THE CLOUD SEEDERS

by James Zerndt

  Stay calm, Dustin. Stay calm.

  -You want some water?

  -Sure.

  -Recycled or non?

  -Funny.

  -How about you boys? Thirsty? Oh, right. Probably hard to drink with those hoods on. Too bad. Nothing like a cool drink of water on a hot day.

  -Stop it.

  -Why?

  -Because it’s unnecessary.

  -Your face is unnecessary.

  Beauty.

  That’s what I remember most. What a beautiful man the President was. When I was introduced to him, he stooped and shook my hand. His eyes sparkled something insane. Almost like his body housed too much electricity and was trying to escape.

  I took that for intelligence.

  Now I know it for something entirely different.

  “Do you realize your father has managed to tame the forces of nature?”

  That’s what the President said to me. And I nodded. That’s all I could do. Nod.

  Like a child.

  Like a disciple.

  -What do you think’ll happen to them?

  -They’ll get the treatment.

  -You hear that back there? The treatment. And the treatment aint good.

  -They can’t speak. Remember?

  I wanted to be just like the President.

  We all did.

  Dad, too.

  -Hey, I think something’s wrong with the little one.

  -Shoot, he must have passed out.

  -What do we do?

  -Un-gag them.

  -But...

  -Just do it.

  I have a picture of these two in my head. The guy in front of me, the driver, is fat. The other one is tall and thin with a handlebar moustache. Maybe wearing a gold chain.

  -The older one, too?

  -The older one, too.

  Someone yanks on my hood, but it gets caught on my chin and my spine momentarily fills with shards of glass again.

  When I’m free of the hood, things slowly come into focus. Turns out I was way off in the description department.

  Both of them are skinny. And young.

  Dustin, I think to myself, please hold your tongue for once.

  “Where the fuck are you taking us?”

  No such luck.

  I was expecting fear, trembling, maybe some tears, but no. Pure unadulterated pissed off my little brother is. He probably faked that whole passing out thing.

  “Show some manners, you little shit.”

  “Sorry,” Dustin says, his arms tugging at the restraints. “Please tell us where the fuck you’re taking us.”

  “Listen to the mouth on this kid. No wonder they want us to bring him in.”

  “Are you going to kill us?”

  “Kill’s a harsh word, kid. They may Stamp your brother here, but you should be okay.”

  The driver shakes his head, turns around to look at Dustin. “Nobody’s Stamping anybody, kid. He’s just talking.”

  “He’s just a dick,” Dustin says coolly.

  “Kid’s got your number.”

  “What number?”

  “Forget it.”

  It’s almost like they’re playing their own version of Good cop/Bad cop.

  Good cop/Dumb cop.

  “And besides,” Good cop adds. “The rest is up to them.”

  “Them who?”

  “Them Rehab.”

  Dustin sits back, looks at me like what the fuck are we going to do now. I’d shrug, but my back still happens to be on fire.

  “We’ll be okay, D. Just try to relax.”

  “Listen to your brother, kid. That’s good advice.”

  Dustin settles back into his seat and looks out the window. We’re high off the ground, riding in the same kind of monster truck we saw at the check-point. I lean forward, wincing something fierce, and raise my thigh to my belly.

  They took it.

  Mom’s book is gone.

  *

  It’s nearly dark by the time we stop again.

  No clouds. No Betsy. Just another ridiculously clear night. A sky scrubbed clean.

  Antiseptic.

  Flawless with a high chance of no personality.

  In front of us is what must be the State Rehabilitation Facility. Each state has at least one of them. Usually they convert old warehouses or abandoned super-stores to house the steady influx of new inmates. I heard Utah turned one of their Walmarts into the country’s most successful Rehab.

  This isn’t any Walmart though.

  This is 100-percent government made.

  A giant cement bubble painted light blue so that it looks like a fat drop of water in the middle of nowhere. Barbed wire. A guard tower. Pretty much non-descript save for the U.S. flag hanging listlessly outside the main entrance.

  “Looks nice,” Dustin says. “Way better than our tents.”

  “Way,” I say and Dumb cop’s neck turns red.

  “Jabber it up, boys,” he says as he climbs down from the truck. “We’ll see how tough you are in a week. If you last that long.”

  Dustin rolls his eyes, shakes his head like he doubts the possibility of there being anything more torturous than being stuck with these two.

  I try not to grimace as we’re pulled from the truck and led past an armed guard. Behind us a fifteen-foot tall gate silently shuts. When I check to see if maybe another cruiser has followed us, there’s nothing.

  Where are the rest of them?

  Did they get Jerusha, too?

  Once inside, we’re led down a narrow hallway, a door bathed in blue light waiting at the end.

  Black curtains line the walls.

  This isn’t like the training manuals.

  I remember studying the pictures of Rehabilitation, the cells stuffed with inmates, hands wrapped around the bars, floor upon floor of prison cells, the gaunt hollow faces peering out, a sea of broken men and women. There were thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Elbows and legs poking out from the bars.

  Like intensive chicken farming.

  Only with Leftovers.

  But there are no other prisoners here. None, at least, that we can see. And not a sound. Everything is deathly silent, church-like.

  And the smell.

  Like someone’s burning incense. I’m wondering what’s behind the curtains, how we’ll be able to survive something like this, when they stop us just outside the blue door and slice the bindings from our wrists.

  There’s a keypad on the door.

  Something with letters and numbers. I try to watch as Dumb cop punches in the code, but he blocks my view.

  “Welcome to the past,” he says when the lock clicks free. “Go ahead, open it.”

  Dustin, no doubt fearing the alternative behind the curtains, pushes the door open, walks in on the balls of his feet.

  It takes a baton jabbed into my back to get me to move.

  “Sorry,” Dumb cops says. “I slipped.”

  The door slams behind us, leaving me and Dustin standing in a living room.

  A pre-drought living room like we had growing up.

  Only this one is circular and in the middle there’s a giant glass box with a guard sitting inside.

  And it’s raining.

  Or that’s what it sounds like anyway.

  They have the place rigged with speakers, the rain loud enough so that it feels like we’re outside.

  “What is this place?” Dustin says, creeping toward the glass box. The guard just stares at Dustin, scribbling something on his pad without bothering to look down.

  There’s something robotic about him.

  Dead almost.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper. “Just be careful.”

  There’s a couch and an old TV near the glass box.

  Dustin edges closer, says, “Hi, I’m Dustin. What’s your name?”

  The man keeps writing, his eyes never leaving Dustin.

  “Really?” Dustin says. “That’s a beautiful name.”

  He looks back at me, shrugs,
then reaches for the television like he’s going to turn it on, but stops when he sees what’s on the coffee table.

  “Hey, how did this get here?”

  Mom’s book of poems.

  “They must’ve sent it on ahead,” I say and scan the room.

  There’s a kitchen. With a sink. And soap. Glasses on the counter. A refrigerator. There’s even a bathroom.

  Only everything is out in the open.

  Including the shower.

  The toilet.

  And the walls are all lined with the same type of black curtains we saw on the way in.

  I walk to the fridge, ease the handle out like I’m removing a pin from a grenade. There’s milk. Orange juice. Bread. Sausage. Bacon. Frozen pizza. A myriad of cheeses. Various lunch meats in little plastic tubs just like in the old days.

  There’s even a couple steaks.

  My hands are trembling.

  “D, would you please come here for a minute.”

  Dustin, still trying to get the TV to turn on, stops when he sees the open fridge.

  “Probably fake,” he says. “Or poisoned.”

  “Still,” I say and take a slice of turkey from one of the containers. The smell of it. My eyeballs are drooling. “Maybe you should try some.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Think of it this way. If you go into convulsions, we’ll know it’s not safe.”

  “No. To infinity and beyond.”

  I put the turkey back, the man in the box watching us all the while.

  His face is gaunt, pale.

  Like he was born in that box.

  I check to see if the faucet works, and, unbelievably, it does. Together we watch as hot and cold water pours out decadently, then disappears decadently down the drain.

  This isn’t right.

  Everything here works.

  We go around to each miracle and test it. The toilet flushes, the shower showers. The fridge even makes crushed ice.

  All that’s missing is an indoor pool.

  I can’t look at these things without thinking of Jerusha. I’ve never seen her eat pizza before. Never seen her take a shower. I think I’d even get a charge out of seeing her flush a real toilet.

  “I wonder what they’re eating back at the camp,” Dustin says.

  “Goat stew,” I say and notice a fuzzy light coming from underneath the curtains. “Hey, D. Why don’t you see if the curtains open.”

  “You do it. I want to watch TV.”

  “The TV’s the only thing in here that doesn’t work.”

  I notice a big tasseled chord hanging from the ceiling and walk over, pull on it. One by one the curtains lining the room draw back. The fuzzy light I saw isn’t coming from any windows like I’d hoped. Instead, there are about twenty floor-length panes of glass circling the room, each of them housing an inmate, all of them naked.

  Then I understand what this place is.

  We’re inside a Panopticon.

  Dad told me about them once, how they were the most effective way to watch over a large number of inmates. And the cheapest, too, since you only had to pay for the one guard.

  I find myself standing face to face with a female inmate, the glass the only thing separating us, her eyes wide and unblinking, staring right into mine. I want to call out to my brother, but I can’t seem to remember his name.

  Her eyes.

  So full of terror.

  Like she knows what’s in store for us here.

  There’s something familiar about her, too.

  Like I know her from somewhere.

  I reach for the chord again, tug on it hard, but it won’t budge now. The curtains, too, are rigid, locked into place when I go to close them.

  The woman’s pointing at something.

  She’s talking, but I can’t hear her. It looks like she’s saying “Butter, Butter, Butter,” over and over again.

  “D,” I finally manage to say.

  “Thomas,” he says, frozen, standing on the couch and aiming the remote at the glass cages like a gun.

  The woman keeps pointing, keeps mouthing, “Butter, Butter, Butter.”

  Then I see it. A black button on the wall.

  Button. Button. Button.

  I point to it and she nods, smiles, her teeth all jangly looking.

  “I think she wants me to push this button.”

  “Why?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Maybe it lets them out. They’ll fucking eat us. Look at them.”

  I step back from the button and her smile drops. The other inmates, all of them bone-skinny, start doing the same thing, pointing at the button, pounding on the glass, shouting.

  That’s when I notice the two empty cages.

  Reserved for me and Dustin no doubt.

  “What do we do?” Dustin asks, turning around in circles on the couch now, the remote still in his outstretched hand.

  “We don’t push that button. That’s what we do.”

  “Agreed,” he says and holsters his remote.

  It’s almost like they can hear us because all the inmates quickly lose interest, recede back into their cells. Each of the rooms has a giant fluorescent light for a ceiling, each cell bathed in a sickly white so that their skin appears almost translucent.

  There are cots that fold down from the wall.

  Personal recyclers for them to use.

  One empty bowl per cage.

  And that’s it.

  I go and stand next to Dustin, the couch being the furthest thing away from the cages, and approach the guard in the glass box.

  “Can you hear me?”

  He stares straight at me, not the slightest acknowledgement I’ve said anything. He writes something down and when I lean up against the glass to see, he pulls the notebook tight against his chest.

  “Don’t want me to see that, huh? What is this? Some kind of experiment?”

  Again, nothing.

  “You want me to push that button? Want to see what the rats are going to do, is that it? Well, guess what. We’re not playing. You hear me in there? We’re not playing.”

  It’s almost imperceptible, but he nods his head slightly.

  “Good. Glad we’ve got that settled.”

  “Why would we be rats?” Dustin says once I sit down.

  “I don’t know. Maybe not rats. Mice?”

  “Gerbils.”

  “Fine. Gerbils. What difference does it make?” I look at the cells across from us, at the other prisoners staring at us. “I think we have more pressing things to worry about, D.”

  Dustin surveys the room again, his eyes coming to a stop on an inmate directly across from us. He’s old, ribs pushing out against his mottled skin.

  “Yeah,” Dustin says. “All this is making me hungry.” He turns toward the glass box. “You get that? Need me to repeat it?”

  I swear I see a shadow pass over the guard’s face.

  Something that almost resembles emotion.

  But I’m probably just imagining things.

  The Rat Who Committed Mutiny

  In the morning

  i found you hanging

  by the pink

  of your knotted tail.

  What order did you refuse?

  Or were you simply like me

  and born with petulant whiskers?

  Did you see your death

  scurrying towards you

  from the horizon?

  When the noose took hold

  did you row your arms

  toward a landlocked heaven?

  If so, remember it was me,

  the boatswain, who cut you down

  and slung you out to sea

  among the waves

  crumbling

  like so much Feta cheese.

  11 Water is Life. Don’t Waste Yours.

  It’s like Vegas in here. The lights never go out and we have no idea how much time has passed.

  Vegas in a rain forest maybe.

  To pass the time,
Me and Dustin have taken to naming the other prisoners. The guard in the glass box is now Shakespeare. Because of all the writing. Hitler was a close second.

  The old man is now Ribs.

  For obvious reasons.

  The woman I first saw has become Teeth.

  Also for obvious reasons, though that one was all Dustin.

  Shakespeare still watches us, but he paces back and forth in his box a lot now. He talks to himself now, too. Or to them, I’m not sure which because we can’t hear a thing he says.

  All I know is it’s never directed toward me or Dustin.

  And we haven’t seen him eat or drink anything in two days. Or at least I think it’s been two days. I’m also pretty sure they fed the other prisoners. I woke up from a nap and saw them all crouched over their bowls like monkeys, scooping up whatever garbage they gave them to eat.

  We haven’t seen the other two cops again either.

  There’s only the one door out of here, which I’ve tried just about every hour, even though I know it’s useless.

  I’ve also already given Dustin my two last salal berries and, to make matters worse, every time I lie down on the couch, I’m forced to listen to the refrigerator seductively humming away.

  The refrigerator.

  Our salvation.

  Or a shiny, white coffin.

  “Dustin,” I say, and he stirs, pulls Mom’s splayed book from his face. He’s been using it as a shield, something to block out the light.

  And the other nineteen people watching us.

  “I’m going to make us something to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Sorry. Stuffed.”

  “Fine. I guess I’ll be eating pizza alone then.”

  Dustin shrugs, but I swear I hear his stomach rumble.

  “Pepperoni okay with you?” I ask Shakespeare and head to the kitchen without waiting for him to not respond.

  There are two frozen pizzas in the fridge. Each of them loaded with toppings. I decide to cook both since I could easily eat two if Dustin doesn’t come to his senses.

  Before too long every inmate in the place is standing, their foreheads pressed to the glass, watching my every move as I wait the fourteen excruciating minutes for the pizzas to cook.

  I wonder if they’ve seen this sort of thing before.