“Do coyotes bite?” I ask her, because I’d like to hear some reassuring news even from somebody wearing a six-shooter and two crossed bandoleers. Now Tammy wears a big crucifix around her neck on a gold chain from the hospital gift shop. I think the crucifix used to be on the wall in the chapel, but now the whole hospital has become a sort of chapel and Tammy has become sort of a Frito Bandito Priest.
“They mostly bite Road Runners,” she says.
“Good to know.” I run for the lobby door holding Teddy close to me. I expect Tammy to chase me, but she doesn’t. That’s because the door is bolted, and she has the key.
Tammy stands there stroking her giant chapel crucifix while I slam my shoulder into the glass and have about as much effect as a bug slamming against a car windshield.
There’s a set of wooden chairs around a miniature table where the children of patients used to stack blocks and play board games with missing pieces. I pick up one of those chairs without dropping Teddy. It’s made of really solid wood, like oak or maple, and I throw it at the one of the glass walls before Tammy can say, “Jesus Christ!”
The chair bounces off the glass and almost hits me. I’m planning to try it again and again, but Tammy draws her six-shooter and pulls the hammer back.
She’s aiming at me with her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth, and I have no doubt she’s going to shoot.
“Tammy!” My shout doesn’t distract her at all, and she’s closed one eye so she can line the sights up with my body. I suddenly remember what bullets feel like, and I really don’t want to feel them again, so I turn sideways and hold Teddy up for protection, the way my mother protected me when I got shot the first time.
The slit in Teddy’s back gaps open and a couple of Snickers bars and jerky sticks fall out. My authentic Cheyenne War Society knife is getting ready to drop to the floor. That knife is important to me, since it was made by my boyfriend and brother in blood, Joseph, so I catch it instead of taking cover.
Tammy looks surprised to see the knife, and even more determined to shoot me, because now it might be self-defense. I clutch Teddy to my chest and hold the knife over my head in a Statue of Liberty pose and close my eyes as she pulls the trigger.
Lots of noise, like when I was shot before, but this time there isn’t any pain or people gathering around me telling me I’m going to make it. There’s just the sound of breaking glass, and coyotes yipping and an alarm bell ringing.
Bright light floods the lobby. Some kind of battery powered security system, I guess, but with all the noise and all the light and Tammy being such a bad shot, I figure now would be a really good time to leave.
Everything slows down when emergency alarm systems go off, and I stand there way too long, still holding my Cheyenne War Society knife over my head like a torch, getting ready to run, but not quite able to make my body move. Coyotes run through the broken glass wall, and when I finally turn enough to see them I move my knife in front of one of the security spotlights and fill the room with bright rainbow colored splotches.
When I twist the blade the colored flashes dance around the lobby like a planetarium light show, and before long, the room is filled with armed nurses and coyotes.
All of them are pretty amazed, especially Tammy. She falls onto her knees and puts her hands together like she’s holding an invisible book. Her mouth moves too fast for sound to keep up, and the other nurses see what she is doing and follow suit.
I run for the broken glass wall, because I know the alarm battery will run down soon and the nurses might realize I’m not some kind of Coyote Goddess, but even I have to wonder, because the animals follow me for twenty yards or so, yipping all the way.
They form a circle with me in the center, and the full moon’s light shows me that every coyote eye is turned toward Teddy.
“Turkey jerky for everyone.” I toss Teddy to the pack and take off running into the empty city, still holding the knife Joseph made for me. The scar on the palm of my hand right below my thumb throbs and pulls me southeast.
Mary sits on a pink sandstone boulder, watching Momma Cindy and Daddy Bob argue with the radio. Momma waves to her. Daddy tries to smile but only one side of his mouth goes up.
Mary says, “I’m getting wet.”
It isn’t rain exactly. The air is like the vaporizer her mother used to use when Mary’s throat got sore.
Daddy Bob points the radio in different directions, listening for words mixed with the hissing sounds.
“Maybe the radio is gone for good,” he says. “No more broadcasts ever.”
Momma Cindy doesn’t think so. “Black Mesa State Park is so far away,” she says, “From the news, I mean.
Mary knows about far away. Momma Cindy, Daddy Bob, and Mary live in the RV so they’ll be far away when everything turns bad.
“Look, sweetie.” Daddy Bob points to a string of puddles. “Dinosaur tracks. Black Mesa’s famous for them.”
Mary can make the puddles look like footprints if she holds her head just right. A big dinosaur and a little one walked here a long time ago. Before television. Before cars. Before people.
“Sixty million years ago,” Daddy Bob says.
The water in the footprints is clear, but he tells her, “Don’t drink it. Not potable.” Grown-ups have a lot of words Mary doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand what the two dinosaurs did here either.
“Where do the footprints go?” she asks.
Daddy says it doesn’t matter, because everything that lived back then is dead now anyway. “Extinct.” Another grown-up word.
The radio makes an ugly sound, like it did sometimes when a storm was coming.
Mary pushes a finger into a dinosaur track. Mud squishes at the bottom, and the water doesn’t look clear any more.
“Not potable.” She pretends to lick the muddy water from her finger, slowly, so Momma Cindy will have plenty of time to stop her. But Momma’s busy listening to popping sounds, like the firecrackers Daddy set off last fourth of July.
“It’s coming from the parking lot,” she says. “Back where the RV is parked.”
Daddy picks Mary up and sits her on his shoulder. “Maybe we should follow these footprints a little farther.” He talks to Mary in his story-telling voice. “No telling where those dinosaurs will lead us.”
It’s not stealing if you take things out of the Goodwill box behind St. Gregory’s in the middle of the night.
It’s especially not stealing when civilization is so far gone even anarchy sounds good, and you’ve just escaped from a hospital where the nurses turned into religious Nazis. I pinch the back of my hospital gown so my butt doesn’t stick out when I reach into the bin. Those slutty-sick-girl costumes are terrible for self-esteem.
I find a pair of pretty good jeans, and a pair of sneakers that are almost the right size, and a T-shirt with a Jack Daniel’s bottle on the front and Party Till You Stink written in neon-orange letters on the back.
No socks—who needs them?
No bra—I wish I needed that a little more.
No panties—too bad about the panties.
Too bad about a lot of things. Too bad my mom is dead. Too bad I have a silly name—Karma. What were my parents thinking?
Too bad the world fell apart before I turned sixteen. Before I ever used a tampon or put a condom on anything besides a banana. Before I was grounded even once for staying out too late with my boyfriend, Joseph.
No radio. No TV. No Internet. No trash pick-up on Monday. No electricity. Everything I thought would last forever has gone to Where the Woodbine Twineth.
Funny how I remember things from TV programs I never saw and books I never read. I’d like to ask somebody about that, but everybody I’ve seen lately is way too scary. Armed and dangerous, waiting for monsters who’ve been hiding under their beds for a thousand years.
A pack of coyotes somewhere close yips at the moon. Another pack yips back. Coyotes used to be afraid of people, but now it’s the other way aroun
d. Claws click on the pavement of the alley that leads to the Goodwill box. No more time to search for panties.
“Git!” I snap my previously owned T-shirt at the closest coyote. She backs up but doesn’t run away. Neither do the others that are waiting to see what the boss coyote does. They look like dogs, but they’ve never been man’s best friend—or even his next best friend. They’ve waited patiently for things to fall apart so they could take their rightful place on the food chain. Not at the top, but close.
I threaten them with the almost authentic Cheyenne War Ceremony Knife, given to me by my very authentic boyfriend, Joseph, who made it out of pressure-flaked green Coke bottle glass and butcher’s bones.
Joseph whispered, “I love you Karma,” when he handed me the knife. Well, he would have whispered that if his mother hadn’t been outside my hospital room, listening to every word.
So he said, “I love you Karma,” with his eyes, before his mother told him it was time to go to the part of Oklahoma that is officially Indian Territory again.
“It’s time,” she said. “Before Oklahoma City falls apart completely. Karma can find us when she’s finished getting well.”
Somewhere near Durant if the pack of coyotes lets me live.
Lights shine behind the stained glass windows of St. Gregory’s. The whole place is lit up with votive candles. Each one is a prayer for the dead, so it’s bright inside church.
“Back up!” I slash my homemade Indian knife at the lead coyote and she backs up a little more. I point the green glass blade toward them and walk sideways toward the front door of St. Gregory’s, which I know will be open, because that’s how churches leave their doors.
“You’d better run,” I tell the chief coyote. “That church will be full of people and they’ll be on my side.”
I start thinking about what I’ll do if the church is full of people, because people got religious-crazy when the electricity went off. They blame it on the New Flu virus that drills into your brain and makes you listen when God sends you on a killing spree, but that might just be an excuse.
I swing the front door open and look inside. Nobody. Just hundreds of votive candles burning like an old time witch convicted by a jury of her peers.
The coyotes are still behind me, eyes glowing green in the candle light, watching to see what happens next.
I go inside, shut the door, and sit in one of the middle pews. I’m afraid to say a prayer because that might be the first sign of New Flu. But I think one anyway, quick and concise, like religious shorthand.
Give me everything I want / help me find Joseph. The last words in my prayer are, show me a sign because it sounds religious. My lips move a little so God has a better chance of noticing—if there is a God.
Instead of thinking, amen, I whisper, “Anybody here?” People have been asking that question in churches since the very first one.
No answer. That means I might be safe for a while.
There’s a crucifix. There’s a birdbath-looking thing full of holy water. There’s a poor-box and a pulpit and a little room against the wall where people used to confess their sins.
The confessional has an electric light that used to come on when it was in use—like a refrigerator, or a recording booth. I’ve never seen the inside of one so I open the door—to make sure no one will be watching me when I put on my pretty good jeans and my close enough sneakers and my Jack Daniel’s T-shirt with the neon-orange words on the back.
As soon as I open the door I wish I hadn’t, because there is someone inside. Someone with a pistol in his hand and a hole in his temple and a note pinned to his clerical jacket.
The priest smells like peeled potatoes. One eye is open and the other is closed, like he’s winking.
The votive candlelight reflects in the open eye—a wild green color, like coyote eyes. I can see my silhouette in the reflection. Black on green, like a special effects monster in a cheap movie on Syfy.
What kind of monsters will people imagine now that television is gone?
The note on the priest’s jacket written in red magic marker says— “Family is when you know everything bad about somebody, but you love them anyway.”
Was that something the New Flu put into his head or something he just had to write in bright red ink and pin to his jacket before he told God, “Sorry,” and shot himself?
I shut the door because the peeled potato smell makes me sick. I can’t see my reflection in the priest’s non-winking eye anymore, but it’s hard to stop thinking about it.
So I think about the hole in his temple.
And the note he left for me to read.
And my father, who I haven’t seen since I went into the hospital.
• • •
I wake up on the St. Gregory’s pew with a stiff neck, a sore bottom, and a stream of drool drying on my cheek.
The first thing I think is, I forgot to brush my teeth.
The second thing I think is, I’m really hungry. My stomach growls like one of the wild animals that roam the streets of Oklahoma City when the sun goes down. Every McDonald’s in the world is closed. And every Taco Bell. And every Long John Silver’s. I’ll eat anything as long as it’s not potatoes.
The priest smell has crawled out under the confessional door and filled up the whole church. Some of the votive candles still burn but most are puddles of hardened paraffin. The church is full of stained glass colors, sunlight broken into its spectrum like a seventh grade science project.
Nightshift monsters are off duty, ghosts, and goblins, and things you hear moving but never see. It’s a long walk to my house on the Northwest side of Oklahoma City, where my father might be waiting—safe from looters and rioters and the Oklahoma National Guard because he’s so quiet and careful that he’s almost invisible. I think he loves me, but he almost never said those words. No one did—not even me.
The only things I have are the underwear-free clothes given to me by St. Gregory’s generous Christians, and my Cheyenne War Ceremony Knife with the glass blade.
The knife is a pretty weapon. There’s a not-so-pretty weapon in the dead priest’s hand, one with a proven history. I’ve already confessed my sins and I don’t want to open that door again, but I do, because, where else will I find a pistol now that all the stores are closed?
The peeled potato smell has picked up a garbage dumpster tone that makes my eyes water. Both the priest’s eyes are open now. Blue bottle flies are busy there, and in his nostrils too, doing insect things I don’t want to think about.
I try to take the pistol, but the dead priest doesn’t want to give it up.
“I read your note. What else do you want?” I pry his index finger out of the trigger guard and say the magic word my father taught me, “Please.”
That convinces him. The gun slips from his hand without shooting me. It’s a silver pistol with a pearl handle, like cowboys used to carry.
“What’s a priest doing with a six-shooter?” I ask.
A beetle crawls out of his mouth, like an unholy answer to my question, and that sends me running for the church door.
I’m a hundred feet down the street with my gun and my knife, looking way too dangerous to mess with, when I remember I didn’t shut the church’s door. I start to go back, but I see something grey and furry run inside. It might be a coyote, but I think it is a dog, because there’s only one, and its tail is wagging.
Don’t mind me. I’m just a friendly dog looking for a dead priest to eat.
“From dust to dog food,” I tell nobody. Now I understand why buildings have doors.
• • •
It’s a long hungry walk to Northwest Oklahoma City. I slip the knife through a belt loop, but I hold the gun, ready to shoot anything I see.
There are fires all around the city and no one is trying to put them out. There are wrecked cars, and now and then a body.
Dog packs roam the city—looking dangerous and friendly at the same time, but they know what pistols look like and they
stay back. No need to kill a real live girl quite yet. That’s still too far for a domestic animal to go when there are plenty of dead people to eat. The dogs look at me as if to say—“See you later, Karma.” I wonder how long it will take for the all masters of the world to turn into kibble.
I think maybe I should protect these dead people, but there are so many of them and I only have five bullets in my six-shooter, because the priest already used one of them.
How hard is it to shoot a pistol? It looks easy on TV. Everything looks easy, like driving a car, or making love, or keeping civilization from going down the drain.
I go into a 7-Eleven, because I’m starving. There are Hostess CupCakes inside—the chocolate ones with the white icing scriggle across the top. I eat four of them and wash everything down with a warm Diet Coke. A girl has to watch out for her figure.
I stuff my pockets full of beef jerky and Slim Jims, because you never know when you’ll be starving again. I make sure the door is closed when I leave, and it’s a good thing, because the feral dogs try to get in before I’ve gone half a block. They look at me like they might hold a grudge.
“I have five bullets left!” I cock back the hammer on my priest-killing pistol. “Go ahead. Make my day.” Everything useful I know comes from television and movies. Where will I learn about the world now that they are gone? Books, read by candlelight, like Abraham Lincoln? That’s one more thing I learned from television.
The hammer on my pistol has a fang shaped firing pin. I know that’s what it’s called even though I’ve never seen one until now. It looks sharp and dangerous, and I don’t know how to get the hammer to go back down without pulling the trigger, and I don’t want to do that because I don’t want to waste a bullet, and I don’t want to hear the noise of a gunshot, and I don’t know what it will feel like when something explodes in my hand.
I make sure my finger is not on the trigger. I walk a little faster, because the six-shooter is really heavy and I’m afraid to put it in my waistband with the hammer back. The Hostess CupCakes filled my blood with sugar and made me hungry again too quickly, so I open a couple of Slim Jims and eat them before the grease makes me too nauseated to swallow.
Sacred Alarm Clock Page 12
