Canni

by Daniel O'Connor

  “I can work for you,” said Rob. “You must need able-bodied help. I’ll clean toilets.”

  “Sir, we really . . . ”

  “Let my girl sleep here, please. I can stay outside in the street . . . ”

  Cash interrupted. “That is not happening.”

  “She’s pregnant,” he said.

  Staph gave Cash the once-over.

  “How far along are you?” she asked.

  “We just found out,” said Rob, before Cash could respond.

  The woman produced a clipboard with some papers on it. “You’ll both need to fill this out and produce valid identification.”

  Rob was thrilled. He studied her neck jiggle as he reached into his pants to get his driver’s license. He was reading the admittance paperwork when Steph’s arm swung over it. Her triceps fat was doing the Tango Argentino with her neck. She dropped a home pregnancy test onto the paperwork.

  “It’s ten dollars for the test, and I have to go in the bathroom with your wife while she takes it.”

  Rob arched an eyebrow and sighed, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but savor the thought that Cash had been referred to as his wife.

  VIRGINIA

  The roads had a touch of rainwater on them, but nothing too severe. Only a novice biker would have any trouble at all in this type of weather. It was more mist than rain.

  But the skid marks were there, plain as day.

  Along the dark path of the tire tracks they found the sissy bar and the luggage rack, twisted and scarred from scraping the road. Ten yards beyond them was the Guardian Bell. Also known as a Gremlin Bell, its purpose was to symbolically protect motorcycle riders from evil. Crafted from fine pewter, this particular bell featured the inscription 2nd Amendment Defender wrapped around a depiction of the stars and stripes.

  The black Harley was at rest on its side beside the damp and rusty guardrail, oil and gasoline seeping out like plasma. One helmeted rider lay prone on the slick pavement, beside the fallen Screamin’ Eagle; another was on the far side of the guard rail, down a wet, grassy embankment—arms and legs bent the wrong way, like snapped twigs.

  “This one’s breathing!” yelled the EMT beside the Harley.

  A lanky cop knelt beside the rider with the twisted limbs. The officer looked up from the turfy slope, his face dewy with drizzle. He had no idea about the potential gravity of his next words.

  “Not this one,” he said.

  “He rode a bike his whole life. Could do it with his eyes closed. He was in the Gulf War, was in the Pentagon on 9/11. He saved my fucking life yesterday,” she said, quietly, “and he’s dead because of me. I killed my brother.”

  V. Anderson reclined on a hospital bed. Her right shoulder was still bandaged, and now her left arm was in a sling. Both arms were also wrapped as they had been torn up by the pavement. Her neck was stuffed in a hard collar. She gulped frantically from a water bottle.

  “Well, you are lucky to be alive,” said the attending physician. He was standing with two police officers and a representative of the government.

  “I need to speak with Dr. Anderson in private, please,” said the government man. He was a tall, thickly built, Mexican-American with a shaved head and bleached white teeth. V eyed his three-piece suit, speculating that the sales tax on it would likely have paid for the clothes her brother was wearing when he died.

  “We’ve been told that Dr. Anderson should have top level protection,” said the physician, “I believe the police officers need to remain.”

  “No,” came the reply from the government man. “They will stand outside the door until I speak with her.”

  Without debate, the hospital doctor and the two cops walked out.

  “I don’t believe we’ve ever met in person,” he said. “I’m Arturo Ochoa-Calderone. Please call me Art.”

  V’s thoughts were all about her brother, but she couldn’t help inwardly sighing.

  Another fucking hyphenated name.

  “My condolences, Doctor Anderson. Your brother was an asset to his country.”

  Was? she thought. She knew he was gone, but still, the past tense had her upside down.

  “I don’t mean to be callous,” he continued, “but do you remember anything at all about the motorcycle accident?”

  It was all a blank. She was quite sure what had caused the wreck, and there was nothing in her mind to indicate otherwise, yet she thought hard as Arturo looked on.

  “He wanted a calzone.”

  “A calzone?”

  “Yes. That’s the last thing I remember. My brother wanted to get some calzones for our lunch. He must’ve somehow cajoled me into getting on the back of his bike.”

  “You didn’t like the bike?”

  “Not especially. Definitely not in times like these. He was a persuasive sort, though.”

  That was word again. She looked over at the wall at nothing in particular and gulped from the water bottle.

  “So you can recall nothing after the calzone comment?”

  “I don’t even remember walking out the door. I just woke up here.”

  “I assume, from your prior comments, that you believe that you . . . ”

  “Yeah. I flipped. Went canni.”

  “How do you know that to be the case?”

  “You kidding?”

  “Not at all. I understand you have memory loss but being tossed off a bike could cause anyone to black out.”

  “Where is my brother’s body?”

  “Not to worry. That is all being taken care of, and with utmost respect. No need to be concerned. I promise.”

  “Has anyone called my husband?”

  “We have not. Once we knew you were relatively okay, I made the decision to let you proceed with that phone call, whenever you like.”

  “Okay. Good choice there. I appreciate that.”

  “Certainly,” he replied. “As far as you flipping, how can you be sure that you actually did?”

  “Mr. Ochoa, I . . . ”

  “Ochoa-Calderone. But call me Art.”

  “Okay Art, when I awoke, my mouth tasted like the asshole of an African Bush Elephant. Also, I am starving. My beloved brother has just died, yet I want nothing more right now than a trip to the fucking Olive Garden. But, the number one reason I know that I had a cannibalistic seizure is because a man who could handle any bike on any terrain and in any weather wiped out on a lazy afternoon ride to a pizzeria. I obviously went berserk on the back of his Harley, probably trying to chew his face off, which would have been quite impossible, as we both had full-face bike helmets on. Tell me, Art, when they found me, did I have vomit all over my mouth? Were my eyes completely and inhumanly red?”

  “Yes. All of that.”

  “Can you smell the stench of my breath, right now, from where you stand?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Then, Mr. Ochoa-Calderone, why the fuck are you asking me this shit? And do you have a Tic Tac?”

  “Dr. Anderson, am I asking you anything that you have not asked of the volunteers that you and your brother have studied at Dr. Robert’s barn?”

  LAS VEGAS

  ALL FLIGHTS GROUNDED

  That was the news headline on Paul’s phone.

  “Two separate passenger jet disasters within three hours must’ve been the last straw,” he said.

  “We couldn’t fly home now, even if she wanted to,” replied Rob. He and Paul were watching Cash as she dumped their empty soda cups into a curbside trash container. They had just eaten at the MGM Grand food court on Paul’s dime. The three of them stood at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue, a crossroad that features more hotel rooms than any other in the world. Yet they had no place to stay.

  Rob smiled at Cash as she turned from the trash can to walk back toward him. His back was leaning on the MGM. Behind Cash and across the street stood the Tropicana, and just across the boulevard loomed the Excalibur and New York-New York. For decades, this is where the excitement wa
s, countless thrills and endless excitement for the hordes of tourists. Now, as Rob looked around, the quartet of buildings somehow brought him thoughts of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

  As Cash approached him, hand sanitizer rubbing between her palms, he couldn’t help but love her. Here was a world when, in normal times, many self-centered slobs would have just placed those empty cups by the wall of the MGM, or even simply dropped them into the street, or tossed them into the well-manicured shrubbery. Yet there was his girl, with the world going to hell, car wrecks all over the roads, people screaming in the distance, helmeted security forces running about, and jets falling from the skies—his girl was placing trash into a receptacle and washing her hands.

  Yet doing anything normal, no matter how trivial, had an aura of reward.

  “Sorry about those shelters, guys,” said Paul.

  “We took a collar. 0 for 4,” answered Rob.

  “Huh?”

  “A baseball term. Never mind.”

  “Oh, like you struck out?”

  “In a way.”

  “I would so let you crash with me, but I live in two rooms, dude.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Cash. “We’d be like sardines.”

  “That’s not even it. We’d kill each other.”

  “Ha,” laughed Cash, as if they were in prior times.

  “I mean literally kill each other,” replied Paul.

  “Have you . . . ?”

  “Gone canni? Not yet.”

  “Same with us,” said Cash. “Maybe, we’re all immune or something.”

  “Rumor has it that some people might actually be immune,” said Paul. “Not sure what the odds are that all three of us would be, though.”

  Rob came off his wall-lean to tend to his suitcase that had toppled over on the sidewalk. “I wouldn’t want one of us to realize that we are not immune by discovering the bodies of the other two.”

  “I may have a place for you guys,” said Paul. “I’ve been debating it in my head for hours, but you should be the ones to decide.”

  “What?” said Cash.

  “We’ll take it,” added Rob.

  “Hold up. Not so fast,” sighed Paul. “A shelter would have been much better, or a hotel . . . ”

  “Not a hotel,” interrupted Rob. “She won’t be safe in a hotel room alone with me.”

  “I bet she’s been saying that for years.”

  “Very funny.”

  Paul looked at Cash. She was grinning. He continued, “There’s this place. I went there to try and get some answers about your stolen car. I know some people. They trust me. Word is—and this is so unofficial that I shouldn’t even be saying it—it seems that maybe no one there has flipped at all. At least not the area I’m talking about.”

  “That’s beyond sweet!” yelped Cash.

  “Is it some kind of shelter? Is there protection?” was all Rob wanted to know.

  Paul avoided eye contact as he spoke. “You see, that’s the thing.”

  Cash stepped off the bottom rung and moved away from the enormous concrete wall. Rob and Paul were at the bottom, waiting for her. The two suitcases were there too. Paul had left his bike in the MGM garage, but not without retrieving a pair of important items from it.

  “I don’t even know why we are bothering,” she said.

  “We can leave now, if you want,” said Paul. “I just think this might be your best option, under the circumstances.”

  He put on his miner’s helmet and turned on its light. Then he handed a flashlight to Cash.

  “If Rob is the bellhop, you should hold the light.”

  Rob picked up the luggage. “Well, at least we have an hour or two of sunlight left.”

  Paul gave his cell phone a quick check as he answered Rob.

  “Won’t matter.”

  Cash turned on the hefty black Maglite as she studied the structure before her. There in the warm, bright Vegas sun stood the entrance. Ten feet high and equally as wide. The sunlight managed to creep about seven feet within, after which there was nothing but darkness.

  “It has come to this. I’m going to live in the fucking sewer,” grunted Cash.

  “It’s not the sewer system,” replied Paul. “I promise. It’s a drainage system for floods. Yeah, it rarely rains here, but when it does, it can come hard. This was built to funnel that water out.”

  “How long is the tunnel?” asked Rob.

  “Tunnels. Plural. It’s an entire system, varying in height and width. Tunnels, chambers, dividers, equalizers, drains, basins, manhole tubes. All leading to the Las Vegas Wash, and then, finally, Lake Mead. More than two hundred miles of underground . . . er, caves.”

  “Rob, there must be some other way,” moaned Cash.

  He dropped the luggage and put his arms around her, but he spoke to Paul. “And people actually live in there?”

  “Hundreds of people live in there. I know a few of them. Yeah, there are some real fucking dickheads—I’m not gonna lie. Lots of drug addicts, degenerate gamblers, some criminals hiding from the law . . . ”

  “I’ll take my chances in a shitty motel room, Rob,” said Cash, as she headed for the wall rungs.

  Her boyfriend held her back.

  “Think for a minute, baby,” he said. “Would I do anything that isn’t the best for you? Let’s just check this place out. I know it seems crazy, but let’s recap our options here. You and I in a motel—one of us flips and stone cold kills the other one. You and I sleeping in the street, or in some abandoned building, or on a train back to New York—one of us flips and kills the other one. I know from my point of view that I’d rather you did not kill me, and I certainly don’t want to kill you, because once I found out that I did, I’d off myself anyway.”

  Cash stared at her feet. “But we could chain ourselves up before bed . . . ”

  “What about during the day? We could flip at any second. We are tempting fate whenever we are alone together.”

  Tears.

  “It’s okay, baby,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you. To us. Paul said that, for whatever reason, the people in the tunnels haven’t been flipping . . . ”

  “I said that some people, in a certain section of the tunnels may not be flipping. These tunnels are like a city within a city. There are different . . . let’s call them neighborhoods, with different leaders and different structures. There are also lone wolf residents who do their own thing. But, if I can get you into a non-flip area, if there truly is such a thing, that’s great. More importantly, I want to get you into a community, where they stand watch and look out for each other. It’s like a shelter. You won’t be alone.”

  Rob rubbed Cash’s cheek and nodded.

  Paul continued, “But, get the fuck out of there fast if it starts to rain.”

  They stepped into the darkness, the light on Paul’s helmet and the one in Cash’s hand leading the way. Cash noted that the ground was quite dry for a flood tunnel. The walls were covered in graffiti, at least for the first several yards. Then the wall artwork vanished.

  “If this is the best place to be, why won’t you be staying with us?” asked Cash. She could feel the perspiration on her neck, which seemed odd, since the tunnels could be twenty to thirty degrees cooler than the busy streets above them.

  “I live alone in a tiny apartment,” answered Paul. “If I had a girl, we’d be staying here too.”

  They’d been walking for less than ten minutes when they came upon the first split. Their vision was limited to just the areas illuminated by their lights, so they could have missed the dingy divide in the darkness. But Paul was familiar with it from prior visits.

  “You want to avoid that tunnel,” he said. “We need to stay to the right here. It’s the first of several splits.”

  Rob and Cash gazed into the total blackness of the second tunnel. They could hear some distant dripping. Sounded like a leaky faucet, if the faucet were the size of a Civil War cannon.

  “Should
we avoid it because of water?” asked Rob.

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “Stop,” demanded Cash.

  The men halted.

  “There is too much of this,” she said. “Get out fast if it rains, don’t go in that tunnel, lone wolf whatever-the-fucks wandering around. Plus, it’s starting to smell gross in here, and I’m sweating like an old pipe. My heart is racing . . . ”

  “And you have an enormous spider on your shoulder,” interrupted Paul. He swatted it off. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t a black widow.”

  “I can’t do this,” she said.

  Rob lowered the luggage.

  “Maybe we won’t. Most likely, we won’t,” he said. “Do you think we can just go and meet the people Paul knows? If they have some system of watching out for each other, you can be safe. It might even be true that no one flips there. Maybe they are so deep underground or something that they haven’t had the exposure the rest of us have had.”

  “Baby, that sounds crazy,” she said.

  “I know, but the whole country is crazy. We don’t have any options.”

  “Maybe we could round up some people who would all want to stay in a hotel. We could work up a security schedule and all. We wouldn’t have to live in the sewer,” she said.

  “Storm drains. Not sewers,” added Paul.

  Rob ignored him. “What people, Cash? We don’t know anyone out here.”

  “What about fucking buses?” she asked. “Trailways, Greyhound. Whatever the hell. Maybe they have security on the buses now. We could take a bus back home.”

  BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA

  One hundred and thirteen miles outside of Los Angeles, the engine of the charter bus roared. It had a pattern that was almost musical. There would be a brief, trebly whine when the driver hit the gas, but it would quickly inspire a crescendo of bass and drums. The term Basso Continuo kept creeping into his mind, but he wasn’t sure if the description truly fit. His days of serious musical study were in the past, as he now devoted much of his time to the creation of culinary delights.

  A cooking magazine rested on his lap as the engine fumes irritated his nostrils. This was a newer, greener, diesel bus, but a greasy stench stormed his nose nonetheless. The other passengers were probably oblivious, but he wasn’t. An older woman had been sitting beside him on the first leg of the journey, but never retook her seat after the rest stop. Her perfume, however, remained.