Dead Earth

by Demers, Matt

  James sure noticed it, too. The way the Tweaks no longer seemed hesitant about killing you if given the chance. It was true that some of them went crazy right off the bat, sure. The ones like Phil Rettig and Will Heller during the first terrible weeks. But just as many wanted to be left alone. Until now, that is.

  The doctor continued her lecture. James and Gaffer drifted toward the back exit.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing,” James reasoned with Gaffer. “Once they starve out, venturing out for the injection won’t be a death sentence.”

  “Waiting too long is, too,” Gaffer warned. “Eventually you’ll just have to go.”

  The Escalation began in autumn, five months after the good, yet blunt folks at Johns Hopkins gave James a year to live, give or take. One good year, the nicest of the physician’s assistants had said to him. Enough time to set your affairs in order and make peace.

  That year passed three days ago.

  ***

  Only one person had adapted to the Brave New World — Frank Gaffer.

  After the shit hit the fan, Gaffer went on being a courier; a good gig with nice bartering rights as far as the Brave New World economy went. You had to pay top dollar — figuratively speaking — to a man willing to retrieve prescription drugs for someone’s heart condition, or deliver messages to someone’s aunt two Tweak-infested towns away. He was fond of canned peaches and spicy Slim Jims, and he gave James what little his body could handle, which wasn’t much.

  “There’s only one place I won’t go — downtown Monroe City. It’s a deathtrap.” The odd jobs kept Gaffer’s belly relatively full. Bartering gave him a healthy fullness and glow that stood out against the majority of shrunken and wiry survivors, but even Gaffer knew his limits.

  Gaffer and James walked without speaking, compound hunting bows slung on their backs. The sun fell below the distant factories, casting shadows over Riverside Drive. A gust of wind blew puffs of dandelion seeds in spirals around them, a product of the unseasonably warm spring weather, fooling Mother Nature onto the dance floor way too early.

  Days like these, sandwiched between much cooler ones, gave James a reborn feeling, like he was a kid running through the doors of his elementary school, feeling the heat of the sun. How uplifting, to peel off his bulky winter coat and feel the breeze.

  But now he felt too sick to appreciate it.

  Three blocks stood between the camper and the barricades — what the Greenville folks eventually called, “The Wire.” By now, all residents — minus one very stubborn family, the Woodhouse clan — moved from their homes to the large parking lot of Mac’s. The campers kept everyone together, making it easier to react to emergencies and plan an escape route if need-be.

  “It isn't just the hunger that's stirring them,” Gaffer said, hiking the quiver of arrows back onto his shoulder..

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve been around more than anyone. And let me tell you — there’s somethin’ about them, James…”

  Gaffer stalled the way he always did when bearing bad news.

  “Go on,” James insisted.

  “They changin’. I swear on my grandma’s grave — they actually changin’.”

  Gaffer looked out at the dead smokestacks of the factories of Monroe City.

  “How are they changing, Gaff?”

  “Don’t know yet. It’s like they’ve gone somewhere, a long voyage. And now they’re back to tell us what they saw. Except we don’t want to know.”

  James began walking again, but Gaffer didn’t follow.

  “James?” Gaffer called and James turned to him. “Promise me something. Promise me if one of them wants to tell you their secret, you won’t listen,”

  James considered asking if Gaffer had found some good weed. But the man’s expression was serious. “Gaffer, I don’t even know—”

  “Just promise,” Gaffer cut in. His voice sounded soft, defeated, the same way the troopers sounded the day of the Escalation. It was unlike Gaffer.

  After a long moment, James held out a fist, and Gaffer bumped his scarred knuckles into James’.

  You and me, we’ve stared down enough black wells in our times, Gaffer once told James some months back. Gaffer had been downing the last case of Greenville’s beer that day. His elbows on the camper’s fold-away table were the only thing keeping his head up. We’ve looked down the well all right. It’s black and bottomless. And you know what we realized, James? The well stares right back.

  James thought of Phil Rettig, pulling strands of flesh from his girlfriend’s neck, Phil’s lake-calm eyes.

  They reached Turkey Creek Bridge and looked through the broken windows of old sedans and cargo vans that made up the meat of the barricade. On the far side, eight or so Tweaks wandered sloppily, most of them wearing reflective vests that read “City of Monroe,” except for one, a teenage boy, shirtless in bright red skinny jeans. Shreds of flesh, looking eerily like thin-sliced bologna, hung where his jaw had been.

  “They’re lethargic today. Think they’re starvin’ out?” Gaffer said.

  “You know they ain’t. They saving their strength.”

  The Wire is where they liked to talk about anything but the Apocalypse, but tonight it loomed over them. Greenville wasn't just backed into a corner. The floor was collapsing and the ceiling about to cave in.

  “You feel like a little worm on a big fucking hook?” Gaffer asked.

  “Yep.”

  Each time they visited The Wire, they leaned against the same tired Dodge Caravan. They had lovingly christened their hangout spot with their initials and the words “groin shots” etched with a broken beer bottle across the van's hood.

  Gaffer spotted the same bottle by the front wheel well.

  “Ahhhh, brings back memories.” He picked it up and threw it over The Wire and watched it combust next to a Tweaky school-girl curled on the ground in the fetal position. She seemed indifferent to glass shrapnel.

  “You wanna know what I think?” Gaffer said.

  “It don’t matter, cause you’re gonna tell it anyway,” James replied. YouknowhatIthink always precluded long speeches.

  Gaffer grabbed a homemade cigarette from his shirt pocket and stuck it to his lips.

  “I think people need to stop bitching about this whole American Dream bonanza. Like we deserve T-bone steaks and two car garages. Load of shit. Let me tell you, those sixty years or so of good living was just a blip.

  “People say how things are fucked. Wrong. Things are just back to how they always was. World wars, bubonic plague, the crusades, the Holocaust. This is life. While children starved in Africa, we complained our double mocha latte with caramel sprinkles wasn’t like we ordered. We studied New Age gurus who told us that anything is possible if only we think positively. Go tell Africa to think positively. See if that puts food in her belly.”

  James plucked at his jeans, lifting the fabric from the sore spot. “I think Africa is fucked too.”

  Gaffer ignored him. He grasped his bow and flexed the bowstring. “What we got ourselves here is a reality check. A little taste of the Savannah in our own backyard. Wasting, dying and eating each other ain’t no travesty. It’s life without takeout boxes.

  “And you’ll find people will be much happier to boot. Once they get used to it. You’ll find when people put their self-help books down and start focusing on stuff of the earth — food, drink, shelter, survival…We’ll all become enlightened. No guru could ever teach that." Gaffer released the empty bowstring and smacked a bug across his neck.

  “Well, if that’s all true," James replied. "If this planet is just dogs eating cats, then I guess those airborne guys have it coming.”

  “What’re you talking ‘bout?”

  James squinted and gazed out far beyond The Wire. “I reckon those guys need to pay for what they done. All they had to do was kill the boy, put em’ out of his misery. But they didn't want it on their conscience. Instead it’s on mine.”

  Gaffer o
pened his mouth to respond, but after looking at James he thought it better to gaze through The Wire along with his friend. After a long moment, he gave James a sidelong glance.

  James shrugged. “We’ve both got skeletons.”

  They looked out beyond The Wire in silence.

  “Loser pulls the arrows out,” Gaffer finally insisted as he grabbed an arrow from his quiver. He aimed the bow at the Tweak in the skinny jeans. He pulled and released. The arrow spun and whistled through the air. It zipped by the barricade through a windowless truck and impaled the Tweak’s thigh. Thick dark blood sputtered the pavement, but the Tweak paid no attention.

  Gaffer squinted and sighed. “So close.”

  James pointed at the fat, grass-stained city worker wearing Calvin Klein jeans as he grabbed an arrow. Who wears designer shit trimming weeds?

  The arrow hit its target with a thunk. Fluid sprayed from the crotch of the Calvin Klein’s. Mr. Calvin Klein, a glass half-full kind of Tweak, paid no mind. “Tweaky chicks don’t put out much anyway,” he’d probably say.

  “Man, you sure got skill,” Gaffer told James with a pat on the back. “Least you got one thing going for ya.”

  “Third place at the Greenville Rodeo,” James said pointing a thumb at himself. He smacked a bug on his forearm. “That sounded better in my head,” he added, scratching another line under his initials on the hood of the Caravan. “Now, let’s finish those fuckers off.”

  “Why? So they’ll rot and stink in the street?”

  “The smell ain’t that bad. Not as long as Hiram Walker keeps it up.”

  The yeasty fresh-bread scent filled the air over Greenville when the wind blew out of the east.

  Hope for life beyond Greenville's barricades — the distillery. Schools closed, police stations vacated, and soldiers AWOLed, but Hiram Walker never stopped making whisky. James doubted the once mighty corporation still ran it, but business — regardless of who ran it — was obviously still good.

  “Whaddya think they’ve got goin’ on down there?” Gaffer asked. The distillery lay beyond Gaffer’s usual errand range.

  “Don’t know, but if they got the time to make booze,” James said as he lifted another arrow from his quiver, “I bet it’s good.”

  One of the city worker Tweaks shuffled over to his crotch-impaled friend. He tilted his head for a moment, contemplating the strange rod. He took a swipe at the feathered end of the arrow, missed. A second try, and he had a grip on the arrow. The shaft slid out easily. Calvin Klein turned and hissed, but the worker stared back blankly. Blood poured from the hand that gripped the arrow.

  “He’s just tryin’ to help.” James chuckled. “Ungrateful fuck.”

  James turned to Gaffer. Gaffer’s face had frozen, his expression unreadable.

  “Gaff?”

  Gaffer ran down the embankment toward the creek, shouting. “Jon Holloway! Jon!”

  The Tweak holding the arrow turned toward Gaffer. It limped quickly off the road. It stumbled down the opposite embankment. Gaffer and the Tweak stared across the water at each other. The Tweaked shrieked.

  James jogged up beside Gaffer. “What?”

  Gaffer swallowed convulsively and then gestured. “My brother-in-law.”

  The Tweak swayed. Dark stains trailed across its gaunt face and over the safety vest. The eye-sockets were so sunken, two open graves.

  “Urgh,” it groaned. It held out the arrow.

  Gaffer pointed at James’ bow. The Tweak nodded slowly and dropped the arrow.

  “You want me to do it?” James asked.

  Gaffer only stood there.

  “You want me to do it?” James repeated.

  Gaffer finally shook his head. He pulled an arrow out of his quiver, nocked it and drew. He closed one eye and tilted his head, sighting along the arrow.

  The Tweak stuck its chest out, inviting it.

  But Gaffer didn’t shoot.

  #

  INTERLUDE I:

  What’s a Matter with Grandpa

  Nothing they said could change her mind. They’re family, and families stay put.

  Jenni peeked through the kitchen window and looked east at the rows of dimly lit trailers sitting adjacent to Mac’s Variety and Cigar Shop. If she looked west, past the trampoline and Easy Store Safari slide, she’d see one of two Greenville barricades, this one beneath the overpass — a mixture of jagged metal, tractor tires, barbed wire, and mounds of spool. It was noble somehow, that barricade. Like a knight in rusted armor. It did nothing, unfortunately, to stop the men contained within it. The men who wanted to drive her from their home.

  Jenni’s children drew ducks in raincoats on the living room walls in the glow of scattered candlelight. Alex, the six year old, drew large blobs with small orange feet. Rose, taking after Daddy’s artistic side, drew every detail with care — the tiny beak nostrils, the web between each claw, even the creases on the yellow raincoat.

  It wasn’t in Jenni's nature to do. To let them break the rules and draw wherever they pleased, but the tired beige wallpaper could never be replaced anyway. It seemed silly these days to preserve something so —

  “Inconsequential,” Jenni said to herself.

  “What's that, ma?” Rose asked as she drew a duck wing.

  “Nothing, honey,” Jenni replied.

  That was the word she wanted — inconsequential. The divide between things that mattered — her family, their home — and the inconsequential — rust on her truck, a yellow lawn, her facial birthmark. Wallpaper fell into the inconsequential pile. So she let them draw. Besides, it was the only thing distracting them from their grandfather.

  “Why does grandpa do that, ma?” They asked when they first heard him.

  “He’s sick, honey. He needs time to get better.”

  Each night, after the children slept, Jenni crossed the front lawn in her Hillman's High wrestling shirt and binoculars. She liked the way the cold dew felt on her feet, especially after long, arid days. It surprised Jenni that the marsh didn’t dry up, given the drought the past two summers. Locals began to joke that city folks might sue for false advertisement. “I expected Greenville to be a helluva lot greener than this,” they might say, driving home from their jobs in Monroe City.

  The brown grass sloped into the marsh, and Jenni stood by the edge, wondering how things could have gone so wrong. She walked out onto the dock she and her father built with their own hands. She remembered her cousins’ amazement at how strong she was when they built it. She’d sawed wood and hammered nails like a man twice her size.

  “You've got my strength in you,” her father once told her, meaning it in more ways than one. “You’re gonna join the boy's wrestling team.”

  And so she did, and it surprised her cousins even more. No trophy case decorated her walls, but for her size, she did good.

  “She did damn good,” her father would say to any Greenviller who listened.

  She gazed out across the sludge, and wondered how deep the marsh sank. She never touched bottom, even as a child, afraid of what the soles of her feet would feel. Slime? Leeches? A grasping hand?

  “It ain’t no marsh anymore,” her father told her three summers ago. “See that moss? See how there ain’t no fish? It can’t sustain much life now. Too acidic.”

  She pulled out a vial of holy water and poured it into the bog. She watched it splash against peat and algae, then knelt at the edge and prayed.

  “God’ll make this bog healthy again , Papa. You’ll see.”

  She stood at the edge of the dock for some time. The handheld CB radio rarely crackled to life and when it did, the message came from Crystal Bay, down Green River from Monroe City, where a community of houseboats anchored in a line just off Boblo Island. Boblo itself remained unsafe.

  The night sky shone clear, making it easy to spot every shrub and sedge with her binoculars, but still she couldn’t see him. The bog remained quiet for some time, until 2 a.m., when the screams began. Sometimes the screams would come duri
ng daylight or early evening and that's when Jenni let the kids draw wherever. She used to blast the TV to drown him out. That was before the power went out.

  His screams echoed off the woodland beyond, making it hard to pinpoint the location. The sound followed a pattern, beginning as long sobs, slowly rising into desperate pleas by night’s end. During the day, he was quiet. Usually. And usually, he pleaded to the children.

  But the children sat safe inside sleeping as Jenni knelt at the dock listening.

  “Rose. Rose. Be a good little princess and come give grandpa a hand. Pleeeeease!” She hated the thought of him out there somewhere, stuck in the mud and rot. Sobbing. That was the worst part — the sobbing. For a man who never cried at his brother’s funeral, he sure as shit made up for it now.

  The next night came and she whisked her children off to the basement again. This way they never heard the worst of it. She sat with them down there, huddled together on quilted blankets, a candle flickering in the cast-iron pagoda. They ate cans of cold ravioli over comics and coloring books and talked about visiting Vermont when things got better.

  When Alex and Rose fell asleep, Jenni tiptoed upstairs and walked across the dewy lawn to listen. To see if Pa finally put things right.

  “Jenni, I’m dying, here!” Her father screamed. He sounded angry now, but really, it wasn’t him. His voice never trembled. Not like that.

  For two more nights, Jenni listened and watched. She hoped that Pa somehow worked his way closer to the docks, where she could see if he changed back as promised.

  Seeing is believing, Jenni reasoned.

  Another day passed and Jenni waited until her children were asleep before crossing the dew-wet lawn. This night felt different. The moon grinned at her. It hung close, low, and cast a silvery orange glow over everything, a sign that summer began its slow descent into autumn. Jenni minded the missing plank in the dock, sat at the edge, and waited. She waited half the night away, but this time Pa did not call.