THE ENOCH PILL
∞
Matthew William
2015
1
Kizzy stared at the northwest horizon, the crows were coming again. They were freakish creatures with a genetic mutation that made them grow to the size of small children. Children, that is, who were four feet tall with eight foot wingspans, covered in greasy black feathers and had deafening cackles. They were what nightmares were made of. When Kizzy saw them approaching, her stomach twisted and her brow began to sweat. It was her job to kill them.
The EMP sat out in the dusty old barn between the tractor and the lawn mower. It had two wheels and a small ethanol powered engine. It was her only weapon against the crows, but it was the only one she needed. Reliable, effective, deadly. The cannon was a flat glass tube and the shield was a transparent blue plastic polymer. You made sure you stood completely behind it when you fired, otherwise the electrical blast would kill you. The sight of the machine always brought a smile to Kizzy’s face. It was one of the few things in her daily life that made her feel like a bad-ass.
When she yanked the rope the machine shuddered to life, coughing smelly gray smoke. Kizzy wheeled it from the barn and took aim at the small gang of crows that sat out in the field, pecking away at the Enoch beans.
She punched the button to arm the EMP, stood squarely behind the shield and pulled the trigger. A blue ring of energy shot from the cannon. Kizzy held onto the handles, absorbing the recoil. When the energy hit the crows they fell to the ground dead. The electric shock had stopped their hearts from beating. Kizzy sighed. That part always made her a little bit depressed.
They had been genetically engineered to help pollinate the Enoch beans, but people had lost control of them after the plague. People lost control of everything after the plague. Now the crows were a nuisance. They were the only animal besides humankind that could eat the Enoch beans and live, and that’s exactly why they needed to die. If left unchecked they would live forever and eat every last bean from the face of the earth and that would be game over for humans beings. So the crows needed to die, so that the humans and the mutants could live.
When Kizzy was ten she had a cat named Cheetah. He was orange with white stripes and technically looked more like a tiger, but animal classification was never Kizzy’s strong suit. In Kizzy’s humble opinion he was the greatest cat that ever lived. So friendly and free, he’d sometimes purr without being pet. He’d sit next to Kizzy’s feet while she did her homework and just purr away, like a little diesel engine. And when her mother explained to her one day that cats don’t live forever the way people do, Kizzy hatched a plan. She gave Cheetah an Enoch pill in his food. The next morning they found him out in the barn, dead. It was the saddest day of Kizzy’s life.
So deep down she found it disturbing to see the crows mindlessly eating the beans, as if in a trance. And it was unfair that they had to die because of it. But that’s the way life goes. Kill or be killed. And Kizzy made a good allowance from killing. The other farms in the county would hire her to help with their crow problems, which was unfortunate because the repulsive things scared the hell out of her.
Kizzy walked the EMP back to the barn and grabbed some white burlap sacks. The corpses had to be removed from the field or they’d poison the crop.
At that moment the delivery truck from the city came barreling down the country road. Kizzy had to be there to open the crate first. Her mother couldn’t know what was coming.
When the supply crate emerged from the back of the automated truck it rolled down the long metal ramp onto her front porch. It looked like every other supply crate that came from the city; two feet high, two feet wide, six feet long and made of wood. But maybe this was the one with the special delivery. Maybe today would be the day.
She drug the crate into the living room and used her key card to unlock it. It beeped happily and the top sprung open. Inside, stuffed amidst the packaging straw, were cans of food, Enoch pills, ethanol, tools – all of the products that the mutants of the city had made from materials sent in by the humans in the country. All except for the one square white envelope, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Kizzy’s heart skipped a beat when she laid eyes upon it. Could that be what she’d been waiting for? She snatched it from the box and scurried towards her room.
Halfway there she noticed her mother’s paints and brushes sitting out on the kitchen table. She must have drank too much the night before and forgotten to put them away. If Kizzy didn’t clean them, the paints would dry out completely. She hesitated for a moment, then groaned to herself. In a flash she ran the envelope to her room, hid it someplace safe and came back to the kitchen. Lids on the jars, brushes in the vodka glass. Drying her hands she snuck back into her room.
With the door tightly closed she pulled the album out from under her pillow. Her hands shook. Her chest felt hollow. Was she really alone? She cracked open the door and peaked up and down the hallway.
“Hello?” she called out. Silence. Her mother must have been out in the fields.
Kizzy gently closed the door and snuck up to the envelope as if it were a sleeping bird that could become frightened and fly away. But it didn’t budge. The album just sat there waiting.
She tore it open, ripping through the white paper like a maniac, exposing the glossy yellow plastic underneath. Kizzy’s heartbeats began to pound in her chest. The flat yellow album was finally in her hands. She went to the closet and pushed all her clothes to the right. She eyed the bedroom door with distrust. The coast was clear.
She got down on her knees and lifted the floor boards. Down in the cavity sat her prized red record player, just as she had left it. She pulled the yellow album from its cover and carefully laid it on the turn table. It began to spin. Kizzy put the needle to the vinyl and it made that amazing crackling noise. She slipped the headphones over her ears and let the music take her away.
Kizzy was obsessed with all the music from the city, even though it was strictly forbidden. They said the deaf girl in her class wasn’t born deaf, but that they found her listening to city music and took her hearing away. Kizzy hoped that wasn’t true. The music was too amazing to give up.
It was a fluke Kizzy had ever even heard it at all. She had been out in the tractor, far away from the house, tilling the fields one day. The tractor must have gone through a patch that the radio jammers didn’t have blocked. Broadcasts from the city came flooding into the stereo system. It scared the heck out of her at first. The music was so raw and crazy, like wild animals. But then she caught the rhythms. And then she could sense the intelligence in the construction – it was meant to be fierce and free. That was the only way to say those things that couldn’t be said with just words. Those things hid in the dark basement of your soul and could only be felt, not thought.
That first song she heard was called “Free Yourself” by the mutant artist Banshee. He began to sing about not accepting what people told you, but thinking for yourself. It went against everything they taught in school. It made Kizzy’s ears tingle.
Ever since that day Banshee had been far and away her favorite artist.
And now she had his newest album. Twelve new songs to discover. Sitting on her knees, she pulled the hanging clothes around her, like a blanket. She swayed to the music and forgot all her worries; the fact that she had no friends, because the girls at school didn’t like her, because they didn’t know here, because she always had to be home to work on the farm. Those disgusting crows. The flocks of them that came in constant waves, eating more and more of their crop. She and her mother would lose their farm if they didn’t make the monthly quota of Enoch beans. And the clo
ser they got to losing their farm, the more her mother drank. And the more she drank, the meaner she got.
Kizzy wished she could cure her mother’s sadness. But it was bigger than she was, stretching back to before Kizzy was born and with roots that reached down further than she could ever dig. The more she tried, the more she seemed to make it worse.
Her mother was insanely mad the day Kizzy was sent home for punching her teacher. She decided to work Kizzy like a dog during the harvest, hoping that would teach her some sort of lesson. But Kizzy regretted nothing. Her teacher was fat and stupid and deserved it.
She thought back to that moment. Camilla had cornered Kizzy for missing a homework assignment. It wasn’t as if she had forgotten it, she just didn’t have the time to do it. But Camilla didn’t care. She got right into Kizzy’s face and Kizzy did the only thing a cornered animal could do. She lashed out. After that it was all just a blur. The next thing Kizzy knew she was in the headmaster’s office while Camilla and her mother took turns yelling at her.
Now she realized how foolish she had been. A punch to the nose could send a bone up into a person’s brain, killing them instantly. That would have been a death sentence for Kizzy. No trial, no excuses, no mercy. If someone died because of you, you had to pay the price with your own life. Forever paid for with forever. She hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t thought of anything. If she had just slapped Camilla across her fat face, it would have been a lot safer.
Kizzy shook all those thoughts away. The music lifted them and made them disappear. That’s what it did best. It transported you to another place and time and suddenly everything was small and inconsequential. Forever stretched out in front of her.
From the corner of her eye she saw her bedroom door opening. In an instant she tore off the headphones and stood up amidst all her clothes.
“Didn’t you hear me calling you?” her mother asked. She looked annoyed.
“No, sorry,” Kizzy said, stepping out from the closet. “I was just rearranging my clothes.” She tried to catch her breath. The sweat gathered on her forehead.
“And you didn’t hear me?” Her mother’s eyes squinted. Was she amused or suspicious?
“I must have been lost in thought.”
“Why is your head always up in the clouds Kizzy?”
Kizzy tried to think of something to say. But in that quiet moment she heard something that turned her guts rotten. The music was ever so quietly still playing from the headphones on the floor. How could she have been so stupid? Could her mother hear it too? “Well, I was lying.”
Her mother raised her eyebrows.
“I was trying to organize my closet before you came back. I wanted to surprise you.”
“Well, let me see it then,” her mother said, stepping closer.
“No,” shouted Kizzy, putting her arms up to block the way. “It’s not perfect yet.”
Her mother smiled. She was always saying, ‘Now that we have forever, there’s no reason to settle for less than perfect’.
“Alright, alright.” Her mother began to leave. At the doorway she turned. “Hey, why did you open the supply crate?”
“Oh, well, I wanted to see what was inside. You know, just to live a little.”
“Well, next time you decide to live a little how about you help unload the box too?”
Kizzy nodded and forced a smile. The music almost seemed louder now. The drums were kicking in. Normally she would’ve loved that. Now she hated it. The music didn’t take her away to another place, no it was keeping her frozen there in that moment. Time refused to move.
“There’s something else I needed to talk to you about,” her mother said. “The report says there’s a flock of crows coming. And it’s a pretty big one. I have to fix the irrigation system before we lose the beans in the south field. So do you think you can handle this one by yourself?”
“Of course,” Kizzy said. Her nerves vibrated through her voice.
“Love you Kiz.”
“Love you too.”
Then her mother was gone.
Kizzy let out a big anxious breath. Her chest was a hive of bees. Her hands were shaking. She turned off the record player and closed the floorboards tightly. She spread her clothes out so they hung evenly across the closet. She decided to wait until the nighttime to listen the music. Her mother would be asleep and it would be safer.
Kizzy went out to the front porch and looked to the southwest. Five crows were already in the Enoch beans down near the woods, eating away at her livelihood.
She jogged to the barn. When she looked back down at the field, the sky above the trees began to fill up with flapping black wings. The cloud of them grew and grew. This swarm was big enough to take out their entire farm. They swept down and landed on the field in a wave of black feathers. They cawed and cackled as they ripped the beans from their roots.
Ten of them fluttered above the field looking for a good place to land, but then they spotted Kizzy. They tore through the air towards her. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, they had never attacked her before. In an instant they had her surrounded, pecking at her head with their large bottle sized beaks and scratching at her back with their hand-sized claws. Kizzy covered her face. They lunged at her, trying to grab a hold of her arms. The gusts from their powerful wings flapped dirt and dust into her eyes.
Kizzy saw an opening and sprinted towards the barn, the crows at her back, clawing at her shirt. She ran in through the barn door and slammed it shut. The crows pecked viciously at the other side. She felt her forehead. A trickle of blood came from her hairline. Those monsters had gone for her eyes. Blasting them with the EMP suddenly seemed less barbaric.
She started the engine and pushed it towards the door. The gang of crows were still scratching away at the other side. She armed the canon, kicked the door open and hid behind the shield. She pulled the trigger and the blue pulse shot from the cannon and flew through the door. The crows froze midair then fell to the ground.
Kizzy pushed the EMP past them. The other crows covered the crops like a black blanket. Their cackles and caws rang in Kizzy’s ears. They were laughing. Laughing as they ate away at her life.
She shot blue rings of death out into the field. The cawing gave way to silence as the birds fell to the ground. All those crows, perhaps a hundred of them, were now dead.
But something was strange this time. She wasn’t depressed. No, she was actually smiling. The crows had hurt her and so she hurt them back, and it felt good. This was troublesome.
She went back to the barn and grabbed several white burlap sacks. Two crows filled a sack and Kizzy hoisted them up over her shoulder. Their beaks, claws and bones poked her back. That part was the worst.
Had it ever felt good to kill the crows before? She couldn’t recall. There was always that hollow silence that hung in the air afterwards. It wasn’t pleasant.
But it was all different this time. They had attacked her. That had never happened before. Something was wrong with them. That explained the whole thing.
She hauled the two bags to the woods and entered a little path she had carved out for herself. The crows needed to be buried at least 300 feet from the beans. She walked until she could no longer see the field or the house. That was about the 300 foot mark. But then she walked deeper into the woods. A few minutes later she passed the first abandoned house. A few minutes after that she passed another and another. And a few minutes later still that she came to the central square of the tiny ghost town. All around her were dirty, decrepit shop-fronts and dilapidated homes. In the middle of it all was an old concrete fountain. That’s where she dumped the crows the day before. It was easier than burying them in the hard forest floor.
Up on a hill, overlooking the town was a large electronic billboard. Dr. Enoch, with his square jaw and porcelain white tee
th popped one of his pills into his mouth and smiled. “The Enoch Pill, Take one everyday! #ENOCH”. Somehow a glitch in the wiring had kept the image repeating itself over and over again into infinity.
Kizzy had first seen it from the woods and that’s what had led her to the town. Her mother told her to never come to this place, that it was dangerous. But she worried too much. Kizzy had been here dozens of times and there wasn’t a thing to worry about. Everyone in the town had died in the plague 18 years ago.
Kizzy wondered what that must have been like, to lose every person you had ever known in the blink of an eye. One day they were there, the next they were gone. She couldn’t imagine losing one person. Let alone all of them. Her brain just couldn’t grasp it. And thanks to the Enoch pill she would never have to.
She walked towards the fountain over the cracked pavement and crooked sidewalk. The wind swayed the weeds that had long ago burst through the concrete. The houses were crumbling and their windows were dirty with years of grime. This town was completely dead and nature was reclaiming it vine by vine. It made Kizzy feel empty inside, but that’s why she liked it. There was something magical about a place that no longer lived.
She was about to dump the crows into the fountain but something was wrong. The crows from the day before were gone. Had some animals had eaten them? It would have been a lot to eat, there had been five crows. It must have been a pack of animals. But the crows were toxic. Maybe some species of wolf or vulture had a special bacteria in its stomach that could handle the toxicity?
She emptied the sack. The crows fell to the concrete with hollow thuds. Their loose feathers fluttered all over the place.
Kizzy furrowed her brow. If it had been an animal, surely there would be some feathers left. Or bones. Or at the very least some blood. But there was absolutely nothing. It was all gone.
The Enoch Pill Page 1