What was not human, or what seemed no longer to be, was the sense of wonder that made the fecalith’s pain bearable. It was enchanted by its very existence, lived with a permanent sense of the miraculous, like some agonised saint witnessing the hand of God in everything. Each tiny moment of consciousness was a rapture and a joy at the living fact of itself.
If only people felt the same way, thought Mason, what a different world it would be.
In the chest of the fecalith, Mason changed. The filth that flowed in its veins now flowed in his through the many tubular and canular connections between them. The fecalith’s chest had become a kind of womb in which Mason grew in knowledge. The fecalith fed him of its own strange plasma, nurtured him. Kept him alive. Every union with the fecalith was painful, each penetration of wire or silicone or steel or glass an abhorrence. Mason was deeply fulfilled, though, for he had become one with the new life, the new nature and that was more than he could ever have hoped for.
The consciousness of Donald Smithfield was gone, as were the consciousnesses of the dozens of animals he’d fed the fecalith in his shed. They were simply dead; everything physical that remained of them was in use by the fecalith. But their spirits - it had let those go. Donald Smithfield was dead but he was free. This and the knowledge the fecalith shared with him assuaged Mason’s sense of guilt. The boy had died for something great.
The fecalith showed him what it was. It showed him the planet’s history. Mason found himself unable to be sceptical about what he saw, it made such simple sense. The fecalith displayed for him the many ages in the world’s growth, the coming and going of many species that had survived mere thousands or hundreds of millions of years. Many of the species had become too successful and the Earth, in its own time, had destroyed them to save itself. The Earth was a huge living organism, within and upon which many tinier organisms lived out their tiny lives. Like the cells of the skin or the bacteria in the gut, these tiny lives were meant to exist in harmony with the whole ‘body’ of the Earth. When a group of cells became too successful or too prolific, disturbing the delicate balance of the whole organism, the organism cleansed itself. In this way, many creatures had come and gone since life on the planet began. Most amazing of all to Mason was the uncountable times that humans had existed, flourished, become destructive and been wiped almost totally away. Each time humanity had survived the Earth’s self-cleansing process, it had changed, become better in some way, learned some lesson about harmonious survival.
The world was about to self-cleanse again, the fecalith showed him. Its birth in the depths of the landfill was only an early sign of the change. Mason had been right all along, the fecalith was a new order of life. It came from the dead things humans threw away. Human trash had accumulated to a globally toxic level. Now the Earth was working hard to get rid of the toxicity and its cause. She’d sent a new species to facilitate the operation. The new species could not be destroyed or stopped by humans but that didn’t matter. There was new hope - as there always was and always had been - because the Earth would not destroy humankind totally. It would merely bring it to the edge of extinction where, as a species, humanity would learn a valuable new lesson and then rebuild itself better than before. The whole organism of the world would benefit from the cleansing. There was a bright future ahead.
Mason was happy in the darkness of the fecalith’s heart, learning and grasping the secrets of new realities, seeing new hope for the world and being at the very centre of it.
Then the fire had come.
The fecalith knew it was coming when the tankers began to fill its ocean of rubbish with fuel. But he didn’t pass this on to Mason - there would be no point in filling the man with fear. Mason, who had been like a father to him, was now like his child. When the flames came, it did everything it could to protect him.
Mason felt the physical shift all around him when the fire began with a huge explosion. But the noise was so muffled he didn’t know what it was. Not until the temperature began to climb inside his cool heart-womb. Not until he began to cook. When the heat melted off Mason’s hair and his screams were too much for the fecalith to bear, the fecalith extended fleshy tubing into Mason’s mouth and nose and cut him off from the air. The fecalith oxygenated Mason in other ways, with fluids instead of air; it pumped the coolest of its liquids into Mason to keep him alive as best it could. Meanwhile, the fecalith could not help but be burned and therefore changed by the fire. It knew, though it could experience and endure endless pain, that it could not die. Not ever. And so it had faith in the world that made it. Faith that it would survive. Faith that the world would become a better place.
Mason’s consciousness became an awareness of nothing but burning. Burning and not dying, though he begged and begged for its cool, black release. In that fire of three days they were both re-forged.
Facing the soldiers as the fecalith’s mouthpiece, Mason had felt no fear. Instead an evangelical frenzy took him as he tried to convey to the men, the men who had not and could not live through fire, what the future held for them if only they would lay down their weapons and listen. If only they would take heed and change.
He didn’t believe it when they opened fire. The bullets hurt as badly as the flames. He held out his hands to stop them but they took no notice. It was then, when so many machine gun volleys hit him that his very limbs began to drop away, that Mason began to die. It was both a terrible shock and a glad relief for his life to be over.
Withdrawn once more inside the fecalith’s chest, he felt all the interfaces being withdrawn, the makeshift tubules and veins receding, his awareness ebbing.
‘You said we could not die.’
‘You are not we,’ replied the fecalith.
An explosion sent Mason sliding around in his own blood inside the chamber of the fecalith’s chest. He sensed the creature’s terrible pain increasing. Suddenly it seemed that he might have been wrong about everything, that the fecalith was insane or, at worst, a liar.
‘They’re killing you, aren’t they?’
‘We cannot die.’
Mason grunted, a laugh of sorts.
‘You’re delusional.’
‘No, Mason Brand. You can die. You will die. But we will live on. This fire is simply a beginning.’
Another shell, nearer to Mason this time. The black world shook and reeled. Light came in from somewhere. The fecalith’s body was breached.
24
The four of them watched the army blow the fecalith to pieces. More tanks rolled to the edge of the landfill pit. They fired at will, sending shell after shell into the already charred hulk. It came apart. One side of its head disappeared in a single impact. Its right arm fell away at the elbow. No longer could it hold up its hands in supplication. It stood, resolute and fearless, one television-screen eye watching it all.
The soldiers on the ground fired until their muzzles were hot and their magazines empty. Then they reloaded and started again. They aimed at every part of it; limbs and thorax, head and neck, even its sexless groin. But it was the tanks that did the real damage, each shell breaking the fecalith open, tearing it down. Finally they broke one of its legs and the four onlookers watched it topple into the ash.
The tanks and troops retreated swiftly from the landfill, pulling back towards the main road. Seconds later, whining thunder swelled in the distance and three jets approached the site. Each loosed two missiles that left smoking trails as they hissed into the pit and ignited. White light burst upwards followed by a crackling roar. They felt the heat even in the trees. Whatever was in the missile burned with an almost purple whiteness, flashing and giving off a much lighter-coloured smoke.
They watched for most of the morning as the flames died down to nothing. When it was cool enough, convoys of huge trucks began to arrive, tipping and leaving mounds of earth and hardcore at the edge of the largest pit. Green bulldozers arrived to
push the earth over the remains. Hour after hour the trucks brought in a mountain of soil for the earth movers to push into the smoking void. They didn’t stop until that section of the pit was filled level. By then it was cold and dusk was approaching.
‘We’d better go,’ said Ray.
He took them to his place because it was the closest. Around the streets of Shreve the army presence was far less obvious. Nevertheless, they checked around every corner and stuck to the quietest routes.
Inside his flat, away from the chaos of the streets, Ray handed everyone a can of cider. No one raised their drink for a toast. Ray watched Kevin sit with his arm around Jenny’s shoulders, no longer even surprised by his lack of reaction. It didn’t matter that she was sitting there with another man. Ray was glad to be a survivor. He was in love with Delilah. Now that they’d made it through the worst of this nightmare they could have a life together. They’d fought for it. They’d made it this far. They’d earned it.
‘Don’t know about you lot,’ he said, ‘but I’m walloped. I’m going to crash. You two alright with the sofa? There’s plenty of extra cushions and stuff.’
Kevin nodded.
‘We’ll be fine.’
In bed, Ray held Delilah tight. She’d been very quiet all day.
‘Are you okay, D?’
It was such a long time before she replied he thought she’d fallen asleep.
‘I’m afraid.’
‘Afraid?’ he asked, half-asleep himself. ‘You haven’t been afraid of any of this. What’s changed?’
‘It’s the way they dealt with it. Burning him. Burying him. Doesn’t seem any different to what we would have done before. It doesn’t seem any smarter.’
Ray was having trouble keeping his eyes open.
‘I’ll have to talk to you about this in the morning. I’m too tired to make sense of any of it.’
She squeezed his hand.
‘You’re right. Let’s forget about it until tomorrow.’
***
The army left as quickly as it had come.
The clean up operation in Shreve was carried out by local services and thousands of volunteers. Truckloads of waste, now mingled with human and animal flesh, were ferried from the town to the landfill site where they too were burned in petrol and then buried. Thick black smoke rose and drifted wherever the wind took it. In the aftermath of such tragedy and destruction, complaints from neighbouring communities and villages about the stench and fumes were ignored.
Even though Shreve was now regarded as a ‘plague’ town, most of the survivors stayed, imbued with a sense of pride at their staunchness and finding ever more beauty and simple wonder in a town that had woken up from a nightmare. Their town. Shreve.
It was quiet in the streets. Many people had died. And it was quiet in the surrounding countryside where so much of the wildlife had been taken and ‘used’.
Ray and Delilah agreed they’d see Kevin and Jenny for drinks, maybe dinner, very soon. It seemed right, after all they’d been through, that they should remain friends. But the days after the fecalith was shot and burned gathered as quickly as autumn leaves and the four of them didn’t make contact.
Ray was philosophical.
Perhaps we all need time to heal quietly. Perhaps we’ll come out of ourselves when we feel brighter inside.
***
Aggie Smithfield woke up in warm, clean sheets in a hot room.
Tubes in each nostril blew a steady but fine stream of pure oxygen into her. Each time she breathed out, her nose hissed as two jets of air collided. In her left hand was a syringe driver that she could squeeze to alleviate the pain in her chest. In her right arm a saline drip kept her from dehydrating.
The nurses were kind to her, their faces full of concern. The doctor, a young, dark man with far too much beard, spoke to her softly. Inspired her to feel better with his intense, confident eyes.
She did not know what day it was.
She could remember running away from something but she didn’t know what it was. The doctor told her she’d had a terrible shock and serious injury and that she wasn’t ready to remember. One day, soon, when she was stronger, her mind would let her recall what had happened. In the meantime, he said, she was to lie still, relax and let him and his team take care of her.
The pain in her chest - due to her cracked sternum, broken ribs and punctured left lung - was very bad at times. She used her syringe driver a lot. Depended on it for sleep. But the morphine had its dangers; it was in her sleep that the monsters came. Nameless, shapeless things that dragged themselves along after her with endless determination.
Screaming hurt the most. She screamed often, always on waking.
***
After so long without contact, the text from Jenny came as a surprise.
Ray and Delilah were drinking in the pub but both of them felt off colour. The lethargy and heaviness of their limbs had come on overnight. They had stomach cramps and couldn’t face food. Ray suspected the previous night’s Chinese takeaway. He awaited the diarrhoea and vomiting without enthusiasm. As there was nothing better to do, alcohol had seemed the only solution. They were both drinking whisky with ginger wine to ease their stomachs when Ray’s phone had bleeped.
‘Who’s it from?’ Asked Delilah.
‘Jenny. Asking us if we feel all right. She says they’re both laid up. They must have ordered from the same place last night.’
‘Text her back. Ask her what the symptoms are.’
As Ray keyed his phone, Delilah looked around the pub. It was quiet. None of the people there looked particularly happy. In fact, several looked quite pale. Maybe it was the light. Doug, the landlord, always a cheerful sort in his laconic way, was sweating in the gleam of the bright bar lights. She was about to shout over to ask him what he’d been drinking the night before when he leaned down and vomited into the bottle trolley behind the counter.
‘Shit,’ she whispered, and then: ‘Ray?’ He looked up from his phone.
‘What?’
‘The landlord just chucked up. Look around. Everyone’s ill.’
Ray stopped texting and glanced around.
‘Nah . . . they’re probably just . . .’
‘Just what?’
He studied the other patrons more carefully.
‘Fuck,’ said Ray. ‘This is not good. Drink up and let’s take a look outside.’
Beyond the pub car park the streets were deserted. Ray shrugged. More to himself than her he said:
‘That doesn’t prove anything. It’s been like this for weeks.’ He walked quickly towards the main road. Already he could see there was little or no traffic on it. Then they heard an ambulance siren. Then two.
‘Christ, D. What’s happening?’
‘It’s starting again.’
‘No. This is something different. It’s -’
A gut spasm cut him short and, utterly unable to control himself, he vomited onto the pavement. The stream of puke was dark, almost black. The puddle it made was oily. Not a bean sprout or water chestnut to be seen. Not the ghost of a spring roll. He looked at it, trying hard not to think about what it might mean. His body was shaking.
‘I’m freezing, D. I need to get inside.’
Walking back to her bedsit, Delilah was sick too - so suddenly there was no way to prevent it. All she could do was turn her head away from the pavement and retch over a small brick wall into someone’s front garden. Ray couldn’t stop himself from checking out what she’d produced. It was the same stuff. He remembered the smell from somewhere but he said nothing.
‘Maybe there’s an outbreak of stomach flu. E-coli or something.’
He didn’t believe it, though, and he knew she wouldn’t either. At her place they took turns in the shared bathroom. Then, as they weake
ned, they allowed themselves the use of bowls next to the bed. By the time the black puke overflowed, they were too frail to get up and empty their bowels. The vomit seeped into the carpet.
Ray watched it from the corner of his eye.
Each time he fell asleep and woke up again the puddle had changed. Grey threads appeared in it like rootlets or tendrils. They gripped the bowl and wormed into the threads of the dirty carpet. They spread like veins. Soon they pulsed and Ray felt the rhythm inside himself.
He turned to look at Delilah.
Her beautifully pale skin was turning black, the black of rubbish sacks. Her hair, silky as crow feathers, was whitening, the same colour as the vein-like threads expanding from his sick-bowl. To find happiness, to survive the landfill war and then to lose it all like this . . . He wasn’t too sick to cry. The tears that seeped from his eyes were viscous, dripped too slowly too be natural. It only made him weep more. He didn’t want to know what he was becoming, didn’t even want to assess himself in the mirror. She was silent beside him. Very still. The effort of lifting his arm to reach out to her was great. Like he was wearing lead armour. His hand was coal black shot with grey, dendritic capillaries. What flowed inside those veins now? The chalky veins had grown from his fingertips, protruding like shoots. His hand was shaggy with hair-like extensions.
He rested this strange hand on her chest. He wanted her to know while he still meant it, while it was still him talking. Her chest rose and fell intermittently. Her heartbeat seemed distant through his fingertips.
Garbage Man Page 29