Dead Earth

by Demers, Matt

  “We need sleep, not a history lesson,” James returned, but smiled to ease the tension. She pressed her lips and spat something in Slavic. James guessed it wasn’t “No sweat, man.”

  They came to a winding staircase leading into the basement and descended it.

  “You’ll be staying in the conference room — the two of you,” Kovac informed. There are showers in the main floor’s west wing. Five minutes only, if you please. Behind the souvenir shop you’ll find a stove and fully stocked fridge.”

  James felt the cool, humid air of the basement and the smell of wet cement. They followed Kovac into a room with cobblestone walls, a cherry table, a row of five deflated mattresses and a kerosene lantern. James thought of Al Capone and the Hiram hotshots wearing Zoot Suits and Fedoras, making deals around the cherry wood, their Thompson M1’s leaned barrels-up against a gun rack.

  “Are those what I think they are?” James pointed at the small round holes in the cobblestone.

  “I’m not your tour guide, remember?” Kovac reminded him. Awkward silence followed. “May I have a word?” She pointed to the cellar corridor.

  “Stay here, sweetie,” James said to Jade. Did he just say that? The little Tweak nodded her head and sat cross-legged on the floor.

  Inside the corridor, Kovac spun around and crossed her arms. “You don’t want to get on our bad side here, James,” she whispered. “I don’t know what Bondy did to you, and I don’t really care, but we manage to keep our humanity here.”

  James tried for a warm smile. “I’m sorry, you know. Didn’t mean to upset him or you for that matter. It’s just —

  “You’re in more pain than I can imagine.”

  “Yes.”

  It was true. The pills no longer cut it.

  “Fine. But keep in mind.”

  “Okay, Okay,” James said. “I’ll play nice.”

  She left them alone.

  “Might as well raid their fridge for what it’s worth,” James told Jade.

  “Yes,” Jade said and actually smiled. The make-up was starting to wear off, but the smile made her look almost normal — a brief respite from being Tweak.

  In the kitchenette, James found eggs, bread, and powdered orange juice. He fried the eggs on the stove and served them to Jade sunny-side up.

  “Dad always makes them over-easy,” she replied, looking down at the two yellow yolks staring back at her.

  “Oh,” James responded and tossed the eggs back on the pan.

  I could’ve done this. A little clean-up here, a little complaint about the style of eggs there...

  “Tell me about your dad,” James asked her and turned to meet her gaze. At first she just stared back, but then her forehead strained and her eyes looked upward.

  “My dad?” Every line on her face deepened. She aged. Then her eyes widened as if something long forgotten was returning to her. At first it made her smile, but only briefly. She frowned deep enough to fill a well. She cried.

  She cried and cried but James just stood over her.

  You’re no good at this, the ghost of his college girlfriend reminded him.

  James put a hand on her shoulder anyway. He wasn’t sure how long he just stood there, feeling her boney little shoulder tremble, her face buried in her palms. He worried about her makeup. Someone would walk in and see a diseased little Tweak eating their eggs.

  “The eggs!” James yelled and turned around. Smoke billowed. He grabbed the pan-handle and picked up the pan. Bolts of heat from the hot iron handle singed his fingers. He yelped. The pan dropped, smacked the stove’s edge, and flipped forward. The burnt eggs catapulted from the pan and whacked James in the neck. He felt the heat slide from his Adam’s apple, below his neckline and down his chest.

  The eggs slithered beneath his shirt — two slabs of hot tar. He jumped up and down trying to dislodge the balls of fire stuck inside. He waved his shirt and spun. The eggs finally dislodged and plopped on the linoleum.

  James stared at the two burnt pucks below and shook his head. He heard Jade whimper. She still cried, but now they were tears of laughter. Her body shook just like before, but her lips curved upward and she let out machinegun blips of laughter. James decided it was a great laugh. Maybe even the best laugh on God’s dead earth.

  “I’m glad my pain makes you happy,” James said, and he wasn’t being sarcastic. He smiled.

  James fixed the mess and cracked two more eggs over the pan. When they turned white, he flipped them and turned the stove off.

  “I have the best dad in the world,” Jade began. James turned to her. Her smile stuck this time.

  “We go to the tracks every Sunday and he always lets me pick the horse. If we win, it’s spare-ribs and mashed potatoes at Kildare Pub. And we always bring the bones home for Millie; he’s a Scottish terrier. My dad says he’ll make Millie burgers for supper if that damn thing shits in the living room one more time.”

  James tried to hold it in, but that just made it worse. Laugher rose and spilled out in waves. He bit his tongue to stop. “I think the word is crap,” James offered.

  “Oh,” Jade responded. “If that damn thing craps in the living room,” she corrected.

  “Close enough,” James sighed. Hours ago he wanted nothing to do with the girl. He shuddered at the thought and packed it away with needless things.

  ***

  Jade slept soundly, but the click in her throat kept James up. He left her there and ascended the cellar steps to the main floor. Orange moonlight illuminated the stained glass just enough to trace the trail of red carpet to the exit. James shuffled through and onto the production floor. It appeared empty. He winked and grinned like a pirate with every step. Had Timmy taken a liking to his hipbone now, too?

  James walked and ran his hand along the vats. He noticed a wooden pocket door that stood halfway open and ventured in. A small vestibule with an exterior window. Beyond it, a courtyard glowed orange. Green vegetation stood neatly in rows.

  He opened the second door and a waft of muggy, river air hit him. Hydroponic vegetable plants, in two long troughs, ran the courtyard’s length. Rubber hoses crisscrossed beneath the troughs, running to and from a large reservoir at the far end. Across the reservoir, a garden of trellises held cherry tomatoes, beans, and eggplant. A shabby greenhouse sulked in the far corner.

  “Fitting, isn’t it?” a soft, exotic voice said. Kovac stepped out from behind a trellis. Her gray Holy Names gym shirt hugged her shoulders and torso tightly, revealing her slim yet healthy frame. Her gardening gloves looked two sizes too big.

  “What’s fitting?”

  “The Harvest moon,” she pointed up and grinned. It glowed amber and looked close enough to touch. Her smile faded. “You’re taking a risk you know,” she began.

  James felt his neck itch, but scratching it didn’t help. He hated Kovac’s cryptic speak. He hated that she seemed to know him without giving herself away. He hated, hated the way “Holy Names” clung to her firm breasts. But only because it tempted him.

  “Spit it out,” James said.

  “If they find out she’s a Tweak, they’ll kill her.”

  He dug fingers across his neck and raked. Another Percocet would do the trick.

  “What else do you know?”

  She peeled off her garden gloves and set them on the edge of a trough.

  “Let me show you something.”

  “Famous last words.”

  James followed her along a walkway toward the greenhouse. It stood in a circle of artificial turf James guessed was once the employee putting green. Grime and mold clouded the Plexiglas. Broken holes, some stuffed with garbage bags, riddled the roof.

  They stopped at a flap of blue tarp. “Not all of us know about Father Thomas, so what I’m about to show you must stay between us,” she warned and slung the tarp up.

  The room stunk of stale urine and rotted food. A bulk bag of dog food had spilled its contents in a pile. A man dressed in all black sat on a footstool with his back turned
, facing the corner. His balding head held wild strands of salt and pepper hair. His posture straightened from the sound of rustling tarp. He turned. James noticed the white clergy collar.

  “Father Thomas,” Kovac introduced.

  The priest gawked slack-jawed through a hole in the roof as if spotting the Lord himself gallivanting through the night sky. Father Thomas’ eyes reflected the orange moon. They hadn’t chained him down.

  “Looks like you’ve got a pet Tweak yourself, Miss. So why all that they’ll kill her talk?”

  “We need him. He’s different,” Kovac claimed.

  “So is Jade!” James yelled.

  “It’s Bondy who needs convincing, not me. But I wouldn’t recommend trying after lying to his face about her already. He’s got skeletons, like you. There’s a limit to his kindness.”

  Kovac walked to the priest and waved her hand over his eyes. The Tweak never blinked. She snapped her fingers. Nothing.

  “He’s getting bad. Used to play scrabble with him. Now he gets in these trances. Father Thomas?”

  “He’s cooked,” James offered.

  Kovac shook her head. “I’ve never seen one with such awareness,” she insisted. “It might have something to do with what they were like before. The better off mentally, the better off Tweaky, if that makes sense.”

  “Less skeletons the better?”

  “Indeed. So now he’s a window in. We learn things from him. The way he explains what they are. How it feels…”

  James’ lips tingled.

  How it feels.

  What they see.

  Who they are.

  James didn’t want to know. But it seemed he was about to find out.

  Kovac shut the Tweak’s mouth and clasped her hand over it. With the other, she grabbed something small from her pocket and jammed it in his nostril.

  “Urgh!” The priest gasped and dry heaved as Kovac stepped away. “Am I dead?” The Tweak asked with bulging eyes.

  “A psychiatrist brought him,” Kovac told James. “They came together like you and Jade did. They studied astrology here in Monroe many years ago, until they both switched majors — one psychology the other theology. Joey — the psychiatrist insisted on Joey because no one pronounced Abdel-Shahid correctly. Joey promised answers. What drives them. Why some are docile and others want to tear us apart.”

  The priest eyed his surroundings as if sight was something new to him. He gasped at nothing in his pet food then buried his head in his lap as he moaned.

  “I knew Joe hid something from us right from the beginning, before it became obvious he had issues. He started talking to himself, self-cutting. I pried until he admitted the reason he became a psychiatrist. To treat his own disorder — paranoid schizophrenia. Once his medication ran out, the symptoms returned.”

  “Where is he now?” James asked.

  “In the bottling factory, armed to the teeth. We don’t go there and he doesn’t come here. That’s it.”

  “Joeeeeeeeey,” the priest groaned.

  Kovac turned to the Tweak. “Tell James what you told me. Tell him what it’s like being…what you are.”

  The yellow sparks of the priests eyes flashed at James. They widened.

  James thought of Will sitting on the apartment balcony, the Milwaukee cradled in his callused hands.

  James shook his head. “I don’t want to know.”

  “It’s like,” the priest began anyway, as he looked stared into the moon again. Maybe the answer hid in a dark crater on the lunar surface. “It’s like…” the Tweak repeated, “…every moment is an Event Horizon. Do you know what that is?”

  James shook his head.

  The Tweak’s voice was eerily calm. “An Event Horizon is the gatekeeper of all black holes, allowing entry, but nothing to escape, not even light. When it takes you — not the black hole, but the Horizon — you simply drop between the cracks of time. You do not grow old; you do not die. You simply fall for eternity with nothing but your thoughts and an ocean of nothing. Every moment feels a stone’s throw from forever, from eternity.”

  James’ heart fluttered. The priest’s eyes glazed over again and James now understood why Tweaks looked like that — from centuries that were mere seconds, falling in the dark with nothing but your thoughts.

  It’s time for you to see, Will’s corpse had insisted.

  “I have lived billions of lifetimes since you stepped into this very room,” the priest grumbled.

  “Why aren’t you like the rest?” James asked him. “Why aren’t you trying to kill us?”

  “Because I have faith, and so I fight it. I fight it because it threatens my very soul. A losing battle — yes, but my holy sword will gleam until it finally takes me.”

  James thought of Jade. He thought of the immense timeline of suffering she faced each moment, how strong she must be for resisting it. The priest stared at James now, and James saw the ancientness in his eyes. The yellow flares put James into a trance, as if reeling him in for a sneak preview.

  “But what good is killing? What does it solve?” James demanded.

  The priest bowed his head shamefully. “It’s not what we want that matters. It’s what it wants.”

  “What is it? Who do you work for?” James said. It sounded like something from a bad cowboy cop film. To James’ surprise, the Tweak told him and it suddenly it all became crystal clear, if only for a moment. Someone had turned James’ world to a station with shoddy reception. His frequency regressed to static interference and everything swam through white noise. Through it, James heard the roar coming for him.

  Can you see it?

  He couldn’t. The river never stretched into ocean like it had when he hit his head in the camper lot, or when he slept on the Monroe City Raceway median. But this time , his visions didn’t last. His feet felt smooth cement, not the Green River’s pebbled shoreline. He saw a cherry wood table and an empty sleeping bag where Jade had slept, not crashing waves. James looked ahead. Kovac stood face-to-face. A kerosene lantern in the corner winked at James. Make your move, it seemed to say. She wants you, bad.

  “I don’t remember what he told me,” James admitted.

  “You lost consciousness for almost an hour,” Kovac replied. “And your pulse…You need to get that treatment. No delay.”

  She placed a hand on his chest and held it. “But your heart still beats strong. It’s like a war drum. As much as I tried to dismiss it, my drum responds in cadence.”

  James enjoyed the warmth of her palm over his shirt. He wanted to hold it there forever.

  “Where’s Jade?”

  “Sound asleep in the souvenir shop. She seems to enjoy the beanbag chairs.” Kovac’s hand slid downward. “You really care for her.”

  James, for the first time, decided he did and Kovac smiled as she read the realization in his eyes. Two thin lines formed along the corners of Kovac’s lips and James decided he cared for that too.

  His fingers traced up her arm; tiny bumps formed along her as he grazed. The bumps trailed behind his fingers, up her shoulder and across her neck.

  “It is all about the little details with you, isn’t it.” Kovac stated.

  “That’s one thing we half in common,” James responded. “Little details, big ones —I can’t hide anything from you.”

  “Well, James. Why don’t we take advantage of our keen attention to detail?”

  They locked lips and it made James’ world recede again. He remembered the feel of the sleeping bag in his palms and Kovac’s warm, moist body beneath him, her legs locked tightly around his midsection.

  #

  CHAPTER 10

  Joey

  James awakened to the rustle of his own sleeping bag. The lantern twinkled on fumes, giving enough light for James to see he lay alone.

  He checked his watch — 6 a.m. Kovac told him that they would tag along, something he stood dead set against, especially since Bondy would be risking his life on the precedence that Jade had cancer too.


  Regardless, they needed guns first, “A wackload of them,” Kovac insisted. This he agreed on. He could worry about how he’d get away from them later.

  James headed for the main floor. A sign beside the bannister read: “First come, first serve,” referring to the folded pile of clothing beneath. He grabbed black denims and a faded LaSalle Bowling polo. He poked his head inside the souvenir shop.

  Jade lay asleep on a black Whiskey Reserve beanbag chair. He searched the sales shelves until he found a towel. He unraveled it and the price tag fell.

  “Ninety bucks?” James said softly. “Girl, you’re lucky the apocalypse takes American Express.” He laid the blanket over her and tucked the sides in. She had reapplied her makeup once, and now that began to fade too, but the rich food, warm showers and fresh clothing gave her a different look from undomesticated Tweaks.

  Bondy isn’t too fond of domesticated Tweaks, Jade. As good as we got it, it’s time to jet. Just gotta take care of this sea sickness. Timmy sails downwind today.

  “You up early,” a voice said. James turned to see Haley in the doorway of the kitchenette munching the last of his toast. He had bad intentions written all over his face, but maybe Kovac was right — how could James be sure? He didn’t even know the kid.

  “I think we got off on the wrong—“

  “Too late.” Haley came closer. He stood close enough for James to smell his overpowering cologne. “You made me look bad in front of the crew. You disrespected me.”

  Haley’s entire face scrunched. Not only did Wilcott gel his hair, he was also melodramatic. Maybe James instigated this, but he sure as hell felt too sick to let his stubbornness continue it.

  “Wilcott. I’m not good at this apologizing crap, but when I make an apology, I mean it. So I’m sorry. I judged you straight off. For all I know, you might have run a farm for rehabilitated turtles. You might have gone to church on Sundays, walked your brother to the bus stop, never watched porn—”

  “Are you patronizing me?”

  James wasn’t. Really.