The Sleep of the Gods

by James Sperl

  “Oh, no, no, no. No, you’ve got Apache Camp, Trinity City over on the south side, Dead Town, New Shanghai. There are others we’ve heard. Just don’t know the names.”

  “Mommy, New Shanghai. It’s like in that newspaper you found!” Tamara blurted out excitedly.

  Janet’s eyes darted back and forth from Catherine to Tamara, her eyes narrowing, her brow arching inquisitively.

  “What newspaper?”

  Catherine glanced at Tamara in a brief, but stern manner. The newspaper had been something she’d wanted to keep to herself for the time being. She hadn’t given much thought as to who or when she would reveal the contents of the paper. She only knew that it was still early in the getting-to-know-you game with Janet and her crew. Until she could get a better sense of the people with whom she would now, apparently, be living she had hoped to keep it secret. But Tamara had outed her. And for the life of her, Catherine couldn’t think of a good reason to lie.

  “We found this,” she said reaching into her back pocket and pulling out the folded, ink stained newsprint. “I’m sorry to say the crew who had it...didn’t make it.”

  Abby shot a look of horror over at Josh, her suspicions confirmed. Josh met her eyes only for a moment, nodding subtly.

  Janet took the paper and unfolded it. She scrutinized it meticulously, flipping the paper over several times, struggling to make sense of the garbled mess on the page. “New Shanghai,” she said at last. “And you found this at sea?”

  “Yes. On a boat.”

  Janet looked to Neal who said, “We’d heard they might try something. Bunch of brave SOBs you ask me.”

  “I didn’t think they were serious, though,” Janet contemplated.

  Josh stepped forward. “Serious about what?”

  Janet folded up the paper and handed it back to Catherine. “We heard rumors some folks at New Shanghai were going to attempt a transoceanic voyage. See how things fared on the other side of the world.” Janet locked eyes with Catherine. “How many of them were there?”

  “Two. Maybe three,” Catherine responded. “It was...it was a little hard to tell.”

  Catherine’s eyes watered at the memory of that sad and repugnant day. Janet caught sight of her emotional recollection, bowing her head in acknowledgement. And with a sudden hand slap to the counter, straightened with purpose.

  “Right, then,” she began, “I need some cheese steaks and fries all around and a couple to go.”

  Neal hopped into his role as line cook, eagerly tromping over to a Haier chest deep freezer and withdrawing frozen bags of steak meat and pre-cut French fries. He brought the food back to the camping cooker and immediately set to preparations.

  “Oh, and Neal,” Janet said.

  “Whatcha need, Janet,” he replied amiably.

  “I need you to tell them the story.”

  Neal turned suddenly, dropping a bag of steaks.

  Catherine couldn’t remember the last time she’d tasted anything so magnificent. And if the empty plates resting in front of her children were any indication, assumed the feeling was mutually shared. The steak was dry, the bun rife with freezer rot and the few slivers of cheese virtually tasteless. But if asked if she would like another, would respond with an enthusiastic “yes”.

  Neal agreed to tell of what he saw, but only after everyone had finished eating. His story, he proclaimed, was not one for dinner conversation. The plates now empty, he pulled a chair up to the group, resting his hands in his lap in a simple, relaxed posture.

  “So, how was everything?” he asked.

  The table erupted in a bevy of platitudes, everyone praising Neal for his fine culinary skills. Tamara was especially thankful, having engulfed two huge servings of “griddle fries” and angled for yet a third until Catherine put the kibosh on her gluttony.

  Neal accepted his accolades graciously, glancing over at Janet. He eyed her curiously as if he were waiting for some sort of cue.

  “It’s your show, Neal,” she said, nodding.

  Neal looked over the table and moved his hands from his lap to the tabletop. “All right, then,” he began. “Janet told me what she already told you so I’ll spare you the redundancy. But what I’m about to tell you, the things she hasn’t said, well...”

  “It’s all right, Neal. Just lay it out,” Janet said supportively.

  Neal sucked in a cloud of air and blew it out in a preparatory manner. “You all just need to understand that it’s going to sound crazy. I mean from head to toe insane. But it’s what I saw. There ain’t no mistaking it.”

  “Neal, whatever you have to say,” Catherine said, “whatever you have to tell us, we’ll believe it. We’ve seen and experienced some things these past few months I thought I’d only ever read about. We’re not going to think you’re crazy.”

  “Thank you, Catherine,” Neal said, bowing his head gratefully. “Time will tell.” He smiled thinly then leaned onto his forearms.

  “On the day it started, I was making a delivery. I used to work for a small bakery—Nana’s Bread Shop it was called—and every morning myself and another young gal would set about making deliveries to various restaurants and coffee shops we’d contracted with. It was about seven-thirty. I know this because I was running late that day and still needed to gas up the van. I’d already made a couple of stops and was pushing the limits of my tank, but eventually had to pull over to fuel up. I wished to God I’d done it the night before.”

  Everyone stared at Neal, their eyes growing wider by the second as they waited in anticipation for him to continue.

  “I pulled off the highway,” he began again, “and rolled into a BP just off Belair. Now it wasn’t uncommon for traffic to be heavy along that road. Especially at seven-thirty in the AM. So occasional horns and tire squeals were par for the course. But as I’m filling the van, I hear this loud crash. The unmistakable sounds of an accident. I came around the front of the van to see what had happened and there in the road was a cherry red Nissan four-door, its front end smashed into a concrete barrier and telephone pole.”

  “What’d you do?” Tamara said innocently, eliciting a wan smile from Janet.

  Neal glanced at her twitchily, his lips finding the shape of a grin, but only for a moment. “Well, I did what I figured most decent people would do. I went over to see if the driver was okay and if there was anything I could do to help. There were a few of us that had the same idea. Two other men and a really tall woman. And as we’re all making our way toward the car, it...the car just...” Neal eyed the table, measuring the reactions. Everyone gawked at him in what could have been confused for suspended animation. Only Janet looked down.

  “The car just sort of...exploded from the inside.”

  “What do you mean?” Josh inquired.

  “I don’t know exactly,” Neal said shaking his head slightly. “There was a loud pop inside the car. And at the same time it jerked really hard like it had just been hit. But there were no other cars near it at this point and the direction of the movement looked as if it had come from underneath. Or from the inside. A second later, I knew exactly where it came from.

  “Right after we hear this pop there’s this deafening metallic punching sound. Like a hammer on metal. Just over and over. And I look at the car...” Neal smiled to himself, shaking his head, seeming to ready himself for the impending onslaught of verbal denouncements. He raised his head and stared Catherine directly in the eye. “I look at the car and the roof is popping like one of those Jiffy Pop foiled popcorn pans, like something is trying to bash its way out from the inside. Glass is shattering and the car’s rocking all over the place. And that metallic sound just got louder and louder until...”

  Neal straightened himself, adopting a “don’t care” posture. His face became stern with resolve, his features steeled against potential ridicule. “The roof just blew off. Maybe fifteen feet in the air. And that’s when I saw it.”

  The entire table sat with bated breath. Not even a finger so much as mo
ved.

  “The thing might’ve been ten feet tall,” Neal said, his voice quivering. “I really couldn’t say. But it was big. And was nothing I’d ever seen before in my life. It crawled from the car and just stood in the road and I could see that it had legs and arms but the joints were different than ours. Like they went the other direction or something and there were more of them than we have.” Neal searched the faces of his audience and found them to be captured. There would be no mockery today.

  “I looked around to the other people and I could only imagine what my reaction must’ve been based on what I saw on their faces. This...thing had a small head and a big barrel chest and its skin was weird. Like a scaly leather or something. But it was covered all over in this red mucky stuff.”

  “Where was the driver in all this?” Josh asked.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Neal said. “Once that thing crawled out there wasn’t anybody in the car far as I could see. Just this monster oozing red slime or something.”

  Neal looked at Tamara and saw her hands digging into the soft pelt of Sniffles. He shot a look over to Catherine. “Catherine, you sure you want me to keep going what with the little one and all? This story’s only gonna get worse and, truth be told, I’m not sure it would get anything less than an R rating from the MPAA.”

  Catherine placed an arm around Tamara as the girl snuggled up against her mother. “I appreciate your concern, Neal. Truly. But after tonight, I’m not sure there’s much left that can scare this child.” Catherine kissed Tamara softly on the head. “If what you’re telling us is what’s happening out there then we need to know. All of us.”

  “Fair enough,” Neal confirmed with a nod. “So this thing is standing in the road and that’s all it’s doing. Standing. It doesn’t make a sound, try to run or fly or whatever it does. It just stands there. And I’m looking around to the other folks who are just as stunned as I am. And it was like this Old West standoff, all of us just standing around looking at each other waiting for something to happen. And then something did.”

  He adjusted his position in his chair, sliding himself closer to the edge. “I’m not even sure how to describe the sound, but it was like a wet, sickening combination of bones cracking and vomiting. I’m sorry to be so graphic, but that’s about as accurate as I can get. And before anyone had any idea as to what was happening, this ten-foot tall whatever-you-call-it explodes from its chest. I mean it just bursts outward. All this bloody gunk and guts spewing onto the car and the pavement in front of it.”

  “Holy shit,” Josh said, garnering a disapproving look from Catherine.

  “You can say that again. And I think I did say that. Along with a whole string of other obscenities as I hightailed it back to my van and hid.”

  “What happened to the thing?” Abby asked. “Did it die?”

  “Not only did it not die. It was still standing,” Neal answered, sounding amazed himself, as if this were the first time he had heard the story. His eyes wandered to a remote portion of the table void of watchful faces, seeming to drift into a hypnotic state as the recollection solidified in his mind. “And as I’m standing there, as I live and breathe, this thing reaches into its own chest and pulls out...”

  Neal paused, but from Catherine’s perspective it didn’t seem like his hesitation came about as a result of trying to avoid telling a truth that may be difficult to swallow. No, this man was actually questioning himself. Could he really have seen what he claims?

  Neal pulled himself from his trance and sat back. “It pulled out a man.”

  “What?” Abby and Josh virtually yelled in unison.

  “It was completely naked and soaked in some more of that red muck.” Catherine shot a look to Janet that contained equal parts understanding and horror. Neal continued numbly. “This thing reached in, pulled out this person and set him in the road. And soon as it did this, the thing fell over sideways, crumpling to the ground and then evaporated like it had never even been there in the first place.”

  “Wait a minute,” Catherine said sharply. “What do you mean it ‘evaporated’?”

  “I mean it hit the ground and seconds later it was a vapor cloud. When it cleared there was no evidence that that thing even existed. No evidence except for that...man.”

  “Sublimated,” Josh said.

  “What’s that, Josh?” Catherine asked.

  Josh glanced around the table and found that all eyes were on him now. “It’s called sublimation. When a solid goes directly to gas. Like dry ice. It’s called sublimation.”

  Neal exhaled, relieved to have finished the story. “Well, whatever you call it that’s what happened. This ten foot or so giant just vanished in front of us.”

  “What happened to the man?” Tamara asked, still nestled into Catherine’s chest.

  “I have no idea,” Neal said, wiping beads of sweat from his brow. “When I saw him open his eyes—and trust me, it was a him—I didn’t want to be anywhere near him. I ran to my van and drove as fast as I could. Busted through a fence near an access road behind the gas station and drove. And when I heard the reports on the radio of similar sightings, I knew something bad was going down. I just got right the hell out of there. The road eventually spit me out a few blocks away from here. Figured it was as good a place as any to hole up. Home was too far away and I wasn’t about to get back on the road.”

  The table fell silent for a moment, everyone reflecting on the events Neal just relayed.

  Janet kept her eyes on Catherine. “Now you know what we know,” she said. “This is what we’re dealing with.”

  Catherine stared emptily at the top of Tamara’s head. “So these...people, these naked people covered in the red muck, what do they do?”

  “That’s the mystery of it,” Janet began. “We’ve got a handful of reports from some of our people here that they don’t really do anything. They just kind of wander. They don’t seem to be aggressive or hostile, just...”

  “Just what?” Josh queried, leaning around his sister to get a better look at Janet.

  Janet shifted her gaze to Josh. “You just don’t want to let one of those things touch you. We hear stories of people being touched by some of these New Humans as they’re called—and I’m talking just a touch of the hand on skin—and folks lose consciousness. I’ve seen it myself.”

  “Like the police video you saw,” Catherine said.

  Janet nodded.

  “What happens when they wake up?” Abby asked.

  “That’s the bitch of it. We don’t have a clue. We got no TV broadcasts. No radio. The only bits of information we get are from people we bring in to the fold here or dirtbags we come across in the streets. And their testimony is far from reliable. Some say the people wake up just fine. Others say they never saw the person again after they woke up and walked off.”

  Janet stood and twisted at the waist. Her back cracked in several places. “The one bit of information that’s been consistent, though, is the night.”

  “The night?” Catherine asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “No one’s seen or talked to anyone who’s seen one of those New Humans walking around at night. It’s like they need daylight or something to survive or maybe they just disappear at the end of the day. Sublimate like those things Neal saw. Who the hell knows? All we do know is that there’s no light at night and as long as the earth keeps rotating around the sun and the moon holds its course then we at least have some part of the day to claim as our own.”

  “Hey, Janet?” Josh asked.

  “Talk to me,” she replied, setting a boot on the edge of her chair and readjusting the laces.

  “Well, you say that as long as ‘there’s no light at night’ we should be okay?”

  “That’s the theory,” Janet claimed with a tug of her laces.

  “And there’s no power, right? I mean, electricity has been gone for a while. There’s no central source?”

  Janet lowered her boot, looked at Josh. “For the better part of e
ight weeks now. The only juice people get are from running gennies like us. What’re you asking, Josh?”

  “Yes, Josh,” Catherine interjected, “what are you asking?”

  Josh brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. “I was just wondering that if that’s all true, then what was that bright glow we saw earlier tonight?”

  Janet began to raise her other foot, then stopped in midair, slowly lowering it back to the ground. “What bright glow?” she said, her face growing suddenly dour.

  “Just before you guys showed up and saved our ass, there was this really bright light on the horizon. But I couldn’t see where it was coming from.”

  Catherine nodded now, Josh’s recollection jumpstarting her own memory back to a previous time in the evening she would have been content to forget. “He’s right. I remember. It was a yellowish light. Kind of hazy. It just sort of came on. A few minutes later it was gone.”

  Janet reached behind her and pulled a walkie-talkie from her belt no one was aware she even had. “Which direction was it coming from?” she asked, her eyes racing back and forth between Catherine and Josh.

  Catherine thought on it a moment. “It was south. Maybe even southeast of here.”

  Neal looked up sharply at Janet. “That’s Apache Camp,” he said.

  Janet peeled off from the group as she spoke into her walkie. “Eagle to Eagle Eye One, come in.”

  A garbled and static soaked voice replied almost instantly. “This is Eagle Eye One, come in Eagle.” Janet walked away from the group, standing near a trashcan as she continued her conversation.

  “What’s this mean?” Catherine said to Neal as he rose to his feet.

  “It means,” he began, “that as long as I’ve been here and we’ve been running patrols, nobody’s seen a light at night. Not even so much as a firefly.”

  “I find that hard to believe, Neal,” Catherine started. “Surely there are other people who’ve gotten a hold of generators like you. Who are running power to lights, appliances and whatnot?”

  “Sure there are. And the smart ones will have taken the same pains we did in making sure no one knows about it. This is one of those rare times when advertising is not in your best interest.”