Before We Die Alone

by Ike Hamill

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One * Confession *

  Chapter Two * Black Bear *

  Chapter Three * First Meeting *

  Chapter Four * Question *

  Chapter Five * In-betweens *

  Chapter Six * Work *

  Chapter Seven * Puzzle *

  Chapter Eight * Advice *

  Chapter Nine * Unemployed *

  Chapter Ten * Conference *

  Chapter Eleven * Reality *

  Chapter Twelve * Argument *

  Chapter Thirteen * Mission *

  Chapter Fourteen * Explanation *

  Chapter Fifteen * Despair *

  Chapter Sixteen * Meeting *

  Chapter Seventeen * Ambush *

  Chapter Eighteen * Injury *

  Chapter Nineteen * Past *

  Chapter Twenty * Work *

  Chapter Twenty-One * Space *

  Chapter Twenty-Two * Trial *

  Chapter Twenty-Three * Travel *

  Chapter Twenty-Four * Feral *

  Chapter Twenty-Five * Independence *

  Chapter Twenty-Six * Travel *

  Chapter Twenty-Seven * Guest *

  Chapter Twenty-Eight * Working *

  Chapter Twenty-Nine * Brother *

  Chapter Thirty * Desert *

  Chapter Thirty-One * Rescue *

  Chapter Thirty-Two * Assault *

  Chapter Thirty-Three * Working *

  Chapter Thirty-Four * Exile *

  Chapter Thirty-Five * Return *

  Chapter Thirty-Six * Investigation *

  Chapter Thirty-Seven * Chase *

  Chapter Thirty-Eight * College *

  Chapter Thirty-Nine * Enlisted *

  Chapter Forty * Assault *

  Chapter Forty-One * Brother *

  Chapter Forty-Two * Apartment *

  Chapter Forty-Three * Future *

  Chapter Forty-Four * Forecast *

  Chapter Forty-Five * Life *

  About

  More - Madelyn's Nephew

  More - Kill Cycle

  More - Super Apex

  More - Inhabited

  More - The Claiming

  More - Extinct

  More - Migrators

  More - Accidental Evil

  More - The Hunting Tree

  More - Transcription

  More - Post Grace

  More - Dug the Drummer

  More - Camp Sacrifice

  More - The Vivisectionist

  More - Lies of the Prophet

  More - Skillful Death

  More - Punch List

  More - Wild Fyre

  BEFORE WE DIE ALONE

  BY

  IKE HAMILL

  WWW.IKEHAMILL.COM

  Special Thanks:

  Cover design by BelleDesign [BelleDesign.org]

  Thanks to Lynne, as always, for the edits.

  For Ben.

  Copyright © 2016 Ike Hamill

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events have been fabricated only to entertain. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the consent of Ike Hamill.

  Chapter One

  * Confession *

  I KNEEL IN FRONT of the ornate grate. This is my confessional.

  “Adam? Adam!”

  No answer.

  I cup my hands to the cast iron rectangle, embedded in my wall.

  “Adam!”

  Finally—an answer. It’s preceded by approaching feet. “Yes?”

  “Adam, I need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “I think I just killed a man.”

  Chapter Two

  * Black Bear *

  WHEN ASTRONOMERS BUILD A new instrument—a telescope, or whatever—they refer to the first use as “First Light.” They pick some well-known object, point their device, and then capture a perfectly unremarkable image of it. It would be impossible to get a really good image the first time out, I guess.

  I’m no astronomer, but I decide that “First Light” for my new camera should be something beautiful. I’m not one of those thoughtful people who can find beauty in a sewer grate, or coax a subtle poetry from a cracked window. Given my surroundings, I figure I better stop at the zoo in order to pay due respect to First Light for my new camera.

  The lions are asleep behind some rocks. The zebras are literally standing in, and stained with, shit. None of the animals are even slightly photogenic. I zoom in on them, poise my finger over the shutter release, and look for a good shot. I can’t do it. In my head I hear a soundtrack of doleful, lonesome music, and a voiceover telling me that just a dollar a day could save this animal’s life. These animals are not worthy of First Light.

  The black bear is the closest. I stop at the railing. The bear is leaning back against his rock wall and staring straight down at himself. If he would look up, it would be at least an okay picture. Not National Geographic, but better than shit-covered zebra.

  I press the button half way, to focus the camera on him.

  He looks like he is contemplating his own belly. Just under his chin, the bear has a brown spot on his chest. It makes him look like he’s wearing a tie. Like Yogi.

  I am alone. The zoo is only open for another fifteen minutes. I put the lens cap back on the camera. I can’t bear to waste my First Light on this animal.

  Get it? Bear?

  I laugh at my stupid pun.

  “What’s so funny?”

  I look around and try not to blush. I’m an inveterate blusher. Blushing is the involuntary reddening of someone’s face, due to adrenaline or something. For me, it starts with my ears and works its way down to my neck before it ever hits my cheeks. Of course, just thinking about it makes me blush even more.

  The bear is looking at me. It isn’t a bad picture now. I reach for the lens cap, forgetting for a second to be embarrassed.

  “I’m not going to do something prurient, just so you can take a picture of it,” he says.

  My eyes blink rapidly, out of control. They are spelling out Morse code for “WTF?”

  My hands still moves, taking the cap off the camera.

  “I’m fucking serious, asshole. Put it away.”

  Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that can make it difficult to tell the difference between what is real and what is not real. I’m not saying I have it. I’m just saying. When the bear spoke that last time, I saw his lips move, and his tongue snap off the roof of his mouth to form the T sound. I glance around with a smile starting to form at the corners of my mouth. This is a joke that the staff likes to play on the last stragglers in the zoo, right?

  I look at the bear.

  If it is a joke, he isn’t in on it. He has one paw extended towards me, and he is doing his best bear-job at giving me the middle finger. Black bears have five fingers on each paw, and no thumb. They’re not great at bending the fingers individually, but having an odd number of fingers gives them a natural advantage when they’re flipping the bird.

  I don’t take a picture. I just run.

  Chapter Three

  * First Meeting *

  THE FIRST TIME ADAM spoke to me, I thought the TV was busted. I was sitting there, watching one of those singing competitions, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. The contestant was one of those throat singers, who uses weird harmonic nodes in their throats to produce multiple notes at the same time. It was quite amazing—the guy could do a three-part harmony by himself. His audition was one of those croony old Beach Boys songs, with the high part sailing above the tight foundation of voices. The judges loved the sound he made, but said he looked a little “Downsy.” I couldn’t watch after that. I shut the TV off.

  When Adam spoke, I though
t the TV was still talking to me even though the picture was gone.

  “He’ll never have a career.”

  I picked up the remote and hit the button again. The screen started to come on again, so I hit it once more and watched it turn off.

  Adam cleared his throat.

  Still convinced it was the TV, I stood up and started to move towards it. When he spoke again, I realized the voice was coming from the grate in the wall.

  “The business is ninety-percent visual,” Adam said.

  “Hello?” I asked. “Are you seriously spying on me through the wall?”

  At that point, I was accustomed to my privacy. I lived alone, and my apartment was packed into the middle of the block. I had two windows—one in the entry, and one in the upstairs bedroom. I never expected company in my living room. The room was buried in the building. I was like a rabbit in his warren down in there.

  “As good as he can sing,” Adam said, ignoring my accusation, “they can make a machine do better. It’s not about talent, it’s about marketing.”

  I moved to the grate. It’s one of those old cast iron things, that looks like it belongs to a heating system that probably ran on coal. I considered covering it up when I moved in, but it never seemed drafty and it looked pretty cool. I was regretting that decision as I knelt before the grate for the first time.

  I touched the cold metal and tried to think of the best way to block out my neighbor without doing too much work. A bookcase would do the job. It was the wrong spot for a bookcase, but I would get used to it.

  “Who’s your favorite singer?” he asked.

  An obscenity sprang to my lips. I had been trying to cut back. It seems like jumping too quickly to profanity lessens the impact of the words. I wanted to maximize the impact. Somehow, instead of screaming, “STOP FUCKING SPYING ON ME IN MY OWN MOTHERFUCKING HOUSE!”

  I simply answered. “I like David Lee Roth.”

  It’s true. I do like Roth. I’m not sure it’s accurate to say he’s my absolute favorite. He had some good songs about a million years ago. Thom Yorke would have been a better answer. Robert Plant was amazing. Jon Anderson was amazing. But, somehow, Roth came out of my mouth, and it was close enough that I didn’t bother to correct it.

  “Yeah,” Adam said. “Big white pants, suspenders, jump splits, and big hair. You see?”

  “No. No,” I said. There was a bookcase up in my room. I could have gotten that. It was getting late, but it would be nice to seal out this intrusive voice right then and there. I started to get up. He said something then that captured my imagination. In fact, it defined our friendship, before it even started.

  He said, “Life is cold in the in-betweens. We toil and cling to could-have-beens. Each voice, an echo of ourselves.”

  I shook my head and went upstairs. I kept glancing over my shoulder as I climbed the narrow flight. Once I got to my bedroom, I looked at the bookcase and imagined clearing it out. It was too much work. I went to bed instead. By the morning, blocking out the voice in my TV room seemed silly. Maybe it had just been an echo of myself.

  Chapter Four

  * Question *

  “WHAT MAN DID YOU kill?” Adam asks. Always the pragmatist, he doesn’t immediately reject the notion that I had killed someone. He moves quickly to gather facts so he can find a solution. That’s Adam.

  “A client. His name is…”

  “Stop. No names. Client of what product?”

  Over the years, I told Adam about all our products. I only had to mention the brand name and he knew all about it. All these conversations took place through the grate in my living room wall. We spend fifteen minutes debating the fine details of how the software works and what I did to mess up the machine enough that it was able to kill someone.

  Based on one conversation, he is able to come up with an answer. This is nothing short of miraculous.

  “Isn’t it more likely that there was a problem with the ultrasound hardware than a problem with the controller?” he asks.

  I’m speechless. He’s right. In fact, if we plot out the times from the logs, we could prove it. We log the power output from a separate circuit, so we’ll be able to show the difference between expected and actual output.

  I don’t know what to say. “Thanks, Adam.”

  “Any time.”

  That’s why I love talking to that guy.

  Chapter Five

  * In-betweens *

  AFTER I FIRST MET Adam, I became somewhat obsessed with his living arrangements. I did the math and tried to figure out where his apartment was, exactly. It wasn’t an easy question to answer. The block I live on is pretty big, and the buildings are crunched right together. There are a few alleys that lead to loading docks and interior doors, but the buildings have branched out, even taking over the space above the alleys. It’s like a termite mound.

  Behind me is the Indigo State College of Art. If I had to guess what was on the other side of my back wall, I would say it’s dorm rooms. Of course, I would be wrong.

  “Where do you live?” I asked Adam one day.

  “What do you mean? I live right here.”

  “But were is here? Where is your front door?”

  “Are you planning a visit? Are you going to bring me a fruit basket and a jar of homemade preserves?”

  I laughed. “Sorry, no. I’m just curious. Are you in a dorm room?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m in a hallway, at the bottom of one flight of stairs, and the top of another. The opposite wall of my hall is shared with the college, but it’s not dorm rooms there, it’s the Student Union.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s a big recreation room, I guess you would call it. They call it ‘The Grinder’. They have for years. Apparently, ever since that app, the room is only used as a gay hookup spot. Function follows form.”

  Sometimes a conversation with Adam is like a crossword puzzle. I have the clues, and I know what the word will look like, once I fill out all the boxes. I just have to come up with the letters.

  I’m left to deduce meaning from his puzzle.

  For clarity—to give you context for my story—people have created these things called cell phones, which is short for cellular telephones. People like me rarely use them on any cellular network, and we never use them as telephones, but the name has stuck. On these “cell phones,” we have things called apps, which is short for applications. Looking back from the future, people will assume that letters and syllables were tremendously expensive in my time, necessitating the shortening of everything for the sake of maximum brevity. Whatevs.

  I believe that Adam is referring to an app called “Grindr,” which allows gay and bisexual people to find each other and arrange meetings. He’s suggesting that because the Union was already called “The Grinder,” when an app came out called “Grindr,” the purpose of the app became the purpose of the Student Union.

  Puzzling.

  “Where does your hall go?” I asked.

  “To the stairs.”

  “Where do the stairs go?”

  “Up and down.”

  Life in the in-betweens.

  “Is it cold there?” I ask. I’m wondering if he’ll recognize his own poetry. Is he capable of being that self-aware?

  “Sometimes,” he said. “It depends on who’s home.”

  Another puzzling answer. I’m almost certain he lives alone. I think he said it one time. I suppose that I mostly see Adam as a mirror of myself.

  “How much do you know about black bears?” he asked.

  “Not much, why?”

  He never answered.

  Chapter Six

  * Work *

  WHEN I’M IN THE zone at work, time flies by. I’m zipped-up on coffee, standing on the balls of my feet, and all my eyes can see is the three monitors in front of me. My hands rarely leave the keyboard.

  Before I forget, for clarity—computers of the twentieth century are a strange combination of typewriter and television. When I press
the buttons, characters appear on the screen. I use my computer to compose instructions for the computer to follow. Imagine writing a shopping list for your least-imaginative friend. You would have to describe exactly what kind of peanut butter to buy. I can’t assume that they know that crunchy peanut butter is inferior, or that the natural stuff is like motor oil on top and concrete on the bottom. I have to explain exactly, precisely what kind of peanut butter I want, where to get it, and then whether I want my friend to bring it to me, or run over the jar with the back wheels of his car.

  Most of the time, the computer is going to run over the jar regardless of what I tell it. It’s a computer thing.

  I wear headphones when I program. I can’t handle anything with lyrics, but I’ll listen to instrumental songs all day long. The music helps me focus my attention and cuts down on all the distracting noises of an office. At least it would except for the strange attraction of assholes to headphones. Everywhere I’ve worked, as soon as I put a set of headphones on, all the assholes want to talk to me.

  They approach my desk and start talking. As soon as I notice them, I’m left to rip off my headphones as quick as I can and then guess at what their opening sentence was.

  “They said they haven’t received the build yet,” the guy says.

  “Who hasn’t?” I ask. People scrunch up their face as if I’m being the difficult one.

  “Q and A hasn’t… received… the… build,” he says. He spaces out his words very carefully, so I won’t misunderstand. Please ignore that he just said, “Q and A,” instead of “QA.” Does he mean Question and Answer? No—can’t be. He must mean Quality Assurance. It’s not what the department is called. We call the department UT, which is short for Unit Testing. I’ll just assume that “Q and A” equals “QA,” and “QA” equals “UT.” Journeys like this are my daily commute to stupidity.

  “I haven’t sent them the build yet. Today is only the fourth.”