Apocalypse blues x-1 Page 2

  "Hello?" my mother called hopefully.

  There was nothing. It was kind of a relief. I'd been tricked into meeting Mr. Cowper during one of my mother's confrontations, and to his credit, he was cordial, but chilly. What was odd was how desperately coquettish she had been, flattering him and making her painstaking pursuit seem like a casual visit. It was pathetic. He went along with the small talk, humoring her like a doctor in an asylum, and I could feel his sympathy for me like a chintzy gift from a rich relative. When he started asking me how I was doing in school, and Mum began to boast about what a genius I was, I felt physically ill-it was the sensation that he and I were watching her with the same pity.

  In the distance I could see the bulbous water tower by the highway. It made me wonder how long we'd have water pressure… and electricity, for that matter. A lump rose in my throat. My anxiety was interrupted by Mum's plopping down on the steps.

  "I can't take this," she said. "I just can't take it."

  Trying to sound reassuring, I said, "It'll be okay. I'm sure there are other people like us around." I could tell she was on the verge of one of her meltdowns. It was something I didn't think I could handle just then, as I was barely keeping it together myself. Give her a few minutes to cool down, I thought. "Listen, you take it easy for a little while," I said. "I'm just going to run over to the stoner house and take a look. I'll come right back."

  "No! By yourself? No way, buster, we'll drive."

  "Mum, it's twice as long to drive. From here I can just cut across the field, and I'll be back in five minutes. You know how careful I am."

  She was wavering, not sure what to do. With her graying hair and her housecoat, she suddenly looked very old and sad.

  Trying to clinch it, I said, "You know nobody's even going to be there. I mean, look around!" I waved at the ranks of empty cottages. "I'll be right back, I promise."

  With a worn-out nod, she said, "Okay, but don't scare me."

  "I won't." I bolted from the porch.

  Cutting across backyards and sparse woods, I felt exhilarated, free. At times my mother was a planet unto herself, with a dense, claustrophobic atmosphere and heavy gravity. She needed company, and it was my lot to provide it. Being alone never bothered me; I often thought I would do well in solitary confinement, as long as I had access to books. Of course, being cooped up in that cabin with her for more than a month didn't help. As my head cleared I even began to wonder if the whole Agent X business wasn't pure delirium. Not that I could believe that, but it was so unreal.

  I stopped to pee beside a vine-covered stone wall, listening to the trickle in the silence. It was so damn peaceful-yes, maybe there was nothing to be afraid of.

  Crossing the meadow under the power lines, I found Hull Street. It was a narrow dirt lane with more summer houses on either side. My feet crunched on the gravel, and I found myself treading lightly without quite knowing why. If there was no one around, why did I care? And if there was someone, shouldn't I make myself heard?

  Stoner Central lay at the end of the street, a double-wide trailer strung with Christmas lights. I had seen it at night, all lit up and booming vapid technomusic to a throng of future tin nitus cases. Now the place was quiet, and nearly invisible, set far back under the trees and surrounded by a low chain-link fence. Drifts of unraked pine needles covered the property. Whitewashed tires that might have been taken off the stripped car in the driveway served as planters. Around back, a decrepit patio set was visible under the pines, where there was a lingering icy crust from the last time it snowed.

  Worried about dogs, I made a racket opening the gate and waited. Just as before, there was zero response. I looked back down the road to see if anyone was watching, but nothing stirred except the trees. Standing still was the worst thing to do-it makes you imagine all kinds of things. Never being one to let my imagination get the best of me, I mentally slapped myself and went up the walk.

  A cold gust of wind swept through, slamming a screen door somewhere and making me turn my face away. It had been a very mild winter, but in the afternoons the wind always picked up. I entered the zone of shade around the house and climbed to the front door, kicking pinecones off the step. There were cigarette butts everywhere. We're all friends here-that was what I tried to communicate with my spritely knock.

  Once more there was nothing. The sunlit street looked a long way off, and I was ready to call it quits. I turned to go but, while turning, absently gave the doorknob a twist. It opened.

  Damn, I thought.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Feeling my skin crawl, I pushed the door in, and said, "Hello?"

  Rank, housebound air puffed out. It smelled like damp ash-trays and rancid milk. I felt for and flicked the light switch, but it was dead, so I leaned in to let my eyes adjust. For a second my heart seized up at what I thought was the shape of a person in the gloom-Oh God, oh God-until the shape resolved itself into a life-size cardboard cutout of Pamela Anderson. Getting a grip, I stepped inside.

  Not much to see: mustard-colored shag carpeting, a bunch of baggy old furniture, TV, stereo-typical guy stuff. Pamela was the only decoration. These were the kind of men who could argue heatedly about which pro athlete should be president. I tried the TV and got nothing, but there were several remotes, and it's possible I didn't do it right.

  So this was Stoner Central. I was a little disappointed. Except for a few cigarette burns the place was pretty clean. I'd always pictured something a little more exotically nasty. To tell the truth, I'd had a secret yearning to come in here since Mum and I first arrived, and had gone so far as to spy on their New Year's Eve party, skulking around under the trees as the place roared like a bonfire: sleazy-voluptuous tattooed women slithering against crude roughnecks, none of them much older than me, yet as confident in their skins as royalty, while music and laughter and the clink of bottles pushed back the solitude. I had fantasized about walking into that circle of light, all of them falling silent and the most scarily beautiful couple-the branded boy with the pierced lip and his languid, stunning gangsta princess-coming up and taking me by the waist. Welcoming me in.

  That party was the last peep we'd heard out of the house, and I realized it was likely that no one had been here since then. I crept across the living room and peered in the kitchen. Not too bad. The contact paper was peeling here and there, likewise the Formica, but on the whole it was at least as clean as our place. No dirty dishes or pizza crusts-these guys wanted their security deposit back. Spotting a wall phone, I snatched it up, but it was dead. This was getting to be annoying. I checked the refrigerator with a sense of trepidation, but it contained only basic condiments and a few cans of beer. I hate beer.

  There was a collection of tools laid out on the dining table as if on display: axes, hatchets, pruning saws, cleavers. The sight of all those sharp blades was vaguely unsettling, so I returned to the living room, thinking I ought to get back before Mum panicked.

  Crossing to the front door, I was struck again by the putrid milk smell. I had forgotten about it in the kitchen-obviously it wasn't coming from there at all. I took a step down the wood paneled hall… the smell was definitely stronger. The only room I could see into was the bathroom, on my right. Some idiot had broken the toilet seat, but other than that it looked empty and clean. No, the smell was farther down, in the vicinity of those closed doors. It had to be pretty ripe behind one of those. You had to wonder what was causing it.

  With terrific economy of motion, I was back outside, tugging the front door shut behind me. That I neither left it open nor slammed it in haste should put to rest any idea that I panicked. I was fairly secure about the source of that smell being nothing but, say, a rotting damp mop. But what would be the point of finding out?

  Kicking through a drift of pine needles halfway down the walk, I began to hear something. A pattering sound from the road. I slowed to listen. It was the sound of rapid footsteps-someone running.

  A jogger? There was something alarming in that ordina
ry sound, but I didn't want to jump to any paranoid conclusions. Chances were it was someone else who was feeling a bit marooned. Perhaps someone helpful. I couldn't see the person yet through the screen of trees, but in a moment our paths would intersect at the front gate. As the footsteps neared, I felt a strong, instinctive impulse to hide but limited it to stopping well short of the fence.

  Now I could hear other footsteps trailing the first. I pictured a whole gaggle of runners, a cross-country team sprinting by in their shorts as if nothing was wrong. God, that would be good. I was shaking.

  The first runner came into view, really moving, and it took me a moment to recognize my own mother. I just watched stupidly as a blue woman-her face the bruised color of a sparrow chick-ran deliriously toward me, dress flapping. Her open mouth was an obscene black hole. Then it clicked: That housecoat…

  "M-mummy?" I cried, stumbling backward.

  As she attempted to lunge over the fence, her dress became entangled in the hooked wires, and she fell. Senseless with shock and grief, I cried out and jumped to help her, but froze again at the sight of her rolling and heaving in the dirt like a wild animal. She was so blue, blue as someone in the throes of strangulation… but she was not choking. All the while she struggled to get loose, the huge black pupils of her glaring eyes were fixed on me. It was such a manic, predatory look that I shrank back with fear. Then the dress gave way like a shed skin.

  I don't remember screaming or running or anything else that happened for the next few seconds, but somehow I wound up crouched in the trailer, gasping for breath, with my back against the front door. The door rattled in its frame. I must have been in shock, because the strongest feeling I had was that I was late and my mother would be worried.

  Once when I was in fourth grade, I had been so late coming home that she called the police. Some other girls and I had been holding a kind of seance in a churchyard, having convinced ourselves that the statues of saints moved when we weren't looking. We even gave offerings of pocket change. But then some less-credulous older boys showed up and spoiled the illusion.

  The door stopped shuddering, and the thing outside leaped off the stoop to circle around back. The back door. I ran into the kitchen just in time to see my mother yank the screen off its hinges and smash the little window high in the door. Her whole arm snaked through, heedless of broken glass, a crablike blue hand skittering in search of the lock. Half her terrible face was visible in the opening, the mad dilated eye bulging with furious greed.

  Weeping, I jammed a chair under the doorknob, and shakily said, "Mum, stop." I couldn't look at her.

  "Lulu," she grunted. "Lulu help. Help Mummy, Lulu. Come out." Her voice was guttural, masculine. The sound of it made my hair prickle like static electricity.

  "Mum, please," I wailed. "It's me! Try to remember. Try."

  Her efforts became more frenzied, but it was no use-she couldn't reach the knob. Her arm withdrew like an eel, and I lost sight of her. Heart racing, I looked out the window over the sink just in time to catch a blur vanishing around the front of the house. There was a loud crash of breaking glass-the living-room window. Forcing myself to move, I arrived there just in time to see not only my mother but two more frenetic human monsters floundering in over the high windowsill. One of them had no eyes. It was a freakish feat of agility, this squirming invasion, and in a way it cleared my head, because it was nothing my real mother could have ever done in her wildest dreams.

  Flying on pure instinct, I barely spared them a glance as I rushed past and into the first door off the hall. I half shut myself in the bathroom before I realized the knob was missing, then lunged for the next nearest door, one that opened on a shelved linen closet packed with canned goods and emergency supplies. Damn it! Footsteps pounded toward me-the little daylight filtering through from the living room was suddenly blocked by the press of approaching bodies. I didn't dare look back, just barreled through the next door and locked it behind me. As I whimpered there in the dark, the door beat hard against my shoulder, shaking the whole house: BAM! BAM! BAM!

  My crying was a high-pitched whistle from deep in my throat, broken up by violent hiccups. That door's not going to hold, it's not, it's not…

  What was that smell? I was in the last throes of animal desperation, but even that had to yield before the stench. The stench. It filled the dark room like a dense, gamy vapor, like cut bait left in a tackle box all summer. I couldn't see anything, just a thread of light under the heavy blackout curtain, but I knew there was something rotten in there.

  I could hear the maniacs laying waste to the room next to mine, searching for a way through. It freed me to leave the door for a second and open the curtain a crack, just enough to admit a little light. I did this with trembling caution, not wanting anyone outside to notice and come crashing in. But there was no sign of them-the yard was empty. I turned and screamed.

  The room looked like a slaughterhouse. It had been a bedroom, with a futon on the floor, CD racks, and a high chest of drawers, but everything was spattered with black congealed blood, all the way up the walls. The center of the futon pad was a lavalike mass of gore, mixed with teeth and hair. Several blood-smeared yellow raincoats were draped on a chair alongside gloves, overshoes, and other protective gear. Wads of duct tape and cut plastic police restraints littered the floor. Remembering the tools on the dining table, I suddenly had a bizarre revelation: Where were these guys when I needed them? Instead of dropping dead from the horror, my brain seemed to rise to the unspeakable and take unexpected strength from this scene-not everybody was squeamish. I had the choice there and then to fall apart or live… and be this kind of person. Because the carnage before me was not the work of Agent X mental cases. It was the work of hard-hearted men.

  This was not a conscious thought process so much as an emotional rush that got me moving.

  I dragged the sodden, reeking futon over against the door and prepared to move the dresser in front of the window. Then I thought, Why? Barricading myself in this awful place wouldn't save me for long-screw that. Instead, I tipped the dresser onto the mattress and went to unlatch the window. It slid open easily, presenting a clear field of flight. Then I frowned: I'd never outrun those things. Not even my own mother. Anxiously, I started searching for a weapon, a club, anything to hold them off until I could get back to our car… and maybe away.

  The maniacs were going crazy in the hall, having heard my yelp and the dresser falling over. Still looking for any kind of weapon, I opened the closet and leaned in, then reeled backward as if slapped. In the middle of a heap of women's shoes stood a green plastic garbage can, filled nearly to the brim with purplish blue human remains. Amid the offal I could make out part of a jaw, ribs, hair, intestines. But that wasn't what had made me jump.

  The remains were alive.

  Though every joint seemed to have been severed, the whole mass seethed like an octopus. It made wet, smacking sounds, and I had the insane impression that it was aware of me-that those veiny, glistening lumps were surging in my direction.

  The bedroom door was coming apart. Moving like a sleep-walker, I closed the closet, casually crawled out the window, and dropped gently to the ground. Fresh air! Nothing was weird at all out there-it looked exactly the same as when I'd first walked up. I knew I hadn't been dreaming, but still felt self-conscious running for the road under that prosaic winter sky, as one who awakens kissing a pillow. I felt dirty.

  Going through the gate, I made the mistake of looking back and caught a glimpse of herky-jerky figures emerging from the window like bats from a crevice. They were so fast. Chrome-bright panic knifed through the cobwebs, spurring me to run harder than I ever had, harder than I really could for more than a short sprint. I'd never been much of an athlete, except for diving, and that didn't require much stamina.

  I came to the first crossroads and broke right, not daring my earlier shortcut. White noise began to fill my ears-the rush of blood to my head as my breathing shredded. I could taste iron. Pl
ease, God, I pleaded. I'd been avoiding backward glances, but as I ran I began to feel that perhaps the creatures were no longer after me, that they had lost interest. Lungs burning, I risked a glance and lost equilibrium, skidding, going down, skinning my hands and knees. Grit powdered my sweaty face and funneled down my dress. I hated myself.

  But there was no sign of any pursuit. Heart galloping, I got to my feet and scanned the road. Nothing. Nothing but-

  Movement flickered to my left, among houses and yards. I flinched, drawing a sharp breath. It was them, all three of them, coming across the lawn nearest the road and splitting up to cut me off. My mother was the closest, shamelessly charging up the center in her underwear, as rapid and jerky as a windup toy. Next was a man, a swarthy, unkempt soldier in tattered fatigues, whose face was the frozen scowl of a tiki idol. The last was a tall, limber boy who looked about my age but whose eyes were just hideous black sockets. He moved as surely as the rest.

  With their blue-gray complexions, they resembled a trio of rubber-limbed Hindu deities. Where I had turned right, they had come across diagonally to intercept me, demonstrating at least an animal cunning. They weren't tired. Their loony, distorted faces showed nothing but wild obsession. Not even cruel glee-I got no impression that I was sport, just a commodity.

  I doubled back, legs shaking, trying to duck the enclosing snare. The one angling to block my way was the blind boy, whose unhindered, gangly agility made me think, No fair! Tongue lolling out as he ran, he was wearing a tattered sweat suit and a gold medallion around his neck.

  They had me: I was blocked and had to stop in my tracks. My only hope was the field I had cut through to get here, though I didn't feel good about running over uneven ground. Eyes stinging with sweat, I launched myself over the roadside ditch and landed, scrambling on all fours, halfway up the far embankment. I grabbed at dead stalks of last year's milkweed, but they pulled out of the loose soil like bathtub plugs, and I sprawled to the bottom.