by Tim Curran
“What about the private sector?” Donny rambled. “I don’t know. I honestly just don’t know. You’re seeing a lot of crowdfunding and that leaves me cold. In fact, it leaves a lot of investors cold and with good reason. Don’t get me wrong, there’s money to be made but you had better be a fucking expert to judge trends and weaknesses. If I was you? No, just stay out of that entrepreneurial shithole. It’s a welfare system under a different name.”
At this point, Mr. Hammerberg was making a concerted effort to pay attention because he was starting to worry about his mind. He was about two gray hairs away from his 70th birthday and the idea of losing control of his faculties and ending up in assisted living scared the hell out of him.
But Donny…God, what was he even talking about?
“Here’s what we need to do,” Donny said, drooling so profusely now he had to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. And after he did so, he studied the glistening drool on his fist. His eyes blinked uncomprehendingly. “You come down to Fidelity…and I bend over backwards to protect your assets. That’s how I operate. That’s the kind of guy I am. Your money is my money.” He paused there as if he was waiting for applause from the wings. Not getting any, he went on. “Okay, strictly shooting from the hip, we need to diversify your portfolio. We turn a minus into a plus. Again, it’s how I roll. We’re going to play around with some rock-solid start-ups, dip our wick into some CDs and hot muni bonds I know about. Strictly conservative shit, then, oh yes, then we’re going for big game. We’re going to cowboy up the place with some unique biotech. I got something under the table about a new line of coronary disease biopharmaceuticals—it’s a cash cow waiting to be milked, especially in this country where your average Joe is overweight, inactive, and the only exercise his over-stressed heart gets is ranting and raving for the NFL or NBA…”
Still, Mr. Hammerberg couldn’t make heads or tails of what Donny was saying. What was this shit? Was he speaking fucking Aramaic or Thracian? It was almost as if he didn’t know himself, like there was a disconnect between his mind and his mouth. Those red welts on his face looked like they were going to pop and the drool hung from his lips in freaking ropes like he was some stupid hound…
24
Something came over Donny, and he was more self-confident and exhilarated than ever before. He needed another fish. Needed one bad. Credit cards maxed. The timeshare in Key West. The Volvo about three inches from repo. Investment properties that didn’t even pony up market return. The bath he took on Asian telecom stocks. But he was going to swing all that around with the biopharma thing. He knew it. He felt it. He just needed some capital, and guys like Hammerberg had it. All he had to do was separate them from it and make them think it was their idea. When the returns came in on the plus side, Hammerberg—and a stringer of about thirty others—would think they were investment gurus and they’d throw the cash at him.
But one at a time, one at a time, Donny knew. Tease ’em. Bait ’em. Hook ’em hard and play ’em out until the fight’s gone out of them and their portfolios are empty. That’s how you did it. That’s how you played the game.
25
Overhead, the sky was looking funny and this was not lost on Mr. Hammerberg. The clouds looked dirty. Like lint balls drifting across that placid July sky. As Donny prattled on, he studied them in detail as they became an ever-rotating spiral that he knew could not be. He shook his head, part of him wanting to scream while another part…something submerged, something primeval, something vestigial…wanted to shout with sheer joy.
See, see! a voice that was not Mr. Hammerberg’s cried in his head. It’s happening! It’s really happening! The time is now and the place is here!
Which left him feeling confused, disoriented, and more than a little giddy. He did not know what was here and now. He had no idea. But it frightened him badly as he looked from the spiral to the face of Donny Falconi and saw something in his eyes he had never before seen in the eyes of a human being—something cunning and dangerous.
Then it happened: the meat began to fall. Shanks and filets and blood-glistening hunks of it dropped from the sky. Donny and he were pelted by it. The meat fell from heaven and struck the fence and grass and driveway. It bounced off the house like large, soft hailstones and rolled from the roof.
And at that impossible moment there was frisson. Something happened to everyone who saw it and smelt it. Perhaps, on some basal level, they understood what it was all about. The meat was a catalyst of some sort and critical mass had been reached.
The rain of meat lasted mere seconds. Like a summer squall, it came and went.
Mr. Hammerberg squatted in the grass and reached out for a fist-sized chunk of meat that was impossibly raw and impossibly delectable. His stomach growled and saliva filled his mouth, overflowing and coursing down his chin. He touched the meat and there was a burning sensation as if he had touched a glowing orange coal.
He cried out.
He was nearly certain that he cried out.
Maybe it was Donny (who reached for a piece of the meat at the same time he did) and maybe it was the both of them. The pain passed quickly enough and perhaps it wasn’t really there at all. He gripped the meat in one shaking hand and licked it the way a dog might lick a bone before gnawing on it. The taste. God, God, oh dear sweet God! It electrified his tongue and ignited fireworks in his head. It was like having an orgasm…no, that was hardly descriptive—it was like his orgasm had an orgasm. There was pain as if teeth had bitten into his brain stem, then a wonderful release of chemicals in his limbic system that created a state of euphoria that was at once spiritual and organic. His mind ran like hot wax and molten steel as he tore into the meat, filling his mouth with its salty pink juices.
He bit and gnashed and swallowed.
And when it was gone, he bit his fingers.
He wanted to bite anything that had touched it.
Overwhelmed, his brain rioting from this exotic biochemical cocktail, he fell back into the grass and began to scream.
26
Lara Stromm came awake, her entire body going tense. She nearly fell out of the rocker. Billy? Did Billy cry? No, the house was silent. She looked over at the clock. She’d dozed for about twenty minutes. All that fresh air today out painting the fence and keeping Grub occupied had tired her out. Particularly when you factored in that she was exhausted nearly all the time.
She wasn’t sure what had woken her…but it was as if someone had tapped her on the shoulder or called her name. She felt a strange sort of excitement in her belly, a tingling that seemed to go right through her.
It’s not Joe. He won’t be home for hours yet. And when he arrives, it won’t be a tap on the shoulder. More likely a slap across the back of the head. Maybe he won’t come home at all. Maybe he’ll drive his truck into a tree like a good little drunk.
But as soon as she thought that she felt horrible. Why would she think something like that? Was it because, down deep, she thought she deserved a man who was better than her father? Or that Billy deserved a man who could be a father? She squeezed her eyes shut, conflicting thoughts running riot in her head. She thought about the neighborhood and knew that the shrews and hens and jackoffs that pretended to be her friends were in reality gossiping about her on a daily basis, wagging their evil tongues and picking away at the bones of her life instead of worrying about the wreckage of their own.
Oh, poor, poor, Lara. Joe hits her, you know. He hits her and she takes it and it’s no wonder, her father did the same. Women like that, they get to crave it after a while. They get to needing someone to lay hands on ’em. She’s not right in the head. Not her fault, but she’s still not right in the head.
“SHUT UP!” she cried out, her own voice echoing through the house.
Oh God. It was bad enough to talk to yourself, but when you started yelling at the silly voices in your mind, then you were in real trouble.
But they were talking about her and she knew it. Bo
y will probably grow up to be no better than his father. You mark my words. And isn’t that what worried her? What gnawed away in the back of her mind on a daily basis? That she might be creating another Joe? Yes, yes, yes! Late-night feedings with Billy, she would look down at him and see how perfect he was and it would make her want to cry because she knew he would grow into the image of his father. That not only scared her but made her sick to her stomach. It was a cycle that had to be stopped. Didn’t she owe it to generations as yet unborn to see that such things did not happen? That they did not suffer as she had?
But what could she do about it? Divorce Joe? Hardly enough. Kill him? A little too illegal.
All her life she had been haunted by voices, little voices telling her not that she was doing okay or had done the right thing, but that she was making mistakes, fucking up, dropping the ball, tripping over her own two feet.
Nagging, nagging, always nagging.
They moved inside her like worms, biting, chewing, driving her to the edge of madness and then yanking her back from the precipice at the very last moment.
She stood and walked over to the window. There were weird-looking storm clouds hovering up there in the sky. They would bring bad weather. In fact, they would bring weather of the heaviest variety.
How she knew this to be a fact, she did not know.
Only that a voice, one she did not recognize, said softly in her mind, Wait for it, Lara. It’s coming. It’s coming just for you.
She kept staring out the window, watching the clouds spinning in the sky, feeling suddenly cold and weirdly confused.
Before she could make sense of it, the meat began to fall.
27
When Kalen Spriks came back from her run, her skin hot and beaded with sweat, she felt restless. Usually a good run fused her mind and body into a single unit. It was one of the reasons she liked running. It brought things together. At least, that’s the way she had always looked at it. Today, it just didn’t work and she felt more disassociated than ever. It was as if there was something she’d wanted her entire life and now it had been denied her.
“Raining yet?” Johnny said when he saw her.
He was watching baseball on TV. She didn’t know who the teams were, and she didn’t really care. Overpriced assholes, that’s all they are. Men and women sit around and pour millions into a system that’s meaningless and utterly insignificant. Fiddling, fiddling, fiddling while Rome burns. She blinked her eyes because she had no idea where that came from. She had nothing but derision for professional sports and the numbskulls that painted their faces with team colors and waved flags while their intellects went to sauce…but she’d never felt so hateful about it before.
Johnny didn’t notice the confusion on her face because he was too busy watching millionaires running around on the field.
If it wasn’t baseball, then it was football or soccer or basketball or hockey or even fucking golf. He was an old jock, and he did what marshmallow-gutted old jocks did once they were pushing forty and could no longer perform on the field: he watched sports instead of playing them. He became a voyeur.
Generally, she didn’t care, but today it irked her.
The grass still wasn’t cut, and the weeds were calf high around the garage. He still hadn’t taken his golf clubs out of the back of her Highlander or put up the trim in the bathroom or re-plumbed the hot tub.
And he won’t either. I know he won’t.
At that moment, she hated him.
She remembered that in college, at Western, she was in love with a laid-back stoner named Abe. He played guitar in a band, wrote crazy poetry on the walls of his dorm room, and smoked a lot of weed. But he worshipped her. He bought her gifts and wrote songs about her and made her feel more special than she’d ever felt before. But she was also pledged to Delta Sigma Phi and her sorority sisters looked down their long perfect noses at Abe because he wasn’t good enough for her. That was how she ended up with Johnny. Because he was a big man on campus. He played football (or did until he tore his knee), and she’d been with him ever since.
But Abe…
Abe teaches in Holland. Windmills and fields of wheat and charming cities. And I’m stuck here in Newton with this…this slug. I wash his clothes and clean his house. I bend over for him and suck his dick. I cook healthy meals and when my back’s turned, he orders pizza. I diet and exercise to keep myself looking like the girls in the magazines he reads. I break my ass. And why? To be ignored? Unappreciated? Abandoned for fucking sports?
But it was more than that and she knew it. It was…it was…kids. Johnny wanted kids, and she did not. Not just yet. Maybe later when she was in her thirties, but not now.
I will not ruin my body to be a baby machine.
Thinking that, brought a pang of guilt. But it was true. It was how she felt. She couldn’t help that.
The TV droned on and on.
She looked from Johnny to the poker by the fireplace.
I could pick it up and he’d never even notice. He’d never take his eyes off the game. As the slop-headed masses cheered like Romans in the arena, I could split his head wide open.
The very idea made her gasp. Before she said (or did) something perfectly awful, she dashed upstairs and jumped through the shower. She had the strangest feeling of expectation. She’d had it all during her run, but as she stood beneath the spray, it seemed to grow. She scrubbed herself and washed her hair, toweled off and stepped into a pair of shorts and her Cereal Killer T-shirt.
Johnny was still watching TV when she got down there. She stood beneath the archway leading into the living room, pulling her long red hair into a pony tail. She could see the top of his head over the back of the chair and for some reason, this offended her.
Stop it! You’re not making sense!
That was the troubling thing. Nothing was making much sense today. That feeling of expectation, of anticipation, and possibly even apprehension was still eating away at her. Nothing seemed right. Was there something in the air?
She went into the kitchen and then out the back door into the yard. She stood in the grass with a blank look on her face. Dark clouds rolled overhead much as they rolled in the corridors of her mind. She saw her neighbors in their yards. Like her, they were waiting, waiting, and waiting.
This is it, a voice in Kalen’s head informed her. This is the calm before the storm. This is the moment of peace before death and destruction.
Then she looked up, staring into the monstrous eye of the spiralHelleye, it’s Helleyeas it seemed to stare down at her. Moments later, still mesmerized, mouth hanging open, thoughts sucking down inside her head in a sort of endless maelstrom, meat began to fall from the sky.
28
Bria woke momentarily about thirty minutes after she’d fallen asleep. Her eyelids flickered. She heard a leaden silence out in the neighborhood.
Funny, she thought.
Then she closed her eyes again and drifted off, even though something in her warned her to stay awake and stay vigilant. But sleep claimed her, and she happily went out. There was nothing to worry about. Whatever it was, she could deal with it later.
She missed the fall of meat.
29
It happened up and down Birch Street. There was no escaping it. The dark, almost metallic-looking vortex hovered overhead as if maybe it was not made of clouds but something far worse. Everyone had been experiencing the same thing as Kalen Spriks—the same sense that something was building around them, expectation and nervousness—and when the meat fell, it vanished.
The awful tension faded.
This was it, they knew.
This was exactly what they had been waiting for. Though how they could have known it was coming was beyond the reasoning capabilities of their minds, they knew that it had arrived and they welcomed it.
On Birch, the arrival of the meat was like a great switch had been thrown. Suddenly, everything stopped. Cars pulled to curbs. Children
paused on the sidewalks. People stopped washing cars and trimming hedges and pruning flowers and grilling burgers.
There was silence.
Radios and TVs were turned off.
Tablets and phones were dropped. Laptops were set aside. Facebooking ended. Games of Farmville and Candy Crush were abandoned. What dropped from the sky grabbed everyone’s attention in a way that nothing else could.
Tony Geroy stared blankly at what was in the yard. Margie Blowers dropped her phone and forgot about her conversation with Alice Candliss. For the first time that afternoon since he saw Kalen Spriks jog by, Ronald DeYoung thought of something else besides her ass. Mr. Bagmore saw the meat and tossed aside his varnish brush. In the Moody’s backyard, burgers burned and blackened on the grill. The Bakers, Jeff and Jenna, stopped fighting for the first time in memory and Debra Standish quit worrying about who her husband was screwing. Lara Stromm stepped into her backyard and grinned at the sight of the meat. Anna Lee Posey sat calmly on her back stoop and began to gnaw at a juicy shank.
And on Birch Street, in the dark pulsing heart of the neighborhood a whole new world began.
30
Though asleep, Bria’s eyes were wide open. They did not blink. They gazed straight up at the white stucco ceiling she spent so many of her teenage years staring at. There was an emptiness in her eyes. Nothing associated with Bria lived in them. They were blank voids, unsettling in their desolation.
She began to shiver.
To tremble.
Sweat that was cold and dank-smelling began to boil out of her, running from her pores like raindrops, leaving a wet, glistening sheen on her skin. It was pink like the juice of raw meat.