American Apocalypse (20 page)

My guess, based on the mix, was that it was both of them. Some were also from his mother’s time, but not anywhere near as many. There was a fair amount of poetry, some of which I found impossible to read. Others, well, some of the verses were like flares going off inside my head. I really liked Frost. Then there was T. S. Eliot. There were a couple anthologies of poetry that were
great—mainly because I got to taste a wide selection of poets. One I liked especially: It had poems written by Sassoon, Graves, Brooke, and Owen. From the anthologies I began to make a mental list of who I wanted to read more of. Shakespeare was well represented in the selection of books. I really tried but found I did not care that much for him. Some of the lines he wrote were great, but I found it to be too much work to get to them. Then I found Steinbeck. He totally enthralled me with his descriptions of his character’s worlds.
The Sword in the Stone
was also an incredible book. I read that in one sitting. Sometimes after reading a passage or a great verse I would sit outside, look at the stars, and wonder about things.

I had always known I was weird—maybe even a “freak.” It had bothered me a lot, once upon a time. Now, well, I found I just didn’t care. I never knew how other people seemed to know certain things. It was as if the entire human race had been issued an instruction book at some point in their lives. I imagined that it was called
Handbook for Humans
and that it was bound in red leather with the title in gold lettering. It would have chapters like “How to Have a Conversation” or “How to Get a Date” or even “How to Really Care.” I never found a copy, and no one ever admitted to having one. I was still looking though.

Riding into town with Tommy was interesting. Just to see new sights was a nice change. It had only been three months but the changes were startling. Maybe it was because it had been so long since I’d spent any time outside my little world. My mind held images of what a small town in Virginia looked like, but they were all a few years out of date. Reading what was happening on the
blogs, seeing the news coverage, and even experiencing the changes where I had lived had not prepared me for the reality that confronted me. I knew I was in America, but whose America?

I lived and survived by sensing emotional undercurrents, in individuals and in groups. If I had any gift at all, that was it. I found that there were always multiple realities happening on every street and in every conversation. Together they would make up the one major current for that place. The currents I was feeling, especially when I got out of the car and left Tommy to go find the library, were not good ones: This was not a happy town. It was a very stressed, confused, angry town.

I did not feel comfortable and I was glad I was carrying visibly. At least 30 percent of the people I passed were also, and most of them were males. A lot of people were out on foot or bicycle. A man and a woman passed me on horseback. I was on the sidewalk; they were on the street. I thought about what it would be like to have them come at me at full speed while shooting or waving a saber, and I understood a lot more why being a peasant sucked back in the day.

The common areas were unkempt: Street signs had been hit and were either mangled or snapped off at their base. They had not been replaced. Trash was scattered on both sides of the road. The gutters had not been cleared of the past winter’s sand and oak leaves. Graffiti had been spray-painted on empty buildings and had not been cleaned off. The business district looked as though it had gotten ready for the arrival of a hurricane and then decided not to take down the plywood once the storm passed. People were drinking in public and not bothering
to hide it. On one corner a black man, dressed in clean clothes and otherwise normal looking, was screaming “God Bless You!” over and over. This was punctuated by fits of laughter and wide grins. He was probably the happiest guy in town.

The town had not given up entirely. Many of the cars may have been getting old and had unrepaired dents, but they had been washed. Some of the houses looked untouched by what was happening. They were well kept, with flower gardens and fences in good repair. If you switched your vision to selective, you might even be able to convince yourself all was well. But it wasn’t, and to think otherwise was a very dangerous thing to do.

We had checked before leaving to make sure the library was open. The town once had had three libraries. Now it had one, and it was open only three days a week. It had not bought anything in two years and the librarians were volunteers. My plan was to check for e-mail at the library and then walk over to the used bookstore.

The library had a crowd around it, waiting for it to open. They charged for Internet access: one paper U.S. dollar for fifteen minutes and a thirty-minute maximum usage policy. I had arrived fifteen minutes before opening thinking that would be sufficient, but I was wrong. I was the tenth person in line. Everyone stared at me when I got in line and only a few responded to my cheery “Hello.”

One person, a young girl, was talking on a cell phone; two other people read paperbacks; and the rest of us just stood there—all sullen but me. The librarian, an older woman with gray hair and a haggard face, opened exactly on time. We flooded in, everyone except for me having a clue about the procedure. A large sign that read Internet
Access was suspended by string over the desk. Everyone was in line to sign up, so I got in line. Most of the people not only signed up, but also had brief conversations with the librarian. Her assistant would disappear occasionally, reappearing with official-looking mail. The people would grab it eagerly, dash to the Internet access waiting line, and rip it open. Nobody seemed happy about what they received. One person cried right there, and an old man began cussing the government and went off on a short tirade before stomping out the door. That was fine with me—one less person in front of me.

It took me an hour before I was able to sit down where six Dell computers were set up. Two were broken and turned off. I got the machine that was beside them, so I didn’t have anyone next to me. The county must have bought new machines right before the Crash, as these were not that bad. The keyboards had seen better days, and I felt like running some hand sanitizer over the mouse, but hey, they worked. The other machines were being used by two old people and a pretty girl of about seventeen. I’d smiled at her when I sat down and she had returned it shyly. I logged into my latest e-mail account and checked for messages. I had one from Max. It was short and I liked what it said:

“Come home now!”

I let out an exuberant “Yahoo!” It silenced the place for a second. The old farts scowled at me. Happiness was not allowed in their world.

The young girl whispered to me, “Good news?”

I nodded my head. “Yes, it sure is.” I was just starting to compose an e-mail to Night. I wanted to avoid any
drama upon my homecoming, and I also wanted to make sure my room was available.

That’s when I heard the voices: loud, obnoxious voices with an edge that sounded like alcohol. I didn’t even have to turn around to dislike them. Once I did turn around, I found I liked them even less. There were three of them, the minimum size for a gang, but they were making maximum use of the power they thought it bestowed on them. They walked up to the Internet sign-up desk. The few people in line visibly cringed at their arrival. All three were white males, in their early twenties at most, and the leader was a big kid. He had long hair and a handful of metal attachments embedded in his face. He also had all the right tattoos. His followers had been cloned at the same factory. One had a really nice Confederate flag tattoo on his biceps. Two of them had the old-school wallet chains, and they were all carrying handguns.

The leader said loudly, “Hello, auntie! We’ve come to use the Internet.”

She told him, using a tone that had about as much steel in it as my underwear, “You know you need to sign in, Lucas.”

They all laughed. He leaned over the desk and lightly patted her face. Well, he tried to; she flinched before his hand reached her.

“We’ll do that, Auntie M.”

He laughed and they turned to survey the table. One of the old people who was seated at a computer began gathering her stuff. She knew what was going to happen. The old guy next to her muttered something and began typing faster.

“Hi, Rachael!” the leader called out to the young girl.

His lackeys mimicked him, “Hi, Rachael!” as they swaggered over.

The leader told the two old people, “Git.” The old lady was already moving before he had made it halfway across the floor.

The old man held up his hand, “Just a minute, boys! I am almost done.”

He bent over the keyboard and continued typing furiously. The leader nodded at one his lackeys, who smiled. I noticed he had been neglecting his dental care. The lackey walked around, reached over, grabbed the old man by the collar, and tossed him from the chair.

He told his boss, “He’s done.”

The old man got slowly to his feet, rubbing the small of his back. “That was unnecessary, Lucas. I was almost done.”

“Fuck you, Mr. Branson,” the leader told him. “Get your skinny ass out of here before I kick it.”

The old man scurried out of their way. “Leader Boy” turned to me and said, “He was my English teacher”—as if that explained everything. I nodded. I had never had any English teachers I liked either.

Whooping and hollering, the trio settled into the two now-vacant terminals. One of them came around and grabbed one of the empty chairs from the dead terminals next to me.

“Anyone using this?” he asked me deadpan.

“No.”

They all thought that was pretty funny. I finished my e-mail to Night and hit Send. I started surfing the blogs, partly because I was interested in reading the news, partly because I was no longer in a hurry to get to the used bookstore.

The boys found what they had come for—porn, of course. They talked real loud and made rude comments about what they were watching. One of them got up and acted like he was going to unzip and jerk off right there.

“C’mon, Rachael, look over here.”

She ignored them. Leader Boy flipped the flat screen around so she could view it.

“Hey, Rachael, that looks like you. You’ve been making extra money on the side? Huh, baby?”

She flipped them off and said, “Fuck you!” She was pissed and scared but she wasn’t moving. I liked that. I liked the boys even less now, if that was possible.

“So, Rachael, I hear your brother and his butt buddy cousin are back from the army. How long they going to be around this time? They still got all their arms and legs?”

She looked at them, smiled sweetly, and said, “Maybe I could call him and they could come by?”

I don’t know what Leader Boy’s history was with Rachael and her family, but that was not what he wanted to hear. He decided to shift his attention to me.

“What are you staring at, asshole?”

I stood up slowly and looked each one in the eyes. The girl had her hands under the table.
A weapon?
Each one of them had time to assimilate the fact that I was also carrying. That familiar sensation of coldness swept through me and I welcomed it. It had been too long. Part of me registered that the library had gone silent. My field of vision narrowed to them and me. Inside—In my head? Perhaps in my soul?—I heard delighted laughter.

“So what happened to your face?” I asked. “Nail gun accident on the job?”

I saw the girl smile just a tiny bit. The boys looked confused. The boy leader processed it and realized it wasn’t a compliment.

“Hey, fuck you. How about I come across this table and nail your ass? You would probably like that. Wouldn’t you, you pussy.” His fans approved—or at least they understood this exchange.

“You can come across the table, but I guarantee you will be dead once you reach this side.” Without taking my eyes off Leader Boy, I said, “Rachael, why don’t you take a walk?”

“Don’t you fucking move, Rachael!” snarled Leader Boy.

I was impressed. It was a credible snarl. Leader Boy had a little more emotional range than I had expected.

“That was good,” I told him.

Rachael stood up, her eyes reflecting her uncertainty. A song began playing in my head, just a fragment of it, origin unknown:
“Should I stay or should I go
,
”
the singer wailed over and over in a rather demented loop. It was always nice to have a soundtrack, I thought.

Then we all heard, “Yeah, why don’t you go, Rachael.”

By the grin on her face and the grip on her cell, it was obvious her cavalry had arrived. A texted plea for help must have summoned big brother and cousin. Big brother strode in, his cousin flanking him until they came near the table. Then the cousin arched a bit for a better angle on the twins. Brother was carrying a twelve-gauge that had probably been cut down to the shortest legal length: eighteen inches of barrel. More than likely it had begun life as a hunting shotgun. The shotgun alone changed the balance of power in the room. Cousin had a big, black,
snub-nosed revolver.
Maybe we were cousins, too?
I thought when I saw the revolver.

Rachael moved toward the door, slowing long enough as she passed her brother to flip off Leader Boy and yell, “Asshole!” before she was out the door.

“Lucas, what did I tell you last time I was home?”

Leader Boy mumbled something.

Brother looked at me, “Did he touch her?”

As much as I wanted to say yes, I didn’t. Brother looked as disappointed as I felt with that answer.

Lucas, being the idiot he was, had to say something to save face: “One day, you and your family ain’t going to be here to save her ass and boss people around.
Then
we’ll see who is tough.”

Brother just laughed. “If that looks near to happening, I will come back and personally kill you and your cat and burn down that double-wide you inherited. You really think your kinfolk want to start a war over your sorry ass? I am going to tell you one more time. Any body part you touch my sister with will get cut off. Now I am going to add this: She ever tells me you looked at her the wrong way, then I am going to come and take your eyes. You got that?”