Exile from Eden

by Andrew Smith

  We heard the scritch-scritch of what sounded like clawed feet moving across the concrete floor of the passageway, coming toward us.

  I dropped the backpack and found the .45 pistol.

  “It might be a bear,” I said.

  Scritch-scritch-scritch.

  “I don’t think that’s a bear,” Mel said.

  Then we saw the twin tooth-spiked forearms of an Unstoppable Soldier emerge into the light from the mouth of the tunnel. The arms jabbed into the ground to anchor and pull the rest of the creature out onto the trail in front of us.

  I put the pistol down on the ground and swung Robby’s paintball gun around on its shoulder strap. I knew how to use it—everyone in the hole had to learn how to do it—but I had no idea whether or not this particular one would even function.

  Mel and I had gone a long time without testing it, without ever needing to.

  Mel said, “Holy shit, Arek.”

  This was the first time she’d ever seen one of the things.

  When the monster emerged from the tunnel and stood upright, its twitching arms spread wide, the beads of its massive compound eyes pinned directly on me and Mel, it was at least ten feet tall. It sizzled and burbled saliva.

  I was so scared, I honestly thought I was going to piss myself.

  The barrel of the paintball rifle twitched up and down with each surging rush of my pulse.

  The Unstoppable Soldier came forward.

  Scritch-scritch-scritch.

  But there was something wrong with it. It appeared to be limping, as though injured or sick, and there were large brown bruises splotching its abdomen. But it was very hungry, too. There was no doubt about that.

  Scritch-scritch-scritch.

  It came closer.

  I shook, fumbling with the gun’s safety catch.

  The Unstoppable Soldier was so close to me, when it fully extended one of its forearms, the hairlike sensor at the very tip of the spiked claw got to within a few inches of my feet. Then the thing jerked back, straightened up, and cocked its arms, ready to leap at me.

  I pulled the trigger.

  Fwack!

  A paintball, loaded with the only toxin in the world that could kill one of the monsters—my other father’s blood—burst against the creature’s left eye. The Unstoppable Soldier froze, confused. It combed one arm across the eyeball, which promptly dissolved, exposing the interior of the monster’s skull like a soft-boiled egg.

  Fwack!

  I shot it again, this time in the pulsing center of its pillowy abdomen.

  The second paintball did not burst on contact; it penetrated the creature’s body directly through one of the mushy bruise spots. The Unstoppable Soldier took a step around, as though contemplating a retreat through the tunnel. And when it turned away from me, a geyser of acrid yellow goo began erupting, like spouting diarrhea, from the creature’s anus.

  At this point in my life I was no stranger to the incomprehensible wretchedness that was inside an Unstoppable Soldier, but this was all new to Mel—the smell, the steamy fog of heat.

  Some of the torrent of goop skittered along the ground and splashed over my shoes and up my legs, onto my tractor boxers. The heat of it stung my skin.

  Mel said, “That’s fucking disgusting!”

  Her claim left no room for argument.

  The Unstoppable Soldier took a final half step, then collapsed in a heap at the entrance to the passage out of the forest, sizzling and squirting like an ignored stove-top espresso maker on a red-hot burner.

  “Fuckbucket!” I said.

  Mel went pale.

  Her mouth turned sharply downward, like the opening to the cave we had found. She looked at me, then at the dead thing slumped in front of us, then back at me, and so on, for a good few minutes.

  Then she turned toward the bushes that lined the trail and vomited.

  I was also very familiar with that reaction.

  A Smoker’s Best Friend

  “So. Let’s see. Where was I? Well, me and Joe left the attic in the church that third night after Father Jude and the sister ladies didn’t come back.”

  Breakfast and Olive had been walking for four days since they’d left Rebel Land. Every vehicle they came across on the way was utterly useless, so they walked.

  After coming back from his duck hunt and seeing what had become of Edsel and Mimi, Breakfast took Olive back to their old septic-pumper truck to gather up the things that the wild boy simply would not leave behind: a canvas bag stuffed with money, his rifle, and a few other assorted tools and trinkets.

  Then they walked.

  “But I’ll tell you, I’ve never been happier in my life as I am right now. Car or no car, Olive. I never want to go back to Rebel Land. I can’t tolerate being covered in shit at the start of a day, and then kept in a cage at the end. And you know why, don’t you?”

  Olive rocked her chin against Breakfast’s chest. It was her way of laughing, and answering, too.

  Breakfast said, “That’s right, girl. Because I’m wild.”

  On their fourth night walking, they settled into an ancient tobacco barn. Breakfast liked the building because from the outside it looked like a flying saucer from one of his favorite comic books, due to the wide skirt of sloped tin roof that extended outward on all four sides, midway up the structure’s walls. On one of those outer walls, in paint so faded Breakfast could barely read it, the barn said:

  TENNESSEE CLUB PIPE TOBACCO

  A SMOKER’S BEST FRIEND

  The interior of the barn reminded Breakfast of the old church attic he used to live in with a boy named Joe Mahan and three sour old people in black who had something to do with the church, which was why he wanted to continue telling his story to Olive.

  Olive loved Breakfast. Olive didn’t care that she’d heard the story at least a hundred times, but then again, Olive didn’t care about anything much at all.

  Since there was no window with colored glass, Breakfast peed on a rickety old sawhorse in a dusty corner of the old barn.

  They made a bed on a pile of giant tobacco leaves.

  Breakfast knew what tobacco was, but he wanted to taste a bit of it. Olive did too. They both decided that seventeen-year-old tobacco leaves were not suitable for eating.

  “When we left that night, it was a little bit cold, and it was raining as hard as I ever seen it rain. That was probably a good thing, though, since you know how much those bugmen hate water. Still, Joe tried talking me into wearing clothes, and I told him no. I mean, just look at him—all sogged down in britches and a shirt that drank enough water to double that boy’s weight in no time. Besides, like I told him, I was wild. That’s how I lived this long, right, Olive?”

  Breakfast picked his nose and wiped a stringy amber clot of dried mucus on one of the tobacco leaves beside his head.

  “I can’t remember the name of the city the church was in. Centerville or Midvale or something dumb like that. It was empty. Every house and building sat quiet like gravestones. I think Joe and me were the last two people for miles and miles.

  “We got into a store, and Joe took a bottle of vodka, a pack of cigarette lighters, and a small box of cigars that were supposed to taste like cherries. The only naked-people magazine the store had, Joe already memorized it, frontways and back, so he said he didn’t feel like carrying it along too. I’ll tell you the truth—I never cared for cigars or vodka, neither one of them. Joe said the vodka made him feel good. I told him thank you, I felt fine as I was.

  “Joe and me walked all night in the rain, trying to get away from that town, on account of all the monsters we’d seen when we climbed up and looked out that little round window with the cross in it a few days before. Joe smoked cigars. I tried one too. Let me tell you, Olive, I have eaten cherries plenty of times, and if they ever tasted as shit-stank as that cigar, I’d rather starve to death. And you know what Joe said? He said he was glad to be out of the church, and that he’d wanted to leave for a long time, but the only reas
on he’d stayed there with Father Jude and the sister ladies was because of me. He said they were all from before the time, and since I was from the after-time, all wild and new, I deserved not to be prayed over and told to wear clothes—but was I sure I wasn’t cold? Ha-ha—that’s what Joe told me. Wild.”

  Olive rustled around in the bed of tobacco leaves and sighed. She lay her hand flat on Breakfast’s tummy.

  “Well. Once the sky started getting light, the rain came even harder. But by that time me and Joe were away from the city, walking through a countryside that was mostly trees and houses spaced far apart, with big fenced-in fields where Joe told me people used to keep horses and hogs and cattle. Can you imagine what that must have looked like? Horses and hogs and cows all kept inside fences, as opposed to running wild. What a time! What a time for the cage makers of the world, right, Olive? Wild.

  “But since it was getting light, and we were both tired, and Joe told me he wanted to get drunk, we decided to find a hiding spot and lay low for a bit and see what was going on around here. One of the big fenced-in places we came to had a little brick house sitting out in the middle of a field. Oh, that house wasn’t even a quarter the size of this barn, and there was no windows on it neither. Joe said it was a shed or something, probably for tools and such. But since it was brick, with a stout metal roof on it, Joe thought it would make a decent place for us to sleep. It had a stovepipe chimney, too, so Joe said we could maybe get a fire going inside. So I told him, fine, but I’m not cold, but let’s see what it’s like in there. And then I asked Joe if he was cold, sloshing as he was in those soggy dumb damn clothes. Ha-ha. Wild.”

  Breakfast stretched and yawned, and Olive, who frequently mimicked the boy, did the same.

  “You know what? Let’s tomorrow get some fish or some crawdads to eat. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.”

  Olive nodded her head and patted Breakfast’s stomach.

  “So me and Joe jumped over the fence and then tramped our way through this field where the ground was so wet, my feet sank in halfway up to my knees. Joe’s did too, and both his shoes come off. And I laughed at him and said, ‘See? Dumb clothes. Nature herself wants to take ’em off you, Joe.’ But Joe said shut up, wild boy, and let’s get inside. Well, there was a heavy wood door on the little brick shed, with an old iron latch on it that Joe had to jimmy up in order to get us inside the little brick house. Despite his being odd about so many things, Joe was a real good guy at figuring things out, and he was smart enough to teach me how to read and write, so that’s saying something. But now he was barefoot, and his britches were carrying at least ten pounds of mud on ’em and were pulled halfway down his legs from it, but he got that door opened. Then Joe lit one of his cigarette lighters, so we could see inside.

  “So, you know what was inside that shed, Olive?”

  Of course Olive knew. She’d memorized Breakfast’s story dozens of tellings ago.

  “Well, first off, everything inside was bricks. The floor was bricks too. And in the middle of the floor there was yet a circle of bricks, stacked up about knee high, that was made for keeping a fire in, with an old chimney hood over that. But what scared me about it right away was there were steel bars high across the room, and there were two whole pigs hanging upside down by their back legs. They were dead, though. They didn’t have no guts, and their skin looked like shiny leather. And there were other big, round pieces of meat too, all hung up from sharp steel hooks, just hanging there over my head. Joe was tall as a doorway, though, and about as skinny straight up and down as a stop-sign post. But I’ll tell you, Olive, I’d never seen such a thing as those upside-down hanging pigs and those big chunks of meat. And Joe told me we found a smokehouse, and it was a miracle, and that we were going to eat a ham before we went to sleep.

  “I had never heard of such a thing, but Joe promised me it would be better than anything. So we went out again to find things Joe could get a fire going with, and then we lit that fire inside the ring of bricks. Joe drank almost half his bottle of vodka and began acting silly, but I didn’t mind. He sang a song he learned from Father Jude, and Joe took off his dumb clothes and hung ’em on the steel bars to dry out, and then he pulled down a big hunk of meat, which he said was called ham, and we tore it apart with our bare hands and ate till we couldn’t stand up, neither one of us, but in Joe’s case, it was probably more due to the vodka. That Joe was a real good singer, though.

  “That ham. My word, Olive, I think that was the best thing I ever tasted in my entire life.

  “Oh, what I would give for us to find a smokehouse like that, Olive. I’m practically drowning in saliva just thinking about that ham. You know what? I’d pay one thousand dollars for a ham, I would.

  “And you know what I said to Joe? I said, ‘Joe, look at you there on the floor with me, with not one stitch of clothes on, muddy, and eating like this with our bare hands. You know what we are, Joe? I bet you do. Wild. That’s what we are, Joe. Wild.’

  “And Joe laughed and laughed, and then he sang another song. Wild.”

  In This Version of Adam and Eve

  As it turned out, the Unstoppable Soldier I killed at the end of the tunnel was not the only danger we encountered before we got back to our van.

  Mel’s sixteenth birthday ended up being a universe-expanding day for surprises.

  We stepped around the lake of steaming goo that spilled out of the dead monster. Mel wadded the neckline of my basketball shirt up over her nose and mouth.

  “Do they all smell like this?” she said.

  “Well, I’ve only seen three of them in my entire life, and they all smelled really bad.”

  Also, something I hadn’t noticed before, but this one’s innards seemed to be alive with writhing white worms that were as big and thick as my fingers. The worms wriggled so much, they made a sound like the monster’s guts were boiling.

  I said, “But I never saw this before. This one was all full with worms. He looked like there was something wrong with him, don’t you think? These worm things must have been eating him alive from the inside.”

  Mel shook her head, keeping the shirt over her nose and her eyes level with the opening at the opposite end of the pathway out. “I am not looking, Arek.”

  By the time we came out the other side and could see our van parked in the gravel lot, Mel had recovered and was able to breathe again. But when we got to within ten feet of the van’s side door, a sudden and loud buzzing startled us. It seemed to come from beneath the motorhome’s doorstep. The buzzing sounded like something was burning, like an electrical short inside the van, and I immediately thought about how terrible it would be if the van caught fire right here, leaving us stranded in the middle of a forest.

  I put up my hand to stop Mel from getting closer when I saw what was making the noise. It was a fat, black-banded rattlesnake with a copper-colored stripe running the length of its spine.

  The snake raised its head as we stood there and watched. It hissed and huffed, inflating its body like a balloon to appear more threatening.

  To be honest, the snake did not need to appear more threatening. It was the second time in less than an hour when I seriously thought I might pee myself.

  We both knew what rattlesnakes were, but books and photographs and old cowboy movies just could not convey how scary they are when you actually see and hear one, face to face, for the first time in your life.

  The universe adds a snake.

  And the thick, menacing rattlesnake was coiled just below the step up into our home, facing us with a predicament about how—or if—we should go about getting back inside to the relative safety of the van.

  “I think he plans on stealing our house,” I said.

  Mel said, “He can have it.”

  “No. I need to take a shower and get all this shit off me. Here, take this.”

  I handed the paintball gun to Mel and took out the .45 we’d found in the hole in Rome.

  The gun was heavy, and my hands ha
dn’t stopped shaking since the encounter with the Unstoppable Soldier at the tunnel. When I squeezed off a shot, we both jumped. Actually, all three of us—the rattlesnake included—did.

  The shot went right into the rattlesnake’s head, splitting it open, and breaking its lower jaw so its mouth hung crookedly agape. But the snake continued to writhe and buzz its rattle for half a minute before turning over and lying there, dead still.

  “In this version of Adam and Eve, our heroes kill the serpent, then drive away in their motorhome, start their own basketball team, and live happily ever after, through many more birthdays,” I said.

  I clicked the safety back on the pistol and put it away. “You know, we could cook this and eat it.”

  Mel frowned and shook her head. “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t think so.”

  Camouflage Does Not Make You Invisible

  I thought it would probably be smart if we moved the van at least ten miles from the forest where we’d encountered the monster and the snake, just in case there were any more things trying to sneak up and kill Mel and me.

  So I pulled out of the lot and onto the unmarked road we’d driven in on.

  Mel was in the back, changing out of my basketball jersey–dress and into some regular after-the-hole human being clothes.

  In some ways, I was relieved there had been so many distractions that day, but now that we were back inside the safety and isolation of the van, all I could do was think about the kiss we had shared at the edge of the pool. I knew it was going to be something we’d talk about, because it was just like Mel to nonchalantly bring it up in conversation.

  I imagined we’d be eating dinner—maybe something dehydrated from a silver pouch out of the survivalists’ kit in Rome—and Mel would say something like, This dinner is great, don’t you think? And I’d nod, and then she’d say, And why haven’t you said anything about that kiss? Did it scare you? Did you even like it?

  And here I was, driving our van and having this made-up conversation in my head, and I could feel myself turning red and feeling uncomfortable and aroused, all at the same time.