by James, Guy
Death versus panic attack, Ginny wondered. I’ll take the panic attack, thank you very much. Then I can go hide out at home until I feel better, get on my computer and see the world from a distance, online. Much better than death, she decided.
Ginny tried to stay on top of her anxiety by avoiding its triggers—chiefly, other people—by meditating, and by trying some herbal supplements she’d researched: valerian and GABA and magnesium and calcium. And she’d even tried something more intrusive on her routine than pill-swallowing: exercise.
She’d gotten a rowing machine online and started using the thing every day, just like the Underwoods did on House of Cards, which she binge-watched on Netflix each time a new season came out, subscribing to the service upon release of the show’s latest installment, and canceling as soon as she was done watching that and anything else she could find of worth in the Netflix lineup, which of late was only House of Cards and Trailer Park Boys, but more on the latter in a moment.
None of it helped a whole lot, although she had to admit the exercise did have some calming effects, and getting a sweat going and her heart beat up made her feel like she’d accomplished something—almost as good as it felt to get an article out, and that really was a great feeling, especially if her piece was breaking new ground. Had she gone outside in the daytime more often, and farther than her stoop, she might have made some progress in correcting her vitamin D deficiency, and that would’ve helped her anxiety some too, but she never did that.
Traveling somewhere sunny and scenic to soak up the sun and take in the outdoors was nowhere near her bucket list. As far as she was concerned, all bucket list items had been fulfilled, mostly because there were so few. She had a job she loved, lived alone free of the stressful influence of other people, took care of a cat she loved very, very much—almost as much as her job—and had food and running water. What more could an anxiety-ridden, agoraphobic girl want?
The best pastime she could imagine was staying inside and losing herself in research on her computer, and her job as a freelance writer was perfect for that. She was at her best—and proudest of the role she’d carved out for herself in the world—when she managed to earn money for articles that argued the opposite sides of the same issue.
This was easiest to do in the financial sector, where she wrote under the pen names Walter Radley and Jimmy Oliver. Mr. Radley was a permabear, and silly old Jimmy was a permabull. Neither had any idea where the stock market was going of course, and neither did Ginny, but that didn’t stop her from making money on the articles.
In fact, other than the income from the hot air finance gunk she wrote, she had no position in stocks whatsoever, opting to keep all her money in a low yield savings account. The other personal finance writers would have blown their tops.
On a more local front and of late, many of her articles were focused on the encroaching Balleston Haven Trailer Park. If you’d ever seen any episodes of Trailer Park Boys—and Ginny had watched more than a few as part of her research, she’d watched all the seasons through in fact, and twice over—you’d have an idea of what Balleston was becoming, except the real life version was not set in Nova Scotia, and was not at all quaint or humorous. To Ginny, the reality wasn’t picturesque or amusing in the least, whether in an ironic sense or otherwise, but quite the opposite.
The trailer park denizens, if a word with three syllables could even be used to describe the grotesque things that lived there, were multiplying like Viagra-crunching, mullet-sporting rabbits, on meth.
There was some damn good tub shine coming out of the trailer park, but Ginny didn’t know about that, and she wouldn’t have tried it if she did. She didn’t partake in such pointless activities as drinking. And having a drink or two might risk a social encounter, and she wouldn’t have wanted that.
She was trying to get some more Balleston citizens on her side to stop the ongoing land grab by the trailer park developer goons, which would have been much easier for her to do if she’d actually stepped outside of her house, went to talk to some of her neighbors—most of which were likeminded on the trailer park issue—and showed up at a public hearing in more than just spirit.
Still, writing up her thoughts on the Balleston Independent Chronicle website—owned and operated by Virginia Nelda-Ann Lloyd, thank you very much—was much better than nothing. Because the locals did read it, and sometimes not just the locals, and every bit of press helped.
It was like the trailer park was consuming the town. And to top it all off, there was suddenly decay floating on the air, and not in a shy way, either. It was everywhere.
Something was going very, very wrong, and it seemed to be originating in Balleston Haven Trailer Park. That wasn’t true, but the Haven—she scoffed each time she thought of it by that name—was a hotbed of the spreading rot with which Ms. Lloyd was about to concern herself.
And she was right to do so, too. It would turn out to be a matter of concern for all of humanity, and she’d be one of the first to try to call attention to it, although no one would remember her for her valiant efforts.
63
When Ginny stumbled on her greatest, and last story, she was snacking on Annie’s organic ‘Friends’ bunny grahams, which came in a mixture of honey, chocolate chip, and chocolate, and which she ordered online because you’d be hard-pressed to find anything organic in the dear old town of Balleston.
That was how she worked best: in the dark, a mug of hot cocoa by her wireless—thank heaven for dongles—keyboard’s side, and Milo the spotted tabby—who sometimes went by Miy-Miy when the mood so struck his mistress—looking disdainfully down at her from his wall perch, which Ginny had ordered online and installed herself, thank you very much for that too.
It eats people.
That was the phrase that caught Ginny’s eye.
It eats people.
It.
Eats.
People.
Grabby, she thought, but amateurish. Still, she gave it a read. It was definitely a hatchet job, done by a hacker who was low on the whole persuasive writing skill thing, but it was the information in the article that Ginny cared about, not how it was written or by whom.
Apparently, it really did eat people. The it was Desomorphine, a cheap drug whose street name was Krokodil, because…a quick flip through the images and a translation of the transliterated word said it all, too much, in fact.
She clicked on an innocuous-looking hyperlink. She knew better of course. No hyperlinks were innocent, and least of all in the Deep Web chat rooms where she was now frolicking.
A clutched handful of bunny grahams froze in midair on its way to her mouth. A few lucky bunnies tumbled out of her hand and fell with all their chocolaty goodness to the floor.
She put the rest—the ones she was still holding—back in the bag and wiped her palm clean of graham crumbs against the leg of her sweatpants. She swallowed, a feat that was usually easier for her to manage, and kept going.
The images filled her screen when she was reciting the mantra: ‘Balls to Balleston, soon to go balls-up thanks to the Haven,’ which she recited quite regularly, and choked on the ‘thanks.’
It came out as a, “tha-ha” and transitioned not-at-all seamlessly into a coughing fit. When she was done coughing, she went to the bathroom and launched a neat plume of masticated bunnies into her toilet, where their bits could hop to their little chewed-up hearts’ content. She flushed, swirling the bunny parts into sewer oblivion, and went back to her post.
Even when the innermost reaches of her gut were clenching with the force of an amateur arm wrestler’s fist, what she’d seen remained pinned to that darn tack board in her mind, not one of her run-of-the mill story tack boards either, but that one, the one that once there was something pinned to it, wouldn’t be pushed out of the way or even curtained. When pieces of mental scrap paper were stuck to it, it wouldn’t go away until it was served, and all she could do was submit.
This story would consume her life and she
would pursue it with a passion she hadn’t tapped before, and that was fitting, because this story was to be her last. It was always good to go out with a bang, or, in this case, a global pandemic.
It was unfortunate she’d lost her meal of bunny grahams, and her appetite with it. She usually ate them when she was working on a story, it was part of her process, and the only difference was whether she dipped the grahams in her cocoa or not. Sometimes she dipped and sometimes she didn’t; it depended on the story she was writing.
In this case, she wouldn’t, but thanks very much anyway. She hardly ate at all while working on this one, her appetite becoming more and more difficult for her to locate. It just wasn’t where she left it anymore, like a key ring that sprouted legs and moved about the house at will. You know the kind.
Her curiosity needing to be quenched, she reloaded her Tor browser—which she’d closed out of in disgust before spewing up her snacks—and began to peel away the onion’s layers, until she reached its core, which she found was more than a tad rotten. When you combined all the sources on the Deep Web, you could usually begin to see some of the truth, pieces of objective reality, as if the combination of the sources created a chemical solvent that was finally strong enough to cut through all the obfuscatory lies and false halves of half-truths.
The It eats people page was on her screen again, and now that she had no troublesome anything in her stomach, she could go on. The images only got worse, and the truth was cruder than the tagline suggested.
It wasn’t a neat thing that just ate people and went on its merry way, it chewed people up from deep in them, working away at their veins and bones, keeping them alive in a protracted state of suffering in which they were apparently helpless in their need to give themselves up for further chomping.
Krokodil was the transliterated Russian word for crocodile. Maybe, she thought, it’s called that because it eats you like a crocodile. But then, no. She shook her head. A crocodile wouldn’t leave damage that was so revolting. The injuries seemed cruel, and yet they were self-inflicted. Was that poetic? Ginny wondered. Or ironic? Or just another example of humanity’s self-destructive nature at work? It was a tragically poetic irony, perhaps, or something.
But, as she discovered, that wasn’t why it was called that. It was called crocodile because that’s what it made your skin look like, scaly like that of a crocodile, while it rotted you from the inside out.
Krokodil.
Chomp, chomp.
Charming, Ginny thought, as she scanned through the photos of people with parts of themselves eaten away and other parts in the process of being eaten some more.
Six-and-a-half hours later, her hot cocoa had cooled, and some of the organic, fair trade, magical powder had settled to the bottom of the mug.
“Oh my, Miy-Miy,” she said, looking at Milo, “my oh my.”
The cat yawned, unimpressed. He wasn’t named after the sorghum, but after the Nestle tonic food that was basically evaporated chocolate and malt powder, which would become an epically prized—read, killed-for—possession after the outbreak.
And what he was now perusing in his cat memory banks was an image of Ginny eating the Milo powder straight from its green container, spoonful by dry, heaping spoonful. No wonder she couldn’t find a mate, thought the tabby. No wonder.
“Old news to you, is that right?” Ginny shrugged. “What else is new? But, gosh darn it, oh my.”
She took a sip of tepid cocoa and frowned. The dark mixture was the only way she was taking in any calories at that point, and it offered few. She tried to immerse more nutrition in it, but couldn’t drink it with more than a dollop of Horizon Organic Milk and a smattering of organic brown sugar.
At this point in the night, the cocoa needed some heating if it was to stand any chance of feeding the ill-fated journalist. She blinked at the screen and tilted her head, setting it at an angle that was almost jaunty, but it was just something she did to give her eyes a rest.
Tilting her head from side to side, she could alternate the strain on her eyes and work longer. It seemed to do the trick, anyway.
“Probably knew the cocoa was cold, too?”
Ginny wiped her lips with the back of her hand, smearing some light cocoa trails past her lips and onto her left cheek. She smiled up at Milo, beaming love straight at him, while he was still thinking of his powdered tonic food namesake and the way it had smelled on his mistress’s breath.
While his cat mind scratched aimlessly about the filing cabinets in his brain, he continued to watch her, as she dove into the murk where the crocodiles swam, and uncovered more than she bargained for.
64
Krokodil was a mixture of Codeine tablets, paint thinner, red phosphorous scraped from matches—for the Krok devotees of a more hipster-like persuasion—gasoline, butane, household cleaners, iodine, hydrochloric acid—always a hit at parties—and whatever other chemicals happened to be within arm’s reach. You mixed all that shit together and then injected it into your yearning veins.
Basically, it was super cheap horse, a heroin-type ride that wouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg, except that was exactly what it did. Arm, leg, jaw bone, face, foot, spine. Yeah, you’d be paid up for a while with that, but if you wanted to keep spinning on that merry-go-round, you’d have to pony up more.
Born in Russia, where heroin ain’t so easy to find, the green scaled drug’s tenth birthday had come and gone by the time it caught Ginny’s attention, but chances were extremely good that had you tried it when it first hit the streets, you wouldn’t have made it to Krok’s second birthday bash. And that was because you’d have been dead a good twice over by then, and great foresight in starting on the whole decaying thing in advance, hats off to you.
Krok was about three times more potent than heroin, and three times cheaper, but the high only lasted a few hours, so about half as long as horse, depending on your tolerance. You may or may not be a mathematician, but that was like four-and-a-half times more bang for the buck.
Now that’s one hell of a multi-day binge. Fuck sleep. Who needs that shit?
So what if you become like those zombies on TV because all you do when you’re not in the quickly-burning-off high is chase the next one? So what if the rotting gums and infected bones of your jaw and face and the open sores that are everywhere and the rotten and pus-spewing nubs where your ears, nose and lips used to be, so what if that gets you looked at askance in the street? What matters is you made your own fucking choices. It’s your life, man. Now fuckin’ skin-pop that Krok.
Krokodil was really good at starting up some scrambled, green eggs-looking gangrene, especially around the injection site where it clumps, and those thrill-seeking clumps…they spread. Green and scaly skin plus the smell of rotting flesh plus nerve and brain damage plus the best high of your quickly-shortening life plus no more toenails to clip on account of no more toes equals pure, unadulterated awesome.
Ginny stared at another picture, the Krokodil victim in this one missing half a foot, one whole arm, and a nice portion of his lower face. Next to that, the expanding quicksand-like pools of ulcers on his skin didn’t look half-bad.
“Lovely,” she said, cringing.
The news articles that she was able to pull up—from reputable sources, no less—confirmed the chat room rants, at least as far as the nature of the drug. Krokodil really did eat people from the inside out.
It’s an injectable opioid—also available in pill form, lucky you—that eats your flesh and turns your skin black and green, and let’s not forget, scaly, and makes you a walking, rotting brainless thing that will eventually end up on Google images making someone who doesn’t use Krok and therefore is ignorant in only the way the Krokodil-uninitiated can be, blow chunks all over themselves. Fucking cute little newbs.
Oh, and happily, the gravy gargling fun isn’t limited to those who see Krok abuse pictures. You, as a Krok abuser, get to do it too, so shoot it and gut dump and negative chug away. You’ll be putting your bes
t food forward in the tonsil toss, after all, assuming of course that you’re still managing to eat on the Krok and that your tonsils weren’t removed when you were a kid, and that the Krok hasn’t gnawed up said tonsils yet—key word, yet, ’cause it will. Oh yeah.
In exchange, you get a strong, short-lived high, and on top of that, you don’t have to dress up as a zombie for Halloween anymore. You can just go as, well, you, dolled up with gangrene, necrosis, and tissue damage galore.
At first, Russia and Ukraine had been the hotspots for getting high with the Krok, but apparently our scaly friend had taken a liking to travel, and who could blame him? Who doesn’t want to see more of the world?
Ginny’s digging revealed that the Krok was making special cameo appearances in Illinois, Arizona, and Oklahoma.
Shit, it’s already here, she thought.
Not only that, but Krok had a way of biting people with short drug histories. Fresh meat. Good for the Krok, its PR people must have been the creamiest of creams.
After completing her introduction to Krokodil, she read thread upon thread—each more spidery and disturbing than the last—of posts by two hackers who went by the names Fyodor-D3PO and Nikolay-Zaitsev, and that was when she got at the heart of what the Deep Web folks were claiming. She digested all the data after cutting it up into bits small enough for her to chew, and said figurative kind of eating was pretty much the only kind she was doing in those days, because the more she read, the further her appetite for food got from her.
It was like the idea of eating food ever again had gotten into a sports car, hit the track, and made just the right sequence of wild and reckless turns to break out of its loop, and was now speeding off into the sunset, where it was going to drive right off the edge of the world. And her thoughts were beginning to trail off, possibly looking to find the sports car and try the whole early retirement thing too.