Ruined Cities

by James Tallett (ed)

  “Mis-o-gyn-ist.” Mary stretches that word into a whole conversation. Works so hard on pronunciation that she almost doesn’t see the flicker of movement beside the overturned UPS truck halfway across the bridge.

  A man’s shoulder moves beyond the rusty brown truck as slow and steady as the sun edging from behind the moon at the end of a total eclipse. Careful, like a new cat introducing himself into a household full of cats that doesn’t really need one more. Quiet as a ghost. Raj said there’s no such thing as ghosts but Mary’s not so sure. There are ghost-books in the libraries; that’s proof, isn’t it? Maybe Mary even saw a couple of ghosts when she was sick to the point of death before Raj went away forever.

  Instead of drawing her 9 mm, Mary whistles Bridge over Troubled Waters because everybody knows ghosts can’t stand whistling. She doesn’t get the tune quite right and the apparition beside the UPS truck keeps on being there. But he doesn’t charge her, and pointing a gun at him doesn’t seem like the thing to do.

  She changes her tune to Happy Birthday. Whistles it twice, which is exactly the right amount of time to wash your hands according to Raj. The ghost is still there, looking less ghostly by the second. Spirits don’t have dirty blond dreadlocks or bad teeth. His eyes start out polite but that fades into a creepy glint like Raj got sometimes when he looked at pictures in the magazines he didn’t think Mary knew about.

  Not creepy enough to shoot — not yet, anyway — but this guy definitely isn’t the ghost of some long dead riot victim whose bones have been carried away by wild dogs. He’s very much alive. Alive and dirty.

  Mary wraps her fingers around the grip of her 9 mm pistol, but she doesn’t engage her trigger finger yet, because Glocks don’t have a safety and it’s stuck in the waistband of her pants and she can draw and fire really fast if it comes to that. She walks toward the man like she isn’t afraid at all, the way cowgirls did in the Wild West stories Raj used to tell her. Like Calamity Jane, and Bell Star, and Anne Oakley. Mary has the attitude if not the marksmanship, and the man beside the UPS truck doesn’t know about her pathetic shooting skills.

  Two more steps and she’s close enough to see the pimples on his skin. The rotten places in his front teeth that haven’t been brushed since the world came to an end.

  His tongue slides over his lips, like a snake sampling the air for Mary molecules. Not quite dangerous enough to shoot, but maybe dangerous enough to show him her pistol.

  Two more steps, then Mary will be close enough to put a bullet into him even if she shuts her eyes at the exact moment she pulls the trigger. But by the time she’s ready it’s already one step too late. He’d pulled a coal black revolver with an exceptionally large barrel from behind him and points it at Mary’s chest.

  “Pardon me miss.”

  A polite killer. Mary freezes like she used to do when she and Raj played German Spotlight. When there were still batteries and flashlights and she didn’t know about all the bad men in the world who wanted to do things to her Raj wouldn’t talk about.

  The gunman’s fingernails are caked in black grease, the kind a man gets from scratching his unwashed body while he thinks about all the nasty things he’d like to do with the last few girls in the world. Mary’s not sure what this man wants to do with her but she’s very sure it won’t be pleasant.

  Less pleasant than a bullet at close range? Wait and see. Still plenty of time to die quickly if she can’t escape. Mary has her secret ways. Ways she’s read about in libraries books.

  Plan A was her pistol, but Mary still has plan B ready to go — and this dirty dreadlocked bad-skinned boy hasn’t got a clue.

  The important thing is not letting fear paralyze her.

  The important thing is being ready when the time is right.

  The important thing is getting close enough — and Mary figures she’ll be close enough before long. Getting close is what a man has in mind when he points a revolver at a girl and says, “Pardon me miss.”

  “You sure are pretty.” He keeps the pistol pointed at Mary’s chest but his eyes explore every part of her.

  “Turn around.”

  She can feel his eyes on her back now, moving lower.

  “Sure are pretty.”

  In a second he’s taken her Glock. In two seconds he has her switchblade. He pats her down with his free hand as if she has weapons hidden in all the girl places he’s been thinking about but hasn’t gotten to touch for a very long time.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?” He pokes her back with the barrel of his pistol. Nudges her across the bridge into the city full of ghosts on the other side.

  Before Mary can answer, he sings a little snippet of a song about love and marijuana and racial harmony. A reggae song — Raj told her about those. It doesn’t make sense, a song like that coming from a dirty white boy with a gun. She hears a kitchen match strike on a rusty car. Hears the gunman inhale deeply and hold it. Raj told her about smoking dope too, but she hadn’t thought people still did it.

  “My name is Mary.” She works the words around the single edged razor blade hidden under her tongue — plan B. She moves her hips a little more than usual so her captor won’t notice the lisp. Would the dope make escape easier or harder?

  “You can call me Bob.” The gunman’s voice is full of phlegm and smoke.

  “Just like Bob Marley — you know, the old days reggae king.”

  ***

  Bob the gunman knows a lot of reggae songs and he sings them all to Mary while he marches her through the city.

  “To the garden of Eden,” he tells her. “Used to be the old Oklahoma City Botanical Garden back in the day.”

  He isn’t worried about dogs or ghosts or even feral men, because according to Bob, the Marleys have this part of Oklahoma City, “All sowed up.” They have guns and tents and crops of the best dope in the world.

  “Rolling papers is scarce. And matches. Girls is even scarcer.” Every now and then Bob gets close enough to touch Mary. Usually that comes between songs, and she thinks maybe if she times it right, she can spit her plan B razor blade into her hand and swing around at exactly the right moment to change her captor’s attitude about women.

  “You sure are pretty.” Bob keeps coming back to that and his touches are getting much more frequent. Mary figures it won’t be too much longer until he confuses her passivity with compliance and decides to steal a kiss or two — and maybe a little more — before they get back to all the other Marley Men.

  “Only six of us right now, so it shouldn’t be too bad. And you can smoke all the weed you want to make things go easier.”

  His voice goes up a notch when he talks about weed. “Aurora Indica’s harvested and aged. Seeds came all the way from Afghanistan before the world went to hell.”

  According to Bob, the Marley Men have a good supply of dope of every description. “White Widow, Northern Lights, Hindu Kush, and my personal all time favorite, Jack Horror.”

  “Good for headaches, toothaches, stomach aches, whatever aches there is. My you are a pretty girl.” The Gunman’s mind is on a single track with three stops: Drugs, Reggae songs, and pretty girls.

  “Want a hit?”

  Mary stops when she hears the sound of smoke pulled into the gunman’s lungs.

  “Sure.” She does a slow about face, brushes one hand over her breasts, which bounce in a way she knows is sure to please. She walks toward her captor the way slutty girls do in romance novels, and she’s pleased to see it works just like the instructions say.

  Bob has a mouth full of joint, and a mind full of Mary, and at that moment he believes she is totally blown away by his charm. He’s not too sure what he should do with the pistol, because he’s pretty sure he’s going to be enjoying his share of this pretty girl before any of the other Marley Men even get a taste.

  Mary gives him a soul gaze, like the ones that usually come around page sixty in young adult romances. She’s pleased to see Bob can’t figure out how to smoke his joint and hold his pistol w
hile he gropes her.

  The air makes a little whistling sound as he breaths around the joint. His Adam’s apple dances as he swallows his inhibitions. His eyes jerk back and forth as he sorts through all the nasty things he wants to do with Mary as soon as he figures out how to manage the pistol and the joint and her at the same time.

  He puts the pistol in his waistband beside Mary’s, even though it’s pretty clear his pants will be coming off soon. It’s a real dilemma until Mary takes a running step and kicks him in the testicles.

  She stands in front of him watching him choke on the joint and double over. No point in using her plan B razorblade, but it sure would be nice to get her pistol back.

  She kicks him again — a little refresher — and reaches for the pistol, but Bob is all ready bent over as much as he can go, so the kick doesn’t do much good.

  He grabs her by the wrist as she reaches for his waistband, hard enough to hold her — not for long, but long enough. He turns his body sideways so he can catch her future kicks on his legs. Bob isn’t very smart. He doesn’t know much about girls. Especially girls like Mary. She drives the heel of her free hand into his nose.

  Once, twice, three times, until he lets go and lies sprawled on his back like a mangy dog that desperately wants its belly rubbed.

  Mary’s pistol has disappeared inside Bob’s pants but his cowboy gun is clearly visible. No time to be choosey. Footsteps approach her from behind — two men, close but not as close as the revolver. She snatches it from Bob’s waistband and points it in the general direction of the men. Dirty men with dreadlocks just like Bob’s, stepping apart so they’ll make a harder target. Five yards and closing. She cocks the hammer back, shuts her eyes and points a few feet above the sound of running feet.

  Click.

  Mary recognizes the sound of a hammer falling onto an empty cylinder. Two more clicks and she has to face the facts. Bob took her prisoner with an empty gun.

  The two Marleys point revolvers at her from a few feet away. Close enough for her to see bullets in the cylinders. Mary already knows the first thing one of them is going to say.

  “Pardon me miss.”

  The other one says, “You sure are pretty,” just like Mary thought he would.

  “I’ll bet you guys are Marley Men.” She hardly lisps at all around her plan B razor blade.

  ***

  The three Marley men carry on a banter about Bob’s testicles and how the pain won’t go away until he takes the girl-cure.

  Bob smiles at the jokes while he waddles and inhales clouds of Jack Horror smoke. “Won’t never get glaucoma.” He holds his hand up like an old time Boy Scout swearing to do his best to do his duty only Bob is swearing to never let another girl get close enough to kick him. “Not unless she’s tied up proper.”

  Marijuana dulls the pain, but he walks so slowly the sun is setting by the time they reach the Garden of Eden — at least two acres of cultivated marijuana growing among decorative grasses run wild, and exotic trees in need of trimming.

  They tie Mary’s wrists in front so she’d be comfortable while she waits to die. The knots aren’t very good — nobody knows how to tie them anymore — but they might hold her until sunrise. The Marleys start a fire with fresh books from the library so she’ll be warm and well illuminated.

  “Everything is kindling but the Bible and the Quran.” Bob stands bowlegged in front of the fire and tosses in the remnants of civilization. “Anything that don’t have God in the title.”

  Jack Horror makes it hard to stay angry, but Bob keeps his distance.

  “This here’s Encyclopedia Britannica.” He holds a volume close enough for Mary to read Compton’s Encyclopedia on the spine. She wonders how many religious books are thrown into the flames by mistake.

  The Marleys are all white boys, except for a scarred up black man whose legs have been amputated at the knees. He lumbers around the camp on leather pads tied to the ends of his stumps. His injuries make him look powerful, maybe even mystical. Mary tries to make the sign of the cross, but her bindings rob the ritual of its power.

  “That’s Shorty,” Bob holds a World Atlas beside his face, shielding his voice from the black man. “Don’t look at him direct.”

  None of the white boys look at him direct. They glance Shorty’s way just long enough to make sure they aren’t on intersecting paths. A quick check before they remember something important on the other side of the camp, as far away as possible.

  The boys all wear their hair in dreadlocks. They greet each other with elaborate handshakes, and reggae dialect. Silly, dangerous white boys pretending to be Jamaicans; disorganized, moderately violent, and thoroughly high. Saint Bob told them to smoke herb, stay in touch with Ja and watch out for no good women, so they do.

  Mary looks away from Shorty as he searches her for weapons Bob might have missed. He’s especially thorough around her breasts.

  Shorty is Mary’s first encounter with a real live African American. Was he injured in the troubles, after the electricity went off and everybody started going crazy? It’s hard to guess a man’s age if his legs are gone and he’s got pink keloid scars all over his arms and face, but he’s forty at least. Maybe even older: fifty, sixty, seventy. Mary’s only seen pictures of people that old in books like the ones the Marley Men are throwing in the fire.

  Shorty lumbers around Mary on his padded stumps. His dreadlocks swing like snakes with every lurching step. A male, African American Medusa. Mary feels her face turning to stone.

  “You gonna cry to me, Yeah!” Shorty follows those words with a string of other singsong lyrics that sort of rhyme and sort of have a tune. Probably one of the old reggae songs that used to be on iPods and radios before the world went down the drain. Maybe the legless brother is channeling Bob Marley. Mary can’t tell, because she’s never heard a Jamaican accent. No one in Oklahoma has, since the electricity stopped and the killing started.

  The few words Mary understands make women sound pretty bad. Why not? Women have been causing trouble ever since Adam and Eve. Just ask the Christians and the Jews and the Muslims, if there are any left. Just ask the boy gangs who use women up and toss them onto the fire like so many copies of Encyclopedia Britannica.

  “Sorry for your troubles, sister.” Shorty tells Mary he’s powerless against the will of Saint Bob Marley. She can button up her shirt any time she wants, but it’s understood that everything will be ripped off for the sunrise ceremony.

  “Ain’t personal.” Shorty looks at his wrist, as if he is checking the time. There are still plenty of watches in the world, but no batteries to run them. The wind up kind would still keep time if anybody cared about hours and minutes any more.

  “Men still have their needs.” Shorty stumbles sideways, steadies himself with his fingers, so he doesn’t fall.

  “Killin’ you afterward makes in pure.” Up close, his breath smells like something inside him is dying.

  The white boys stand outside of Shorty’s visual field discussing how they’ll use Mary when their turns come around. It’s understood Shorty will go first.

  “Ja don’t want no more propagation.” Shorty uses the loudest outside voice Mary has ever heard.

  “Man contaminated the water and the air.” When Shorty raises both arms in supplication, he loses his balance. Still powerful, still dignified in spite of falling on his butt.

  “Everybody guilty.” Shorty raises the volume a little more to make up for his vulnerable seated position. “Women guiltiest of all.”

  The white dreadlocked boys light up their joints with looted butane lighters. There must be billions of those still in the world; there’d probably still be billions when the last man on earth murdered the last woman.

  Once God wipes the slate clean, he’ll start all over again. That’s the Gospel according to Shorty. Now that the Marleys have used up their own women, they hunt for the wild girls like Mary who live by their girl-wits without men or marijuana or rhyming poems written before the collaps
e.

  Mary wants to tell Shorty she’s not given up on the world. Hasn’t given up on men either — not entirely. But there’s no reasoning with a man who wants to rape you and kill you afterward because that’s what God told him to do.

  Mary wants to tell Shorty lots of things, but that would mean she has to talk, and she might reveal the secret hiding underneath her tongue. The secret that will set her free, so she can collect her guns and bullets and library books and however many years she might have left to live.

  So Mary doesn’t say anything, because she knows it won’t do any good, and because it’s hard to talk around a single sided razor blade.

  ***

  The sun always looks brand new in the morning, even though it’s older than everything in the world. Older than Oklahoma City. Older than America. Older than the olden times when people built the botanical garden and never imagined it would belong to Marley Men.

  Everybody’s tired and stoned but Mary. No White Widow or Jack Horror for her. Too much to do when the sun shines through the tall empty buildings that used to be the pride of Oklahoma City and now are nesting habitats for eagles. Nothing lasts in the cosmic scheme of things, not people, or politics, or the trappings of civilization. And most certainly not a girl like Mary, tied up and ready to be blamed for everything that went so wrong.

  Shorty checks his imaginary wristwatch again. An old habit from the time when people kept track of all the minutes in their lives. The sun still keeps perfect time, an unbreakable cosmic wristwatch. It measures every remaining minute of Mary’s life with skyscraper shadows that stretch across the Garden of Eden like hangmen’s ropes.

  “Time to get the business done.” Shorty’s accent was all Jamaican last night, but now it’s fifty percent Okie. He’s too tired to fake it this early in the morning. Worn out from smoking dope and singing reggae songs and planning details of the ceremonial rape. Too tired to notice when Mary spits the single edged razor blade into her hands and starts working on her ropes.

  She leaves a few strands intact, so the bindings won’t fall away until the time is right. Then the blade will become a weapon. The Marley Men have been right all along about the treachery of women.