by Adam Golaski
“Evening,” Roger said to the man with the gas can, but with an eye on John Deere.
The man with the gas can released the pump trigger, stood and replied, “Morning, more like it.” The man with the gas can then heard what Roger heard, a sickly sound, a rale, something unhealthy between breath.
John Deere fell upon the man with the gas can. Roger ran toward the two men; the man with the gas can yelled out in pain; Roger hit John Deere hard with his shoulder. John Deere’s head hit hard against a pump, then hit the ground with a sound like a soggy sponge thrown against a tile floor. The man with the gas can started to complain—“son of a bitch bit”—but stopped when he got a look at John Deere.
The side of John Deere’s head had collapsed, as if the skull was ceramic, as if there had been nothing inside—but, splattered against the pump was blood and tissue, a shivering jelly.
The man with the gas can vomited. Roger watched: the man wasn’t vomiting because of the gross corpse; he was sick, abruptly, violently ill. The man said, gasping and bewildered, “He bit me,” and held out his arm. Roger ran to the gas mart, opened the door and shouted to the clerk, “There’s a man sick out there.” The clerk glanced at one of the monitors behind the counter—two men, and both looked to be in bad shape. The clerk couldn’t quite comprehend what he was seeing and began to ask, but Roger was gone. He wouldn’t wait anymore. He didn’t have time to get involved. He put his groceries on the passenger seat of his car and drove. Without the stars flashing across the sky, the night was very dark indeed.
Roger drove out of Billings. Though the star shower was over, cars were still parked alongside the highway. A pickup with its doors open wide offered a glimpse of a woman awkwardly asleep on the front seat. People wandered on the median: the headlights of stationary cars lit up men and women who appeared lost—at least, uncertain. Strange sights.
A car pulled onto the highway toward Billings. With his rear-view mirror, Roger watched the car drift from lane to lane. Perhaps a few six packs brought along for star gazing. Or sick. Roger let his mind go to worry: his sister had once been quite needy, but since Roger had left, she’d pulled herself together. To ask Roger to come and see her, well, she must really be sick. Roger put this out of his mind.
He considered the possibility that the police would connect Roger with the incident at the Billings gas station—as Roger was indeed connected. Perhaps the clerk would say something suggestive, “He was in an awful hurry to get out of here,” or the police would watch video and see Roger kill John Deere. Roger admitted that to himself: he did kill John Deere, though, he added—and this he said aloud, “His head shouldn’t’ve been like that.” Roger felt a nervous-sick, took a swig of water, pressed the gas pedal, and brought the speedometer’s needle to 90. If the police came, Roger would probably stop. But he didn’t want to think about it anymore so he didn’t. He didn’t allow himself to think about the incident.
Two years ago, during Roger’s first month on the job in Decker, at the warehouse where frozen food was loaded onto the truck Roger drove, enormous cuts of meat but also meals in boxes, vegetables and microwavable burritos, there had been a terrible accident. A truck driver named Davis, a fork lift, a crate, and a cracked palette. Roger heard wood split, a shout, a scream. A crate—three-hundred pounds of frozen food—had crushed Davis’s gut and abdomen. Davis’s legs lay separate from his body, pumping ever-weaker gasps of blood. Roger knelt beside Davis; Davis was alive; he whimpered and gripped Roger’s hand. Davis wept, whimpered and begged. Davis cried because he knew he was dead. Roger had never seen anything so horrible and he muttered, “This is the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen,” but he thought: “I can bear it.”
As Roger drove past the Laurel exit, he turned on the radio, let it scan through the empty stations, numbers flicking from one end of the dial to the other without a word or a note, FM and AM—not too unusual, but—a little unusual. A tractor-trailer rushed past, rocking the Saab in its wake. Roger slowed his car, down to 85, and shook his head at the truck driver. Too dark to drive like that. He reached for a CD. Without looking to see which of his sister’s mixes he’d picked up, he opened the case, popped out the CD, and slipped it into the player. When he and Vivienne lived together in his San Francisco apartment, he often came home from work to find his sister getting ready for a night out, music loud, sometimes with a girlfriend, both checking their make-up, both dancing, both teasing Roger for his suits. Roger hadn’t minded. He liked to see his sister happy. He turned off the music.
On the road ahead, two. little. lights.
Roger hit the brakes hard, glanced at his rear-view mirror—he was alone on the highway. The tires held the road, his belt held him: he did not hit the bighorn sheep that lay in the road. He’d seen the animal’s eyes, made gold by his headlights. The sheep’s hip was crushed, its hind legs bent, hooves in the air. With its forelegs, the sheep dragged itself toward the car.
That the animal had been hit (very likely by the truck that had passed Roger a few miles back) did not trouble Roger much; certainly, he would not have gotten out of his car to stare if that had been the whole story. Roger was troubled because the animal was calm. There was no fear in its expression, no struggle in its movement. He’d seen animals similarly injured, mostly deer, and always they had looked terrified.
He let the sheep get quite close before he snapped out of his uncomfortable reverie it’s as if it’s dead and got back into his car.
A sign for Red Lodge distracted Roger; he recalled the only fact he knew about the area, that in 1943, the Smith Mine exploded, killing 74 miners. He thought of the sheep again, and he wished he’d shot it. Not to free it from its misery, but because it was horrible. In San Francisco, there were bad periods with Vivienne. He thought of the night he’d woken to find her standing in his bedroom doorway. He’d waited for her to say something, but she’d stood without moving, dressed in a pair of his pajamas, for long minutes—he’d glanced at his clock—3:07, 3:08, 3:09, etc.—until 3:20. He’d gotten out of bed, had put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her face. The illusion that she had no eyes was shockingly vivid, even now, as Roger drove I-90 toward western Montana, toward Seattle where Vivienne lived and was now sick in a hospital. She’d had eyes, of course, dull, blank, surrounded by puffy, gray skin. The illusion had disturbed Roger, but he blurted a cry when drool had dribbled from her lower lip, a great elastic strand. “Vivienne,” he’d said. She’d closed her eyes, reopened them—eyes alive again—and she’d said, “What is it, Roger?” When Roger hadn’t answered, she’d laughed and returned to the guest room. Some weeks, she’d done that every night. A few nights had been worse and once she’d screamed so much a neighbor had called the police (Roger had been glad when they’d shown up, banging on the door, if only so he could show Vivienne—asleep by the time they arrived, of course—to someone else, so that someone else could say, “She looks fine to me”).
Roger drove slow for a few miles. A group of bighorn sheep, clustered at the side of the road, appeared to be normal. He brought the Saab back up to 85, drove fast past Greycliff, Springdale, McLeod and Livingston. Just outside of Bozeman, a car merged onto the highway. Its left taillight flickered, a loose wire, a red wink in the dark. The car exited, turned sharply onto an unmarked dirt road. Roger was once more alone on the road. The sky became silver blue. Roger ate elk jerky and peanuts. He tried the radio again.
A few miles from Main Street, Bozeman, in a trailer park, a teenaged boy, sixteen, woke up. His girlfriend, Dorie, was asleep beside him. His mind felt smoke-filled, vague; his skin stung and was slick and gritty. The night before—generic smokes, beer, and finally—finally!—sex, though stupid, frightening sex—Dorie yelped with pain and his orgasm came too quick and all over her thigh, and when she’d looked at the mess she’d said it was, “Absolutely disgusting.” But he was not hung-over sick, not embarrassed or guilty sick. “Dorie,” he said, just before his eyes rolled up and he felt his brain shift, slip inside
his skull, felt things liquefy.
Thought—as he’d known it—was gone from his head. He pawed at Dorie’s body, curious, her neck and her face, and skin came loose as he did. He ate a little bit of Dorie, but quickly lost the thread of what he was doing, wandered away from Dorie, into town.
Outside, the grassy mountains were white, their snow-covered peaks gray. The sky was empty. The teenaged boy was not alone in the park. Others walked sluggishly from their trailers. They had no interest in each other.
Roger was nearly to Bozeman. He dialed Martin’s number: the news broadcast he’d found had been hysterical. “Martin, it’s Roger.” Alongside the highway were parked cars. “Martin, calm down.” A man stood by a car, his hand up, a weak wave, but there was something so totally wrong in the way he waved. “Shut up, Martin. Shut up. How’s my sister?” Roger clenched his teeth. “You stay there with her. You tell her I’m just eight hours away.” Roger pulled the wheel to the left, let his cell phone drop to the floor, just missed hitting a car stopped in the middle of the highway. “Damn it!” he shouted. He reached for the phone and said, “Martin, what’s going on?” but the call was lost.
Roger kept his radio off, to focus on driving. More people had parked their cars on the highway. A motorcycle lay on its side. A man and a woman were hugging. Roger slowed to 45. He hoped the traffic—if it could be called traffic—would clear once he was past Bozeman. Eight hours away. Roger wanted to be with his sister now, not in eight hours. He felt ridiculous and angry for leaving her. He reminded himself that he had his reasons and thus cleared his head. Had Roger turned on his radio, had Roger’s antenna picked up a signal, he would have heard the news that a connection was being made to a world-wide star shower and several new diseases, or one disease with a variety of possible outcomes, a disease that affected not just people but mammals of all sorts. There was a warning about dogs and a story about a horse that tore off the leg of a little girl.
But Roger didn’t hear the news, he drove in relative silence, cautiously until the traffic did clear up, just past Bozeman. He accelerated, brought the car up to 85, spied the green dinosaur logo of a Sinclair, and decided to stop in Belgrade to fuel up. He was more than a quarter down, and he didn’t like that.
The gas station appeared unattended, but the pumps were on, so Roger filled up. As he stood by his car, he watched the window of the gas attendant’s shack. A flicker on the glass; not someone in the station, headlights. The car weaved, and for a sick moment Roger was sure it would crash into the tanks, until it jerked away, rumbled down a dirt path, the gated entrance to a ranch, the gate wide. The pump clicked off. “Hello!” Roger shouted. He screwed on the cap, took half a dozen steps toward the shack, stopped and cried out again. He walked back to the car, opened the trunk, contemplated his shotgun for a moment, picked up a tire iron and a flashlight instead.
He did not go into the shack. He shouted once more, saw the glass door rattle against his voice, shone the light into the room. A few racks of maps were tumbled over. A coffee pot was smashed on the floor. He couldn’t see over the counter. “This’ll be on Sinclair,” he thought, until he heard breathing, ragged like he’d heard before, in Billings, from the John Deere man.
“I’d like to pay for my gas,” Roger said to the attendant, who’d come around the corner of the shack. Roger kept the beam of his light low on the man. “I said I’d like to pay.” He raised the beam up, from crotch to chest, chest to face—
When the light hit the attendant’s face the attendant screamed—squealed, really, a wet, porcine cry. The attendant raised his hands up, presumably to block the light but didn’t actually cover his eyes, only held his hands up, on either side of his face.
The left side of the attendant’s face showed bone, had the look of something chewed and raw.
Roger moved toward his car, tire iron raised and ready, but the attendant did not move, only screamed. Roger wanted to smash the attendant’s face, to shut him up, to feel his head turn to mush at the end of the iron, but he saw no practical reason to do so, and so got into his car, and drove onto the road that led back to 90 West. The attendant squealed and squealed, hands up, tongue circling chapped lips, round and round, well after Roger was miles gone, past Churchill and Amsterdam, past Manhattan, fast approaching Three Forks. There, between Manhattan and Three Forks, Roger calmed enough to pull the car to the side of the road, found the presence of mind to get out of the car—tire iron firmly in hand—and retrieve his shotgun and the boxes of shells from the trunk. Once these comforts were on the back seat, Roger checked to see if he was close enough to Butte to get any reception on his phone.
“Martin, it’s Roger,” he said. He looked around: beyond his headlights there were only black shapes and nothing much in between. “Martin, what the hell is going on?” Behind Martin’s voice the clatter of wheeled, metal furniture, the flash of brushed steel. “You’re moving her where?” Vivienne was being moved upstairs, Martin said, because, “…more secure.” Roger shouted—he didn’t realize he was shouting, the noise from Seattle so loud, “Why secure?” Roger remembered Vivienne violent, coming home to find the glass-top coffee table shattered, Vivienne a mess on the floor, that vacant stare. “Is it Viv?” he asked. Martin shouted back, a “No,” but wasn’t speaking to Roger. Martin’s voice lowered said something like “another patience,” and the call died. Roger redialed, hung up—the road again, he needed to be there.
He thought he’d heard police sirens more than once, checked his mirrors, but all the way to Butte there was no one else on the road, and even for Montana, even so early in the morning, this wasn’t normal. Roger scanned through the radio stations—near Butte there’d be something. He picked up a top 40 station, all pre-programmed, even the DJ, but otherwise there was nothing. Roger opted for silence.
Off the highway, down in Butte, men crawled along the jet-black slag walls, moved over the walls on all fours. A woman walked from a bar to the wall. Her walk was straight-backed, rigid. She grabbed a man from the wall, plucked him from the wall by his foot, dropped onto him, her knees snapped a rib, and she took a bite of the man’s cheek. He did not struggle. He moved as if he were still crawling on the wall. A young mother, her child strapped into the backseat of her car, an ‘81 Rabbit Volkswagen, swerved onto Harrison Avenue, toward I-90. She’d never catch up to Roger, but she’d follow, miles behind, all the way to Seattle.
Behind her, Our Lady of the Rockies, a statue of Mary, mother of Jesus, 90 feet tall, usually brilliant white and lit by floods at night, was dark; all the flood lights were shattered. Mary was a dim shade, her face, blank.
The sky, for the first few hours of Roger’s drive, had been distracting with stars and with lights falling to Earth. Then the sky went dead, exhausted, and for hours was gray-black, pasty, murky. At 5:13 AM, the sky got purple and clouds stretched low were visible and the mountains, too, vivid. The shadows of pines and rippled rock cast deep black lines. Roger had made good time—by driving between 85 and 95 most of the trip—yet he felt late, felt an anxious grip on his stomach and groin. All around were cars, most pulled over, like the sightseers’ cars back in Billings. By 5:45, the sky was a deep pink.
And ahead, a car—for an instant Roger was sure the car was moving—maybe slow—but as he approached—fast—he saw that the car was stopped and that its front end was just off the road and touching the front end of another car. He jammed the brakes. He thought, I don’t have time to see if anyone’s okay, and, I don’t care. Roger sat behind the wheel, finger on the door-lock, engine clicking, ignition off. 5:49 AM—still seven hours to drive—the clock went dark, came back to light, blinking 6:00 AM. “Close enough,” Roger muttered, and without another thought he stepped out the car, shotgun in hand.
“Is anyone here?”
No response. The sky was empty, growing gorgeously pink, hints of a clear blue sky appearing up high, well above the mountains. A bull, a small shape near the tree line to Roger’s left, walked toward the road, something abou
t its gait unhealthy—and Roger heard the sound of gristle, chewed. For a moment he thought it was the crackle of a fire, and carefully examined the cars—the cars were fine, a little dent where the bumpers kissed, it looked to Roger as if the cars had slowly rolled into each other. He walked around the cars—glanced at the bull as he did so and saw that it was closer and that its flank was smeared with mud. The chewing sound grew loud and Roger caught a whiff of something foul, feces. Not the sweet smell of manure; more acrid.
On the other side of the stopped cars was a man wearing nothing but black dress socks. His pale skin was covered with excrement and dirt and blood. His face was buried in the stomach of a still living deer. The deer strained to keep its head off the pavement, its legs kicked. The man was holding the deer down—his strength—
“Stop,” Roger said.
The man jerked his shoulders, pulled his head up out of the deer’s gut, then released the deer—it struggled to move, but its viscera was spread around the naked man’s knees, the deer, falling out of itself. Roger shot the deer in the head; it gave a great kick which broke open the naked man’s head—
and a woman sat up in one of the cars and thrashed around, maybe an epileptic—
her head hit the dash and broke apart like glass, its contents, thick liquid.
The naked man, flailing, attempting to keep upright, reached for Roger, clawed at Roger’s pant leg. That was when Roger began to think of those people—the John Deere man, the gas attendant, the woman in the car, and the naked man—as dead. Clearly they were not without animation, but they were not alive. Roger shot the naked man.