Parasites Like Us

by Adam Johnson

  I inhaled till it rattled.

  “Much better,” Dad said.

  “I’m okay,” I told him. “I can do this.” Backs to the river, we began walking, our snowshoes following the trail they’d broken before.

  I’m not one to believe in signs. If there is a grand blueprint to existence, our lives are no more than the little round shrubs with which the Architect adorns the corners of the plan. Still, I won’t try to lessen what happened next.

  We heard motion and panting. There was the hiss of skids, and then, as if out of an old movie, several dogsleds raced through the haze at the edge of our vision. They were merely dark outlines against the snow, but there was no mistaking the swatting sounds of paws plunging through crusty snow. Your mind can’t make up the cracks of a mushing whip upon the backs of dogs.

  “Ahoy,” I shouted.

  The lead sled stopped, and the others followed. The figures, for they were only figures through a drifting veil, set their snowbrakes and, turning our way, lifted dark goggles to observe us.

  I don’t know why I’d shouted “Ahoy,” but, stupid as it sounded, I shouted it again.

  Dad and I began to trot toward the drivers and their steaming dogs.

  In the distance, an arm waved, large and sweeping.

  We began to run, a high-kneed gallop to keep our snowshoes from snagging in the powder. The main sled was harnessed with six dogs, and had piled on its litter coils of rope and all the nets from the campus volleyball courts. The little sleds were rigged with two dogs each, and they were packed with dog toys, things like Frisbees, squeaky balls, and tugs.

  “Gerry,” I shouted.

  “Hanky,” Gerry called back.

  Running toward me, Gerry shouted, “Dogpile.” When he’d closed the distance he sprang high, and once again tackled me. I went back into the snow, then one, two, three, four children jumped on me. The point of the exercise seemed to be to smother people experiencing acute respiratory distress, especially by way of rubbing snow up your nose and then having children set their smelly little butts on your face. When this greeting was over, they helped me stand.

  “How?” I asked Gerry. “How is it possible?”

  Gerry was so happy that tears streamed down his face. “See?” he told the kids. “See, I told you there were people still alive. I told you the radio wasn’t lying.” He rubbed all the kids on their heads. “I told you your mom’s okay,” he said to them. “I told you she’s just fine.”

  “Where are you guys going?” I asked Gerry. “Where are you headed to?”

  Gerry and the kids had racquetball racquets tied to their feet. We were in a circle, all our snowshoes toe to toe. “I knew it,” Gerry said. “I knew it. Tell them, Hanky. Tell them how things are going to be okay.”

  I looked at the kids, all bundled up in their winter gear. Which were which, which were boys or girls, I couldn’t tell. They just stared at me.

  “Things are going to be okay,” I said, but it was so feeble, so lacking in feeling, that I attempted a cheery “Don’t worry” to bolster things.

  “You hear that?” Gerry asked them. “That’s a professor talking. He’s a very smart man. If he says things are going to be okay, things are going to be okay.”

  The littlest kid started crying.

  “What’s going on, Gerry?” I asked, trying to ignore the children. “What are you doing out here? What’s with the nets and ropes?”

  Gerry looked at me. “Tell them how their mom’s going to be okay.”

  Everything got quiet.

  “Gerry,” I said, “it’s time to stop pretending. You’ve been by the hospital, haven’t you?”

  But Gerry didn’t flinch. His sharp blue eyes didn’t even flinch.

  “Go on,” he said. “Tell them how people at the dude ranch are okay. You must have heard that people at the dude ranch are just fine. I know you did. Tell them how their mom’s just fine.”

  “Come, now, Gerry,” I said.

  “Don’t keep it a secret,” Gerry said. “Go ahead and tell them.”

  I looked to Dad. He shook his head, No, don’t do it. Then Gerry locked in my gaze. For a long moment, we looked at each other. When his blue eyes flashed to the river, I knew what he meant. He meant, Look at all the death around us; help me keep this death from penetrating these children.

  And then there were the kids. They cocked their heads, waiting for my answer.

  “She’s okay,” I told them. “You mom’s gonna be A-okay.”

  “See?” Gerry said. “You heard it from the professor. You heard it for yourself.” He passed out some candy bars to the kids, then started talking about his dogs. “You’re wondering about the Pomeranians,” he told me. “Well, the Pomeranians didn’t work out. Given enough time, maybe. In a couple more months, we might’ve really made it work. There’s no more capable canine, you know. No dog is more cunning. But on short notice, we simply needed stronger dogs.” Here Gerry nodded at the Akitas, shepherds, and mastiffs harnessed in the traces. “It was not for lack of vision. We had the breeding camp. The training system was in place. Show me finer studs.”

  He went on and on about the dogs, but I didn’t listen. I’m sure it did not escape your notice, anthropologists of the future, how I committed one of the gravest crimes of humanity: the giving of false hope to children. No doubt in your time the penalty for such a crime is stiff, and I willingly accept any punishment posterity deems fit to levy upon my memory. Let me say only this—the circumstances were extraordinary, and forget not that you are all descended from me, that I myself am the source of your laws.

  “You mentioned the radio,” my dad said. “What did you mean with the radio?”

  My poor father. With his teeth, it sounded like he was saying “wadio.”

  Gerry pulled out a transistor radio. He slowly tuned the AM dial along its spectrum of static until it came upon a voice: “I repeat—this is the city of Parkton, United States,” the voice said. “If you receive this signal, we are monitoring shortwave, citizen’s-band, and military frequencies. If you receive this signal and you are capable, transpond this message toward Okinawa.”

  The voice was Trudy’s.

  I turned toward Club Fed, though I couldn’t see a hundred yards in that snow. “It’s the prison radio,” I said. “The backup generators must be running.”

  “I don’t understand,” my father said. “How?”

  A thought came to me. I turned north. I walked a couple steps. All was white, but I suddenly knew that out there somewhere, Yulia was alive.

  “Gerry,” I said, “I need you to get us to that prison.”

  He nodded. “You bet, Hanky,” he said. “Just help us catch a couple more dogs. We were chasing two malamutes when we found you.”

  * * *

  When we reached the prison, I was covered in dander and had red claw marks up and down my forearms. The dogs I drove had lived lives of willfulness and indolence, and they did not take to the harness well. Behind a full dog team, I drove a little sled with the child named Pat on my shoulders. I kept getting kicked in the face with racquetball racquets, but he was a good kid—trusting, quiet, and he leaned with me in the turns. The dogs did not want to run the last uphill leg across the prison grounds, and I had to lay it on with a willow switch to get them to dig.

  “I’m sorry, doggies,” I yelled at them, “but I need everything you’ve got.”

  I put some sauce on the switch—that set their paws on fire.

  When we neared the base of the broadcast tower, I set the snowbrake while the dogs were still running, a move that knocked them off their feet. Holding Pat’s ankles, I ran forward with the inertia. Pat wrapped his arms around my neck as we burst through the door, and I nearly killed us both trying to run up stairs in snowshoes. When we reached the broadcasting booth, it was empty. In the blue plastic control panel, a cassette tape was playing in an endless loop. I looked around for any sign of Trudy—a lipstick, a gun, a hot-rod magazine—but found nothing. Along th
e edge of the console, however, was a sprinkling of crumbs. I pressed my finger into them and inspected the ones that stuck—definitely some kind of chip had been eaten here. I licked my finger, but couldn’t guess at the variety.

  I lowered Pat off my shoulders and hooked him under an arm.

  “Are those Dorito crumbs?” I asked.

  He, too, licked his finger and tasted. Eyes closed, he scrunched his face. He seemed to sense the gravity of the situation, but still he had to shrug.

  “Can’t say,” he said.

  Outside, Gerry and my father were pulling up.

  When Gerry had set his snowbrake and dismounted, he said, “Easy on the dogs, Hanky. You’re not dealing with highly trained animals here. These are house pets.”

  Dad set the snowbrake on his sled. When he lifted his goggles, he said, “What, were you trying to lose us?”

  Gerry grabbed a box of treats from his litter. “Haven’t you ever heard of the reward system, Hanky? When dogs do good, dogs get treats.” He started passing out dog biscuits, paying no attention when a Chow Chow nearly took his finger off.

  Oh, it was easy for Dad and Gerry to act like charter members of the Dogs Are People Too society. These particular curs had yet to taste the frozen flesh of a human corpse. They would, though. The hundred-thousand-year friendship between man and dog was but a brief interlude, a cheap affair in the history of both species, and in a week or two, these dogs would join thirty million of their canine brethren in sharpening the teeth of forgotten instincts on the hocks of human loss.

  Looking down, I realized I was still holding a child under my arm. When I set him down, he put his arms out for me to pick him up again. Instead, I began pacing in the snow. If my theory was correct, Yulia was alive and well in Croix, North Dakota. To drive to her in a car, I’d need to travel west to Sioux Falls, catch Interstate 87, then head north to Fargo on roads that would take me five hundred miles out of my way. The snow was two feet deep already, and another foot might drop before this weather front moved on. lt’d take two weeks for the roads to melt clear, and I wasn’t waiting two weeks. The only other possibility was driving the whole way in a snowplow, at five miles per hour. Imagine the stalled vehicles and various obstacles blocking those thousand miles. And snowmobiles were out of the question—even if I did figure out how to drive one, what about breakdowns and fuel scarcity, and a dozen other ways to get stranded in rural North Dakota? Only two things were clear: First, the shortest route to Yulia was to follow the Missouri straight across the Dakotas. Second, of dogs there was no shortage.

  I turned to Gerry. “I have a hunch,” I said. “If it’s correct, I’m going to need a sled, a big one, the best sled you’ve ever made.”

  Gerry asked, “A hunch about what?”

  “Do you still have your workshop set up?”

  “Well, sure, Hanky.”

  “Can you make the sled or not?”

  “Sure, I suppose,” Gerry said. “What’s this about?”

  “You’ve got three hours,” I told him.

  I turned to Dad.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said.

  “We’re off, then,” I told him. “Gerry, you’ve got three hours.”

  * * *

  Next to the broadcast building was the clinic. Dad and I kicked in the door—it took both our boots. Inside, all was quiet and low-lit. The floors were polished, and the brushed stainless-steel cabinets shone red under a single emergency light. Clean butcher paper covered the beds, and several examination instruments waited patiently in a cylinder of blue antiseptic fluid. Ten thousand people had died within miles of this room, and not one bandage had been dispensed.

  The next building was the armory. There was no getting in that door, but Dad boosted me up to a small reinforced window. Inside was a sort of prison cell. Behind its grated doors were the prison’s guns, hanging orderly along hooks and racks. Spread across the checkered floor, however, was a chaos of empty ammo cans. It was the same story everywhere: the city was choked with firearms, but there wasn’t a bullet left on earth.

  The cafeteria reeked of rotting enchiladas, and the indoor swimming pool had bloomed a fabulous green. The post office got to me more than anything—bin after bin of letters stood waiting for hands that would never receive them. Eggers and Trudy were nowhere to be seen. On a longshot, Dad and I went to check the vending machines that had replaced the Unknown Indian.

  In the basement, everything looked normal except for a ceiling-mounted strobe light that overwhelmed the cheery machines, with their beeping sounds and flashing LED panels. The machines seemed so sad and pointless. Here they were, standing at the ready to minister to the desires of humans, but they had no idea. They didn’t have a clue. Dad pulled out some change. Newly minted quarters shone foolishly in his palm. He inserted them carefully into the slot. Was this the last machine we’d ever use? The last money? Two granola bars dropped, and we began munching them as I studied the inventory. In all of the machines, a certain product was missing.

  “Find a clue?” Dad asked. He had to bite and chew with his back teeth.

  “They’ve been here,” I said. “They’re in this prison. But where to look?”

  Dad said, “We’re looking for a young man, right?”

  I nodded.

  “You said his parents are out of the picture. So he’s pretty much been on his own in the world, as you and I often were in our respective upbringings. We know such a person cares little for material things. He’s not interested in money or conveniences. He’s learned to be self-sufficient, and perhaps even feels at home in times of trouble. He’s not seeking security, as most people think of it.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Well, what does this person want?”

  “He wants connection,” I said. “To be close to other people.”

  “Enter this young woman. Enter Trudy. These two—are they, you know, are they a thing?”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “Probable.”

  “I know probable,” Dad said.

  “You say that like we should be checking all the cots and mattresses,” I told him. “You’re forgetting about Trudy. Her four years of high school were spent in four different countries. Her father is a Louisiana Creole. Her mother’s half Japanese and half Korean—figure that one out. We may never understand where Trudy’s coming from, but the term papers she writes are about connecting to a history that predates modern ideas of culture, that comes long before the labels people place on her now. So—she’s not just after a roll in the hay, Dad.”

  “Don’t get defensive,” Dad said. “I’m just saying if those two are alive they’re together, and they’re here. This place makes too much sense. It used to be a college. It’s in the center of town. The radio tower’s here. It’s the only place that isn’t littered with bodies.”

  We finished the granola bars in silence. Our snowshoes melted puddles on the floor. I stared into the vending machines. Little galleries of delights, were they any different from the emporia of Rome or the bazaars of Baghdad? One of the machines sold only sundries, like razors and sewing kits. Here, for a mere dollar, you could buy a packet of fancy cologne or a little box of dog treats—artificially flavored to taste like meat, shaped to simulate bones—for the lapdog you brought along to your white-collar prison.

  “One thing we know for sure,” Dad said, “they think they’re the last people on earth. What do people do for fun in this prison?”

  “Watch movies,” I told him.

  The theater, when we entered it, looked like something out of Hitchcock. A tight, vertebral staircase spiraled up to the projectionist’s booth, and in the lobby was a little sitting area furnished with the props of old Parkton College plays. A Victorian settee and a Greek daybed framed a Louis XIV coffee table. These were separated from the snack bar by a Japanese screen, as if Tokugawa, Marie-Antoinette, and Pletheus held salons here to discuss Orson Welles.

  Crossing the lobby, we heard Cary Grant’s staccato voice
, followed by Ingrid Bergman, breathless and deceptive. The film was Hitchcock’s Notorious.

  We parted the curtain, and sitting alone in a field of seats were Trudy and Eggers, feet up on the next row. Above them on the screen was Hitchcock’s South America, a place filled with exiles, inhospitable terrain, and long-hidden love.

  Even in the dark, you could tell Eggers was wearing the kind of parka they’d sport down the runways of Paris. It was cut from a flashy silver material, and the thing was covered with zippers that were bordered by strips of highly reflective yellow.

  Dad whispered, “What does she see in him?”

  “What is his secret?” I whispered back.

  We walked down the aisle and stood on the runner at the end of their row. They were only six seats from us, but they were totally wrapped up in the movie. This is the point where I was supposed to say some cool John Wayne line or something, but I couldn’t think of anything. I just watched the two of them. It was the scene where Cary Grant realizes that Ingrid Bergman has been poisoned, and when Grant races up the staircase to her, Eggers and Trudy held their breath. Their fingers were interlaced, and, looking at their profiles—Trudy’s strong cheekbones and almond eyes, Eggers’ sharp jaw and sweeping brow—I had to give the couple their due.

  “Great jacket,” Dad said to Eggers. “You looking for a job on an aircraft carrier?”

  They turned. Trudy called, “Dr. Hannah!”

  Eggers was the one who leapt from his seat to embrace me first.

  “We thought you were dead,” he said. “We thought everybody was dead.”

  Trudy rushed me, arms wide. Her eyes were wet from the movie. “We went by your house and your office. Jesus, have you seen campus? Have you seen what’s happened?”

  “How?” Eggers asked. “How did you make it? How is this possible?”

  I lifted a hand to halt them. If they said one more word, if they held on to me a second longer, I was going to break down and cry. “Listen,” I said. “In due time. Things will come clear in due time. Right now, we have to find Farley. If he’s alive, then Yulia’s alive.”