Dark Inside (15 page)

Several buildings off Deerfoot Trail were on fire. He could see the black smoke in his rearview mirror. Half an hour ago, he’d been right in the middle of it, holding his shirt over his nose with the windows rolled up tightly. It was slow moving, too many cars in the street, doors open and abandoned. There were dead bodies alongside the road. Burned. Mouths open in silent agony. The crazy monsters roaming the city must have chased them into the fire. Which was worse? Dying at the hands of insane people or burning alive? He wasn’t sure.

When he’d driven past, he’d kept his eyes focused in front of him, pretending the bodies didn’t exist, trying to convince himself that the smell in the air wasn’t that of roasting flesh.

He decided he’d never drive through smoke again. The next time he found fire, he’d bypass the city entirely. It wasn’t worth the memories. Or the smell. He’d have to ditch his clothing the first chance he got.

You forget the good and remember the bad.
His mom used to say that. Bits of her still wormed their way into his memory when he least expected. The smell of her perfume. The way she smiled. He was trying so hard to forget. He’d traveled
many miles over the past few weeks, but she continued to give chase. When he fell asleep she was there. When he stopped to take a break or let down his guard she was the only thing he thought of. Eyes closed, hooked up to machines, taking her last breath before giving up the fight. She never even got to say good-bye.

No. He wasn’t going to remember this.

Leaving the keys in the ignition, he climbed out cautiously and wandered around to the front of the car to take a look.

Both front tires were blown.

Glancing back at the road behind him, he could see bits of glass reflecting the morning sun. How on earth had he missed that? Cursing again, he slammed his fist down on the hood.

Now he’d have to find another car. That shouldn’t be too hard. There were probably a dozen dealerships within walking distance. He could have the pick of the lot. No Hummer or Porsche was beyond his reach. But he’d never cared about flashy cars in the past. He didn’t know the difference between six cylinders and sixty, so now wasn’t really any different. Besides, a fancy car would burn gas faster, and that meant stopping more. He didn’t trust the gas stations. They were out in the open, and who knew what might be lurking around. No, the only car he wanted was one that worked—tires and all.

It wasn’t safe being in the middle of the intersection.

How long till he was discovered?

“Need some help?”

Mason turned quickly, hands up in defense, but one look at the man behind him and he instantly relaxed. The guy had to be at least seventy. His white hair was neatly combed and slicked back. He was wearing one of those suits that hadn’t been in style since the fifties, along with a tie and a red
polka-dot handkerchief in the pocket. And he was missing a leg. Under his arms, his weight rested on a pair of crutches.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” the old man said. “But I don’t think there’s any non-terrifying way to greet someone these days.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Mason said.

“I’m sure you can deduce I’m harmless,” the man said, tapping his crutches on the ground to prove it. “I’m hoping the same of you. Never heard one of ’em making a fuss over such a little thing before. Not when there are thousands of available cars sitting about. So I think that makes you pretty human.”

“I’m normal,” Mason said. He wanted to do something too, so he turned around in a slow circle to show there was nothing behind his back or up his sleeves.

“Normal, huh?” The man laughed. “Is there such a thing as normal anymore?”

“Probably not.”

The old man twisted around on his crutches and scanned the road. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not overly fond of staying in the open for too long. I live just down the street. Why don’t you come back to my place and I’ll fix us up some tea and breakfast while we try and figure out how to get you on the road again. What do you say?”

Mason glanced back at the blown tires attached to the car he’d found just outside of Drumheller. His own car was abandoned at the side of the road outside of Rosetown. He’d had a terrible time leaving it behind. It seemed silly now, loving a car. It was just a piece of metal with some fancy bits that moved when he used a key. He couldn’t remember why he’d been so attached to it. That seemed like a million dreams ago. Reaching through the window, he grabbed the bag he’d packed the morning he’d burned down his house. From the
sun visor he grabbed the picture he’d carried in his pocket.
Mom and Mason—enjoying the sun
. Happy, cheerful Mason—when did he grow up?

“Let’s go,” he said.

“I’m Winston Twilling,” the man said. “But everyone calls me Twiggy. At least, they used to call me Twiggy. No one calls me much of anything these days, I guess.”

“I’m Mason Dowell.”

“Pleased to meet you. Wish the circumstances were better. But we can’t all be eating cake and crumpets these days. But I’ve got some good tea. Swiped it from the fancy market down the street. They have an entire aisle dedicated to the fine world of teas and coffee. Wouldn’t shop there before—they used to just gouge people on their prices. But a free lunch is a free lunch. At least these days it is. Who’s gonna complain?”

Twenty minutes later Mason sat in the only chair in Twiggy’s bachelor apartment and waited while the man fiddled with the buttons on an old propane stove that now ran on gasoline. Mason stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. It was getting harder and harder to get a full night’s sleep these days. Twiggy, however, looked like he’d had ten hours the night before. The old man’s eyes were bright and energetic.

Twiggy’s apartment was more like a museum than a home. There were shelves overflowing with everything imaginable. Thousands of books, notebooks, statues, loose articles, and knickknacks, piled and tossed until every corner was filled. On the walls were a collection of maps of the world. Maps of the solar system. Maps of subway routes and what looked like small towns. There were drawings and pictures, mostly of places—waterfalls, beaches, jungles, canyons, ruins of ancient civilizations, and even a few smiling people—stuck in place
with thumbtacks and pushpins, several of which overlapped into one gigantic collage.

Binders and newspaper clippings were stacked in corners. Even the kitchen had boxes of books pushed up against the refrigerator and cupboard doors.

The place made Mason feel slightly claustrophobic, but it didn’t seem to bother Twiggy in the slightest.

“It was a push-button generation,” Twiggy said. “We never needed to work for anything. Anything you wanted was within your reach. If you were hungry you popped something in the microwave and pressed a button. If you wanted to drink you turned on the coffeemaker. We used buttons for elevators, cars, televisions, alarms—hell, if you could think it up, someone would invent a button for you to press in order to have it. Now, I’m not one of those old farts who goes around talking about how much better the world was when I was a boy. It wasn’t. At least, it wasn’t a few weeks ago. Can’t really compare it to today, can I? Nothing is worse than this.”

Mason nodded. He stared at a stack of books that looked dangerously ready to topple at the slightest breeze. Twiggy’s apartment wasn’t dirty, but it wasn’t exactly clean, either. The dishes were done and neatly stacked in the cupboards, and the bedding looked freshly washed. But everything was worn—old and faded. Mason couldn’t help but think it must be a depressing place to live.

Twiggy caught him looking around. “Yeah, it’s not much, but its home. I’ve lived here a long time. I guess if I really wanted to, I could find myself a nice condo in the downtown core. I’m sure there’s plenty of good real estate waiting around these days for someone to grab it. Might get a real steal of a deal.”

Mason nodded, distracted by a smushed bug on the ceiling.

“But this is mine. It’s not the building but what’s inside that counts. Been here thirty-some years. Could have left it behind a long time ago, but never felt like I needed anything else. Aside from books and knowledge, I’ve always believed in a simple life. Never married, no kids, nothing but my job and that was enough. Even after I retired I still didn’t feel like moving down to Florida or whatever it is old people do these days. Besides, can you imagine how much it would cost to move all this junk?”

“What did you do?”

The kettle began to whistle and Twiggy switched off the burner. He poured the water into mugs containing fancy-looking tea bags. For a one-legged man, movement was not a problem for him. Balancing on one crutch, he picked up a mug and brought it over to Mason without spilling a single drop.

“I was a sociology professor at the university,” Twiggy said as he went back to the kitchen. He picked up a bag of cookies and tossed them at the bed before retrieving his own mug. “Don’t look so surprised, us nutty professors always look like twenty miles of bad road. I think unmanageable hair and tweed suits are part of our chemical makeup.”

“Cool.”

“Extremely,” Twiggy said. “I specialized in downfall, the destruction of societies. As you can imagine, this whole event has caused quite a stir in my attention span.”

A scream sounded from outside the window, and Mason jerked his hands up, spilling hot tea across the front of his shirt. Swearing, he jumped to his feet, pulling at the cloth to try and prevent the scalding liquid from burning his chest.

Twiggy hopped over to the window and pulled aside the curtain to get a better look. “Can’t tell if that was one of them
or someone in trouble. Not that we’d be able to do much.”

“Should we go take a look?” Shirt cooling, he joined Twiggy at the window, which faced an alley. There was no one in sight.

“Not a chance. I may be old, but I’m not looking to die just yet. I saw them tear apart a looter a few days ago. Dumb idiot was trying to carry one of those seventy-two-inch televisions. Don’t know what he thought he was gonna watch it with? Maybe he thought it runs on pixie dust? Who knows? They did him in just the same. Never heard a man scream that way. You’d best keep low if you want mankind to survive.”

Mason turned from the window. He knew Twiggy was right. It seemed irrelevant anyway—the screamer was gone. Or silenced.

Twiggy closed the window and pulled the curtain. Moving back toward the bed, he sat down. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

“Not really.”

“I doubt it’s because you don’t have much to say.”

Mason shrugged.

“I’m not going to ask you who you lost,” Twiggy said. “It’s all over your face. But I’ll tell you this. Going off into the wild and being a hero isn’t going to bring them back. Now isn’t the time to be getting survivor’s guilt.”

“It’s not that,” Mason said.

“You want answers? There aren’t any.”

“Why?”

“Good question.” Twiggy scratched at his leg. “But I don’t have that answer. Why does anything happen? I think the disease just got too deep.”

“Disease?”

“Humanity.”

Mason shrugged again, mostly because he didn’t have a clue how to respond. Twiggy was staring at him intently, and he was getting uncomfortable. His algebra teacher used to do the same thing all the time, especially when he knew Mason didn’t have the right answer. Maybe it was a teacher thing?

“Born into blood, raised by blood,” Twiggy said. He hobbled over to the bookcase and took down a scrapbook, passing it to Mason. The first page had a black-and-white photograph of a wasted world. Broken buildings loomed in the background while hundreds of dead bodies littered the streets. “Humans are the most violent species on the planet. We have a brilliant history of all the ugly deeds we’ve done. We’re rotted straight to the core. The disease finally won the battle. We’ve never had a cure, and the symptoms are out of control. We’re finally doing something right by wiping ourselves off the face of this planet.”

“So you’re saying we’re responsible? We created this?”

“Not directly,” Twiggy said. He turned over a few pages for Mason until he found what he was looking for. Ancient ruins. A temple covered in vines and overgrown bushes. Mummified skeletons with their jaws forever open in agony. “It’s the end of days, Mr. Dowell. Like all great societies before us, ours has begun to eat itself—cannibalize, if you will—from the inside. Think of all the great societies in the past. Mayans. Aztecs. Romans. All advanced for their time. All destroyed and gone today. They’ve left behind nothing but a few hints for people like me to come and dig up.”

Twiggy pointed to a picture on the wall. Hundreds of dead bodies piled together. “Murambi Technical School in Rwanda,” he said. “The genocide of an entire culture. Hundreds of thousands killed. Hacked into pieces with machetes. Slaughtered. Not pretty, is it?”

“That’s messed up.”

“It’s our turn to eat ourselves from within. Something happened that roused the destruction on a universal scale. We are no longer a cluster of societies living off the land. We’ve globalized and grown too big. Now something’s made us go strange in the head. Took away our free will. Humans are dogs, you realize. There is a pack leader that starts us off down the path to destruction. But someone or something always comes along to throw us a bone first. Philosophers like to argue that we have free will, but I think the majority of people can’t stop themselves from following. Whatever is controlling this, it picked the perfect time to plan its attack. I think it was the earthquakes. Animals can sense them, did you know that? Fact. But something caused the ground to split, and it’s angry. It’s come for us, you see. And we’ve invited it in with open arms.”

“I don’t believe in that sort of crap.”

“Doesn’t matter what you believe in. Do you think things will stop or change because you’ve forgotten what the bogeyman looks like? Maybe that’s what pissed it off, so to speak. It doesn’t like being forgotten. So it decided to shake things up a little.”

Twiggy took back the scrapbook and turned a few more pages until he came to a picture of total devastation. A woman held her dead child in her arms, her face taut as she tried to keep from falling apart. Dead bodies were lined in a row behind her. People stumbled around the debris, desperately searching out their loved ones. Another picture—the bodies of two young girls, side by side, rotting in the streets because there was no one around to bury them.