We all remember
the world that was. Things like Reagan, New Coke, Walkman, the Ayatollah: all
legends. The stories are meaningless, but we hang onto them, clutching them in
the cold whispering night. I can taste the mist even, through my duct-tape seals:
it has a tangy, metallic flavor that’s vaguely artificial. Someday it will fill
my lungs completely, and oh, what a relief that’ll be. Because then the fear
will be done with.
I was a
little girl, back when it happened. I’ll never forget the blood, the panic:
hunched behind glass, we waited. So much screaming. But that’s over, and I have
a purpose now. I’m a runner, a courier between the pockets of humanity that huddle
in sealed-off factories and rubberized basements, in the tops of skyscrapers
where only the flying things can get you.
My name
is Lupita.
There’s
barely any uppers, in the grocery stores and pharmacies. Decades of scavenging
have picked those places clean. Spiders with the faces of men live there now; they've webbed up the leftovers. Good luck getting through that silk; your hands will burn off,
and then how will you play your vinyls? So I make my first run of
the day without the bennies or caffeine or methamphetamine pounding through my
skull, hammering at my heart. I run clean, without a buzz. Maybe it’s for the
best: there’s less fear, like this. The anxiety comes from real things.
My
Hazmat suit is patched in a dozen places; it’s a kaleidoscope of color, but
they don’t see color, so I’m okay. One of these days, the seals are
going to break, and I'll be dinner. I often wonder what’ll get me:
whom among the scuttlers and flyers and pre-Cambrian rippers of flesh will do
the honors. Some of them have acid venom; others just tear you limb from limb. I’d
prefer to get stepped on by a Big One, if I’m honest, or just fall in a sinkhole. Those
deaths are quick, simple. Maybe even fun, if you’re zonked out on blues or reds.
I wake
up in the elementary school. Walls etched with chalk, kerosene lamp glowing. It’s
a sturdy place, a leftover of brutalism that’s survived into the aughts,
although its students haven’t. They’re still there, mummified little bodies
webbed up in classrooms or scattered in the halls. I live in the maintenance
shed, attached to the main building by one flimsy door. I open this door and
pass by the bodies, like I do every day. I’ve never dreamed of cleaned them up.
They’re my friends, Gap Tooth and No Face and Stripped Skin. Besides, moving
them would risk attracting attention, releasing old scents that make my
neighbors anxious. Excited.
I
sprint down the hall, the mist oozing over the visor of my suit. It’s thinner
in here—thinny, you might say. I have a machete today, and that’ll do. Ran out
of bullets years ago.
God, I’m
hungry.
It’s
like a dream, hammering down these old tiles and into the street, past the
yellow buses with their flat decaying tires and rictus skeins of old mucus. The
sky is gone, hidden in gray. The fog coats everything, turning objects into
specters that hang half-hidden and lurch from the white as I approach.
It’s quiet. Particles of something
unpleasant float, bouncing off the thin plastic of my suit’s visor. Spores, maybe,
or a new breed of killer unleashed by Arrowhead. Evolution works fast, on the
other side: things come through that were bred in weeks, days, to become
perfect killers. Heard a guy say once he’d seen the portal, and it’s nothing
but darkness over there, deep todash. I wouldn’t mind that.
At
least in the darkness, you can’t see what’s eating you alive.
A big scuttler
goes by, not fifteen feet away. I freeze; the little ones are blind, but the
big ones are clever, smarter than the ‘average bear,’ if you kennit. This one's pretty dumb; its feelers play over my suit, and it gives me a nudge with its
pincers, just to see if I’ll run. If I’ll turn out to be food.
I hold
perfectly still, as its sucker-mouthed tongue plays over my arm.
Eventually
it gets bored and skitters off. These things have quick metabolisms; it
needs to find food quickly, or starve. I wait
till it’s a shadow on Green Street, before I start running. My sealed boots
go thwap-thwap, thwap-thwap against
ancient, cracked concrete.
My
first stop is Wordboy’s house, by the pond. He picked out a nice place, an old
mansion type of deal. Lanterns in the drive, lots of windows. He replaced the
glass with sheet-metal and the door with a long airlock tunnel, made of duct-taped
steel. Must’ve taken him ages to build it, but he’s a smart one. Taught me all my words.
Wordboy’s
in a talking mood. Once he scrubs me off, he invites me inside. I strip off the
suit and lie nude on his moth-eaten couch. He doesn’t mind; Wordboy’s gay as
lord. No boob has ever turned his gaze. I tell him the bodies are still where
they lie, at the school.
“Good,”
he says. “Keep the bastards off your scent. How’s the shed?”
I tell
him it’s fine, though the latrine could use some work. He nods; plumbing is an
issue when you can’t churn up earth without attracting hungry mouths. He’s had
similar problems, and candles flicker in every corner of his home, masking his
scent. One day, I think, this whole place will burn down.
“Wordboy,”
I say, and I ask him—it’s become sort of a joke, you see—I ask him this every
time. “Wordboy, when’s it gonna end? When’s the mist going away?”
He
laughs. “When the army comes back, and television comes on, and Project Star
Wars is back on the budget.” He’s stooped and his teeth
are rotted from eating processed junk to survive, but when he smiles I still
see the old professor in him. He waves his empty rifle at the chalkboard in the corner.
“Been tracking their migration patterns—south, like always. But slower.”
I nod.
It makes logic. Whatever’s coming through Arrowhead wants to fill the whole world—stuff
it to the brim, with teeth and claws and greedy mouths. It hasn’t done that
yet, but if the migration’s slow, it must be close. “You think when the mist is
everywhere, maybe they’ll move on?”
He
shakes his head. “Never. This ecosystem is too perfect—everything eats
everything else on their world, but ours... ours is a free buffet. All you can eat, forever.”
I throw
up my hands. “Wordboy, you don’t give me hope, sai.”
“I
know.” He taps the stock of his Remington. “But we’ll rebuild. We’re a stubborn
breed. That’s why I have my books, ken? Someday we’ll build a way to stop them.”
His arrogance
is immense. I roll my eyes. “Sure, sure. And someday I won’t shit in a bucket.”
“I’m
telling you. Things will change.” The worst part is, he really means it. Smart
types think they have it all figured out; me, I think with my legs. It’s the
only thinking worth doing, when a thousand grasping arms are reaching for your
meat. “Someday, Lupe, we’ll fix it. Until then…” And he presents me with a
miracle. An unwrapped, still-fresh Twinkie, virginal and yellow in its
translucent shell. “Here. For the Hodgson books you brought me.”
I take
it. “Is this… real?”
“As
real as anything from the dead past.” He shrugs. “Tastes better than hydroponic
carrots, at least. Try.”
I do. My
body is starved for carbs. I want to save the treasure for later, but I can’t help
it: my fingers rip open the wrapper. “It’s beautiful.”
He
laughs. “I’m sure the manufacturers would appreciate your review.”
My
first bite is heavenly: stale, yes, stale as dead skin. But so fluffy, and
sugary, and light on my mouth! Melting, on my tongue! My eyes roll, and this
time it’s from pleasure. Once my Twinkie-gasm is over, and I lick my fingers clean,
I stand. “Can’t stay. Lot of runs before dusk.”
“I can dig
it.” He hugs me, and I hug him back. We aren’t family, or even close friends,
but we both understand this need, the need for mutual human contact that’s been
lost in the face of the forever-darkness. The sunless earth. “I wish you’d come
and stay here.”
I shake
my head. In my stomach, the Twinkie churns nauseously, unrecognized by digestive
enzymes. “No. I need to be alone. They smell you, if you gather. That’s how
they got Brighton.”
He
sighs. “If we don’t gather, we’re just going to go extinct. Matter of time.”
I don’t
care. I don’t like people. They scare me, because at least with Big Ones and the scuttlers, you know what you’re getting. But faces are hard to understand,
and caring is harder. Better to be alone, and safe, with my Atari and my
corpses. “I know,” I tell him. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
He
nods. “Well. If you change your mind… I’m here.”
“Yes.”
I put
on my suit, I pass through the airlock with its mist of ethanol-bleach.
My boots hit the pavement and I am running, running, past the lumbering legs of
something ten times my size that sweeps the ground with a clawed tentacle. I
run past a man-faced spider, fighting with its fellows over the last scraps of
a dog’s bones. My feet pound the roads, my face stares blank and gauzy from the
fogged-up visor.
Someday,
I think, breathing hard. There’s Twinkie on my breath.
Someday.
