The Pedestal (51 page)

Growing up, I used to think Chicago was monikered the Windy City because of the fierce winds that scour boulevards year-round. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I learned it was actually a stab at the local politicians back in the eighteen hundreds, who were reputed to be full of hot air. The thing is, on days like today, you can easily take it literally.

We’re all holed up inside today—me, my new bride, Mrs. Grace, and Truman—with the shades drawn, faces wrapped like terrorists with bandanas against any unseen drafts. With every gust, the wind fills the air with pink clouds of spores. Until today, I’d all but forgotten about them, but now I’m reminded of just how dire our circumstances are.

Truman agreed to accompany us here to marry us, and now that he’s fulfilled that purpose, he’s eager to return home. I can tell he’s not comfortable here; his hands are wrapped so firmly around his shotgun that his knuckles have gone white like the knobs of unwrapped bones. Our upstairs neighbors have worked their way down and are at work in the halls, kicking in doors and pillaging their way toward our apartment.

We could hide, and indeed, I did my best to plead a case in favor of it. But even as I defended the idea, I realized that the space is too sparsely furnished to hide with much effectiveness, and it provides no protection from anyone with enough brunt to force his way in. It’s a small apartment—two small bedrooms with no closet between them, a hall bathroom, a kitchen that opens into the living room. But for a linen closet in the hallway, there isn’t a single crevice large enough to accommodate a person—much less four.

So here we sit, like fish in a barrel.

I found a knife in the kitchen, and I’m holding it in one hand now, my other squeezing Mitzy’s with as much reassurance as I can muster. But I’m not fooling anyone. Any moment, that door is going to barge in and we’ll be overwhelmed by the violence of people who have not only survived in the absence of order, but have found joy in exploring their unbound proclivities. Until this very moment, it escaped me how reliant we had become on our NanoPrints, not only for access to information, but for the reigning in of our animalistic urges. Our minds have been weakened by the constant crutch of our implants, and with them gone, our thoughts are free to roam into sickly lands.

Outside, the spores of blood plants swirl about, seeking a bare patch to take root, whether it be on earth, structure, or flesh; those bizarre entities destroy everything in their paths, killing in order to thrive. And when a sharp rap resounds on our door, followed by a stout kick, it’s now clear that, for all its horror, this is the new formula for life. At its core, there’s no love or loyalty in animal survival.

And despite what I’ve always believed to be true, humans haven’t necessarily broken that mold.

On the fourth kick, the doorjamb finally gives and the door rips open with enough force that its knob is buried into the drywall. Mrs. Grace cries out, and I wish I could do something to calm her.

In spill four men dressed in piecemealed outfits, scavenged from bits of clothing that were never meant to coordinate with each other. In front is an absolute bull of a human being with a thick moustache and beard. He looks like a wilderness man, except that in the wilderness, such people live off the land rather than their fellow man.

“Well, looky what we got here,” he says. He has a guttural voice, like he’s got a bit of phlegm in his throat that needs to be coughed out. He glances around the room, soaking us all in. His eyes come to a stop on Mitzy, and suddenly his hairy face splits in a maniacal grin; even with her face masked, her beauty cannot be belied.

Oh, God help me
.

The hulk of a man takes a step toward her, poking at her with a pistol, and though I know he’ll kill me, I rise to intervene, brandishing my puny knife like a child’s toy. When the blast comes, I’m surprised at how little it hurts—until the man slumps to the floor at my feet, and I see Truman standing nearby, his shotgun trailing a plume of smoke. Half-standing, drenched in the blood of an ogre, I reach down and snatch the pistol from his hand, even as he twitches and groans his way toward death. My shoulder stings and I know I’ve been wounded, but it’s minor.

“Who’s next?” Truman growls. There are no takers. Just as quickly as they came, they are gone—leaving behind their dying leader like the cowards they are. Mitzy is weeping and I hold her until she regains her composure. Truman sees to Mrs. Grace, whose kerchief has fallen away, revealing a mouth frozen in a silent scream. Her eyes bounce from the intruder to Truman and back again. I can imagine what she’s thinking: All this death—do we really have to kill to survive?

“I’m terribly sorry,” he mutters. “I had to do it.” Mrs. Grace looks at him with horror staining her gaze and says nothing.

“You saved our lives,” I say. I realize as I say it that I’m really speaking for Mrs. Grace’s benefit, so that she’ll understand that regardless of how disgusting it was to witness, this man’s death was a tradeoff for her life—and not only did he give it willingly, he demanded that we act rashly.

With our door obliterated, what little sense of safety we enjoyed is gone. We’re afraid to merely relocate to another room, yet we can’t leave the building for the spore-laden wind.

It’s then that we hear the planes.

Outside, while the blood plants rule at ground level, the military rules the air. The planes are too numerous to track; each is a fat-bellied beast trailing rivulets of white, which almost immediately diffuse into a sagging fog. For nearly an hour, they circle the city, drizzling their payload over every square inch of real estate. As we peek out our window, I notice we’re not the only bystanders. I see darkened shapes in windows across the street—there must be twenty or more—and though I should perhaps feel some comfort in knowing that there are other survivors, that we’re not completely alone in this mess—all I can think of is the dead man on our floor. I guess I’d rather that we were alone, if it came with some assurance of safety from others.

Mrs. Grace has been increasingly distant since the onset of the plague, yet she’s fixed her attention even more inward in the last hour, and I can’t help but wonder if she’ll ever come back out again. Mitzy is stroking the elderly woman’s thin hair, whispering encouragement into her ear. But it goes unnoticed.

I’ve resolved to drag our intruder into the hallway, where at least we won’t have to look at him. I’ve heard the term
dead weight
before; until now, it never really registered that mass can change with death. On my own, I can’t budge him. Mitzy and Truman join the cause, and we soon get him out of the apartment. The floor where he died is soaked with gore, though; it’s still an improvement, but if my stomach is flopping with disgust, it’s probably safe to assume that the others will be likewise afflicted.

Mitzy finds an old welcome mat in the hallway and tosses it over the mess. I laugh at the irony—
welcome to your death
,
it seems to say—but the humor of this is lost on the others. Fortunately, I’m allowed to act out of turn in these conditions—we all are. So when Mitzy drags me into the back bedroom where the drapes are still pulled and begins to kiss me like there’s no tomorrow, I don’t hold it against her. Because for all I know? There is no tomorrow.

And besides, we’re married now.

It’s getting dark, and I’m spooning on the couch with Mitzy. Truman is sawing logs in a nearby chair, and Mrs. Grace hasn’t moved an inch.

At dawn, Mitzy is the first to wake. When she does, she shakes me violently.

“Wake up!” she yelps frantically. “She’s gone!”

I do my best to process this statement, which isn’t easy to do when climbing up the slick walls of sleep. She’s right, I see. Truman is rubbing his eyes, wondering what all the fuss is about. It takes only a second for him to understand what’s happened, too—that Mrs. Grace has left us.

Mitzy checks the bathroom as I peek into the hallway. Both are lifeless. At once, my new bride begins to cry. As a man, this is like kryptonite on its own—but combined with my own grief and a dangerously primal need to protect those I care about? It’s just too much. These people are all I have left in this world, and I feel that I’ve let my guard down, to the detriment of someone I made a commitment to protect.

I know what I’m doing is ill-planned and blatantly stupid—but I don’t care. I take the stairs two at a time down to the ground floor, cinching a torn bit of t-shirt around my face as I go. It defies logic that anyone would intentionally go out into this nightmare, yet something tells me that’s precisely what Mrs. Grace has done. Reaching the bottom of the stairwell, I see that the exit door is ajar. The lobby is dark, but I sense long before I slip inside that it isn’t void of habitation. I tighten my grip on the pistol, and I must admit that I feel powerful with it under my command.

I hear a rustling of fabric and from nowhere a man materializes, holding a bit of nail-studded lumber, winding up to whack me. I raise the gun and shake my head. I’m prepared to shoot him, and I realize this doesn’t disturb me as it once might have. On the contrary, I feel emboldened to step out of the shadows and into full view of danger. I’m desperate, and I’m armed.

Bring it.

The man falters and then slows to a halt. Now that he’s close enough to get a look at, I’m surprised to find that he’s not a man at all, but a boy—no more than twelve. He looks at the gun with what can only be described as lust. He wants this power so badly, and his willingness to attack me evidences that, even given his shortage of years on this planet, he’s more ready to pull the trigger than I am.

“Get back,” I say. He takes a single step back, and then waits. For a moment, I think he’s just testing his boundaries—isn’t that what kids do? But his face is in constant flux, quaking under the stress of inner battle. He’s not just testing me, he’s psyching himself up.

He wants to kill or be killed.

“Where are your parents?” I demand, as if it makes any difference—maybe I’m hoping a question or two will distract him from his fool’s errand. “Are they alive?”

“Fifth floor, dead.”

“How long ago?”

He shrugs, and though it might be a gesture of defiance, I believe him—time has nearly lost all meaning in this new world, with no power or clocks. No nexus.

His hands tighten on the stick again, and everything about his body language says that he’s poising for another rush.

“C’mon, kid. You don’t wanna do that,” I chide.

But apparently he does.

To my eternal shame, I don’t even try to outmaneuver or strong-arm him; I just pull the trigger. He drops to the floor with a rustling thud. It’s so easy to end a life. My heart is racing now, but I know the real blowback will come later, when I look in the mirror and cringe at the monster I see there, wearing my clothes. I turn toward the front door, and there she is. Leaning against the door, as if waiting patiently for a tram that will never come.

“Mrs. Grace?”

She doesn’t respond, but I know she can hear me, can see me. I know she has witnessed the carnage of what I just did back there. She’s seen it, and even if she’s already half-mad, her body still has the sense to cringe at my approach.

“It’s okay, now. I’ve got you.” I’m reaching out to her, wanting to comfort her, to protect her. But as my hand nears her, I realize it’s still holding the pistol. I balk and shove it in my belt. Her eyes are molten, brimming with contempt.

“Don’t you touch me,” she growls. “Whoever or whatever you are, you stay away.”

“It’s me, Mrs. Grace—Wilson.”

She squints at me, scrutinizing the man before her with disbelief.

“No you aren’t,” she insists. “You’re an imposter. You’re a cold-blooded murderer.”

My mouth drops open; I’m armed for battle, yet I have no defense against this sort of weaponry. She turns her back to me with an indignant swoosh and—just like that—pushes through the door. Before I even register what she’s done, she’s already vanished into a cloud of spores.

I cry myself to sleep later with Mitzy at my side. Though he’s reluctant to draw attention to himself under the circumstances, Truman is clearly beside himself. He wants so much to go home, away from this carnage. Even if it’s just an empty building, he’s invisibly tethered to it and longs to return.