Empire Of Salt

by Weston Ochse

  Trying to keep up with the conversation, Metzger asked, "What was that?"

  "The Vale of Siddim had another name, a more common one. Locals loved the area around it because it was a bread basket of harvest, much like the Imperial Valley is around here. Can you guess what the common name for the Vale was?"

  Metzger shook his head. "The incense. What did you do to it?" His tongue felt thick.

  "Don't interrupt, you bad boy. Listen closely. The common name for the Vale of Siddim was the Salton Sea."

  Metzger gritted his teeth. His brain was becoming numb. He managed to ask, "What about his wife? Didn't she turn to salt?"

  Kim laughed loudly. "There's a funny thing about that. Lot never had a wife. Do you know how we know? It's because she's the only one ever talked about in the Christian bible who doesn't have a name. They never named her, so she didn't exist."

  "Then why -"

  "Because she was a biblical mnemonic. They wanted the masses to be afraid of salt, as if salt represented everything evil in the world. The twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were built on the edge of the Salton Sea."

  "You're crazy," he said. But he licked his lips. Her body glistened in the light. Her breasts quivered as she spoke.

  "They tried to sell the idea that salt was a bad thing. And here's the rub. We're almost seventy percent water and we have more than six ounces of salt on average in our bodies. We're literally made of salt water, but at the same time we can't metabolize it." Kim smiled and sighed. A blossom grew on her stomach, hatching yellow and pink butterflies. "Yet here we are on the edge of the largest salt sea in America."

  Metzger found himself entranced by the way the vines curled around her thighs, fruit growing between her legs. He shook his head. He knew he shouldn't be looking, but he couldn't tear himself away.

  "The Vale of Siddem. The Salton Sea. The Sea of Lot. There's an even older name for that place that everyone knows. The Dead Sea. Nothing can live there. It's so polluted by the salt that the shores are like snow drifts. There's an old Arabic saying about it, An Empire of Salt, ruled by the dead, fit for no man to live or love. It used to be a place they sent men to die. What do you think of that?"

  Metzger shook his head. He was drooling, imagining salt on his French Fries and ketchup on her breasts. "I think salt is bad for you."

  She laughed. "That's what the doctor says." Then she ran her hands through her hair and inhaled deeply. He couldn't help but watch the rise and fall of the vine wrapping her body.

  "Touch me," she said.

  "No." He shook his head. "I can't."

  "Touch me."

  "I don't want to," he said through gritted teeth.

  "Sure you do. Do you really know what you want?" She touched his gun with the tip of her forefinger, then licked her finger. "I said touch me. Touch me. Touch me."

  He stared at her body for a long, luscious moment as the words sunk in. Finally he reached out with his pistol to touch it, but she shook her head.

  "Not with that. Here, give it to me."

  Without thinking, he handed it to her.

  "Now," she leaned in close to him, so close he could see what looked like a hummingbird tattoo on her right shoulder. It seemed to be hovering there, its wings blurred from their motion. "Touch me here."

  Both her hands went to her thighs. Metzger placed his hand between her legs and found her center. His erection strained at his pants. He gripped her with his free hand and shoved her back towards the altar. When her back hit it, she pushed herself on it into a sitting position. Her breasts were now at eye level and he enveloped them with his mouth, kissing first one, then the other, lathering them with his tongue.

  He vaguely wondered what he was doing. But his brain was a hazy muddle as he let his fingers push into her. She moaned, her eyelids fluttering like the hummingbird's wings.

  "I can't stop," he murmured.

  "No," she panted. "You can't. The incense is made from Frankincense and Myrrh soaked in an orange sunshine microdot solution. Just a little LSD. You have little control over anything you do."

  "But..." He wanted to talk, but his mouth was full of her. She was his drug. She was what he needed. He needed to say something, but it didn't seem as important as it had been. Still, he managed to croak, "You killed him."

  She paused for a moment and examined him with critical eyes, then melted back into ecstasy. "I've killed more than him."

  He pushed her down and climbed on top of her. She began to help him out of his clothes.

  "Hopkins," he whispered, pressing his lips against the hummingbird.

  "Yes. Sam." She licked his stomach. "We're old friends."

  Metzger knew that he shouldn't be doing what he was doing. He also knew that there was some connection between her voice and the incense. She'd said the smoke had been laced with acid. He grinned. He'd loved acid growing up. He and his friend Pete had done microdots for a full summer, never once coming up for air. It had been lost time. He never really knew what had gone on during those three months, but he remembered feeling happy.

  "Why'd you kill him?"

  "Same reason you're going to die," she said. "You know too much."

  Metzger found the idea of dying funny and began to laugh.

  She laughed too. Soon, they were both laughing about how funny it was to die.

  His mouth was on the hummingbird when his hands found her throat. He squeezed.

  "Not so hard," she said, with that voice that made him want to listen. "Softer. Gentler. Lovelier."

  He closed his eyes and let his hands relax. He could feel the tips of his boots pressing against the altar. His erection pressed against her pubis.

  "Hurry, before someone comes," she urged.

  His body jolted as a memory seized him. He'd heard those words before. He was transported from the altar of this church to a ditch outside an abandoned factory south of Mosul, Iraq. He never knew the woman's name. She was a prostitute - at least that's what they'd thought. He was fourth in line and the last from his squad. He lay atop her as she spoke lush Arabic into his ear. She could have been calling him an imperialist pig, she could have been talking about tomatoes, but he remembered pretending that she was talking to him like he was a real man and she was a real woman, and they had something real together.

  He'd unzipped his pants but had left his vest and top on. That was the thing that saved him. He was plowing her, using his arms to support his weight and listening to her speak to him, when he heard the first shot. It came from far away. He was so used to hearing them that he ignored it.

  Then she said the words in English, "Hurry, before someone comes," and all hell broke loose. Rounds sizzled into his friends from broken windows in the factory. His squad members fired back, but it was too late. A single round hit him in the back. The air left him, but he didn't die. The vest had caught the round. Looking at the whore, he saw the hatred in her eyes and how her gaze flicked to the windows of the factory. That's when his hands had found her neck.

  He was hit twice more, but he never let up. Even when she spat on him with her eyes bulging and her tongue seeking escape from her mouth, he continued to squeeze. The hatred faded from her eyes as they turned dull, life fleeing them so quickly that she was there one minute and gone the next.

  Metzger opened his eyes and found himself living the scene again, his hands throttling Kim Johnson.

  She tried to speak but she could only gasp. She thrashed and kicked beneath him. Her eyes bulged, filling with fear as she realized that this was the end, and that all her planning, her voice - the acid-laced incense - and her gaming with Metzger had somehow turned back upon her.

  Kim Johnson died gurgling.

  Metzger held himself atop her with his arms outstretched for several moments before rolling off, out of breath. He caught himself before he fell to the floor, staggering, using the edge of the altar to support himself. He found his shirt, holster and vest, and struggled into them.

  His mind was beginning to clear, but
the fuzziness was being replaced by something else, something dirty and awful that he didn't want to remember. No, now it was two awful somethings, each playing in endless loops.

  He spied the bag of meth beneath a chair and snatched it. Without even thinking, he poured a quarter of it into the palm of his hand and snorted it. His lethargy disappeared in a rush. His senses expanded. His mind grew sharper.

  "Metzger! My God! What are you doing?"

  He jerked from his ecstatic moment like a dog caught in the act of chewing something he wasn't supposed to.

  Veronica stood just inside the door, one hand gripping the back of a chair, the other holding a pistol. She breathed heavily as though she'd been running. Her gaze went from the naked body atop the altar to Metzger and the bag of drugs in his hand. "What happened?"

  He closed the bag and shoved it into his pocket. He found his pistol on the ground, put it back in his holster, snapped it in place and walked towards the exit. He was about to walk past her, when she grabbed him by his arm and spun him around.

  "I asked you what happened."

  He stared coolly into her eyes as his system raced with meth. "What happened?" he repeated. When she nodded, he replied with one word. "Murder."

  Then he shrugged out of her grip and headed out the door.

  Metzger was too high to cry. He was too wired to let depression overtake him. His hands gripped the wheel with the same force he'd used to strangle those two women. He sped past the entrance to the quay. He tore down the road towards the plant. He remembered the conversation about suicide bombers he'd had with Dr. Gudgel. It seemed like it had been hours and hours ago. What had the older man said? "My time has passed. My purpose is gone and there's nothing else I want to do with my life." Metzger understood those words. He also understood that he didn't want to go on with the images of those women in his head, forever dying, and forever being murdered... by him. No matter how evil they were, he'd stained his soul by killing them.

  Metzger took the remote detonator from where it lay in the ashtray. He could make it all go away in a rush of light and heat. He wouldn't even feel anything. For a moment, he thought he understood the mentality of the suicide bomber.

  But then an image filled his mind, which drilled through the chemical high, pried apart his pain and fell into his heart. At the last minute he opened the door and bailed out.

  Metzger hit the ground hard enough to rattle his teeth and rolled, tumbling until he was on the shore of the sea, his boots in the water. Somehow he'd kept a grip on the detonator and as the truck plowed through the fence then crashed into the front door of the plant, he flipped the first switch. The explosion shook the world. A moment later he flipped the second switch. This one was double the first.

  Pieces of metal and concrete rained down. He covered his head with his arms and concentrated on the good feelings that had returned to him. He had to. Because if he forgot about the good, all the bad would come back to him and he would need the meth which was currently weighing down his pocket.

  As soon as pieces of the plant stopped raining down, he dragged himself upright and stared at the sky, wondering if any satellites were looking down.

  "Hurry, before someone comes," he said.

  When the sea started to flash green, he ran.

  Metzger met the others running towards him.

  Derrick's smile was immense. "Holy shit. You blew it all to hell."

  Natasha's smile was almost as wide. Metzger remembered the camera mounted in the truck and wondered how much she'd seen. Then he saw Veronica. She smiled as well, but it was more reserved. Auntie Lin followed behind.

  Suddenly he realized the enormity of what Veronica had witnessed. Natasha wouldn't understand. She couldn't ever know what had happened in the church or in Iraq. So it was with a heavy heart that Metzger embraced the others as they plowed into him.

  "So you got her?" Derrick asked. "Veronica said you got her."

  "Yeah. I got her." He shot Veronica a look. "It was close though. She almost had me."

  "Did you see the water?" Natasha asked.

  Metzger nodded.

  "What now?" Veronica asked.

  "We gotta get out of here. By the frequency of the flashing lights, every zombie in the zip code could be headed our way." Metzger glanced at Natasha, who'd been gazing at him the whole time. "We need to find somewhere safe."

  "Didn't you see?" Derrick asked. "The road is completely blocked. There's no way out."

  "We don't have to drive out of here," Natasha said. "We could just run to the road until we meet a passing car or truck."

  "We'd never outrun the zombies. We'd tire first." Metzger shook his head. "The only way looks like the sea. Like Maude said."

  "We're not leaving without my uncle and aunt," Veronica insisted. "They're the only family I really have."

  Metzger stared at Veronica for a moment, then nodded. "Fine. Then go get them."

  "She can't go alone. I'm going with her," Derrick said.

  Natasha moved to intercept her brother, but he shrugged her away.

  "I'm going."

  "Meet us at grandpa's trailer," she called.

  He waved his hand, then sprinted to catch up with Veronica, who'd already made the turn down Fourth Street. Natasha turned to Metzger. "Are you sure you're okay?"

  "Why your grandpa's trailer?" Metzger asked.

  "There are some pictures there of my mother and father I don't want to leave." Seeing his expression, she added, "They're all that I have now."

  "It's a waste of time to go there."

  Natasha narrowed her eyes. "Why would you say that?"

  Metzger felt the drug coursing through his system. He fought to control the his twitching jaw.

  "You were in there a long time. What happened?" Natasha asked.

  Metzger glared at her, hating that he was being asked so many questions. But then his gaze softened as he remembered that the drug could make him mean if he let it. "It was hard. I had to kill her. I don't want to talk about it if it's okay with you."

  She nodded and tried to smile, looking concerned. She took Auntie Lin's hand and hurried forward, avoiding pools of light.

  Metzger collected his thoughts. He was embarrassed by what had happened. His body had reacted in a natural way to wholly unnatural circumstances. That it had been a life or death situation didn't matter. Sex and death are close friends; they just never meet in public. No, he wasn't embarrassed by what happened, but that he'd been caught. He had powerful feelings for Natasha, there was no doubt. But the idea of sex on the verge of death, the power of the energy created between him and Kim Johnson where he didn't know how it would turn out, whether he'd live or die or fuck or not, was undeniable.

  He realized with a sense of fatalism that if he had to do it again, he'd probably do it the same way, even knowing that Natasha would be crushed if she ever found out.

  It was at that moment that Metzger realized that he wasn't the right man for her. She deserved better. She didn't need his sort of damaged goods.

  They decided to take a detour.

  Well actually, Veronica decided. Derrick followed. Veronica wanted to check on the children first. She'd explained to Derrick how she'd spent a lot of time babysitting Carrie Loughnane's disparate offspring, so much so that she felt like a sort of big sister. There had been several times when Carrie had fallen off the wagon, leaving her kids to be cared for by fate, and Veronica had stepped in and treated the seven little monsters the way she would have wanted to be treated herself.

  So she and Derrick ran the length of Fourth Street, then turned down Avenue A. They hadn't seen any zombies yet but the dramatically flashing lights promised that it would only be a matter of time.

  Derrick hoped that they were going to make it in time, but when they arrived at the Laundromat, the zombies had been there and gone. It looked as if a herd of rampaging beasts had stampeded through it. Nothing remained of the glass frontage. The chairs had been splintered and twisted into origami puzzl
es. Washing machines were overturned, posters had been ripped from the walls, the fluorescent lamps that had hung from the drop ceiling were shattered, not a single one intact.

  But somehow the children were still there.

  And Derrick realized, so was their mother.

  Like goldfish in individual tanks, the kids stared out of the glass doors fronting the upper row of front-load dryers, their eyes wide, mouths open and sagging, exhausted from screaming. Blood smeared the outside of the doors. One of the glass fronts had cracked but was still held together by the shatter-proof coating.

  Derrick looked at the doors. To open them one had to turn a lever above the coin feed and then pull the handle on the door; too difficult for a zombie for sure.

  Then he looked down. On the floor beneath where the children had been saved lay their mother. Carrie Loughnane's eyes remained the sky blue they'd always been. Her face held a knowing smile, as if in the last moments of her life she'd finally understood something important. But the rest of her was mangled. Her arms had been taken, her legs bent at impossible angles, broken and snapped, her ribcage torn open. She'd been emptied out. Nothing remained but a glimpse of vertebrae in the shiny cavity that had once harbored a heart big enough to love everyone she'd ever met.

  "Come on," Derrick said, trying not to look at the body again. "We gotta - we gotta go."

  "But the children -"

  When Veronica put her hand on one of the glass plates, the girl on the other side pressed her cheek against it. "We can't just leave them like this."

  "We have to." Derrick looked from one to the other. "Do you really think we can keep them safe? We're barely able to protect ourselves."

  "But they're only kids!"

  "Look at the front of the dryers. The zombies already tried and gave up. They can't get to them. Let someone else save them in the morning when help arrives."

  "If help arrives."

  "When help arrives. I can't believe that a whole factory can explode and an entire town can get eaten and no one will come to investigate?"

  Veronica gave him a withering look. "Look around you. This town has never been on anyone's to do list."