A Chemical Fire (11 page)
Authors: Brian Martinez
“You look at them.”
“The morphine pops were a bad idea.”
“Well you gave them to him.”
“I had no choice, you heard him. It was that or drive around all night.”
Reception coming in, picture is a neighborhood with houses on each side, daylight now.
“I know. What does he call those things again, Victims?”
“Yeah.”
“Are we planning to talk about what he did to that one in the meat store?”
Clearer. Clearer.
“No. Just be glad he’s with us and not against.”
Clearer.
“Is he with us?”
“For now. If he becomes a problem I’ll take care of it.”
The image wobbles back to place and the first clear object is a car. A car I know.
This car.
“Jesus, John, you scared me.”
“I know this car.”
This beat up shit-mobile, this long car with the hidden panel in the floor and air-conditioning that ran all the time, every day, year round.
“Janet,” I say, and it impregnates me with a feeling of nostalgia. They stand at either side of me, in the rain, careful, guns up for more than just Victims, looking like witnesses, ready to bash me for the wrong move, a fear on them.
“You knew this person,” Adena asks.
“Janet.”
Daniel says, “Who was she?”
“He.”
"We should get moving," Adena says.
Hands on wet window, I see the door is unlocked. When I pull away, black, scabby handprints stay behind. I check my palms and find them covered in Victim skin.
“He?”
I rub my hands on my pants, pull the handle and it opens. “My pharmacist. He didn’t live around here though.”
“Really, we should keep moving,” Adena says.
I get into the driver’s seat. The smell hits me like I never left it: Freon and plastic, cocaine and mildew. My cheeks go withdrawal red from memory alone.
“We do need to make camp and find food before we starve,” Daniel says.
Adena says, “We won’t starve.”
I reach back between the seats and find the fake panel, push the side in and lift it up as they watch. Empty. I pop the trunk like I’ve always wanted to, ever since I met Janet, and when I open it I find dirty clothes. That, and the suitcase.
Adena asks me what’s in the suitcase. I tell her, “Something dead.”
“Excuse me?”
The suitcase jerks and we jump, Adena shouting, “What the hell?” Sure enough the old case is rattling, moving. She says, “Okay, what is that?”
From the street Daniel says, “Find something?”
“Casey,” I say and slam the trunk shut.
“Who's Casey?”
Adena says, “How is something dead alive?”
I say, “Look around.”
The house is brick-brown and tall in the grass. Maybe it was a house call. No ashes are in the car, Janet would’ve brought it in with him.
Adena says, “We’re not going in there.”
“We’re not going in there,” I say, heading up the path to the door, past overgrowth and newspaper plastics with paper slop inside.
“Screw semantics. We’ll leave you behind.” I open the storm door, the second door, both unlocked. She shouts, “Do you really want to piss off everyone in the world?”
The door closes and I face a mirror, mounted on the backside of stairs that go up. To the right is the kitchen with a round table layered in filth. I come around to the front of the stairs and see every step is a mirror, individually mounted all the way to the top, and in front of the stairs is a door open to a bathroom and more mirror, every wall. To the left side of the stairs is a living room stacked with videotapes and exercise equipment, the back of an L-shaped leather couch wrapping around the television set.
The walls, all around, top to floor- mirrored.
“John?” A familiar voice falls from the top of the stairs and my stomach drops. I don't want to but I turn left and look up, past each mirror to the top, and there, standing, alive, with that greasy, slicked back hair, that pointed beak, is Janet.
***
“No fucking way,” he grins through a cigarette. His bare feet reflect again and again as he descends, descends, my heart shrinking. He grabs me by the shoulders, bringing his dirty mouth close, and says, “You’re dead, too?”
“This isn’t Hell, Janet.”
“Close enough though, right? It's incredible. I can’t get bored. I’ve tried it, I literally can’t get bored. I barely make it out the door anymore.”
I walk around the room to step away from him, looking around at conspiracy magazines and books on government research. “You’ve been living here the whole time?"
“The guy who lived here was a client.” He makes finger-swirls at the side of his head to mean crazy. “There’s two years of food and a bomb shelter downstairs, plus every newspaper from ten years up in the attic. God, I love it here. That's why I don't leave. Also the car won’t start and demons are running loose.”
I look out and see Adena and Daniel looking down the block and discussing their options: leave me, leave me not. Janet sees and says, “You brought people here? You must be crazy man, this is my hideout.”
“Have you seen anyone else, living people, other than me?”
“Don't think so.”
"That's because those two are the only others left besides us, so drop the paranoia."
He says, “Hey fuck you, I’m not paranoid! Eddie was the paranoid. He thought aliens were trying to investigate his asshole, track his library books.”
“Well Eddie’s dead now. I only see you, wearing his fear.” If I learned anything from Janet, it’s how to deal with Janet.
“Fuck that,” he says.
I say, “Did it come with the house?”
"What?"
"The fear."
“Alright, introduce me,” he says
I get halfway to the door and I'm stepping over turtle food and rubber-banded phone cord when Janet asks, “Is one of them your ball and chain? Did you guys get back together?”
Feet stop, hand hovered on the doorknob, I say, “Did you mention this place had a bomb shelter?”
“In the basement. Been keeping real busy down there.”
“Doing what,” I ask, and he smiles. “Can I see?”
“What about them?” He nods to the street.
“They can wait.” I reflect his smile back, nothing behind it.
He takes me through the living room to a hallway filled on the sides by two lines of cardboard boxes, stacked chest high, marker on the sides listing dates in red and black that go back fifteen, twenty years.
“Half of them are nail clippings,” Janet says. “The other half, hair.”
We go through the door to the wooden basement stairs, the smell immediate and in my head every detail I’ve ever told Janet, about what happened before the fire, with Gala and the school and my parents, every drug-drenched talk numb-fumbling through deals in parking lots and dead ends. He pushes the button on a battery-powered lantern halfway down and it lights up his oily neck, the one I’ll be squeezing.
To our left is open space, below that a basement thirty feet square with a table in the middle and each wall end-to-end shelving. They’re stocked with powdered and canned foods, tear-open plastic pouches of carbohydrate gels, large jugs of protein, cigarettes, water.
“The rest?”
“Six feet down.” He goes to the table in the middle and slides it to the side, scrape-sounding to show the metal square stamped into the floor. He pulls the handle up, spins it left and pressure releases, letting the door lift and push back to rest on its hinge. Excited, he hands me a flashlight and says, “You first.”
My feet hit the top rung of the ladder and I climb down into the hole, Janet over me and light from my hand shooting around. I haven’t touched ground yet when I see movement to my right and turn. A Victim lights up, reaching to me with mouth open, and I shout and fall backward.
“His name is Gary,” Janet says from above. Then I see rope tied around the ankles and neck, tethering him to the wall, knives buried in the burnt meat of his chest and shoulders. Past him, white and half the size of the basement above it, the bomb shelter is mounted with cabinets and littered with the evidence of what someone like Janet means by keeping busy; syringes and cutting tools and discarded skin. A metal table in the center with a woman Victim nailed by the limbs to it, not moving. I walk around Gary, careful not to be grabbed, and go to the woman with squares of flesh missing from her.
“This is my laboratory,” Janet says, turning on another lantern. “I’ve been doing all kinds of experiments down here.”
“Like what?” Putting down the flashlight.
He looks around. “Mostly cutting them up and shit. See what happens. See if they feel it.” He giggles a little at a memory.
“And?”
He shrugs. “Hard to tell. But I’ll tell you what, shoot them up with the right stuff and you’ll get a reaction. Very interesting shit I’ve been learning. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a dead guy tripping balls”
“Their bloodstreams can’t work.”
“Not their veins.” He goes to Gary and turns his back to me. I grab a thick knife from the table.
Getting behind him, knife coming up, I say, “So I can’t help but notice they’re not wearing clothes.”
“Yeah, well…experiments.” I step closer, knife ready, about to do what I’ve thought about so many times on so many cancelled deals, so many unreturned phone calls getting treated like nothing, my blade to the back of his neck needing one, clean punch.
“Are you there?” Daniel’s voice from the basement above. The knife hides.
“Down here.” Then he turns to me and says, “If I don't like them I dissect them.”
Daniel’s head lowers into the hole. “Nice bomb shelter."
“Built it myself,” Janet says, tightening Gary’s rope. “Come on down and check it out.”
Daniel squeezes through the opening and joins us, sizing things up. "Concrete. Air filtration. Potassium Iodide supply." He holds out his hand and says, “I’m Daniel, you must be Janet. What’s with them?”
Janet takes his hand and glances at his toys. “Those? Experiments. Pain tolerances, stuff like that.”
“If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you’ll succumb in every battle.”
Janet says, “Art of War.”
Daniel’s face turns up. “You’ve read it?”
“I’m something of a businessman,” Janet says and I carefully set the knife down.
“John told us you’re a drug dealer.”
Janet looks at me and I say, “Pharmacist. I said pharmacist.”
Janet says, “And coming from you that can only mean one thing,” and the two of them laugh, Gary gnashing at them.
“Can you guys get out of the ground?” Adena's voice echoes down through the opening, impatient.
“That’s our woman,” Daniel says, grabbing the ladder. “Small chest and bad attitude. Don’t bother, I’ve tried.” He climbs up and I follow.
Adena is in the corner picking through food with a strange look on her face when Janet comes up into the basement. “Her?” He smiles. “You hang with her?”
“Hello, Janet,” she sighs.
***
“You know her?”
He laughs. “Know her, I told you about her, remember? Her dad is my hero.”
"Shut up," she says.
I think back. “The one who used his tie-”
She raises her shotgun. “You say it and they wear you.”
“-to hang himself,” I say to Daniel. She chambers the round, her hands trembling, the barrel dancing. “And that would mean you two,” I look at Janet, “You know each other very well.”
Daniel looks back and forth, his skin growing red. “You're joking. Him? My god, am I really that ugly?”
Adena’s eyes watering up, gun aimed, wind creaking the house, I say, “Knowing Janet, she just needed something badly enough.”
Janet keeps smiling, comfortable with what he is.
“Take that back,” she says. The house moans from the wind picking up outside, dirt and dust building up at the small windows.
“Everyone is dead now anyway, what does it matter how one, single person died? Tell me, which is it that hurts more, confirming he’s gone-”
She says, “Fuck you.”
“-or feeling somehow responsible?”
“God damn you,” she steps closer and raises the barrel to my nose. “God damn you, don’t say another word.”
