Dead Weight

by Casamassina, Matt

  “All ears.”

  “Everything I’ve heard so far—the Rapture, aliens, this thing about wiping humanity clean, and your addendum to that, they all presume that we are the center of the universe. Whether it’s God or E.T., they’re really interested in messing with humanity.”

  “Why not? We are pretty awesome — especially me, as you know.”

  “But what if we’re not? What if everything we know and everything we are—it’s all some infinitesimal speck buried a trillion layers deep within endless universes? Think of it like this. What if Earth was just one of an uncountable number of cells within the bloodstream of a flea hidden away in the mangy fur of some dumb dog, itself unsubstantial, its neighborhood inconsequential, its universe one in a zillion? And then let’s say that the dog was finally given a long overdue flea bath, and the ramification of that was a poisoning of the flea and a breakdown of its cellular structure. Now, this is an event that takes seconds in its universe, but spirals into infinity for us, and as those cells are tainted, the result is an unexplainable change in the reality we know—in this case, the widespread disappearances of people.” He met his friend’s gaze. “And that’s it. No design. No epic plan. Just cause and effect, but not one that we will ever understand. Certainly not one that gives one solid shit about us.”

  Neither one of them said anything for a while, and then Trey broke the silence. “OK, a couple things to say to that. One, you’re not even twenty, so stop this pessimistic fatalism bullshit. I get that you’ve been through a lot, but from my point of view, your life could be worse. Your place is rockin’ and you’re with one of the hottest girls in Alpha by far. By far, dude. So maybe try to sprinkle a little more optimism into your life.”

  “It’s not fatalism,” Zephyr began and Trey talked over him.

  “Two!” He flashed the peace symbol with one hand. “Two! Even if we are microscopic flecks on a puddle of vomit in some bigger universe’s toilet bowl, that still means there is another universe. And that if you climb the universal ladder high enough, maybe there is some method to the madness. Some version of the Wizard of Oz, my man. And whoever or whatever that is, wherever they exist, and however they exist, I choose to believe that they understand the balance and keep it, even if we never will. That whatever happened here happened for a reason.”

  Zephyr considered all of this, took another drink, and then smiled. “Dude, let’s keep my girlfriend out of these little chats, huh?”

  “All right then. But no promises where my dreams are concerned.”

  “Pervert. And no offense, but you’re a little old for her, grandpa.”

  “Experienced, you mean, and go fuck yourself,” Trey said and then held out his beer. The two of them clanked their bottles together and then drank.

  “I’ve been wondering, with the world being what it is, if you could go anywhere and do anything, what would you do?” Zephyr asked.

  His friend scratched his neck and thought about it. “I’ve considered that a few times. I think maybe I’d get a boat, sail to Fiji or something. Stupidly beautiful, by the way—vacationed there before all of this happened. White sands, aqua blue ocean. You can look right through the water and see fish swimming around. And the weather is perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. You just wanna bask.”

  “You could, you know. You could just take a boat and do it. You’re a smart guy.”

  “Sure, but it’s not sustainable. I’m not a farmer or a fisherman. I need help to survive. And don’t act like you don’t, you idiot.” He was about to take another swig of beer and he stopped. His eyes narrowed, and he said, “You’re scheming—I can see it in your face. What’re you getting at?”

  “No, nothing. It’s just a question.”

  Trey surveyed him a moment longer. “Yeah, not buying it.”

  “It’s really nothing, seriously. I’ve just been thinking a lot about the future and what I should be doing with my life, that’s all.”

  The older man swiveled in his chair and faced him. “Translation: Where you should go. And you started thinking about this right around the time we met those kids in the mall, am I right?”

  “You don’t have to be a dick about it,” Zephyr said.

  “I’m not. But let’s face it, man, you’ve been moping around for the last couple weeks and everyone around you knows exactly why. And, by the way, I’m not saying that you don’t have every right to be pissed off because that shit ain’t cool and we both know it. At the same time, though, I can see the other side of this an—”

  Thunder crashed around them so loud that it walloped them, obliterating the argument. And did lightning flash, too? Fading colors pulsed and swayed in his vision. He blinked, then glanced at the sky again and confirmed the moon and no clouds.

  They both listened, their heads cocked like confused dogs, and Trey was about to say something when several new booms sounded from some unseen place. They gaped at one another before they both understood, rose and raced for the edge of the rooftop even as more gunshots cracked and roared five stories below. To Zephyr, it sounded as though thirty minutes of fireworks had been condensed into a few seconds and he knew before he saw anything that some terrible battle must be underway.

  Trey tripped over something and released a series of profanities as he stumbled and fell. “What is it?” he called from the ground while he clutched a knee and groaned.

  “I… hold on,” Zephyr began and peered over the ledge as his friend struggled to rise.

  His first assessment blazed and burst in a millisecond. Strobe lights, a street party with strobe lights and fog…. and then, a Halloween party? What? No, that couldn’t be right, he thought. And then his eyes focused and his mind overwrote the ludicrous diagnosis with a truer one: muzzle fire, guns, lots of guns, smoke everywhere and all the people. Oh my God, so many people. So many damned people!

  The assault was colossal in scale — easily hundreds and possibly thousands of combatants surrounded all sides of Alpha’s base. The street lights had likely been blown out and yet the muzzle fire from hundreds of weapons shot in unison illuminated the scene in radiance that flared and dimmed unpredictably. The structure’s first floor was on fire, a half-incinerated car still protruding from a gaping wound in what had formerly been the barred entryway. Something big exploded, the crowd roared and Zephyr nearly lost his footing as his own building shook and glass disintegrated all around them.

  “Get down!” he yelled and ducked, but Trey was still on the ground and nothing came at them.

  “What the fuck!” Trey bellowed.

  “They’re attacking the headquarters!”

  He hurried over to the ledge, leaned over and gawked at the building across the street. “Jesus, they’re boned. They’re fucking boned, man! We have to do something.”

  “Check it out!” Zephyr pointed to the top of the structure. “Our guys are still up there!”

  As if on cue, a thick stream of fire and smoke erupted from that precise area and javelined down to the city street below, lighting up the night as it flew. For just a second—had he blinked, he might’ve missed it—the strobe light effect was overtaken by uninterrupted brilliance and he gasped at all of the people. Then, a monumental explosion ripped through the pavement and the resulting inferno spiraled flailing, broken bodies into the air with terrifying force. Now, as screams rang out in chorus on the streets below, more Alpha gunmen took aim and sniped people at will.

  For a moment, Zephyr hoped the crowd might actually disperse, that this simple show of force would end the uprising, but clusters of people reformed as quickly as his idea and he shook his head. They aren’t gonna last like this, he thought. There are too many out there.

  “Our weapons,” he said. “We need to get our guns.”

  “Yeah, let’s do it,” Trey replied.

  They hadn’t made it halfway back when the rooftop door swung open and they skidded to a halt—Trey stumbled again and nearly ate cement this time.

  “Relax — just me,” Au
rora said and tossed Zephyr a spare rifle. She wore a long flannel, some shorts, and her feet were bare. “Please tell me you’re seeing this.”

  He nodded. “Hard to miss. Where’d we put the bug-out bags, you remember? We need to get all of our weapons and get…” He gripped her shoulder hard as understanding seized him.

  “Aurora,” he said. “Where’s Jordan?”

  She cupped her mouth and shook her head, tears already forming in her eyes, and he knew. She didn’t need to say a word, and couldn’t anyway.

  “I… She…” was all she could manage between the agony that disabled her.

  “Where?” Trey interjected.

  “Across the street,” Zephyr said. He felt sick.

  “At fucking Alpha?”

  “Yes. At fucking Alpha.” He turned back to his girlfriend and tried to embrace her, but she wouldn’t let him.

  “It’s OK. We’ll try around back. Or go through the sewers if we have to. We’ll figure this out.” It wasn’t a lie. He’d get her back or die trying and it was just that simple.

  “I sho—shou—uld’ve picked her up earlier, but Sonia… Sonia sss-s-said she’d bring her when they were done playing,” Aurora cried, her face contorted. “Why didn’t I get her? I should have fucking gotten her!”

  She was going to lose it and he knew it, so he took her face in his hands and met her eyes. “We will get her. I promise you. No matter what.” And he was unwavering in his resolve. She must’ve seen it on his face because she nodded and seemed to regain herself a little.

  “Guys, something’s happening. I think you should look at this,” Trey called and Zephyr’s ears confirmed the change. The gunshots had halted. Scattered bangs and cracks still sounded from nowhere, but the cacophony of deafening noise had subsided. All at once. When he and Aurora finally leaned back over the edge of the building, the light show was finished, and they saw crowds of faintly lit shadows retreating backward into the darkness.

  “They’re leaving,” she said.

  “Maybe the big boys on the roof scared them off,” Trey replied. “The bazooka or missile or whatever the fuck they shot down below tore up those assholes pretty good.”

  Zephyr shook his head. “Yeah, but why now? It was one big explosion and the crowd reformed right after it blew up. I don’t get it.”

  “Who cares? Let’s go get Jordan before they come back,” Aurora said.

  They had scarcely started back when more gunfire rang out behind them and Zephyr turned just in time to see that it was all coming from Alpha’s rooftop. The snipers now lined the perimeter of the structure and had forgone any particularity about their targets. Muzzle-fire layered the border of the high-rise. Shot after shot after shot. They were firing everything and not stopping to breathe.

  “Christ, here we go again,” Trey said as the three of them ran back for a better view.

  Then he spotted it. A monstrous diesel truck made an accelerated beeline for Alpha’s front doors, the rooftop soldiers unable to inflict any real damage upon it. Shoot another one of those rockets, you idiots, Zephyr thought and nearly screamed, but it was too late, no good, and he knew it. Seconds passed underwater and then the 18-wheeler plowed through the entryway of the building as though it were tissue paper until it was obscured from view.

  “Are they carrying fighters inside it, you think?” Trey asked.

  “I don’t kno—” Zephyr started before a blinding hot light raced through the lower extremities of the structure and a massive detonation howled into the night and knocked them on their asses even as their own hotel seemed to shake and sway on its foundation. Zephyr watched the stars blur in and out of focus and thought he heard more explosions, although they seemed distant now. A low humming gave way to ringing, he cupped one of his ears and found it wet to the touch.

  “Oh God!” he thought he heard Aurora scream from some faraway place as he fought against his senses to regain verticality, faltered, and toppled forward. He couldn’t seem to restore his center of gravity and every time he tried to stand firm he oscillated and fell instead.

  “It’s blowing!” Trey shouted. “Man, it’s blowing! We’re fucked!”

  “Help me get up… help me get up,” Zephyr said. Or he hoped he said. The ringing in his ears still outshouted everything else. He was about to ask again when Trey and Aurora obliged.

  He looked out beyond the perimeter of their own building just in time to see Alpha trembling, its footing shaky, its standing uncertain. His mind surfaced images of the old party game Jenga seconds before a misplaced block sent the puzzle to pieces. Then, before he could even contemplate the totality of such a change, his former home crumbled into itself, level collapsing onto level as any recognizable architecture transformed into broken concrete and metal and splintered wood and great shards of glass.

  He screamed something that might’ve been the name of a little girl and then a black cloud of billowing dust and debris swept over him.

  40

  This couldn’t be happening.

  The city horde roared somewhere down below. Aurora screamed and cried from another universe. And for the first time since the disappearances, Zephyr’s fight left him. He lay there on the cold rooftop, stared up into layers of smoky darkness and searched for the stars and moon beyond it. If he could just find one twinkling light in the night sky, he felt certain he’d wake from the dream and everything would be right again. His parents downstairs in the kitchen, maybe. No scourged new world. Just the old one, reality shows and traffic jams and thirty-two-ounce sodas and report cards and the fucking Internet and…

  “Get up, Zeph!”

  Faintly he heard this, the ringing still louder in his ears.

  Trey’s dumb face stooped before him and Zephyr almost pushed him away so that he might focus on the sky instead, but these thoughts fluttered away into the cloudy aftermath above and he finally allowed the circumstances and the horrible truths that followed to crush him.

  He loathed himself for every time he promised to find Jordan’s mother and for every time he sent her off to school so that he could savor his pointless solitude. And he blamed Aurora for letting this happen. He knew it wasn’t fair and wasn’t right, but he couldn’t help himself. As the tears cut paths through the ash and dirt on his cheeks, he wished it was him underneath that destruction and swore a silent oath to murder whoever orchestrated the attack on Alpha. That was what mattered now. Not anything else.

  Then Trey’s hands were upon him, shaking him, and pulling him up. His friend shouted something that Zephyr couldn’t understand and now Aurora was beside him. He waved her off but she ignored him.

  “We’ve gotta get him—” Zephyr heard before the ringing overtook his senses again. Far away, a great crowd of people cheered. That collective jubilation reverberated outward and he bawled his fists in response. So many innocent lives lost, and for what? What had really been gained this night?

  “Oh my God,” Aurora said and then asked something Zephyr couldn’t decipher.

  “Dunno, but it’s not pretty, that’s—”

  “I can walk,” he said. “Let go of me. I can walk.”

  But they continued on as if they hadn’t heard this declaration or didn’t care, each holding an arm and dragging him closer to the rooftop exit. He tried to shake them off but couldn’t. When they finally pulled the door open and after his eyes adjusted to the emergency lights inside, he saw that his shirt was soaked with sweat. Dark red sweat. And something was jutting out from it. Something foreign. He reached down to touch it and passed out.

  41

  “Now what?” a voice breathed.

  Another replied, “Bedroom closet. Three black bags. Get them all.”

  Zephyr opened his eyes and searched the sky again for moon and stars. Dark against darker. The blast cloud still dominated his panorama. He blinked and nothing changed. Tired. Cold. Nauseated. He tried to sit up and couldn’t move his arms.

  Cognition sparked to life and he recognized two new and important
details. First, that he was no longer on the rooftop, but in his dining room. This was not a reassuring revelation— only disorienting and concerning. Worse, he seemed to be lying on his dining room table, itself cleared of plates and silverware, not to mention books and toys and whatever else littered the surface on a daily basis. Second, and most important, he was bound to it.

  A pattering of footsteps. “I’ve got ’em,” Trey whispered from somewhere nearby. “Good fucking Christ, this is not what I signed up for. Is he awake?”

  “Yep,” Aurora said and then her face was over him, her hair dangling down onto his cheeks as it always did. She smiled, but he saw at once that it was disingenuous.

  “Zephyr, baby. You’re hurt. Not too bad. But we have to fix you and then we have to get the hell out of here.” She cupped his face with both hands and kissed him. She was sweating and breathing heavy. “You following all this?”

  “Yeah.” The world lagged a little and he felt dizzy. “Why am I tied up?”

  “Because it’s gonna hurt. A lot, baby. You’ve got a big piece of wood in you and I have to pull it out. We don’t have anything to stitch up the wound with and even if we did, we’re not sure we’d know how to do it. Plus, those people are still out there, which means we’ve got to go, and the sooner the better.”

  “Just leave me,” Zephyr said. “Take the bags an—”

  She slapped him hard enough to rattle his senses. “Don’t,” she growled. “You never say that to me, ever. You fuck. That is not up for argument.”

  “Aurora,” he started, and she ignored him.

  “So we’re going to cauterize the wound. It’ll be quick, and it’s going to work—Trey is positive it’ll work just fine— but it’s going to hurt.”

  “It’ll work, dude,” Trey promised. “But yeah, she’s right. Not gonna be a rocking good time.”

  “You’re probably gonna wanna scream,” Aurora continued. “That’s why we have to gag you, too. The last thing we need is people hearing that. I’m sorry, baby.”