by Guy James
The sight of the spandex recalled Lars’s death, and a chill crept up Sven’s spine at the memory. Ivan skittered, and the combination of the painful recollection and Ivan’s uneasiness plunged Sven’s mind deep into the thoughts that he had been trying to distance himself from.
Looking away from the crawler and diverting his attention from the crawler’s moans, Sven jogged around the man, having spotted something that he could use propped up against the bench the man had come from.
Leaning on the railing between the bench and the East River was a racing bike.
76
A CABIN IN RURAL VIRGINIA
The vegan with the handlebar moustache woke with a start and disturbed the platter of tuber and guacamole remains in his lap. He gasped, quickly steadied the platter so that it didn’t topple, and looked down.
The small, misshapen mountain of mashed yucca and avocado that remained uneaten had begun to oxidize. It was turning an unappetizing shade of grey.
His first thought on preserving the sanctity of his food, the vegan’s mind flashed on the plenteous reserve of lemons in his refrigerator. He moved the platter from his lap and set it down in the empty spot on the couch next to him.
He got up, noting that the water in his foot tub was down to its last inch and needed refilling, lit a cigarette, picked up his platter, and wobbled over to the refrigerator, trailing water from his bare feet and tattered jean bottoms as he went.
Something other than the refrigerator let out a creak as he opened the refrigerator door. The vegan spun, his grip on the platter faltering. Before he could steady the platter, a dollop of oxidized guacamole plopped onto his right foot, just above his big toe.
He set the platter down on the counter next to the refrigerator, forgetting about the lemons and his desire to keep the remainder of his dinner from turning an unappealing, streaky brown.
The vegan’s eyes strained to see through the darkness beyond the window, but all he could make out was the swinging canopy of branches that covered the front entrance and driveway of the cabin. The swinging was gentle, even calming to watch, and for a brief moment the vegan felt hypnotized and lost track of why he had come to the window in the first place.
Who would be out here, in the middle of the Virginia nowhere where the vegan had taken up refuge after the outbreak? He was in a small, wooden cabin, three quarters of a mile worth of rough road deep in the forest.
For many years, the cabin had been a rental property, popular among the few city folk who sought to stick a week of peace and quiet in between the constant insanity of their work lives. Before the outbreak, the cabin had been rented one or two weeks out of every month, bringing the vegan a respectable amount of supplemental income, enough to cover his cigarette habit.
Now, there were no takers. Even if someone had wanted to rent the place, the vegan didn’t want to keep using the cabin as a rental property anymore. After the outbreak, he had decided that the cabin would become his home, so he had taken after Thoreau’s example and become a hermit.
That was what he had felt was best. He wanted to find peace and understanding in a place of quiet solitude, because he knew that peace and understanding could only be found in such a place, and the cabin appeared to have been built with that exploit in mind.
To the vegan’s eyes, the cabin had the look of a structure that had not been built at all, but that had grown out of the forest itself, like a natural projection of the woodlands that had sprung forth by the world’s natural processes.
The cabin was not unlike a rocky extrusion, pushed out by the churning of the earth. It was a good place—a place of stillness that was in perfect synchronicity with its environment.
The vegan had decided he would be a backward Thoreau, however, and rather than seek an understanding of society through personal introspection, he would seek an understanding of himself through an examination of the events of the world at the time of the outbreak. Proceeding in this fashion, he thought, would lead him to what he was looking for: a personal understanding that would orient him to the nature of his new life’s purpose.
Cabins were conducive to that sort of thing, the vegan had decided, especially ones that were so untamed, regardless of the type and direction of the introspection, and so he had moved into the cabin, leaving his few belongings behind in his apartment outside the forest, and made trips back to civilization twice weekly to stock up on food and wilderness supplies.
Now he stepped away from the refrigerator and strained his eyes once more, but the light of the moon didn’t reach through the wooden canopy in front of the cabin. He could see moonlight beyond it, about fifteen yards from his front window, lingering on the mossy ground there, but nothing crossed through the light.
The creaking came again, and this time the vegan thought it sounded more like a scraping than a creaking. Though he wanted to attribute the noises to the wind blowing through the branches and the branches scraping against the cabin, there was something about the noise on this night that differed from the cabin and woodland noises with which the vegan was familiar and comfortable.
He strained his eyes and thought he saw something, a glimmer of sorts. The vegan shuffled to the door and opened it, letting in the chill air. He stepped out onto the wooden stoop, his bare feet not feeling the frost. There he stopped and listened.
The ordinary forest noises that the vegan expected to hear were absent. There was an eerie stillness in the air, and it stood apart and distinct from the biting cold.
Then the vegan understood the glimmer that he had seen. It was snowfall.
He returned to the cabin and took a final look around. There was no television, and no internet, so there was no way to check and confirm what he felt.
The vegan set to packing snacks that would sustain him on his journey. He filled small, recycled paper bags with dried apricots, dried pineapple rings, dried cherries, dried cranberries, walnuts, pecans, brazil nuts, and coconut-date macaroons rolled in maca powder and raw cacao. The vegan had made the macaroons from scratch. He carefully put each of the little baggies in a backpack and covered them with a hemp blanket.
After considering adding some containers of water to his pack, he decided against it. He knew that given the way his body now worked, he could soak up what he needed from the snow, and the less weight that he carried on his back, the more quickly he could move. He wasn’t sure what he would need to move quickly for, or where he would be moving, but he preferred to err on the side of packing too lightly.
The vegan with the handlebar moustache closed the backpack and slung it over one shoulder, then, resisting the urge to take one more look at the tranquil cabin that he loved, stepped out into the sparkle of falling, moonlit snow.
77
SVEN, JANE, AND LORIE’S APARTMENT, SUTTON PLACE, NEW YORK
“Hello…Jane,” Milt said.
Jane raised her gun and pointed it at Milt’s head.
Milt pursed his lips. “Et tu?” Milt said. He slumped and shook his head. “Please allow me a few moments to explain myself. Grant me that courtesy, if you will, fair lady. I have not come here to harm you, or to harm anyone, for that matter. My vehicle, perfidious though it may be, is stationed but a short distance away, at the easternmost periphery of 57th Street, overlooking the children’s park that does abut the East River—” Milt gestured to the view of the East River through the window, “—so if you only allow me to explain myself first, I shall leave without delay if that is what you then desire…after hearing me out.”
Jane stared at him, the gun pointed at his head. Her grip trembled.
“I do apologize,” Milt said, “for coming in unannounced. That was both rude and presumptuous of me. Please do excuse me for that arrogance. I am in a rather strange temper. You see, I suffered a fall on my journey here—I rode a two-wheeled transportation device, one that is popular among my former…” Milt shook his head. “Never mind, I do digress. Please do forgive me for the intrusion.”
Jane lowere
d the gun, so it was pointed at Milt’s heart rather than his head. “What do you want? And how are you still alive…or whatever it is that you are?”
Milt nodded. “My appearance doth tell much. You are correct. I am not alive in the human sense, not any longer. The virus did change me.” Milt grinned sheepishly. “If you would not be too offended, I must digress once more, for there is something that is weighing quite heavily on my heart.”
Jane took a step back, keeping the gun trained on Milt’s chest.
“In the children’s park next to which I did park my slow and deceitful mechanical steed—it did take me quite a while to complete the expedition to your abode—there is a statue of a wild boar in the center of the park.”
Jane narrowed her eyes and frowned. “What?”
“Do you know of what I speak?”
“What?”
“The boar statue?”
“Do I know the statue? In the park? Yes.”
“Well,” Milt began, “when I saw that magnificent illustration, my mind began at once to attempt to decipher the message that the carved beast was supposed to convey to the human children who visited and cavorted in the park. I assumed immediately that the rendering was a metaphor for something, but a boar…of what significance is such a creature to human children? A very long time has passed since I myself was a human child, so I resorted to accessing a number of semi-dormant sections of my brain in order to rummage about for the answer.”
Jane looked Milt up and down, trying to evaluate the threat he posed while he continued with his monologue. Why was he here? What was he hiding?
“Fortunately,” Milt went on, “my commitment to continual brain enhancement via Dual N Back training granted me a multitude of accessible brain sections so vast that the scope of it is unimaginable to…to…to—” Milt sputtered, “—well, to anyone other than me. I proceeded, aided by the rapid-fire action of my massive host of neurons, to draw on every instance of boars and boar-related things that I had theretofore encountered in my education and life, in the miscellany of TV documentaries that I was able to recall, and even in any symbolic significance that I could imagine to do with pigs, hogs, swine, and all popular media and food product derivatives of such beasts.”
Jane stared at him.
Milt sighed. “Try though I did, I could not fathom it. I then considered entering the park to look for an inscription at the base of the statue, which inscription might elucidate the nature of said glorious replica beast, however, I decided that such pursuits would have to wait. At some later time, I shall return there to ponder the statue further. Perhaps we shall all return there…together.”
Milt looked to his left, and then his right, noticing that the shoulders of his trench coat were piled with snow. The snow was melting, running down his coat, and dripping on the wood floor. He flushed, then groaned.
“What a ham-fisted buffoon I am,” he said. He adjusted a knob on his self-hydrating contraption, increasing the flow and soothing his anxiety. “I do apologize about the floor.” He bowed in a grandiose fashion, and the piles of snow on the shoulders of his trench coat fell to the floor. Only a light dusting was left on his coat. Milt groaned.
“How do you know where we live?” Jane asked. “How did you find us?”
“Well,” Milt said. “That was easy enough. The media and the protests—in respect of which I do express my sympathies—made it exceedingly simple.”
“How did you survive? How are you still alive?”
“I would like,” Milt said, “to tell the full tale, for it is truly miraculous and a thing of unparalleled beauty, but, seeing as how you have leveled a firearm at me and continue to hold it unwaveringly in place, I shall give you the much abridged version.” He looked at Jane and his face became stern. “The virus—it evolved me. That is what it does. That is its purpose. To evolve all of humanity. To push humans to the next stage, toward perfection.”
“You?” Jane said. “You’re perfection?”
Milt rolled his eyes. “Such a thing may be unfathomable to you now, however, I assure you that it is so. And thus, without further ado, I humbly request that you join me in the wonder that I have wrought, in the progression toward superior—”
Jane felt her insides grow cold. “You did this?”
Milt appeared to be suppressing a smile. “Quite,” he said. “It is impressive, is it not?” He bowed again, adding a flourish of his trench coat this time. “This is the new evolution.” Milt paused, seemingly for dramatic effect. “Join me, and we shall inherit this plane. I shall make you and Sven thanes in my kingdom…and with time, I shall grant Lorie that privilege also. Do not fret, for my word is true. As I say, so shall it be.”
“You’re insane,” Jane said. “Completely insane. Maybe it’s the virus, maybe you always were. I don’t know how you survived, and how you did this, but you’re crazy. You’ve killed all these people. You unleashed a plague, don’t you get that? Millions of people are dying right now.”
Milt shrugged. “It is necessary for the world to move forward. Let’s put it this way, in terms that you can comprehend: you—”
“No,” Jane said, “let’s put it this way.”
She pulled the trigger.
78
MANHATTAN WATERFRONT GREENWAY, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Sven caught his breath as he examined the bike.
“Last time I rode a bike…I was eight.” He took the bike by the handlebars. “Worth a shot to make it back faster, huh Ivan?”
Ivan whined.
“I’m not thrilled about it either,” Sven said.
Sven guided the bike away from the railing and rolled it through the snow past its crawling owner, who had by that point turned around, and was making a direct course for Sven’s last position, behind the bench.
Sven stopped when he was a safe distance from the infected biker and under the glow of one of the Greenway’s lights. He focused on the bike, averting his gaze from the snow that the biker had infused with blood and pus.
The bike looked clean of blood and other bodily emissions. The tires were thin, and Sven doubted they could handle well on anything, least of all on snow. Then again, people rode bikes like this all the time, so Sven guessed that it must have been a workable design.
Ivan whined again.
Sven sighed, changed the filter in his mask, and got on the bike. He turned and saw the bike’s owner gaining ground. Blood was oozing from the infected man’s mouth, marring the fresh snow.
Taking a deep breath while trying to recall what it had been like to ride a bike when he was a child, Sven pushed off.
He began to pedal, surprising himself that it was working.
Another of the biker’s moans reached Sven, and then Sven was out of earshot, accelerating north on the Greenway.
As he rode, Sven strained his eyes as far into the distance as the night and his vision would allow, searching for any infected in his path.
“Good thing I lost some weight, huh Ivan? This would’ve been almost impossible in contest shape.”
Ivan whined.
“It’s all about relative strength, just like I’ve been telling you.”
Ivan whined again.
“Yeah, yeah. I know…me too.”
As Sven rode, the bike’s tires broke loose on the path—sometimes the back tire, sometimes the front, and sometimes both at the same time. Sven compensated for this by slowing down and trying to avoid the iciest patches, which were sometimes hidden under a fresh layer of powdery snow. Even in the cold he was in, his hands were coating the handlebars with sweat. He noticed this, and wondered how long it would be until his hands froze solid to the bike.
79
The frozen ground was moving away from Ivan and Ivan was moving backward attached to Sven and they were going to find Lorie and Jane and Ivan liked Lorie and Jane and he wanted to help Lorie and Jane but he and Sven were also moving in the same direction as the fat man with the bad death and Ivan could smell his smell growing
stronger and it was cold but he could smell that fusty smell and it was almost as bad as the smell of the water that was next to them and that smell was almost as bad as the bad smell that was everywhere and Sven was shivering and sweating and Ivan was telling Sven where to go but Sven kept going in the wrong places and Ivan was tired and cold and still unhappy and Ivan hoped that he and Sven would find Lorie and Jane and that they would all be able to eat and rest soon like they did before.
80
Sven was trying to make out the street numbers to his left when he entered a portion of the path that was shrouded in darkness. He gently squeezed the brakes.
The wheels locked up and the bike began to skid.
The handlebars began to fight Sven’s grip, and the bike’s front tire found an unseen, dangerous pathway that it was now following with relentless determination.
The bike lurched toward the river.
Sven jerked the handlebars away from the river, realizing as soon as he had done it that it was a mistake.
The bike spun and its tires left the ground.
Ivan hissed.
Sven was thrown halfway off the seat. His knees caught the seat as the bike crashed to the ground.
Momentum carried Sven and the bike farther up the path, on top of the downed bike. Frozen snow scraped at Sven’s shoulder and side, where he was concentrating his weight to protect Ivan. Then he felt a jolt in his legs, and he was stopped. He looked down and saw that the bike’s back tire had caught in the legs of a bench.
Ivan hissed again.
“Sorry,” Sven said. “I never said I was any good.”
Ivan meowed an irritated meow and scratched at the inside of the backpack.
Sven picked himself up and looked at the ruined bike. He made sure that the seal of his mask was in place, caught his breath, and got his bearings.