Soft Apocalypse

by Will McIntosh

  An old Mickey Mouse coloring book was stuffed in a magazine rack by the woman’s reclining chair. I pulled it out, took a good look of the image of Mickey on the cover, then held the coloring book up and pointed at Mickey. “Here’s what I’d like you to do. Take this book to Mark Parcells at Whitaker Print Shop, and get him to make labels with this picture and ‘Mickey Mouse Honey’ on them. The honey will sell much better that way.”

  “Oh,” the woman said, sounding less than enthused. “But isn’t that a copyright violation?”

  I chuckled, shook my head. “Disney isn’t going to bother you, I promise.” Ah, the good old days, when Disney had the time and energy to sue people for selling unlicensed products.

  If there was any bright side to The Decline (as the media often referred to it), it had to be the neutering of corporate America. Back in the old days they were such a huge presence; today it took all of their energy and resources just to produce their products and get them onto store shelves.

  Pleased to have secured another product for the store, I headed home. If I’d been able to whistle worth a damn, I might have whistled.

  Bull Street was almost deserted in the afternoon heat. From an open second-floor window, an old woman with no front teeth stared at me, her mouth curled in suspicion. She reminded me of my great aunt, who had believed for the last ten years of her life that I and all the rest of her relatives were trying to kill her.

  Two blocks ahead, a woman turned the corner and headed in my direction. It was Deirdre.

  I bolted into the doorway of an abandoned storefront. Why I was hiding, I couldn’t say. Deirdre still had all of my childhood photos (assuming she hadn’t burned them). I should have confronted her, maybe twisted her little arm behind her back until she told me where they were. Instead I did my best to fold into the crack between the door and the boarded-up window.

  What had she done with my photos? Sometimes I still lay awake wondering. There had been no cut-up pile greeting me when I finally built up the nerve to use my key to sneak into her place while she was out. No charred corners mixed with the ashes in the fireplace (showing a tantalizing hint of a sneaker; the ornament-laden branches of a Christmas tree…). They were just gone. Did she toss them in a dumpster? Did she still have them? I missed them to my bones. I had no proof now, that I had a past, that I’d once been a child. I never would have guessed it would hurt so much to lose them. Evidently Deirdre had.

  Deirdre strutted past, oblivious to my cowering form. I was not afraid of her, I told myself. I just didn’t want to deal with her. I waited a couple of minutes, then went on my way, still thinking about her.

  At home I found Colin and Jeannie parked in front of the TV, watching the news. We might as well ditch the remote—our TV was always tuned to MSNBC. With times so dark there was always something new, always people dying. Egypt was systematically exterminating the population of the rest of Northern Africa. Why? Because the population of Northern Africa ate. Fewer people meant less competition for food and energy, and Egypt had the biggest guns. Bad as it was in the U.S., some other parts of the world were turning into nothing but giant concentration camps and killing fields. It was both mesmerizing and depressing.

  I took a deep breath and turned away from the TV. I would have liked to go to sleep, but Colin and Jeannie were sitting on my bed watching TV, so I went into their room to do a little bookkeeping for the store.

  “I have to say, Cortez was a natural,” Ange said. “He’d stop to look at a table of sorry-looking pistols, then turn and bump into some guy in an expensive suit, grabbing the guy’s shoulders like he was steadying himself. The guy didn’t even flinch from the stick. He was slapping people on the back, even pulled it off with a couple of cops and soldiers.”

  Uzi tugged on his leash, panting and wagging his tail, trying to pull Ange across the street toward Jackson Square and its Live Oaks. “Uzi, no,” Ange said, as if that would faze him. He lived to pee on those massive trunks.

  “You want me to take a turn?” I offered, knowing she didn’t. Ange shook her head. “Are we talking regular U.S. soldiers from Fort Stewart, or those private mercenary guys?” I asked.

  “Regular. He’s not suicidal.”

  There were more people in the park than usual. More adults, anyway. The kids were always there, playing their incomprehensible game, jumping among big colored dots laid along the squares and sidewalks, alternately frowning in concentration and laughing like hell, dousing each other with industrial-strength water guns, rolling dice the size of baseballs. Now there were also groups of adults, sitting in circles, cooking in pots on open fires, laughing their heads off. They were infected with Doctor Happy.

  Doctor Happy had made the local evening news three days after Chair and Sebastian’s infection party. They called it a strange new virus that results in “disorientation, amotivation, and giddiness.” Sebastian had said the government wasn’t going to like this virus at all. Authoritarian types are uncomfortable with people altering their consciousness—they’d rather see them vomit blood.

  An ultralight helicopter buzzed overhead, casting a drifting shadow on the street. Probably some rich jerk going for a martini at Rooftop Elysium.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a rocket launcher,” Ange said, her neck craned.

  “Maybe you’ll have one of your own once you get your Ph.D.,” I laughed. “At the very least you’ll be able to live in a gated community.”

  Ange glared at me. “I’d never become one of them. I’d live in a better place, sure, but never in one of those obnoxious gated fortresses.” Ange kicked a soda can out of her way. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because I’m not getting my Ph.D.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “What?”

  She let her head loll back until she was staring at the sky. “I had that meeting with Charles, my thesis advisor. A dinner meeting, of course. At the Pink House.”

  “Typical,” I muttered. The Pink House was a silk tablecloth, sniff- the-wine-cork place.

  “Yeah. It was his usual shit—the grope-hug greeting, reaching over to brush my hair out of my eyes, all the sexual innuendo crap. I asked if we could schedule my defense, and he said no, he thinks I need to run another fucking study. Then he pulls out his appointment calendar and says his wife will be out of town the first half of next week, and why don’t I come over to his place Tuesday night for dinner, to discuss the new study?”

  Uzi strained hard on his leash, eager to get moving. We continued walking.

  “It suddenly hit me that he’s not going to let me defend my dissertation until I let him fuck me.” She started to say something else but choked up. I waited as she took a few deep breaths and got herself under control. “He’s going to throw one obstacle after another in front of me, make me sit through a thousand excruciating dinners, because that way he has power over me.”

  A Jumpy-Jump lounged on a stoop up ahead, watching us approach. Watching Ange, really. He was dressed in a mock-mailman outfit, the “U.S. Mail” shoulder patches executed in ornate calligraphy.

  “For four years I’ve been dreaming of walking across that stage, with my whole family—even my bitch grandmother—watching. What do you think of your crank-addict loser, drug-rehab dropout, gypsy granddaughter now, you old bag? I wouldn’t even have to say it out loud. Probably none of them but my mom and Cory would actually show up, but the fantasy works better when they’re all sitting in a row on those metal folding chairs, watching.”

  “That’s a big dog for such a little peanut,” the Jumpy-Jump said as we drew near. We kept our pace steady. I’d seen the guy around—he was ethnic, maybe East Indian. Long braided hair. He spoke with the singsong accent that Jumpy-Jumps evidently had invented out of thin air.

  “Where are you two and your big dog so urgently needed?” He stood lazily, not exactly blocking the sidewalk, but impeding it. Ange veered into the street, cutting a wide path around him, and I followed her lead.

  “I’m talking to you, don’t disappear me,�
� he said. He moved to block our path.

  Uzi snarled and lunged. Ange held his leash tight; the Jumpy-Jump leaped clear of Uzi’s snapping teeth.

  A heartbeat later, there were blades all over the Jumpy-Jump, jutting from his belt, his boots. He clutched what looked like machetes in both fists. “You think your big dog can protect you?” There was blood and a ragged gash on his thumb—Uzi had just caught his retreating hand.

  I grabbed the leash and helped Ange drag Uzi backward. He was barking and snapping, scrabbling to get at the man. We just kept pulling, retreating the way we’d come, until Uzi finally relented and reversed direction as well.

  “I can fuck you any time I want, Little Peanut,” the Jumpy-Jump shouted at our backs. “Right here on the daylight street. Strip off your false security and live in constant fear, where you belong.”

  We ran five blocks before slowing.

  “I hate that I can’t walk the streets without being afraid. I hate it,” Ange hissed.

  “I know,” I said. My heart was still thumping like mad. “What’s wrong with those people? And what happened to the police? Or even the Civil Defense? What happened to their whole thing about taking back the streets?”

  “Now they all just look out for themselves,” Ange said. “Just like Charles.”

  A street sweeper rumbled along a side street, churning up plywood and cardboard shelters, its whooping alarm warning tenants to get clear or be swept up with their houses.

  “Have you complained to the Department Chair about him?”

  Ange nodded. “I was there this morning. She says there’s nothing she can do, that I should switch advisors. But Charles is the only botanical biotech person left on the faculty, so I’d have to start my dissertation over in a different area. When I told her I couldn’t afford to start over, because my financial support ended this year, she suggested I let him fuck me.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.

  Ange shook her head. “She said when buildings are being bombed and politically outspoken faculty are disappearing in the middle of the night, ‘small incivilities’ don’t mean much.”

  “I can guess what you said.”

  “I bet you can,” Ange said. She stopped in front of the Savannah College bio building. “This is where I get off.” She waved. “Bye, sweetie.”

  I waved back. No public displays of affection. Somehow we’d made it work for four years, the friends-with-sex thing. Probably because neither of us had met anyone, or really wanted to meet anyone at this point. Things with Ange were comfortable and easy. Uncomplicated.

  Truth be told, I was beginning to doubt that I would ever find someone to love in any case. I suspected that the sort of relationship I was looking for just wasn’t possible any more, that it was an artifact from the time when those photographs I missed so much were taken. There was a line drawn in my memory that separated my life before The Decline from my life after. I imagine everyone has that line. Everything else had changed after The Decline; there was no reason to think that love had some special dispensation.

  I headed home. The sun was low in the sky, filtering through the twisted, moss-covered branches of the oaks, adding a gold tinge to the red brick path. I felt so bad for Ange. She was so close. A two-hour defense, three signatures, and she had a Ph.D. She could teach at a university, or continue her research for an agro corporation. The stakes were so high. Once upon a time if you didn’t make it into a lucrative career, there were plenty of semi-lucrative alternatives. Now it seemed as if the divide between rich and poor was a chasm. There was no middle class any more. On one side there were the rich—safe and comfortable, living in luxury—and on the other, on our side, it was a challenge just to stay alive.

  As I approached Jackson Square, I stopped short. Sebastian was sitting on a bench in the square, with the Jumpy-Jump who had threatened us a half-hour earlier. They were laughing like old pals. Sebastian spotted me and waved; the Jumpy-Jump turned, smiled.

  “Little Peanut’s big brother! Come join us.”

  I headed toward the bench.

  “You two know each other?” Sebastian said as I approached.

  “Yes indeed,” the Jumpy-Jump said. He held out a bandaged hand without getting up, looking amused, as if we’d shared a joke rather than an altercation. I ignored his hand.

  “We began our song with the wrong note, I fear.” He dropped his hand, stretched out on the bench and sighed contentedly. “So, Mister Peanut, what do you think of our Dada Jihad?”

  I’d read everything I could about the Jumpy-Jump movement since that night at the art show. It had started in Detroit, after the Foxtown Massacre, when the police broke up a protest using nerve gas. A Native American street singer named Dada Tanglefoot began preaching a weird mix of anarchism, Zen, and Dadaism that spoke to the people. Tanglefoot was assassinated in quick order, probably on orders from the feds, but her words spread like a virus through the poor and angry neighborhoods. As far as I could tell, the actual doctrine was incoherent bullshit. Maybe Tanglefoot’s teachings had gotten tangled as it passed from person to person.

  “I understand why you’re angry, but I don’t think much of killing random people,” I said. “What do you expect to get out of it?”

  “Me?”

  “Jumpy-Jumps, I mean.”

  “We don’t expect anything.” He shrugged, his eyes twinkling.

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Does anything make sense? It’s all absurd. We’re just unleashing some vicious absurdity to underscore the point.” He stood, made a peace sign. “Sebastian, it was a pleasure.”

  Sebastian returned the gesture. “Same here, Rumor.”

  “Down is up, and sinners are saints, Mister Peanut,” Rumor said as he turned to leave.

  “My name is Jasper.”

  “Down is up, and sinners are saints, Jasper.”

  Rumor stood at the edge of the square, waiting for a truck to pass, before sauntering between two abandoned gas hogs and across the street.

  “Why were you talking to that asshole?” I asked Sebastian. “He threatened Ange and me just half an hour ago, waving a machete at us. If Uzi hadn’t been there we’d probably be lying dead with our throats cut.

  “I’ll talk to pretty much anyone.” Sebastian said.

  “Well hooray for you.”

  He met my sarcasm with a big grin. “If you always keep things amiable you minimize the chance of ending up in the street with your throat cut.”

  “Nothing minimizes the chances of getting your throat cut when it comes to Jumpy-Jumps—they’ll happily cut you open and pull your guts out while they sing you a love song.”

  Sebastian laughed delightedly. “You almost sounded like a Jumpy-Jump when you said that.”

  I smiled. It was difficult to hate the guy too much because of his demeanor. “So, what’s it like? The virus.”

  “It’s invigorating.”

  “Invigorating? So, you’re happy all the time, and you don’t want to hurt anyone? You’ll even have a friendly chat with a terrorist? It sounds like a lobotomy.”

  “Oh, no.” He clasped his hands together and held them to his heart. “It’s the exact opposite of a lobotomy. You glimpse the infinite. Just a glimpse, but that’s enough. If I were cracked open any wider I might go mad—we’re not built to experience all that emptiness.”

  “Oh, now I get it. You’re basically on a permanent acid trip.” I gave him the peace sign. “Peace, love, all-is-oneness.”

  An ultralight copter buzzed low over the square. Sebastian waited till it passed before answering. “That’s about right, I guess.”

  “How did you get infected?” I asked.

  “I volunteered.”

  “You’re shitting me. You volunteered to be infected with an incurable virus? Why would you do that?”

  Sebastian sighed. “My wife and daughter were raped and killed in front of me during the Atlanta gas riots.” He gave me a wan smile, as if he were talking abou
t an old friend he missed. “I was going to hang myself; what did I have to lose?”

  How do you respond to something like that? “I’m sorry.” It was all I could think to say.

  A tall, scrawny girl hurried past carrying a bucket of water, her body canted to compensate for the weight.

  “What did you do in Atlanta?” I asked.

  “Research and development. I’m a virologist.” He closed his eyes, turned his face up to the sun. “I led the team that developed Doctor Happy.”

  “So what are you doing here? Why aren’t you back there working on other fabulous new viruses?”

  He made a face like he’d just bit into something foul. “I don’t want to sit in a concrete room under artificial lights all day. I want to be around people, in the sunlight.”

  “Well, if it’s people and sunlight you’re looking for, you came to the right place.”

  The night of the bamboo party, Chair and his entourage dressed as homeless people, which basically meant getting a little dirtier than usual, looking a little more hopeless and depressed than usual, and taking along a couple of trash bags of what looked like their belongings. Only instead of just their belongings, the trash bags contained bamboo roots and containers of gray water, wrapped inside belongings.

  The crickets were in full stereo as Ange, Cortez, and I crossed MLK and walked up the on-ramp to I-16. Vehicles rumbled past occasionally, the drivers taking no notice of us. It was nice to be invisible; I thought maybe I should haul a bag of shit around with me all the time.

  “Do you ever find yourself envying Sebastian?” Cortez asked.

  “Shit, no,” Ange said. “I crave a good buzz as much as anyone, but I want to come down after.” There was a slight breeze; it was almost bearable tonight.

  “But nothing would ever bother you again. Doesn’t that sound even a little tempting?”

  “It’s virus-induced,” I said. “Those little fuckers are doing things to his mind.” We reached the interstate, walked alongside, staying in the weeds well away from the road.