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Summer Breeze (221 hits)

Category: UberMadness! Entry
Labels: Ubermadness_IV

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Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2006-10-09 16:15:58 EDT

This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.

There was a time when bashing a man's skull in with a hammer was a violation of the common law.

That time is gone.

The fall of civilization came on the Summer Breeze.

All of the madness and blood and destruction that followed were born in the Pacific Ocean. That's what most of the old people agree upon. Some of the old people, the Faithful, say we were being punished and feeling the wrath of God. The Faithful are just as crazy as the Affected. The idea of the sea vomiting this sickness into the world makes sense, in a way, because there was no cause, no plan, and no retribution. It just happened.

-

The man was trying to rape a little girl. She was about ten years old, and considered fair game at that age. This was on a swath of green grass in the empty shell of what was once Jamestown, North Dakota. He had pulled off her pants and shoes and climbed on top of her. He was bare-assed and holding her down with one hand while hawking a gob of spit into the other to make himself slick when I brought the business end of the hammer down on the top of his head.

I have three weapons. A long knife with a broken tip for slashing, a boot knife for stabbing and throwing, and my hammer. The hammer is all old people stuff. Old people steel, old people rubber on the grip. Stamped on the neck of the hammer is a word. Craftsman. It hangs from a rawhide thong on my belt. My father gave it to me when I was small. The hammer is my favorite. No one is making things like that today. Old stuff is steel and glass and plastic and nylon. New stuff is wood and clay and leather and wool.

There was a muffled crack and the hammer bounced back. The man looked over his shoulder as if someone had just called his name. I hit him again and this time I broke skin and fractured more bone.

Blood ran down his forehead and cheeks. He shook it away as if it was sweat.

-

My father told me that there was a time when life was good. Some people had more than others, but life in general was good in this country called America. Then the Summer Breeze came, crossing the country from west to east. People were affected. The Affected acted on their most hidden desires, followed base impulses they had restrained all their lives.

Blood ran on every street in every city and town. Blood ran on dusty country roads. Blood ran in the great airplanes that once soared through the skies and in the automobiles that once clogged now empty roads. There were atrocities beyond counting. Parents attacked children and children attacked parents. Domestic animals were nearly wiped out in an orgy of slaughter and feeding. Great fires burned, cities fell.

America fell.

-

I've seen men with sturdy skulls take twenty or thirty hits from a blunt instrument. It is a tiring way to kill a man. I gave the hammer a turn. Now I was working with a two-pronged claw. I leaned over and pulled a curved plate of bone out of place. It dangled from a flap of scalp. I reached into the man's head with two hooked fingers and ripped out a chunk of brain. I would have eaten that fresh meat but the man's skin was mottled red, and I couldn't tell if he was Affected or just excited. I leaned down and held the gray-red glob in front of his eyes.

"I think you dropped this, friend," I said.

The man looked at me and scowled. "Gagga-fagga," he said. He made a shooing motion with his spit-slick hand.

He looked down at the girl and started gibbering.

I hooked two fingers into his skull again, and he let out a yell.

"Nuh-nunna-FUH!"

I flicked a wad of brains over my shoulder, and dug in once more.

The man stiffed, rolled off of the girl and onto his back, and began to flop around. He spurted and an arc of spunk leaped into the air.

The little girl got to her feet. She was wearing a soiled, baggy t-shirt. Her arms and legs and face were thin. She had nor been eating enough.

"What's that say?" I gestured at her shirt.

She looked down and frowned. "¿Qué?"

The girl put one hand between her legs, covering herself. She didn't have any hair yet. My dad used to say you could get locked up or killed for fucking a boy or girl who was hairless.

I grabbed her shirt and yanked on it. I briefly felt her ribs under my fingertips, and the rounded curve of a budding breast. Tits but no hair? That was new to me.

"¿Qué dice?"

She had a thick Mex accent, but she wasn't stupid. Ignorant flatheads were all over the country. To some survivors the flatheads were good for fucking when they were a little more mature than this one, and when they were hairless and titless they were good for barter. They took the place of a lot of animals. Beasts of burden. Pets. Meat.

She read her shirt, upside down, long hair falling down over her face. Her hair was clean, and under those dark strands her skull was nice and round. Somebody taught this little one right.

"Hu-ween the end of el mundo ees cayming, you need to be hu-wearing theese fuhking shirt."

-

Those who survived had children like me. There aren't many of us. The Affected had children as well. We call them flatheads.

Flatheads literally have half of the brains of survivors, maybe less. They are dumber than dogs, but the ones with a gentle nature are just as easy to train. The skulls of flatheads are almost like the tops of tables, with none of the curve of a normal skull. Some of them are blubbering tyrants holding sway over groups of their kin. Some of them are filthy roadside bandits. Most of them are just simpletons, walking meat for the Affected.

I've seen flatheads corralled and slaughtered like cattle, human bodies spit-roasted for hungry crowds of the Affected. I've seen two Affected men corner a flathead woman and cut her in half so each of them would have something to fuck and eat. Then again, the Affected would that to a survivor woman as well.

The Affected are violent and unstable and almost as smart as survivors, and that is what makes them dangerous.

When I meet a single one of the Affected I kill them. More than one Affected should be avoided. Flatheads I judge on a case by case basis. Some are harmless. Some need to be put down.

I killed my first Affected when I was four years old. Back then, we still had bullets for guns. No more. Bullets and gasoline and electricity are all things of the past. If there were more survivors we could very likely start rebuilding, but there are too few of us, and the Affected are still scheming and fucking and killing.

If their rage didn't always get in the way the Affected might actually accomplish something, but they never seem to get anything done that doesn't take more than a few minutes.

The Affected outnumber the survivors ten to one. The Summer Breeze has come and gone, so there are no new Affected ones. Survivors have normal children, like me. The Affected breed flatheads, some docile, some malevolent, and some violent. All the Affected strive for is screwing and killing, so they are creating a lot of useless children. The children of survivors will likely have normal children. No one knows what the children of the flatheads will be like, but it is said they enjoy a good fuck just as much as the rest of us, although I would imagine it would take a flathead boy a considerable amount of time just to find the right hole.

-

I grabbed the girl's pink denim pants and gave them to her. I kicked her shoes to her and pointed at her thigh.

"You'll want to clean that off."

She gave me a questioning look.

"That." Mex for spunk? I had no idea. Eyaculata? Sounded too religious. How about man cream? "That nata del hombre on your leg."

"Ayiii," she whispered, squatting and grabbing a handful of grass and rubbing at her leg until the glistening streamer was gone and a fragrant green stain remained.

I picked up my pack and bedroll. "What's your name?"

"Fuhk you," she said. "You hu-wanna stuck your preek in me too, eh? Fuhking greengo preek."

I laughed out loud, something I hadn't done in a while. I popped the buttons on my canvas pants and showed her my soft greengo preek.

"See? Suave. Not interested."

She frowned, and I told her what she wanted to hear before she had to ask.

"Yes, you are pretty, mucha Linda. ¿Comprende?"

She nodded. One minute she is about to be raped, the next she is insulted. It happens to the pretty ones more often. The commodity that damns her could also save her.

"I'm hungry," I said. "Let's find some food."

We found some berries growing through the tumbled remains of a parking lot filled with rusted hulks. I saw a rat scuttling by and threw my knife. After I built a little fire in the shell of an old van, I cut the rat apart, inspecting it for disease, and giving thanks as my father once did.

"Thank you, little one, for helping us live another day."

-

The Summer Breeze hit the Americas hardest. Later the madness would move across the Atlantic Ocean and spread around the world. The rest of the world is where we were twenty years ago.

When America began to fall, the once friendly country of Canada built a wall along the northern border. My father said it took years to complete. It still stands. McKinnon's Wall could not stop an airborne infection. I've never heard of anyone crossing the wall. There are rumors that the entire country is full of Afflicted savages.

To the south, Mexico created a living wall, called la Línea de la Sangre. This Line of Blood was maintained by survivors, men and women armed with guns and axes and clubs. In the years since its formation it has broken up into fiercely protected villages along the border, some friendly, some not.

-

There was no God guiding my hand, no divine intervention of the Faithful at play when I used my hammer. The girl was about to be raped, then either traded or killed and eaten. I stopped it, and now she is with me.

Like the Summer Breeze that started all of this long ago, there was no direction behind it. It just happened.

I am older now. My father died two years ago. I am old enough to begin passing on what I know, otherwise it will be lost. My father told me this was something I must do. I am seventeen. It is time.

The girl told me her family was dead. They were slaughtered by a horse gang, just after the snow melted. That was six month ago.

If it wasn't for the fact that most riders are in gangs that hit and run I would have been on a horse long ago, but if you ride a horse you have a target on your back.

She had managed to slip away while the horse gang ate her family's healthy brains and hearts, cutting the big muscles out of their legs for carrying meat.

"Fuhking greengos comieron mi madre. I see them cut off her teets."

She said this happened in a small forest outside the city, most likely an overgrown park. She told me she hid in the shadows and tore a strip of bark from a tree.

"What for?"

"I put la corteza in my mouth. So they no... hear me scream."

Smart move. She sure as hell wasn't a flathead. She would do fine.

-

It was said that the sea opened up and a ejected a plume of matter high into the sky. That plume was caught by the winds and carried across America on the Summer Breeze. My father used to talk about the various theories of what was in that plume. I don't remember much of it. It was science talk and I find that difficult to understand.

I had an old magazine called Popular Science that had a lot of stories on the Summer Breeze, which was called the Japan Flu back then. Before I got a chance to read much of it, not that I would have understood all of it, I fell in a river and it fell out of my pack.

There were many earthquakes in the American west at the time the plume was tossed into the sky, and the earth still shakes there today. Great waves washed the coastline, crushing coastal cities and causing flooding far inland. Father said the floods created the California Sea. He said that before I was born there were fertile farmlands across the interior of California, where there is now a sea. That western sea has good fishing. Whales come and go through the Los Angeles Inlet. After the earthquakes and flooding, the Summer Breeze came.

Father said it was believed to have started in the Marianas Trench. He talked of tectonic plates and undersea eruptions and superheated gasses that thrust diatoms and other life up and away from the ocean floor.

His knowledge of this came from television, a glass fronted box that carried images and sounds from everywhere, both stories and information. He said people would sit in front of these boxes for hours at a time, but I think he was making that part up because it sounded ridiculous.

Whenever I discover a library that hasn't been burned down I look for good maps, and science books. In most cases surviving library books have been scavenged, likely for fireplaces and butt wiping and rolling papers for wild tobacco, and many community buildings like libraries and hospitals and schools were set on fire in cities and towns across the country many years ago. When I do find intact books about science or history I try to look up these things father talked about. I haven't found any answers yet.

-

That first night we sat by the fire and talked. I asked the girl her name and she said I could call her whatever I wanted since I was feeding her and protecting her and by her reasoning I owned her. We went back and forth on this for a while, until I started getting a headache.

"Look, all I want to know is your name, girl. I don't own you. You are free to go."

"But you telled me that eef I go away I hu-weel go hungry, an eef I stay you hu-weel feed me."

"Yeah, I said that."

"So hu-what am I? Your pet? Your leetle poosy? You hu-wanna teach me treecks?"

"All right. I'll call you Peli."

She frowned at me while digging in to roasted rat.

"Short for peligroso. When I talk to you I fell like I'm going to go crazy. That's dangerous. You're dangerous."

Peli said she would call me Cabeza Blanca because of my pale blond hair.

"My name is Frank," I said. "That will do fine."

We settled on Franco.

We ate rat and berries. I asked her where she was from and she shrugged. I asked her what she knew of the world and she shrugged. I asked her if she could read or write and she started to pick her nose, bored with me.

I pulled a soft paper book out of my pack. I read a little, by the light of the fire.

My father says that before the Summer Breeze came books were dying. Everyone wanted plug-ins. Plug in tools. Plug-in food. Plug-in stories.

Ever since I could remember, father made me read from books. Story books, cook books, history books, it didn't matter. He told me reading and writing were skills as important as hunting and navigating by the stars. 'No son of mine is going to be a grunting beast,' he would say. 'You will speak well and write well.' I hated him when I was little. Now I miss him every day, like I broke something inside that just won't heal.

Books were all that remained if you wanted a good story. The world was full of flatheads who would wipe their asses with the pages of soft paper books if they had even that much in the way of smarts. Luckily for me, flatheads would just as soon shit their pants.

Science and history books were scarce, but story books were easy to find if you were willing to sift through the wreckage of old homes. The old people must have loved their made up stories more than anything else in the world.

The books in my pack were strange blends of story and science and history. They made learning an enjoyable exercise.

I read to Peli from a book about bees. I was learning that bees were important to the fruits and vegetables that feed us, and when I saw one I never swatted at it.

"With her antennae she probes the darkness of the hive, measures danger, distinguishes friend from foe, and sniffs out pollen and nectar. A bee's antennae may be the primary equipment that puts her in touch with forces that elude researchers who try to cross that fine and invisible line between science and the unknown powers she is tapped into."(1)

Peli yawned. "Puro pelo."

I kept reading, to myself. I couldn't blame her. At that age I also thought reading was pure bullshit.

Later we huddled back to back under the blankets I had in my bedroll. It was September, and the nights were chilly. When I felt her little hand on my gringo prick now hard with wanting, I rolled over and told her to knock it off and go to sleep.

She reached for my prick again. Smart mothers teach their little girls and boys how to give jerkjobs. It makes for easy barter and it can sometimes derail a rape.

I noticed that she had stripped off all her clothes. Her round belly had been hidden by the baggy t-shirt.

Was she pregnant? I wasn't sure. I didn't have a lot of experience with women. I thought she was too young to conceive, but her belly said otherwise.

Not that most guys in my position would have given it much thought. They would already be stabbing away between her skinny little legs.

I wanted this young girl for her brains, not her body. My father said that information was lost with every passing day. If we were ever to stop attacking each other like packs of stray dogs we had to retain what knowledge we had accumulated.

I rooted in my bag for another book, one about a big sea storm in a place called Galveston, over a hundred years ago. I read to her by the red light of glowing embers.

"At the very center of the eye, the air is often utterly calm. Sailors throughout history have reported seeing stars at night, blue sky during the day. Often, however, the eye is neither clear nor cloudy, but filled with a liquid light that amplifies the stillness, as if the world were suddenly fused in wax. The sea, however, is anything but calm."(2)

Later, when Peli was asleep I got up and walked to the edge of the parking lot. My prick was still hard. It felt heavy, like it had been carved from stone. I jerked off, took a piss, and got back under the blankets, craving a fuck like a man craving steak and having to make do with greens.

-

Father said diatoms were tiny living things. Some of them lived in the very deepest part of the ocean where no living person had ever been. When water and hot gasses formed the plume that surged out of the sea and up into the sky, countless diatoms were carried along. Torn away from the place they had lived for millions of years and released from the pressure the deep sea placed on them, the diatoms burst open in the high atmosphere. Whatever was in the diatoms, whatever microscopic thing made many of us sick and created the Affected, was carried on the winds and sprinkled across America like malignant seed. Warm summer breezes carried the disease everywhere.

-

We would follow the Old Roads.

With winter coming I knew we had to go south. I decided we should head for Nevada or Arizona. Father and I passed through the state of Florida, now known as Wet Windy by the vast legions of moronic flatheads living there, and I saw what a sea storm could do.

California had more flatheads clustered on the shores of their inland sea than any other place I knew, and there were earthquakes all the time now, but there were also a lot of survivors in the southwest, and the chance for barter. There might even be a commune we could join for the winter.

In a year of wandering the borderland close to the two thousand mile long McKinnon's Wall, Peli was the first person I had met that I could talk to.

I met a lot of flatheads. I had sex with ones that were docile and pretty and chased away ones that were annoying. I avoided the Affected whenever I could.

Peli didn't piss her pants in front of me or try to chase me away. She was normal. Aggravating, but normal. And that was rare.

Peli and I followed the Old Roads.

29 South as far as Kansas City, now called Meat City, because it was the biggest marketplace anywhere for meat traders, and you could find anything from cows to dogs to flatheads, in any form you wanted, smoked, dried, or movable livestock. There were too many survivors packed too close in that place, and more often than not they carried on like the Afflicted, fighting and raping and acting disagreeable.

From there we would take 70 West for only a short way, no use going to Colorado with winter coming, and then 35 South before steering clear of Oklahoma City, where an Affected madman named James Rhoden had been Governor for the last five or six years. You could easily move around the outskirts of the city, as they were marked by great stakes that my father said once held up wires that carried voice messages in the days before little plastic things called cells carried those same messages without wires, and I believed none of this, having never heard a magic voice from out of the air. Rhoden impaled people on those tall wooden stakes. He also put up mile upon mile of fences, with human bodies entwined in the steel wire. Oklahoma City was surrounded by a ring of bones and rotting flesh.

From there we could take Old Road 40 into the open west. There were Indians in those lonely places who would barter and show you where you could hunt and fish as long as you kept moving. Being caught squatting on Indian lands meant being sent on your way with your mouth sewn shut around a fire-hardened ball of dung and a shovelful of hot coals up your ass. Father says the Indians lost a lot of their lands once, and they were not going to let it happen again. Father also said there were very few Affected among the Indians and no one knew why.

As we traveled, I talked with Peli, all day and into the night. In weeks her heavy Mex accent began to melt away, becoming just a lilt as she mimicked the way I spoke. And she was asking questions almost faster than I could answer.

Whenever I asked her a question, always the same question, she looked away.

I wanted to know if she was raped. She would not say.

As always, the talk circled back to the question of why the world was the way it was.

We got more answers than we ever could have wanted after six weeks on the road. In a place called Little Sioux we met a man named Fennister.

Peli saw it first, a tower of iron beams reaching into the twilight sky, on the edge on the abandoned town. On top of the tower was a long box of wood and metal. There were lanterns hung on each end of the box, and they held tiny whickering flames.

The massive metal legs of the tower were wrapped in razor wire. A cool evening breeze was whistling among a thousand sharp points.

There was a huge hand-painted sign. Hanging near the sign, on a cable that rose up the tower, was an old steel bucket. I asked Peli to read the sign to me.

"Eef you want to speak to a ceeveelized yooman bee-ing, please answer my three questions and write your answer weeth the pen and paper een the bucket. Then reeng the bell."

In smaller hand-painted letters were the three questions. There was a pencil and a pad of paper in the bucket, as well as a brass bell.

"This is smart," I said. "A good way to weed out flatheads and the Afflicted."

Peli snorted. "What about survivors weeth hammers and knives?"

I pointed to more writing, on the side of the bucket.

DON'T FUCK WITH ME. I HAVE A GUN AND BULLETS.

I picked up the pen and paper and read the questions.

POLAR OPPOSITE OF SAD

I wrote down HAPPY

MOVING THE FEET OR BODY TO A MUSICAL RHYTHM

I wrote down DANCING.

AFTER THEY ARE EGGS AND BEFORE THEY ARE FROGS

I wrote down TADPOLES.

I put the pad and pen in the bucket and picked up the bell. When I rang it the sweet sound seemed to go on forever as it rolled away into the still evening sky.

There was a ratcheting sound from high above, and the bucket was reeled up and out of sight.

A few minutes went by, and then a light came on, shining down on us. We heard a metallic clanking as a ladder made of thick cables and aluminum ties was unrolled, the end of it swaying in front of us.

We climbed up the ladder, taking our time. By the time we reached the narrow trap door into the floor of the box my hands were aching, and Peli's face was pinched. We entered the box and found ourselves in a metal cage. There was another empty cage in front of the first.

A light was shining on us. The other end of the box was dark.

"No weapons," a voice said. "Strip and step into the second cage. I can offer you food and drink, but I won't put myself at risk."

This was not an unusual request. Many peaceful communes have strip entry rules for new faces. Peli and I stripped naked. One wall of the cage was raised and we stepped into a second smaller cage, the wall dropping back in place behind us.

"Sorry for the inconvenience, but the business about the guns is mere fiction. I have to be cautious."

A man came out of the shadows. He inspected us, asked us to turn around slowly, and then walked away. I heard a few clicks, and long tubes over our heads filled with light.

"The roof and walls of my boxcar are covered in solar cells," he said. "I am able to enjoy battery-power, if I do not abuse the privilege."

He asked us to hold out or hands. He pricked at our fingers with little tubes of glass, and went away.

We could see him bent over a table, working under a domed light. Glass and metal clinked and rang softly.

Soon enough he was back, giving us a broad grin.

"Just making sure you are healthy," he said. "I had a quick peek at your blood."

He opened the cage and handed long wool blankets to us. We wrapped ourselves and followed the man down a short corridor into a large, bright room.

The room was filed with tables, the tables cluttered with science stuff. There were microscopes and glass flasks filled with liquids of every color and texture. There were trays of gleaming instruments. There was a cot in one corner, and across the room there was a separate table. A dead flathead was on the table. The flathead's head had been sawn off just above the eyes, and its short, flat skull was sitting upside down in a gleaming metal pan. The chest of the flathead had been cut open as well.

"Sit, sit," the man said," gesturing to a pair of wooden chairs. " I was overjoyed when I read three correct responses. The Afflicted often try to answer my questions. They never can, though. 'Go fuck ya momma' or 'Eat my anus' is the usual standard of their replies."

He brought us each a small white cup of hot brown liquid.

I sipped, and smiled. I hadn't tasted this in a long time.

"Is this tea?"

The man clapped his hands and nodded. "Yes-yes. Tea! I grow it myself."

"I am Frank," I said. "This is Peli."

Peli dipped the tip of a finger in her tea. She tasted it, grimaced, and set it aside.

"My name is Fennister," the man said. "I am a scientist!"

He announced his trade with the same flourish used by traveling magicians in roadside shows.

Fennister was tall and thin. He moved like a spider. He had thick spectacles over his eyes and a fringe of wild gray hair around his bald head. His clothes were stained and worn, and he was wearing a flapping white coat with many pockets.

"It is such a delight to have two real survivors here! You have no idea how often I am harassed by marauding gangs of the Afflicted and poor stupid flatheads. I dump shit and piss from my chamber pot down on the heads of the diseased ones. It makes then quite irate, let me tell you. As for the flatheads, I toss down table scraps from time to time."

Peli spoke up. "And cut off their fahking cabezas, too huh?"

"Now-now! This little one was quite dear to me. He did simple tasks rather well, washing my dirty laundry and tending a garden just over the hill. He would also defecate where he stood until I taught him that was unfathomably rude and unsanitary. He had a cancer in his tummy. You can go look if you would like."

Peli wasn't letting go. "So why do you chop off hees head?"

Fennister looked away. "To try and understand why. Why do flatheads exist? Why are they immune... did you know that? Flatheads are immune to the Summer Breeze bug, all of them. The Afflicted hold onto the bug, right to the end. Very few survivors are immune. Why? Curious..."

"Thank you for the tea, sir," I said.

Fennister shook his head. "My pleasure, my boy. It is simply delightful to be able to have a civilized conversation. With flatheads and the Afflicted I hear either grunting or shouting. We can have a nice chat and then you can, you know, be on your way."

I settled back in the chair, feeling warm and content. "This is a fine home."

"Ah, yes," Fennister said. "This was once a boxcar. Part of a train. You know, running across America on metal tracks? Old people stuff."

"Hmmm," I said. The idea was ridiculous.

My eyes were sliding closed when Fennister stood up and pulled a length of polished wood out of his coat. He raised this weapon over his head to strike at Peli, but Peli wasn't there.

I watched the young girl darting away from Fennister. She crawled under one of the cluttered tables.

"Oh you little—" Fennister paused, and looked at me. He grabbed one of my hands and lifted my arm. When he let go, my hand dropped and slapped against the side of the chair. "Isn't it wonderful? My own concoction. You feel nothing but lighthearted bliss. No panic. No concern. I promise you won't feel a thing when I work on you."

I opened my mouth, feeling as if I were floating. Nothing could hurt me. "What work?" My words were slurred.

Fennister gestured toward the skull of the flathead. "I've been working on the Afflicted and flatheads for years and years. It's such a rarity to find a young and healthy survivor. I should like to see what makes you tick. You will be doing a great service to science, my boy."

I tried to shrug, but it was too much effort. "Let Peli go. She is pregnant."

"Oh yes," Fennister said. "I am already quite aware of that fact. The question is... who or what impregnated her?"

I tried to get out of the chair. I might as well have tried to fly.

"Now," Fennister said, getting down on his hands and knees. "Where is that little one hiding?"

The legs of the tables made a low forest of shadows. Peli was under there, somewhere.

I heard a wet sound, and Fennister laughed softly.

"Poor thing," he said. "She's so afraid she has helplessly purged her bowels."

Fennister crawled a few feet to one side.

"It's alright little one. I'm not going to—"

There was a wet splattering sound, and Fennister began to scream with rage.

"You little CUNT how DARE you! I shall make you pay DEARLY for that!"

He stood and turned and I saw that his spectacles, as well as his nose and cheeks, were covered in shit. He took of his glasses, muttering to himself.

Peli darted by him, brushing his legs. One of her hands was dark and damp with her own waste.

Fennister swung his weapon and struck the floor. The polished wood shattered just above his hand.

"Damn it! That was my favorite baton!"

He tried to quickly clean his glasses, squinting at the sounds Peli made as she scrambled up onto one of the tables holding a few inches of splintered wood in one hand.

"Oops," I said, another slur.

"Eh?" Fennister said turning to face me, as Peli stepped across the table and looked him in the eye. "What's that?"

The little girl rammed the sharp length of wood into the soft spot under Fennister's jaw.

--

My father said everything had to die, eventually.

"The smarter something is," he said, "the harder it fights to live."

He told me this as he lay dying by the side of a road in Vermont. In my panic after he collapsed I thought he has said his ailment was caused by a stork, and I knew those to be large, beautiful birds. One entire side of his body was immobile.

"And sometimes," he said, "A smart thing gets to chose when it dies."

My father told me he was done. I would have to go on without him. He could not walk, he could barely speak. He had even pissed his pants.

"Finish me, my son."

I think I held off for two or three hours. I screamed and cried and tried to argue with him, but my father was smart, and stubborn.

"Just nick me here, with that sharp knife of yours. It won't hurt a bit, and I'll just feel like I'm going to sleep."

I remember shaking my head.

"I would rather die here, than try to struggle on and suffer further degradations. I would also put you at risk, my son. A man needs to be able to move quickly in this world."

I remember looking down at the knife poking out of my boot.

"Come on now, there's a good boy. See, night is coming on. I can see sunset and stars, I can head all the wild things calling out. I can smell the pines. I am in no pain. A man couldn't ask for more. Now come. Hold me. And cut."

I did as he asked.

As his blood ran out onto the road I bent low and held him. He whispered that he loved me and kissed me and squeezed my hand. He held on longer than I would have thought possible, but eventually his hand slipped free of mine, and I was on the road alone.

-

I awoke to the light of day.

Fennister was cold and pale, long dead.

Peli had managed to get a little gas stove going. She made us cups of coffee from powder in a jar, and we ate oatmeal from powder in little bags.

Eventually, I was able to stand up, and move about.

"Good work, Peli," I said.

She gave me a hug, squeezing me long and hard. "I don't know why I like such an eegnorant person so much. But I do."

We ransacked Fennister's laboratory home for lightweight goods worth taking on the road. I suggested we stay. It was safe and secure. Peli simply shook her head.

Peli was quiet until we were dressed and carrying full packs and walking down the road.

"Franco... the man said the disease ees coming back."

I stopped, and she stopped a few paces ahead of me, staring down the road.

"He was bleeding, but he told me theengs before he died. He said the Summer Breeze was coming back again and eet would be stronger than before."

"Did he say when?"

Peli shook her head, still facing away from me. Her long dark hair was shining in the sun.

"He said almost everytheeng would die."

I thought about that. It could be days from now. It could be years away.

"Peli, what did he say about your baby?"

The young girl said nothing. She started walking down the road, and I followed alongside her.

After a while, she took my hand.

I wanted to ask more questions, but I held my tongue.

Time would tell.

(1) The Queen Must Die and Other Affairs of Bees and Men © 1985 by William Longgood

(2) Issac's Storm © 1999 by Erik Larson

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Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-06-04 22:43:48 EDT (#)
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