The Postmortal

by Drew Magary

  Confessions of a Nonstockpiler

  I know everyone’s into stockpiling right now. I haven’t taken any kind of action on this front. I’m the antistockpiler. I can’t get rid of my crap fast enough. I looked in the fridge the other day and found three items, two of which had gone bad. The mustard is still good, if I ever buy anything to put it on. Closet space is at a premium in my apartment. If I buy a sweatshirt, it better be the greatest sweatshirt ever invented to justify the space it takes up.

  I have at least two friends who have rented out storage facilities in New Jersey at prices that would make you wince. They haven’t put anything in them yet. One of them is still haggling with his wife over what should be included in the cache. But they’re amateurs next to this one client I met with a week ago.

  This guy was originally from Texas but now maintains a giant compound out in eastern Pennsylvania. I drove out there with my boss. The estate was completely walled, on all sides, and there was a watchtower with a guard on duty twenty-four hours a day. The only thing missing were those little slit windows for archers to shoot out of.

  “What do you think?” he asked me.

  “I think it looks very . . . safe.”

  “The best part about it is that my daughter can’t sneak out at night anymore to go to parties. In fact, that’s damn near the only reason why we have the walls and the guard and all this superficial bullshit. It’s not about keepin’ people out. It’s about keepin’ that wild child in. Because unless I got a goddamn chopper in the sky watching her every move, she weasels out and is raisin’ hell first chance she gets.”

  “She sounds cool.”

  “That’s what all the boys say. Like I said, this is just window dressing. Let me show you the real state-of-the-art shit.”

  He took us out of the main house and across his campus to a very small stainless-steel shack. It didn’t appear to have any door. He punched a code into a smooth keypad etched on one side of the structure. A panel opened next to it, with a small glass plank extending out toward us. Then the Texan took a small Q-tip out of his pocket, swabbed the inside of his cheek, and smeared it on the glass. The plank retracted into the panel, and a hidden door materialized on the adjacent side.

  “Genetic identification,” he said. “When they first set it up, it would take a drop of my blood. But I got sick a havin’ my finger poked every time I wanted to show this puppy off, so they engineered one that uses Mr. Q-Tip here.”

  We walked through the hidden door, which turned out to belong to some kind of elevator. The Texan pushed a button, the door closed, and down we went. Dropping. Dropping. Dropping. I began sweating. The floor finally stopped giving way beneath us, and the doors opened to reveal a vast luxury apartment. I let out a sigh of relief. There may have been four billion tons of dirt and rock above us, but the lavishness of our surroundings served to diminish that fact considerably. It was a fallout shelter. But it was a really nice one. We could have been at the top of the Dakota, if the Dakota had somehow been inverted or sunken down into the earth’s surface. A low-sink high-rise, if you will. There were marble floors, UDTVs, pieces of furniture that probably cost as much as my apartment, and more. Fresh, cool oxygen permeated the air, as if I were back on the Fountain of Youth casino floor, fighting to stay awake at 5:00 A.M. The Texan poured us a drink and guided us through.

  “How did you get all this stuff down here?” I asked him.

  “All through that little elevator shaft. Can you believe it? Took’em two years to build the space and another two years to furnish it. Y’all New Yorkers think you’re so smart and tough. But it takes a real Texan to know how to fend for hisself. Don’t let all this fancy shit fool you. This space is 100 percent self-sustainable. You see this water?” He turned on the tap. “It’s tapped from the groundwater above our heads. Completely independent piping system. I never told the county about it. Matter of fact, I didn’t tell the county jack shit about this place. All they see is a steel shit-house. See these air vents?” He pointed to the air vents. “That’s a central air system that pipes in oxygen from up on that mountain y’all drove over to get here. There’s a filter midway through the system that takes out any impurities, plus a Geiger counter. If the radiation goes over a certain level, the system automatically seals itself off and we go on oxygen reserve. I have a twenty-year stockpile of it. Same with the water. And the whiskey’ll last me thirty! Ha!”

  “Jesus.”

  “Oh, he’s here too.” He pointed to a velvet painting of Jesus behind the wet bar. “I told Jesus that if the water and whiskey run out, I promise to start believin’ in him again. He’s my backup backup. I’m not a wine guy otherwise. Let me show you the pantry.”

  He took us into a miniwarehouse with shelf after shelf of packaged goods, condensed milk, and booze. At the end was a walk-in freezer that extended back some thirty-odd yards. Entire sides of beef were vacuum-packed and stacked on large metal shelving units inside.

  “I can probably make this last ten years,” the Texan said. “Long as I don’t get greedy.”

  There was more to show us. There was a control room with seismic detectors that could create a digital image of the ground above us, presumably to defend against anyone trying to burrow into the shelter and steal all the ground chuck. The command center monitoring this activity was manned at all times. The Texan told us he hired miners for the job, since they were so used to working underground. There was a gaming room. And a walk-in humidor. He also showed us his arsenal. Then he showed us his other arsenal. Then his third arsenal. He showed us a giant wall toward the back of the bunker that was made entirely of vulcanized rubber. Behind the rubber was another steel wall, then more rubber, and then a forty-thousand-barrel oil reserve. He also had a room dedicated solely to his toy train set. I thought that was a nice touch. I pictured him wearing a big engineer’s cap and yelling out “choo-choo!” while the world burned above him.

  When the tour was over, he turned to me. “You start stockpiling yet?”

  I felt inadequate. My lifetime assets could have fit in his liquor cabinet. “Not really,” I said. “I do keep an extra stick of deodorant in the closet, just in case.”

  “Well then, you’re wayyyy behind! Hell, I don’t really plan on ever living in this stupid place. But at least I know I have a secure area to house my supplies. You best do it sooner rather than later. I’m tellin’ you. Just like the guidelines in Marty Frost’s book say, you need a couple years’ worth of water; a couple years of canned beans, tuna, and vegetables; a couple years of powdered milk . . . What about guns? You got guns?”

  “No.”

  “Good God! That’s damn near irresponsible! Most valuable commodity we have right now. Didn’t you say you had a baby boy on the way? You need a gun. Here.” He opened up the inside pocket of his hunting jacket, took out a small automatic, removed the clip, and handed the gun and clip to me. “Take this.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t.”

  “Take it! I’ve fallen out of love with this one anyway. I can’t promise you an invite down into this lovely abode when the shit hits the fan. This is the least I can do. Take it.”

  “All right.” I took the gun. There’s something about holding a gun. It feels so comfortable in your hand, as if the grip has been molded just for you. It’s always inviting you to squeeze it.

  “That’s right,” he said. “You take that gun and you learn to fire it at a movin’ target. And start stocking up. Even if you don’t end up needing it, there might be some poor soul out there willing to pay you handsomely for it. Now let me show you the septic system.”

  He showed us the septic system, which he said could treat two hundred pounds of raw sewage a week. At the end of the tour, he took us up in the elevator and back out into the glare of raw daylight. I took in the air, which tasted stale compared to the oxygen buried a thousand feet below in the Texan’s nuclear-holocaust condo. On the ride back to the city, I offered the gun to my boss.

  “I don’t want it,�
� he said.

  “What the hell do I do with it?”

  “I dunno. Sell it or something.”

  When we got back, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up dinner. I stared at the bottled water on the lowest shelf. I thought about grabbing a bunch of cases. But I didn’t have an airplane hangar buried in the earth’s lower mantle to house them. So I grabbed a frozen pizza and a Coke instead. At my apartment I took the gun and clip and stashed them both away in my closet. There’s a police station fifteen blocks away that will give you a seventy-five-dollar gift certificate for groceries if you trade in your gun. I’m taking advantage of the offer, because I need all the canned beans I can get.

  DATE MODIFIED:

  5/15/2030, 12:34 P.M.

  What Do We Do with Baby Emilia?

  Transcribed from Cara Forlani’s piece on CBS’s website:

  Forlani: Her mother calls her the perfect baby. And by outward appearances, little Emilia Burkhart is exactly that: a beautiful eight-month-old baby girl, with huge brown eyes, a shock of auburn hair, and a half-moon smile that is downright infectious to all around her. Little Emilia rarely cries. She sleeps through the night and can light up any house with the sound of her laughter. She is perfect—and this is the disturbing story of what her mother did to keep her that way.

  Mia Burkhart: I love my daughter. I love her. I know people have called me a monster, but I’m not. I look at her and what I see is a happy child. She laughs all the time. She smiles all the time. She’s purer of heart than anyone you or I know.

  Forlani (narrating): Mia Burkhart is Emilia’s mother. She’s forty-four years old, with a cure age of thirty-five. Divorced with two grown children, Mia decided three years ago she wanted to become a mother again—this time on her own. With no boyfriend or husband to help her conceive, Mia decided to contact a local sperm bank, secure sperm from an anonymous donor, and receive in vitro fertilization.

  Mia: They asked me what sex I wanted the child to be and I said, “A girl! A girl!” I remember shouting it out at the top of my lungs in the doctor’s office.

  Forlani: You were done having boys.

  Mia: Oh yes. Done! When you have two boys, you don’t need a third. No, I definitely wanted a girl. And when they showed me the rendering at twenty weeks, I knew she was going to be special. I just sat there and stared at the screen, crying. I knew she was going to be the most beautiful baby in the whole wide world. It was like watching all your hopes in life turn into this little person.

  Forlani (narrating): Twenty weeks after that ultrarendering, little Emilia Sugar Burkhart was born in a relatively easy and uneventful delivery. After just a day in the hospital, Mia was discharged and brought her new daughter home with her. For the next eight months, Mia dedicated herself to raising Emilia full-time, having successfully petitioned her employer to let her work at home. She fed Emilia, took her for walks, and practiced cosleeping with her.

  Debra Cousin: I thought they were both cute as buttons.

  Forlani (narrating): Debra Cousin is Mia Burkhart’s former neighbor.

  Cousin: They would come strolling down the street and stop to chat nearly every day. And of course, I’m a grandmother, so any baby that comes near me . . . Well, I’m helpless to resist.

  Forlani (narrating): But after a year and a half of seeing Mia push baby Emilia around the block, Cousin noticed something unusual.

  Cousin: She wasn’t getting any bigger.

  Forlani: You mean Emilia.

  Cousin: Right. The baby. But it’s one of those things you can never be sure about. Every child grows differently. I had four children of my own, and they change so slightly from day to day that you don’t notice how much they’ve grown until you take a look at some of the older pictures and say, “My goodness! They have grown!” It’s like staring at the hour hand of a clock. You don’t see it moving even though it is. So it was very difficult to tell with Emilia. But I never saw her walk. I never heard her talk. She was just always in her stroller, kicking her little feet.

  Forlani: Did you suspect then that Mia had given her daughter the cure?

  Cousin: No. No, I thought the child, frankly, had some sort of developmental problem. The kind of thing you never, ever bring up. That’s what I thought. It didn’t occur to me that someone would give an eight-month-old baby the cure.

  Forlani (narrating): But that’s exactly what Mia Burkhart had done. Around the time Emilia turned eight months old, Mia decided that she didn’t want her perfect little baby to grow up at all.

  Mia: One day I looked at her, and I asked her if she was happy the way she was. And she said yes to me.

  Forlani: But she couldn’t talk.

  Mia: She didn’t have to. I saw it in her eyes.

  Forlani (narrating): After deciding to give her daughter the cure, Mia visited an online directory of back-alley curists—curists who are not licensed geneticists and offer the cure to desperate customers at a reduced sum, some for as low as a thousand dollars. Many back-alley curists are scam artists, often injecting their victims with a harmless saline solution, the kind you find in IV drips. Unfortunately for baby Emilia, the back-alley curist her mother hired was legitimate.

  Mia: I knew that this was what she wanted, that this was going to give her a lifetime of happiness.

  Forlani: But didn’t you want to watch her grow? Isn’t that the joy of having children? To see them grow and develop into their own people?

  Mia: I’ve seen my children grow before. I don’t think much good came of it. They die every year, you know. They turn one and they never wear a onesie again. They turn two and they never use a sippy cup again. The child they used to be dies, and that child doesn’t come back. They’re born to be ruined. One of my sons is in jail now. The other one is addicted to drugs. He’ll disappear for months at a time, then show up at my door demanding money. I’ve seen my kids grow. I’ve seen them leave. I’ve seen them become unhappy people with lives they don’t want. That will never happen to Emilia. She’ll never be forced to lose her innocence before it’s time. The world will always be a wonderful, magical place for her.

  Forlani: But you’re in jail now. Doesn’t that hurt her? Don’t you think she misses her mother?

  Mia: Well, if they would simply let me out of here to be a mother to my child, that wouldn’t be a problem.

  Forlani (narrating): Debra Cousin may not have sensed that baby Emilia had gotten the cure. But others did, including Mia’s own sister, Wendy Malek.

  Wendy Malek: I knew something was wrong with the child, but I was very careful about bringing it up around Mia. I’d always phrase things in the most polite way possible. Just a simple “how is she?” Things like that. And then, one night, I was watching the news. And I saw a report about what was going on in Thailand, how there were young girls over there who had been given the cure and sold as prostitutes. And that’s when it hit me.

  Forlani: You knew.

  Malek: I knew. I knew, and I was horrified.

  Forlani (narrating): According to police reports, one evening Wendy decided to confront Mia about her suspicions. Mia then confessed to giving Emilia the cure, begging her sister not to tell anyone. Four days later, Wendy Malek called the police, to tell them what her sister had done.

  Forlani: How did it feel, having to make that call?

  Malek (crying): It was agony. This baby . . . She’s always going to be a baby. I thought maybe the best thing to do was leave it alone. Otherwise, who’s going to care for the child? Mia was the only one willing to do it. So I thought about not calling the police, but I knew in my heart I couldn’t live with that. Mia has always had her problems. She’s been troubled. But I never expected her to do something like this.

  Forlani (narrating): Federal officials say that so-called Peter Pan cases, like that of Emilia Burkhart, remain relatively rare, accounting for roughly one-tenth of a percent of people who receive the cure here in the United States. For the time being, Emilia is staying with Wendy Malek and her husband and
their four children. But Wendy worries constantly about the future.

  Malek: We’ve all gotten the cure, but I don’t know how we handle this kind of burden. Emilia will be a baby for as long as she lives. And I know I have to care for her that whole time. But to think that I’ll never see her grow into a woman? That’s more than I can stand. It makes me sick to think about it. And the guilt ... There are days when I don’t want to care for her, and that kills me. I feel terrible because I know Emilia’s powerless to do anything about it. What if something happens to me? What if something happens to Mia when she gets out of jail? Who’s going to care for this child then? Who’s going to want that responsibility?

  Forlani: Do you still feel you did the right thing in calling the police?

  Malek: I don’t know. And I don’t know that I ever will.

  Forlani (narrating): While Hennepin County prosecutors pursue aggravated-assault charges against her, Mia Burkhart remains in the county jail, eagerly awaiting the day when she can rejoin her little girl and spend the rest of their postmortal lives together. Emilia is now twenty-seven months old. There is no telling how old she will be when she sees her mother again. But if she does, she’ll still have an irreversible cure age of just eight months.