Empire Of Salt

by Weston Ochse

  "Uh... I think you scared him," Derrick murmured.

  Veronica shook her head and frowned. She mumbled under her breath as she stepped through the broken front door and onto shag carpet that had been new a long time ago, before disco was dead.

  Natasha and Derrick followed close behind.

  Veronica played the light across the room and into the kitchen. Spider webs dominated the room, and a thick layer of dust coated everything. Tattered cheap paintings hugged paneled walls. The once white popcorn ceiling was gray. As they stepped into the trailer, the vibrations sent a plume of dust trickling down from the ceiling, making them sneeze.

  The trailer was in a standard configuration, with three doors coming off a short hallway. The two on the side were a second smaller bedroom and a bathroom, and the door on the end led to the master bedroom. They checked each room and found them empty.

  The second and third trailers they searched were burned-out tin hulks, with the residue of those who'd once lived there scattered around the wooden floors, singed and sodden souvenirs of better times. By the time they searched the fourth trailer, the idea of going into one of the dark and dingy interiors no longer sparked fear in Natasha's heart.

  Now Derrick wanted to lead the way. They had to pass two occupied trailers first -- Lu Shu's and Carrie Loughnane's. On the other side of the ex-cheerleader's home lay a yellow and white trailer half covered by buffalo grass. Golf cart tracks had worn a path through the weeds to the rusted remnants of the doorframe. Although the windows were broken, the screens behind them covered with cobwebs, it was clear that someone had been here recently.

  Yet Derrick was undaunted. Holding his flashlight before him, he turned and grinned infectiously as he stepped boldly into the front room.

  And stopped.

  He stared at something in the darkness, his light fixed somewhere deep inside the trailer.

  Natasha called to him twice, but he refused to answer. She saw his knees buckle and called to him again.

  Veronica stepped inside, glanced once down the hall, grabbed Derrick and jerked him out of the doorway. They fell together in the weeds. Veronica tried helping Derrick to his feet, but he was staring blankly at the sky.

  "What is it?" Natasha asked. "What did you see?"

  Veronica shook her head as she glanced worriedly at the doorway. "Not here," she whispered.

  Together the girls got Derrick up and stumbled into the middle of the street. The distance was enough to snap Derrick out of his stupor.

  "What is it, Derrick?" Natasha pushed his lank hair out of his eyes. "What did you see?"

  He gasped, and wiped his eyes. "I felt something. There was something inside."

  Natasha looked at Veronica.

  "I felt it too," Veronica said. "I thought I saw one of those things in there."

  "What things?" Natasha asked.

  "Your creatures. I could just make it out standing in the shadows of the master bedroom. Watching us. Waiting for us." Veronica shook her head. "It was hard to see. Maybe it was nothing."

  "It had no face," Derrick whispered.

  Natasha made a move to go inside the trailer, but both Veronica and Derrick grabbed at her.

  "You can't go." Derrick shook his head. "The soldier isn't in there."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "I'm sure. Trust me."

  She jerked her arms free. "Fine. Let's just check the next trailer."

  The lot next to the yellow and white trailer was empty. It had been cleared long ago and only held the detritus that the wind had blown on it, trash captured by the weeds.

  Beside the lot stood an empty trailer painted in shades of blue. A faded logo of a flock of birds flew forever on the edge across the front door, their painted wings flaking away. The trailer's door was closed.

  "Do you want to go in first again?" Natasha held the flashlight out to Derrick.

  He shook his head.

  Natasha turned the light to the door and tried to shine it through the small window set in the middle, with little luck. It looked as if there was a curtain blocking the flashlight's beam. She tried the doorknob, and opened the door an increment, then glanced around and beckoned the others to follow her. "Anyone in here?" she asked loudly. "If there is, don't be afraid. We're not here to hurt you." Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside.

  The living room had once had a mural - a painting of the galaxy - on one wall, now marred by time and dust. In the kitchen, the filthy refrigerator stood half open.

  Natasha turned to her left and peered down the hall. It was laid out like all the other trailers.

  "Hello? Can you hear me?"

  The sound of something shifting down the hall made her jump. She thought she saw something round and black at floor level suddenly disappear from view. Was it a boot? Had the soldier been lying against a wall with his legs extended, or was it one of the creatures?

  She waited a few moments until her heartbeat returned to normal. Then she called, "My name is Natasha. I saw what happened last night. I... we... live here and want to stop what's happening. We want to help you."

  Natasha frowned. She sounded like an idiot.

  Still no response.

  She tried another tack.

  "We have some food for you. I know you're hungry. Probably thirsty, too. We have a Mountain Dew and some water. Do you want some?"

  Natasha heard the almost imperceptible sound of fabric brushing against the rug in the other room. Other than that, there was no response. Veronica and Derrick had entered, sticking close to each other. Derrick glanced fearfully down the hallway.

  "I think he's here," Natasha whispered.

  "Are you sure?" Veronica's eyes widened.

  Natasha shrugged. She couldn't be positive, but she felt like he was the one back there making the noise.

  "Listen, I know you're back there. I can hear you, so there's no reason to hide." She waited. Nothing. "We're here to help, but come nightfall, either the people from the plant or the creatures are going to come after you." She paused again, but still nothing. "So you can face me or you can face the creatures. And I'm just a girl. So how about it?"

  A groan came from the master bedroom. It was followed by a scraping sound as if someone were using the wall to help them stand, sliding their back up for support. "Who are you?" came a weak raspy voice.

  Natasha felt her heart leap.

  "Natasha Oliver. We own the Space Station Restaurant here in Bombay Beach. I'm here to help. Can we come in?"

  "Who else?"

  Natasha turned and was about to reply when she saw Veronica point to herself and shake her head. Natasha started to say something, but stopped when Veronica shook her head more violently. Then she got it.

  "Just me and my brother," Natasha said.

  "Hi. I'm Derrick," Derrick said.

  "Come on then. Slowly."

  The voice sounded sick. For the first time, Natasha felt a twinge of fear. What if it was some kind of disease that turned the people into those creatures? It happened in the movies.

  Derrick prodded her in the back.

  She grabbed the bag of food and water and walked slowly down the hall. She entered the room and found the soldier sagging in a corner. Derrick entered and stood in the doorway behind her, eyes wide.

  The soldier stood about a foot taller than Natasha. Closely-cropped dark brown hair topped an angular, but not unpleasant face. His sand-colored camouflage uniform hung loosely on him, as if it was made for someone bigger. The duffel bag was at his feet and still bore the imprint of his head from when he'd been using it as a pillow. Her attention was drawn to his dirty hands, which kept opening and closing.

  "Hi," she said.

  He was appraising her just as she was him. He kept thrusting out his jaw.

  "You have food?" he rasped.

  Natasha looked at the bag in her hand, then offered it to him.

  He stepped forward and snatched at it, then fell back agai
nst the wall. He looked inside and pulled out the water first, downed half of the liquid, and ripped into one of the tinfoil-covered tamales. He crammed two bites into his mouth, then chugged the rest of the water. He chewed furiously for a moment, before swallowing.

  Then everything changed. He dropped the bag and fell to his knees. Water and pieces of tamale hit the floor in a sickly spatter. The soldier wretched again, rolled onto his back and clenched his stomach, wiping spittle from his face.

  "It's the DTs," Veronica said from the doorway. When Natasha gave her a blank look, Veronica gestured toward the writhing soldier. "Look at him. He's an addict, and he's been one for a long time."

  "An addict?"

  "Look at his hands and face. Looks like he lost a lot of weight too. He's been using for a long time."

  "What drug is he on?" Derrick said.

  "Meth, crank, whatever you want to call it. Makes you feel like Superman for a while, then breaks you down until you can't even eat someone's homemade tamales. Some Superman he turned out to be."

  "Kryptonite," whispered the soldier. "It's the kryptonite that's killing me."

  Veronica rolled her eyes. "And he's a comedian to boot." She took his duffel bag, pawing through it while the soldier struggled to bring himself under control. "Not much here. A couple of changes of clothes, some comic books and a box of medals."

  "Let me see those."

  She passed the medals to Derrick.

  He opened them and whistled. He mouthed a wow as he looked from the solider to the objects in his hand.

  "Those are mine," the soldier said. He struggled to get to his feet, sliding himself up the wall. He licked his lips and wiped his face with the back of a hand. "I said, those are mine. I thought you were here to help me, but now you're stealing from me?"

  "I was just looking, Mister." Derrick handed back the box.

  "Are you okay?" Natasha asked.

  "Yeah. Just not used to regular food." He glanced at the others. "It tasted good. Did you make this?"

  "My auntie did," Veronica said.

  "Tell your auntie she did good." When he got no response, he added, "You held back in the hallway to make sure I wasn't going to attack your friends, didn't you?"

  Veronica nodded.

  "Smart."

  "Is what she said true?" Natasha asked.

  "About the meth?" The soldier shrugged. "Sure. And I used to be Superman too. Now I'm just..."

  Derrick used the opportunity when the man trailed off to ask, "Did you win those medals in the war?"

  The soldier laughed hollowly. "You don't win a medal. You get one for surviving."

  Derrick laughed with him for a moment, but then stopped when he saw the man's eyes.

  "So what's your name?" Veronica asked.

  "Metzger."

  "Is that all your parents gave you? Just Metzger?"

  "Shane. Shane is my first name." He looked down, realized that his hands were clenching and unclenching and stuck them into his pockets. "But everyone calls me Metzger."

  "I'm Veronica. This is Natasha and this is her brother, Derrick. We're the Bombay Beach Welcoming Committee." She looked around to see if anyone would add anything. When they didn't, she opened her arms and declared in a mock-dramatic voice, "Welcome."

  "Uh, thanks. I think."

  "So what is that place you and your soldier buddies were being driven into last night?"

  "Don't know. A bunch of us were in Track 3 Rehab for Meth Addiction. A Colonel came and enrolled us into a special program. He said we'd get clean and earn bonuses besides."

  "Some special program," Veronica repeated. "Did he say it involved those creatures?"

  Metzger stared at Veronica beneath heavy lids. "Of course not. They just said we'd get clean and never have to worry about it again. The Colonel told us we were going to be like astronauts. Lots of rigorous training, he said. He said we'd be astro-mechanics or some shit like that."

  "Astro-mechanics." Derrick said. "What do you suppose one of those does?"

  "Fixes astros?" Veronica said, then realized it sounded like a joke. "Seriously, what's an astro?"

  "I think it means space or something like that. Like in astronomy." Natasha shook her head. The soldier was a piece of work. He looked like he was standing two inches from death's door. She'd only known one other drug addict before and she'd died in gym class her senior year. The soldier, Metzger, had the same hollowed eyes and cheeks as that girl had had. "I think they lied to you, Metzger. I think they had something else in mind."

  They talked for the next few hours.

  Natasha told him about her life in Pennsylvania. She told Metzger about her mother and how she'd passed away. She told him about her father, and how she wanted to hug him sometimes because he looked so miserable, but she knew that if she did he'd get mad because his unhappiness was supposed to be some big secret.

  But more than telling him about her life, she listened and began to understand why Metzger was the way he was. She didn't press when he talked about the war, but when he mentioned the ocean she probed further.

  As it turned out, he'd been raised in Destin, Florida. His father had been in the Air Force. Metzger had wanted to become a Green Beret, so he enlisted in the Army instead of following in his father's footsteps and joining the Air Force. He'd grown up on the type of war movies where red, white and blue heroism didn't carry with it the smell of blood, guts and shit. He'd wanted to be a hero. He'd wanted to be someone they'd make a movie about. So Metzger spent his childhood preparing and pretending at every possible opportunity to be a soldier.

  Living on the Florida panhandle, there'd been no end of trips to the white, sandy beaches where he'd sit back and stare at the water. Then when a roadside bomb in Iraq ate a great hole in the side of his Hummer and his friends had evaporated into nothing, he'd spent the next three weeks on a hospital ship in the Persian Gulf, haunted his friends and by the moans of the wounded below decks. He spent as much time as he could on deck, away from the others, staring at the depths of an ocean that connected halfway around the world to the beach he'd once called home.

  But now the sea no longer calmed him.

  It made him nervous.

  The Army brought him back stateside and stationed him at Norfolk, Virginia to recuperate, and the water messed with him. He didn't even need to see it. He could smell it, hear it, feel it in the air. And then he would be transported back to the Hummer ride along Highway 80 in Iraq - to the explosion - to the MEDEVAC chopper - to the sight of bloody bodies in the bowels of the hospital ship, the gray deck flooring splotched with the blood of wannabe_heroes and other mothers' sons.

  At first Metzger had thought he would get used to it, but it got so bad he couldn't even look at the water. His mother called it anxiety, but the government called it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And they spent the next three months trying to cure him while he self-medicated meth.

  When the sun went down, Derrick left with Veronica to get more food, water and some candles.

  Natasha felt perfectly safe on her own with the soldier.

  She saw Metzger differently than she had before; he was more than an anonymous addict. Still, his face looked worn, and his eyes seemed old even though he was really only a couple of years older than she was.

  They could have been two people together anywhere in the world, talking, resting, looking each other in the eyes. Anywhere else they would have been allowed to continue. Not in Bombay Beach.

  Tommy Klosterman wasn't at all what Abigail expected. Seeing him outside all of these years she'd expected him to be much more an animal; after all, the only thing she had to go by was the way his own grandparents had treated him, and they kept him chained outside. And oddly enough, she felt safe with Tommy.

  After he'd taken Trudie from her, he'd held the small body for a very long time. Abigail didn't think that he knew the dog was dead. He acted as if it were a stuffed animal, clutching it tightly to his chest, making noises to it, petting it with his sausag
e-sized fingers. But then he'd gotten hungry and had gone out into the yard to the length of his leash. He'd hollered loud and long for his "Omammie," but he'd never received an answer. It wasn't until midday that he came back inside, grumbling and pounding the floor with his fists.

  While he'd been outside she'd taken the opportunity to stretch her muscles. She'd sat up, trying to get as comfortable as possible. Inside, it was nothing like a doghouse. It was like a shed, or a small house, or a child's fort. There was enough room for her to stand; light filtered through the door and the ventilator in the roof illuminating walls with crayon-scribbled characters, a stained futon and an immense box of toys.

  She found Trudie lying atop the box of toys. She touched the fur gently, telling herself that what had been her dog no longer occupied the body. Trudie's spirit, that thing that made her such a special dog, had gone elsewhere leaving nothing but dead flesh behind. She told herself this, because she had to, or else she'd go crazy with the knowledge that Tommy was playing with the corpse of her dead dog.

  When he'd returned after his grandmother had failed to feed him, she'd gone back to her original position, curled into a ball near the entrance. He'd ignored her when he entered and had thrown himself onto his futon, whining into the mattress and rocking back and forth.

  Abigail wondered what had happened to his grandmother and why she hadn't come outside to feed her grandson, as she always did. But as Tommy Klosterman cried on his mattress like a small child, Abigail came to believe that she knew the reason.

  An hour later, after Tommy fell asleep, Abigail gathered her courage. In a burst of energy, she rolled out the door. She scrambled to her feet and ran as fast as her old legs would take her until she reached the porch.

  Behind her came a growl of frustration as Tommy awoke. The door opened, followed by the crash of chain against wood as Tommy ran towards her, but then was forced to stop as he reached the end of the leash. He hollered after her, "Omammie! Omammie!"

  As scary as Tommy was, the plaintive wail tugged at her heartstrings. "I'll see where she is, Tommy," she said. "Don't worry."