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The Queen of the Dead

Page 9

by Vincenzo Bilof


  Jack walked with him and listened. He felt the pangs of shame; he’d been out there spilling blood as if it was a game. These people had lost everything they had, everything they’d known. He had nothing to live for, no career, no girlfriend, and no future.

  Deep down, he knew he would change his mind about everything if Jerry showed up.

  You fat turd, get yer big ass going and start busting brains out their ears. You’re not worth a damn, because these fuckers have been laughing at you. Pointing and laughing because you smell and you’re fat. F-A-T.

  Hundreds of people scattered on the floor.

  None of the victims wanted to talk to him, or make eye contact. They focused on the cowboy; most of them were still checking their cell phones for a signal, which was the hottest topic among the survivors. Why weren’t the phones working? Were the networks jammed? If the networks were jammed, was the violence spreading everywhere?

  Most of the survivors looked at the cowboy with wary glances. He might be a savage, a murderer, or a hero.

  No matter how much he and his band mates used to dream about getting their revenge upon the world for committing the crime of being musically and politically ignorant puppets, his desire to inflict serious damage was gone.

  There were long stretches of silence in the hangar. They shared a nightmare together, and none could believe the power it wielded over their souls. They whispered their experiences and their fears, while wondering what the future might hold. There would be rescue, of course. The government always had a plan.

  Jack and the cowboy sat down after wandering through the maze of farts, sweat, and tears.

  People were starting to ask about using the bathroom and finding something to eat. At some point, they would have to go back out there. A few soldiers who sat among them protested on the grounds that the base was evacuated, and by now, the dead things ruled the base.

  “Wonder how long we’re gonna wait here,” Jack tried to make small talk, just to remind himself he was still alive.

  “Don’t hear those things banging on the doors,” Clint Eastwood said. “We’ll leave when we’re ready to move on, when we’ve figured it out. It don’t matter what I said earlier—someone will step up and start making decisions nobody will like.”

  Exhaustion was setting in. The total adrenaline crash and the emotional letdown. The party was over and someone had to pick up the pieces, but who?

  “I didn’t know if you were one of them,” Clint Eastwood said.

  “What?”

  “Out there. I didn’t know you were alive. Your movements weren’t as jerky. That’s how I figured it out. Right out of the corner of my eye. I took a chance.”

  Jack bowed his head, his cheeks growing warm from the embarrassment. He’d looked like nothing more than a hungry corpse, attacking everything in sight.

  “What’re you worried about?” the cowboy asked.

  “I’m just thinking. You did everything. I don’t know…” he couldn’t finish his sentence. His hands were shaking.

  “Guilt,” the cowboy said. “Survivor’s guilt.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Jack couldn’t look at him. He chewed his bottom lip and stared at his feet.

  “You’re right and you’re wrong. When things go wrong, people want someone to blame, and someone to save them. They expect a superhero to throw money at their feet and bail them out, someone with all the answers.”

  Jack sat down and crossed his legs beneath him. It was his turn. He was the last to hear these words, and they were meant for him alone.

  “I’m homeless,” the cowboy said. “Was a philosophy professor about twenty years ago. Worked at U of M. I cracked. I didn’t know how to deal with knowledge. I was suicidal. I’ve had some odd jobs, spent some time sleeping in tunnels, in shelters, and in garbage. Slept in an asylum. I needed the disconnect. I appreciate life because I know what it’s like to live.”

  He continued. “All these things you see and feel make you want to live. You have to decide. But I didn’t have to decide. I really am a cowboy, you see. The American knight in shining armor. I don’t look real because people don’t want me to be real, unless they need me.”

  Clint Eastwood sat next to him and sighed. Both men listened to people in the hangar cough and talk.

  “We’re already living in tomorrow,” the cowboy said as if discovering something new. “The sun always rises and it doesn’t care what we think or how we live. I think that’s amazing. Something so important to us, something that sustains us; our mother, the sun. Watches over us. Defeats the dark. Reveals truths. It’s just a thing we don’t think about. Like the air we breathe.”

  The cowboy provided the comfort of a voice that didn’t want to berate or command, a voice that was so human that Jack realized he’d never understood what being a man was.

  “Do you know why these people came here? To the base?” the cowboy asked. “They were desperate for hope. Nobody knows what hope is, but they know they want it. They crave it. It’s like falling in love for the first time. Time stops. We want that feeling every day.”

  Jack had no idea what he was talking about. He thought he knew what love was, but he knew it was confused with his sense of loyalty. Jerry was all he needed.

  Living in Jerry’s shadow provides this snapshot of life: jerk off and play video games. Smoke weed and pretend to look for a job. Hit the drum kit and play the beats Jerry wanted him to play; play different beats when Jerry wasn’t around. Listen to music he really didn’t like. Hang out in clubs and watch his brother say awful things to women. Spitting in their faces. Knocking drinks out of their hands.

  “What do we do now?” Jack asked.

  The cowboy smiled. “What we do every day. We struggle. We breathe.”

  Jack watched a little boy rest his head on a soldier’s thigh. There were streaks through the dried blood on his face where he’d cried. The soldier rubbed the kid’s back, hardly aware of what he was doing, staring at the ceiling and wondering why he failed.

  “Every day we’re waiting to die,” Jack said. “My brother used to say that. I didn’t know what it meant. All I know is, I never wanted to hurt anybody. Not really. I’m not a mean guy. I’m not a bad person, y’know? I play the drums, but I’m not a killer. I’m not mad… not really… just…”

  His eyes blurred with fresh tears. He tried to watch his hands shake.

  ***

  Maybe he could sit and dream; everything would go away. He’d be back in his basement beneath a cloud of marijuana smoke, waiting for Jerry to hand the joint to him, even though his lungs were on fire and he didn’t want to smoke. He would hear Beanie laughing while oiling his katana. Upstairs, Mom would be sitting on the couch watching a re-run of a reality show while dirty dishes waited in the sink; dishes from a year ago, a feast for flies. Before Dad succumbed to lung cancer, Mom used to drive them to school every day; buy them clothes, make dinner, work a full-time job at a bakery. Her depression had earned the right to disability benefits and years of convalescence.

  And now the worst memory of them all.

  Running upstairs when Jerry and Beanie finally showed up. He’d been waiting ever since the riots started in Detroit; waiting for his brother’s reaction. They gathered in the kitchen while Mom stood over the sink, scrubbing away at the grime. The television in the living room played an episode of Survivor as if nothing could be going wrong.

  Jerry rambled on about destiny. He thought about their “chance” to get back at the scum-suckers who beat them down. Jack watched their mother scrub away with a smile on her face. For the first time in years, he thought she might respond if he asked what was bothering her.

  The band descended into the basement and watched the Detroit riots on TV. Jack wanted to ask questions, but he knew better than to look like a coward to Jerry; it would just piss him off. Beanie swung his sword around the basement while Jerry paced, speaking with broad hand gestures and spittle flying from his lips.

  A crash upstai
rs didn’t cause anyone to move with urgency; they were used to Mom’s odd mood swings, in which she would suddenly emerge from the clutches of the sofa and break things in fits of rage.

  Hours passed and the riots intensified. Cell phones stopped working because the networks were clogged and because the military (according to Jerry and more than one conspiracy theorist) shut them down. The city was under quarantine. Soldiers manning a barricade on the Ambassador Bridge were gunning people down, only they didn’t look like people. The barricades around the Renaissance Center were falling apart and the Mariott was on fire. An hour later, Detroit had become a no-fly zone. There were rumors the Renaissance Center was completely gone. There were rumors that the riots were a response to something more violent, more horrific.

  Jack found the motivation to walk upstairs, while Jerry flipped channels and shouted obscenities and prophecies. The upstairs was a completely different world; he always had this feeling when he was too high to think straight. It was a land of silence and questions, mystery and despair.

  She was standing over the sink with the lights off in the house. Sirens outside caused Jack to shiver. What was going on?

  Mom turned to him. Thick lines of blood stained her wrists and her sweat pants. Her lips were blue, her eyes glassy. The light coming in through the kitchen window was orange; it should’ve been dark outside.

  Sirens crashing through the night. Fireworks going off in the neighborhood. Mom opened her mouth. She slid one foot in front of the other along the hardwood floor. She nearly lost her balance as her feet slipped through dark stains that weren’t there before.

  Jack shook the memory loose from his mind. He hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t given it a moment to become real. It was as if he still believed there was a home to go back to, a mother to wake up in the mornings and drive to doctor appointments and pharmacies. To the park where she would sit on the bench while drooling upon her shirt.

  ***

  Hours passed. There were attempts to snatch minutes of rest, but sitting and waiting for something to happen, for answers to appear, or for phones to start working again, was starting to weigh the survivors down. FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Guard—where the hell were they?

  Jack couldn’t give up hope that his brother was still alive out there. A part of him wondered if it might be better that Jerry was dead. With his mother and brother both dead, he would have to fend for himself. So far, he wasn’t doing a good job of it. His stomach rumbled and his eyelids were heavy, but sleep was unwelcome. In the darkness of dream, his shuttered eyes found only the faces of dead people.

  The chattering of voices intensified as rain pounded the hangar. The cowboy slept through the thunderstorm. Fresh terror was sweeping through the hangar, causing more sobbing and lamentations, more pining for lost loved ones and prayers to whichever deity was willing to listen.

  Those who still had battery power left in their phones revealed the bittersweet news: they could once again connect to the network.

  As the old man snored, shouting brought the hangar to life.

  “They shut down the freeways to Detroit…”

  “If Detroit was under quarantine, then how did this shit get here?”

  “Stay indoors? Stay in your homes? That won’t keep anyone safe!”

  “The Mackinac Bridge is on fire. Look at this… the whole bridge…”

  “Oh, my God, it’s in Windsor, it’s in Flint…”

  “Lansing’s evacuated…”

  The sound of the world ending. Each voice more desperate, more hopeless than the last. People standing up, revived from their stupor, sharing videos and gasping, reality muted by the horror of hopelessness; they were imprisoned on an island of blood and fire with no way out.

  The guessing games resumed, and Jack played the role of spectator. Eyes flickered to the sleeping cowboy on more than one occasion. They were looking for a martyr or maybe a scapegoat. There would be hell to pay, and Jack wondered if he was willing to protect the man, to save him as he’d been saved.

  When the pushing and shoving began, Jack stood and clenched his fists, prepared to fight. They might kill him just for standing near the cowboy.

  It was almost as if he stood outside, fire and smoke baking the flesh of shuffling figures that refused to crumple onto the lawn. Faces that couldn’t identify morality or fear, faces that saw nothing and everything, eyes activated by black magic or something cooked up in a lab or maybe delivered unto the Earth from the stars. These people would tear him to pieces without thinking twice.

  This is why they should die, but you were too weak to kill them when you had the chance. Jerry mocked his cowardice.

  Screams from somewhere in the hangar caused hundreds of eyes to look over shoulders.

  “Where’s the doctor?” A panicked voiced asked. “This man’s been stabbed! He’s hurt, please…”

  Minutes passed. An hour. His life was in just as much danger here, as the survivors cannibalized themselves by pointing their fingers and shouting.

  When the Eastwood woke up, he stepped into the fray, and several voices hushed as those who’d asserted themselves as the stronger members of their fear-collective still argued.

  “What’s the point of hiding in here? The damn military took off! They abandoned this place! What makes you think they’re coming back?”

  “We were forced to evacuate!” one of the bloodied soldiers stepped up. “You people—brought those things here with you.”

  “It couldn’t be contained,” someone commented. “Nobody could stop it. The phone networks crashed and nobody knew what the hell was going on.”

  “It was your job to stop them,” a finger jabbed at the soldier’s armored chest. “We came here because you were supposed to protect us. You people have the answers…”

  The cowboy interjected, “Might as well stop there. Beat us all to death with guesses. Blame. This is how we eat ourselves. We’re no different than those things.”

  “This is the killer talking,” a voice from the crowd announced.

  Exhausted mothers peered up at the old man, hoping he would perform a miracle to take away their suffering. The cowboy was one of the good guys, someone who would always cling to hope and strive for it no matter how hard life became. He didn’t seem to be aware that his appearance was odd; he absorbed and experienced all the sorrow and the pain, the fear and the dread.

  “Could you kill this woman’s boy?”

  The cowboy didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

  An uproar ignited. “So you’re playing God now? You decide who lives and dies?”

  “Sit the fuck down, man! Don’t you know what’s happenin’ out there? Did you see what we all saw?”

  Jack stood next to the cowboy while the debate raged. The old man’s bravado didn’t solve any conflicts that would arise; these predictable arguments had been delayed. Jack feared the worst because he was used to thinking that way. He wanted these people to live. Even an asshole didn’t deserve to be eaten alive.

  A woman with shoulder-length blonde hair and jade-colored eyes grabbed the cowboy’s arm; dark splotches stained her navy blue uniform, and the revolver and handcuffs hanging from the belt were enough to make Jack cringe; cops were the enemy when he was drinking and smoking with Jerry on the road. Her nametag read, D. Keefe.

  “We’re seconds away from a shooting gallery,” she said to the cowboy, “you got a plan?”

  The cowboy smirked. “A plan for what?”

  “You’re the only one with a level head in this shit hole,” she said, her green eyes focusing on Jack. “I think I saw you out there…”

  “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!” someone proclaimed.

  The officer glared at Jack. “You got a brother? He in here with you?”

  “Uh…”

  “LISTEN TO ME! THIS IS HELL ON EARTH! THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THIS IS TO KILL OURSELVES! WE CAN’T WIN. WE CAN’T WIN, BUT I CAN HELP ALL OF YOU…”

  The officer had her hand
on the revolver. “The plan?” she asked the cowboy.

  “What did I say?” the cowboy asked. “Caesar was stabbed in the back by his followers because they wanted his love.”

  She wasn’t about to listen to anymore of his vague bullshit; she did what Jack should’ve done earlier. “This isn’t about being in charge, and it’s not about any of this crap that comes out of your mouth. You have the strength and the will to keep some of them alive, and you want to sit back and watch?”

  “It’s been you against the world since you put that uniform on,” Clint said. “Now you feel it. Go ahead and save them. Go ahead.”

  “You think it’s funny,” Officer Keefe spat at the cowboy’s feet. “You’re just as bad as those mutherfuckers out there.”

  “He’s one of them, get back! Everyone get back!”

  Shoving and screaming ensued. The soldier with the boy on his lap was gone, disappearing into the frantic crowd. The banging on the hangar doors intensified. Jack could feel the pressure of time; should he wait on the cowboy-philosopher?

  “We gotta get out,” he said, looking at the tattoo on Officer Keefe’s left wrist, Harley Davidson written in script with an orange rose. This woman was someone who didn’t expect to be fucked with, the kind of woman Jerry would’ve insulted at a bar only to end up sleeping with her that same night.

  Before Keefe could respond, people were pushed into them; flailing arms and spittle, the smell of body odor, vomit, and feces, slippery flesh compelled to move before the sight of death itself. Jack nearly lost his balance while a thousand colors flashed through his vision; the clothes of countless people who were running and clambering toward something they didn’t know how to find.

  Just as quickly as the cowboy had inspired a few moments of order, chaos and fear swept through the survivors and drove them mad.

  Several people were already lying beneath his feet. He did his best not to step on them, but their face was stomped into the ground by everyone else who didn’t care to look. Women cried out for the children they couldn’t find.

 

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