God Drug

by Stephen L. Antczak

  She heard a car drive up outside, rubber tires crunching over the gravel in the alley behind her house. Curious, Emily went to a window, pushed aside the curtains to see. Parked across the alley was a Jeep Cherokee, partially illuminated by the glow of the house floodlight, partially in shadow. There was someone sitting in the driver’s seat. Just sitting. Something didn’t feel right about it. She smelled authority. Cop?

  Maybe it was paranoia, maybe it was a false alarm… but she washed all her pot down the drain in her kitchen sink, shoved orange peel down after it for good measure, and turned on the garbage disposal. It growled like a creature from some 1950s B-movie as it chewed the marijuana and orange peel into pulp. She hated to waste good ganja, but it was always better to take precautions.

  The stairs leading up to the apartment creaked. Someone was coming up, taking slow, methodic steps.

  Emily stood in the kitchen, pulling open the knife drawer just in case, and waited.

  A cloud of white smoke drifted up and in with a pungent odor even stronger than the ganja.

  A man stepped into view. He stood on the landing just beyond the doorway. He wore a uniform, and the white smoke rose lazily from a corncob pipe hanging from the right corner of his thin-lipped mouth. Emily gasped. It was the man from Io’s painting.

  “Where’s the kid?” he asked, sounding tired. He didn’t stand tired, though. He stood like wound steel, bent and twisted into the shape of a man, coiled and ready to spring at Emily without warning.

  Her heart pounded like sledgehammer in her chest, threatening the integrity of her rib cage.

  “I think you need a warrant to come in here,” Emily said bravely, trying desperately to keep her voice steady. She knew how to keep her cool around “the Man.” The only difference this time was that he wasn’t here about drugs. He was here about “the kid.” Io.

  The man laughed. He oozed military, polished brass and squared-off shoulders, sharp edges, medals and mirrorshades. A walking, talking cliché. If there wasn’t something about him that made Emily feel sick to her stomach she might have laughed in his face.

  “Warrant?” the man asked. “I don’t need to stinkin’ warrant. I’m no cop, hippie chick. Where’s the kid?”

  “What kid?” Emily asked.

  The man exhaled smoke, sighing.

  “Don’t give me that shi—” He stopped suddenly, and grinned. He looked down the hall. Emily looked, but there was nothing there. A moment later she heard the soft patter of Io’s bare feet. Don’t come out here! Emily wanted to yell, but she could barely breathe.

  Io came down the hall and walked purposefully into the room. When she saw the man standing in Emily’s doorway, she snapped to attention and saluted.

  “At ease, soldier,” the man said, returning the salute.

  Io let her hand fall to her side.

  “You know why I’m here, don’t you soldier?” he asked.

  Io nodded, and replied, “Yes sir, General, sir! So I can grow up!”

  “That’s right,” the General, if that’s what he really was, said. “So we can alllll grow up!”

  “What the hell’s going on here?” Emily asked. “Do you know this man, Io?”

  “He’s the General,” Io said. As if that explained everything.

  “I’m the General,” the General repeated.

  “Are you her father?” Emily asked.

  “I’m the General. The girl doesn’t have a father. I was her commanding officer in the ’Nam. In the United States Marine Corps your C.O. is both your mother and your father. Right, soldier?”

  “Yes sir!” Io answered. She saluted again. She was also, in contrast to the General, grinning from ear to ear. Having fun.

  “Io,” Emily said, getting the little girl’s attention. “You don’t really know this man. It’s a trick.” He’s crazy, she wanted to tell Io, but the General made her nervous. He had a gun. Just seeing a gun, even in its holster, had made her faint before. She was fighting the urge to do so now, using all her willpower to stay in control.

  “I do so know him,” Io said, defiant. She walked past Emily, toward the General. Emily grabbed Io’s arm, knelt down in front of her.

  “Io, don’t…”

  “Emily, it’s okay,” Io said. She suddenly sounded mature, almost grown-up. “I wanna go. And besides, he’s more a-scared of me than I am of him.” She smiled.

  “What about Sparrow?” Emily said. “She’ll be so sad when she finds out you’re gone. I’ll be sad, too.”

  “I know,” Io said. She reaches out to gently touch Emily’s face with her little fingers. “I’m gonna be kinda sad, too. But Sparrow’s gonna be with me some day, though.” She turned to look at the General. “Right?”

  “Affirmative,” the General answered. “Let’s go, soldier. Now.”

  “Yes sir,” Io replied. She turned to go, then turned back to Emily and said, “Hug.” She threw her arms around Emily’s neck and squeezed tight. Emily squeezed back, not wanting to let go, but feeling somehow that trying to keep Io there wouldn’t work. The General had a gun. He looked crazy. What could she do? Emily closed her eyes to keep from letting tears out.

  Io pulled away. Emily reluctantly let her go, touching her with one hand until Io was out of reach and at the General’s side.

  “Bye, Emily,” Io said.

  Emily couldn’t reply.

  Io grabbed the General’s hand and led him back down the creaking wooden steps. They were gone.

  Emily squeezed her eyes shut as tight as she could, but one tear slipped free to slide down her cheek.

  Io was gone.

  “Just who is in charge here, soldier?” the General asked Io as he pulled the Jeep into the parking lot of the Dairy Queen.

  “You are,” Io said. “But I want a ice cream.”

  “You want ice cream. We’re in the middle of a Goddamn mission and you want to stop for ice cream!”

  “You have one too,” Io insisted. She opened the passenger side door and jumped out, then ran up to the Dairy Queen window.

  The General followed.

  “I don’t want one,” he said.

  “Get me a triple-scoop sundae with chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry, and fudge syrup, nuts, sprinkles, and… and…”

  “Butterscotch?” the General suggested.

  “Yeah!”

  “You heard her,” the General told the woman inside.

  “Now you get something,” Io told the General.

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “Get a shake,” Io said.

  The General sighed, then nodded to the woman inside.

  “What kind of shake?” she asked.

  “Vanilla,” the General said.

  “Chocolate,” Io insisted.

  “Chocolate,” the General said.

  “Good!” Io jumped up and clapped her hands.

  “What are you so Goddamn happy about?” the General asked.

  “Ice cream, silly!” she replied. “You should be happy, too!”

  As if he should jump around and clap his hands. That was her job. That was why Sparrow loved her, and why the General needed her. Having Io was crucial to Jovah’s plan. In some ways, Io was more important than the General, enough to let her pull rank on him for ice cream. But not enough to get him to let his guard down, to let his war face crack. If that happened, he might stop being the General. That would jeopardize the mission, and he couldn’t let that happen. Even if success might wipe him out of existence forever.

  Absorbing Io was going to be easier in some ways than absorbing Galactic Bill had been. She wasn’t going to put up a fight. But… But, but, but. In some ways it would be much harder. She was a strong personality. He could get lost in the process.

  The General wasn’t happy about anything at the moment.

  They took their ice cream around to an outside table, along the side of the Dairy Queen. The air was cool, pleasant. The problem with Galactic Bill was that he had not accepted Jovah. The General, on th
e other hand, accepted the war dream and visions in his head as Gospel. He knew his role in the mission and was determined to carry out his orders. He’d been in the ’Nam, he could handle anything else life threw at him.

  “We weren’t in Nam,” Io suddenly said. The General came out his musings. They shared thoughts, he and Io and the others. More or less. Io scooped a pile of syrup, nuts, sprinkles, and strawberry ice cream into her mouth.

  “We were there, soldier. We kicked gook ass.”

  Io shook her head, suppressing a grin.

  “You think something’s funny?” the General asked sternly.

  “We were here,” Io said.

  “What? Here in the States?” The General frowned.

  “In Flor’da!” Io said, laughing, spewing nut slivers and sprinkles across the table.

  “Listen, soldier,” the General said, sighing. “It was war. You were in my company, Alice Company. We were overrun by North Vietnamese choppers, but we took ’em out.”

  “It was a game,” Io said, “but they were playing mean. ’member?”

  “I remember,” the General told her. “It wasn’t a game.”

  Io closed her eyes.

  Her world exploded around her, blossomed into a swarm of butterflies. She laughed and jumped among them, shouting, playing, happy they were her friends. Then the first one bit, needle teeth pinpricking her face, then another, and another, a shower of tiny, colorful razors slicing her, a rainbow of pain. Io screamed, cried for her Daddy, “Where are you?” She tried to swat them away with her little hands. She tried to run, she tried to get away but the swarm stayed with her, a halo of fluttering knives, a cloud of spinning, whirling, biting angels. Butterflies bored through her cheeks, into her eyes, into her stomach, and she fell to the ground…

  Io opened her eyes.

  “See?”

  The General sipped his chocolate milkshake.

  “They played mean,” Io reiterated. “And ’sides, those North Vee’meese didn’t have hell-choppers. Everybody knows that.”

  They didn’t have helicopters. Io knew. Jovah knew. Now the General knew it was the truth, even as he believed the dream was still real, somehow, that he’d been there.

  But he had never set foot in Vietnam. The real General Archimedes Carter had been there, long before Alice Company and the war games, and the drug. The real General would have remembered that Americans in Vietnam never ran for cover for when they heard helicopters approaching, because the choppers were always friendlies. There was no such thing as “friendly fire,” either.

  But in the dream… The choppers became dragons and attacked anyway, even though they had to be on the same side as Alice. Why? War game. Not chess, not checkers… What kind of game, with choppers that ate men, choppers that spit fire and gave birth to attack-butterflies?

  The drug. Well, yes, the drug, the General knew that. In those disgusting peaches.

  They played mean.

  The choppers were always American.

  Jovah would know all when Jovah was back, when Jovah was whole again.

  “Let’s go, soldier,” the General told Io. “It’s time.”

  She scooped one last spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. They went back to the Jeep. The General wanted to take her back to Galactic Bill’s to do it, but he didn’t want to wait that long. She knew too much. More than he knew. There was still so much more of Jovah in her than in him…

  “Play nice,” Io told him.

  “Sorry, soldier,” he said, grinning ruefully. “I can’t play nice. You know that.”

  She was so small, though, he might be able to get her all in one bite.

  He started the Jeep.

  All in one bite.

  Back at Galactic Bill’s, drowsy like a snake after swallowing a mouse whole. The General looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Skin nut-brown, wrinkles gone, face rounder, hair less stringy, fuller, and darker. The mustache was gone now. The General looked smoother, younger. He was still recognizably him, still the General, but superimposed over his features were those of another.

  Jovah.

  “Goddamn it, I’m still in charge here,” he said to his reflection. He was in charge. He tried out his trademark grin. His mouth twitched imperceptibly. He was tired again.

  The General was tempted to remove his mirrorshades, but he dared not. They were as much a part of his persona as the shredded voice, the carved-in-granite posture, the pipe. If he took the shades off, he was afraid that the eyes looking back at him wouldn’t be his. Bubbling beneath the surface, Galactic Bill was still trying to take over. He came on as a random thought, a sudden urge, an impulse. An impulse to take the mirrorshades off, for instance. The General had a feeling that if he did, Galactic Bill would be there, looking back at him.

  Let me out! I can’t see! It’s dark in here! Let me out!

  “I’m not going to let you out,” the General said. Io was in there, too, as an urge to jump and shout, to sing and start laughing uncontrollably and maybe never stop.

  And Deuce.

  The General felt Deuce as a subtle craving for something to take the edge off the world, like the slow burn of heroin, spreading warmth throughout his body… Those pangs were easy to deal with, easy to quell. The General liked the edge. Deuce didn’t threaten to override the General’s Self, to push him out of the driver’s seat like Galactic Bill would if he could.

  The General touched his mirrorshades. As long as they stayed on, Galactic Bill was blind.

  He leaned back against the bathroom wall, slid down to the tiled floor. Sleep was approaching like a sluggish, rocket-propelled grenade, zeroing in on him.

  He closed his eyes.

  Slow motion, the world came apart second by agonizing second, bursting like a flower in time-lapse photography, freeze-frame of a bullet punching through an apple. The apple is apparently still whole after the bullet is gone, but the reality of the apple is already shattered. Like Alice Company. Shattered by shockwaves from the bullet’s brief visit. The General watched as Hanna was scooped into the maw of a heli-dragon, teeth glinting in subtropical sunlight as they ground her to pieces. Then Deuce, Galactic Bill, Io, and the rest of Alice. All of them eaten, food for the gods, sacrificial lambs.

  Eat or be eaten, prey or predator, the law of nature. General Archimedes Carter had these thoughts even as the heli-dragon hovered over him, even as he fired round after round from his Colt .45 at the creature’s belly. The heli-dragon exploded and rained hot metal on him, splashed him with molten innards as it died with a machine shriek.

  Another one dove, its tail a spinning buzzsaw which it swung low as it swooped over the General. The buzzsaw sliced him in half, bisected him. He stood there for a second, held together by sheer willpower, then his willpower broke and the two halves of the General slowly peeled apart, unzipped with a scream, a dying howl of pure hatred.

  Then…

  The Grey Nothing.

  Sounds of death echoed within, the ghosts of Alice Company swam around and around and around in a cosmic fishbowl.

  They disappeared, one by one, faded away, melted into the Grey Nothing.

  Then there was nothing at all.

  The Boardroom inside Jovah’s head.

  The General opened the door and entered. There he found Io, Hanna, Galactic Bill, Deuce, and the rest of Alice Company sitting around a large oak conference table. Jovah sat at the far end. His features were almost totally blanked out, wiped smoothly away.

  “Report,” said Jovah. All eyes turned to regard the General. All eyes were blank. Gone. He kept his mirrorshades on.

  “The mission is proceeding as planned, sir,” the General reported. “Although there is one glitch.”

  It was a dream, he realized. It seemed real, though, more real than the war dream, more real than the world outside.

  Jovah frowned. It was an emanation more than a physical effect. He was almost solid now. The General could still see through him, but he had to really look hard to do so.


  “What glitch?” Jovah asked.

  “It’s about the girl.”

  “What about her?”

  “She only took some of the drug,” the General explained. “Not all of it, as planned. She shared the rest with two other people.”

  “What do you suggest we do about these other two, then?” Jovah asked.

  “I don’t know that we need to do anything about them at all.”

  “They could interfere with our becoming One with Sparrow. We don’t want that to happen, do we?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then maybe something can be done about them.”

  “Yes, sir. Something can be done about them,” the General said. He heard, and obeyed.

  “Do you foresee any difficulty in implementing the final phase of your mission, General?” Jovah asked. He regarded the only other empty chair at the table other than the General’s.

  “She’s a force to be reckoned with, but she still doesn’t realize it,” the General said. “This will work to my advantage. If she believes herself to be weak, then she is weak.”

  “And you, General?”

  “Me, sir?”

  “Are you weak?”

  “No, sir. I am not weak.”

  “Are you stronger than me, then?”

  “Stronger than you?” The General frowned. “No, I am not.” But it occurred to him that he could be, later.

  Jovah started to say something else, but the image wavered, went out of focus, scrambled into snowfall like interference on TV. Parallel lines ran diagonally across the scene, then vanished to a single point in space-time, like a black hole, and spat the General out beyond the event horizon.

  The General opened his eyes.

  He didn’t enjoy Jovah invading his dreams like that. Typical bullshit… Let the General do the dirty work, avoid the blood-soaked, scream-echoed killing fields and come to take the glory, wade ashore and stride upon the beach and announce, “I have returned!”