PostApoc (18 page)

- 26 -
CREEP MANIFESTO

T
ara walks out of the house with her wig back on and returns wrapped in a blue boa and silver spandex shorts, reciting a creep manifesto like nothing's unusual:

Decree the fate/unwilling

Planetary intercourse/our command is

Far reaching/

For the unchangeable/

Know your fires/

Your cities/

Escape plan C/section off

Earth's ancestors/text collaboration

Creep chronicles/

An un-history

“Hey,” she says, giving me full-on eye contact, pupils contracted into speed-sucking focus. Her hands fly through her crooked hair. She's high again but only has another hour left of this buzz. I can tell by the shake in her knee.

“It's a bad taste that can't be killed,” she says. “Just like the first time I was ever asked by someone if he could lick the scars inside my arms. When I said yes he flattened his tongue wide across my wrist and worked it all the way up to my elbow. He said there was a taste to it.
‘Acquired' was the word he used.”

Tara has sacrificed herself as a host to a shadow drug, floored by slim collections of collective delusions. Her posture is a curve that ends in a point: a question mark.

She laughs—split second—and then blanks out before being caught in forward momentum, with it again but not with us.

“I've gotta go, Ang,” she says. “I met someone. Someone who knows where to get more grayline. More of everything. They've invited me to stay with them.”

“Stay where?” I ask.

“I told him about you,” she says, “but he doesn't want a lot of people coming around.”

“Where are you going?”

She doesn't answer.

“There's nothing left out there,” Cam says.

“That's what they want you to think,” Tara says. She leaves everything behind but what she can carry in her purse.

For every hour that Aimee sleeps, which has been most of them lately, Trevor's hand blackens by another inch, no matter how much vodka we pour onto it. The infection's spreading fever directly to his brain.

“ANG,” he says. “I've figured out EVERYTHING.” I wait for him to tell me what everything is but instead a sob comes out of him.

It feels like it might be what we used to know as midnight when Cam says, “He's going to have to lose that hand.” It might be for another hour that he stares at me as if waiting for permission.

“What do you want me to say?” I ask finally.

“Just tell me what to do.”

“I feel like you already know what to do.”

It might be two in the morning when Cam looks from one knife to the other. “This one has a sharper blade, but this one can cut deeper.”

“Whatever you do, just do it fast,” I say.

Trevor's pillow is soaked with sweat but he's shivering through fever.

“I don't want to be here for this,” I tell Cam.

Trevor's eyes are closed.

“Fine, then go.” Cam doesn't look at me when he says this. He's looking at Trevor.

I only have two cigarettes left.
Again. Aimee must have a few; she's hardly been awake enough to smoke any. Not sure what'll be left after this, if anything.

Outside, the night air's got a chill in it. I'm in a t-shirt but don't want to go back inside. It's easier to be cold.

I'm a block away from the house when I hear a short, gruff cry. It could have come from the Victorian, but it also could just be an animal. I can't let myself ponder it any more than that. Instead I think about Hunter: past life and what was wrong and what was right and what really mattered. Did we really matter? Yeah, I think we did.

We spent so much time nurturing boredom and defense that our expressions took on early lines of flawed character. Every question I asked him started with an unraveling and ended the same way, but I was only a catalyst for one of them.

I remember my ear against the mild swell of his pectoral, the rock of bone beneath a dark cavity, an obscurity where the heart should have been. When I get to him, finally, will we be able to work our way back to what we had?

I walk the same four blocks until the sun comes up, consider myself lucky that it even makes an appearance for me today. I didn't want to be back in that house in the dark.

Cam and Trevor are gone when I get there, along with their clothes, books and knives. Trevor's mattress is bare. There is as much blood left behind as I'd expected. It's the blood on Aimee's crotch that surprises me, scares me.

Her face is that of someone drowning, lips blue and slightly swollen.

“I have the worst cramps right now,” she says. “I might puke. This is the worst period I've ever had.”

The window is open all the way but there's no air coming in. Nothing moves outside. Aimee's hair is plastered to her forehead. I crouch down beside her but she sits up and bolts for the bathroom.
The bedroom door slams open against the wall and shakes on its hinges.

On Aimee's bed is a circle of blood—more than the start of a period. I run into the bathroom after her. She's curled up on the floor, red soaking her jean shorts like piss. Her left hand covers her abdomen like she's trying to calm whatever's inside.

I kneel over her, try to get her on her back, but she keeps her body coiled. “Let me,” I say, reaching for the button of her shorts. They don't even need to be undone they're so loose, but I give her time by popping the waistband, unzipping the fly before pulling them toward her ankles.

I'm not ready for the smell of so much menstrual blood. In this heat it could rot on her body; its odour already holds a hint of heavy brown.

Aimee's panties are soaked all the way up to the waist. I peel them away and a strand of mucous breaks from between her legs. She's breathing fast now.

“Relax,” I say.

“Ang,” she says, “it hurts.”

“I know. I won't last, though.”

Her midsection contracts and another stream of blood pushes out from her. “Shit, Ang,” she says. “What's happening?”

I wanted to bring her back to bed but she said she didn't want to move just yet. That might have been three hours ago. We're still on the bathroom floor, my body against her back, arm overtop of hers, leg wrapped over her hip. Together, we shake. Her shivering is violent enough for both of us. I can't let her chill take me over. She needs all the heat I have.

With everyone gone now but us, the house is the quietest it's ever been. There isn't even a skitter from the ghosts upstairs or down. In the night, I tell Aimee, “Breathe.”

She breathes.

In a dream I'm cutting the anchor tattoo out of Aimee's arm to keep us weighted down. In another dream I realize I've fallen asleep too long to remind Aimee to breathe. Beside me, she's gone stiff. I am no longer in a dream.

Overnight Aimee's body has gained the volume of death and I've lost all muscle mass. I cover her with the blanket left on Tara's bed because I don't know what else to do.

Miscarriage. From that pick up she did alone.

I am on my own in a way I've never been before, but now, more than any other time in my life, I have the feeling of being closed into a crowd: mental crush of space, claustrophobic estimates, emotional perception in overdrive.

I believe I've made a mistake in waking. I go back to sleep to see if I can correct my reality. But every time I start to fall asleep I think of Aimee's body beside me and get an adrenaline jolt. It would be easier not to think at all.

It's my body and I'll die if I want to.

- 27 -
AFTERBIRTH

A
imee's already decomposing, decaying in fast-forward. Her tattoos are shriveled but the colour's still solid. I know I should move her, but I'm not ready. At least with her body still here, I can feel a little less alone.

I don't wear my own clothes anymore. I live in hers. Aimee's sweatshirt fits me like a dress. In it, I soak in my own sweat.

I wait two days before I close the bathroom door but the smell still gets through the hallway. It's dark green with spots of maroon. By now I thought I knew what death smelled like. If I sit with her body long enough and talk to her, I can get used to the scent. The only problem is, it seems like it gets worse by the hour.

I wait two more days after that before moving downstairs because the smell is all over the second floor now. There's a mark on the kitchen ceiling below Aimee's body. Is she leaking through the floor?

I can't sleep here at night because the smell's gotten outside. The animals know what I'm hiding in here and they claw and cry to get in.

Aimee's skin is as green and bloated as the smell that comes off her. I love her too much to let her see how nauseous she makes me, so I gulp it down and suck it up as I cup her skull lightly, so her scalp doesn't come away in my hands. I run my fingers through her hair until strands come loose between my knuckles. I braid the stray hairs and tie them around my wrist.

I don't have much to pack: a lighter with its last bit of flame, a few t-shirts, my black faux-fur jacket.

I finally take off Aimee's hooded sweatshirt. It will be too hot to wear it on my bike. As I stuff it into my bag a single scream comes out of the basement, the same scream as the day we arrived.

Outside, the wind whips tight, a bed sheet snapping flat over the city. A gust cracks something thin and light—a blade of grass maybe—across the bridge of my nose, vicious enough to open a thin red line.

I turn around, look one last time at the house. Just in case Aimee's standing in the window.
Just in case it's not really over. But there's nothing left but ghosts.

I take a bike but just walk with it for now. On my way to the beach I unclasp the bare silver charm bracelet and pull on it hard from each end. The links come apart, fall away from each other and into the cracks of the sidewalk. There's no luck left in it. I finger the eye dangling from my ear and hope that the bracelet's failings don't mean there isn't any luck left at all.

Shelley and Anadin's house is gone. The lake has retreated again, too, left the bare bones of their caged birds to bleach in the sun.

“Ang!” The voice comes from a crop of trees a hundred feet away.

Off the beach, Shelley and Anadin look thinner, older, like they left parts of themselves back there with their bird bones. They've set up a small area between the trees, built benches and beds out of piled flat stones.

They had to leave most of their things behind. Shelley holds up a violin. One of its strings is broken and has curled underneath the hem of her dress. She sees me looking at it but doesn't make a move to fix it.

“We've been trying to recreate the earth's atmosphere again,” she says. The veins in her neck go varicose when she speaks. Her skull has widened, chin extended. Shelley and Anadin both have exaggerated faces now, complexions blanched and eyes fixed in a start: cats alerted.

“Did you notice anything different today?” Shelley asks.

“I don't think it's working like we thought it would,” Anadin says before I can answer, putting her husky-cold eye on me. “Let's go to the beach,” she says, swaying her head south for me to follow.

“Do you still dream?” Anadin asks when we hit the stained line where the tide hit hardest.

“I do,” I say.

“Then that means we're right about it,” she says.

“Right about what?” I ask.

They stop to sit. I come down on my knees and sit on my ankles. The circulation in my legs stops almost immediately.

“About time,” Shelley says, pulling a dusty can of tuna out of her bag. Anadin takes a knife from her boot and passes it over.

“You ever heard this theory before?” Anadin says, opening her mouth to let Shelley feed her a bite of tuna. “Well, it's our theory, really, but we believe that you can't be dead if you're still dreaming.”

Shelley holds the knife up to me. It's the first time I've seen them with food. Their fast must be broken. The tuna's probably ancient but it still tastes better than anything I've eaten in weeks. “Hang onto that knowledge for when you need it,” she says.

“And you will need it,” Anadin says.

“You will need this, too,” Shelley says, wiping tuna juice from the blade of the knife before handing it to me. “For protection.”

“Where are you going to go?” I ask them, folding the knife into my boot.

“We're waiting for the lake to come back for us,” Anadin says.

- 28 -
MASS(IVE) HALLUCINATION

I
t feels like I've been riding east for hours already but the sign on the road says I'm still only as far as the old suburbs. I glide into the parking lot of a big mall, its doors long smashed open, department store windows gutted. The sun's coming up and the few bites of tuna I had on the beach with Shelley and Anadin wore off miles back.

The deeper into the mall I get the more light I lose. In the center is a skylight that's also been smashed out. Days' worth of rain has pooled on the floor below. A dead bird has its head tucked against its chest. I get on my knees and cup my hands, take a drink.

Someone's taken the plates of broken glass that would have fallen from the ceiling. The gates of the stores are all drawn down but a lot of them are broken, too. I drift into skeletal clothes racks, find a black cardigan and tie it around my waist. Finally, there's a bulk food store. The bins are down to the crumbs. Mice and rats have replaced what they've taken with their own shit.

“Shit,” I say.

“You won't find much around here,” says a voice from behind. I spin to face a girl in flared jeans and an army parka, her tangled blonde hair turning to dreads. Look long enough and you can see she used to be pretty.

“You live here?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says, “we do. We live here.”

The girl's voice changes then, raises several octaves until it's nearly a child's: “She likes to talk about how we're all in this together but get her alone and see what she'll do for you. She'll write you out of her words and permanently mark you in her own version of the story. This is all going to collapse any day now and if you don't listen to me you'll die this way, eaten alive. Only I'll still be here, under the extra coating of haze and smoke. That's what's been helping me get through this. Will yourself to a paler shade. Command your body.”

The girl's eyes roll. Her voice refreshes into something deep and gruff: “This could be like any other night if it weren't for you here right now.
There are girls downstairs who'll do anything for ten bucks or a pack of smokes. You want to meet them? You could be one of them if you want.”

“Be one of what?” I ask. “What are you?”

But instead of answering me the girl's mouth starts slurring, wordlessly, like it's fallen off its track. Dark liquid drips from under her right sleeve. Her blue eyes go from sky to navy to black and back again.

“Maybe I should just go,” I say.

The girl doesn't move. Her legs are in place at a wide stance, her face slack.

I run, through the bulk food store, through its backroom, and out the emergency exit. I don't stop until I'm back on my bike. I ride, and I don't look back this time. My heart doesn't stop pounding until I'm at least twenty minutes away. The adrenaline subsides but the hunger rises again, and with it this time comes weakness, dizziness.

The sun's high and the heat's still bearable but that could change at any minute. I remember Cam and Trevor had looted some houses. Just a few. Why we didn't do it more often I don't know. Maybe we were afraid there'd still be someone inside. Maybe we were afraid of what we'd find. But today I can't afford to be afraid.

I exit off the highway and ride to the border of a residential area. I go for the first house I see: blue vinyl siding, gravel driveway, porch with peeling white paint, old grey wood exposed underneath.

Everything's intact. I rattle my fingertips across the bay window at the front of the house, wait for movement—nothing. I kick gravel at the basement windows, wait for movement—nothing. I break a window and slide below ground level.
The concrete floor moves. At first I think it's fog but no, it's centipedes, thousands of them, swirling over each other. An inch of a scream squeezes out of me and I clamp a hand over my mouth to keep it shut.

I trip over my shaking legs to get to the stairs, brush bugs from my ankles and calves at the threshold. The ones that hitched a ride up with me scatter off over white carpet and disappear into cracks only they can see.

The upstairs is green upholstery and wooden furniture, a row of stuffed animals on the back of a living room couch. I head to the kitchen and pull the cupboards open, grab at canned meat, cereal, dried peas, crackers, soups. I sniff at half a jar of crunchy peanut butter. A few of the nuts along the top are black but I stuff it in my bag anyway. I'll eat around whatever I have to.

I pull open the drawer and grab kitchen knives and a can opener. Then I go upstairs even though I'm not sure what I'll find up there. Still, I take the stairs two at a time.

My hands blur through costume jewelry and a drawer of old photographs. This house must have belonged to an older woman, or a couple. Grandparents, maybe. I find two hundred dollars stashed under the mattress. I've forgotten what money feels like. I wonder if they still use it where I'm going, decide to take it just in case.

I pull up to a low-rise apartment building, the only structure left standing on a charred block. The curtain's pulled back on a basement window, revealing a smear of blood on the wall and an upturned coffee table. I move on, ride until the sun starts to set.

Off to the left is an old wooden barn, its slats broken off in some places, roof caved in. There's still enough daylight to see that it's empty. I open the canned peas and eat them cold, with my hands. I didn't think to steal a spoon.

I dream of trees split up the middle, rotting from their centers, full of rings of maggots that spill down their trunks. Mushrooms sprout from those same rings: long, yellow-stemmed fungi spreading in skinny bodies down the base of trees, creeping through the grass.

In the dream it's not The End. It's just another day, except for these mushrooms that can pull apart an ancient oak. But that's not all. I walk into a park and it smells of berries and cream, candied soda. A few animals—a couple of dogs or city coyotes, a raccoon—skirt the shade of the tall grass and broken trees.

I have to walk slowly, with my eyes on the park so the dogs don't chase me out. But then I realize they might not even notice; they're smelling the rotten tree rings, licking at residue and slurping maggots and mushrooms. They come away with tongues tinted bright blue from fungal fluids.

No sooner is one stem plucked before another shoots up in its place. No sooner is one stem swallowed than the animal drops, its skull coming apart, cracking open to make room for new growth, the animal's brains used as a house for a new colony of fungi.