How could things not return to normal?
When the supply trucks stopped arriving, Dennis had to shut Jimbo’s down. The kitchen crew split up the supplies left in storage and scattered to the winds. Following that final lights-out, I found myself sitting on the nearby beach with Beau, swapping a joint back and forth. I had no family, and Beau had an ex-wife and two kids in Boston, well beyond the military checkpoints.
“No planes,” I said, nodding at the stars overhead. “That’s weird.”
“Maybe it’d be weirder if there was anything flying.” He snapped his fingers for the joint, which I passed over. “We’re through the looking-glass now.”
I settled back on the cool sand, wishing that the rumbling of waves would soothe the anxiety that had both hands around my throat. “It’s all collapsing,” I said.
“Not all collapsing.” When Beau dragged on the joint, its cherry flared bright against the darkness. “For example: You can’t trust anything you hear these days, but I heard the cartels down in Mexico are establishing order. The Mexican government can’t do it, so these drug dealers are setting up their own little kingdoms, complete with hospitals, virus checks, trash pickup. Some lady who’s like the big queen of the cartels, she’s running it all.”
“Who’d you hear that from?”
“It was on Twitter, before Twitter stopped working.” He chuckled, his gold front tooth flashing in the moonlight. “Tweeted its last Tweet.”
“Well, I wouldn’t disbelieve it,” I said, taking the joint back. “Time like this, you want a little fortress to hide in. Like the Medieval days.”
“Maybe all those knights in shining armor were onto something. You know what else I heard?”
“Is it scary?”
“Yes.”
“Go on, just tell me.”
“This little fucker of a virus, it’s mutating. Different symptoms every week. And not just like, this person over here’s coughing, but this person over there’s bleeding from the eyes. I heard it’s doing weird shit, like turning people into zombies. Or making them switch genders.”
“I think we’ve been hitting this weed a little too hard.”
“I’m seeing things clearly, man. Two hundred years ago, people didn’t even know what a germ was. A hundred years ago, you could’ve said ‘splitting the atom’ to someone, and they would’ve stared at you like an idiot. We think we know everything, but the truth is, we don’t know anything.”
I mimed tossing the joint into the surf. “No, seriously, we’re done here.”
Growling a warning, he snatched the weed away from me. “I just want you to keep an open mind. Society’s toast—this version of it, at least. No more rules apply.”
“Uh-oh.”
“What’s that?”
“You have an idea, don’t you?”
“I have tons of ideas. This one’s better than most. What if I told you there was a way that we could live in safety and security for as long as it took for things to un-fuck themselves? Hell, not just safety and security: Downright luxury?”
“Oh God.”
“What?”
“You want to break into one of the mansions.”
Beau greeted the statement with silence. He knew that I knew his brother well; that before he and Larry worked kitchens across New York and New England, they had done time for armed robbery. The family that preys together, sticks together. Because Larry liked to tell stories about Beau’s exploits, I knew all about Beau banging it out with the Russian mob in Boston, and the time he blew up a banker’s car in a Rhode Island parking lot to make a point.
That’s what I’ve always loved about the culinary industry: It will take anyone in.
When Beau finally spoke again, the words had a razor’s edge: “Not just any mansion. We’re going to take Oleg Abramov’s bullshit palace. I know for a fact he’s not there, because nobody’s seen him around. Come on, let’s take a look at it. You got anything better to do?”
Confronted with a tone like that, I did not. Rising, I pinched my bandana over my face as I followed Beau along the dunes. We left the town beach behind, following the island’s curve toward the more secluded areas where the richest folk lived. Many of their mansions were more than a century old, enormous piles of shingles and gray wood, with wraparound porches and pools.
Oleg Abramov’s mansion was a different beast: Three stories of concrete and glass bursting from the marshland like a cyberpunk tumor. As we ascended the dunes to the west of it, I could see the sliver of moon reflected in the Olympic-size infinity pool in the backyard, a stone’s throw away from the helicopter pad. There were no cars in the gravel driveway, but the first-floor windows were lit.
“I thought you said there was nobody home,” I said.
“That’s weird. Let’s get closer.” He began to descend toward the house, and I placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Might be a bad idea,” I said.
“Oh, come on.” He snorted. “You don’t believe the stories, do you?”
“About the landmines? No. But he could have sensors, alarms, something like that.”
“Like the cops care anymore.” Yet he paused. Was he having second thoughts? Then he hissed: “Left.”
I spun in that direction. In the gap between the dunes, a man crouched, lanky, his bony forearms draped over his knees. His long, thick hair hid his face.
“Hello?” I said, wondering how much this stranger had heard.
“Oleg’s not home, if that’s who you’re looking for.” The man’s voice was absurdly high, almost childlike. “I heard he got sick and died on his yacht, but who knows? We’re in a post-information age.”
“Who are you?” Beau asked.
One of the pale hands rose, parting the hair like a curtain. I recognized the long face beneath, with its pointed jaw and absurdly sharp cheekbones. “You’re that guy,” I said.
The man smiled. “If I’m the guy you mean, I’m the guy.”
“Who’s this guy?” Beau asked, confused.
“Adam Vandermeer,” I said.
“Who?”
Beau was evidently not someone who read Forbes or Fast Company on a regular basis. “He invented that startup, what’s it, Gigstreet?” I said. “Worth ten billion or something before it collapsed? Sorry.”
Standing on cracking knees, Adam shrugged in an offhand way, as if an imploding company was the same as losing a quarter in the street. “No offense taken. We did collapse. A real learning experience. We managed to architect an intuitive interface, but we really failed to envisioneer a new e-commerce paradigm.”
“The fuck?” Beau said.
Adam cocked his head. “I know you,” he told me.
“I’m sure you don’t.”
He snapped his fingers. “No, no, no, I do. Before Gigstreet, I had that other startup, Slicky, we were going to revolutionize food delivery? You and I met. You were the chef at that food truck Danny Gomez was running. We tried to make a deal with him.”
I had no memory of that. Then again, by the time Danny assigned me that truck, which slung overpriced ramen to hungry drunks on the Lower East Side, I was out of my mind on a nonstop diet of pills, cocaine, and whiskey. Not at rock-bottom but hurtling toward it at terminal velocity.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Didn’t work out, did it?”
“You tried to set my scooter on fire.” Adam frowned. “Then you called me a capitalist pig.”
“I was working through some stuff,” I said. “What are you doing here, Adam?”
“Same thing as I suspect you’re doing.” As he whisked his hair from his face again, his smile clicked effortlessly into place. “Taking refuge in Oleg’s beautiful house. Unlike you, I brought a hundred people with me.”
Over the roar of the surf, I heard (or imagined I heard) the roar of engines, and I pictured twenty cars snaking their way down the shore’s narrow lanes, stuffed with angel-headed hipsters fleeing the collapse of civilization. They had their yoga mats and Apple laptops and sma
ll, genetically engineered dogs, and they were going to take refuge from the virus at the edge of the continent. It was such an absurd vision—like something I might have experienced during my coke days—that I had to press a knuckle against my lips to keep from bursting into laughter.
“If you’re amenable,” he said, “come stay with us. Cook. We’re going to have lots of food. Your friends, too, if they’re culinarily inclined.”
The night had reduced his eyes to black holes. He extended a hand to shake, and I took it. After all, what did I have to lose?
As it turned out, quite a bit.
People by the dozens—maybe hundreds—poured into Oleg’s mansion. Rail-thin tech kids with custom eyeglasses and ironic t-shirts bumped elbows with investment-banker types still wearing their tailored suits. Sleek young women occupied the heated pool, which steamed in the deepening cold; old Japanese men in silk robes filled Oleg’s walnut-paneled den; and on the roof, a massive drum circle of beautiful stoners tried and failed to keep a cohesive beat. The house pulsed like a heart, booming with noise, hazy with smoke.
Over the fireplace in the great room, someone had scrawled, in giant red letters, the final words of the U.S. President right before he died at the podium and transmission from the White House cut out for good:
ASSUME ALL INFECTED.
ASSUME ALL CONTACT HOSTILE.
THE BIGGEST APOCALYPSE. THE BEST.
Adam ruled over the scene like a king. He spent mornings surfing, afternoons by the pool, and nights perched in an enormous leather chair before the fireplace, nodding his head to the music pounding from Oleg’s million-dollar speaker system.
I cooked, alongside Beau and José and Bernita, all of them pulled into this absurd hurricane because we had nowhere else to go. Oleg’s mansion featured a kitchen that could have serviced a large restaurant, and we made full use of the massive stoves and ovens, the walk-in fridge and universe of tools. It was tiring and frantic and fun, in a way that reminded me of my first days in a restaurant kitchen, chopping and frying and flipping as an endless stream of tickets poured in.
I tried not to think of the virus jumping through the crowded rooms. The music was loud enough to drown out any coughing, anyway.
It took us a week to strip out the fridge and pantry. As our supplies dwindled to nothing, I cornered Adam by the litter-strewn pool. “We’re running low on food,” I told him. “You got some way we can order more?”
“Sure,” he said. “I built an app for that.”
It was hard to tell if he was kidding.
“Sorry.” He shook his head. “Long night. Our Japanese friends left. My investors, in another life. We couldn’t see terms on what’s happening here.”
Couldn’t see terms? An apocalypse was no place for startup buzzwords. “We just need food,” I said, and turned for the house without looking back.
That afternoon, I found José and Bernita in the upstairs bedroom we had requisitioned for ourselves. They were watching something on a smartphone, which sent a burst of absurd joy through me. I was under the impression that all of the streaming networks had shut down, along with their datacenters. Heck, we barely had cell coverage anymore.
But then, as I circled the room, I saw their screen: A coffin before the altar of an empty church. A tiny icon in the corner of the screen stated ’27,’ which I assumed was the number of virtual mourners tuned into this sad funeral.
“I’m sorry,” I told them.
José wiped his eye. “It is okay, chief. It was their turn.”
“Funerals, they’re all like this now,” Bernita said angrily as she shut off the phone and tossed it on the bed. “That was Jerry Simpson, you remember him?”
I did: Jerry Simpson delivered Jimbo’s beer and wine every week. I barely knew him as a person, but his death nonetheless sent a deep pang of sadness through me, less for him than for everything we had lost. The world had done me wrong, and I had done some wrong in return, but I still missed so much about it: Drive-through burgers and dumb action movies and clean air free of pathogens.
“Where’s Beau?” I asked.
“Running an errand for Adam.” Bernita rolled her eyes. “Some shady shit, as you might expect.”
I headed downstairs again, curious about what could qualify as ‘shady shit’ in these circumstances—and found, in our kitchen, something astounding: Piles upon piles of fresh meat, short loins and strip steaks and center cuts and chunks for stew, sleekly red and smelling so rich it made my eyes water. Or maybe it was tears, because I was remembering what it was like to walk into the kitchen at El Bull, the Michelin two-star restaurant where I spent some years early in my career, with its refrigerator full of the finest cuts of meat anywhere in the world.
Standing by the sink, his arms crossed over a bloody apron, his gold tooth catching the light, Beau said: “Beautiful sight, ain’t it? You can thank Adam later. Let’s cook.”
We grilled and fried all that beautiful meat as fast as we could. It was boar, Beau said, lean and muscular, and although I would have preferred some nicely marbled cuts, we made do. The music shuddered the air and the beautiful people screamed throughout the house. I kept trying to listen for coughs, kept expecting to feel that traitorous tickle in the back of my own throat, but everyone seemed miraculously clear of disease. Maybe Adam had checked all of his guests with a temperature gun before they arrived, or maybe it was luck.
Yet a few days later, the house’s energy began to fade: The screams less shrill, the crowds of folks on the couches and beaches thinning out. When the electrical grid finally died, the house drew its power from the solar panels on the roof, and the light it delivered was weak and flickering. Beau and Adam would disappear for hours and return with more supplies—crates of soda and pasta and sauces and rice, along with more meat. I never asked where they were going, but I assumed they were raiding the other houses.
I wondered what happened to the people who lived in those houses.
Beau started acting a little strange. Well, stranger than usual. He had always fashioned himself as the pirate of the back burners, the ex-con who could whip up a mean creme brûlée. At Jimbo’s, he liked to pull all kinds of stunts, like pinning a busboy’s splayed hand to a cutting board and jabbing a knife between the fingers, faster and faster, missing flesh by a quarter-inch or less, until the busboy screamed.
You know, friendly stunts like that.
He had never juggled grenades, though, which he was doing now, standing by the edge of the pool, toying with four little bundles of death while the few girls in the water shrieked and splashed. They weren’t having fun.
“Just in time, bro,” Beau said, and, before I could reply, tossed a grenade in my direction.
My fear spiking, I grabbed it. If Beau had pulled the pin, I would try to toss it into the empty yard to my left. Fortunately, he wasn’t quite that insane; the pin still rattled against the grenade’s body. “Not funny,” I said. “Where’d you get this fucking thing, anyway?”
“Safe room, one of the other mansions.” He resumed juggling the other three grenades. “The guy had a whole arsenal. Not much ammo, so we only brought back the explosives.”
“Why?”
“For fun. Why else?”
“Ask a lunatic a question, get a lunatic answer.” A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have dared to question Beau’s sanity out loud, but I was out of fucks to give. “I’m going to warm up the grills, start cooking.” Nearly everyone was down at the beach, and I knew they would return hungry in an hour or two.
Beau spun on his heel and chucked the grenades into the pool, one after the other. He left the pins in, but that didn’t stop the girls from screaming bloody murder. None of it appeared to amuse Beau at all. Approaching me, he slammed a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve done some heavy shit,” he said, sounding tired.
I touched his wrist, about to separate his hand from my skin, but thought better of it. “I know,” I said. “Your brother told me.”
“Ah, my bro.”
He sighed. “You know, he always liked you. I went looking for him, you know, one of those times I was out. He wasn’t at the hospital anymore.”
I imagined burial pits in the deep woods, filled to the brim with dead hospital patients, their eyes and noses crusted with dried blood and mucus. Or maybe Larry had managed to escape—he was that kind of unkillable crazy. “I don’t know,” I said.
“I got to hope we’ll see him again.” He glanced at the patio, where Adam lay on the cold concrete, towels wrapped around his head. We were fifty yards away, but Beau’s voice dropped to a whisper: “Word to the wise, kemosabe. Don’t piss Adam off.”
And then Beau was gone.
He must have left in the middle of the night, taking his stuff with him. His mattress was bare, his prized liquor—ripped from the sweaty hands of the music producer who had turned the garage into his weed-smoggy palace—gone from its locked cabinet. He had left the grenades in a duffel bag beneath the bathroom sink.
That wasn’t the only shock: When I returned to the chef’s bedroom, I found Bernita and José dressed in black outdoor gear, stuffing extra clothes and supplies into a pair of backpacks. Bernita’s cheeks were bloodless, her forehead beaded with sweat.
“Where are you going?” I asked, my voice sharp with real fear.
Bernita tried to speak, coughed, and shook her head. José put a comforting hand on her lower back. “We have to go,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes. “You should come with us.”
“Where are you going?” I repeated.
“Somewhere else,” Bernita rasped. “Anywhere else.”
José’s eyes vibrated with terror. She was sick. Maybe him, too. I knew they had become a couple—there was no way I could have lived at such close quarters and not known it—but I had no idea she was coughing.
It was tempting to take them up on the offer, but then I read the silent plea in José’s expression: Don’t come with us. Let us take care of ourselves. A trip to the nearest forest, or a deserted stretch of beach, to finish everything in the soft grasp of nature.
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