Part 2 (1/2)
Gary said, ”We're going to call it the La.s.so.”
Mark Spitz didn't answer. He had no idea what the man was referring to, so he waited for him to provide context. There was time. They were halfway to the street. The emergency lights still worked and they didn't have to worry about renegades lurching in the darkness. The two sweepers were so noisy that any devil maundering in the stairwell would have already made itself known.
”Our skel-catcher. We're going to call it the La.s.so.”
”I thought you were going to go with the Grabber,” Mark Spitz said.
”The La.s.so sounds more sophisticated.”
In his downtime, Gary worked on an instrument for neutralizing skels. He recruited Mark Spitz and Kaitlyn into the only extant focus group on the planet, spitballing for weeks. The latest iteration involved a long rod with a ratcheted collar at the business end. The collar, in turn, was attached to a mesh bag, made of the same tear- and tooth-resistant material as their fatigues. When you came across a skel, you manipulated the collar around its head, then jerked back. The collar cinched tight like handcuffs, detached from the rod, ”And voila: Skel in a Bag.” The captured monsters couldn't bite through, or see. They were neutralized. You could do what you wanted with them.
The problem was that the only thing to do with a captured skel was to put it down.
Mark Spitz and Kaitlyn had pointed this out to Gary on numerous occasions, among their other criticisms of the invention. The skel-catcher, or You-Grab-It or La.s.so, whatever name Gary settled on (there had been brief flirtation with the Gary), was useless in close quarters. It required a low density of hostiles-with two or more creatures in the area, too many variables complicated execution. It tied up both your hands so that you couldn't pull off a last-second head shot if need be. But those were concerns of implementation. The main problem, of course, was that no one wanted a captured skel. In the early days, the government required a stock of the recently infected and the thoroughly turned for experiments, to search for a cure, cook up a vaccine, or simply investigate the phenomenon ”in the name of science.” The vaccine work continued-what were they going to do, boot out the epidemiologist now that priorities had s.h.i.+fted to infrastructure?-and in their subterranean labs Buffalo certainly still rode hard on the centrifuges and electron microscopes, but the market for fresh skels did not exist, the odd hillbilly torture dungeon aside. No one used the word ”cure” anymore. The plague so transformed the human body that no one still believed they could be restored. Sure, rumors persisted that a team of Swiss scientists were holed up in the Alps working on processes to reverse the effects, but most survivors had seen enough skels to know the verdict of the plague could not be overturned. No. The only thing to do with a la.s.soed skel was to put it down. As soon as possible. used the word ”cure” anymore. The plague so transformed the human body that no one still believed they could be restored. Sure, rumors persisted that a team of Swiss scientists were holed up in the Alps working on processes to reverse the effects, but most survivors had seen enough skels to know the verdict of the plague could not be overturned. No. The only thing to do with a la.s.soed skel was to put it down. As soon as possible.
Gary was undeterred. He had been making diagrams for a patent, despite the small matter of there being no patent office in the land to process it. ”I'm going to be rich,” he maintained, as he sulked over his unit's lack of enthusiasm. Spoken like a true pheenie, Mark Spitz thought. Despite other contrary vectors of his personality, Gary maintained his own reservoir of pheenie optimism, a hazy vision, after all this time, of his insertion into the dreamscape of American prosperity. There would be room enough in his fabulous mansion for chambers devoted to his dead brothers' memory, along with the standard lap pool and 5,000 Btu gas grill. The sketches of his invention reminded Mark Spitz of cave paintings, but this was only appropriate given the culture's precipitous regression.
”The La.s.so,” Mark Spitz said. ”You're really onto something there.”
Although the sign at the exit informed them that an alarm would sound, this was not the case. They tugged the heaps across the black-and-white tile of the lobby and lurched into the slurry that pa.s.sed for rain these days.
They left the bags in the middle of the street for Disposal, Gary darting back into the building to avoid the downpour. Mark Spitz felt the rain on his face. This was not stuff you wanted on your skin, to see the residue from the rain when it dried. It reminded Mark Spitz of when he visited his cousins in Florida and he emerged from the ocean with brown globs of oil on his chest and legs, the stuff still drifting ash.o.r.e so long after the big spill. As a frigid worm of water snuck under his collar, he saw that this block of Duane Street appeared unruined. It was any city block on a normal day of that expired calendar, five minutes before dawn, say, when most of the city was still sleeping it off. Duane had not been allocated, so the army mechanics hadn't cleared it, and the spectrum of vehicles popular at the time of the ruin were lined up at the curb, waiting for the return from the errand, the commute, the trip home. Nothing had been boarded up, there were no firefight traces or other signs of mayhem, and a finicky wind had kicked all the litter around the corner. From time to time Mark Spitz happened on these places in Zone One, where he strolled down a movie set, earning scale as an extra in a period piece about the dead world. block of Duane Street appeared unruined. It was any city block on a normal day of that expired calendar, five minutes before dawn, say, when most of the city was still sleeping it off. Duane had not been allocated, so the army mechanics hadn't cleared it, and the spectrum of vehicles popular at the time of the ruin were lined up at the curb, waiting for the return from the errand, the commute, the trip home. Nothing had been boarded up, there were no firefight traces or other signs of mayhem, and a finicky wind had kicked all the litter around the corner. From time to time Mark Spitz happened on these places in Zone One, where he strolled down a movie set, earning scale as an extra in a period piece about the dead world.
The swiftness of the evac, and the fact the island hadn't endured a major engagement-been firebombed like Oakland or nuked like St. Augustine or whatever the h.e.l.l happened in Birmingham-meant that entire stretches of the city were pristine. Not everywhere, of course. Storefronts had been hastily fortified, and the defenses were still fixed in place or piled on the sidewalk in disa.s.sembly. There had been collisions: streetlamps and mailboxes tombstoned over the corpses of crashed cars, and delivery trucks and police vans had beached themselves on the sidewalk like sad behemoths. And they strolled down plenty of blocks where the marines had really gone to town on a throng of skels, as the broken windows and bullet holes testified. Nonetheless, it was remarkable how well the skin of the city had survived the catastrophe. The exploratory missions sent in their reports and the committees in Buffalo concurred: The city was an excellent candidate for early reboot.
New York City in death was very much like New York City in life. It was still hard to get a cab, for example. The main difference was that there were fewer people. It was easier to walk down the street. No grim herds of out-of-towners shuffled about, no amateur fascist up the street machinated to steal the next cab. There were no lines at the mammoth organic-food stores, once you reached checkout after stepping over the spilled rice and shattered jars of b.l.o.o.d.y tomato sauce and environmentally conscious package of whatnot thrown to the floor during the brief phase of looting. The hottest restaurants always had a prime table waiting, even if they hadn't updated the specials since the winnowing of the human race got under way. You could sit where you wanted to in the movie theaters, if you could suffer sitting in the dark, where monsters occasionally s.h.i.+fted their thighs. you reached checkout after stepping over the spilled rice and shattered jars of b.l.o.o.d.y tomato sauce and environmentally conscious package of whatnot thrown to the floor during the brief phase of looting. The hottest restaurants always had a prime table waiting, even if they hadn't updated the specials since the winnowing of the human race got under way. You could sit where you wanted to in the movie theaters, if you could suffer sitting in the dark, where monsters occasionally s.h.i.+fted their thighs.
This street looked normal. It was a facade. Beyond the wall, more streets like this awaited, and beyond the city, expanses of formaldehyded territory, old postcard specimens of America preserved in tidy eddies. Expertise had been employed to produce the illusion of life in the cadaver, a kindness. Then you made a sound, Mark Spitz thought, and you saw the movement of creatures.
A worm of gray water slithered down his back. The last time he saw his childhood home was on Last Night. It, too, had looked normal from the outside, in that new meaning of normal that signified resemblance to the time before the flood. Normal meant ”the past.” Normal was the unbroken idyll of life before. The present was a series of intervals differentiated from each other only by the degree of dread they contained. The future? The future was the clay in their hands.
On Last Night, the sprinkler had pivoted and dispensed in its prescribed arc on his lawn. The floor lamp next to the living-room television transmitted its rea.s.suring cone through the powder-blue curtains, as it had for decades. He was not a loser of keys, and held twenty-year-old front-door keys in his hand. When he fled the house minutes later, he would not stop to lock the door behind himself.
He and his friend Kyle had spent a few nights in Atlantic City at one of the new boutique casinos, adrift among the dazzling surfaces. Inside the enclosure, they imagined themselves libertines at the trough, snout-deep and rooting. The banks of machines trilled and dinged and whooped in a regional dialect of money. At the hold 'em tables, they visualized the hand rankings from their poker bibles and nervously joked about the guys who were overly chummy with the dealers, the local sharks on their nocturnal feed. They tipped the waitresses with chips, deducting these from their night's tally in the spirit of thorough accounting, and slid their fingers around the dice in superst.i.tious motions before launch in the c.r.a.ps arena. They were heroes to strangers for a time, ticker-taped during sporadic rushes. On barstools they ogled the bachelorettes in the club and discussed their chances, recalling near-conquests from previous visits. In the buffet lines they foraged from the heat lamps and steam trays, and impaled and then swirled wasabi around tiny ceramic saucers, tinting soy sauce. After thirty-six hours they realized, according to custom, that they hadn't yet left the premises, and submitted happily to the artificial habitat that is the modern casino. They did not want. It was all inside. Their brains fogged over as possibility and failure enthralled them in a perpetual and tantalizing loop. libertines at the trough, snout-deep and rooting. The banks of machines trilled and dinged and whooped in a regional dialect of money. At the hold 'em tables, they visualized the hand rankings from their poker bibles and nervously joked about the guys who were overly chummy with the dealers, the local sharks on their nocturnal feed. They tipped the waitresses with chips, deducting these from their night's tally in the spirit of thorough accounting, and slid their fingers around the dice in superst.i.tious motions before launch in the c.r.a.ps arena. They were heroes to strangers for a time, ticker-taped during sporadic rushes. On barstools they ogled the bachelorettes in the club and discussed their chances, recalling near-conquests from previous visits. In the buffet lines they foraged from the heat lamps and steam trays, and impaled and then swirled wasabi around tiny ceramic saucers, tinting soy sauce. After thirty-six hours they realized, according to custom, that they hadn't yet left the premises, and submitted happily to the artificial habitat that is the modern casino. They did not want. It was all inside. Their brains fogged over as possibility and failure enthralled them in a perpetual and tantalizing loop.
The casino was emptier than it had been on their earlier missions. The fresh casinos burst from the gaping, rebar-studded lots where the past-prime establishments had stood, and perhaps that explained it, they thought, the law of compet.i.tion and the lure of the latest bauble. Everyone was at the new place they hadn't heard of yet. Fewer people milled about the tables, there were subdued shrieks at the c.r.a.ps, roulette stands shrouded in plastic, although it should be noted that the slots maintained their st.u.r.dy population of gla.s.sy-eyed defectives, the protohumans with their sleepless claws. Their favorite blackjack dealer, Jackie, a weather-beaten broad who dispensed smiles beneath a slumping orange beehive, was out sick, and the creature in her place kept f.u.c.king up the deal, but they decided against complaining to the pit boss after consideration of his imposing, deflecting mien. To be sure, this trip's pod of bachelorettes was a trifle depleted, running through their pantomime of excess with weary affect and listlessly brandis.h.i.+ng the rubber p.e.n.i.ses on the dance floor. It occurred to them more than once that this trip would not live up to their lore, and they mourned over sips of subsidized liquor. Maybe they had outgrown these enthusiasms. Maybe those times were dead and they were only now aware of their new circ.u.mstances. their pantomime of excess with weary affect and listlessly brandis.h.i.+ng the rubber p.e.n.i.ses on the dance floor. It occurred to them more than once that this trip would not live up to their lore, and they mourned over sips of subsidized liquor. Maybe they had outgrown these enthusiasms. Maybe those times were dead and they were only now aware of their new circ.u.mstances.
They did not watch the news or receive news from the outside.
They were up past dawn, crashed, were granted absolution in its secular manifestation of late checkout. They inserted themselves into the Sunday northbound stream and devoured the under-carbonated colas and turkey wraps purchased at the turnpike conveniences. The wraps were sealed, according to the label, in a plastic that degraded into eco-friendly vapor in thirty days. The traffic was atrocious and shaming, of that pantheon of traffic encountered when one is late to a wedding or other monumental event of fleeting import. Surely an accident unraveled its miserable inevitabilities ahead and now all was fouled, decelerated, the vehicles syllables in an incantation of misfortune. Drivers and their pa.s.sengers misbehaved, steering onto the shoulder and jetting past the stalled unlucky, even seeming to abandon their vehicles. Figures lurched through the median. Fire trucks and police cars galloped past in their standard hysteria. Kyle and Mark Spitz traded playlists, which were broadcast from their digital music devices over the car speakers. The traffic did not cease when they emerged from the tunnel, the Long Island Expressway a disgrace in either direction.
”Big game tonight or a concert,” Kyle said.
”They need to chill,” Mark Spitz said. The Monday vise clenched. Here was that end-of-weekend despair, the death of amus.e.m.e.nt and the winnowing of the reprieve. Everyone on the expressways and turnpikes felt it, he was sure, this evaporation of prospects. What impotent rebellion they enacted, feebly tapping the leather facsimile of their horns and spitting the top-shelf profanities. In retrospect, perhaps the intensity of that moment, the pressure he felt, was the immensity of the farewell, for this was the goodbye traffic, the last latenesses and their attendant excuses, the final inconveniences of an expiring world. pressure he felt, was the immensity of the farewell, for this was the goodbye traffic, the last latenesses and their attendant excuses, the final inconveniences of an expiring world.
They finally arrived at Mark Spitz's corner. A small team of boys played basketball at the other end of the street. The game was breaking up, it had been too dark to play for a while now, and he tried to identify the players but they didn't seem to be part of the block's pool of well-bred teens. Were they playing basketball? There was a small round shape on the pavement and they bent into a huddle. He didn't recognize their faces, only that deflated curl of the shoulders that marked Sunday night's recurring epidemic: Back to work.
Mark Spitz said goodbye to his childhood friend for the last time and walked up the pavestone path, the fruit of a recently completed replacement of the brick walkway that had skinned his knees many times. Except for college and brief, doomed stints here and there-a botched adventure in California pursuing a girl whom he hadn't believed when she professed to prefer girls, a season on a couch in Brooklyn-he had lived in this house his entire life. Technically, he lived in the bas.e.m.e.nt, his childhood room having long been converted into his mother's home office, but his father's subterranean renovation-an undertaking that had kept him afloat when so many of his peers had been capsized by midlife's squall-made plausible Mark Spitz's explanation that he had moved down to the ”rec room.” This was no mere bas.e.m.e.nt, with its touch-screen climate controls and programmed lighting routines, but a s.p.a.ce capsule he piloted to the planet of his life's next stage.
The house looked normal from the outside. The shades were pulled and the lights were out save for the aforementioned glow of the floor lamp by the media center in the living room, that dependable illumination that had greeted him for years. His mother had been feeling ”not so red hot,” in her mom parlance, and he surmised that they were half asleep in front of the upstairs digital video recorder as the final fifteen minutes of last week's episode droned before them: the verdict of the judges and the expulsion of the latest scapegoat; the obscure precedents cited by the maverick district attorney; the reenactors of real crimes in their shabby thespians.h.i.+p. His parents often retreated to their old honeymoon nest after dinner, ceding to their son the living room, with its high-definition enhancements and twin leather recliners equipped with beverage holsters. The rec room was a marvel in every respect save its television, a rare impulse purchase on the part of his father, who consulted the roundups on the internet with dedication, often contributing his two- and three-star verdicts to the rabble chorus. The set was an off-brand mistake lately afflicted with a black bloom of dead pixels. Its sorry conjurations gave the family an excuse to enjoy the big television spectacles together upstairs, the ones that periodically reunited the riven nation, albeit in staggered broadcasts in the cascade of time zones. video recorder as the final fifteen minutes of last week's episode droned before them: the verdict of the judges and the expulsion of the latest scapegoat; the obscure precedents cited by the maverick district attorney; the reenactors of real crimes in their shabby thespians.h.i.+p. His parents often retreated to their old honeymoon nest after dinner, ceding to their son the living room, with its high-definition enhancements and twin leather recliners equipped with beverage holsters. The rec room was a marvel in every respect save its television, a rare impulse purchase on the part of his father, who consulted the roundups on the internet with dedication, often contributing his two- and three-star verdicts to the rabble chorus. The set was an off-brand mistake lately afflicted with a black bloom of dead pixels. Its sorry conjurations gave the family an excuse to enjoy the big television spectacles together upstairs, the ones that periodically reunited the riven nation, albeit in staggered broadcasts in the cascade of time zones.
He scowled at the mail on the hall credenza, speculating anew over what misbegotten opt-in had birthed, among other b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, his identification as a member of the opposite political party. (In the catastrophe, the demonic mailing lists were struck. One was free to choose a fresh affiliation from the rubbled platforms.) He decided to crow about his winnings. He moved up the stairs and was startled by the sound of his sneakers on the naked planks. The pavestone renovation had been part of a larger project that embraced, in its broad manifest, the retiling of the kitchen's hexagonal expanse and the removal of the stairway carpet. This was a foot-level campaign. They worked on the house constantly, his parents. The projects took time. Although they were relatively young (young got younger and younger as the gatekeepers of media contemplated their mortality earlier and earlier), their makeover schemes betrayed an attempt to outwit death: Who had ever died during the installation of a backyard water feature, one that might dribble joy from polyvinyl chloride tubing? In bed, they thumbed adhesive notes into the margins of catalog pages got younger and younger as the gatekeepers of media contemplated their mortality earlier and earlier), their makeover schemes betrayed an attempt to outwit death: Who had ever died during the installation of a backyard water feature, one that might dribble joy from polyvinyl chloride tubing? In bed, they thumbed adhesive notes into the margins of catalog pages and exchanged them like hostages over the sheets. Every room, every reconsidered and gussied square foot was an encroachment into immortality's lot line. The blueprints, the specs, the back-of-the-envelope estimates. It would sustain them. The guest bathroom was next. and exchanged them like hostages over the sheets. Every room, every reconsidered and gussied square foot was an encroachment into immortality's lot line. The blueprints, the specs, the back-of-the-envelope estimates. It would sustain them. The guest bathroom was next.
Exhausted by the foot-level transformations, his parents were between renovation projects. Perhaps if it had been otherwise, they would still be alive.
When he was six, he had walked in on his mother giving his father a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b. A public-television program about the precariousness of life in the Serengeti, glimpsed in pa.s.sing, had introduced him to dread, and it had been eating at him the previous few nights. Bad dreams. The hyenas and their keening. He needed to slip into his parents' king-size bed, as he had when he was very young, before he had been banished to his own big-boy bed in accordance with the latest child-rearing philosophies. It was forbidden, but he decided to visit his parents. He padded down the hall, past the green eye of the carbon-monoxide detector, that ever-vigilant protector against invisible evil, and the bathroom and the linen closet. He opened the door to the master bedroom and there she was, gobbling up his father. His father ceased his unsettling growls and shouted for his son to leave. The incident was never referred to again, and it became the first occupant of the corner in his brain's attic that he reserved for the great mortifications. The first occupant, but not the last.
It was, naturally, to that night his thoughts fled when on his return from Atlantic City he opened the door of his parents' bedroom and witnessed his mother's grisly ministrations to his father. She was hunched over him, gnawing away with ecstatic fervor on a flap of his intestine, which, in the crepuscular flicker of the television, adopted a phallic aspect. He thought immediately of when he was six, not only because of the similar tableau before him but because of that tendency of the human mind, in periods of duress, to seek refuge in more peaceful times, such as a childhood experience, as a barricade against horror. to seek refuge in more peaceful times, such as a childhood experience, as a barricade against horror.
That was the start of his Last Night story. Everybody had one.
Mark Spitz and Gary returned to the law office and dragged the other two bodies down, Kaitlyn whistling behind them as they descended. She proposed lunch, and they squatted in the lobby underneath the gla.s.s case listing the building's occupants, which were detailed by easily recombined white letters embedded in black felt. Like most lists of people, it was now a roll call of the dead, an inversely colored obituary page.
”Are they a sponsor?” Gary asked. ”We're hungry.” He held up a chocolate bar retrieved from the spill of candy, breath mints, and hand sanitizer. The gate of the lobby newsstand had been ripped open and looted, probably by the marines, or else a post-evac survivor who'd run out of crackers and dared a raid.
”Not yet,” Kaitlyn said.
”But they might come aboard next week. Could happen. In which case it's okay.”
Kaitlyn shook her head.
”The marines took what they wanted when they came through. How do you think they got all those NFL jerseys?”
”That was before the regs came down. You have chocolate chip cookies in your MRE.”
Gary tossed the candy bar and declined his standard joke. Usually when someone mentioned meals ready to eat, their military rations, Gary pointed out that survivors were MREs to the skels, hardy-har, punctuating it with his gravelly chuckle. Perhaps Gary was exhausted; it was the end of the week. ”Just gonna get eaten up by the residents,” he said. ”Pheenie b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.”
”Maybe they'll put you here,” Mark Spitz said. He didn't believe it.
Buffalo had not yet divulged who was going to get resettled in Manhattan once the sweepers were finished, but Gary had long been skeptical that he would be among them. ”You think we're going to end up here? We ain't special. They're going to put the rich people here. Politicians and pro athletes. Those chefs from those cooking shows.”
”It's going to be a lottery,” Kaitlyn sighed. She opened a meat tube and squeezed it into her mouth.
”Lottery, s.h.i.+t,” Gary said. ”They're going to put us on Staten Island.”
”I thought you liked islands,” Mark Spitz said. Gary was a firm believer in the Island Theory of plague survival.
”We like islands. Natural defenses. You know we like islands. But we wouldn't live on Staten Island if they were giving out vaccines and hand jobs right off the ferry.”
”They screen for DNA, you'll be lucky they don't turn you out the gates.” Trevor, one of the sweepers in Gamma Unit, maintained that he'd heard that Buffalo was working on a system of screening settlers according to their genetic desirability. Mark Spitz didn't believe it but rationalized that he had a decent chance of getting a nice spot somewhere. Surely many of the high-functioning members of society had been killed off, allowing mediocre specimens such as himself to move up a notch.
Kaitlyn tapped her headset distractedly, as if she'd been trying to make a weekend plan with one of her gal pals and her cell dropped the call. Did you lose me or did I lose you?
”Anything?” Mark Spitz asked.
She shook her head. They'd been out of contact with Fort Wonton for a week, ever since they departed for this grid. The comms went out with nettlesome frequency. It was hard to get a signal through on the best of days-the buildings bounced the waves between each other like kids playing keep-away-but the big culprit was mischievous bugs deep in the military communications software. The machines froze, chronically, and then they'd have to be rebooted and it took forever for the equipment to reinitialize. It was highly unlikely that the defense contractor awarded the bid would be prosecuted in the future, but this was the case even if the plague hadn't cleared the halls of justice of everyone save the odd robed straggler gripping a gavel in the empty chamber. be rebooted and it took forever for the equipment to reinitialize. It was highly unlikely that the defense contractor awarded the bid would be prosecuted in the future, but this was the case even if the plague hadn't cleared the halls of justice of everyone save the odd robed straggler gripping a gavel in the empty chamber.
The comm failures were annoying, but fortunately the sweepers didn't need any orders apart from what grid was up next, and they got that every week when they returned to Wonton. ”Let's get going,” Kaitlyn said. ”We'll check in when we go back on Sunday.”