valentina branched out in one direction while Andrew, Clarissa, and Rachel took the opposite way. The logic was boilerplate. With two groups, they could cover more ground quicker, find what they're looking for in half the time, and be on their way.

  The plan sounded solid to Clarissa, particularly the part about assigning Valentina to the other group.

  She was getting worse. Combative and argumentative, it seemed as if nothing escaped her short-tempered scorn. Clarissa theorized that she probably scraped the bottom of her squirreled-away stash barrel and that her reactions were a result of detoxing rather than true feelings. It didn't make tolerating her any easier, but it at least provided a mental hedgerow behind which Clarissa could shield herself. In retrospect, the outpost was probably the last place Valentina should be, but Clarissa had neither the time nor the energy to battle her on why she should have been the one to stay behind with the trucks.

  They followed a thin line of people toward a rustic but impressive archway. Two columns of stacked wooden pallets placed a car length apart rose ten feet from the ground before each curved upward and conjoined with the other. The archway marked the entrance to the outpost, which, as it turned out, had a name.

  Orion.

  Clarissa didn't know what significance the name held, but if the goal in choosing it was to allude to a place that felt both alien and out of this world, the founders had succeeded mightily.

  They passed under the archway, which elicited a frown from Rachel.

  “What's the deal with this gateway?” she asked. “It's not like people can't enter from, like, every other direction.”

  Clarissa surveyed the perimeter of Orion. Rachel was right. No fences—chain link, wood, or otherwise—prohibited a person from going into the
micro city from any direction they chose.

  “It's probably symbolic,” Andrew said. “A pride piece. Something to say, 'Look what we've built. Welcome.'”

  Clarissa leaned into Andrew's line-of-sight. “That's good then, right? If the people here are welcoming and making an effort to establish something permanent then maybe we'll have some luck. Maybe this place won't be so bad.”

  “Sure.” Andrew watched the people in front of him as if sizing up each one, which Clarissa was sure he probably was. “Maybe.”

  With their heads on a swivel, they descended into Orion.

  The trading lanes dividing the “shopfronts” were narrow and gave off the illusion that there were more people than there were. The shops were nothing more than stalls with front-facing counters. There were no entrances, no interiors to browse. It was all point and barter. The setup reminded Clarissa of the games area of a carnival wherein would-be players conducted their business from one side of a table while the barkers ran the show from the other.

  Stalls were plentiful; they were also sad, depressing, and sometimes downright unsettling. One vendor hawked water, which he stored in clear or translucent containers. Many of the vessels appeared far from clean and would likely fail a quality assurance test. Clarissa could only imagine from what muddy pond he obtained the liquid.

  In another stall, a pair of men bedecked in matching plaid button-ups sold household wares, each sale item having been zip-tied to wire mesh frames mounted to the sturdy metal walls of the shop. Their selections ranged from camping gear to kitchen utensils to mechanic's tools. Only a third of the items appeared to be in original packaging.

  Across the way, a squat, heavyset woman displayed used toys on cardboard boxes arranged as pedestals. Handwritten trade prices sat below each item: three cans of soup for a used Elmo doll; 2 packages of Ramen (sauce or no sauce) for a container of miscellaneous Legos; 1 quart of milk or a half pound of fresh meat (any type) for a Nintendo DS, which had been sealed inside a Ziplock bag. The list went on and on.

  Clarissa had never seen such immediate desperation. It was one thing to view suffering from the comfort of her living room when cable news networks sent their most up-and-coming journalists into the pit of the world's most recent tragedy/atrocity/massacre/war to stoke the embers of human compassion, but it was another thing entirely to walk among it. To live it. What really broke her brain was that every example of human misery she witnessed, every wretched person who scrabbled to survive, wasn't the byproduct of some local tragedy—they represented all of humankind.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Rachel said, her nose wrinkled in protest. “And it smells like shit.”

  Andrew side-stepped a young boy and a girl, who snaked playfully through the crowd past him. They trod over muddy ground in bare feet.

  “The Mall of America this isn't,” he said. “I don't imagine there are too many public restrooms around here.”

  Rachel looked at Andrew sharply. “So then what do people do? Just piss in the streets?”

  Andrew raised his brows.

  Rachel grimaced and regarded the sodden lane. “Gross.”

  They threaded their way through Orion's lanes, poking their noses into various stalls and kiosks and offering appreciative nods to the shopkeepers when a booth failed to provide what they sought.

  Clarissa rounded the end of one stall, which was the last in its row, and peeked down the slender space behind it that separated the backsides of opposing booths. Two shops down, a bearded man in a denim jacket and a John Deere ball cap stood with his pants around his ankles. A woman knelt in front of him, her face buried in his exposed crotch.

  Clarissa looked away swiftly but not before the man locked eyes with her. She was sure her face flushed, just as she was sure her step quickened. Rachel gripped her arm.

  “Oh, my God, Clar,” she said. “Look.”

  Clarissa followed Rachel's horrified gaze across an expanse of sludgy ground to a two-story structure that sat catty-corner from them. Three women stood outside a curtained door, each dressed in a provocative manner that left little doubt as to what they sold.

  “Is that...?” Rachel began. But she didn't finish. She didn't have to.

  “Yes,” Clarissa said flatly.

  Based on the cobbled-together materials used to construct it, the building didn't look strong enough to remain standing let alone entertain the sheer number of people—i.e., men—that likely passed through its dingy curtained entrance. A sign over the door, which read “Orion's Belt,” was rendered in red paint with a black drop shadow. Playful hearts with smiley faces scribed into them floated around the name with childlike innocence.

  Clarissa frowned, her expression sour, but it wasn't disgust she felt. It was abject sadness. The women who tepidly cooed to strange men from the doorway didn't look like the sort usually accustomed to this lifestyle. In fact, they looked like soccer moms. Garish makeup couldn't hide their previous lives' plainness, which was anything but plain now. Clarissa shuddered to think what happened inside the roadside brothel. What the women, who not so long ago had shuttled their children to and from after-school activities, were made to do in the interest of providing for their families.

  Suddenly, the filthy, stinking market attained a new level of foulness.

  Clarissa attempted to gauge Andrew's reaction—his face was the epitome of discomfort, yet he barely glanced at the women.

  “Andrew? You all right?” Clarissa asked.

  Andrew looked at her, but that was all. “I'm fine. Just...there're more people than I'd prefer.”

  “Yeah,” Rachel began, “I kind of just want to get what we came for and get the hell out of here.”

  Clarissa nodded profusely. “That makes three of us. Let's sweep the northern section. We don't find anything, we go. With any luck, the others will stumble across something.”

  Luck indeed, she thought.

  * * *

  The first thing Valentina saw after she, Jon, and Evan cut south from the archway was two pigs fucking. It was such an odd and unexpected sight to stumble across so immediately, but there they were, going at it in a thrown-together pen the size of a two-car garage. It didn't shock her terribly—she'd seen worse—but it sure set the tone for everything that followed.

  Orion was a shithole, and that was being unkind to shitholes.

  Sketchy people sold sketchy goods from out of crudely assembled shacks, the sketchiness of them all enough to make Valentina want to take a shower from just looking at them. She knew times were tight and that people struggled, but had it gotten so bad that people couldn't clean themselves? Couldn't run a brush through their hair or splash some soap and water on their food-or-mud-stained clothing? She knew her concerns were petty and snobbish, but if a civilized society wasn't something people fought to maintain, what was left? Places like Orion?

  No thanks.

  Evan stopped at a stall to gape wide-eyed at a butcher's array of freshly carved meats. Each bloody chunk hung from twine that looped through eyelet hooks screwed along the top of the booth.

  “What is all that?” he said, his lip rising in a snarl of disgust.

  “Who cares?” Valentina said, unable to even look at the macabre display. “Let's just go.”

  Jon stepped closer to inspect the fresh carcasses.

  “Probably rabbit. Maybe some squirrel. Chipmunk. Pheasant...or pigeon.”

  Evan's eyes blossomed. “Pigeon? Ugh, that's frickin' nasty.”

  Jon grinned. “Remind me never to take you to certain parts of Italy then.”

  “Can we, like, move along?” Valentina swooshed her hand at Evan and Jon as if she were sweeping them down the lane. “This is making me sick.”

  “You sure you don't want a leg of fox or something?” Jon teased. “There might even be some fresh dog. I can ask if you'd like.”

  Valentina cocked her head and issued lasers from her eyes.

  Jon held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. No dog. Moving on.”


  They navigated the mud-trampled street and investigated the multitude of stalls. Valentina couldn't believe some of the things people tried to trade. Vacuum cleaners and microwaves? Designer clothing and accessories? Computers? Old Ipads and Ipods? Who would be so foolish as to waste good trade merchandise on useless stuff like that? Even if Valentina wanted some of those things, she knew better than to barter for them in a place like this.

  The items were what Jon and Andrew referred to as “bait.” It was a common practice used by the less scrupulous to suss out those with advantage. A seller offers something that would have had a high-ticket value three months ago—typically a technological device—but is currently worthless. If someone traded for it, the supposition was that he or she had the means to use the item in question, which meant the person had the ability to generate power. If they had power, then it was believed the person had food, cold storage, heating and cooling, light—in other words, they had what everyone else wanted. So after a trade, the seller dispatched one of his cronies to follow the person who had made it. Valentina never heard a scenario where it ended well for the buyer.

  “Hey, Dad. Is that it?”

  Evan thrust a finger down the street toward a booth at the far end. It looked like all the others except for the white, hand-cranking shade awning that jutted out from its flat-faced facade. And where most stalls had opted in favor of nameless shops, this one had taken the initiative to promote itself—by painting a large red plus sign over the awning.

  “Bingo,” Jon said. “Way to go, Ev.”

  “Thanks. Locating shitty pharmacies in trash dumps is my specialty.”

  Jon ruffled Evan's hair then pushed his head away playfully. Evan took a couple of playful swats at his father without retaliation.

  They were at the shop inside of a minute.

  The woman who greeted them was so bereft of femininity it took everyone a moment to recognize that they weren't looking at a man. Portly and with an unlit cigar jammed between her chubby lips, the woman's stained jeans were pulled up high on her sizable waist. A gray T-shirt that read “Myrtle Beach Polo Club” was tucked behind a wide leather belt and just visible beneath a leather vest festooned with Harley Davidson pins. Her salt-and-pepper-colored hair—shorn unevenly and nearly flush with her head—was less a style than it was a utilitarian response to growth.