We were awake about twenty minutes sitting against the headstones across from each other. I stared at the man’s face, his broken, beard-strewn, dirt-blanketed face. I could honestly see a soul in those eyes, but it was deep. Possibly too deep.
“Well?” I said.
“Well what?” he mumbled, deflated.
“Are we going to devise a plan or anything? Try to find Pauline and explain? Die here fittingly in this graveyard? What?”
“I think I would like to die right here, Wallace. Right now. Be forever beside Mrs. Geraldine LeMayre, Devoted Wife, Mother, and Grandmother 1971-2024. Wow, fifty-three. Young for a granny.”
I was able to muster a faint chuckle out of Gene’s little statement. It was innocent, something I’d not seen in him for some time, and something I was certain was forever lost on him. A moment of mild bliss was as welcome as the storm that now rained and thundered down on me.
“I’m going to that shelter over there to call my sister,” Gene said. It was a firm and confident relay, telling me maybe he was getting something of his humanity back thanks to being humbled by his sibling.
“You want me to go?”
“Stay here, Wallace. I think you may have spooked Pauline.”
“Very well. I’ll be here.”
I sat and watched the lightning as Gene made contact again. Truthfully, I was so exhausted that I hoped he decided to stop, to give up on his sister. There seemed no good ending with her anyway. Selfish as that may be, I think I deserved it at the time.
My mind drifted. I found myself in the dark cloud above me, trying to fight my way through hordes of crazed Ire-driven children with red eyes. I pushed each one off with great ease and heard their ear-piercing screams with each boisterous fall and I loved the sound. I then jumped off the dark cloud myself to feel the weightlessness of it, knowing I would die and be free once I hit that hard ground, hopefully not water. I heard a woman’s voice as I fell. It whispered in my ear. “Wallace, Wallace.” Over and over. “Wallace.” And I fell into my body to wake up beside, yes, a real woman.
“Oh fuck, get away!” I demanded with fear driving my order.
It was Pauline, somehow able to sit directly beside me and I not feel the Ire. “Wallace Auker, hello. I’m Pauline.” She was so extremely nice, so pleasant. And even after running around in a supreme panic, she still appeared beautiful. I don’t know, maybe it was the fact that I was beside a real woman for the first time in two decades that made me see her as pretty no matter how ugly she might have been in real life.
I looked up at Gene as he stood over the both of us. “Gene? What? How?”
“One thing at a time, Wallace. First, eat. You’ve been out for an entire day.”
“I dreamed for an hour at most, Gene. I know—”
“You don’t know a damn thing, my friend. Here. I heated some brown beans for you.” He handed me the plate of piping-hot food. “Just don’t stand around me when you fart these back out. I smell bad enough.”
I ate and relaxed. Gene had procured a bottle of thirty-year-old rye whiskey, to my sheer joy, so we passed it around the fire in the cemetery. I could feel revelations in the air.
“Right now,” I demanded, the whiskey shooting through me with triumphant whimsy and glee. “I need to know how you, Pauline, are able to talk to me.”
“Funny, because I asked that exact question to my brother yesterday. Almost word-for-word.”
“I explained,” Gene said. “As best I could, at least.”
“And now let me explain,” Pauline said. “After you told me to run away, which was very wise thinking on your part, Wallace, I found shelter and decided to contact my brother again. But he was already in the process of calling me. He told me of your bond, whatever that is. I don’t know how you were able to do it, but it’s real. I still think it had something to do with the Flegtide he took early in your trip. Maybe genetics mixed in, I don’t know. The Ire was subverted. You two could be a test study if you’d like, or if you’re not careful.”
I had thought the same thing many times since it happened.
“Anyway, Gene talked me into taking a higher dosage of Flegtide so we could speak. He wasn’t aware, as I’m sure you’re not, that people in all developments have been reworking the Flegtide that the CA shipped us into a version that works much better and without the sickening side effects. I ingested one of those versions this morning. Not a single Ired moment.”
“What about Gene?” I asked Pauline.
“He didn’t take Flegtide. He swore to me he wouldn’t need to. And somehow, the man was right. He hugged me once he saw me.”
“Gene is not immune to the Ire, Pauline,” I said in an attempt to help her through required wariness. “Gene still feels the Ire. He feels it big time, in fact.”
“Wallace,” Gene said.
“The things I’ve seen him do.”
“Wallace!”
His eyes burned deep into me with the strength of a hundred bulls. It was obvious he wanted his sister to know nothing of his recent past. I refrained from going any further.
“What’s wrong?” Pauline asked her brother.
“Nothing,” Gene said. “Wallace, Pauline knows I kill, just as she has killed. It’s an ugly part of us that doesn’t need described. Alright?”
“Alright.”
“Gene told me how you and him wanted to track me down to warn me from taking Flegtide. Ironic how Flegtide is making this conversation possible after all.”
I sat up. “Pauline, let me ask you something. When Gene called your cell the other day, you seemed high on the stuff. You weren’t a normal person. What was that?”
“I took the dose given by the CA. It was low, and all that did was give a floating sensation when nothing had been eaten. I wanted to find people, but even in my inebriated state I was too scared of the outcome. I knew it wouldn’t work. Based on the stories I’ve heard in the past two weeks, it did not work.”
“What stories?” I asked.
“Hundreds of thousands of people in developments around the world began to go crazy when Flegtide was released to the public. It was manic for the first few days after shipments. More deaths thanks to the erratic behavior of everybody. But the CA quickly thought of something and we were given instructions on how to boost its effects while removing most of the horrible side effects.”
“And you believe that?”
“Wallace, I’m here talking to you. I’ve talked with Gene for twelve hours now. No Ire, no anything. It’s working.”
The sudden knowledge of myself hit me and nearly pulled me down under the ground. I, too, was talking with Pauline void of the Ire. What? And what?
“You.” I was angry. “You forced it.” I felt Ired without the real Ire.
“What are you talking about?” Pauline said, growing noticeably terrified.
“Flegtide. The drug. You forced it in me, Pauline. I never wanted to take it!”
“Calm down,” Gene said. “Wallace, you need to listen to her before you jump to conclusions.” For a man who’d turned into a bat shit psycho cannibal, Gene certainly seemed normal this night.
“Why? Tell me!”
“Listen,” Pauline said. “This is you. There is no Flegtide.”
Confusion again. I couldn’t get away from it. “The fuck?”
“It was a risk, Wallace. Gene tied you down before I came along. I walked over here, didn’t feel the Ire toward him or you, and you didn’t react differently. It was a risk.”
“Risk?” I said. “A risk is Russian Roulette. This was tantamount to suicide, you idiots. What made you think I would not try to attack?”
“I had a pretty big inclination,” Gene said. “Wallace, you are the largest reason for our bond. It’s not me. My brain is far too fucked up to maintain that defense. My presumption was correct.”
Gene was right, and it pissed me off for some intangible reason. I had no allusions about being some key, some ingredient to change the course of human histo
ry back toward a positive direction.
I stood. “I need to be alone for a while.”
“No,” Gene growled while grabbing onto my arm. “Last time you needed to be alone you were nearly gone forever. You’re sticking around, Wallace. Hear me?”
Why fight? “Sure. I hear you.”
We sat around the fire and ate bread provided by Pauline. Yes, Gene ate real food. And I woefully neglected to remember that I had, in fact, felt the Ire for Pauline when we first spotted her—they had done something to me in my sleep.
~~~~
Chapter 26
The Mouth
All things served as a mystery at this very moment. Pauline had hung around her brother and me for almost 24 straight hours. She took another dose of Flegtide around the 22-hour mark, unaware of any time parameters for this particular drug. Nobody was aware, in fact, making the entire scenario that much more dangerous. And where there’s danger, there’s excitement.
I can’t deny there was a viscous tinge of exhilaration in the air while waiting for the Ire to come back or stay dormant. It would be tragic and sad if it did come back and I had to kill Gene’s sister, or Gene, or Gene killed his sister, or she killed us, but the anticipation for such a moment kept me both on my toes and on the edge of my non-existent seat. After noon struck that day, the truth seemed evident. The Ire was not there between the three of us. I found it easy to wonder if Flegtide was even needed for Pauline to interact with us anymore.
I was asleep under the makeshift shelter I’d constructed across a couple tall monuments in the cemetery. Or, I was trying to sleep. I could not, for I was glued to the conversation between brother and sister only a matter of feet from me. They thought me asleep, however.
“What are you thinking?” Pauline said.
“I’m thinking the days of the Ire might be coming to an end.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m not, Pauline. I think the Ire is waning in its potency. I think the Ire is begging to be put out of its misery after torturing mankind for twenty years.”
I was listening in disbelief with a slight touch of quiet laughter as I heard Gene. He would have never said such a statement the entire time I’d known him, and especially after seeing what he was able to do when the Ire called. He was clearly a different person around his sister, whether it was his real side or a complete fake-out.
“Not that simple,” Pauline said. “Wallace here has something in his brain that makes the Ire go away. Has he ever killed?”
“That’s a stupid question, Pauline. He’s alive twenty years after the Ire. Of course he’s killed. I saw him kill twice, in fact.”
“Then why is he able to hold the Ire at bay in my presence, Gene? I want to say the word miracle, but I can’t without regressing back to the days of religion.”
“Hey, do you remember that church we went to until I were twelve or something? What was it, Calgary Union Baptist?”
“Pastor Weston!” Pauline happily exclaimed.
“Pastor Weston, yes, that ass. ‘Oh, you must deliver your soul through the mailbox of God’. Where did he get that stuff?”
“That ass got it from his ass.”
Brother and sister shared a hearty chuckle.
“Why did Mom drag us there?” Pauline asked.
“Because she had to take us somewhere when Dad wasn’t around, Pauline. And he was gone a lot.”
“Absenteeism. His favorite flavor.” She cleared her throat. “Listen, I know you were going to be a fantastic father, Gene. From all the things Jack said in the brief time you had William, you were primed for greatness in that territory.”
I saw Gene’s eyes begin to moisten. He couldn’t look Pauline in the face.
“I may have been. Doesn’t matter. It’s more about Jack. Pauline, I miss Jack so much, even all these years later. I never got to say goodbye, to say how much he meant to me. The last thing I said to him was ‘When you feed the baby, put the spoon in the mouth because you have a tendency to put the spoon on the clothes’. I was remarking on how messy it was when he fed William. Snotty and shitty, I know. I had no idea I would never see him again. That’s the last thing I said to him.”
This was the part in the Gene coaster where corkscrews became abundant. Nauseating and forward, with the next part likely being some loop or big climb.
Pauline put her hand on Gene’s knee. “You guys were great together. I always enjoyed his presence.”
“He’s gone, Pauline. Jack is no longer with me.” Tears again.
“Hush.” She embraced him.
It would have been a very loving, very comfortable moment if I didn’t have the knowledge that Gene had days earlier put human bits in his mouth and much of it still resided in his stomach. His did not have a purposeful turncoat mentality, but rather one of a severe multiple personality disorder. I saw Gene as mentally ill, established fairly recently too. For that, I felt sorry for him.
“Okay, Eugene. The Flegtide is working for now. Don’t know how it will be in the future, but it is working now. I have a large supply. Maybe we can start to plan lives together, as a family. I haven’t asked your plans after this.”
“Pauline, I never had a plan after finding you. My only goal was to get you to refrain from taking Flegtide. Things worked out differently, but probably for the better. I’d like to go back to Minnesota where Wallace and I lived. I am not sure they will let us back in the development, however.”
“Why not? The CA is more than lenient, and in this time of newness with the drug and whatever is happening with Wallace, I think you would be allowed back in. Let’s not forget the fact that so many developments recently became havens for riots after Flegtide was released. Developments want people, period.”
“But you’re not accounted for in their books, Pauline. They started the cabin program based on strict numbers and they kept those numbers strict for a reason. Resources. Even with the unknown times with Flegtide, I don’t see how they would just allow me and Wallace to walk on in to our old cabins.”
“The CA’s humanity is proven, Eugene. I think it’s worth a shot and that you may be surprised with the results.”
I could see where this conversation was leading. We would have a permanent third installment to our party. I liked Pauline. She was nice and sincere, and she had balls, a characteristic often lost in people since the Ire. She wanted to take risks. So if we had to make room for an additional person in our ranks, I would welcome her, although I don’t think I had a choice at this point—Gene and Pauline could not be separated, not after such a unique and splendid reunification.
My cell started to vibrate, waking me from near-slumber as the brother and sister remained melted in conversation. Of all times, now I was getting a message from someone in the Fort Sill Development wanting to befriend me. Carigniari, Native American Female, Lawton, Oklahoma, 37 years old. Seemed things were lonely down here. The timing was odd. My curiosity reached an unusual apex.
“Hello?” I answered.
On the cell screen popped the image of a lady, possibly Cherokee, drenched in sweat and covered in bruises and blood stains. Very unexpected.
“You have to help me,” she whimpered.
“Excuse me? What is this?”
“You, whoever you are. I need help. This regime of bad, it’s coming for me. The stuff.”
“Please explain.”
“The Flegtide raids, they’re killing people. There is no Ire, there’s only the motherfuckers on the stuff looking for more stuff. It’s like 2010 Mexico here. I escaped but I need help. Please help me, sir!”
Her cries were genuine. Then I saw that she was taking directions from somebody off the screen to her right. They were orders. This was a set-up, possibly to have me go to her so I could get killed for the Flegtide I didn’t have. This was very new indeed.
“You can eat my shit,” I kindly said back to her.
“You’ll die, you fuck!” She stopped the call.
Interesting
, the way Flegtide made people react with each other now. We didn’t have peace anymore. People killed for the reasons they used to kill—selfishness. Old bad times anew.
~~~~
Chapter 27
Pauline
It was more Gene’s plan than mine. Frankly, I don’t think I could have provided the world’s most full-proof plan without it being shot down. Gene had the cockpit completely. There was no use in fighting it because he would go his own way regardless in his preoccupied happy state.
We would hang around Oklahoma one more day and night, making our stay there three nights and four days essentially. We would search a few locations nearby to the Fort Sill Development for a surplus or three of gasoline in order to reach Minnesota without much trouble. If we found some more non-perishable food along the way, even better, although what Pauline promised from her cabin would easily be enough.
I had little faith in the trip being one without incident. Gene’s temper, if it were just simply that, was diabolical and devastating in nature. His roller coaster could pop up from nowhere and that could spell trouble for his sister. Furthering my anxiety was the fact that I would have to hide the horrible things Gene did from Pauline. Gene enjoyed feasting on human beings, and such a detail could very well end the siblings’ reunion on the spot. I braced for that detail to somehow emerge, whether it was from me or Gene’s own lack of self-control.
We found a little fortune when we came across a very old service station. Inside were about eight large cans filled with gasoline, far more than enough to get us back to Minnesota.
“I’ll put it in the car,” Gene said.
I stood beside him as he filled the tank. “Gene, what happens when your urge shows up again?”
“What urge, Wallace?”
“To eat someone. I’ve seen you react away from your own control so many times in the past month. Just because your family is now beside you doesn’t mean you’re immune from the uncontrollable now.”
The Populace Page 16