After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (26 page)

The chimeras were chanting when I heard engines outside. Tagalong appeared and told
me Depose was there with cars full of her people and wanted to come in. I understood
that he wanted me to do something and this was why I was here.

So I stood at a peephole beside the door, watched Depose without her seeing me. “We
need to confirm that Caravaggio is dead,” she told the doorkeeper bird, who looked
scared. “Various of his associates and backers need to know. And we need to find that
film he was making. I don’t want to use force.”

I didn’t need to go inside her to know that she was going to use force, and when she
got in here, this place would be looted. I looked back at Caravaggio laid out and
the candles and the chimeras.

At the same time I found Depose and showed her what I was seeing. For a second she
didn’t understand what had happened. Then Depose realized who was doing this and remembered
what she heard that morning about me and Regalia.

Still she hesitated, so I showed her a moment of Regalia and the wall. Depose headed
for her car fast, and I let her know that if she wanted the film, she’d need to come
alone and bring a lot of gold.

I felt shaky when it was over but I waited for the engine sounds to fade. As I went
back to our room, everyone in the studio stood and applauded, and I figured we’d won
our place here.

We sat on a mattress and leaned against pillows. “Maybe you should have done her like
Regalia,” Dare whispered.

“Maybe,” I told her. “But I didn’t have all the anger and fear like I did with Regalia.
And I can’t kill everyone, and Depose can be bought.”

Dare understood and put one arm around me. She cuddled Not, and I held Hussein.

That’s how we were when Tagalong came in with a camera and two women who did stuff
with lights. He said he wanted to film me talking about what happened. “We need a
hero,” he said. “We’ll call this
REAL
. We need to advertise you.” And I thought about Caravaggio and Jackie Boy.

Dare told him, “Her name’s Reality Girl.”

“Great!” Tagalong said, and with the camera running he asked, “Reality Girl, can you
tell us how you came to be here?”

What I remembered first was me and the crew walking down to the waterline a week or
maybe ten days ago.

OK OK.

I am riting on this paper the old-timey way with a pen. This is my 5st copy and the
last copy. Its no good I dont care. Kick me outa homeskool, what happens, Im alreddy
home. Ha ha.

The Big Ant says OK OK git to work buster. Very funnish start but wut about yor topic
title? How th’Irth Wint Rong. Tell me
wut you has to tell, says the Big Ant. Hoo wins th’essay contist gits a hole ham for
the wintir. Go for it, Hapless Joey. Yu needs it, yor wasting away, I kin see yor
ribs thru yor parka. I kin see yor thinkings thru yor hairliss skalp. Yu gits ideers
fast enuff. Put yor mind on the paje.

OK OK.

Big Ant sits an luks at papers from othr kids. Looks at papers.

Im not riting this over. She sits hirself up by th’stove nere the best hot part. She
says she kint unnerstand a singul wird of wut she is luking at. I got to git myself
unnerstud.

Topic title: How th’Irth Wint Rong by Hapless Joey @ homeskool. guv

(Big Ant says, that last bit. Homeskool dot guv. Thats fake. Britetime writing. From
back in the days of internet and puters. Take it out she says. I dont. I think it
looks cool. Maybe puters will be invented again. Sum day. Besides, shes not suppoz
to tell me stuff. Thay want to see how I kin think for my self.)

I am Hapless Joey. I am not a liddle kid. I am not a groanup. I am tall as th’pegs
for cotes in th’hallway. I waz liddle wonce now I’m not so mutch.

I liv in a shack. Hoo dont, yu say but lots dont. My dore gots a lock an my winders
gots glass. I im here with my grandid Ole Joey an sometimes Big Ant come over. She
suppoz to be fare but this hous is not so windy and cold as some so I gits mor uv
hir time. That’s wy I cin rite so gud. Good. Big Ant is good teecher but she eets
a lot. She’s Big Ant. She gots to close hir coat with a rope. Lurning me to rite makes
hir hungerful I gess. Me to.

Note to Commity: This is Big Ant and I have no intrist in a ham or in getting out
of the stupid bone-chilling cold. Hapless Joey has some wits about him so pay attention
to what he says. Im not allowed to correct his work but I cant stand by and let him
slag me off without pitching a comment about it. His house aint all that warm neither.

Also I aint that big, just got a big heart as any Sinner will tell you and a big heart
needs a big rib cage to hold it and stout legs to stand it up and walk it about. I
only use a rope around my coat becawse a dog cawt my belt onct when I was walking
home with a chicken curry courtesy of Sector Admin. who admire my work with kids by
the way.

I waz born a short time befor the Cold Time startd. My grandid tells me all the time
abowt the wirld then. Its hard to beleve wut he says. I cint member I wuz a baby.
But them pickchrs in buks books bux whatever, thay dont lie. I seen cars withowt rust
an I seen green yards like blankets put down. The grass green awl so smooth. I seen
a sky with no clowds, awl sweet an blu lik the cleanest sheet yu ever seen. In pickchrs
I seen it, torn from books an hangd up in th Pickchr Plase calld the Multiplecks.

Bak then th’Irth was fuller. More warm. More cleen. Peepul culd fly arownd in metal
rumez with wings an go here an there. Over to Yurup an Japan an Afrika. An other playcis
that uzed to exist. Thay culd go an cum back like eezy peezy wuts the problim? Thay
culd go on big ships ovir the water. Thay culd liv in Parisfrants or in Lundininglind
or in Romittly. Thay dint think nuthin uv it, thay just livd like you an me. Well
bettr then you an me becaws that wuz befor th’Irthsore happin.

The Big Ant says OK OK I got to rite abowt th’Irthsore. Thass my hole point. Th’Irthsore
that chaynjd the wirld. That made Cold Time.

Back wen my parints wer yung an just chirchd, thay was a mom an a dad too, just like
in sum of them pickshrs, th’Irth it wuz cleen and all ficksed up. Cars slid up and
forth the streets. Sinners culd tawk on littl metel cards with numbrs on them. Thru
th’air I meen, like if you had a frend in Berlinjerminy or Athnsgrese you just like
sed sum numbrs an they sed sum numbrs back an it was like, Hi, how ar you, how is
it over there in Parisfrantz or Kieroejipt. Evrybuddy did it all the time like it
wuz nuthing spexial. Speshul. Spejal. Nuthing unyoujewel.

Note to Commity: This is Big Ant again an you see a brake here in the story because
Hapless Joey smashed his pencil in distress. He spells better than most but that dont
mean nothing to him. He wants to get it write. Thats what marks him owt for spexhul
notice. I told him stop with bragging all those cities, theys all gone and you do
yourself no favors reminding the Commity so he stopps. But he likes geogriphy and
maps as you can see so planely. He started writing agin a few days later. Its with
a color pencil but its still his wirk. He is good dont you agree.

I dont member enny uv this. Th’Irth before Coldtime. Its mor like a dreem sumbuddy
have. But Grandid an Big Ant member fine an others to. Two. Too.

Grandid uze to go to liberry, an it uze to be free. Also opin. He culd reed most enything
he wantd to. He unnerstands sum uv wat happind. He told me an now I im telling yu.
Ywo. Yoo

Damm damm damm. I hate spelling its not lawful.

OK OK. I im bettr now.

Here is wat happind. Back then th’Irth wuz pirfect an men had jobs an cash and womin
had soft yello hair an didnt need so many cotes. Thay culdn feel the cold I gess.
It wuz a time of heros an moving stars on th’Irth. Grandid livd then so did Big Ant.
So did my parints. Th’Irth wen I git born wuz still paradize only nobuddy new it wuz.

With awl the big masheens an stuff life wuz eezy an warm an lots uv food. An pepul
culd go arownd the wirld to plases like Nirobiafrika. An China an Oztrailya.

The peepul all think thay is smartr than God. Thay make a mashine in the mowntens
betwene France an Switzrland. It is big it is ugly it is powrfull. It makes the motes
in God’s eye go fastr an fastr in a big tunnl a hunderd miles long. A sircul tunnl,
rownd an rownd. Peepul calld Siontists thay study the spede uv the parts. The dust
uv the wirld. The smithireens uv the planet. The motes uv God’s eye. Wow thay say
wow, wow! wow! We make the crums an bits uv the wirld run fastr.

Wy du thay do this yu ask. Its a gud kwestchun. I do not no the anser.

Then wun day God gits mad at peepul playing with th’Irth. The peepul spin the motes
so fast rownd an rownd thay meet themselvs coming the othr way. God lets it happn.
God lets the durt in the tunnl hit itself. Hard. Thass wat peepul now think. I wuz
only a baby but Grandid says he woke up during th’Irthsore an the hole morning was
braking up lik threds on the edj uv a carpit.

It wuz 6 in the morning an he culd see me in my crib in the morning lite. My hands
wir trying to clap but thay culdnt. Evrything in the wirld wuz pulling to wun side.
Like static lectrisity back wen thay had lectrisity. My baby hand an the crib an the
winder wir awl pulling. Brok up into eech othr. Lik meltd mud an snow an crud draggd
awl wun way by a stick with fingrs. Grandids legs an the sheets wir awl pulling like
taffy an he culdnt moove to git me. It stayd lik that for an owr or so then it poold
back to normil.

But it wuz not the same normil. Maybe an owr or maybe time got pulld too.

Thay sed on the streets that the big tunnl cullapsd. Maebe it made a nu kind uv dust
that dint like th’Irth. Or maebe it made a tiny mowth in th’Irth that wuz hungry an
wantd to eet th’Irth. Or it wuz maebe spots uv Nothing an it dissolvd th’Irth as far
as it culd. But Nothing cant exist by itself or nobuddy wuld notiss it, says the Chirch
Man. Nothing ate the haff of th’Irth that wuz on that side. Wen it finishd haff it
tride to go on but th othr haff of Nothing is Sumthing. It was ar haff of th’Irth
so we stayd Sumthing.

The othr haff the dark haff is Nothing. No wun unnerstands wut is in it Nothing I
gess. Haff a planit uv Sumthing, haff a planit uv Nothing. Pirfect balans.

Just darck. Darck Nothing.

Why is that I wunder.

OK OK. The end.

Note to Commity: Now you see what I am trying to show you. Hapless Joey is a good
boy and he knows a lot. This is the best pece of riting I seen in four or five years.
I think you shuld also know that his parents were in Moscow or someplace when the
SuperCollider collapsed. Like half the wirld, they never been hird from again.

It is my belief he deserve the ham. I culd come get it just give the say-so.

Dear Big Aunt,

The Committee has reviewed the writing of Hapless Joey and agrees with you that he
is special material. Will you bring him to Central next week, any day you like, and
we will train him up to be a missile into the Dark Edge. We have only sent ten or
twelve people in ten years, and one day one of them will come back and tell us what
they found there. Hapless Joey may be the lucky one. His name is the opposite of lucky,
and something is the opposite of nothing. Don’t tell Hapless Joey what he has won.
He may need to grow up more to appreciate the honor. We don’t want him to run away.

You may keep the ham for yourself after you give him up.

J
EREMY LAY FLAT ON HIS STOMACH IN THE BACKYARD GRASS
, watching three bugs crawl across a flattened soda can. They were larger than June
bugs, with that beetle shape. One was copper colored, one was silver, and one rusty.
Every so often their wing cases would lift slightly and reveal iridescent crystal
blue beneath. The rusty one was almost twice as long as the others, with extra legs
and a junction point where the new head would be after it split. Everywhere the bugs
crawled, holes appeared in the metal.

Jeremy’s dad rounded the corner and said, “Get your butt in the car right now. We’re
outta here!”

Jeremy scrambled up, brushing off his jeans. Ever since the power had gone out three
days before, Dad’s temper had gone from easygoing to better-watch-out, and Jeremy
wasn’t going to do anything that might trigger it.

When they rounded the house, Mom and Laurie were putting laundry baskets full of clothes
into the trunk. Laurie was saying, “But why can’t I go over to Sarah’s instead? You
said I could last week!”

Dad and Mom exchanged glances. Dad’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth, and Mom
said quickly, “You’re going to have to trust me on this one, honey. Sometimes plans
change.”

Dad shut his mouth and moved to the driver’s door. He muttered, “We should’ve
left
last week.” He paused and took a look at the house, head tilted back. Jeremy swiveled
to see, but Dad barked, “In the car. Now!”

Jeremy got in the back and tried to look up through the rear window. He couldn’t tell
what Dad had noticed, but it was hard to see ’cause Dad peeled out of the driveway
and he was thrown across the seat and into Laurie.

She shrieked and shoved Jeremy back. “Put your seat belt on, idiot!”

He did, his eyes wide. The few times Dad had ever driven like that, Mom had screamed
at him and made him stop the car, but now she was just looking back at Jeremy to make
sure he got the seat belt fastened.

The tires screeched as they made the left at the subdivision entrance. Jeremy felt
himself sink into the seat back as Dad accelerated toward the interstate.

Mom spoke through gritted teeth. “We’ve got to
survive
to survive, Peter.”

Dad blew air through his nose and slowed down slightly. The telephone poles were flicking
by faster than Jeremy had ever seen, but there were no lines between them. Curling
pieces of black insulation littered the ground and the side of the road.

Short of the interstate, Dad hesitated. “Last news report seemed to say it was spreading
from Phoenix but it was worse in New Mexico. I think we should take 86 and 85, then
join up on 8 and make for San Diego.”

“What about Mexico?” Mom said.

Dad shook his head. “No. They’re shooting people who try to cross. It’s stupid. The
bugs travel all by themselves. It’s not going to help.”

“Do we have enough gas?”

Dad shrugged. “Maybe. There’s fifteen gallons in the jerricans.”

Gas wasn’t the issue.

Maybe Dad thought there’d be fewer bugs on that route because there were fewer people.
Fewer people, less metal, but he hadn’t counted on the industrial park just west of
San Pedro Road.

Mom muttered, “Where did they come from? Why are they doing this?”

You could see the frameworks of the buildings, but the skin, the painted steel sheets,
were like Swiss cheese. Closer, at the side of the road, there were irregular mounds
shimmering in the sunlight—silver, gold, copper, rust, all mixed with iridescent blue.

They didn’t slow down, but even going by at speed, Jeremy could see that the mounds
weren’t still. They undulated and shifted, exposing the odd windshield or tire or
plastic fender liner.

There was a crunching noise under the tires, and suddenly the air was full of iridescent
wings.

It was like driving through a hailstorm. The bugs banged off the hood and the windshield
and the roof. Dad took his foot off the pedal for an instant.

“Jesus!” Mom said. “Don’t stop! They’re not sticking.”

And that’s what they thought for another ten minutes. Then the bugs began edging over
the front of the hood from the very front of the car. The grille had been scooping
them up like a catcher’s mitt. You’d think that when they’d enter the slipstream on
top of the car they would’ve been blown off, but they weren’t. They pressed their
dark blind heads against the hood and stuck.

“Maybe we should get out?” Mom asked.

Dad tilted his head to the side. Through the rearview mirror Jeremy saw his eyes darting
around. “Let’s get as far as we can.”

A few minutes later the radio antenna came off near its base and, several bugs still
attached, clattered across the windshield, bounced once off the trunk, and was gone.
Now the hood was covered and the bugs were climbing the roof struts on either side
of the windshield. The left windshield wiper came off, and then the roar of the engine
abruptly died, and everyone surged forward against the seat belts as the car slowed.

“They got the ignition,” Dad said, putting the car into neutral. “When I tell you,
get out of the car as quickly as you can and run off the road.”

The car was on a downhill stretch and it wasn’t slowing much. Jeremy thought that
was good. There weren’t as many bug mounds by the road, and the car was clearing the
industrial park. The only bugs he could see were a small group eating a mile marker
and the ones on their car.

Mom screamed, “They’re coming through the dashboard!”

They weren’t, really. There were a few crawling out of the plastic A/C vents. They
began eating the metal radio trim. More crawled out, and she said, “Get me out of
this car, Peter!”

Dad licked his lips, then nodded. Jeremy saw his body shift as Dad said, “The brakes
are gone! They’ve eaten through the hydraulic lines!” Jeremy heard the ratcheting
of the emergency brake, and the rear tires screeched. The rear end broke loose and
slid. Dad steered into the skid, but with the engine dead, the power steering was
no help at all.

They came over a rise, and saw the remains of another car—plastic, carpet, and tires
in a jumble. Beside it, a cluster of turkey vultures were clustered around something
dead. Rather than hit the wreckage, Dad headed toward the vultures. He tried to honk
the horn, but it wasn’t working. As the car bore down on them, the birds jumped into
the air, revealing their meal.

Mom screamed and Dad swore, swerving again to avoid the dead man, and the wheels caught
the shoulder.

It wasn’t much, but it jerked the car around and it went off the road, bounced into,
then out of, a ditch, and then plowed through a stand of prickly pear cactus and yucca,
out into the desert.

The car came to a stop in a cloud of dust. Dad was bleeding from a cut on the side
of his head, and his side window was shattered, but he just said, “Okay?” looking
around. Then, “Out, out, out!”

There was dust swirling around the car, but it had cleared the worst of the cactus.
Jeremy scrambled through the door and backed away from the car.

Dad was doing something with the dashboard, but he finally scrambled out, brushing
at his pants leg. Bright copper flashed and fell to the ground. Dad reached into his
pocket and threw something from him. It glittered as it passed over the hood of the
car. Several bugs lifted into the air and followed it.

Jeremy looked at Dad’s leg. Where his right pants pocket had been, the cloth was riddled
with holes; and there was blood spotting the white tatters that had been the pocket
lining.

Mom and Laurie were standing on the other side of the car, near a hoary old saguaro.
Mom had taken her cell phone out of her purse. Jeremy don’t know what she thought
she was going to do. The cell towers had been the first to go. She turned it on, though,
to try to acquire a signal, and the bugs rose up and headed for her.

Laurie screamed, and they both ran.

Dad yelled, “Get rid of the phone!” over and over again, running after them, wide
around the swarm.

Mom must’ve heard him finally, for she tossed it off to the left and veered right.

The bugs followed the phone.

Mom and Laurie dropped, exhausted, onto a stretch of sand between the cholla. There
was blood on their legs from the mesquite and cactus they’d torn through, and Laurie
had a segment of jumping cholla stuck to her knee.

Jeremy paled when he saw that. Jumping cholla is a kind of cactus with nasty barbed
spines. They stick all too well. You snag one on your shirt, and a branch segment
breaks off in a banana-size chunk, and the recoil usually embeds twenty or so spines
in your skin.

And since they’re barbed, they don’t like to come out.

Mom took a large comb out of her purse and held it behind her back toward Dad. He
took it and held it low, where Laurie couldn’t see it.

Laurie’s eyes were wide, and she was hyperventilating through clenched teeth.

“Easy, easy,” Dad said. “Oh! Look what the bugs are doing to the cell phone!”

Jeremy knew that was bullshit. There was lots of brush between them and where the
phone had landed, but Laurie turned her head, and Dad slipped the comb down between
the cholla segment and the cloth of Laurie’s jeans and
yanked
.

Jeremy ducked. When the barbs let go, the chunk flew thirty feet, whizzing past his
hair. Laurie screamed once, and then Mom was holding her tight and rocking her.

Cool
, Jeremy thought. He hadn’t know Dad could be so sneaky.

“Gotta get the water out of the car,” Dad said. “I tried to pop the trunk before we
got out, but the switch wouldn’t work and my keys are still in the ignition.” He took
Mom’s purse and dumped it out onto the sand.

Mom’s keys—a jangling tangle of keys, souvenir key dangles, and the keyless remote
for the car—were there. There was a also a small pocketknife, a metal nail file, and
a pair of nail scissors. And a mountain of change.

“Shit!” Dad looked around wildly. There were bugs in the distance, but none near.
He began scraping a hole in the sand and pushing the change into it.

“Bury it!” he said to Jeremy.

Jeremy stared back blankly.

Dad pointed at the bloody place where his pants pocket had been. “Metal.
Any
metal. They were going after the change in my pocket.”

Jeremy started pushing sand over the change. “But they
really
were interested in the cell phone,” he said. “More than the money in Mom’s purse,
or her keys.”

“Yeah,” Dad said. “I think anything with an electromagnetic field. Anything with an
electric current. Remember how they went for the electrical transmission wires first?”

Jeremy froze. “Shit.”

Despite her tears, Laurie giggled, and Mom’s eyes got really big. “Jeremy Bentham,
what did I tell you—”

Dad held up his hand. “What’s wrong, Jerry?”

Jeremy took his GameGuy out of his hip pocket. “It’s mostly plastic, but electronics
and a battery, too.”

“Ah,” Dad said. “Yeah, that could’ve gotten ugly. It’s off, right?”

“Yeah. I had it charging when the power went off, and I didn’t want to play it since
I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to recharge it.” Jeremy started to put it in the hole.

“No. We can use it, I think.”

Dad took the trunk key off of Mom’s key ring and dropped the keys down on top of the
coins. They mounded the sand above them, perhaps six inches high, and Jeremy marked
it with a circle of stones.

Dad took the GameGuy and headed back toward the car.

Jeremy followed him, threading through the cholla with care. He stepped on a tinder-dry
mesquite twig, which popped loudly, and Dad jerked around. For a second, Jeremy thought
Dad was going to order him back to Mom, but Dad closed his mouth and nodded.

As they got closer, Jeremy heard a humming and then a cracking sound. Most of the
bugs on the car weren’t flying, so their buzzing wasn’t the loudest thing. It was
the car.

“Noisy,” Jeremy whispered.

Dad laughed without humor. “I don’t think you have to whisper. I don’t think they
can hear anything outside the electromagnetic spectrum. That and detect metal. That
cracking sound is the internal stresses of the metal being released as individual
molecular bonds are broken.”

The bugs covered the entire car, including the trunk. The plastic fender liners had
slumped down onto the ground, and the tires were flat. Paint was peeling off in shreds.
The plastic parts had holes in them too, but they were incidental. The bugs went through
them to get to other metal.

Dad looked at the GameGuy, then handed it to Jeremy. “Turn the volume up to max. I
figure the more juice to the speaker, the bigger the electromagnetic field. It doesn’t
broadcast on an antenna like Mom’s cell phone, but it’ll do something.”

Jeremy rotated the volume knob all the way up with a quick swipe of his thumb. His
index finger went for the power switch, but Dad said, “Not yet.”

Dad held up his left hand, the trunk key encased in his fist. “I want you to turn
the GameGuy on, then throw it over the car so it lands in that thicket in front. Don’t
hit the car—we don’t want to knock it hard enough to stop working. The electromagnetic
field needs to persist.”