The slash widened slowly into a gap.
"The horizon," I said.
The gap widened more, the red fading into vermillion, then into a widening deep ochre bleeding into soft fuzzy-peach.
"The sun," I said, though I didn’t believe it even as I saw it.
And we sat there watching the glow stretching over, warming and casting shadows with light. The cities were gone, nothing to see, nothing down there, no structures, no anything. We’d already witnessed how every man-made structure had ground into dust. Steel, glass, and fancy wrought-iron work had blistered and peeled and rusted, and roads had bubbled up and turned into mulch wherever we went. There had been nothing for weeks, nothing to look for, nothing to head for, no sanctuary to seek.
And now, as we looked out and down from our Alto Plano, down into the first dawn in months, there was nothing to be seen of man, his life, his work, his meaning, his history. Everything had been erased, reworked and woven into the fabric of a New World.
There was so much green out there. A never ending sea of green, of tree ferns and vines reaching up to the light rolling in from the horizon. And the air was heavy and warm and dense with humidity. The beginning of clouds rose up in a filigreed mist, so pure, so soft, so real.
It had been a long time since I’d looked at those drawings as a child, those paintings, representations by another hand, another fevered imagination. But the memory came back to me now. Only I wasn’t looking at paintings and drawings, at someone’s imagination. I was seeing them in the flesh. Sigillarias, Lepidodendrons, Medullosas and Calamites and gigantic club mosses, and I knew there would be insects and dragonflies with two-foot wingspans. Then it came to me. Laurentia, Gondwana, Balitica, the Panthallassic Ocean.
"What’s happened, Dad?" Eddy asked, legs dangling over the edge of the cliff.
"Pangaea," I whispered.
It wasn’t an answer, more a feeling than a knowing. As if everything had reversed on itself, and time and time, and man and men but for us had vanished.
We must be in the Southern Hemisphere now. No wonder it was so damn warm and humid and the air so dense. So thick it was pushed in faster than I could breathe it back out. But there was light and there was green, there was musky scent to the heavy air.
"Look, Dad," eddy said with genuine excitement, innocence, raising his arm, pointing a finger down into the distance. For a moment he was lost in the wonder of it all. Perhaps we were the only humans here. "Look at it, Dad."
And so I did. A Meganeura, a gigantic dragonfly ascending from the canopy of giant tree ferns. The insect hovered in front of us, its body a glittering metallic blue, a deep blue in the hazy orange sunlight still low on the horizon. It must be true, it must be. Dragonflies with wingspans this big wouldn’t be capable of flying in air too thin. There was only one time when the atmosphere was hyper dense enough to support them, and I breathed it deeply.
This is where the trouble started, I thought, as we sat there, legs over the edge, looking at that beautiful creature with curiosity in its glinting black eyes, its wings beating in a golden blur.
We were in a place and time all the energy for a future Earth would be stored and fossilized for another species to emerge and exploit, to ruin the air, to release the energy too fast in too short a time, to choke the planet. But that would be a long time from now — three hundred and fifty million years away. For now we were in a time when the northern ice cap hadn’t even begun to freeze over, and the sea level was high, higher than it would ever be again.
#
The storm clouds gathered over Washington. The blackness came and stayed and the lights went out. And no amount of F-111s can shoot down clouds. They tried busting holes in them with tons of silver nitrate. But the V2 bombers that took it up there never came back, and the clouds stayed anyway. And now the White House began to sink and bury itself into the earth giving way beneath it, as a President sat at a table as the walls came tumbling down.
"Damn terrorists," he muttered.
The glass of the windows, six inches thick, exploded inward as the foundations melted away. The candle on the table wavered, its glow dying, and lumps of rust fell from the holder like and over-stuffed, over-cooked, dead fat turkey. The rioting had stopped. The screaming had died away. The wailing and whimpering and prayers and church spires had crumpled in on themselves like wet hymn sheets. It was the last day the Earth Stood Still, and Dear Mister President waited for the final convulsion. There was no enemy to fight, no reason for being, nothing to push against to give meaning to existence. There was nowhere to run and no point in being alive without an enemy to kill. He looked up, higher, higher. "In this island we trust..." standing up slowly, saluting, as the foundations buckled and snapped beneath him.
#
I worried about predators and disease, new microbes and gigantic carnivorous worms. But so far nothing had happened. We’d climbed and slithered down vines onto the ground below. Most of it was swamp with a sweet smell I’d never known before. Mostly decaying vegetation, and new growth, a lot of new growth. So much growth we could hear the fronds unfurling during the night and open up for the blessing of a new day. And we stepped carefully, very carefully, very careful not to trample on anything with legs enough to run, or smooth muscle to slither, circular jaws to bite with.
In the end we managed to yank some peculiar looking fish out of the after. But it seemed to take a lot more effort than the energy we gained from eating it. But there was soul food too, and that can go a long way when there’s none other for a while. And soul food was Eddy laughing at dumb Dad’s dumb efforts at trying to catch dinner. Okay, so he was better than I was, I’ll give way to that, but only sometimes.
Eddy thrived. He didn’t complain. Maybe he was growing up too fast too young and learning not to. I just grew leaner. Insects, crawling or scurrying were more afraid of us than we of them. And yes, we made meals of some of them. The trouble with fire around here is that everything is so damn damp, sodden. Besides, I’d not seen any flint to make a spark with anyway. So in the end, most of the stuff we consumed was raw. Thank God, I still had my own teeth.
We slept when it was dark and we woke with each sun-up. After a night sleeping inside the crowns of giant tree ferns, we’d walk a bit more, a bit further and listen for the sounds, of voices, other voices. But that scared me and had me hang onto hope at the same time. I didn’t want to be the one who would die and leave Eddy on his own, the only boy on planet Earth.
We slipped and slid and walked along, and tied some loose vines around what was left of our boots. I don’t suppose we smelled too sweet either, but that all blended in well enough with our surroundings. We’d laugh sometimes and talk sometimes and I began to worry about hangovers from a time no longer with us, of birthdays, and Christmases, and Halloween and stuff like that. But the real unspoken conversations were the ones in my head, the talk of survival and hope. And I would sometimes look back at the mud we had just walked through, seeing it glint in the light of another dusk, and wonder if the footprints we’d made would find themselves preserved in fossilized rock. But that was a thought, an impossible thought, a thought like any other.
(First published in Chroma Magazine, spring 2006)
THE PHOTOGRAPH
I heard her before I saw her, her footsteps outside the door, the knocks, the glass rattling in its frame.
Her hand reached up, a shadow through the mist of frosted glasswork, a mamba ready to strike.
A prickle of sweat rolled down my spine.
I needed to be in control, to be calm, collected, to be ready.
I'd gone over it in my mind so many times, and now it was finally happening, the final transaction.
She knocked again.
I patted down my tie.
Damp patches of sweat froze under my arms.
The chair behind me squeaked like road kill as I pushed it back.
She knocked again.
I opened my mouth.
The handle in the d
oor twisted, slow, sure, the little dent in its brass bubble turning.
Then there was a click as the latch gave way. And when door swung wide I saw her, standing in the doorway like a statue.
With the green wall behind her, she looked like a museum piece made out of liquid jet that had been hidden away for years in a secret alcove.
Her head tilted up and she looked at me through a beaded veil of black. Her cerise colored lips stayed closed as her eyes met mine.
"Mister Carter?" she said.
I nodded dumb seeing the envelope clutched in her right hand. A black patent purse gripped under her left arm.
"Please," I said. "Come in."
And she did.
She glided across the floor like a swan glides over a lake. You just don't see how.
Stepping around my desk like a Clydesdale in the presence of a glass figurine I pulled out a chair at the front of my desk.
"Please," I said, "take a seat."
She sat down, still clutching the envelope, and placed her purse on the edge of the desk.
"Can I get you anything," I asked, "a coffee perhaps?"
"No thank you, Mister Carter," she sighed. "I won't be staying for long. But thank you all the same."
I wanted to slap my hands together in exultation, to give them a rub.
"Excuse the mess or… lack of facilities, Mrs. Andresen…"
"Don't worry, Mister Carter," she said looking around my office then back at me. "I'm not here to comment on the décor."
"Right," I said sitting down behind my desk and rolling my chair closer.
She looked at me through her veil. Her ice-grey eyes that never flinched from mine, caught in the sheared evening sunlight.
"Do you mind if I have a cigarette?" she asked.
And before I could say sure, no problem, she had the clasp of her purse open, and pulled out a pack of Slims.
"Okay," I said feeling too dumb to think of anything else, and took the opportunity to open the solitary drawer in my desk, and reached in for the old tin ashtray. It was full of butts so I tipped them into the drawer before I placed it in front of her.
Veil lifted she lit up her cigarette with a chunky lighter from nowhere, an antique thing covered in scrollwork, pewter by the looks of it, then dropped it back into her purse as if she'd suddenly found a dead thing in her hand.
Reaching up she pulled the pin out her hat, removed the hat, and the veil from her face, and for the first time I had a good look at her. The aquiline nose, the Egyptian eyes, the lips fuller than her sixty years might have dictated as natural for a woman her age.
She placed her hat and veil by the side of the ashtray then drew on her cigarette.
"You received my letter?" she said crossing her legs.
"Yes."
"In that case you know what this is all about."
She pushed the envelope toward me.
I looked at it, my fists sweaty, and for a second I couldn't move.
I didn't want to take my eyes off of her either.
She stared back at me, drew in more smoke and siphoned it into the split beams cutting through the grime on the window.
I reached into the drawer again, cigarette butts and all, and scrambled around for my checkbook. Covered in ash I tapped it on the side then dropped it on the desk.
"Okay," I said, "business first. No names. My client has already paid me, so now I pay you…"
My breath was coming too fast.
"There is no business, Mister Carter," Mrs. Andresen said leaning forward, stiff backed.
She tapped her cigarette into the ashtray.
"Sorry?" I said.
"I don't want your money."
She leaned back again, stiffer than before.
"I don't want anything to do with it," she said. "I feel bad enough for passing it on to you. And taking remuneration for it would mean me having to keep a connection with it. I don't want that. I want rid of it."
I let the cover of my checkbook flop back like the wing of a dead duck.
I couldn't think of anything to say except:
"Are you sure you wouldn't like a coffee?"
"No," she said.
She took another puff of her cigarette then another.
"Can I ask why you don't want anything for it?" I asked. "I mean my client is paying a very large six figure sum…"
"That thing killed my husband, Mister Carter," she pointed at the envelope with her cigarette clamped between two fingers, "and ruined my life at the same time. If I'd had the nerve I would have destroyed it years ago. Instead I was a coward and kept it hidden in a vault. My husband's shrine if you will."
"Mind if I…?" I asked reaching out for the envelope keeping my eyes on hers all the while.
"Don't," she said. "Wait until I'm gone."
"Then how do I know that it's even in there?" I said flopping back in my chair.
"What have you got to lose if it isn't?" she said.
I swung my chair a few inches left, right, then back dead centre.
My eyebrows arched.
"True."
"And my letter to you," she said. "What we agreed. I hope you have kept your part of our bargain."
I nodded.
Destroy it, she'd said. Do not let anyone else see this.
I'd lied.
I'd kept it for insurance. What kind of insurance I don't know. But it seemed like a good idea at the time. And besides I was fascinated by it. I don't know why. But I could never stop looking at it. Until time and again just holding it in my hands made me feel good. It set my imagination on fire, made it run riot until I saw nothing but stars. It was a rush every time I touched it.
I should have burned it.
"You play a pretty tight game, Mrs. Andresen," I said.
"I'm not playing games, Mister Carter."
"So you won't mind if I take a peek?"
"Only after I'm gone," she said. "Then you can look at it all you like. It was a very hard decision for me to make, Mister Carter, my handing it over like this. I hope you understand that."
My eyes flicked down to the envelope again.
"Are you the only one who definitely knows of its existence?" I asked.
She sighed.
"A lot of people think they know of its existence, Mister Carter, otherwise your client wouldn't have sent you to look for it, now would he?"
"I guess not," I said.
"Most only need to believe that it exists," she went on in a tiresome tone as if she'd had enough of the subject to last her lifetime. "Unfortunately those men who do believe in its existence tend to end up being obsessive rejects that end up vanishing from the rest of humanity as if they had never existed in the first place. The fact is, Mister Carter, very few people know that it actually does exist, if that answers your question."
Her eyes hooded; shutters of blue-black eye shadow.
"But you've never looked at it yourself?" I asked.
"No."
After taking one last drag of her cigarette she stabbed it out in the tin ashtray.
"And I never wanted to," she said. "Not after what it did to my husband."
"Mrs. Andresen, then how do I know?"
"You don't, Mister Carter," she said. "Let's just leave it at that."
After that she picked up her hat, put it back on, picked up the pin that went with it by its big black bead, and stabbed it right in somewhere at the back of her head.
I winced.
She didn't seem to notice.
She stood up, adjusted the veil in front of her face, turned and stepped in front of my desk.
She looked down at me. I looked up at her.
"I didn't have the will to do what you should do with it," she said. "Destroy that thing before it destroys you, Mister Carter."
That took me by surprise.
I blinked as if I'd been poked in the eye with a stick.
"Well now," I said, "if you'll forgive me for saying this, but that sounds a little melodramatic, Mrs. Andresen.
"
And as soon as I said it it felt like she'd slammed a bulletproof door in my face.
Her eyes turned to slits.
"Don't confuse fantasy with fact, Mister Carter," she said. "That thing kills people."
My eyes went from her, to the envelope, to back at her again. And when they did I thought I caught the glimmer of a smile come to those perfect red lips of hers hidden behind a beaded fog of black net protecting her face. But if it was a smile, her eyes weren't in it. They stayed exactly the same.
"Good day, Mister Carter," she said. "And I sincerely hope that you stay safe now that you have it."
And with that she picked up her purse, held it high and tight in both hands, with her fingers clasping the top of it like the wings of a stuffed hawk, turned and left.
It all happened so fast I didn't have a chance to jump up and open the door for her, and after I watched it close a click I sat there listening as her footsteps echo down the concrete stairwell until there were none.
And I waited, but for what reason, Christ only knows.
#
What now? I thought.
Look inside the envelope, dummy.
But what if it isn't in there? What if it's a fake, a joke? She said she hadn't even clapped eyes on it herself.
So how did she know it's even in there?
I rubbed my hands on my pants. I was shaking. My sweat felt like cold glue.
I sat for a while longer just staring at that thing on my desk, then at the ashtray, and at Andresen's buckled cigarette still smoldering in it. I tore my eyes away and glanced over my shoulder at the only window my office possessed. The late afternoon sky was a bright sterile-blue.
#
I needed coffee.
My metabolism had jumped ten notches and I needed octane.
I was burning up fast and running on air.
Revolution Page 2
