Empire Of Salt

by Weston Ochse

  Will and Sam Hopkins had stayed behind at the Beachy place, calling the crime into central dispatch and submitting requests for the state to get involved.

  Now inside the Space Station Restaurant, Patrick listened as the residents of Bombay Beach propounded a host of unlikely explanations, including alien abductions, government conspiracies and doomsday cultists run amok.

  Kim Johnson talked about Fred and Rosemary West, a British couple who'd killed a dozen people - including their own daughter - and postulated that there might be a similar group in the Imperial Valley area who targeted Amish people.

  Carrie Loughnane reminded everyone about the Manson Family.

  Frank murmured about little green men from outer space, then slid into a diatribe about Mork and Mindy re-runs and how the show had really been a dissertation on the failure of capitalism. He was soon ignored, though, as everyone began to talk amongst themselves.

  Patrick called Natasha and Derrick to him. They agreed something was going on that they didn't understand. So far Gertie and an entire family had gone missing. The rumors of aliens and monsters notwithstanding, they agreed that it was possible that someone in this dying town might have snapped. Wasn't it a fact that serial killers always seemed to be normal, law-abiding neighbors?

  So they came to a decision.

  Patrick stood and gestured for quiet. It took a moment, but with the help of Kim Johnson whistling through her teeth, soon everyone had stopped talking.

  The attention made him uncomfortable.

  "I don't know what's going on. I have the safety of my kids to think about. Probably nothing's going on, but I have to be sure. Bottom line is that I'm going to stay home with the kids for a few days. I don't expect Maude to run the restaurant alone, so..." He held his hands higher as protests began. "Anyway, we'll reopen as soon as all of this... subsides. We're going to stay home. Until then, we think it might be a good idea if you all do the same."

  As he sat back down a chorus of complaints and pleas arose, but Patrick ignored them.

  Rico Duvall stood and proclaimed that he and his brother weren't going anywhere. As one of the only employers in town, he stressed that they were still looking for three to four people a day and that they would pay in cash during this emergency if people so desired.

  Columbus Williams - a retired Navy officer - unfolded himself to his full height and told the folks that they were all crazy, because anything could have happened. Even now the Beachys could be at the hospital because of an accidental gunshot or from getting cut on flying glass. He stressed that not all answers have to be far-fetched and that most things could be explained using rational, intelligent deduction.

  Everyone gave him a moment's serious consideration then returned to their musings. The clamor of their conversations only halted when the missing Kristov and Jose, followed by several others, entered the restaurant with hunting rifles in hand and bandoliers crisscrossing their chests like banditos.

  As the room fell silent, Kristov belted out a few verses of an old Soviet marching song. No one knew the words, but soon all eyes were on him. The song did its trick.

  Clearly having changed from his previous garish outfit into another for the occasion, the cut-price Elvis now wore a robin's-egg-blue leisure suit with an open-collared French-cuffed white shirt. On his feet were black platform shoes. Silver reflective glasses covered his eyes. His hair had been raised into an impressive black Elvis pompadour. The belts that crossed his chest held more than a dozen shotgun shells. In his hands was a 12 gauge shotgun.

  Patrick and Natasha exchanged glances. Patrick was once again reminded what a collection of misfits they had living in Bombay Beach. The notion that an Romanian freedom fighter turned Elvis Impersonator could be the voice of the people was something no one could have predicted.

  When Kristov stopped singing he marched to the counter and climbed up on it, ignoring Auntie Lin's glare. Kristov then sought Patrick in the crowd and pointed at him.

  "I am here to speak with Olivers. I want to say what needs to be said and it is what I am here to say. I want everyone to know that Kristov Constantinescu and his friends are heavily armed and know how to use their weapons. There is no need to close down the Space Station. We have you protected."

  Patrick glanced around and saw his confusion reflected on the face of those gathered before him.

  "The monsters," Kristov said. "We will shoot the monsters with our big fucking guns." When he heard a few chitters of laughter from the crowd, he turned and aimed the barrel of the gun across the tops of everyone's heads. "We are not being jokesters. We are being serious. We will protect you. We will kill the monsters; so eat, drink, and be merry. We will protect you because we are the Bombay Beach Brigade."

  Patrick peered at Natasha, who had a bemused look on her face. She mouthed the word "monsters" and raised her eyebrows.

  Someone in the crowd began to laugh. It turned into a titter as several others joined in. Finally Patrick couldn't help himself as he imagined the Elvis Impersonator at the head of the newly-formed Bombay Beach Brigade, protecting the town's residents from monsters that didn't really exist.

  Natasha and Derrick escaped the restaurant at about five in the afternoon. Patrick had decided to keep the place open for one more night. He hadn't taken much convincing, once he'd started drinking with the others. Maude had returned from another exhaustive yet uneventful search for Gertie and had begun getting the dinner service ready, working listlessly and automatically. It was clear that Gertie's absence was affecting her, but Natasha didn't know what else to do other than go from trailer to trailer knocking on doors.

  Derrick followed her as she went in search of Veronica's trailer. Although the trailers looked nothing alike, they were of a kind, all just this side of a Mad Max movie.

  She stood in the street for a good minute. The heat of the day had dissipated and a cool but foul breeze brushed past them. Once again there wasn't a cloud or bird in the sky. Natasha realized that the stillness had been bothering her since she'd arrived. In every neighborhood she'd ever been in, there had always been movement, the sounds of life during the daytime. But here in Bombay Beach no kids played outside, no pets scampered about, no people walked along the roads. Except for the flies, there were no insects: no lightning bugs, ants, beetles, roaches, nothing. Everywhere she looked there was nothing moving, as if the entire town had been abandoned but no one knew it yet.

  Suddenly the ground began to shake.

  Derrick stumbled and fell to one knee. Natasha held out her arms and spread her legs for balance as everything shook and trembled. It took a moment to register that she was in an actual earthquake. The palm trees quivered, dead leaves rattling like papier-mâchÈ skeletons. The trailers screeched on their foundations, trash containers and beer cans fell from porches, chain link fences rattled.

  And then it stopped.

  As suddenly as it had begun it stopped. Once again the world returned to its former stillness, with only a few beer cans rolling back and forth on the ground to prove that anything had actually happened.

  A screen door swung open as Natasha helped Derrick to his feet. Veronica shot out of a trailer, jumped from the porch and ran to the chain link fence that surrounded her home.

  "Did you feel that?" She took a look at Derrick. "Never been in one of those before, have you?"

  Derrick smiled weakly and shook his head.

  "Do they always last so long?" Natasha asked.

  "Long?" Veronica giggled. "Wasn't more than five seconds."

  Natasha doubted that could be true. It had felt much longer.

  "Come on in," Veronica beckoned. "We have the swamp cooler going and it's almost habitable inside."

  Natasha glanced at the ground and the palms and wondered how bad it could get. How much could the ground shake before it opened up and swallowed them whole? She shuddered at the idea and hastened to follow Veronica.

  Soon they were all safe inside Veronica's trailer, with a cool draft blowi
ng over them. Old blinds cut the light into slits, throwing lines of shadow across everything. The room was clean and furnished with green vinyl chairs and a long sofa.

  An older Hispanic woman wearing shorts and an LA Dodgers T-shirt, with her graying black hair pulled back, was busy picking up things that had fallen over in the earthquake. As they entered she was tutting over a broken dish depicting the Statue of Liberty. In the kitchen, an older Hispanic man fiddled with the back of a radio with a screwdriver.

  "Auntie, these are the people I told you about," Veronica said. "This is my Auntie Hermana and that's my uncle in there."

  The old woman greeted them and immediately put them to work helping her repair the minor damage the earthquake had caused. All told, there wasn't much. She'd used earthquake wax to hold things against the walls and tables, so most of her ornaments were unbroken.

  Afterwards, Natasha and Derrick followed Veronica to her room. Veronica immediately flopped onto the bed, lying on her stomach, feet in the air.

  Natasha and Derrick stood in the middle of the room, mesmerized by the conglomeration of images on the wall. There were thousands of magazine photos of musicians, sports heroes, politicians, Bible characters, animals, insects and all manner of things. There wasn't a single space on the wall or ceiling that hadn't been covered, sometimes repeatedly, by black and white and color images.

  Veronica saw them staring. "After my brother was shot, my parents kept me inside the house for almost a year. I didn't go to school. I didn't even go into the front room for fear that someone would spray the front of the house with bullets. Because my room was in the back of the house, it was the safest, so I stayed there. To keep from getting lonely, I cut pictures out of magazines, books, cereal boxes, anything I could get my hands on. I would have gone crazy without them. It got to the point where these became as much my family as anything."

  "But why here? Why do it now that you're living with your Aunt?" Natasha asked.

  "Because I got used to them." Veronica smiled self-consciously. "I realized that I missed them, so I raided abandoned trailers, took the magazines and removed the pictures. It's funny. Although I can leave anytime I want, sometimes my Auntie has to kick me outside. I like mi familia," she said, pointing at the walls. "I know them better than I know anyone."

  "Do you know who everyone is?" Derrick asked.

  "Some. The famous ones."

  "And the others?"

  "I invented names for them. Like that one," she said, pointing at a straight-haired man, sitting in a barber chair about to get a haircut. "I call him Charles and he's a butler for a Duke and Duchess living in San Diego. He hates dogs and cats but loves birds. His favorite color is violet and he sleeps with a teddy bear."

  Natasha grinned, but couldn't help asking, "Are you serious?"

  "Of course."

  "What about that one?" Derrick pointed.

  "That's Roger Daltry, the lead singer of The Who."

  "And this one?" It was a rail-thin young woman with her blonde hair seemingly glued to her head.

  "That's a woman who has just been fired from her first job. I call her Susanna. She lives in London and hates driving on the left side of the road. She wishes she were American, and is a fan of Country and Western music. She has a tattoo of Bigfoot on her ass."

  Natasha leaned in close and put her finger on the picture in question. "Are you talking about this one?" When Veronica nodded, she added, "Her real name is Twiggy. She was a model in the 1960s, I think. My mother had a picture of her in her scrapbook. She wanted to grow up and look just like her."

  "So says you," Veronica said without blinking. "To me she's Susanna."

  Natasha was about to argue, but then decided against it.

  She plopped down on the bed next to Veronica. "Was that a big earthquake?"

  "Not really. I'm told there are a lot larger ones, but that's about what we get here. It scared the shit out of you, didn't it?"

  "Well, yeah. Who wouldn't be scared, you know?"

  "What about this one?" Derrick asked, ignoring the girls' conversation, too entranced by the images to care.

  "Sissy Spacek in Carrie."

  "She looks pissed," he said. He moved along the wall, his fingers flowing across the images like they were Braille and he was a blind man.

  "Do the earthquakes cause any damage?" Natasha asked.

  "Not really. I mean, some of the old trailers in Bombay Beach are real dumps to begin with. Each one of the tremblers takes them a step closer to collapse. That's why Will and that asshole Hopkins tell everyone to stay out of them. They say it's dangerous."

  "And you don't believe them?"

  Veronica made a face like she'd smelt something bad. "Oh, I believe them, but what do they really know about danger? I just have a problem with them telling me to be careful. It's like telling a woman who has cancer to look both ways when she crosses the street."

  Natasha wasn't sure the metaphor was accurate but she could tell that she'd struck a nerve. "What about Hopkins? Why doesn't anyone like him?"

  "I don't know. He just comes across as a know_it_all, and I hate know_it_alls."

  "What about this one?" Derrick asked.

  "That's Kevin Bacon. He's an actor."

  Derrick moved on.

  "You know, I saw him," Natasha said.

  "Kevin Bacon?" Veronica sat straighter.

  "Nuh-uh. Hopkins. That government guy. We saw him last night over at the desalination plant."

  "Out there? Why would he be over there so late?"

  "There were buses that came in and he was keeping track of them or something. He had a clipboard."

  "Who was on the buses?"

  Natasha shrugged.

  "And this one?" Derrick poked his finger at the ceiling.

  "John Wayne."

  "The Duke. I thought that was him, but I've never seen him with the eye patch."

  Natasha looked at Veronica and rolled her eyes. Then they began to laugh. Soon, Natasha had joined in the game and she was dancing around the room, pointing to picture after picture, taking turns with Derrick, and letting Veronica either tell them who it really was or making up a story to fill out their two_dimensional lives. All was hilarity until Veronica mistook the made-for-TV band the Monkees for the Beatles, which almost made Natasha hyperventilate at the insanity of the error. Soon she was telling Veronica the truth of the Monkees, and the state of American television in the early days: Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, The Love Boat, and the best show in the entire universe, Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp.

  The dog was ill, there was no denying it. Abigail had broken down and fed it two pieces of chocolate. It had vomited several times and kept crapping in the corner, noxious streams of yellow-brown liquid. When it wasn't in the corner, it was pacing back and forth, unwilling to lie down.

  Abigail had left a third of the chocolate in the box and had placed it back on the shelf so that the dog would leave her alone. She knew she shouldn't have given it chocolate, but what was she to do with the dog begging, starving, whining in front of her and not understanding why Abigail was eating and she couldn't.

  When she could, Abigail fed it water. They had a never-ending supply of the stuff, and if they could wait out the creature and stave off her hunger, they could survive this episode.

  Abigail lay back on the bed, her husband's fedora clenched in her arms, and stared morosely at the door. God, she'd love to live somewhere else, but all of their money had been sunk into the land and this trailer and no one, but no one, was buying land around the Salton Sea.

  She was trapped in Bombay Beach as surely as she was trapped in her home. Any way she looked, she was trapped. It was all just so hopeless. She was just marking time until it was her turn to die.

  Scratching came from the bathroom.

  "Stop that, Trudie."

  The scratching continued unabated.

  "Trudie, I said stop that."

  Trudie leaped on the bed beside her, panting rapidly.

&n
bsp; And the scratching continued.

  Abigail sat up in bed. If Trudie was right here, then what was it making that noise?

  She got to her feet and crept to the bathroom door. She peered in and cocked her head. When the scratching came once more, she pinpointed the sound. It was coming from beneath the toilet.

  What could be making that -

  Was it the creature from the hall? Had it decided to try another way in or was it another creature come to get her?

  She took a few steps towards the toilet. And why was it scratching there? Roger had steel-plated the walls and floor and ceiling. There was no getting in.

  Except...

  She remembered when she'd had Jose come over and repair a busted pipe. He'd said something then about the steel flooring. The price he'd quoted was unreasonably high, she'd thought, and she remembered telling him so. He'd brought the price down to a reasonable amount she was willing to pay, but had told her that he'd have to cut corners.

  Was one of the corners the steel plating?

  The scratching answered her.

  Patrick's head should have exploded sometime between when it hit the pillow at 3 AM and when he was woken with a shove at 9 AM. If it had, he wouldn't be experiencing the pain he was feeling now. The dull throbbing he could take, but the hundreds of screwdrivers lancing his brain was another thing altogether. If he had the keys to the world he'd put a stop to it, but for now all he could do was gulp aspirins and glower at all things noisy - which apparently was everyone except himself - and hope to survive the next few seconds.

  The restaurant was in full swing, although how long that was going to last he didn't know. Maude had handed in her notice. She'd said that with Gertie having run off and Lazlo dead, there was nothing left for her but bad memories. Patrick realized that her leaving would be a crippling blow to the restaurant, but in his condition he couldn't bring himself to care.