Garbage Man

by Joseph D'lacey

  Her pulse was erratic. Each beat was a clap of agony inside her head. The irregularity of it was frightening; her heart not beating the right time, losing its rhythm. She tried not to worry about it. She tried not to think. Thinking only made it all worse. Keeping the image of the two boys from her mind was almost impossible. It hung there at the edge of her consciousness, waiting for her guard to come down. Whenever she drifted close to sleep, instead of being released from the pain, she saw the boys. The furtive glances, their innocent, inexpert hands, their trembling excitement. She would snap back to wakefulness and sickness and pain.

  She didn’t know how long she’d lain there. Hours, it had to be, but how many she didn’t know. She ignored the urge to urinate at first and even succeeded in convincing her body it didn’t need to go. Twice she’d managed the trick of it but now the urge had returned, insistent and demanding. She would not be able to trick herself again nor sleep through it. Sooner or later she’d have to get up and face the agonies that a sudden change of blood pressure would cause her.

  It was time.

  She turned her palms to the mattress, ready to ease herself upright.

  From downstairs came the muffled sound of glass breaking and wood, the door-frame perhaps, being - what? - kicked?

  More glass shattered. There was a scraping sound. She recognised it: the back door had been opened.

  Strange how both the urge to pee and the intensity of pain receded as she listened. From downstairs she heard thumps and dragging sounds. Deliberate, determined movements. She imagined a man, deformed somehow, limping from the back door across the lino in the kitchen and onto the hallway carpet. Was someone hurt perhaps? Mr. Siscombe from next door having a heart attack and struggling to find help? She couldn’t just lie there. She had to check.

  More quietly than she would have done minutes earlier, she pushed herself into a sitting position and swung her legs out of bed. The pads fell from her eyes. Her vision turned gritty white and the room spun away from her. The pain struck her like a tsunami. For several moments she didn’t even know if she was still sitting or if she’d fallen back onto the bed. She couldn’t stop the sickness then. She just sat forward and let her stomach clench and cramp. There was nothing in it and she racked one dry spasm after another until finally a dribble of pale green bile rose and slipped from her lips onto her grey skirt. This seemed to satisfy her stomach and the retching ceased. The chartreuse liver-mucus seeped into the rough fabric.

  The white-out must have robbed her of a few seconds because now the noise of dragging and stumping was on the stairs. Nearing the top. There was definitely an urgency to the movement. A kind of desperation.

  Her bladder was a bag of needles. Even so, she didn’t believe she’d be able to stand.

  The smell of sewage and rot hit her and her eyes widened in utter revulsion. The vomiting began again. This time the bile was dark green and coagulated. Its bitterness made her nausea worse. She heaved and heaved until it seemed her head would burst.

  And then the thing that had broken into her house and dragged itself up the stairs came into view and she knew what it was. God had sent His retribution. She had failed Him despite every effort to serve. Now He had sent a creature to escort her downwards, away from Him forever, unblessed and discarded.

  She didn’t know what it was. It had no name. It had five ‘arms’ which it used as legs. It was fashioned of junk and animal parts and filth. It dragged a long fat body and left a wet trail of excrement on her carpet. A long-bodied spider without enough legs to move properly. It was searching for something. It used its arms to point its front end in one direction and then the other - hers. Its eyes were the loops from the handles of scissors. Its teeth were the ends of dozens of knitting needles. They clicked as it saw her. It dragged itself into her bedroom.

  The thing was almost comical. It was impossible to believe it was real. The pain had elevated her awareness and reality had become a kind of farce now. Here came the shit spider with its stunted arms and comedy teeth. Here came its leaking body behind it. Clickety-click went the shit spider’s chattery teeth. Snip, snip went its scissor-hole eyes. It was no higher off the ground than a small terrier. Along it came and she watched. She might have giggled if she knew it wouldn’t have hurt her to do so.

  The shit spider crawled closer, all the while blinking its eyes and clacking its remnant jaws. It took hold of her left leg with surprising strength; the grip was as sudden and strong as a sprung animal trap. The comedy went out of it all when it bit off half of her left foot. Until then, there’d never been pain worse than a migraine. The scream that had been waiting in the wings like an actor with only one line made its entrance.

  The shit spider was hungry.

  It bit and swallowed but did not chew.

  She watched all this with inquisitive terror. The smell of waste filled her nostrils until they burned ammonia white.

  Both her feet were gone.

  Mavis Ahern allowed her bladder to release.

  She thought of her roses. How from the muck good things would come. She had been wrong. So very, very wrong.

  18

  He wasn’t happy with her decision but he couldn’t think of anywhere better. Time was the only factor and so he agreed.

  The Shreve Tertiary College car park was only a quarter full. It was Saturday, a day mainly for adult learners and weekend courses of a less academic nature. Kev pulled up right outside the front entrance and Jenny got out. When he didn’t follow her, she walked around to the driver’s side. He lowered the window.

  The sound of sirens came from every direction. Smoke rose from various points on the horizon. Whether people realised it or not, Shreve was beginning to come to a halt. On the main steps of the college, students stood in frowning groups, not yet aware of what was happening.

  ‘Aren’t you coming in?’ She asked.

  ‘Yes. But not yet.’

  ‘You’re going to get her, aren’t you?’ He looked away.

  ‘I can’t just leave her there with these things. I can’t just let her die, Jenny. I’d never forgive myself. Trust me, babe. I love you but I have to do this. I’ve got no choice.’

  ‘Kev, please . . . I know she’s your wife . . . I know you probably still love her but -’

  ‘Jen, it’s not that. I just -’

  ‘What I’m saying is, I don’t care about her or what happens to her. I care about you. You’ve got to come back to me, Kev. Promise me you’ll come back.’

  He took her hand.

  ‘I’m coming back, Jen. I swear it.’

  ***

  Morning found Mason Brand shaved and dressed in clothes that had not come out of the wardrobe for several years. They smelled musty at first so he’d aired them on a ladder outside the back door.

  In the predawn light, the garden was nothing more than untended fruitfulness turning into waste ground. Nothing moved out there. Whatever tide had drawn so close to his shore had ebbed far, far away.

  The shaving didn’t go well.

  He cut off as much of his beard as he could with scissors. Then he used the only thing sharp enough in the house to finish the job - the knife he’d honed intending to kill himself. It did not lack for keenness - it was merely the wrong shape and several times he poked himself with the sharp end, eliciting a wince and a very willing blood flow. Finally, he managed to get most of his face smooth. He left long sideburns and a tuft under his chin where he’d nearly taken the top off his adam’s apple.

  The brown suit was loose because he’d lost weight so he punched extra holes in an old Swedish army belt and pulled the trousers tight around his waist with it. He wore a white shirt and an old, broad-ended tie. He had no dress shoes so he wore his walking boots, also brown, and pulled the bottoms of his trousers down to cover them as best he could.

  Standing dressed outs
ide the back door it was easy to believe that he’d imagined or hallucinated the things he thought he’d seen out there. It was such a long time since he’d eaten that his mind might have played any number of tricks on him. One thing it hadn’t done was let him forget his morality. He had done wrong - ultimate wrong - and he intended to do something about it before the end came. What exactly he would do, he wasn’t certain, but he felt a small power left within himself, as though he’d discovered a final crusade worth pursuing.

  He neither drank nor ate anything. When the sun came up, it burned into his eyes for several seconds before he turned away. Something made him take off his boots and for several minutes he stood barefoot on the soil of his garden before brushing his feet clean and putting the boots back on.

  He walked away from his suburban lair with determination.

  ***

  Kevin’s drive back to Bluebell Way was worse.

  Small accidents had occurred on many roads, mostly because of the distraction caused by the animated waste that crawled or slithered in every street. But some people, the small and the slow, perhaps the overly inquisitive, had already been unlucky. He passed a mobility scooter on which sat an elderly man. The man wore a flat cap and a dirty coat but his face was obscured by a creature half rabbit and half spoilage. Evidently the man had been trying to scream for help when the rabbit thing had extended a pseudo limb of some kind and thrust it up through his exposed palate. Now the old man stared ahead while the rabbit educated itself on his aged brain and other limping chimeras of junk and flesh crawled over him. They disassembled him, added him to themselves.

  Too occupied with the fate of the elderly man, Kevin himself almost hit a cyclist who had wobbled into the centre of the road. He resolved to keep his mind on the journey.

  Armed police had arrived at the top of one terrace where the rubbish seemed to be invading in force. He remembered that this street had both a home for the elderly and a day nursery. He wanted to stop then and do something to help. The thought of the rubbish cannibalising parts from children barely old enough to stand made his stomach turn over and his anger ignite. But what could he do?

  He pulled onto the kerb to watch the police operation. It was clear that though they had their routines and training, it didn’t fit the situation. The group converged on a large knot of resurrected debris, their rifles and pistols aimed downwards into them. Officers glanced at each other and shook their heads. Someone gave the command to open fire and the street echoed with the unfamiliar sounds of war. Automatic bursts and single shots popped and clattered into the rubbish. Here and there Kevin saw puffs and bursts and tears in the amalgamated flesh and plastic, the tin and bone. But the majority of the rubbish kept moving, seething forward. It was slow because it lacked the limbs to propel itself properly. But it came forward without fear, unaffected by the threat of bullets that could rip through it so easily. Many of the individual creatures that had been hit were still moving - evidently, the bullets had missed the vital components or hadn’t torn big enough holes in their ‘skins’.

  Kevin remembered the way Ozzy and Lemmy had chewed open the fat tadpole-shaped thing he’d seen at the reservoir. That had been enough to end its life. The bullets were making only small holes and probably passed right through their targets. They’d need something less precise to stop the landfill creatures. He pulled back into the road and put his foot down for home.

  Correction, my ex-home.

  Bluebell Way was an invasion site. Kevin couldn’t believe it.

  It looked as though the landfill had been airlifted in ten tons at a time. But looking closer he could see dozens of individual landfill creatures moving in their hesitant, fumbling way. Christ, he thought, they’re so much more dangerous than they look.

  Dozens of them were besieging his house. Tamsin was upstairs looking out of the window in pale-faced terror and disbelief. Before he parked, he turned the car to face back the way he’d come. If they made it back out of the house they needed every advantage. Lumbering, crippled assemblies of rubbish and animal flesh assailed the door, climbing over each other to break in. One of the panels in the frosted glass had already shattered and something was pouring itself in through the space. Kevin had no weapons.

  He spent several valuable moments thinking before he jumped out of the car. Tamsin had seen him by now and was jumping up and down at the window in desperation. She looked like a child. He saw another look on her face too, one he’d never seen before. Remorse. She was sorry. Sorry for what she’d done or sorry for what he’d done, he couldn’t tell.

  The garage was clear of creatures; it was the living they craved. He ran to it, unlocked it and hauled the door up. As soon as they sensed he was there landfill creatures converged on him from every direction. Panic rose and swelled in him. It was like an urge to piss with time running out. How long could he hold himself together? He hauled the door down behind him. It creaked as they pressed themselves against it.

  In the garage he grabbed the tool with the longest handle, a rake they’d never used - it still had the price sticker on it. In the corner there was a five-litre plastic petrol can in which he kept the two-stroke fuel for the lawn mower. He picked it up and shook it. It was less than half full. Would it be enough? Was two-stroke even flammable without a wick? He couldn’t remember.

  Something scratched the leg of his jeans and he shook his foot violently. With a pathetic mewl, something unrecognisable crashed back against the wall. Whimpering, it began to crawl back to him. They’d lifted the door enough for some of the smaller creatures to slip under. More of them were working their way through the gap.

  He let himself out the side door of the garage, shutting the things inside, and went to the back of the house, watchful and twitchy. There were two or three landfill creatures crossing the garden towards the back steps but the main body of attackers was still at the front door. He crept quietly to the front of the house, now, along the side wall. Several of them had already found him. They swarmed down the alley formed between the house and the garage but they were all small fry. He pushed them back with the rake as though sweeping. Some of them tore badly and a filthy plasma leaked out. Kevin choked on the smell but kept pushing.

  Most of the landfill creatures were slow moving and ungainly. He knew if he was nimble enough, he’d be able to do enough damage to buy some time.

  At the front of the house he risked hopping over several of the things to get closer to the main entry. Fumbling and shaking, his knees jittering as he stood on the spot, he unscrewed the lid of the petrol can and splashed the fuel out towards the front door and all over the converging landfill creatures. They shivered at the touch of the liquid as if knowing what would follow. Darting between other creatures on the lawn he spilled fuel out behind him as he sprinted back to the side wall. He hoped the trail of fuel was unbroken and he tried to douse as many of the creatures in his path as he could. When he reached the back garden he took the pink Bic lighter from his pocket and thanked God he hadn’t quit smoking. It was so low on gas he couldn’t hear any fluid inside when he shook it. He flicked it beside the fuel-glistening grass but there it had no effect. He flicked it again and again.

  ‘Come on. For God’s sake, come ON.’

  The fuel caught, not from the lighter’s flame but from a spark hitting it. It leapt to life burning his eyelashes and the front of his hair. He fell backwards onto the grass. The fire was already around the corner to the front of the house. Every landfill creature the flames touched caught light and began to melt. Every one of them made such desperate, haunted cries he almost wanted to turn the hose on them. The leaping flame and the writhing of the dying creatures mesmerised him for a few seconds as he lay on his side. The sound was hard to bear. It interrupted his concentration.

  There was a searing pain in his ear and then he was screaming and rolling away from it. He struggled to his feet and put his hand to the sid
e of his head. Most of his left ear was missing. It had disappeared inside the razorblade mouth of a tiny trash freak.

  ‘You dirty fucker,’ he screamed.

  He used the rake to tear it apart. Scattered and broken it was soon still. There in the liquid shit of its blood, lay his severed ear. He didn’t dare touch it.

  Crying at the pain, he went to the back door and used the rake on the other creatures that were scrabbling at the glass, killing them easily. Then he let himself in and locked the door behind him. Terrified that the wound would be infected, he turned the tap on, bent down and bathed what was left of his ear under it. The water made the pain worse but he gritted his teeth. With the damage had come a kind of hyper-clarity. The creatures outside were an obstacle. He would find a way around them. Getting Tammy to safety was a problem he would solve. The insanity of the situation no longer screamed at him and slowed his thinking down. Everything was simple now.

  Pressing a clean tea towel to the side of his head he ran up the stairs.

  She was waiting at the top, tearful and overjoyed.

  ‘Oh Christ, Kevin. Thank you. Thank you so much.’

  ‘I only came back for a change of boxer shorts.’ She noticed the bloodstained tea towel.

  ‘Was it . . . one of them?’

  He nodded then pushed past her to the bathroom to search in the cabinet. The things he didn’t want he threw on the floor. When he found what he was looking for he unscrewed the cap and handed it to Tammy. This was the feared and respected remedy his own father had put on all their cuts when they were little - hydrogen peroxide.

  ‘I won’t be able to do this to myself.’

  ‘What do expect me to do?’

  ‘Just tip a bit on when I take the towel away.’