Such news did nothing to help Gene. If anything, it would hurt him, even in death. I would remember Gene, of course. But he had nobody else left to remember him, both for his good parts and bad parts. His sister was dead. His husband and son were dead. His legacy sat firmly within me, and I had no idea what to do with it. Truthfully, his legacy is little more than a lame duck. But I owned it and had to do something with it.
I waffled with the idea, but eventually settled on removing his remains from the pub and putting him in the ground. Some people demanded the return of religion alongside the sudden return of human interaction. I, for one, would have benefited from a person of the cloth when I buried Gene. Otherwise, his send-off would not have been so bleak and somewhat meaningless.
I stood above the grave on a small hill without trees a short distance behind my cabin. About a foot deep was all I could reach beneath the soil. Dirt covered my drab gray clothes. My hands were haphazardly crossed in front of me.
“There were malls before the Ire. We walked, we shopped, we ate, and ultimately we hated them. We liked the ideas of them mostly. But in each mall was a map and on each map was a tag. ‘You Are Here’. Quick and simple then, everything now. You are here now, Gene. You’re here. You’re beside this tree in Minnesota Development Number-5. Soon to be an actual state again, I believe.”
I couldn’t let this go on without something resembling a true, traditional funeral carrying on. The tears breaking from my eyes took that role.
“You have been lifeless only two days and already the world feels different. Singularly adjoined upon the axis of another universe. My way of saying it all feels foreign. Gene, I needed you to be gone for the health of everyone you would have killed in your involuntary quest for meals. But also, and you’re going to hate me saying this, I needed you gone to make me better. Not a better man, but rather a healthier man. The hours I’ve invested in you are too many to count. And for each one, I think I have lost a bit of my soul. I pined over your sorry ass more than I deserved to. Than you deserved. You made me be your friend. In the end, it was a decision...that I still have no verdict on whether it was good or bad. The love I felt for you made me like humanity again. The hate I felt for you made me, well, hate, and there’s nothing human about that. But all in all, Gene, I know deep in me that I would always do it over again. Retrospection makes you think differently than in the moment. Your memory is stronger than your reality, and that fucking sucks, Gene. You were too great a human to make me think that way.”
Wind shot through me like Gene smacking my face with his fists. I bet it was him telling me it was either fine or wrong of me to say it.
“You made me cry, like I am now. Nobody else has brought out such passion. But enough about me. You are here, Gene. Well, your body is here in this little grave. You are probably with Jack now. And you know what? You belong there. If there’s anything good I can say that came of this bullshit we’ve been through together it’s that you got back to Jack, the one you’re destined to be with. I can sleep well knowing that. My love and my all to you, Eugene del Gregory. Your place is wherever you are.”
~~~~
Chapter 44
And So On
It appeared society was getting back on track in a long-built hurry. People began moving back into the cities. Minneapolis went from once-was to a city with a population growing by the thousands daily. What we’d taken for granted before the Ire was now a luxury, the most of which being the ability to talk. Oh, and sex was now a regular occurrence between all takers. The real, unequivocal Baby Boom would be happening in nine short months.
My life three days after the burial was no boom, only a bust. Depression hit hard. I missed Gene and I missed him dreadfully. I had no plan, no direction for my actions. Whereas I had planned to remove Gene from society by taking him to Renee Island, that idea was in shambles now. Or was it? The purpose would be completely different, but the end results the same. I could still go to Renee Island. The notion sat and festered in my mind.
My cell was not buzzing. I’d expected J to contact me at any moment. But since days had gone by with no movement from him, it was plainly obvious that he had gone back to his original development. No problem. I didn’t need a new friend. Likely never again. Haydon hurt me. Gene destroyed me. What the hell might J do?
A nice cup of coffee was in order. I grabbed a small bottle of No. 87 Crème Liqueur and headed down to Lela’s stand. It was busy, far busier than anytime I had previously seen. People were talking. They were happy. A tinge of joy permeated the air. I had not felt this ecstatic ambience throughout my life.
“Hey, you asshole!” Lela said to me from behind her stand with a mammoth smile. She leaned over the counter and planted a wet kiss on my cheek. “Wallace, right?”
“Yes, that’s me,” I said with a stammer. “What was that?”
“Triumphant jubilation. That’s what that was.”
“Why?”
“Were you born dumb or did isolation breed it in you? Wallace, look around you. We aren’t getting ready for something big. The big thing is here. We are a society again. People again. We are human beings living like human beings instead of caged pets on the earth. Everyone here, you, me, that girl in the blue sweater, that guy in the white business suit, we are all here because we survived. The war is over and we won every goddamn battle thrown at us.”
The man in the white suit looked familiar. Yes, it was J dressed for business.
“Happiness is all around,” Lela continued. “You would be a fool not to imbibe in it yourself, Wallace. Here. This cup of coffee is for you. To enjoy our old world renewed.”
I was losing sight of J through the growing and very busy crowd of people.
“Take the damn coffee, Wallace.”
“Oh. Oh, yes, of course.” I took the coffee with little thought. “Thank you, Lela. I have to go.”
“Do what you must.” She couldn’t be broken of her jovial spell.
I ran in the direction I had last seen J. He was gone so fast, possibly a ghost. My grief was intense enough to give me hallucinations. Walking along the road away from the coffee stand, I spotted the man in the white suit again from the back. “J!” I shouted, far louder than I’d intended.
The man turned. Indeed, it was the man in question. He walked toward me and I to him, both of us stopping in front of the life-sized garden gnome statue. It was weathered and its left hand had fallen from the pickaxe it held. Its face looked directly at me and J.
“Wallace?”
“I’m glad you heard me, J. Wolfgang. Whatever.”
“Are you out enjoying the world like everybody else?”
“Something like that. The suit. Why?”
“Society is back, Wallace. We need to start acting like businesses will be opening up again, because they will. I don’t want to be left out when that moment happens. You should probably be doing the same.”
Why did I stop him? I didn’t want to be his friend anymore. I wanted nothing to do with him. He could have kept walking and nothing would have changed in my life. “You might be right. I’ll do whatever I need to do.”
“What were you before the Ire?”
“Me? Nothing, really. I was a college student. No job, no career. Hell, I have no prospects if business does get started back up.”
“Not if, when. We’re kind of in the same boat, you and I. College. That’s what I was doing when we all became Ired.”
“Ironic.”
“I suppose so. I had such a future. New child, new marriage, it was all going to be great. There was something awfully special between my husband and I.”
My mind did a double-take. I hesitated. “Husband, you say?”
“Yes. So much love. A seemingly endless supply of it between us. I have no idea why he insisted on calling me Jack all the time. Never Wolfgang, only Jack.”
I felt a haze bubbling up in my head, the image of J becoming somewhat fuzzy right in front of me. A surreal aura overtook my mind. “
Your...name is Jack. Jack? Your name...is Jack?”
“Well yes,” he chuckled. “As he would always call me.”
“Who? Who is he?”
“My husband, of course. Eugene.”
I felt every demon in the universe enter my body at once and grip every muscle, organ, and vein and twist them into mangled nothingness. This could not be.
“Eugene?” I was able to spit out in my near-catatonic state.
“Eugene del Gregory.”
I began to lose my balance.
“Wallace, are you okay?”
I stumbled closer to the gnome statue.
“Are you sick?”
I tried to catch myself on the bulbous nose of the frightening statue, but it immediately crumbled, sending me to the cold ground below. A river of vomit shot from my mouth onto the pickaxe held by the gnome.
“What is wrong with you?” J pleaded. “Wallace, talk to me.”
What was real and what was not? This could not be. Jack seemed to be suddenly resurrected before my eyes, all the while he needed to resurrect in front of Gene’s eyes, but Gene was dead. Dead only five days. Five fucking days. This could not be.
J, or Jack, knelt down by my side and put a dry rag on my forehead. “Do I need to see about doctor for you? I hear a clinic is opening up in the development. Just like old times.”
I couldn’t look at him, let alone speak to him.
“Goddamn it, Wallace! What is it? Did I say something?”
Finally, my eyes met his, a silent admission to his last statement.
“Eugene? Did you know him?”
How easy it would have been to have told Jack I knew Gene, that I had spent the last two years with Gene, that I helped Gene find his sister, that I saw Gene through all his misery and all his monster, that I knew so much about Jack already simply through Gene because he never stopped talking about him, and that I was in attendance at his death less than one week ago. I could have said that, but then I would have had to watch yet another perfectly good person sink down into something dreadful. Timing was pitiful.
If only Gene had told me Jack’s real name once we arrived back at the development, or if Jack had told about his husband likewise, I could have reunited two people that were clearly meant to be one. Alas, neither happened, and the result was me being stuck with this burden that was likely worse than anything Gene felt in his awful condition before his death.
I had to pretend. It would be a leviathan charge that could have easily ended up in failure. “I didn’t know Eugene.”
“Okay. You made me wonder. Look, the blood is coming back to your face. You seemed to have a stroke all of the sudden.”
“J, what happened to Eugene?”
“He died. The Ire. I don’t think he made it past the first day. We lost contact that day. I had the baby with me and had just dropped him off at the nanny’s. Don’t ask about William, the baby. Wallace, please don’t. I don’t know what happened and I don’t want to think what happened.”
“So Eugene died?” It hurt to lie in question, especially about someone so close to me.
“Well I never heard from him. Cell communication was nothing in the weeks after the Ire took hold, only news feeds. I know for a fact if he survived then he would have found me. No fate would be so cruel as to keep us apart while both of us were alive. And it hurt. I loved him so much. So, so much.”
You have no idea how much love he returned to you, Jack. Gene was designed for you.
“I never got over losing him, Wallace. Eugene was special. His mind worked different from others’. Creative, intuitive, incredibly smart, and also funny. In many ways, I’m glad he wasn’t alive while I did some of the things I did due to the Ire. He would have felt how ugly I’d become.”
Gene kept saying he felt like Jack was around, but that it was his ghost touching him. Their bond was so strong that he was likely feeling the actual living person residing in his development. A matter of a few miles away.
“I considered looking for him when I returned to Number-5 Development a short bit ago, but I knew turning up nothing would only break my heart more. Worthless. Can’t conjure up old bones when they aren’t around, right? I even did a cell sweep a few times to see if his name popped up. Nothing.”
Strange because it showed up perfectly on my cell. Perhaps fate was being an asshole. Or maybe it was simply a technological glitch for the worse.
“I did find you right after the developments were established, though. I remember sending you an invitation to be my friend. You turned me down, Wallace.” The grin on his face told of his insincerity over the statement.
“Sorry, J. I wasn’t the friendly type. Still not.”
“Well, should we find you a doctor or are you feeling better?”
“Better, yes. But thanks.”
“I’m on my way to see Yves. He has problems. Again! Will I be seeing you around, Wallace?”
I didn’t want to see him anymore. It reminded me of what I, myself, took from him and Gene—each other. But I defected to the ‘dear friend’ side. “Yes. Yes, you’ll be seeing me around, J. Jack Wolfgang Babblerook.”
“Fantastic!”
He left a happy man. Such ease it would have been to crush him with the truth. I hated life. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to Gene, Jack, or me. Life wasn’t fair.
~~~~
Chapter 45
Number Seven
Five months I’ve spent in silence, in forced seclusion, making this memoir. A word or two I spoke to J on occasion, but nothing else. And now, the first Saturday of May, 2050, time is a thing. I left a letter with Lela early this morning to give to J the next time he comes along.
Dear Wolfgang “Jack” Babblerook
I am a liar. Your husband, Eugene, I did know him. I knew him quite well. And through him, I knew you long before I ever met you. I will tell you how, you are going to hate me, you will be justified, and so will my next move.
Gene survived the Ire. He befriended me over two years ago. We grew close. He was a true friend. Last year, when the news of public Flegtide release was around, he began to worry of his sister, who lived in a development in Oklahoma. He begged me to go with him to stop her from taking the drug. In the process, Gene gave me the drug against my will. A large dose that was experimental. I was able to talk to everybody immediately and almost never felt it again. However, I am now feeling the stab of its side effects greatly.
One thing Gene never stopped talking about was his love of Jack. He cried over how much he loved you, how punishing it was that you were taken, and that everything he did, good AND bad, was for you. Toward the end, all of our conversations eventually ended with your name involved. You were everything to him.
It is my sorrow to inform you that Gene was one of the misfortunate few whose Ire was never lost, only strengthened. He grew a taste for human flesh almost from the start. I found his victims beneath his cabin, which is Cabin 89 in this development, in November of last year. Too many to count. At the same time, Gene was losing touch of his own reality. He was a danger. I brought him to an old pub in St. Cloud’s ruins a few nights later with every intention on killing him, putting him out of his misery. I could not do it. I tried, but the trigger would not squeeze. Although the beasts hunting him were only minutes away from ending him, I still could not kill him. Gene grabbed the gun and put a bullet in his own brain. He knew his time was up.
It was only four days later when I found out who you were, Jack. Had I known earlier, I assure you the two of you would be together today and extraordinarily happy. I was the medium that did not allow that to happen. No sorry is large enough to remove even a small portion of the damage I have done.
Gene’s body is buried beside a tree in a field a short distance behind Cabin 50. I will see you there.
Your friend who never was,
Wallace
And it was all true. I didn’t kill Gene. As much as the universe needing me to kill him, I defied that logic. My current con
dition, wrecked in both guilt and the strangling effects of Flegtide, is the trade-off. My head is a medicine ball of wrong. It cannot stay this way.
The friend thing? It was a disaster. I tried and tried and it didn’t work out. Isolation was meant for me, so now that it’s gone I don’t have a world to hang onto.
This cabin, it has been my home. This development, it has been my family. This world, it started as my cradle but is now my casket. But my chair is sympathetic to me. I have a big fat black capsule I am taking with me to the field, that lovely field void of many trees. I will lie down next to Gene’s meager grave. The sun is shining. The air is warm. It’s perfect.
The suffering of the world is done. We who trudged the mountains of shit to make it through the darkest twenty years in our species’ history can stand high and proud. I’ll boast of myself in that regard while I’m off doing my next thing, in fact. When I mentioned I’ve had seven kills, one was a preemptive notion. Number seven will be me, and I could think of no idea sweeter on the tongue than to own my own destiny, Ire be damned.
My ghosts are no more. Haydon is off being Haydon, all nice and best-friendy. Gene? I want to know what Gene is doing now, but then again I truly do not want to know, the same inconsistent back-and-forth I always felt around him in his life. All those others, including my parents, are mere shadows of thoughts anymore. No expectations of seeing them soon.
But a new ghost has appeared at my door. Peace, you have finally found me. I was lost and left alone twenty years ago. Now, after ten lifetimes in those twenty years, I’m going home. Thanks for the hand.
~~~~
~~~~
The Populace Page 25