A Chemical Fire

by Brian Martinez

  “Now,” Daniel says and I gas the truck, lurching us forward. To our left the crowd starts moving toward us a walk, then a shuffle run. They travel like birds responding to each other with movements, reacting as one.

  “Look out,” Adena shouts as we smack into the corner bumper of a sports car sitting polished-apple-red. Its thin metal and plastic give to the truck as I push past, steering around and right.

  The flock slams into the left side of us with their hands and chests, rocking us to the right. Daniel says, “We should’ve found an armored truck with gun holes,” and dumps out the duffel bag between the seats.

  “What do we do,” Adena asks.

  He finds what he’s looking for and heads into the back. “Get your shotgun ready in case this doesn’t work.”

  “And me,” I ask, hearing it, feeling the thumping from our front left that means the tire went flat on the sports car.

  “Drive.” He opens the back doors as I weave between cars of sky blue and champagne, ones with roof racks and others with mounted spare tires. I scrape and bang past them, coming up to a clearing, while Daniel discharges round and round out the back, casings pinging against the floor and insides.

  “We’re almost clear,” I yell.

  He says, “Do you see the gas station?”

  On the corner, up on the right. A little more than a block away.

  “Cut through it as fast as you can." Finally out from the dead traffic I aim for it, pulling ahead of the pack. The driver’s side tire is fully deflated and making it hard to steer, hard to build speed. Daniel strikes a flair and it fills the cabin with red light, smoke and sulfur.

  “What’s he doing?”

  Turned backward in her seat she says, “Lighting everything on fire.”

  “Help me push it out,” he coughs and she jumps out of her seat.

  As we get within a block of the gas station I hear her say, “Oh my God, they’re right behind us.”

  “Don’t shoot them, just push.” Smoke taking the truck over, thick in the lungs, I hear them shoving stacks and pallets out the back as I steer left around a van with a victim locked in the passenger seat, meeting eyes with me and turning it’s head to watch us go. In the rearview an onslaught of flaming letters and boxes tumbles into the crowd of messy runners.

  “It’s only slowing them down."

  “It only has to.”

  The truck heaves too fast into the gas station and I pull the wheel right, just missing the pumps on the left. I drive past them and through, eyeing the side mirror with its view of victims taking the sidewalk and then the station, fire licking their feet and distracting them. True to Daniel’s plan it slows them down and I win us enough distance to pull away from them and out of the station. Behind us is flame debris and then something round and green-gray and bouncing.

  “Down,” Daniel shouts and I pedal-to-floor the gas as the grenade goes, erupting the pumps. I squint as the shockwave hits us with heat and fury and the wheel jerks in my hands and for the second time I fight to hold it feeling the back wheels come up and then down, no sound in the ears, air rushing the cabin through the open back doors and pushing my skull forward, seatbelt hugging my chest and holding me. Then, slow-motion: my elbows and shoulders raise from concussion. Glass on all sides of me cracks, bursting out in sheets, separating and spreading away in a billion perfect, sharp and shiny pieces.

  The logo on the butcher shop window is the outline of a lamb. It’s the last thing I see before the crash.

  Coming Apart Together (Reflect)

  “Have you seen him like this before?”

  “Once or twice. You?”

  “When he tried to kill me.”

  Their voices, through the dark.

  “He told me it was you that tried to kill him.”

  “He would, wouldn’t he? I’m telling you there’s something wrong with him. We went to his wife’s house and-”

  “He’s married?”

  My head bobbing, back and forth. My legs the same.

  “She’s dead. We went to his house to make sure, he went blind he was screaming so hard. I got him out of there and helped him recover. He thanked me by swallowing half the pharmacy and choking me.”

  Air past my face, ground under feet. I think I may be walking.

  “Is that why-”

  “Wait, I think he’s coming around.”

  “John, can you hear me?”

  “John?”

  Just the slightest whispers of sight ripping through the black.

  “Look at his eyes.”

  “You look at them.”

  “The morphine pops were a bad idea.”

  “Well you gave them to him.”

  “I had no choice, you heard him. It was that or drive around all night.”

  Reception coming in, picture is a neighborhood with houses on each side, daylight now.

  “I know. What does he call those things again, Victims?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are we planning to talk about what he did to that one in the meat store?”

  Clearer. Clearer.

  “No. Just be glad he’s with us and not against.”

  Clearer.

  “Is he with us?”

  “For now. If he becomes a problem I’ll take care of it.”

  The image wobbles back to place and the first clear object is a car. A car I know.

  This car.

  “Jesus, John, you scared me.”

  “I know this car.”

  This beat up shit-mobile, this long car with the hidden panel in the floor and air-conditioning that ran all the time, every day, year round.

  “Janet,” I say, and it impregnates me with a feeling of nostalgia. They stand at either side of me, in the rain, careful, guns up for more than just Victims, looking like witnesses, ready to bash me for the wrong move, a fear on them.

  “You knew this person,” Adena asks.

  “Janet.”

  Daniel says, “Who was she?”

  “He.”

  "We should get moving," Adena says.

  Hands on wet window, I see the door is unlocked. When I pull away, black, scabby handprints stay behind. I check my palms and find them covered in Victim skin.

  “He?”

  I rub my hands on my pants, pull the handle and it opens. “My pharmacist. He didn’t live around here though.”

  “Really, we should keep moving,” Adena says.

  I get into the driver’s seat. The smell hits me like I never left it: Freon and plastic, cocaine and mildew. My cheeks go withdrawal red from memory alone.

  “We do need to make camp and find food before we starve,” Daniel says.

  Adena says, “We won’t starve.”

  I reach back between the seats and find the fake panel, push the side in and lift it up as they watch. Empty. I pop the trunk like I’ve always wanted to, ever since I met Janet, and when I open it I find dirty clothes. That, and the suitcase.

  Adena asks me what’s in the suitcase. I tell her, “Something dead.”

  “Excuse me?”

  The suitcase jerks and we jump, Adena shouting, “What the hell?” Sure enough the old case is rattling, moving. She says, “Okay, what is that?”

  From the street Daniel says, “Find something?”

  “Casey,” I say and slam the trunk shut.

  “Who's Casey?”

  Adena says, “How is something dead alive?”

  I say, “Look around.”

  The house is brick-brown and tall in the grass. Maybe it was a house call. No ashes are in the car, Janet would’ve brought it in with him.

  Adena says, “We’re not going in there.”

  “We’re not going in there,” I say, heading up the path to the door, past overgrowth and newspaper plastics with paper slop inside.

  “Screw semantics. We’ll leave you behind.” I open the storm door, the second door, both unlocked. She shouts, “Do you really want to piss off everyone in the world?”

  Th
e door closes and I face a mirror, mounted on the backside of stairs that go up. To the right is the kitchen with a round table layered in filth. I come around to the front of the stairs and see every step is a mirror, individually mounted all the way to the top, and in front of the stairs is a door open to a bathroom and more mirror, every wall. To the left side of the stairs is a living room stacked with videotapes and exercise equipment, the back of an L-shaped leather couch wrapping around the television set.

  The walls, all around, top to floor- mirrored.

  “John?” A familiar voice falls from the top of the stairs and my stomach drops. I don't want to but I turn left and look up, past each mirror to the top, and there, standing, alive, with that greasy, slicked back hair, that pointed beak, is Janet.

  ***

  “No fucking way,” he grins through a cigarette. His bare feet reflect again and again as he descends, descends, my heart shrinking. He grabs me by the shoulders, bringing his dirty mouth close, and says, “You’re dead, too?”

  “This isn’t Hell, Janet.”

  “Close enough though, right? It's incredible. I can’t get bored. I’ve tried it, I literally can’t get bored. I barely make it out the door anymore.”

  I walk around the room to step away from him, looking around at conspiracy magazines and books on government research. “You’ve been living here the whole time?"

  “The guy who lived here was a client.” He makes finger-swirls at the side of his head to mean crazy. “There’s two years of food and a bomb shelter downstairs, plus every newspaper from ten years up in the attic. God, I love it here. That's why I don't leave. Also the car won’t start and demons are running loose.”

  I look out and see Adena and Daniel looking down the block and discussing their options: leave me, leave me not. Janet sees and says, “You brought people here? You must be crazy man, this is my hideout.”

  “Have you seen anyone else, living people, other than me?”

  “Don't think so.”

  "That's because those two are the only others left besides us, so drop the paranoia."

  He says, “Hey fuck you, I’m not paranoid! Eddie was the paranoid. He thought aliens were trying to investigate his asshole, track his library books.”

  “Well Eddie’s dead now. I only see you, wearing his fear.” If I learned anything from Janet, it’s how to deal with Janet.

  “Fuck that,” he says.

  I say, “Did it come with the house?”

  "What?"

  "The fear."

  “Alright, introduce me,” he says

  I get halfway to the door and I'm stepping over turtle food and rubber-banded phone cord when Janet asks, “Is one of them your ball and chain? Did you guys get back together?”

  Feet stop, hand hovered on the doorknob, I say, “Did you mention this place had a bomb shelter?”

  “In the basement. Been keeping real busy down there.”

  “Doing what,” I ask, and he smiles. “Can I see?”

  “What about them?” He nods to the street.

  “They can wait.” I reflect his smile back, nothing behind it.

  He takes me through the living room to a hallway filled on the sides by two lines of cardboard boxes, stacked chest high, marker on the sides listing dates in red and black that go back fifteen, twenty years.

  “Half of them are nail clippings,” Janet says. “The other half, hair.”

  We go through the door to the wooden basement stairs, the smell immediate and in my head every detail I’ve ever told Janet, about what happened before the fire, with Gala and the school and my parents, every drug-drenched talk numb-fumbling through deals in parking lots and dead ends. He pushes the button on a battery-powered lantern halfway down and it lights up his oily neck, the one I’ll be squeezing.

  To our left is open space, below that a basement thirty feet square with a table in the middle and each wall end-to-end shelving. They’re stocked with powdered and canned foods, tear-open plastic pouches of carbohydrate gels, large jugs of protein, cigarettes, water.

  “The rest?”

  “Six feet down.” He goes to the table in the middle and slides it to the side, scrape-sounding to show the metal square stamped into the floor. He pulls the handle up, spins it left and pressure releases, letting the door lift and push back to rest on its hinge. Excited, he hands me a flashlight and says, “You first.”

  My feet hit the top rung of the ladder and I climb down into the hole, Janet over me and light from my hand shooting around. I haven’t touched ground yet when I see movement to my right and turn. A Victim lights up, reaching to me with mouth open, and I shout and fall backward.

  “His name is Gary,” Janet says from above. Then I see rope tied around the ankles and neck, tethering him to the wall, knives buried in the burnt meat of his chest and shoulders. Past him, white and half the size of the basement above it, the bomb shelter is mounted with cabinets and littered with the evidence of what someone like Janet means by keeping busy; syringes and cutting tools and discarded skin. A metal table in the center with a woman Victim nailed by the limbs to it, not moving. I walk around Gary, careful not to be grabbed, and go to the woman with squares of flesh missing from her.

  “This is my laboratory,” Janet says, turning on another lantern. “I’ve been doing all kinds of experiments down here.”

  “Like what?” Putting down the flashlight.

  He looks around. “Mostly cutting them up and shit. See what happens. See if they feel it.” He giggles a little at a memory.

  “And?”

  He shrugs. “Hard to tell. But I’ll tell you what, shoot them up with the right stuff and you’ll get a reaction. Very interesting shit I’ve been learning. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a dead guy tripping balls”

  “Their bloodstreams can’t work.”

  “Not their veins.” He goes to Gary and turns his back to me. I grab a thick knife from the table.

  Getting behind him, knife coming up, I say, “So I can’t help but notice they’re not wearing clothes.”

  “Yeah, well…experiments.” I step closer, knife ready, about to do what I’ve thought about so many times on so many cancelled deals, so many unreturned phone calls getting treated like nothing, my blade to the back of his neck needing one, clean punch.

  “Are you there?” Daniel’s voice from the basement above. The knife hides.

  “Down here.” Then he turns to me and says, “If I don't like them I dissect them.”

  Daniel’s head lowers into the hole. “Nice bomb shelter."

  “Built it myself,” Janet says, tightening Gary’s rope. “Come on down and check it out.”

  Daniel squeezes through the opening and joins us, sizing things up. "Concrete. Air filtration. Potassium Iodide supply." He holds out his hand and says, “I’m Daniel, you must be Janet. What’s with them?”

  Janet takes his hand and glances at his toys. “Those? Experiments. Pain tolerances, stuff like that.”

  “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you’ll succumb in every battle.”

  Janet says, “Art of War.”

  Daniel’s face turns up. “You’ve read it?”

  “I’m something of a businessman,” Janet says and I carefully set the knife down.

  “John told us you’re a drug dealer.”

  Janet looks at me and I say, “Pharmacist. I said pharmacist.”

  Janet says, “And coming from you that can only mean one thing,” and the two of them laugh, Gary gnashing at them.

  “Can you guys get out of the ground?” Adena's voice echoes down through the opening, impatient.

  “That’s our woman,” Daniel says, grabbing the ladder. “Small chest and bad attitude. Don’t bother, I’ve tried.” He climbs up and I follow.

  Adena is in the corner picking through food with a strange look on her face when Janet comes up into the basement. “Her?” He smiles. “You hang with her?”

  “Hello, Janet,” she sighs.

&n
bsp; ***

  “You know her?”

  He laughs. “Know her, I told you about her, remember? Her dad is my hero.”

  "Shut up," she says.

  I think back. “The one who used his tie-”

  She raises her shotgun. “You say it and they wear you.”

  “-to hang himself,” I say to Daniel. She chambers the round, her hands trembling, the barrel dancing. “And that would mean you two,” I look at Janet, “You know each other very well.”

  Daniel looks back and forth, his skin growing red. “You're joking. Him? My god, am I really that ugly?”

  Adena’s eyes watering up, gun aimed, wind creaking the house, I say, “Knowing Janet, she just needed something badly enough.”

  Janet keeps smiling, comfortable with what he is.