Just a Couple of Days (35 page)

“This is reality!” It was the bellow of General Kiljoy, and it was his heavy hand that struck my face yet again. “This is reality!” he roared. “This is reality! Wake up!”

I came around at last, bruised, beaten, heaving, and itchy. To my dismay, I recovered from my urushiol ordeal within a few days, and was placed under General Kiljoy's close supervision. Though his threat concerning the removal of my fingers and toes went unfulfilled, I was made to sleep in his bed with him for over a week. This ceased when he awoke one morning spooning me. The urushiol, clearly, did not work, though it did put me in a delusional coma for thirty-six hours. The bottle of toxin was found near me, and Tynee knew enough to inject me with a massive dose of vitamin C, which neutralized much of the poison. The urushiol was years old anyway, Tynee informed me in condescension, and most of it had broken down into simpler molecular forms.

Everyone suspects I'm still suicidal, which as a matter of fact, I am. I'm depressed. I'm in a recession of consciousness. My life has been a speculative economy, counting on tomorrow, but it has finally crashed. The bulls were only running because a bear was on their heels. Writing no longer offers me any solace, for not much has happened lately. Life in a fallout bunker becomes routine very quickly. This dullness has spilled over into my consciousness like an overflowing toilet with no plunger in sight, and so the shit riseth, and life is crappy.

I have not slept well since Tynee and Miss Mary first consummated their inexplicable attraction toward each other. My nights have since been colored by the sound of their moaning slapsex right next door. Tynee's cheeks are invariably rosy in the mornings. On top of my sleeplessness, General Kiljoy wakes me before dawn, gives me coffee and some unidentified hot chunkiness for breakfast, and gets me to work. He makes me take
breaks in the observation lounge, where we all hang around watching the boring crisis aboveground. If nothing else, I enjoy the natural light piped into the room, but my circadian cycles have lost their cadence nonetheless. I no longer possess any circadian rhythm. I stumble to the slosh of circadian Muzak.

Earlier this morning, I found myself pacing around the laboratory, clenching my hands, daydreaming about dancing and drumming around a fire until I had stomped my self-awareness into dust that blows to where the wild things are. Freedom to scream, freedom to roar, freedom to swim naked on a moonlit shore. A childish fantasy, to be sure, and not at all characteristic of me. I considered the possibility that I might be going stir-crazy. This worried me, and I tried to reassure myself aloud. But I sounded anxious and apprehensive, and thus only succeeded in making myself paranoid as well.

As I said, the monotony has dulled my motivation to write. My pace has slowed to a few sentences a day, if at all, and upon review amounts to little more than the rambling refuse of an academic recluse. This is also worrisome, since it occurs to me that I write to prevent myself from going mad. Yesterday, in desperation, I even tried doing what I was supposed to be doing just to do
something
, but that just depressed me all the more. Suicide presents itself again and again at every turn of thought.

Escape is demanding that I pay him heed. The sounds of his desperate cries reverberate through my head, spasmodic screams and primal anxiety bouncing the echoes of pathological frustration around the inside of my skull, kicking the life out of my survival instinct. As a rule, when a situation becomes intolerable, an egress is desired. Thwarted, frustration builds, the
spirit expands, driving you to remove yourself from the situation in any way possible, for the spirit will not be confined. Not here, not anywhere.

Polite at first, the voice of freedom becomes increasingly fierce and unforgiving, fighting as it is for the love of life itself. We ignore it at our own peril. It either forces change or it forces death. The spirit must be free, I've discovered. It will not be shackled by the concerns and worries of the material world. It will be heard, it will get its way, and it will make us die before it will give up.

 

125
Things change, we constantly need to be reminded. Today is the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year. On this unlikely day my mood suddenly soared, and I realized how fantastically selfish suicide is. Seeing as how life kicks everyone in the shins from time to time, what passing despair could possibly convince one to return the most spectacular gift in the universe? How do our dinky difficulties drive us to dicker with death? What belligerent buffoonery in the face of such benevolence! Suicide? Good heavens, I must have gone silly in the head. I almost deleted the previous passages out of existential embarrassment, but it's not likely that anyone will ever read this anyway after what occurred today. I write nevertheless.

(General Kiljoy is looking in on me now. He looks afraid, and I strive to look the same. Nothing going on here, just diligent fear and work. I pause to rub the stress out of my temples.)

Why the sudden change of outlook, this sudden gaiety and glee? Aside from the glad fact of existence, I'm specifically pleased that I existed in time to witness what I'm about to relate.

Around ten o'clock this morning, as I sat at my desk trying to think of something to doodle (such were the depths of my crushing boredom), General Kiljoy summoned me to the observation lounge. Once I had joined Tynee and Miss Mary on the sofas, General Kiljoy commenced pacing, nay, marching, to and fro before us, stern and erect, clutching his military discipline with all his authoritarian might. “I have good news and bad news,” he began without a break in his step. “First, the good news. The situation upstairs will not continue. I was informed this morning that the entire quarantined area is to be sterilized.”

“The whole city?” Tynee spoke.

“The entire quarantined area,” General Kiljoy corrected, clinging to his euphemisms like an infant clinging to his mother's silicone breasts. “The sterilization is scheduled tomorrow night at midnight. A warhead of undisclosed size will accomplish this objective. Everything within a sixty-mile radius of ground zero will be incinerated. The Pied Piper virus will then exist only in the laboratory once again.”

“What happens to us?” Miss Mary demanded, forgetting, for once, her monetary investment in the Pied Piper virus.

“We are irrelevant to national security,” General Kiljoy stated flatly. “We're safe in this compound, in any case. This is, after all, a bomb shelter.”

“They're going to drop a bomb,
the
bomb, on the greater metropolitan area?” Tynee asked, more confused than thunderstruck. “And right before Christmas? How the hell do they plan to get away with that?”

“I'm amazed it took them this long. It is a theoretical possibility that a bird could carry the virus out of the quarantined area. Confronted with the risk of a plague, there has been little
resistance to this plan of action. It is generally regarded as unfortunate but necessary by the public.”

“Come on,” Tynee snorted. “The government can't just nuke a small city and its few hundred thousand inhabitants and expect to maintain legitimacy. What's going on?”

General Kiljoy paused, hands in pockets, nudging his nubbin. “The release of the virus is being called a terrorist attack.”

“Wow.” Tynee chuckled. “That's a whopper.”

“Negative. The automation routines of this compound have been thoroughly examined and reexamined. There was no malfunction. Someone is responsible.”

“Terrorists? Did they find something on the videotapes?”

“Nothing that we don't already know. Whoever is behind this was thorough.”

“So what's the bad news?” Tynee asked.

“We will be taken in for questioning after sterilization.”

“What? I helped to conceive the goddamn idea!”

“Did you think they'd just give us a hug and say they're glad we're okay? This is the worst breach of national security in world history. We may not be publicly responsible, but each one of us is guilty until it is established exactly what happened. For all they know, one of us is the terrorist.”

“Us?” Tynee blurted and sputtered, flabbergasted at the notion. “I've been with this project longer than anyone!”

“I've already explained that Agent Orange is unaccounted for. She is currently suspect. They're looking into it. She may be a double agent. She couldn't have accomplished such an objective without massive assistance.”

“Did you tell them your theory about Captain Down as well?” Miss Mary's haughtiness was returning with the news of
her imminent release and subsequent limitless supply of fresh smokes. She spat a cloud in General Kiljoy's direction. He deflected the insult with a roll of his eyes and a toss of his twerp.

“Why now?” I asked. “Why not earlier?”

“Things are occurring,” General Kiljoy answered without turning to me. He pointed his remote control at the observation window and turned on the video screen. “The release of the Pied Piper virus on such a massive scale has had consequences unanticipated by our limited observations of individuals and small groups.”

“Meaning what?” Miss Mary demanded, again concerned about the status of her investment.

“Meaning there is more bad news.” General Kiljoy directed our attention to the screen. “This is an aerial view of the city recorded earlier this morning by a remote-operation surveillance plane. Notice anything peculiar?”

From such a distant perspective the city looked like a massive scab, a clumsily grid-lined, malignant scar on the natural landscape. Aside from that, there was nothing particularly unusual about it. Tynee, however, strode to the screen and immediately pointed to a barely visible line that encircled the entire city. It appeared to be a nearly perfect circle.

“What's that?” he demanded.

“Isn't that the outerbelt?” Miss Mary suggested. It would have been my first guess as well.

Tynee pointed to a thicker line, outside the original circle, which meandered its way around the city, connecting to other easily visible traffic arteries. “This is the outerbelt.”

“Good eye, Tibor.” General Kiljoy congratulated him.

“So what is it?” Tynee demanded once again.

“Watch.” General Kiljoy hit fast-forward, and the view of the city became gradually closer as the aircraft descended. Once we could distinguish windows on buildings, he resumed normal playback speed. The view presented by the camera revealed streets deserted exactly like a fresh ghost town. Newspapers and other artifacts of an abandoned civilization lay scattered about like tumbleweed. The stillness was interrupted only once by a pack of five dogs trotting down the middle of the street, utterly mindless of the extreme strangeness around them. “Reports estimate that approximately one-tenth of the city's residents have perished,” General Kiljoy informed us as if he were relaying baseball statistics. “Widespread panic, random rioting, a lot of suicide. Interestingly, not many died of starvation or exposure. Apparently, finding food and shelter are drives independent of the ability to communicate.”

“One-tenth of the population? Where are all the corpses?” Tynee asked.

“Buried.”

“Buried?”

“Some were burned.”

“How is that possible?”

General Kiljoy cleared his throat in hesitation. “It seems that the sanitary disposal of corpses can be accomplished independently of the ability to communicate.”

“What?” Tynee was incredulous. “That doesn't make sense.”

“What about everyone else?” I interrupted. “Where are they?”

“Just watch,” he said, gesturing to the screen, where the camera was now moving out from the center of the city and over progressively wealthier neighborhoods. Miss Mary pointed
out a country club at which she had attended a splendid wedding and twaddled on about the hand-painted set of dinner plates she'd commissioned for her gift to the couple and wondering who got to keep them after they got divorced.

Eventually, we reached the fringe of development, camera panning over as yet undeveloped woods and farms. It was then, just before it came, that I began to suspect what was coming. I was astounded nonetheless. It was a simple thing, a line of people holding hands, yet it could not have violated my expectations more completely. There it was, like some Red Rover revelation daring us to come over, a line of people so long that they formed a circle around the entire city.

 

126
In grade school, standing in line created its own particular form of play. Rules existed, yes, but they only provided the conditions of the game. Standing in line naturally preceded giving the person in front of you the knee wobblies, or even better, set the stage for a rousing round of human dominoes or some such horseplay. Absent such diversions, we'd chatter and whisper and snicker and generally enjoy ourselves despite the rules. Do you remember? Little did we realize how things would change, how our fellow linemates would change, how we would change. Unruly no more, we wait in line, shut down our awareness of everything but the progress of the line, despising all whose existence made the line possible. We dare not knock the hat off the person in front of us, or even make idle chatter. Shh! Be quiet, you! Stand in line!

If I romanticize the queues of childhood, it is only to indicate that the line of humans before me now made them seem
totalitarian in comparison. Chaos springs to mind as an initial description, yet this was a line. There was an unmistakable order, a perfect order, a perfect circle of collaborative chaos. Panning down the line revealed human after human of various colors, sizes, and ages engaged in games we never dreamed of as children. There were those occupying their time spinning, arms outstretched, slapping hands with each other at every half rotation. This activity gradually faded into the most blatant line jumping I've ever seen, though since this line was ultimately a circle such prohibitions become moot. A person would jump out of line and almost immediately back into a space left empty only a moment before by another, jockeying for position like birds on a wire, a high wire, precariously balanced on the tightrope of thrilling existence. This went on and on down the line, but it too eventually melted into a game I shall call the whip. The whip was like a narrower version of the sports arena wave, but unlike the wave, there was not just one wave of motion. Movement in the whip was more properly understood as a wavelength, in that a discernible frequency of motion emerged, with an estimated wavelength of seven persons. This was the game of the day, it seemed, for it went on and on, and I suspected it would eventually overtake the spinners and the jumpers and whatever else preceded them.