I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1 (16 page)

“I wouldn’t either. He looks like a pizza with skin cancer,” he replied.

“Stop it. He can hear you, you know?”

“I don’t care. He still owes me fifteen bucks. Hey, Deadgar, where’re those fifteen bucks you owe me, ya’ mooch?” Jerry yelled.

“Hey, I said, stop it. Let it go. That was a long time ago.”

“I don’t care. Get rid of his scurvy ass. I still need to eat later.”

I agreed with Jerry about Edgar Bunk. It looked like Edgar had a bad reaction to something that left his body riddled with infected boils and repulsing pockets of blisters. He was beyond the help of antibiotics and Neosporin, so I paid him with painkillers to keep him ticking. His head and neck were bulbous and his arms and legs were long, scrawny, and peeling skin.

His stomach pushed out from beneath his ribs like a basketball bursting at the seams and, at times, he looked to be in a pain that he once described as “constantly being set on fire.”

Pockets
was Edgar’s street name because he was a career thief, picked pockets, and sold stuff that fell off the back of trucks. When he came around I used him to skulk through the neighborhood since he knew its inner dealings better than most and could get things, including information.

I admit Edgar wasn’t as stealthy as he probably once was and might’ve lost a step in his
slink and hustle,
because sometimes he wouldn’t return for days, and sometimes with nothing at all.

Edgar had a difficult time speaking through the sores sitting inside his mouth, so he spoke slowly. His tongue, sickening to look at and horribly fat, slid across his lips like a charred caterpillar and between gaps where teeth used to be.

“How are you feeling today, Edgar—better?” I asked.

“Uggghhnngggh, I can’thh thcratch my inthiides.”

“Okay, maybe it’s better you don’t speak, just nod yes or no, okay? I know you’re in a lot of pain so we’ll make this quick, and you can have your medicine, deal?”

“Why don’t we do the kid a favor and put him out of his misery?” Jerry yelled from behind me.

“Jesus, Jerry.”

“Look at him, Charlie. He’s a walking waste dump. He’s going to die anyway. Jesus Christ, I think he just shit his pants!” Jerry turned away, heaving in disgust.

“Okay, Edgar, where were we? Have you heard anything about a secure passage out of the circle yet? How about food?”

“Nuhhh,” he answered.

“Okay, well, here are your treats then. Come back if you hear anything, alright. You come to me first and I’ll take care of you.”

“Yuhhh.”

After rewarding Edgar with some pain relievers, I watched as he shuffled off, never to return, leaving behind a lingering odor of the
runs
and decay.

 I often think of what might have happened to him, why he never came back, or why he looked like a leper. He wasn’t ill-tempered and he wasn’t a Deviant. I don’t know what he was.

XXX

VALLEY OF THE VAGRANTS

Sunday, January 26th,  2014

The commune at Bowne Park looked more like a concentration camp, surrounded by steel fencing crowned with barbed wire and long railroad nails.
Armed civilians in jogging suits carefully monitored every movement from their watchtowers. They cornered us a block away from the watchdogs at the entrances, greeting us with guns to the back of our heads while shoving us to the ground, taking cues from those
very, very low budget action flicks
.

“Get down to the ground, motherfuckers, or we’ll blow your motherfucking heads off!”—or something to that effect. I found it a bit over the top, but I was concerned for Jane, who wasn’t responding well to children pointing their guns at our heads.

The kids couldn’t have been any older than 14 or 15 years old and needed to cut down on the energy drinks and video games before they accidentally killed someone.

An older man with the face of a constipated hawk, gray hair and glasses, pushed through the circle of rug rats and ordered them to help our asses up. He was dressed in civilian clothing, but walked with the confidence of the cock that ruled the roost. He introduced himself as Bryce, the administrator of the compound’s activities.

Bryce apologized for the young men’s ambush but told us the hoarders had been trying to sneak into the communes to steal resources—hence the caution. I understood their stance. It’s become seemingly impossible to defend ourselves from the Deviants and also have to worry about the intrusion of others, but what’s up with the
soldier of fortune
shit?

“Are you seeking shelter?” Bryce asked.

“No, we’re looking for a boy, my son, he’s 8, 7 years old, brown hair, this tall, maybe this tall,” I answered.

Bryce took a brief moment to process the information through his mental database, or maybe not. “Hmm, sorry, doesn’t ring a bell, but again, we have many orphans here on the compound. You’re more than welcome to come inside and take a look around. We might’ve picked him up on the last run this morning,” he said, ordering the watchmen to clear a path for us.

Bryce escorted us through the reinforced fence and into the encampment where tents, cots, and barracks, all made from corrugated metal scraps, blanketed most of the park’s claustrophobic confines.

Some of the lurkers and have-nots met us with sad faces and suspicion as we hiked our way through the path of the commune. A gang of dirty children played ball in the icy mud—some without coats and others without shoes. Most of them were without the supervision or company of an adult, and none of them were Dusty.

Bryce briefed Jane and me on the makeshift colony, but seemed underwhelmed with the lack of camaraderie among certain groups there.
“We do what we can for them. No one’s ever happy,” he said pushing further through the trail of vagabonds.

“How about you kick them out and see how they like it on the outside?” I added.

What is happy these days?

Shantytown was far from being the Four Seasons and unfortunately only a cut above a prison yard. It wasn’t like in the movies where everyone pitched in together to churn butter and chop lumber on the prairie. There were no sing-a-longs and marshmallows by the campfire at night. Hope was a flickering flame slowly dying on a pile of embers we called home.

I was disappointed to see segregation still existed after what we’ve been through with the fallout. The human fence within the fences you can say. I’d hate to be the guy who tells the riffraff that Deviants do not discriminate. Deviants care about what your principles are just as much as you care about what fried chicken thinks before you eat it. The disease will kill you whether you are a Doctor with a PHD or homeless, eating crap out of the garbage to survive.

The Deviants will snack on babies and come back for seconds. Get over yourself. Just being alive is
the
luxury now.

While walking, a filthy man in a suit approached me, possibly a banker or trader who was looking to score some nose candy while trying to uphold his profile among those
other
people. You know, the
other
people who were also homeless and cramped his style.

“Hey, chief, I don’t want to be presumptuous or anything, but you think you could tell me where I might find some…?”directing my eyes to his nose with the tip of his finger.
Yeah, I know where it goes, buddy.

When Bryce caught wind of my friend in need, he offered to shove his boot up into the man’s ass, sending him swiftly on his way.

“We all have needs, Charlie—some more selfish than others. Damn junkies. There is no place for those types here,” Bryce said while giving his soldiers orders with a simple motion of his eyes.

I’ve seen enough movies to know that the
look
meant someone was going to get their backside handed to them. 

There’s nothing like a good old fashioned beat down to work off that teenage angst, and the soldiers quickly took off after Mr. Suit.

Frankly, I didn’t give a shit about the real estate or the politics, but I wasn’t going to leave any stone unturned to find Dusty.

Bryce told us he was a retired police officer from the 109
^th
precinct who endured the initial fights with the Deviants, and one of the first responders to help begin building the commune when the evacuations began. He was a crusader who arranged for buses and jalopies to transport drifters from one commune to the other through the safe zones.

A sense of civil unrest loomed as rations and supplies were quickly depleting. I felt Bryce was losing control over and confidence of the people. I don’t blame them. He lives in a nice tent guarded by his own little personal army while everyone else lives in shit.

Upon entering the command center, a miniature circus tent erected in the back of the compound, Bryce appeared uneasy at times speaking about the Deviants, whom he typically referred to as
those things out there.
I asked him what he knew about the roadblocks, and his body language and mood changed almost immediately, so much that the air in the tent changed with him.
He was pensive about the eye in the sky and the border patrol.

It may have been a slap in the face for a dedicated police officer to receive the cold shoulder from military monkeys like everyone else had, but—Bryce soon began to elaborate on something I almost wish he hadn’t.

Bryce paused, and before continuing, sat on a large trunk that mysteriously stood in the middle of the tent. The Deviants and hoarders were a fraction of our worries, he warned us, his words becoming low and cryptic. What I saw from my window and occasional strolls in the ‘hood was a drop in the toilet bowl according to Bryce. The Trinity did not limit itself to humans. It affected everything from humans, to small and large animals, plants, and my favorite—the
insect world
.

“It’s in the water now,” he said, “and we haven’t gotten the worst of it yet.

Bryce jokingly compared our world to the
Land of the Lost
, but I didn’t find much humor in it as the idea sent an uncomfortable chill up my spine. Did he mean giant insects? Killer fern? Dinosaurs?

Bryce sat on the trunk that was draped with a heavy fabric, drumming his fingers against the chest, and with eeriness in his voice, he asked us if we wanted to see something.

He didn’t give us time to respond as he pulled the fabric off and unbolted the latches, tossing the lid open.

Jane turned away and covered her eyes as Bryce stood over the trunk looking like a kid who morbidly wanted to show off his dead hamster. “Come here, you have to see this!” he said, waving me over.

Fuck it. What could be so bad? I’ve buried people and chopped people up, so this couldn’t be that much worse, right?—Wrong.

When I slowly inched over to the trunk to look inside, my throat and chest tightened in an instant snap, like someone had put my lungs in a kung fu grip.

“Hey, are you okay?” Bryce asked placing his hand on my shoulder, but I couldn’t breathe. There was a goddamn giant water bug on its back, four pointy legs up in the air, and it was looking straight at me!

The air escaped me, and the floor vanished as I tried turning my head away from the bug’s beady eyes and crooked antennas. I imagined the creature attaching itself to my body as my heart palpitated and throat closed, cold beads of sweat formed on my face.

Bryce slammed the trunk shut and pulled me aside.

“What the fuck was that, man?” I yelled. I would have gone into a full-blown panic attack had Bryce not closed the trunk.

Proud of his trophy bug, Bryce waved his hand over the chest like a Las Vegas magician, smiling, eyes widening and calling it
evolution.

No, this is not evolution, man. This is an abomination, and I don’t like it.

“Why in the hell do you have it? Are there more?” I asked, looking around the room for trap doors and anything else large enough to hold three-foot insects.
Jane pulled on my arm and gave me the “let’s get the fuck out of here” look.

Bryce took a moment in complete silence, looking out onto the commune through the windows. “Charlie,” he began, “we are all living on borrowed time here.

Those fences out there…they’re just prolonging the shitty inevitable. Every day you wake up telling yourself it’s bound to get better, but does it? Every day there’s less food, there’s less water, and there are people and orphans who are sick and dying because they’ve gone without their medicine or clothing. Look at them out there. What do you say to a father whose children have the croup when we can’t get them to a doctor soon enough, and one of them dies? What do you say to a child who doesn’t want to be alone? We’re losing, Charlie, all we are doing is just waiting around to die,” Bryce lowered his head and stared at his feet.

I didn’t care for Bryce’s doom and gloom pity party, and he was wrong for feeling responsible for anyone’s death. Death is circumstantial, and there is nothing you can tell anyone to change that. Shit happens. Sorry we’re all living in fear, sorry we bleed, sorry we need food to live, and sorry it takes something like this to remind us that we’re all just human. We weren’t meant to be here for long. Maybe now’s the time for the next species to come along and take our place on this dying planet. After seeing what happened to the dinosaurs, I knew not to get too comfortable. So, before I slit my wrists as a result of listening to Bryce speak, I wanted to know more about the bugs, of course reluctantly, and without the use of props.

“Ah, yes, the bugs,” Bryce comfortably snapped back into magician mode minus the cape and wand. “We came across this one here just sitting by the train yard. My son neutralized it and brought it back to the camp. Fascinating isn’t it?”

“Not really,” I thought.

“Whatever this thing is, it’s here, Charlie, and once they migrate and breed, there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it. There might be hundreds of them down in that subway tunnel, a nest of some sort,” he assumed.

“Where did they come from? Does anyone know? Have you heard anything?” I asked him.