Thinking bong-bong and deadlands, Chris considered the rebar bolt that had fluttered out of the ’Tween place and buried itself up to its sheet-tin fletching in the meat of Lenny the kicker’s leg. The day had been a common one in a quiet time. Then someone shouts, “Incoming!” Head’s-up, Lenny throws the Boss aside. There’s a meaty thunk could be heard forever and Lenny’s scream tops it all and there’s Lenny, his good left leg—his kicking leg—pinned to the standing part of a fallen wall. Lenny’s wails went on until the Boss dusted off and shut him down. Len had nuts, say that! The rest followed: a dozen shift-work scrabblers and a handful of newsons hung around, leaning and licking lips at the looking while the bolt’s hacksawed then drawed out of Lenny’s meat. All of them were thinking who’ll dip what of the kicker’s stuff when he gives it up?
He didn’t give it. The Boss cut and drew the bolt, his own hands, Chris, sitting on Lenny’s legs as Lenny bucked. Ribbed steel pulls out rough. Still, he made it through.
Now there they were, Chris and this girl, walking plain across the land from whence the bolt had come. Señor Temoco hadn’t fired that bolt. Not he, himself, pretty sure. Someone out here jerking off, was all. ’Tweeners, Niggertown kinks.
“Tell me more about your walkabout?” Chris jolted off his think about rebar bolts, the casual jerking off of ’Tweeners, Señor Temoco, about the box to come and about that plump and fragrant girl critter herself who’d just jolted him!
“Quiet,” he said quietly, “’Tweeners,” he added to be nice. She stayed quiet for three steps.
“’Tween…?”
“Shh.”
Another step.
“Okay. What’s tha—
“Sh!”
“…that gong?” she whispered.
“You’ll tell me,” he whispered back, “being a Chicagoite and all, you tell me what’s been out here bonging, long as I remember.”
She listened for a few steps. “Well…”
“Hsht…” he said.
“…wind, loose metal, maybe… something…
“Sh,” he said.
“‘Sh’ why?” she started.
“Shh the fuck up is why!” He shouted his whispers now. He stopped long enough to give her one good plink, let her know it meant a busted lip, maybe, if she didn’t Shh real good. He didn’t like stopping here: deadlands, ’Tweeners, bong-bongs, hell! Yeah, he was thinking ’Tweeners scared hissowndamnself! And he wished he had the Boss’s way with plinking looks and steely nerve!
Out came that wet little laugh. She raised her hands in surrender and took the lead, patted his shoulder as she passed.
That shit never happened to the Boss.
Hell, maybe there ain’t no ’Tweeners by.
With her ahead the walk went quiet. The ground beneath, they moved inside a gray dome, chill dark above and nothing all ’round. Easy walking, but when Chris figured it noonish, he was ready for a breather. Old, he thought, near old at least. “Grunts,” he said—too loud—and slipped his pack by a hollow drop. The Girl perched her rump on a heap of brick and stared at the grub from her pack.
“What’s…” she started.
“Sh, don’t,” he said. Doesn’t recognize butter. Didn’t know thistle, never heard of jack. What the hell’s she been grunting since The Day? If she didn’t know roach, he wasn’t going to explain roach, not here. The noise alone, he thought.
“Don’t eat it, you don’t want it.”
She dipped a yarrow leaf in the pale yellow paste then touched it with her tongue.
“Ah. Lovely,” she said. “For the conversation portion of the meal you’ll tell me more of your hero’s journey?”
Torqued his jaw. “No, you’ll tell me. Don’t know butter, don’t know thistle. Don’t know much of nothing. Where the hell you been?”
“Why am I alive?”
“You might could start there.”
“That is what it means, yes? ‘Where were you on The Day?’ means ‘How come so-and-so’s dead and you’re not?’” A moment’s quiet. A gear shifted behind her eyes and she slipped the distance between them, sat at his feet. She was warm. He felt her warmth through his leggings and slacks. Her eyes were green.
“On The Day, I was in the Deep Tunnel. You’re not from here, okay. The Deep Tunnel was an engineering project, to cut flooding, keep effluents out of the Lake.”
He stared.
“Think sewer!” she said.
“You was in a sewer when.”
“Think big sewer. Think really big sewer! Think Gargantua, King Kong, Godzilla. The Triple Trump in Vegas. Think that. The Deep is tunnels 40 feet in diameter, 400 feet down there.” She pointed to the ground. “Two hundred and seven point three miles of tunnel. That’s a world down there.
“The Tunnel was going to keep Lake Michigan clean… where we got our drinking water, Chicago, back then. Thing was begun…” She squinted. The squint was kind of sweet. “I don’t know project history. I was engineering assistant to a Commissioner, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. They started digging in 1980. By The Day, the thing had spread about everywhere there was under the City. Probably below us, right here.”
“So, so! On The Day?”
“So on The Day. I was adjacent to one of the South Calumet catchments, four hundred and twenty eight feet below grade wrapped in solid limestone and damn near Indiana. My Commissioner, world-class cocksucker that he was, you see, knew it was coming, The Day. Well, everybody did! Didn’t we all? I mean, it was in the air, right? There was this feeling, the whole race had it, the big kill off, ‘Let’s just get it done, do it, right now!’ You know?
He did not.
“I mean, more or less. You did? I mean, you felt it in the air?”
He’d not.
“Well my guy, Commissioner Cocksucker Michael Acciari, was prepared! One of the few. Well, he had the chops for it. I mean, give a man a 7-billion-dollar hole in the ground, he can hide a few private scratches.
“Mike had a whole side section excavated, sealed, finished, provisioned—the works—water, food, fuel, tools, books, movies. Civilization enough for a hundred people for 20 years! More.” She was panting. “A little world. And all for himself.” Her eyes locked on Chris. “And a friend.”
He couldn’t see in the near dark but he knew those green eyes were wet.
“So. We’re working, doing what we do, Monday-through. Suddenly Mike’s ‘going to the field’ he says, ‘contractor needs verification, yadda, yadda.’ And I, I don’t know from The Day because it’s just another day, it’s work, and I don’t know the end of the world’s in motion and I go with my Commissioner because that’s what I do and he needs me to verify, for the record, a testament, you know, attest to the fucking record to bring before the Board of Commissioners.” Her voice dropped. “The Goddamn humping mother records and the board of socktucking Commissioners. You know? And that’s where we are. Specifically, that’s where I am and Commissioner Cocksucker is on The Day—at the Moment that day became The Day and it all went! You know? Dead. I am checking flow rate, one catchment to another and, boom. It went.
“Ever hear a nuclear detonation a couple dozen miles away through 428 feet of limestone?”
Chris stared.
“Don’t. Bad for the sinuses. Feels like you opened the door on Mars 2. One big suck, then slam! Like an underwater explosion. The pressure blasts up your skull like it’s the inside of a hydraulic ram and someone shoved the drive pipe up your ass.”
“Underwater! Yeah!” Chris said.
“When you realize you really are alive, you notice everything’s dark and dead and has been for, well, since that first big suck. And you’re there, alone, at the bottom of the world. Alone meaning him and you, Cocksucker Adam and Ms. Fucking Eve. Which has been his thinking all along. Stick to the books, kids: I was hired out of IIT, third in my class, to be fucking Eve. Emphasis on, well, you know?”
He was noticing her wet green eyes when the ’Tweeners showed.
He smell
ed before he heard. He caught the whiff around the time he remembered underwater thunder from his dream-memory. Deadlands were full of every which-kind of stink, so he didn’t think too much about this stench until scrapes and grunts started coming from the shade and haze, Wetward. Without a “shh” he wrapped his arm around her neck and covered her mouth with his gloved mitt. She wiggled and blew snot but caught on when he eased them into a quiet slide down a dozen feet of shattered brick and pulver into a cellar hole. At bottom was a three-foot drop into the muck. It oozed but didn’t splash and he shoved her against what had been a basement wall five years back.
It had been years since he’d had to duck and cover from slinking scum—thank the Center’s kickers—but it came back. He pressed them to the tangled roots sprouted from the wall. She’d shh’d.
The ’Tweeners were having a good old time, no trail discipline, probably hadn’t reckoned anyone but themselves being in the ’lands. Cripes, he should have heard them a good half-minute earlier but he’d tuned to the girl being fucked on The Day or whatever. The ’Tweeners were talking some shit he didn’t, greaser, nigger, Polack! Walking burnups, Christ… Who knew what they talked or what twitched their nads, if nads they had?
They passed in shadows above. Chris knew more than he could see. Dreams and imaginings filled them in, made the picture whole. “They live to fuck witcha!” the Boss had said. Hate a Wrigleytowner for his airs, a greasy Mex from the Heaths and Hollows, maybe, bastard Soxers, absolutely! But ’Tweeners? Well, you deal. Hell, they’re there to fuck you, fuck you good so you fuck them sure! Chris knew they had no teeth—or just a few, but them few filed sharp as hell! He knew they were more scar than skin, and never enough limbs, no hair except white and straggling thin stuff here and there. Eyes? A few. That he knew though he’d never seen. Among ’Tweeners, Chris knew the Boiler would have been a pretty man, his smile, Christmas jolly, his laugh, sugar sweet! That much Chris knew. Now, he strained to see.
Shadows passed, above. The clouds had thickened in the nooning of the day and the dark was near to night. No matter what the Boss said about the Long Season, today was dark, cold, and Seasonable!
One, angles and humps, stopped near the edge above. He stirred the air and shouted a whiskery hush. The stench it spread, the sound it kicked from gut and throat gave Chris the willies. Then it waited, stumps on hips, like a Boss, while the others slid their shit. Spalls and bits of pulver rolled down on them. Under ’Tweener babble was a rolling crush. They were moving something big.
Bolt-shooter. Bolt shooter, yes.
The girl wiggled under his hand and pointed. A dozen yards along the wall, the brick showed black. A cut, a hidey hole maybe. They worked toward it. Four yards, six… Chris’s eyes on the ’Tweener by the edge.
Boss, Chris figured. Watches them others do the work. Caught himself. A plink like that! He wanted to punch himself! Decided to wait.
The black crack in the cellar wall had been a coal bin. They eased inside. Waited. The ’Tweener’s grunts and giggles seemed farther off, had less edge, but they were there, still passing.
Took time before he realized the girl had been punching his arm. Her eyes were wide and white, her face dark. “Yeah, well,” he whispered and eased the pressure on her mouth and nose.
She sucked air.
’Least she breathes quiet!
Time hung. There was noise. Some noise. He couldn’t see worth shit, stuck down here, what the hell, what the hell to do… You almost choke her? Responsibility! His responsibility. He felt himself shaking.
She tapped his arm again, held a small thing under his nose. Took a second, dark as it was, but no shit, a watch! No band, just a round old watch. Its face glowed dull green.
“Five minutes!” she mouthed the words against his ear, pointed to the dial. The tick, tick, ticks were loud in close—like that news show he never watched. He stared at the damn thing like it was a blessed TV Johnnie, itself; couldn’t take his eyes off. The ghost-thin hand swept the dial like he hadn’t seen one do since, cripes, since forever. Five years. No! Longer! Not since Grandpa Mutt’s Waltham-Ball Railroad watch with the radium dial! Little gears and springs unwinding. Mutt once pried the back off, showed him. One thing moving another on that windy watch! Windy watch still worked; mechanics, not batteries, something you could see move, no magic crap. The minute hand flowed, disengaged from the 7, headed into space toward 8.
The rolling crush of the ’Tweeners’ passing peaked, grew faint as the glowing hand crept. In three minutes the noise was near gone. Four minutes and it was. The rot-meat stink of the ’Tweeners thinned, the hiss of pulver tumbling down the bank dissolved to wind-sigh as the last seconds passed and the hand touched, then covered the 8.
“Okay?” she breathed.
“What?” Close her smell was different. “Yeah.”
He leaned out of the coalhole. Not a sound, nothing moved.
“Shall we?” she breathed.
He held up his hand. He was, by God, gonna let naught happen! That was sure! “You wait. I slither,” he said with his hands.
“My hero,” she whispered.
Up he slithered. He was still a fair creeper but it took breath. He was winded by the time he peeked the lip. No denying, he was getting on. On the deadland flats, the world was a close ring of pulver and busted brick. In the few minutes they’d been below, the sky had darkened and the gray dome around them had narrowed. Two new tracks cut the dust where he stood. The ’Tweeners—five, six of them—had rolled or shoved something large and heavy by.
When she touched his shoulder it about sent his spine through the top of his head! “Gone?” she said.
“Hsshh,” he hissed and snatched hold of her.
“Gone?” she mouthed.
He looked at the narrowing world around them. “Guess.”
“What was that they were pushing?”
“Cross’, I reckon.”
“Cross’…”
“Big crossbow dealy!”
She shook her head.
“They set them up and shoot bolts into where there’s folks. For fuck’s sake. Pins someone, sometimes, mostly not.”
“Those people made a ballista?” she said.
“What?”
“‘Big crossbow dealy,’” she said. “A Roman thing. They built a ballista just to harass your group?”
He stared at the path.
She looked around in the haze. “So? Which way?”
“Well,” he said. “Well.”
“You have a compass?”
“Well, we find where we was and I figure where from there.”
They backed along the edge of the hollow and the girl suddenly perked. “There!” she pointed.
Their packs lay by the tracks of that—what’d she call it? A ballster? Before he could say, “shh,” she was running to them like a tip-toed coyote.
The thought hit him like thunder. ’Tweeners passed. They’d seen their stuff.
She snatched up her pack, turned, and her eyes went wide.
Saved his worth. Realization—and the ’Tweener—kicked him in the nuts at about the same time. Nut-pain, fierce and chilly, shriveled him blind! He dropped like a shot as a hollow whoosh from a length of pipe moaned the air over his head. The world was a dusty sudden mouthful. He rolled, grabbed himself best as he could, reached for whatever. Life could be over in three, four seconds and he worried over his nuts! All that growing and school, hanging with the guys and Jaycee, driving bus, the walk to Chicago—everything he saw, did, knew and wanted, done forever.
He skittered sidewise.
The pipe whooshed again.
He’d been out of the swim for a time, this kind of thing. The big ’Tweener’s stink gagged him as he grabbed dirt, reached for rock, brick, anything to hand for a weapon! Nads hurt like he’d never known nad-hurt. His eyes wouldn’t stay sharp and his gut wanted to ralph every chew he’d grunted that week. Topping that, he heard the Boss saying how much this trip was worth, his only pair of n
uts and all…
Another bass whoosh and a thud as the ’Tweener’s pipe smacked pulver where his head had been. Things moved too fast for figuring. Keep moving, stay lucky! That’s enough. The critter-man trying to nut or brain him was a blur of greasy gut, a pair of bare legs, a quick blink at mismatched chukka boots (no socks), grub-white flesh, smooth like a baby’s. Rolling past, his eye caught a scratch on the critter’s right ankle. Small. An “ah shit” thing you might could get brushing a rock. How’d he notice that?
Another whoosh!
Didn’t know. His head pounded. Head pain from a shot to the nuts, what the hell…?
He rolled…
Hollow whoosh, muffled thud… The ’Tweener grunted. Chris felt its breath, smelled its sweat.
Roll! …and the world skewed sideways. Keep grabbing for… A brick swept by as he twisted in pulver that filled his nose, mouth, eyes, ears. He grabbed.
Missed.
Another stinking oink and the pipe shattered the brick Chris had missed. Broken shards sprayed the back of his head, nicked his ear, caught the corner of his right eye. How long? Chris wondered as he tried to roll upright, gain a weapon, stay off target. How long do I stay lucky?
It was luck! Scary. He’d never been a lucky son-of-a—
The world buzzed like an alarm clock. Life went herringbone…
…and she was standing over him. Then kneeling. She touched him. His face was numb where it didn’t hurt like hell. A glancing blow, like they say, otherwise he’d be dead.
…and he was still dodging. The girl was talking but he was twisting, rolling. Finally, he snagged a pair of bricks, rolled to his feet, stood ground, looked every way for the ’Tweener, the ’Tweener’s moaning pipe, and what the hell, there was the girl and she? She was standing over a pile of skin and cloth, blood and white thin hair. It was over. Then she had him by the elbow, steering, carrying both their packs!
“Wait, Goddamn, wait!” It was the top of a whisper. Chris tried to stay with her, keep his bearings, not let every ’Tweener in the deadlands know they’d survived. When he got moving on his own she let go his arm. She took off like a rabbit into the pulver mist a dozen yards ahead, leaving the probably dead ’Tweener at the edge of the basement hollow. Hell, she done him; girl done a ’Tweener! He knew he hadn’t; hadn’t even seen him, except for that little cut. And now she’s running, probably, toward the Wet, toward the Monadnock.
Drink for the Thirst to Come Page 3