I lifted my elbow but the wound was covered by my jacket. The purple stain proved nothing.
She shook her head.
My breath came in ragged across my teeth. I was losing face. I wanted vengeance.
I breathed in the smoke and looked at the group. Their faces were blank, lined with tar, empty eyes, teeth that seemed swollen and exaggerated.
Animals. There is no vengeance against an animal.
The ferals straightened up. They looked like a faithful impression of old world humanity.
I stepped quickly behind her, face to the audience. They were bold but uncertain.
I really didn’t want to do it. There was no joy in this. But the ear had disappeared into embers - sputtered out its last spark of fat - and I was empty-handed and torn-up and frustrated.
I put my hand on the woman’s shoulder and pushed her down to her knees. The fire continued to regurgitate clouds of black acid.
Goddamnit.
I wanted somebody to make a move. I wanted to be blind-sided. Any distraction would do.
But there was nothing but the sputtering of the fire and the sepia sky radiating off the old woman’s scalp.
I was thirsty and my head pounded and I was losing blood from my lip and back and forearm and fist.
I gestured with the tyre iron - a broad circle, covering every feral in the crowd.
“This is your fault. You have to swallow what you are about to see.”
And I lifted the tyre iron and formulated the most charitable line across the old lady’s skull.
And I bit my tongue and fought back vomit.
And with nothing but the brown sky in my eyes and my chest and arms flushed with blood…
I felt thin fingers catch my wrist and yank it back.
I blindly flung a sharp elbow behind me.
I turned to see my elbow connect with Tarboy - catching him right in the mouth.
He shook his head and spat and his expression didn’t change. His chin was bright red with blood - young blood that looked exaggerated and unreal.
I opened my mouth but he stopped me with a gesture and and pointed toward the shore.
And over hundreds of feet - over shacks and shanties and lean-to’s and barely-sentient flesh…
I saw Jesus.
The air was thick and humid but I could see him clearly. He wasn’t as tall as I remembered, his black hair was now streaked with white - but his face was still stony and tanned and heavily lined. He stopped to talk to a feral - his face expressionless but calm. Muscles stood at his right, the Insect at his left.
The group followed the Tarboy’s gesture and looked back at me.
Something had changed.
Something human had come across their faces.
I didn’t know how to feel. My heart beat fast and I ran my tongue over my split lip.
The old city was burnt and abandoned. My apartment long turned dust and scattered by the wind.
Over a decade had passed. I’d stuffed the meatbin a hundred times over. The ferals knew me by reputation and trembled.
But it was Him. Jesus had come. And I was thrown right back to the beginning.
The water ran clear for a few months and then grew darker and darker until it was a brown like gasoline. It ate through the pipes and leaked liquid rust down the walls and along the tiles - until there was nothing left but ragged spaces and the memory of metal.
I hadn't left the apartment in months.
The bullet had hit me in the stomach - a few inches to the right of my navel and had settled just beneath the skin in the small of my back. I could have cut it out, but I was afraid of what would come with it - an endless stream of intestines, twisting around my feet.
I had crawled for miles. My knees and hands flapped open and chunks of gravel and glass worked their way into the wounds.
I remembered pulling myself up against the door of the apartment block and falling into my apartment - bolting the door behind me. I slid along the wall to the window - bloody hand prints like animal tracks.
I stood at the window through the night, hands still pressed to my gut. My legs were wet and cold. My jeans coagulated to my skin.
I locked myself in the apartment and piled the furniture against the windows.
The rain had eaten away at the glass and left it clouded and brittle.
I had propped the head of the mattress against a bookshelf and slept sitting upright and facing the door. I arranged every possible weapon on either side of the pillow.
I strained to hear some sign of life. Occasionally I would catch a low mutter or the groan of furniture being dragged across the floor - but it was so distant and muted that I couldn't be sure I had heard anything at all.
The only indication that anybody was alive was the thick and sweet smell of burning hair and fat. It would slip below the door and hang in the air, settling amongst the blood dust on the carpet.
In the beginning it had been deafening - all sirens and hysteria and gunshots and metal crashing against stone.
I sat completely still - hand over the hole in my gut - feeling vulnerable and small, waiting for the door to burst open and for the mob to drag me onto the street.
I pushed a brittle square of glass from the window and watched as the city was digested and the streets swept clean in a corrosive river of blood and hair and rubber and rust.
No human, no animal, no plant or tree or streetlamp or car.
Just a thick tide gradually flowing toward the ocean.
And then there was silence; broken only by the overwhelming beating of my heart and the morning hiss of tar on asphalt.
The streets were empty. I watched for days and nights and nothing moved. It began to look surreal and flat, like a matte painting propped up against the window.
Everything was dead.
I had no water. No food.
The hole in my stomach had twisted into an ugly puckered grin.
I waited to die. I forced myself to sleep and hoped I would never wake up.
But every day I would open my eyes and it would be the same.
The bullet hadn't killed me. Starvation hadn't killed me. Dehydration hadn't killed me.
And I hadn't killed myself.
And so I sat. Crippled by fear. Caked in sharp black tar. Panic pushing breath ragged through my teeth.
Neither thirst nor hunger nor the ragged hole in my gut would let me die.
I guess it was the natural progression of centuries of effort. All human endeavor geared toward the elimination of needs and the pursuit of ultimate freedom.
There were no lingering questions and no nagging responsibilities.
Perfect freedom.
The most depraved punishment of all.
I had no goals and no purpose. I could feel the bullet sliding between the skin and muscles. In my sleep I watched myself drowning in a pool of my own shredded organs. I tried to fill my lungs with air but they were adrift in blood and entrails.
And the days stretched out. And I kept watch over the street and saw nothing but the shadow of my own death and a slow black stain creeping across the world.
And that was where he found me.
A heavy fist beat at the door.
It shook the entire building. The silence had been so pure.
I didn’t know what to do. It had been so long since anything had punctuated the stasis.
I stood up slowly - blindly grasping beside the bed for a weapon. I picked up a knife and held it in front of my face - it was serrated and the tip had bent. It was still reflective enough to catch my face. I was old and looked like dust turned man.
My knees cracked as I shuffled to the door - my muscles were knotted and seemed to tear painfully with every step.
“I can hear you in there”
Again, the banging at the door - still stained with bloody hand-prints, turned black and peeling from the wood.
I opened my mouth to speak but I had lost the words. My throat was dry and my tongue was swollen
and useless. I worked my teeth against my cheek to try to summon some moisture.
I don’t know why I opened the door. I was in a trance - an old world social autopilot.
I pulled the bolt, turned the handle and let the door swing open.
The air smelled clean. It was bright.
And that was the first time I saw Jesus.
He looked from the knife to my face. He seemed impossibly large - spreading out to occupy the entire doorway. I could see nothing but Jesus.
His skin was dark and oily - it seemed human and comforting. His long hair touched his shoulders and his beard was straight and clean. He wore a sweat-stained button-up and thick trousers with heavy brown boots.
His left hand was by his side, palm outward. A sign of surreal spirituality.
His right hand was flush against his thigh - tapping a tyre iron against his calf.
“It’s time to wake up”
He smelled like sweat and smoke and humanity.
I breathed in deeply through my mouth - he tasted like the old world. He tasted like every corpse I had seen split open on the street, every mouth with teeth shattered by cement, every head split open and leaking purple onto the sidewalk.
“It’s time to wake up”
I tried to process the words but I was choking on the sweet air and the light was burning my eyes and he seemed to warp and stretch and grow dark. He was the old world incarnate. The wound in my stomach twisted and burned. My mouth was filled with bile and I spat a thick stream onto the carpet.
I took a step backward and reached for the door.
His face never changed. His left hand grew massive and he had me by the hair, dragging me into the hallway. He jammed his boot in my stomach and I folded and went limp. I felt my scar tearing open and I tasted blood.
I looked up at his face as my heels scraped along the carpet. I didn’t like the momentum; the direction; being pulled irresistibly toward the real world.
My arm dragged beneath me but I still had the knife in my hand. I locked my feet and grabbed his hand. I stared into his face and my mouth moved to form the words but nothing came out.
“It’s time…”
I jammed the knife up beneath his ribs - almost vertical. It went in easily; up to my fist. He didn’t buckle. He let go of my hair and I fell to the floor. There was no blood. His hands hung by his sides, not angry - just… betrayed.
I could smell smoke. Thick, acrid smoke. He pulled the knife out, threw it on the floor and bent down until his face was in front of mine.
“I came here to carry you out into my new world.”
His face twisted. Jesus had left. His hair fell down over his eyes and his teeth were clenched and veined with black.
He flipped the tyre iron and caught it again. It slapped sharp against his palm.
”You want to stay asleep? Fine! Go back to sleep! I bet it will be everything you want it to be.”
And I felt my brain slam against the fractured wall of my skull; metal warm like skin; and my head cracked against the floor.
I couldn’t close my eyes and I couldn’t move my body. I was wide awake and paralyzed. He looked down at me and his face was Jesus again. He shook his head and threw the tyre iron on the floor beside me.
And I watched the smoke pool along the ceiling and I could hear the flames growing closer and closer - splitting wood and smoldering against the carpet.
My mouth filled with smoke. Distant walls began to collapse. The building was filled with voices again - hysterical, rasping voices. Desperate footfall. My skin flushed with blood.
I rolled painfully onto my stomach and tried to lift myself onto all fours.
My head was screaming - leaking a steady stream of dark blood onto the hallway floor.
I wrapped my fingers around the tyre iron. It was caked with blood. Some of it was mine. Some wasn’t.
I was choking, retching, dragging myself along the hallway. The smoke was hanging low. I could barely see.
I pulled myself up against the emergency door and looked back. My apartment had disappeared behind dense black clouds. The hole in my stomach was weeping.
I limped out onto the street and collapsed onto my knees.
I could not remember the last time I had seen so many people. Pathetic and stained and weeping and huddled together, staring at the blazing corpse of their homes; like ragged children from the womb.
The old world was turning to ash before our eyes.
I looked up and down the street. Every building was alight and crumbling to dust. The sky was choking with black clouds. I searched the hollow faces to no avail.
Jesus had left us.
But I was old now. Old and dry and angry. Nerves and muscles and spine knotted like wet rope.
Jesus moved between the ferals and their tired little shacks - the sad synthetic human life.
Tarboy still held his arm out - pointing one jagged finger across the harbor.
The ferals followed the gesture and turned back to me.
The tone had changed. They looked taller. They looked human.
The old woman scrambled across the asphalt on her knees and slipped through the growing wall of people. I spat on the ground in front of them.
“And what about your daughter? Or your son? Or whoever the fuck it was? What about them? All forgiven? Just like that?”
Silence.
“I saw the body, you know. It was in pieces. He’d twisted the arms off, the lips were eaten away, their eyed pulled out. The room was painted with blood. I couldn’t tell if they were young or old or man or woman. Can you picture that?”
The old woman sobbed, crouched down on all fours. Her tears and saliva spattered in the dust.
“Jesus didn’t sew them back together. Jesus didn’t put their eyes back into their sockets. They went into the meatbin. Just like everybody else. Just like you will.”
They were staring at the ground. If animals felt shame, it would have been pitiful.
“One last chance. I brought you justice.”
I cringed at the word.
“I brought you what you wanted. Now pay me.”
The old woman pushed between two ferals and swung her wet face up at me. Her milky eyes had turned blood red.
“Jesus will save us. We are human”
The ferals snapped to attention. Like automatons jumping at the flick of a switch. The mental image of their dead relative hung in the air. Things were about to turn ugly.
I drew a slow arc with the tyre iron and looked each one in the face.
"You know who I am. And when He leaves, there will be nobody here to look after you. Justice and Charity and Morals aren't going to protect you when I come back."
The words had no effect. Their eyes were clear and wide - their pupils dilated.
I'd seen this expression before the curtain dropped - it was the look of a zealot justifying atrocities as the indefinable plan of God.
The tissue-thin justification of short-term torment for long-term salvation.
I looked at the Tarboy and he nodded and took a few steps back.
"I'll be back. Jesus won't be able to save you."
They dragged themselves toward me - their muscles started to swell and twist.
I stepped behind the fire pit and waited until they were close - a living wall of grasping hands and open mouths - all jagged teeth and the raw pleasure of violent community.
I leapt toward the closest feral and threw a straight kick - catching him in the groin. He buckled immediately with a yelp of pain. The trance began to waver. They looked at him on the ground, stuttered for a moment, and turned back toward me - hands all claws and ragged fingernails.
I jumped back behind the fire, crouching and bobbing on my feet. The air was smoke and rancid breath, the smell of meat and rotting wood.
The first strike came from the right. A stinging slash of fingernails at my eyes.
I sidestepped, twisted to the left and swept my boot across the dust - scooping up the fire
pit - flinging a cloud of glowing ash and embers into the wall of ferals.
The trance broke - they clawed at their skin and tried to beat out the scalding ash on their clothes. They cried out - a constant bestial scream that had nothing human left in it.
I tightened my grip on the tyre iron and threw a broad parting swipe through the smoke - clipping one across his pale forehead. The skin split open and a thin stream of blood spurted out like a brown fountain.
The droplets formed muddy spheres in the dust.
A crowd was growing. The screams of pain continued unwavering.
The old woman cowered behind the smoke.
I smiled and jerked my chin toward the ferals - still frantically trying to smother the embers.
"I'll see you all real soon"
I spat the words out into the smoke, a broad bloody grin cracked my face. Pure hubris.
I turned and ran, following the Tarboy down an alley and into a crumbling row of apartments. He threw himself at the hollow drywall and burst between the rooms. He was pure self-destruction without a hint of concern or fear. A true product of the new world.
Nobody followed us. My boot was smoldering and smelled like burnt rubber. I stomped it against the floor and a few rogue embers sprung loose and died out.
"Okay."
He said it without looking and brushed chunks of drywall from his skin.
"What now?"
I watched him wipe the blood from his chin with his naked forearm. His neck and chest were stained red. He licked the blood from his arm and swallowed.
I looked around. The room was dry and hollow and dusty, like every other room in the city.
The room looked out over the street - ground floor.
I caught a flash of cold light. A thin sliver of metal was wedged below an empty window sill. It was a sharp remnant of a wall bracket - it probably held a radiator.
He watched me - unmoved and bored.
I twisted it carefully from the wood. It was only slightly stained with tar, broad at the bottom and culminated in a long, thin point. I flattened it against the floor with my boot and held it up to the light and looked at Tarboy. He didn't share my enthusiasm.
"I'm going to do big things with this".
I wrapped it in my sleeve and held it like a knife. The metal was dull and flimsy but the tip was sharp like a needle.
Blue Meat Blues Page 6
