But I’d been fighting the urge to retreat for so long, I had no choice but to go forward.
I held the lantern in front of Martha’s dress, and tried to pretend that the tiny pink-white fronds mixed in with the bloodstains were bits of colored wool fuzz.
If the dress hadn’t been green, I might have succeeded in fooling myself.
*
Like everyone else trying to survive out here, we’d long grown able to sleep over the noise of the wind. But the wind combined with my daughter’s incessant coughing and the dead dog’s howling conspired to keep us all awake. Oh, we all lay there in bed, Roy between Martha and me, all our eyes shut, all pretending we were fast asleep, but we were breathing too rapidly to convince anyone we were truly resting.
None of us spoke to break the illusion, either. We just lay there, alone in three separate sets of terrible thoughts.
If anything, when the dog stopped howling it kept us awake even more, waiting for the noise to resume again.
Or waiting for one of us besides Dot to start coughing.
The sun was peeking through the bottom of the windowsill when I quit faking sleep. I rose and got Dot dressed. By the time we reached town, the doctor’s office would be open. I couldn’t afford to pay for any medical care, but I hoped the doctor would have a better nature that wouldn’t permit him to let a little girl die over something as piddling as money.
“Nnn,” Dot said as I pulled her dress over her head. She was reflexively licking her lips, but nothing would dislodge the dusting of white cotton that had formed on them during the night. When she coughed, it sounded like she was speaking through a muffler.
Martha came into the living room, wringing her hands. I tried to give her the bravest smile I could. “We’ll be back soon,” I said.
I took the rifle in my free hand, Dotty slung over my shoulder. I didn’t know what I’d find outside — King George dead, covered with a mound of ethereal white seeds, I supposed — but just in case, the gun gave me a measure of cold comfort.
Outside, there was nothing but wind and dust, with nothing to mark our dog’s second passing. Had he wandered away, his diseased, punctured brain finally realizing his family didn’t want him any more?
I placed Dot in the passenger seat of the pickup and walked around, checking the tires. I gave the handle a crank and a prayer, hopping behind the wheel when the old engine at last caught and spluttered into action. Dot stirred a little at the noise, but mostly lay there, frowning as though not quite understanding what was going on. But then, how could she?
“Thirsty,” she said as we got on the road.
“They’ll have water at the doctor’s office, baby,” I said.
“Nnn,” she mumbled, turning away from me. As far as she was concerned, the doctor’s office meant one thing and one thing alone: injections.
We covered the miles, the wind whistling through the cab, covering up the wheeze of Dot’s breath. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve until her lips were raw. I noticed that the seeds left behind on her clothing quickly withered to nothing. They knew what they needed to grow.
“Thirsty,” she said again after a while. I glanced back behind the seat to the water jug. We needed it for the truck’s temperamental radiator, but I supposed I could spare a little bit.
I reached back and snagged the jug, slowing down so I could feed her a few swallows. “Here it is, sweetie,” I said, and tipped the jug at as shallow an angle as possible to her mouth.
She nursed at the bottle neck, gulping away until I removed it, to her grunt of protest. She leaned back against the seat, giving an “ahhh” of satisfaction.
As her mouth opened, I could see the seeds inside flourishing; sponging up what water remained inside her mouth. As I watched, the growth began to spread out across her lips, heading down her chin and up to infiltrate her nose.
“Oh, God,” I breathed, and fumbled the jug as I reached for her, to try and wipe away this new spread of the disease. The jug bobbled from my free hand, bounced against the floorboard and fell from the truck.
There was a crash of breaking ceramic, and a shuddering pop as one of the shards found a back tire.
I gripped the stiff wheel, fighting as the car slewed to the roadside. Dot fell over to lean against me as I braked the truck to a shuddering stop.
She breathed against my bare arm, but the seeds didn’t take root there.
I stepped from the truck, carrying Dot, and could see the smear of water we’d left in our wake as the thirsty ground absorbed it, leaving no trace. The wind caught me with a fistful of grit right in the eyes, and I dropped to a crouch, blind, cradling my baby girl to my chest.
I would weep away the dirt soon enough. My main concern was how much of the two-hour drive to town we’d covered. Half an hour, maybe less? How long would it take me to walk the rest of the way, on this lonely road where so few vehicles traveled?
The Garners had a farm that was maybe another half-hour’s walk away; I could ask for help there. I was so intent on making my own way without anyone else, I’d barely spoken to them in the all the time we’d been out here. But I couldn’t imagine them not helping once they’d seen Dot’s condition.
I set out as best I could, eyes stinging with tears and dust, Dot cradled in my arms, and left the truck behind. If I was lucky, the wind would bury it before I ever had to see it again.
Living in the “Dust Bowl” was what I imagined living at the North Pole must be like — if you set foot more than a few yards from your front door, you could get lost as dust devils conspired to turn you around and obscure the path. We’d had livestock wander away like that, slipping through gaps in my poorly-made fences, never to be seen again.
I kept my head down and my eyes on the dusty road, trusting myself that I was keeping my steps straight.
Dot snuggled against me; when she spoke, I could barely hear her.
“Story, Daddy.”
“Baby,” I croaked, “I can’t —”
Can’t what? Can’t even tell you a story? Can’t even make this walk through Hell a little more bearable for you?
Why not? Bedtime stories are about the only thing I’m not a complete failure at.
“Once upon a time,” I said, my words falling in rhythm with my plodding footsteps, “there was a boy named Michael.”
Images began to impose themselves over my vision as memory and storytelling took me away from our predicament.
“Michael grew up in a large castle, in the mightiest kingdom in the world. And while his father was not king, he did own a large portion of the city, and had many, many knights that helped him collect tribute from the peasants. The knights would help people obtain mead and wine, which the evil king had declared illegal; they would also distribute the gold spent in wagers on different games of skill and chance.”
I wiped mud-tainted tears away. “But Michael was a foolish boy, and he decided the life of his father was not for him. Michael had gone to school in a faraway land, and gotten all sorts of silly ideas about right and wrong in his head.”
Dot coughed out, and it was a long, laborious process to draw a breath back in.
“So Michael left the castle and traveled out among the peasants of the world, trying to be like them, to support his dreams of being ‘right’ rather than ‘wrong.’ He met a beautiful girl, and they had two lovely children, a girl and a boy. He was ready to make his mark on the world, and Michael was happy, because —”
“What was the girl’s name?” Dot whispered, so faintly I thought I’d imagined it.
“What do you want her name to be, honey?”
“Esmeralda,” she said, more of a sigh than speech.
“That’s a good name,” I said. “Michael had thought about changing his name to something else, especially when the first letters arrived from his father. Michael thought he had been clever, thought he had hidden himself so well that neither his father nor any of the knights could ever find him. But when those letters arrived, he learned tha
t sometimes ‘wrong’ can win, no matter how much ‘right’ deserves to triumph.”
I blinked. I thought I could make out a house in the distance as the wind changed direction, briefly parting the veil of dust clouds.
“We’re almost there, baby,” I said. “We’re about to make you better. What do you think about that?”
No answer.
“Dot? Dotty?”
Nothing.
“Dorothy?”
I felt for a pulse, but nothing came from that paper-thin wrist. In a panic, I crushed her to me and began sprinting towards the house in the distance, uncaring as the gritty clouds stung my eyes, filling my nose and ears and hair with dust, always dust.
This was supposed to be farmland: verdant, lush fields of crops were meant to be stretched out before me. The dust, the barrenness, was wrong.
Wrong shouldn’t win every time.
The house was in sight. The Garners would help. I had to start trusting someone some time; I couldn’t be self-sufficient about everything. Martha and the kids deserved better. It was time to swallow my pride and walk up to the front door of this . . .
. . . this strangely familiar house.
Oh, God. Oh, God, no.
My arms went numb, and I dropped Dot. She hit the ground not with a thud, not with a cry of pain, but with a hollow poof. I looked down just in time to see her burst on impact, but neither blood nor innards spilled into the wind.
There was nothing inside her but seeds, and the seeds were carried away on the howling winds, winds that matched my own screams in volume as I watched Dot come to pieces, each piece lighter than air, each piece swirled away into nothingness, wreathed by a storm of cottony shreds. I grabbed at the wind, trying to stop it, trying to pull her back together, as though she could be reassembled.
As though I could make everything all right, when I had done no such thing for a very long time.
And the fluff and the dirt in the air became as one, and I could no longer say if there was any part of my baby girl which hadn’t been swept away to parts unknown, without trace.
I stood, wondering how far the seeds from Dot and those from King George would travel before they found purchase. How far had they traveled before they found our dog? How many people and animals had they used to spread themselves?
I thought about how long it had been since we’d seen our neighbors, and how long it had been since the mailman or telegram service had visited.
I walked to the house; not because I’d given up on retreating but because I wondered if there was anywhere left to retreat to.
The door was ajar, and dust covered every surface. Roy lay in the kids’ bed. The seeds had colonized him, leaving a ghostly shroud-shape in his place.
What kind of world would let this happen? What kind of world wouldn’t let a boy grow up to make his mark?
I walked past him to the bedroom, and nearly stumbled over a hole in the floor. The loose floorboard had been removed.
Martha sat in our bed, the letters by her side. The seeds had covered most of her body.
I knelt beside her, taking her fuzzy, white hand in mine. She turned as much as her desiccated neck would allow. “You didn’t replace the board very well,” she said. “I almost tripped over it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She sighed as lightly as Dot had. “You never replied to him, did you?”
“. . . It wouldn’t have been right,” I said.
“What am I going to do about you?” she murmured, a sleepy half-smile on her face.
“Have to leave me, I guess,” I said. I pressed her hand to my face and felt the seeds greedily drinking the tears from my cheeks.
“I may have to, at th —” she said, but went silent and still before she finished.
I reached up and closed her remaining eye, feeling the seeds tickle at my palm. But when I looked at it, nothing had taken root.
“Why won’t you take me?” I asked, the wind saying nothing in return but a high-pitched keen.
I stepped from the bedroom, drinking it all in: this little shanty I’d built for my family, thinking all I needed was good intentions and a willingness to do what was right to get by in this world. No liquor, no gambling, no protection rackets. My money would be clean and honest.
Wrong couldn’t win every time, but neither could right.
Roy coughed, and I hurried to him despite myself.
“Son?” I asked. “How do you feel?”
“. . . I feel light,” he said, “like I’m walking on the Moon.”
“Like you’re swinging through the jungle?” I asked.
“That’s right,” he said. “Just like that.”
I clenched my jaw until it ached; my tears drying before any more could fall. I’d like to say there was no right, no wrong — that everything was random and undetermined. But I couldn’t let go of the notion. I’d met Martha, we’d had Roy and Dot, and things had been right, if only for a while.
But maybe . . . maybe there was something other than right and wrong. Maybe there were some things that simply were existing independent of the morality we infused our lives with.
Maybe some things existed at the mercy of the wind’s direction; no more, no less.
“Dad?” Roy asked. From the bedroom I heard a sighing slough, saw seeds swirling through the open doorway.
“Dad?” he asked again. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to be any of those things I wanted to be before. Can I do that? Can I change my mind?”
“You can be anything you want to, son,” I said, closing my eyes.
I leaned in close, and Roy told me what he wanted to be when he grew up.
I opened my eyes, and he wasn’t looking at anything any longer.
There were a lot of things in this life I couldn’t accomplish. I couldn’t follow in my father’s footsteps. I couldn’t succeed on my own. I couldn’t provide my family with the life they deserved.
I couldn’t stoop to wrong, but I couldn’t do right either.
Maybe it was time for that third option.
And maybe a son could succeed where his father had failed.
I lifted Roy, who grew lighter by the moment, and walked from his bed, not looking back, not looking forward. I closed my eyes once again and let my feet steer me out the back door.
I carried my son outside, out into the unending, screaming winds, and waited for him to make his mark on the world.
Here’s another Jeff Sturgeon cover, this time for #25. Alan DeNiro’s story started with the title when he scrunched “coma” and “chrome” together and rolled the koan dice. Another Talebones alum now selling in the bigger world, Alan’s first novel, Total Oblivion, More or Less, includes a Scythian invasion, and a whole lot more. That’s so cool.
COMACHROME
ALAN DENIRO
The tavern was full of mercenaries on leave of their senses but not their weapons. There were yardbirds from the Ten Thousand Asteroids, and damask-cowled birkies from New Caledonia, along with the usual roll-call of irregulars from this planet. The front of the war against the Yegg was close. I could smell battlegrounds and death on these soldiers on leave, the tangerine scents of the Yegg pheromones. The soldiers chose not to bathe; the grime became a second skin. A part of their minds stayed in battle; physical reality was only spectral for them, as it was for the Yegg. Though these soldiers were in different companies, from different planets hired to fight this losing war, they were alike in their disregard for the intricacies of society.
They also considered women intricate, not fit for battle, and so they looked at me with some disdain, the only woman brave or stupid enough to enter their hovel. Many leered, but distantly, as if I were only a hallucination. I noticed their guns tattooed with legion insignia; a few put orgasm patches on their arms as I walked by, shuddering. Outside, the dark waves of the beach-head churned, stronger by the minute. It was hushed from the outlying city of Wang Wei. Monsoon was coming. The prismed tiki-lights bobbed along the breakwall.
And the tavern? It would merely float in the sea, tethered to the breakwall until the storm was done. A guard-tug would make sure it would keep close to the coast. The soldiers came here to drink for this; not just to gamble and fuck, but to experience the visceral thrills of a near-shipwreck. Of course, most of its patrons wouldn’t notice the monsoon at all, lost in their individual stupors.
I needed to retrieve Ling, the Viceroy’s son, before he was cast adrift in the tavern like everyone else. I tried to the best of my ability to stay professional about this task, to set my emotion aside. But as soon as I entered the tavern, that flimsy pretense disinigrated. I wanted Ling safe; I raged to make sure he was safe. Deep in the alcoves of my heart, there was still maternal love for that wayward boy, which had not died after years of neglect. Let the heavens protect anyone who would hurt him, I thought to myself, as I burst through the sapphire curtain in the back room.
Ling was playing koan dice, getting a blowjob under the table at the same time. “Ling!” I said, a bit too sharp than I wanted. I moved to stand in front of the window, blocking the already retreating light. My ears and face became red; I strained not to yank him away from that table right away and shout down the soldiers. The three men with him — yardbirds with sigils from a Mongol polar colony down south — looked up right as Ling was about to cast the bone dice into the box. There was a deed-for-goods note from the central Li Po bank on the table, weighed down by a beer bottle. Three different colored pairs of dice — red, green, and white.
Ling had a much prettier face then the soldiers he was with. Ling was not a soldier, even though he was of age. Two weeks before, he had taken a shuttle down to the planet’s surface, with a tenth of his inheritance, more than enough money to get him killed. “Looking for adventure, away from the grasp of all of you,” his icy goodbye note said.
The yardbirds had guns that hissed at me, turned amber, shouted warning protocols at me in a polar dialect so thick I could barely comprehend it.
Ling’s face contorted with anger when he saw me, which he did his best to suppress. Revealing anger was weakness, especially before composing koans. He gave me a chiding look, as if I should have lived up to that same behavior, and held a stiff hand to me. My fingers grew hot. Even his new “friends” relented in acknowledging me before Ling had composed his koan.
The Best of Talebones Page 18
