Slag Attack (2 page)

   “
Brown work boots.”

   “
What about socks?”

   “
Yep.”

   “
Ankle, crew, or tube?”

   “
Um, well, I guess they’s ankle socks.”

   “What kind of pants are you wearing?”

   “
Just jeans.”

   “
Blue?”

   “
As the sky.”

   “
What about your shirt? What kind of shirt are you wearing?”

   “
It’s a t-shirt. And, well, I’m ashamed to say this but... it’s kind of pink. It used to be red but it’s faded a lot.”

   “
Can you tell me about Pearl?”

   “
Pearl?”

   “
Yeah. Pearl.”

   “
No. I’m afraid I can’t.”

   “
Do you know her?”

   “
Oh, everybody knows Pearl. She’s the Queen of Town.”

   “
The Queen of Town?”

   “
Well, of Hollow City anyway.”

   “
What does she look like?”

   “
Do I know you?”

   “
Yeah, definitely. I’m Mike from down the street.”

   “
Well, if anyone knows what Pearl looks like then I would think it should be you. Wanna do me a favor? Stop yankin my cock. Bye.”

   “
Wait.”

   “
Bye.”

   
Shell doesn’t hang up the phone. He waits until he knows the other person is gone. But this guy doesn’t seem to hang up either.

   “
Are you still there, Mike?”

   
Shell doesn’t know who the man is talking to until he remembers that he’s Mike.

   “
Still here. Are you ready to tell me yet?”

   “
I just say you should know ‘cause you was the last person to see her.”

   
Suddenly, Shell feels confused, like the man is accusing him of something. He bangs the phone down in its cradle on the wall and takes a deep breath. Miss Fitch has worked her way out of the living room and is dragging herself into the kitchen by her arms, her legs trailing out behind her. Shell wonders why she does this since he just saw her walk only moments before. He has to get out of the apartment. He opens the door, slams it behind him and walks briskly out into the hallway, down the stairs and outside.

   
The city isn’t anything like it was when he went in.

5.

When he had first arrived, the area surrounding the apartment building had been just like any other slightly rundown Main Street of a small city. Stately trees stood by the side of the road. Children played in yards. People sat on the porches of their large, old houses.

   
Now it is a flurry of noise and activity.

   
A squad of at least four helicopters, maybe news choppers, maybe police choppers, swoop low over the houses, scouring the early evening streets and alleys. It seems like everyone is outside, yelling and pointing. They parade up and down the streets, most of them looking furious and ready for a fight. The doors of many houses have been flung open, furniture and other debris flying out the door to land in porches and yards. The children have formed two large packs, now engaging in a rumble in a vacant lot at the corner. A young woman wields a chainsaw and cuts down a tree by the side of the road. The tree falls out into the road, smashing cars parked along the curb, and she ritualistically moves on to the next one. A car speeds down the road until it slams into the downed tree. Rather than driving around the tree the driver continues forward in an attempt to drive over it. The front wheels squeal over the tree in a smoky grind of burning wood and rubber until both sets of tires are suspended, spinning around and around in midair. The driver, furious, gets out of the car, slams the door and levels several vicious kicks at it until there is a very visible dent. Then he flings his arms up into the air and collapses into a screaming heap amidst the leaves fanned out on the asphalt.

   
Standing in the parking lot of the building Shell wonders what he will find if he ventures forward. The man in overalls stands to his right plucking scrambled eggs out of his overalls and eating them. He looks at Shell. Fear, or something, twists his facial features and he collapses to the ground on all fours. He heaves out the eggs onto the asphalt. Shell doesn’t feel so well himself. He clutches his stomach and vomits next to the man. Crouching down, he once again sees that his vomit is clear of infection. The same cannot be said for the man in overalls. His puke crawls with baby slags. Enough to make it look alive. And a smell, something Shell equates with death, wafts up and hangs around both men. The man rises and wipes the back of his hand against his mouth. Shell takes a cautious step back from him.

   
Apparently their vomiting together has forged some sort of solidarity.

   “
It’s okay to laugh at me,” the man says. “I know I’m dying.”

   
Shell surveys the destruction, the fervid activity all around him, and realizes he has many questions but only one that really matters.

   “
I’m sorry you’re dying,” he says to the man. “I wish I could help you but I have to find Pearl. Do you even know who Pearl is?”

   “
She’s the Queen of Town.”

   
Shell watches the man’s puddle of vomit as the slags disperse outwards from it, making it look like the puddle is growing.

   “
I’ve heard that. Do you know what she looks like?”

   “
She looks like a Queen. Only she’s very small. Young. Like eight.”

   “
An eight-year-old is your Queen?”

   “
Stranger things have happened. She doesn’t control everything...” He takes a deep breath. “Just the stuff that matters.”

   
Shell gestures at the chaos around him. “I would have thought she controlled everything judging by the way her absence has allowed complete and total anarchy.”

   “
Anarchy?” The man says. “This isn’t anarchy. These people are all trying to find Pearl. They want to bring her back from wherever she is. If it were anarchy then it would be like it was before Pearl and I don’t... I don’t even want to think of that. I’d love to stay and chat but I have to join the search. Everyone is looking for her.”

   “
Say, you wouldn’t happen to know anyone named ‘Mike,’ would you?”

   “
I know a lot of Mikes.”

   “
Is your name Mike?”

   “
I have to go.”

   
With that, the man in overalls walks out amidst the chaos.

   
Where to begin? Shell thinks.

6.

He doesn’t even have any transportation. What does The Rotting Man actually expect him to do? He sends him to a town to look for someone the whole town is already looking for. What makes The Rotting Man think he will be any luckier? This is not the standard case. The Rotting Man didn’t even mention a commission and Shell, so flustered with his environment, didn’t think to ask. Usually he found himself looking for people who everyone else had given up looking for. In this day of the slags and the plague it was easy for state and local authorities (those that still existed, anyway) to write people off. The common belief was that people became infected with the slags and then crawled out into the woods or the bowels of some huge city to die. For the person to be found, this could be a good or a bad thing.

   
Shell never knows if he is demon or angel. The Rotting Man tells him who to find. Shell sometimes finds that person and presents them to The Rotting Man. The Rotting Man gives him a certain sum, depending on the person. What happens to the person, Shell does not know. Nor does he particularly care. To borrow come clichés from The Rotting Man: A paycheck is a paycheck and business is business. Those clichés have not changed since the infestation.

   
According to the man on the phone the last person to be seen with Pearl was a man named Mike. Of course, if Pearl was “like eight,” how old would the last person to be seen with her be? Shell doesn’t think he sounds like an eight-year-old on the phone but, given other strange behaviors he’s witnessed, he doesn’t think he can rely too much on logic. For that matter, he can’t even be sure the man on the phone was telling the truth. Shell generally assumes everyone he speaks to is a liar, whether they know it or not. Most people are living lies, Shell thinks. They live those lies until they believe them and then they take them to the grave. Maybe, if there is any justice in the cosmic universe, the truth is known in death.

   
Stepping onto the sidewalk, Shell approaches the woman wielding the chainsaw. She furiously saws away at a large maple tree, sawdust covering her ankle-length dress and caught up in her brown hair, a frantic look in her eyes, her jaw tense.

   “
Excuse me,” Shell says.

   
She pulls the chainsaw away from the tree, not turning it off, and eyes Shell. “What do
you
want?”

   “
I just wanted to ask why you were sawing down all these trees.”

   “
Isn’t it obvious?”

   “
If it were obvious I probably wouldn’t be asking.”

   “
I’m looking for
Pearl
. You know
Pearl
, don’t you?”

   “
I’ve heard of her but I don’t really know that much about her.” It’s his common routine to act as ignorant to any given situation as he can. People usually want to inform the uninformed. “For instance, why would she be hiding in a tree?”

   “
Boy you really are dense, aren’t you?”

   “
I’m not incredibly bright, no.”

   “
Trees make excellent hiding spots.”

   “
Like up in the tree?”

   “
Like
in
the tree, smartass.”

   
Shell looks at the tree. “I still... I guess I still don’t understand. How could she be
in
the tree?”

   “
She could hollow it out and crawl right in there. This is Hollow City. It got that name for a reason, okay? Like not everything has an inside. Some of it’s just emptiness. And if I find one of the hollow trees then I can almost assure you I’ll find Pearl.”

   “
So how long has Pearl been missing?”

   “
Look, don’t you read the paper? I don’t have time to stand here and answer any more of your stupid questions.”

   
She revs the chainsaw and begins sawing at the tree again. Shell wants to ask her how she knows she won’t just cut Pearl in half if she
is
hiding in a tree but thinks better of it. One does not goad the frenzied bearers of chainsaws.

   
The sky grows darker. Soon it will be twilight and then evening. Shell doesn’t want to think what this place is like after dark. A frumpy middle-aged woman throws open the front door of her house, charges out into the front yard, trips and falls down before raising her arms up to the heavens and shouting, “
Pearl!
”

   
These people are over the top, Shell thinks. Maybe he should just go home. He could just go back to the office and tell The Rotting Man that he wants out of it. That way he wouldn’t have to admit defeat. He could just make it sound like it was something he didn’t want to do anymore. Might as well press on for the time being. It isn’t like he has a lot of alternatives.

7.

He walks away from the tree cutter and takes a blow to the back of the head. The pain is staggering, shooting through his entire body. Everything swims in front of him before going a washed out kind of gray. His legs feel rubbery. In a city like this, in the midst of the slag plague, the last thing you want to give up is your vigilance but, unwillingly, he surrenders to unconsciousness and collapses to the ground.

   
He opens his eyes in a bright room. Surprisingly cool. He doesn’t feel totally awake yet. A rancid smell surrounds him. He stares up at the water-stained ceiling and hears a male voice say: “He’s clean. I checked him.”

   
There’s something comforting in that. By “clean,” Shell assumes he means clean of slags. He has always dreaded the loss of consciousness, imagining he will wake up and find himself infested with slags, infected with the plague. The only place he really feels comfortable sleeping in is his room at home. It’s in a city that has reasonably contained the slag infestation and his bedroom is guarded against that very thing—treated and secure. He wonders where he is. Maybe he’s in the hospital. Maybe someone took advantage of the chaos to rob him when it was clear most people had other things on their minds. Maybe someone just attacked him because he was new and different. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time. As much as he tries not to seem like a detective, most people still figure him out. And most people confuse a detective with some type of authority figure even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. He is not out to find and punish any evildoers. He only looks for people. And he will do whatever is necessary to find those people because it pays reasonably well. This often means breaking the law himself. He is more of a criminal than most of the people who confuse him for a cop. He doesn’t like to think of himself as a bounty hunter. People get lost. People need found. He is not the one who decides their ultimate fate.