Melee

by Wyatt Savage

  I blinked. “Wonder what’s in em.”

  “Nothing good I’ll bet,” Dwayne replied. “People are straight-up freaked which is why they’re turning into bunker bunnies, they’re heading underground.” He brought up another story on his phone, one featuring a reporter following a young family down into a bunker they’d constructed in their backyard made out of a shipping container planted in the ground.

  “They’re building bunkers all over the place,” Dwayne added.

  “I even heard they’ve got door-to-door shelter salesmen,” Lish said.

  “None of it is gonna work,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  “’Cause I just do.”

  Dwayne looked to Lish. “Maybe he is one of them.”

  “Maybe he’s talking to the hive,” she said with a smirk. “The Borg.”

  “The only thing I talk to is Sue,” I said, tapping a finger against my head. “She’s my alien

  digital assistant.”

  Lish laughed her ass off. “Sue?”

  “Yep.”

  “You named your alien ghost voice…Sue?”

  “Yeah, so, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Couldn’t you have come up with a cooler name?” Dwayne asked.

  “What’s yours?”

  “That’s confidential, my friend.”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Well, at first it was going to be Ashley Joanna Williams—”

  “From the Evil Dead movies,” I said, tapping a finger in Lish’s direction.

  Lish made a face. “I know the movies.”

  Dwayne continued, “And then I figured I’d go with something a little spiffier...”

  “Like what?”

  “Mewtwo,” Dwayne replied, his head sagging.

  “What is that?” Lish asked.

  “It’s a character from Pokemon,” Dwayne said.

  We laughed and Dwayne pleaded. “You don’t understand. It’s one of the more badass characters!”

  “There are no badasses in Pokemon,” I replied, barking a laugh.

  “Okay, so what about yours?” Dwayne asked.

  “I named mine Leonard,” Lish said.

  “Yours is a guy?”

  She nodded.

  “Leonard?!” Dwayne repeated, cackling.

  Lish smacked him. “He totally sounds like a Leonard.”

  “All of a sudden Sue is looking a whole lot better.”

  “Screw you, James,” she said. “It just so happens that Leonard is a helluva guy.”

  “Is that so.”

  She nodded and placed a small object on the table. The object was ten inches long, square, covered with several buttons that were duct-taped in place, and it had a clear screen on one end and what looked like a trigger on the other. In short, it looked like the bastard spawn of a cellphone and a Taser gun.

  Dwayne removed his glasses and squinted. “What is that?”

  “I made it using some information gleaned from Leonard,” Lish said, folding her arms across her chest.

  “But what is it?”

  Lish looked around as if checking to see if there were any eavesdroppers. “They download stuff into our brains.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “I remember seeing everything when they first came.”

  Lish nodded. “There’s all kinds of stuff there. Data, numbers, formulas. I fooled Leonard into letting me sift through some of it. I saw directions on how to build that, and given my newfound ability to deconstruct and construct, I did.”

  Dwayne lifted the object. “It looks like a remote control from 1985.”

  “Hey!” Lish said. “Don’t touch it!”

  Dwayne did, pressing a button on it as—

  ZZZTTTTT!

  A rope of orange light burst from the end of the object and struck a nearby tree, setting it on fire.

  “HOLY SHIT!” Dwayne exclaimed, dropping the object.

  “I think it’s kind of like a phaser,” Lish said. She held the object up and gently placed it into her purse. “Fires a bolt of pure plasma. I’m totally gonna use it during the game.”

  “Maybe you can protect me,” Dwayne said.

  “Maybe I will,” she replied. “Maybe we should protect each other, y’know, have an agreement.”

  I scratched my head. “What?”

  “An agreement…a pact.”

  “What kind of pact?”

  “A pact pact, you ding-dong.”

  “Okay, so what are we pacting about?” Dwayne asked.

  Lish placed a finger on her phaser. “When the shit hits the fan, when the game begins, the three of us team up.”

  “Who’s to say we can?”

  “Who’s to say we can’t?” Lish replied.

  “Why wouldn’t we just team up with lots of other people?” I asked.

  Lish squinted. “Because that’s not going to happen.”

  “Says who?”

  “The Bible.”

  “Come again?”

  She tapped a finger against the side of her head. “I don’t remember a whole lot about the Good Book, but I recall a quote that says at the end of days people will oppress people, neighbor will rise up against neighbor, the young against the old, and the nobody against the honored. That’s what will happen when the Melee starts. You won’t be able to trust anyone.”

  I took this in. “Okay, now that I’m extra depressed and paranoid, where will we meet up?”

  “The store,” Lish answered. “Whatever happens, we head to the store and wait.”

  “Done,” I said.

  Dwayne nodded. “Yeah, coolness, I’m down with that.”

  It all sounded pretty good. Lish reached out her hand and Dwayne placed his on top of hers and mine went on top of his. Several seconds of silence fell, and then Lish hugged each of us and I could see that she had tears in her eyes.

  13

  On the fifteenth day after the alien arrival, I was walking home from work when an alarm sounded. This wasn’t an alarm on a car or a fire truck, mind you. No, this was deeper, louder—the kind of alarm a city sounds when it’s about to be bombed.

  I stopped on the sidewalk and looked back and saw flames rising in the east, along with plumes of dark, black smoke that seemed to smother the sky. The same thing was visible way off in the west and south.

  “It’s the military bases,” a young kid said, walking past, removing earbuds. “They’re hitting Andrews and the other military bases.”

  “Who is?”

  “Who do you think?” he said, pushing the earbuds back in before running off.

  I turned back and nearly stumbled into a bespectacled man wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt with a black tie. He held an oversized briefcase in his right hand and a tennis ball in his left. He rhythmically squeezed the ball while gaping past me, toward the smoke.

  “They knew about this,” the man said.

  “Who did?”

  “The media, the politicians, the military...”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  He set the briefcase and ball down, removed his glasses and used the tail of his shirt to wipe the lenses. His right eye twitched and there were enormous sweat stains under his armpits. He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. “Because I read between the lines. Haven’t you seen all those articles the last few years about the fighter pilots running into UFOs?”

  I scratched my head. “I think I saw something about them.”

  “And you didn’t do anything, did you?”

  “What would I do?”

  “You, I, we should’ve been demanding answers! We should’ve done something so that people knew where we stood!”

  He opened the briefcase.

  There were two objects inside.

  A red plastic container and one of those fire-starter lighter sticks with a trigger.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  “The things that will let them know that I won’t take it anym
ore. I’m not going to become a fucking slave.”

  By this time, there were six or seven people around. They’d been wandering past and stopped when the man shouted. There was a woman with an infant off to my right. The little tyke started crying and before they could turn away, the bespectacled man did it.

  He unscrewed a cap on the red plastic container, poured its contents over his head. And then before anyone could tell him to not do what he came to do, he triggered the lighter and set himself on fire.

  I’m here to tell you that the worst thing about self-immolation isn’t the sight of flesh burning and peeling off like bark. That’s horrible enough, but it’s the smell, the odor of burning skin and torched hair that really gets you.

  The others screamed. I stood there, mesmerized by the flames. One of the others tried to put him out, but a big guy with bulging muscles stopped him.

  “Don’t, do not do it!” the big man shouted. “For Crissakes, this is what he came to do. This is his choice. Don’t deny him that.”

  The bespectacled man slumped forward like a snowman melting, folding up into a blackened ball. I was surprised when the flames didn’t go out. Nobody else screamed or said a word. That’s how desensitized we’d all become to what was happening.

  When I entered my house, Mom and Dad were in front of the TV again. There were several things about natural disasters all over the world, earthquakes and fire tornados and the like that folks thought were caused by the aliens. Mom changed the channel only to be presented with more stories about mass suicides, rioting, and looting in places like Los Angeles and Chicago. Dad murmured that it was only a matter of time before the craziness was right outside our door. I didn’t bother to tell him about the burning man, even though I was pretty sure they could smell him on me. My clothes reeked of torched flesh.

  “Guess whatever spell the aliens put on people has started to wear off,” I said.

  “Strange things happen when people lose hope,” Dad muttered.

  We shut the TV off and never turned it on again.

  On the seventeenth day after the aliens arrived and two days after the destruction of every military base, nuclear installation, and airport in the world, we heard on the radio that Congress had imposed a national curfew (ten p.m. Eastern time), and began debating legislation that would authorize a one-time payment to all citizens that could be used in anticipation of the game and only for game-related expenses. It was one of the few things that both political parties felt was worth discussing.

  “How they gonna enforce that?” Dwayne asked about the curfew as we sat in the store room at the discount market, slapping reduced price stickers on tins of expired canned meat.

  “The honor system,” I suggested.

  “And that payment amount, twenty-six hundred and seventy dollars? How’d they arrive at that?”

  I considered this. “I heard that’s the estimate on how much it costs for semi-automatic rifle and a week’s worth of ammo and some food and water.”

  “Shouldn’t we have automatic rifles?”

  I shrugged and Dwayne’s face screwed up. “It ain’t gonna happen, man. If those fools can’t even pass a bill to fix bridges and roads you think they’re gonna find a way to give us some money to buy guns?”

  “Probably not,” I remarked.

  Something landed on the ground at my feet.

  A store name-plate.

  I leaned over and picked it up.

  It was the store manager, Bryson’s name-plate.

  My eyes wandered toward the door and there Bryson stood. He was clutching a bulging black trash bag. He tossed a set of keys to the ground.

  “You’re the manager now, Jackson,” he said.

  “Where are you going?” Dwayne asked.

  “I quit.”

  “Why?”

  Bryson grinned. “Because I’m getting ready for the game. Only ten days left, baby.”

  The trash bag broke, spilling its contents. A ton of stuff from the store. Bryson scrambled to gather the stuff back up.

  “Did you pay for that, Mister Fincher?”

  “Course I paid for it,” Bryson snapped.

  He grabbed as much as he could and shoved it into a box. “If you guys were smart you’d take some time to get ready for what’s coming.”

  “What’s coming?” I asked.

  Bryson looked up, a dark smile on his lips. “A fucking battle royale. See, the aliens were super smart. They took out most of the military, the planes…”

  “Why?”

  “To make it more difficult. It’s gonna be personalized combat, gents, and there are teams from all over the world getting ready.”

  “To do what?”

  “To win the game,” Bryson responded. “To kill people like you.”

  “Why would they want to kill us?”

  “To get points, dumbass,” Bryson snorted. “Every kill gets you points and the more points you get, the more shit you get to buy, and the more shit you get to buy, the farther you advance. All the way to the fucking pyramid.”

  Dwayne picked up the keys. “And you’d know this how?”

  Bryson grinned. “’Cause I know lots of shit, that’s why. I know how to surf the friggin’ dark net. I know that these super-rich hedge-fund guys are building their own goddamn armies. Special forces guys and whatnot. I know the government is taking over stadiums to use to stack the bodies. I know all of that.”

  Dwayne raised a hand. “If you know that much, can I ask a question?”

  Bryson nodded.

  “Who’s worth more, points-wise. Logan or me?”

  Bryson took this in, his eyes narrowing to dots. “Fuck off, Jackson.”

  He mimed tipping a hat at us. “I’ll catch you two fucktards on the flipside.”

  Bryson grabbed up his box and exited the store as Dwayne and I sat in silence for several seconds. “Me by the way,” Dwayne said. “I’ve got to believe that a fully functional black guy is worth more than a partially functional white guy.”

  “I wasn’t offended by that if you were wondering, Dwayne.”

  He smiled. “You think Bryson’s right?” I asked.

  “I’ve got no idea.”

  “You scared?”

  Dwayne nodded. “Shitless.”

  14

  On the twenty-sixth day after the alien arrival and mere hours before the game was to allegedly begin, I worked a full shift at the store. Me and Dwayne were the only ones who showed up and not a single customer came in, although Lish did crank-call us once.

  It was a long day, what seemed like the longest shift ever, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t speak a word the entire time. I heard someone once say that work liberates, and I’m not altogether sure that’s a good thing. When you’re stuck inside a box for eight hours, your brain tends to play hooky and when it does, it trespasses on ground that maybe should’ve remained off limits. On the day it happened, I tried to focus only on good things, but my mind kept returning to dark places. I knew something was coming. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was going to be horrific and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  I later ate dinner with my folks (the “last supper,” Mom quipped) to the sound of a John Coltrane album that warbled on an old-school record player. Dad said he’d enjoyed the album very much as a young man. I didn’t tell either of them about Mrs. Bruciak and me and Dad didn’t mention the birds or any of the other bad things we’d seen outside. It was obvious that Mom was going downhill, more mentally than physically, crawling up into herself if that makes any sense at all. She was only sixty-three but looked ten or fifteen years older. We didn’t want to burden her.

  After cleaning up, Mom said she was feeling a little under the weather and wanted to lie down, so I followed her upstairs. I got a glass of water and helped her into bed.

  “Close the door, Logan,” Mom said.

  I did and she beckoned me to her bedside.

  “I didn’t tell Dad about before.”

  “What?”r />
  “Before with breakfast and your meds. I know you. A mother knows her baby. You’ve gotten better, haven’t you?”

  “I guess I’d say I feel…different.”

  “Those things are inside you.”

  “Something happened before.”

  “They saved you. I saw what happened in D.C.”

  “It was luck.”

  “It was something more than that, Logan.”

  Her eyes strayed toward the ceiling. “This, whatever this is, something good has to come of it, right? For God’s sakes, maybe in some strange way, these things have cured you.”

  I didn’t respond and she looked to me. “You’ll find Sean when the time comes, won’t you?”

  “I’m not gonna have to find him.”

  She shook her head violently. “We both know how this is going to end, Logan. I don’t want it to, but there will come a time in the very near future when you will have to go out into the world. Promise me you will find your brother.”

  I nodded and she took my hand in hers. She smiled. “When you were little you were always angry because you never had another brother or sister.”

  “Was not.”

  “It’s okay to say. You and Sean were never very close.”

  “Mom…”

  “A parent knows these things.”

  Everything she said was true, but I couldn’t remember ever mentioning it to my folks.

  “We could’ve had another one, son,” Mom said. “But we chose not to. Do you know why?”

  There was a lump in my throat and I was terrified that I was going to start crying. I shook my head.

  “We never had another child because we knew at the moment that you and your brother came into this world that we could never love another one as much as we loved the two of you. That’s the truth.”

  That’s some raw, bare-your-soul kind of shit and I didn’t know how to respond to it. I just leaned down and held my mother for longer than seemed proper, never wanting to let her go.