Ubo

by Steve Rasnic Tem

An old man bobbed into view. Chuck squeezed the trigger with a groan. But the old man had changed his mind, fell back just in time. Chuck began to weep. He squeezed the trigger again and again and each bullet erased a portion of his name.

  Four roaches rode past on a four‑seated bicycle. Chuck blasted the back wheel apart and the roaches tumbled haphazardly. He took more shots but the bullets bounced harmlessly off their armored hides.

  There were neighbors and relatives, and people he was only barely acquainted with, and those were blasted too, taken apart shot by shot, squeeze by squeeze, spirited away.

  Chuck looked up into the clear blue sky. He thought he’d heard another plane. He heard the sound, the drone starting somewhere deep inside his belly, but he didn’t see the plane. Still he tracked the sound moving overhead with his eyes, smiling.He just couldn’t smile enough today. Then the black plumes of smoke came drifting overhead. He noticed the blue highlights, smelled the faint trace of phosphorous in the air. And as the ghost of himself pulled away from his skin, leaving it sore to the touch, he remembered that his name was Daniel, and that he was in Ubo.

  The policemen came around the corner, guns blazing. There was a misfire, and Daniel changed position. He looked around for the boy but he couldn’t find him. Good.

  Something slapped him in the head. He looked up, trying to figure out which of the men had shot him. Then the next one took him out.

  3

  DANIEL WOKE UP staring at the ceiling. Oddly hung over, he was convinced he’d done something terrible, but not sure of the details. His head was full of images of people falling. He had an urge to wake Elena up and tell her about his complex dream. Then he started crying, because he’d begun to remember the scenario, and all the people he’d killed.

  The paint on the ceiling blistered and stains spread, mold-colored and rust-colored like some exotic soup. He heard a rapid panting, and he thought to ask her to get the dog out of the bedroom. But they’d had to give away the dog, because Gordon was allergic to dog fur and the smallest thing might set off a respiratory attack. He reached out to touch her, as he always did when awakened in the middle of the night, in the darkness needing confirmation that she was real and that she was alive. But this time he could not find her.

  He sat up. The motion sickened him, constricted his breathing. There was a skim of filth on his skin he couldn’t wash off. Sourness slathered his tongue. He began to choke, turned to throw up into the plastic basin attached to the side of every bed. He splashed the running water onto his face and rubbed it into his eyes.

  But he could still hear the panting. Several bunks away a man sat hunched over the side of his bed, chewing at his wrist and then using his teeth to strip threads of skin from his blood-slicked forearm. The man was insanely focused, pushing his teeth forward and attacking the flesh aggressively. The pattern didn’t look random—a stark, tribal design was emerging—an expressionistic face—it certainly could be accidental, and he could be seeing patterns where they didn’t exist. That’s what human beings do, he thought. He looked around for the roaches, saw several dark heads in the observation window, their antennae waving.

  “They’ll step in if they think he’s going to bleed to death,” Falstaff said behind him. Daniel turned around and blinked at the enormous man filling the next bunk. “That’s Barker. He’s done this kind of thing before. He reacts badly to his roles.”

  Daniel looked at Barker again. A low, terrier-like growl came from under the panting. “I don’t think I’ve seen him before.”

  “Really? How long do you think you’ve been here?”

  It surprised Daniel that he was so unsure of the answer. “A few months.”

  “No.” Falstaff flushed. “Sorry, but it’s been much longer. Over a year, year and a half at least. I was here when you came in. At least that much.”

  Impossible. If he’d actually been gone that long, his family would think he was dead. They’d be trying to move on with their lives. But it couldn’t be. Admittedly he was a little fuzzy about the beginning, but that seemed only weeks ago.

  “You were out of it at first. They usually are. There’s the shock of the transition, and the pull of the family left behind. You feel acutely responsible. Some never recover—they’re damaged permanently from the time they arrive. For that reason I don’t think the roaches use everyone they retrieve. Well, I know, they don’t.” He nodded at Barker. “He was probably in the infirmary when you first got here. The roaches shouldn’t even bother with anyone less than stable—they make unreliable subjects. Not that the roaches would ever listen to what I have to say.”

  “What are they testing? How long it takes us to break?”

  “We’ve played the most dangerous human beings who’ve ever lived. Why did those people do what they did? The roaches must think we’re a terribly troubled people. We live in Hell but we aspire to Heaven—that’s the drama of being human. The disparity makes us troubled, even insane at times, but we pretend not to be just to get through the day, work our jobs, care for our families.”

  Daniel glanced at the observation windows. The roach heads were gone. He wondered if he and Falstaff were being recorded. “If this were a science fiction movie, I’d think they were testing us to see if the human race was worth saving.”

  Falstaff laughed. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  A groan came from somewhere deep in the building, rising into a howl that must have been open-mouthed and wrenching. “What is that?” Daniel hoped he wouldn’t have to hear it ever again.

  “Our werewolf,” Falstaff replied. “He does that from time to time. Our Gilles de Rais. A fifteenth-century Breton knight. A serial killer of children, I’m sorry to say, hundreds of them. The poor fellow’s name is Henry—I never caught the last name. He was a nervous, agitated type, but fairly harmless, I think. Gilles de Rais was the first role he was given after he arrived. He never completely came out of it.”

  The howl came again, louder than before, ending with a cracking, tearing sound, as if the vocal cords had shredded. “Can’t they stop him?” Daniel covered his head with the blanket.

  “Not without killing him, and I suspect they’d prefer to continue studying him. Eventually his voice gives out.”

  Even as the last word left Falstaff’s mouth another howl began, this one so fractured, so human, that Daniel could only grit his teeth and fill his head with some random interference until the weakened voice died.

  “They’ve l—lied to us! They’ve lied to us a—all our l—lives!”

  The blanket-covered lump in a bunk several yards away had hatched, and there was Alan, his Bogart, eyes glassy as he shouted at an invisible audience.

  “Alan! You’re back in the barracks now!” Falstaff shouted at Bogart.

  “B—but they’ve b—been lying to us!” Bogart‘svolume was only slightly reduced as he stared at Falstaff.

  Falstaff looked somewhat shaken. He said nothing for a moment, then asked, “Who, Alan? Who has been lying to us?”

  “Everyone! Everyone t—telling us how to be a m—man, what we’re s—supposed to do, how we’re s—supposed to feel, what w—women are supposed to mean. I have two d—daughters—!” He pinched his face, snagging bits of skin in his fingertips and pulling, as if trying to rearrange or remove his features. Daniel could feel the anxiety like a blast rippling across the room.

  “Alan!” Falstaff yelled over him. “Who were you last night? Who were you playing?”

  Bogart/Alan stopped babbling and looked fixedly at Falstaff. “S—Speck. Richard Speck. B—born To Raise Hell. I had n—n—no feeling, like always. Just nothing while I d—did, well, whatever I thought I o—oughta be doing. I s—should have, I shoulda been one of them. I w—wanted everything they had.” He spoke in a heavy Southern accent, with a thickness in his throat. His eyes appeared to be in some other place. “I w—wanted them, but they r—reckoned I was a p—pig. I d—disgusted them, and you know what? D-damned if it didn’tjust m—makeme more d�
�disgusting.”

  He did something with his hand, brought it to his mouth, the fingers curled and open, took it away. A pantomime of drinking. “I b—broke in, whenever I c—could, took what I could. Course they was always c—catching me, putting me back in a c—cell. I’d been d—drinking heavy that n—night, so heavy I was just s—syrup. I could h—hardly get my h—head off the floor. When I left the bar I just w—wanted a woman to clear my head.

  “It was the lights, y—you know? I just f—followed the lights up to that house. I had my g—gun out, and I asked her where her c—companions were, and I forced my way in.

  “I told them I wasn’t going to h—hurt them, that all I w—wanted was their m—money. That’s what my m—mouth said. But I was feeling pretty s—sick, and the sick was thinking s—something else,I r—reckon.

  “I made them s—sit on the l—linoleum floor f—facing me. I looked at each one of them. They give me their m—money, then S—Shirley, my ex-wife, she c—come in. She c—couldn’t a been there, but she was. I put the g—gun to her cheek. Course later I f—figured out she weren’t S—Shirley, b—but by then it was too l—late. I cut a sheet into strips and t—tied them all up.

  “Then t—two more of them n—nurses come in. They was all n—nurses. These two screamed and r—run into a bedroom. I pulled my knife and ch—chased them through them b—bedrooms, stabbing and having sex, it all kinda r—run together, that’s the way it w—went, until it were all d—done.” Bogart fell silent then, sounding sleepy, exhausted, his head down.

  “Alan, it was just another part. That wasn’t you. You were just along for the ride.” Daniel was surprised by the gentleness.

  Bogart raised his head. “R—really? Is that t—true?” There was an eagerness in Bogart’s voice that embarrassed Daniel. “None of it was m—me?”

  “Absolutely... none of it.” Daniel could detect a note of hesitance. The big man stood and grabbed Daniel by the shoulder. “Let’s get some air.” He couldn’t mean outside, and the windows were all secured, but Daniel stood up anyway.

  The walls of the barracks were off‑white with random, rose‑colored blotches and some darker more unpleasant blotches. Some sections were missing surface layers, fading to a patchwork of stone and faded brick with the odd bit of antique wood and iron filigree attached—but nothing complete, nothing to indicate what the original piece or function had been. The ceiling was the most damaged—thoroughly water-stained and unstable.

  Unlike the floor of the waiting room, the surfaces of the barracks were well-swept. But the deteriorating ceiling left a light fall of pale dust every morning on bed blankets and exposed heads.

  Besides the bunks and basins a rusted‑looking, metallic cube construction stood in the middle of the room where sustenance could be obtained in paste shaped to suggest various categories of food, but more suggestive of lubrication than nourishment. The roaches’ observation windows were similar to the ones in the waiting room, but there were a few more of them, and they were well-staffed by the dark insectoid heads. There were no windows to the outside.

  A baroquely‑ornamented door, like something from a church, was embedded in the wall near one corner—a dark toilet sat tucked behind. He rarely had the urge to go—he assumed it was the malnourishment. A larger door at one end was left open so they could go out at any time, the top hinge cracked so that the door tilted from the vertical.

  But there was nowhere to go,as far as he knew, other than to more devastated areas of the old factory. The other areas he’d seen were empty of everything but debris and the occasional heavily-mandibled guard, and the floors were partially collapsed, so to wander there seemed pointless. The door to the waiting room remained closed and locked until the roaches decided to open it.

  There were more empty bunks in the room than there had been earlier in the week. But some of the residents might be in the scenario rooms, or in the waiting room, transferred, or in the infirmary, or being punished. Daniel tried not to write anyone off too quickly. Sometimes residents died, he believed, as they all talked about. Occasionally there would be evidence of a particularly black smoke coming from one of the factory chimneys.

  Falstaff led the way across the barracks. Residents were rousing themselves, sitting up—some from ordinary slumber, some having recently come back from a scenario. Daniel could tell these by the faraway look in their eyes, the pale patches around the forehead and mouth, and the tendency to move lips silently.

  One was staring at him coldly. A man in his late twenties, black hair and pasty complexion. A bright red rash covered most of his face. His eyes were scarlet pinpricks in dark hollows, embers that darted constantly about as if seeking something combustible. He’d seen the fellow before—he looked worse every time. His name was Carter, or Clark... no, Collier. Collier had been here a long time.

  On the next bed a younger man avoided looking at him. He’d been placed here just before Daniel went on his last scenario. Short dark hair with red highlights, combed straight out from the scalp. Eyes diamond‑shaped. Dark lips. Not red, but he wasn’t sure what the color was. Thin, wiry body that contorted itself in sudden fits. Max—that was the name.

  “Dan’l?”

  He spun around. The chubby figure squatted Buddha-like on his bunk. Raymond P. Smythe, age fifty‑two, late of Louisville, Kentucky, as the man had told him several times.

  “I used to have that problem, myself, with them after‑images, comin out o’ one of them devil’s lives. It’s like a little fire and brimstone hangs on to your coat tails on the way back from Hell.” He shifted his hips and grinned at Daniel impishly. “By the way, you rememberin me now?”

  “Vaguely... yes, yes I do.”

  “Now that’s mighty fine, Dan’l. Used to, it’d take you days, or whatever passes for days here, just to get the vaguest notion about where you were. But I don’t suppose you member that?”

  “No... not at all.”

  “Well, as God’s my witness, that’s the truth, if you can count on anything in this upside‑down promised land.” Raymond grinned, and it was as if the sweating red beach ball of a head had split open, a corn cob of gleaming white teeth instantly filling the wound. The beach ball bounced a few times up and down on the neckless trunk, then the corncob appeared to turn sideways a bit. “Hey now, what’s the matter, Dan’l? You look a little peak-ed. Dan’l?”

  He’d collapsed to the floor when it hit him. “He knew! The first one he shot—she was at least eight months pregnant, and he knew.”

  “Aimed directly at her belly, didn’t he? Shot right through her unborn baby and murdered it. With his skills, no way was it an accident!”

  Daniel was vaguely aware of Falstaff’s arm around his shoulder moving him along. He was vaguely aware of how good it felt, vaguely aware of sobbing uncontrollably. It felt so good to lose control. “Did the woman die?”

  “She survived,” Falstaff said. “She was eighteen, young and healthy. But she couldn’t bear any more children after all the damage. And that was her fiancé leaning over her who was killed.”

  “Oh Jesus Jesus Jesus...”

  “Daniel, let’s get to some fresh air.”

  “Have you played Whitman, too? Have we all done that?”

  “We’ve all done things, we’ve all been in those roles. We’re all in this same boat together. It’s the roaches.”

  “No! It’s us! We couldn’t do those things if we didn’t have that already inside us. Nobody could make you do such things if it weren’t already there!”

  Raymond was suddenly standing in front of Daniel and Falstaff blocking their way. “But the point is none of us ever did things like that before. I don’t think any of us could have done those things if them damned roaches hadn’t taken us. That’s what matters, Dan’l. It’s not us. It’s them roaches.”

  Daniel wanted to believe this, but how did Raymond know? He didn’t know Daniel. He didn’t know what Daniel was capable of in his heart.

  “He doesn’t seem that
devastated by it. Not to me.” This from a sleepy-looking bald headed fellow a few bunks away.

  “Keep it to yourself, Scott.” Raymond walked back to his cot. “I’m getting tired of listening to that kind of trash from the likes of you.”

  Scott looked offended. “I just know how bad I feel after one of these things. And he doesn’t look like he feels that bad.”

  “That’s enough, Scott,” Falstaff warned. “No more.”

  Scott grimaced, or smiled. Daniel remembered him now. Scott’s eyes suddenly widened. “What was that?” he shouted, then burst into laughter. “Stay away from me, bitch!” he screamed.

  “Let’s keep walking,” Falstaff moved him toward another door in the wall by the observation windows. Because of its proximity to the roaches, Daniel had always stayed away from it.

  The door opened into a hallway nearly clear of debris. At the end another door and a stair led upwards. “Are you strong enough to climb these steps now?”

  “I’m okay,” although he wasn’t actually sure. “What’s up here?”

  “You’ll see.”

  After a flight Daniel asked, “Did you mean what you said? That we’re not personally responsible?”

  “That’s not exactly what I said. But I do believe that just because you do something terrible playing one of these roles doesn’t mean you’d normally do it, under any other circumstances. We’re just inserted into these evil creations to bring our human understanding to the narrative.”

  “To figure out why they did what they did?”

  “It’s hard to say what the roaches hope to get out of this process. Unless they’re actually the sadistic gods we sometimes think them to be.” Falstaff turned around and sat down. “Let’s take a break. I don’t get the exercise I used to.” He sighed, but Daniel didn’t think he actually looked that tired. He stared at Daniel. “There once was a famous comedian, Louis C.K.? He used to do a routine about how the biggest danger on the planet to women was men, how he couldn’t believe they actually consented to date us, to continue the race because men were, well, so dangerous, I believe that was the gist. Hilarious, hilarious stuff.”