The Big Bang

by Roy M Griffis

  He eased the gearshift into first, and they slowly pulled away from the ranch.

  It was strange to drive after sundown. Out here, away from the larger cities, the towns had unreliable access to the electrical grid, and most shut it down at night. Where the darkness would have been softened by the glow from streetlights and neon and cozy lamps in front rooms, now the sky was a deep black, with stars burning like slashes in the velvet. He’d not really seen much of the stars, growing up in the cities, and he wasn’t often able to give them much attention in his current circumstances. Caliban attacks came from the ground, not from the air, so he rarely looked to the skies.

  Lightning did a strange thing. She reached over and turned the knob on the radio. This Bug had been mostly stock and so it had the old-school AM-only radio. The hiss of static filled the Volkswagen. Out here, that wouldn’t have been so unusual. Miles from anywhere, the local AM stations would have been blown out at night; it was one of the electrical spheres around the earth reacting to the solar waves, Whistler remembered that much. That was why you’d only pick up the hugely powerful stations after sundown. “Broadcasting with 50 Thousand Watts!” one of them had proclaimed in his youth. Lightning idly spun the dial, moving from 530 up toward 1500.

  It gave Whistler a weird, disconnected feeling. For a minute he felt as if he were floating. In the darkness, in the old car rattling along, with the static and the sewing machine roar of the engine, it seemed so normal. This could have been him thirty years ago, in an old beater VW; out on a date with the gal he trusted most in the world. And it was still all ahead of them: their personal stories, their dreams achieved or broken, success or failure. And ahead of them, too, would be the bombs, the invasion, the fall, the plagues, and all the other events that had rendered everything in their personal Before into gall and wormwood.

  He’d never had such a sense of vertigo, such a sense of coming unmoored in time. He tightened his hands on the cracked steering wheel. Lightning must have had a similar sensation. She looked out the window at the passing darkness, then she reached over and snapped off the radio.

  “What did you want to be when you grew up, Whis?” she asked, not looking at him.

  That caught him off guard. It was nothing he’d thought about in a couple of lifetimes. “Uh…veterinarian, I guess.” He felt her gaze. “I really liked animals.” He noticed how he said “liked,” not “loved.” Love was too dangerous a word for these times, it seemed. “I worked for a vet in high school.”

  “You’re smart. You could have done it.”

  “Hated having to put animals down.” The words felt strange and awkward in his mouth. It was like speaking an ancient language, something from another world. Euphemism had no place in this life. “Which seems pretty dumb, when you consider how many men I’ve killed.” How many had it been? When he was a younger man, young and dumb, he’d sometimes counted the number of women he’d slept with. There was no counting the dead men—he never wanted to face that number.

  “You were just a kid.” Her voice was soft.

  He was concentrating on the interstate ahead of them. This far from the major population centers, the roads hadn’t been choked with traffic that day and in some ways I-10 was still passable. The gangs and barrio boys mostly worked the remains of the cities, so while the possibility of an ambush remained, it was tolerably low. He didn’t want to impale them on the rusting hulk of a semi, if he could help it, and so he almost missed what she said next.

  “I spent five years over there.”

  Over where? he wondered, his eyes on the twin beams of sickly yellow light from the headlamps. Wasn’t anything out here except… “You worked at the prison?”

  “I didn’t work there.”

  “Hmmm,” he grunted. What the hell was he supposed to say?

  “I didn’t want to be anything when I grew up,” she said. Her talking, this was important. He knew it, so he drove as quietly and carefully as he could, making no sudden moves, downshifting with languorous care. “Whenever I thought about growing up, all I saw was a big blank.”

  “None of us saw this, that’s for sure,” he offered.

  “I’d probably be dead if I wasn’t in prison. Mr. G—the Warden—he turned me around, showed me a better way.”

  Whistler had heard about the local prison, the Alamo, being pounded into the ground by the invaders in the early days of the war, so there was no sense in suggesting they go pay the Warden a visit. Taking prisoners was not a real high priority for the ’ban, in the past or the present.

  She turned to look at him. “You ever get tired of this life, Whistler?”

  Now there was a question that had a million answers. “Yeah,” he said. And then, “No. I mean…well, at least what we’re doing means something.”

  Her silence was skepticism itself. Where was this coming from? he wondered. Aloud he said, “I did insurance claims adjusting back Before. How important was that, really, in the big scheme? We spent as much time looking for reasons not to pay as we did figuring out what to pay.” There wasn’t any honor in it, he realized. “It wasn’t worth a damn, really.”

  “Maybe to the person being paid,” she offered.

  “Maybe,” he conceded, a bit grumpily. “But it didn’t make the world any better. If I never showed up for my job again, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

  She was nodding, slowly. “But we make a difference.”

  “Hell, I don’t know that.” He risked a glance over at her. She was looking off toward the north, in the direction of the ruined prison. If she saw it, it was only with her memories. “I guess it makes a difference to me. To know I didn’t just roll over and wet myself when the Caliban came in.”

  “I know things I wish I didn’t,” Lightning said, her voice low. He wasn’t sure she was even talking to him anymore. “I’m good at some wet work…and I don’t want to be.” She straightened up, turned back to him. “You know what I want?”

  He wasn’t stupid enough to even try to guess. “What?”

  “I want my innocence back. I don’t want to know anymore.” She gestured at the body bag in the back. “I don’t want to know what it looks like when you drag a man to death. Or how long somebody kicks in their own blood after you’ve cut their throat.”

  Now it was his turn to nod silently. There was nothing he could add to any of that. Combat, both stand-up and sneaky style, reminded you over and over that at the bottom, we’re bags of meat. After a while, the nine million ways a person could end up dead stopped being surprising or worthy of comment. That knowledge eroded you, somehow, changed how you looked at people. It made you kind of forget that inside those bags of meat were plans and hopes, all the ephemeral, intangible stuff that made us human.

  “I found a lump,” she said. Whistler thought maybe he was getting stupid in his advancing years. He was having trouble keeping up with her conversation. “A lump,” she repeated. “In my breast.”

  Oh. “Damn,” he said, voicing the first inadequate thing that came to his mind. Nine million ways you can end up dead, and some of them were a lot slower and more ugly than others, what with the medical system blown to hell. Thank you, bin Laden. “Maybe Anne has something,” he suggested.

  She sat stiff in the seat, unwilling to acknowledge that hope shared space in her breast with what might be a killer. “Maybe.”

  It had to be a bitch, he thought. This tough, capable woman…afraid of nothing and her own body turns on her. He took his hand off the stick shift, reached over and thumped her thigh clumsily. “It’ll be okay,” he told her.

  She didn’t respond. He lifted his hand to her shoulder, kneaded the muscles of her back. “It’ll be okay,” he said, and this time, he believed it.

  Biting her lip, Lightning leaned against him, and he felt the tension in her drain away as she sobbed against his chest. He couldn’t drive like that so he pulled over near a clump of scrub, killed the engine and the lights.

  As they sat there in the dark, she wept sil
ently, hitting his chest with one clenched fist. “It’s not fair,” she’d gulp out, and then hit him again.

  He put both arms around her and rocked her. “I know,” he murmured, over and over.

  She looked up at him, her eyes shiny with tears. Then she was kissing him.

  It was a hell of a surprise, the last thing he would have thought or expected. And that he was kissing her back, well, to be honest he’d never ever thought about that, either. She wasn’t some chick, she was Lightning, the bad and black force of nature that put fear into the hearts of invaders everywhere, the fastest and deadliest person he’d ever known. But there they were, clamped onto each other like drowning swimmers, and they pulled each other down into those long-forgotten waters.

  If either of them had been any bigger they couldn’t have done it, but somehow she wriggled atop him in the cramped confines of the VW, her mouth still pressed to his. It had been a long time since Whistler had been with a woman, and it was over for him in less than a minute.

  “Ah, jeez, I’m sorry…” he started to say, embarrassed as a high school kid.

  She took his face in both her hands, still moving, breathing against his mouth, “It’s okay, just hold me,” and she was kissing him, and damned if he didn’t catch fire again. This time the fire burned long and hot for both of them, and they finally were still, clothes scattered around or only half off, windows fogged up, Whistler’s arms around Lightning.

  They were still there an hour later when the Caliban patrol found them.

  The headlights coming up behind them jolted them into awareness. Lightning eased off his lap, and they both quickly skinned into their clothes as the headlights slowed and stopped.

  There was a cautious rap on the window. It was with a Kalashnikov barrel. It took Whistler back to an equally awkward moment in high school, his pants around his knees and a girl a year older than him hurriedly pulling her blouse down. It might have been funny, in some other place and some other life; that is, if he didn’t have a dead guy in the backseat and illegal weapons stashed throughout the car. And the cops in his hometown weren’t likely to string him up by his ankles and beat the soles of his feet until the blood flowed.

  Whistler rolled down the window, all the while thinking of Bonnie and Clyde. They had died in a car and he heard that Bonnie screamed like a wounded panther. He didn’t want Lightning to go out like that. “Yeah?” he said with as much innocence as he could muster.

  “Why you here?” the shadowy form asked with a heavy accent. Prophet’s Chosen, no doubt. The desert wind was blowing outside, and through the open window he could hear the footsteps of people moving around the car.

  “Cooling off the engine,” Whistler replied. He said it slowly, so the soldier could process the information. “Engine hot.”

  Someone shined a flashlight in from the passenger side. It illuminated Lightning clearly. Whistler said a quick prayer than none of the Yemeni troops had told their story about the black genie, yet. Lightning sat still, her clothes a little disarrayed, and, honest to God, she looked embarrassed. Somebody outside said something, and there was laughter.

  The man at Whistler’s side seemed to relax and Whistler thought they were going to get away with it, but the flashlight moved to the backseat, and the beam froze on the body bag.

  “What that?” said the soldier, no longer relaxed.

  Remembering what he’d once heard about three ways to lie, he choose option three, which was to tell the truth, but to tell it so badly nobody would believe him. “Dead man.”

  They were apparently talking at cross-purposes, because the soldier said, “Bag. Bad bag.” Oh, for the love of Mary, they were honked on the fact there was a FEMA bag in the backseat. If they decided to move it, or check it in anyway, they’d find the Baldwin.

  Lightning lifted her hands, and held her nose. “Stinky.”

  They both sensed the hesitation outside. Keeping her hands in plain sight, moving slowly, she reached into the back seat and unzipped the body bag.

  Anselmo, poor bastard, had been ripening under the tool shed all day, and the undeniable funk of decomposition that filled the car was enough to make the soldier step back. She zipped the bag up again and sat back in her seat.

  “Don’t keep bag,” the soldier said.

  “We won’t,” Whistler promised.

  The soldier barked something in his harsh language and the footsteps receded. They sat silently in the VW bug until the lights from the Chosen’s vehicles had faded.

  “That was close,” Whistler said.

  “Time to get moving,” Lightning added, rolling down her window, trying to vent the odor of the dead man from the car.

  He started the engine and pulled out onto the otherwise deserted interstate. They drove in silence for a while, the roar of wind through the open windows dimming the opportunity for conversation. After about fifteen minutes, he was freezing. He closed the window, and she did the same. “Is there anything we need to talk about?” he said tentatively.

  “Not here,” she replied. Then she gave what sounded very much like a giggle, jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “Not in front of him.”

  “Yeah, we don’t want to do anything personal in front of him.”

  The sound of their laughter filled the car as they drove on. Lightning had a good laugh, full and rich, and he hoped he’d hear it again someday.

  When they saw the little store and its small compound of homes, they sobered quickly. As he took a wide reconnaissance loop on the rutted dirt road around the adobe huts, Lightning checked her weapons and pulled the Baldwin out from beneath the body bag. She waited until they’d come to the darkest part of the road, well back from the store. She cracked the door open, stood on the running board, and then stepped off into the night, carrying her armory with her.

  Whistler reached over, tugged the passenger door shut, then drove straight up to the store.

  There was a flicker of light behind a largish glass window fronting the shop. He could see shadows moving behind the glass. Well, this was going to be interesting. To minimize his chances of being shot outright, he turned off the engine, opened the door and stood behind it, his hands in plain sight on the roof of the car. “Inside the store. This is Whistler.”

  A voice spoke from the side of the store, from the shadows about where he expected he’d hear it. “Just stand there, Whistler.” The owner of the voice stepped out into the light, carrying a shotgun. It was Charlie, one of the Salazar kids, maybe fifteen, recognizable by the family flat nose and the scarring on his face from the Red Flu. Charlie called out, “Está desarmado. Salgan de ahí.” He’s unarmed. Come on out. Whistler didn’t react, just stayed still. Fine with him if they thought he didn’t understand the Spanish.

  The front door to the grocery store creaked, and people began filling the space, looking out at him. Their eyes weren’t friendly.

  “I’ve got your uncle here,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the backseat of the Bug. At that, a couple of the women began to weep.

  A hard voice cut through the weeping, and a broad-shouldered young man forced his way through the doorway onto the sidewalk. “You have the putas who did this?” Bennie. Shaved head gleamed in the lantern light from the room. What might have been shadows on his head and neck were tattoos, most of them jailhouse.

  “Nope,” Whistler said evenly. “I wanted to bring Anselmo back to his folks.” Standing here felt a lot more dangerous than running at the machine guns on the semi last night. Combat had a strange predictable unpredictability: no matter the setting or situation, the other side was trying to kill you; you were trying to kill them. Here, there was no telling which way Bennie was going to land. He was a smart, tough kid who hadn’t decided who he hated more: the gringos or the Caliban. If what Red and Gunny said was true, these people had been trading with the ’ban, which did make them collaborators, and which called for some harsh penalties. Americans against Americans. Not for the first time, Whistler hoped bin Laden was
roasting on a spit in a special part of Hell. “Give me a hand, Bennie; we’ll take your uncle inside.”

  Bennie walked over to the VW stiffly, muscles in his jaw bunched. “I’m sorry about your uncle,” Whistler said quietly as he eased the body bag out of the backseat. Lowering his voice even more, he added, “Don’t let your aunt see him. It’s pretty awful.”

  “She’s gonna want to see him, say goodbye,” Bennie mumbled back, his pain now more evident than his anger.

  “Let’s you and me clean him up, then,” Whistler offered. “Then we’ll talk, okay?”

  The younger man nodded, took the straps in his hands, and together, they carried the dead man inside.

  It wasn’t the ugliest thing he’d ever done. Like so much after the Big Bang, it would have been tough to pinpoint the worst anything. But if asked, Whistler might have had to point to the Christian school that was torched by the Prophet’s Chosen. The children inside had the choice of burning to death or facing the automatic weapons outside. It was while cleaning up after that atrocity that he first met both Lightning and Anne, before Anne was a curandera and when Lightning was still Taneisha.

  Trying to make what remained of Anselmo presentable was no picnic. He and Bennie took the bag around to a back room and laid it on an old metal table. They tied tequila-soaked bandanas over their mouths and noses and unzipped the bag.

  The tough young kid turned his head away, then forced himself to stare down at his uncle. Whistler let him look. Bennie was hard, and he was probably a killer, but he hadn’t had a lot of experience with the flesh and blood consequences. It’s one thing to shoot at people from a distance or to gang stomp them in a pack, but it’s a whole ’nother game to see what was left after those kinds of deeds. He was glad, in a school-teacher kind of way, of how shaken the tough kid was. Bennie hurried over and opened a window on one wall, then the other. A clean breeze swept through the room.