The n-Body Problem (8 page)

There is a soft light in the clouds this morning. I swing carefully on the porch. Y is in the field. It has been weeks. I saw terrible things. I was kept alive by these jolts. These images. And Y’s portable lamp. I am, for now, in old body. No syndrome. No disease being cooked up by winds in my blood. Y is heading to the house. Pail of radishes. Carrots. I am an old woman swinging on the porch. Grateful to her son. He drops the pail and wipes his brow.

“Surprised these are growing.”

I look out to a copse across the field. It appears like a lead shroud. There is no green anymore. Leaves are grey and black. It gives the land a metallic look. Grass is silver. Odd behaviour in birds. They circle trees in mad spins. Small bushes take on the look of manic gyroscopes. I stop swinging and peer into the pail. Something grew anyway. Carrots look like long teeth. Radishes like filthy buttons.

“Let’s eat them. We got oil and vitamin D. We’re fine.”

We eat inside by candlelight. The vegetables are tasteless and, worse, ugly. Y had followed Dixon out of town while I was out. He was going back and forth between two towns. Y thinks this second town is his next target. I have to call it in to the school board. I can’t afford to be feral. This is my job. I want to get paid. I want to get out.

“I’m calling the school board after dinner.”

Y doesn’t react to this. He pulls a thong of carrot from the back of his throat. He saw it all back there. All of Dixon’s merriment. He wants to hunt. So do I.

“Once I get clearance, we go in.”

Y and I have never talked much. We stick to practical words. What we will do. What we need. A bird hits the window and drops straight down. That happens dozens of times a day. This house sits in a bed of bird carcasses.

Tonight the cloud cover is high and thin. We decide to sit outside and watch the sky. See what it looks like now. We drag reclining lawn chairs and blankets out onto the lawn. It feels like an occasion. We are excited.

“I called the board.”

Y is sitting a pot of tea on a small table between the chairs.

“I don’t know why.”

I lift the pot lid and stir the loose leaves.

“I work for them.”

Y scoffs.

“Really? Are you sure?”

The light shifts from pink-grey to darkness just like that. Nothing gradual. No magic hour.

“They confirm anyway.”

The temperature has dipped abruptly. My breath freezes the tip of my nose. Blankets.

“Ok. Good. So we go in. First thing.”

Yes we do.

“They’ve changed the protocol for Dixon.”

Y doesn’t know the word.

“They want me to do it differently now.”

Y exhales loud. Impatient. Hates me seeking out authority. Teen man.

“No infiltration. No finesse. They want me to find him and terminate him and whoever’s in the room or on the street or near him. They think the town council has covertly requested him, that the entire town’s a snake pit before he even gets there.”

Y likes this. Figured he would.

“So what, we go into town and just start shoot-ing?”

“No. That’ll get us killed. We find a place to watch from. We hope we see something.”

Y lays his head back and looks up.

“There’s guns in the shed and the basement. Hunting stuff. Big shotguns. A couple rifles.”

I figured there was.

“We need to saw those off. Bring me the rifles in the morning. See if I can’t modify them a bit. Be nice to have something automatic.”

Y’s arm stabs up. He points.

“Look!”

I have never seen it like this. The stars are loopy. There are fewer of them but the ones that remain are nearly as big as the moon. It’s an effect of the orbit. Light bends and merges. It looks like white bulbs on a high ceiling. Polka dots, not points. At first it’s breathtaking, because it’s so different, then it crushes you. I feel claustrophobia. Like my breath is being pushed back into me by the sky. We are too big.

“Wow. What do you think?” Y asks.

“I think it doesn’t look like it used to.”

Y whistles.

“It’s like you can touch it.”

Y’s hands wander around through the bodies of light.

A brightness low in the northern sky. Northern Lights, I think. We both watch. A long mane of prickles that spin off and fade. Then a series of puffs: pure white, silent. A few at first. Then more. The puffs appear higher. They hang, snow white then thin and drift. A couple pop closer in the sky above us.

“What is that?”

There is yellow bruising where they first appeared.

“That’s people.”

A sizzling red line in the bruise. It opens like a zipper and an orange column descends.

“What’s happening?”

“Too many peeling at once. They’re going pyroclastic.”

You can see the thrust of the fires, the force. Millions of bodies cremating at once and driving all that energy into the ground. Magma from inner space punching a hole in. It is a terrifying and awesome thing to see. What if it didn’t close? What if the billions came down like bath water through a drain? It would kill us all. The fires would be global. The ash would block the dying light and the heat of the sun would bounce away, never reaching us. The zipper closes. The volcano ceases. Just an ember glow. The pops continue above us. Single bodies incinerating. They look like cherry blossoms. Opening then falling apart in the wind.

“We should go inside.”

“Why?”

“Well, not sure how far away that was but there’s always a shockwave. Let’s go in the basement.”

We are in the basement for only a few minutes when it hits. Glass breaking. Furniture snapping. A heavy roar. It continues after even after the shockwave has blown past. It has left a strong wind behind.

Y has the barrel of a shotgun in a vice and he saws it. I sit with a rifle on my lap. It’s semi-automatic. I am cleaning it. Oiling it. We found a man and four girls on the floor of the root cellar surrounded by broken jars of pickles and beets. They had been lying there for a long time, moving the slop around with tiny seizures. We closed it off but you can still hear them fidgeting a bit.

In the morning we climb the stairs. It is still dark. Probably the ash cloud. The floor is covered in broken glass. Window frames busted in. The door flat on its back. There’s a thin dry patina over everything. Dust.

Y is sliding our guns into a bag and I stop him.

“We carry them. Lose one, you lose one. Lose the bag, you lose ’em all.”

Y nods and hands me the semi-automatic and a handgun. He takes two sawed-offs and tries to hang them in belt loops. I stuff cartridges in pockets, socks, a small bag.

We eat oil and vitamin D. Drink water. Sit in the white darkness.

If the cloud clears, we’ll ride. If not, we’ll still ride.

There is ash drifting across Airport Road. The road dips and banks like a mad ribbon. Entire forests spring from rearing walls then fall as if dropped by a hand into bottomless valleys. It used to be beautiful. Now it looks slick with black rot. The colour is uniform. The forests are drowning in unbreathable light. The ash forms zebra marks in fallow fields. At least the cloud is thinner, higher. A light mist has turned to glue on our windshield and we have to stop to pull it back.

Y turns off this road onto a county road before we get to Avening. That’s where he is.

“This where you tracked him?”

Y nods. I grant him the get. School board said he had been using the meadows behind the community hall to gather folks. I pat the scar underneath my navel. There is new muscle there. I am in old body and it has changed. I wonder if Y is. Has he been sneaking SSRIs? He seems more animated, more focused than ever. Pre-syndrome. New body. Won’t last long. He appears to be much older. Deformed by this. His brow is pointed. His shoulders out-size him.

“There’s an off-road lane through the woods up here. Farmers used it to access the back of fields. Let’s see what we can see if we crawl in close.”

Y’s driving too fast. I keep forgetting he’s a kid. So does he.

“Ok, pull over. I drive from here.”

He stops short. Can’t tell if that’s just inexperience. The smell outside the car is distinct. I smell maple salmon. Clearly just that. Maple salmon. I have to stand still for a full minute before I climb into the driver’s seat.

“So what’s the plan? Are we going to war with a whole town?”

The maple salmon smell is in the cab now. The smell of bodies falling from the sky.

“Nope. We let them do most of the work.”

The way I figure it, if the school board thinks this town is already dangerous, already lost, then I’ll let Dixon strike his set before I kill him. I don’t want the blood of everybody on my hands.

We see fires burning through the trees ahead. I stop the truck.

“Okay. We don’t shoot anybody. Not unless they come after us.”

Y nods. I’m not sure if he’s relieved or dis-appointed. I know for a fact he is prepared to kill people. Can’t tell if he’s itching to.

We advance to about fifty metres of the perimeter of the field. I place Y behind a large fallen willow and I move up into the thinner trees. There are three fire pits. About four or five hundred men, women, and children gathered. They are all wearing pyjamas. Some have old-fashioned night caps on their heads. Some carry candles. There is soft singing from different groups. The sound overlaps. It is a sombre but light celebration. Kids carry stuffed toys. The flash of cameras. Strollers. A few wheelchairs.

I see no sign of Dixon, but I’m pretty sure we’ve crept up on the last night on earth. I fall back to the truck and wave Y over. It’s three in the afternoon but it’s been twilight all day. The monotonous scale of things is giving me a bit of vertigo. Lead sky, lead ground, lead light, lead morning, lead day. It was looking at my watch that made me swoon. Lead time. The trees are crudely drawn and heavily filled in. A rude hand has crushed a pencil into the heart of everything out here.

“Are we just gonna let them all die?”

Y has moved from would-be mass killer to would-be saviour in a matter of minutes. He just wants to know which one so he can finally be it and it alone. I don’t answer his question. It’s a good one. Am I a killer or a saviour? I know better than that.

“Do you think he’s come here? Is he gonna do his thing tonight?”

The thrum of song hangs in the forest. It’s hard not to feel awe.

“I think there’s a good chance.”

“You wanna let them die or do you wanna kill them?”

A grackle shoots through the trees and beheads itself on a branch. There are bats out. Middle of the day. They tend to hit the ground then rise a foot or two and whoomp back down. Over and over again until they die. Now I can smell the smoke from the fires. It consumes the sickening maple salmon odour.

“They sing.”

Y nods. Then looks to me. Does that mean we should let them die? Are they ready?

There he is. I can hear him. I step out of the truck and hold a hand out to Y. Stay.

I move closer but still can’t hear what he’s saying. Just the tone. A preacher’s tone. Lifting and dropping then lifting higher. I can see him now. He’s in an orange t-shirt. White hair. Thin. Can’t see his face from here. But that’s Dixon alright. People are sitting, listening. The occasional murmur of assent. Infant crying. There is someone beside Dixon. A woman in a brown dress. She’s with him. Not town. Dixon stops talking then the woman breaks out into song. An ancient church song. Her voice is clear and loud. Strange to hear something so clean cut through the forest. Dixon is leading a steady clap. I think things are gonna start soon. I turn to the truck, Y sits in the dark cab. I can hardly see him. I wave him out.

Y brings the guns with him. I walk back to grab mine. He is ready. His eyes are cold. I feel a need to temper this.

“This is a terrible day, Y.”

Y looks frustrated.

“We are going to be part of a massacre.”

Y swallows. He is sweating.

“Are we doing this?”

“You’ll do what I tell you to do, but remember this: we—you and me—we didn’t ask for this. We do this for a bigger reason than any we may harbour.”

Y is flustered by this. It feels grey.

“We are the good part here.”

Y lowers his head. That’s what I wanted. Lower your head, pal. This is where we need to come from. I hook my hand around the back of his neck and give him a quick shake.

“We’re gonna come out the other side of this different than we are now.”

Y takes a deep breath.

“So let’s respect these lives that are about to end.”

Y looks up. His cold eyes are wet. Don’t quite need that, actually.

“Let’s know that we are cruel and that God will abandon us.”

I lift his gun to his chest and bang it into him.

“It’s His bad world, son.”

This works. He knows what this means. He’s ready again. I take him to a sheltered spot just inside the tree line. We crouch. The singing has stopped. Four men are unravelling a long cable, rolling it down the centre of the field. Several woman are positioning people along the cable. People are finding their place and holding on. Some children will not give up their stuffed toys and hang on to the cable with one hand.

“We’re going to let them finish.”

Y doesn’t move. Doesn’t react.

“I don’t want to run in there shooting at women and children.”

Y clenches his teeth.

“Do you?”

“No, sir.”

The massive crack of electricity takes me by surprise. White spittle flies up and through the line of people. No screams. Just a horrible snapping. It doesn’t stop. For a full ten minutes. Then it stops. It’s darker now and hard to see the bodies. You can smell them, though. Skin scorched into flannel. Bang! I can make out the woman walking up one side of the line. Bang! The muzzle flare. She’s putting down survivors. I can hear them now. Moans. Bang! She shoots another five or six times and the moaning stops.

“Okay, we run in now. You take her out and I’ll get the Seller. It’s dark enough that we should get pretty close before they see us. Fire when I say.”

I’m going to throw your brains out on the grass, Dixon.

“Now! Go!”

We launch from the trees with our weapons up. Too much noise. I don’t want a firefight in the dark. Y moves apart from me and faster. I stop, lift the gun, and put Dixon in the crosshairs.

“Dixon!”

He is thinner than I remember. Same long sharp nose. Heavy brow. That’s you, buddy. Your hair’s white.

“That you, phuddy?”

“I’m gonna kill ya in a second, Dix. You’re gonna die.”

“What for?”

“How about crimes against nature, for a start.”

Dixon laughs.

“I phought that’s what we do? Me and you.”

The woman has walked over to Dixon. Y is moving in closer.

“Look up, Dix. Here comes God!”

I pull the trigger. Nothing.

I pull the trigger.

Y has reached the woman.

They stand side by side.

Y has emptied my gun.