by Various
• • •
Cal has erased his picture from my computer. I was looking for it this morning but it’s gone. I don’t blame him for not wanting a reminder of what he looked like post-infection, but it was mine. He had no right to destroy it. I check the message boards and realize that I miss the old internet, full of silly videos. The US Council for Recovery has set up Neighbor-Board, the only social networking site we have, but it’s not the same. There is no YouTube or video sharing. The last thing the Council wanted was someone posting old footage of attacks. The feeling I have knowing that Cal got on my computer and deleted his picture is the same one I have when I use this new “net.” It feels likes some sort of violation, or censorship.
I ride my bike to work and it’s a fine spring morning. There is even a sprig
of green sprouting from the dirt and grit in the tank on Main Street.
• • •
I had climbed out of the roof’s hatch, screaming for Lindy. The roar in my ears turned out to be planes zooming in from the horizon: crop dusters. A yellow mist came streaming out from them. One of the planes flew so close that the pilot waggled his wing tip at me. He probably thought I had been on the roof, shouting for joy.
At this same time, Felix Narvaez was on the bridge in McAllen, facing the four thousand gruesome hungry dead. He had been listening in on the radio contact between the military and heard the cure was on the way. He refused to fire on the infected. He stopped right where he was. His people had enough fire power to destroy the whole hoard but he ordered them not to fire. Instead, they fought them off by hand until the planes soared overhead and released their loads. They could have died in their act of compassion, and they nearly did. Narvaez watched the dust settle and the slow shift of consciousness begin.
That was the day I lost Lindy. That was the day the world came back alive. It was the third of July.
• • •
This morning when I get to campus I go to the faculty break room first. Sarah, the psychology teacher, is talking with the Spanish teacher, Kay. “It’s not anorexia,” Sarah says, “but something near to it. I’m sure it’s based on guilt and not physiology. Clinically, I’ll be interested to see the long term effects. Some of the people I’m seeing can’t keep anything down, and it’s not just Turners either. There is a subset of people who didn’t get infected at all but are claiming that they did, and that they can’t remember anything. They are also vomiting when they think of food.”
Poor Sarah. Not only does she teach classes and volunteer like the rest of us, her Citizens Orders have her counseling post-traumatic shock victims. Kay sees me and clears a space for me.
“Buenos días. Cómo está?”
“Hola. Muy bien. Et tu?
“Así así,” Kay smiles. She has always been something of a quiet seer. When Cal and I got married she gave me a beautiful candelabra and her handwritten note said “Something to help light your way.” Kay has told me that in less than ten years more than half of the country will not speak English. I had asked her what would happen if the borders closed and the natives got ticked off from being minorities. She had said “Perhaps another Civil War, no? Neighbor against neighbor, yet again.”
Kay listens quietly while Sarah talks about her patients. I put my lunch in the faculty fridge and excuse myself. “I have to go to the library. Adiós.”
I know what I have to do. I dreamed about it last night. I dreamed I was teaching Daniel Defoe’s tale of the bubonic plague, Katherine Anne Porter’s tale of the 1918 flu, Albert Camus’ tale of cholera, Randy Shilts’ tale of HIV, Richard Preston’s tale of Ebola…. there were so many books on the lectern that they spilled over. I leaned against a marble bust of Giovanni Boccaccio and it fell, crashing to the floor. I knelt to retrieve the pieces but found only marble feet instead, tiny and delicate, like a child’s. “What will they write of us?” I asked the class. “What will they write of us?” The students tried to answer but their voices only beeped and blared like the campus emergency alerts. When I woke, I knew what I needed to do.
I’ve timed my visit carefully, when I know the head librarian will be there. She was a Mole. She and her husband made it out to their deer lease in West Texas where they survived on venison and canned fruit, but they ran out of heat and nearly froze in the winter. She lost two toes.
“I have something for the library,” I tell her. “But not everyone should see this. Not everyone would understand.”
I slide her the journal that I found in the computer lab, written by one of the Eight.
Her eyes open wide. “I heard rumors about this!” She fingers the blood-stained pages. “I’ll put it in the archive,” she whispers. “Only I have the key.”
I nod. “Maybe later, people will want to know.”
“Does it name names?”
“Yes.”
“Was Cal…”
“No. He wasn’t one of them.”
I turn to leave but she has gripped my hand. Her eyes are welling up with tears and we hold hands over the circulation desk top; the granite is as cold as marble. We share the solidarity of the hidden. There is a sentence in the journal where the student wrote, “We know our families are gone but we still love them. We know hope is gone too but we still have it. We’re starving. We’re too weak to fight them off. Whoever finds this, please know that we were here. We hope the world makes it.”
• • •
The cure stayed in the air, like magic. The sunlight made it shimmer as golden
dust motes. Soon the sprayer trucks used for mosquito repellent were fogging the neighborhoods with it as well. All over the country, the hidden emerged from basements, cellars, attics, safe rooms, and offices. We were skeletal, rib worn and pale. We squinted in the bright sunlight, like the moles that we were.
• • •
I had asked Maria if her uncle could get something for me. I whispered the name of the item in her ear, terribly embarrassed. “No problema,” she said.
I thought it would come wrapped in paper or disguised in some way. But when one of Narvaez’s workers on the flatbed truck hands it to me, the pink plastic is obvious. I slip the pills in my purse and give my ration card for him to slide through his handheld debit machine. Technically, what I’m doing is wrong. The President has announced a temporary ban on all birth control items, hoping to boost the recovery boom. But Narvaez’s worker doesn’t bat an eye. I wonder what other things Maria’s uncle gets for people, legal or not.
“Hello, professor.” I turn around and it is Felix Narvaez himself.
“Hi.”
“Have you everything you need?”
He must know what is in my pocket. Probably nothing about his businesses escapes his attention. “Yes, thank you.” He is looking at my wedding ring.
“My husband was a Turner,” I say, as if that might explain anything. We watch each other and I hold my chin up, like Maria does. I too can be unrepentant.
“It must be difficult sleeping with betrayal, no?” he says.
• • •
I was nearly too weak to go find him. To be honest, I was so upset over
Lindy that I didn’t even look for him; it was a colleague from work who called me, telling me there was someone who looked like Cal at one of the Recovery Centers. I found him lying on an Army cot.
The medicine from the planes and foggers had cured the infected, but many were dying. Once the body was reawakened and the immune system started working, massive infections took over. Turners had broken teeth, with bits of gristle and bone lodged in their gums. Many died from oral infections. There was a shortage of antibiotics. Cal was lucky. He would be okay. Many people had been shot or knifed; some injuries were too horrendous to be cured. People were dying all over. Non-infected were shooting themselves, jumping off of bridges, hanging themselves in closets—they were wracked by the guilt from “putting down” an infected love one. Imagine the ones who had shot their own children in the head and then saw the cure come sprinkling down
from the sky, like a prayer answered too late?
In those early weeks of July, the infected and the non-infected looked alike. We were all stuck in the lacuna of being half-alive.
Cal saw me and reached out from his cot. I instinctively backed away. He looked hurt.
“Lindy?” he asked, looking around.
“She’s gone.”
Cal began to wail and a volunteer nurse rushed over. “Hush,” she said sternly. She knew if one person let go it would snowball from cot to cot, town to town, nation to nation—a whole world gone mad with hysteria and grief. Once it started it would never stop.
“Let’s go home,” I said.
• • •
Felix has asked me to dinner. I haven’t given him my answer yet.
Summer is coming along nicely and the victory garden outside is producing well. I dreamt of the statues again last night but they turned into Lindy. I had left the attic to find more supplies, but she had followed behind me. I didn’t know. She got too close to an opening in a window and something yanked her. I dreamt I’m trying to pull her back inside the house but the thing outside won’t let her go. It sounds like an animal. There is blood. The dream goes soundless. I’m holding a statue’s feet, no… they are Lindy’s feet and they are going cold. Her little toes twitch. I feel for a pulse at an ankle. Her feet become drained of blood; they turn as white as bone, as still as stone.
Cal chews his cereal and sees me deep in thought. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Felix has procured extra gas rations for faculty, so I get to drive the car to work. It’s sunny and I put on my sunglasses—I have contact lenses now, also thanks to Felix. When I turn on the radio they are finishing a replay of the President’s State of the Union speech: “To persevere is to live—to live together as one country, one nation—together
in health, hope, and liberty. Forgiveness is not forgetfulness, but rather an acknowledge-ment of the innate need for security, survival, and the necessity of recovery. We shall all be reawakened to see a new vision of our nation…” After she finishes there is applause and then a John Lennon song comes on: “And we all shine on…”
I drive slowly around the commuters on bicycles and on horseback; people wave to each other and smile. I pass by the tank on Main Street and there is a tiny tree sprouting up from the turret. A cardinal warbles and sings on the strongest branch, as red as a drop of blood.
Someday maybe the world will “make it,” as the writer of the Campus Eight had hoped. I don’t know if it will involve remembering or forgetting. I don’t know what languages our silences might speak. But maybe it will be okay. Maybe someday I will tell Cal that I dreamed of him crouched over the body of our daughter, taking bite after loving bite.
Daniel M. Kimmel became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of Shh! It’s a Secret: a novel about Aliens, Hollywood, and the Bartender’s Guide (2013), from Fantastic Books.
Visit him online at www.goodreads.com/author/show/316124.Daniel_M_Kimmel.
* * *
Novel: Shh! It’s a Secret: a novel about Aliens, Hollywood, and the Bartender’s Guide (excerpt) ••••
SHH! IT’S A SECRET: A NOVEL ABOUT ALIENS, HOLLYWOOD, AND THE BARTENDER’S GUIDE
(excerpt)
by Daniel M. Kimmel
First published as Shh! It’s a Secret: a novel about Aliens, Hollywood, and the Bartender’s Guide (2013), by Fantastic Books
• • • •
(Set up: The Brogardi have arrived on Earth in the spirit of peace exchange and cooperation. A year later the son of the Brogardi ambassador, Abi—“Call me Abe”—Gezunt, arrives at Graham Studios wanting to break into the movies. Wanting to keep the project top secret, Abe is sent home with Jake Berman, the studio publicist, until accommodations can be made on the lot.)
THE FOOD OF THE GODS
IREALLY had to hand it to Larissa. She walked in the front door holding Elizabeth, the baby’s food bag, the baby’s clothing bag, and her own briefcase. She was greeted by me, a frenetic Susan, and Abe. She took us all in at a glance, decided all explanations could wait and said, “Can someone take something please?”
I picked up Elizabeth so that Larissa could sort the bags for later emptying and refilling in the appropriate parts of the house. I decided that at least an introduction was in immediate order.
“Dear, I want you to meet Abi Gezunt. He’s going to be staying with us for the next week.”
All right, so I rounded it off a bit. Like, by a week. Larissa again instantly processed the information and determined that any discussion as to why she was learning about this in this manner and at this time could wait. I knew it was merely being postponed, but I was grateful for the effort.
“Mr. Gezunt, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” She extended her hand and then paused. “I’m sorry, do you shake hands?”
“Actually, no, but—to paraphrase one of your sayings—when on Earth do as the Earthans do,” he replied, grasping her hand. “Your custom has a history, so I’m told. I understand it was to demonstrate that you were unarmed and posed no danger to the other person.”
“Really? I had no idea.”
While Larissa was being gracious and Abe was being pedantic, the two Berman children had other ideas. Elizabeth was letting me know in no uncertain times that it was time for a diaper change while Susan had had enough of adult conversation and wanted to go back to playing with her new best friend. There were at least half a dozen of her dolls to which he had yet to be introduced.
“Larissa? The baby needs changing.”
Larissa looked at me. “Yes? So go take care of it. I just got home.”
“Perhaps this would be a good time for Susan to finish giving me the tour of her room,” suggested Abe. I nodded gratefully, then wondered if nodding was one of the things we had in common or not. It didn’t matter, they were off to see Mr. Bunny’s relations, including a stuffed moose doll that was almost as big as Susan. It had been a gift from Junior and cost a small fortune. It had also been left over from last year’s Showeast convention for the nation’s theater owners. We had brought it along for display purposes since the moose was the company logo. Rather than pay to have it stored, he gave it to Susan, saving himself the warehouse fee and with the full knowledge that he could always borrow it back if he needed it.
That left Larissa and me alone with a baby that was now balancing her state of wetness at one end by crying hysterically on my shoulder, trying to get just as wet at the other end. I headed off to the baby’s room and undressed her. If I was going to change her diaper this late in the day I might as well put her in her pajamas. Larissa followed behind after dropping off the various bags around the house and checking on the state of dinner. Closing the door behind her, she waited until I had disposed of the soiled diaper before firing the opening salvo of our argument.
“He’s staying with us for a week? Couldn’t you have at least called and warned me instead of springing it on me as I walk in the door? You know I hate surprises like that.”
Diaper on, I proceeded fastening the several dozen—or so it seemed—snaps on her undershirt and pajamas. Whoever designs baby clothes is a sadist. Either that or it’s someone who has never actually met a baby. If it was up to me, it would all be velcro or the zipper-like seals that they have on sandwich bags that you just squeeze shut. At least the concentration involved in lining up all the snaps and then snapping them shut—all the while baby Elizabeth was letting me know she was going to attempt to exercise her prerogative to be somewhere else—allowed me to ignore Larissa’s questions for the moment.
The last snap done, I handed the baby over to her, figuring it might have a calming effect.
“You told me you were in the middle of a murder trial. I could have interrupted the proceedings but I didn’t think it would get you in good with the judge.” Larissa is a court reporter and is virtually impossible to reach when she’s doing a trial. Of course
I hadn’t tried to reach her, but it was a good excuse and I was sticking with it.
“Who is he? Why is he here?”
I quickly sketched in the details of Abe’s coming to work at the studio, and how we had to keep him under wraps. “They promise me that his bungalow on the lot will be ready as soon as they reopen the studio after Thanksgiving.”
“That’s nearly two weeks. Where is he going to stay? What are we going to feed him? What about the children?”
“Which question do you want me to answer first?”
“Try this one: do you think the jury will let me off if I kill you right now?”
“Look, this is probably the biggest movie I’ll ever be involved with, if not the most historic one in the entire history of the industry. The most important job right now is keeping Abe happy and safe and in seclusion. That job was given to me. Don’t forget that I did lots of things I didn’t like when you were president of your state association, including going to those meetings where I was the only spouse there who wasn’t another court reporter. So now it’s your turn to be there for me.”
“Like going to all those boring awards shows and charity events isn’t being there for you.”
“Yes, I know how burdensome it was to be all dressed up and having to spend the whole evening chitchatting with George Clooney or Brad Pitt.”
“You’ll remember I came home with you.”
“It was their loss.”
She put Elizabeth down in her baby swing and turned it on. Then she rose and gave me a hug. “Of course your space alien can stay here. And I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful time. But what are we supposed to feed him?”
“Apparently anything except chicken.”
• • •
Dinner that evening was a smashing success. Elizabeth was already asleep and the four of us enjoyed salad, melon, and a main course of sand dabs, a Pacific Ocean fish that Rosa prepares just right. The only problem occurred with the vegetable, which was broccoli.