Strategies Against Nature

by Cody Goodfellow

  If he really believed he could take better care of her than her mother, whatever was going on down there, he would have fought harder, made a better home for her here.

  The conductor took her arm and offered her a packet of Nutter Butters, and they both waved as he escorted her onto the train.

  In the car on the way to work, he listened to the news. The story was short and flatly read, but it goosed him as if the newsreader had said his name.

  A customer service operator in Akron, Ohio shot and killed two co-workers and wounded six more before “turning the gun on himself.” Details were scarce, but the attacker apparently tried to force his victims to eat dog food, and shot those who refused. Six more ate the dog food and were allowed to escape, while most of those killed were mowed down as they tried to flee the office.

  He wondered if he should call the police, the FBI, whoever. The idea flowered and died in a hothouse of paranoia. The last thing he needed was to be involved in something like this. They recorded all the calls in those places; they were probably listening right now to the lunatic ranting at Stan about the dog food conspiracy. Probably coming for him. . .

  Morgan had eaten the dog food, and the man who killed his coworkers told him they put a cure in it, so maybe it was all over.

  The office killer tried to make them eat dog food. Maybe he was trying to purge them of whatever he thought they had. Or maybe he was trying to infect them.

  •

  Back home, he made himself clean Morgan’s bedroom. He wanted to go to bed—no, he wanted to kill a six-pack of beer playing pool in the complex rec room, trawling for some other divorcee to rub his wreckage against. To resist it, he could only go to sleep or bury himself in chores.

  As it turned out, Morgan’s room didn’t need much work. Her wastebasket, usually overflowing with snack wrappers and balls of notebook paper, was empty. Her desk was clear. A new stain marked the rug, and the bedclothes were wound up and wadded on the floor like a tornado, but the room was blessedly free of debris. The air was close, stuffy, still richly laced with the tart smell of his daughter’s hair and pre-adolescent sweat. He opened the window, and that was when he noticed the flies.

  A fat green horsefly bumbled out of the almost-shut closet. Stan smelled something rank, greasy and rancid, and heard muted buzzing from within.

  The sliding closet door stuck on a pile of clothes. He almost lost his temper and wrenched it off the track. Flies buffeted his face, two flying into his open mouth as he screamed, “What the fuck?”

  Nestled in the dirty clothes was a mound of food, three days worth of meals. She’d only picked at her Burger King the other night, and had taken her meals in her room to eat alone while playing on the computer. He didn’t try to insist on a family meal; she was just like her mother, with her odd whims that could become manic obsessions if challenged. Much of it, she’d at least bitten into, but the chewed-up blobs and splatters of vomit showed she hadn’t been able to keep anything down all weekend.

  The familiar surge of anger almost felt good, because it held the fear at bay. Morgan had made a mess, and hidden it from him. His little girl was sick, or had been.

  But what the hell had she eaten, all weekend?

  He looked around the spotless room, the empty wastebasket, the almost-empty bookshelves.

  He needed to sit down and drink a beer. Or six.

  Pressing a towel over his face, he dragged out the pile of clothes and pitched the whole mess in the wastebasket. Half the old T-shirts were his, anyway.

  Stan took the trash out and dumped it down the chute in the hall, then shuffled back to the apartment. He seldom looked at the answering machine, but it was blinking, now. It didn’t make sense to pay the phone company to take his messages when he could find a perfectly good machine at Goodwill, and it had proven a good tactic to record all his calls with Sharon.

  But it wasn’t Sharon on the phone, or the FBI. “Hi,” said the call-center operator. “Remember me?”

  Stan paused the tape, then went and got a beer. He rolled it against his forehead, trying to chill his brain, before he pressed Play.

  “I guess you figured this isn’t an official call. . . I don’t know who else to talk to. . . If they call you, don’t tell them anything. I deleted our chat, I don’t think you’ll get contacted, but you don’t know about anything anyway, do you?

  “It’s a happy accident for them, because they’re running out of the cheap shit they feed us, and no amount of artificial colors and flavors is going to hide it, for much longer. . . so they see this as a solution. . . but the parasites. . . they just want to live, and when you throw something that aggressive into a rich new environment with no predators, look out, right?

  “They’re calling it a parasite, but it’s really a symbiote, a new organ that every human is going to need to digest the future. No more food, and we’re drowning in trash, so why not. . . just close the loop?

  “But I don’t have any evidence. I mean, I did, but they broke into my house, and, um. . . I know how this sounds, but you’re gonna to find out for yourself. They can’t keep it in the labs, anymore. It’s spreading, and—”

  At last, the shrill beep terminated the message.

  Stan had finished the beer. He went to get another.

  He wanted to erase the tape, but he ought to hold onto it for the cops.

  The news channels spent thirty seconds or less on the shooting, the sad note of a pointless, routine tragedy, buried by hotter, less depressing stories. The shooter’s name was Rodney LaBonte, and his coworkers and neighbors described him as a quiet, polite man, supervisors suspected drug problems. No mention of dog food conspiracies or parasites.

  And small wonder. The next commercial break was anchored by a dog food ad. A jaunty Aussie Shepherd leapt into the air to catch a golden nugget of kibble as the narrator touted “new all-natural high-enzyme proteins for optimum intestinal health.”

  He called Sharon. Her number was disconnected. Her cell did not pick up. He blurted, “Call me,” and hung up.

  He was a long time going to sleep. He woke up every couple of hours, drunk and disoriented, remembering that he lived here now and everything was normal. He drifted in and out of sleep until he woke up to find two men in his bedroom.

  One sat on Stan’s legs while the other knelt by his bed with a rubber-gloved hand over his mouth and a wistful expression. “Mr. Novak, we’d like to ask you a few questions about your daughter.”

  The man uncovered Stan’s mouth, peeling off the saliva-streaked glove and donning a fresh one from a breast pocket of his overcoat. His partner put the old glove into a silver foil bag and zipped it shut.

  Stan’s brain throbbed with pain and panic. His mouth tasted like battery acid. His mind wouldn’t turn over, couldn’t figure out how to obey. “Who the hell are you? You can’t just come in here. . .”

  “Sorry about that. You were asleep. We just need to clear up a couple of things, and we’ll be gone.”

  “Let me see a badge.” Stan rubbed his eyes, reaching for the lamp on his nightstand.

  The man trapped his hand, did something subtle that hurt worse than a broken finger. “We don’t carry them,” he said.

  Stan took back his hand and tried not to cry. The pain was already gone. He wished he could defend himself. Not that it mattered. They didn’t carry badges, but he knew these fuckers had guns.

  “Where is she?”

  “With her mom.”

  “And where is she? Sharon, right?”

  “She lives in San Diego.”

  The two men looked at each other. The one trapping Stan’s legs shrugged. “I told you,” he said.

  “What?” Stan tried to sit up, but the first guy pushed him back down, not ungently.

  “She knows more about this than he does,” his partner answered. “We should—”

  “Shut up,” the first cut off the second with a tired smile for Stan. “We don’t want to hurt anyone. We don’t want to hurt your little girl
. Not even your ex-wife, so don’t ask.” A chuckle at his own bad joke. “We’re here to help, really.” He leaned in even closer. His breath was sour milk and sewage. “The people who made your daughter sick aren’t going to get away with it. They’re going to pay. You help us out, tell us where Morgan went, and they’ll be paying you. No lawyers, no court bullshit. Straight up cash money. Just tell us.”

  Her name coming out of that vile mouth. . . he’d need to wash it before he could say it again. “I don’t know where they are. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you. What makes you think you can come into people’s houses in the middle of the night—”

  “I told you,” said the man on his legs again.

  “What?” Stan almost wept. “What did you tell him?”

  “That you would be an asshole.”

  The first guy winced like he’d lost a bet and punched Stan. A hard punch, knuckles grinding expertly into his gut, so his dinner came rushing up his esophagus.

  He trapped Stan in a headlock, clamping his jaws and pinching his nose shut. The hot, acidic spew flushed his palate and sinuses. He almost blacked out from the agonizing burning, even before he gagged and began to drown from the inside out.

  “Drunks choke to death on their puke every day, you know? Nobody misses a dead drunk.”

  Stan’s vision swam in red and yellow waves. Vomit pushed at the backs of his eyeballs. A spray of puke shot out from between his locked teeth. He flailed at the shit-breath guy, but couldn’t even mess up his hair. The guy on his legs picked his nose and wiped it on the bedpost. “Cut it out,” he growled.

  Like that, the first guy released him and peeled off and bagged his gloves. “Feel like talking now?”

  Stan folded in a pile around a puddle of sickness. “I don’t. . . I don’t know. . . I would, but I don’t. . . please, I don’t know—”

  Looking sadly at his hands, he put on a new pair of gloves. Black leather. “Of course not. If you decide you do have anything to tell us, just call the police or anyone else to talk about this shit, and we’ll be here before they can save you.”

  They worked him over a bit more. He passed out before they got to the front door.

  He awoke before dawn, still nauseated, skull pounding like a paint-shaker filled with rocks. Staggering into the kitchen, he dumped a couple frozen breakfast burritos in the microwave and tried to call Sharon. House phone still disconnected. Your child support dollars at work. She didn’t pick up her cell phone, either. He tried Morgan’s phone, but he heard it ringing in her room, under her pillow.

  He should call the police. Sharon had bolted, maybe left the state with his daughter. Men were looking for her. Men tried to kill him, and only gave up because he wasn’t worth the trouble. They said they would know if he talked to anyone.

  Thugs always said shit like that. It was empty intimidation.

  It still worked.

  He got the shoebox of cassette tapes out of the bottom cupboard drawer. His lawyer told him to hold onto the tapes, especially if it looked like Sharon was using coke again. The last time they talked at any length, she’d been giddy, glazed but talkative. It’d almost made him forget, for a while, all the bad shit from even before they got married. Until she brought up Larry.

  Her boyfriend was taking Morgan to the beach, teaching her to surf. It stung him to the quick. “He still looking for a job?”

  Sharon didn’t rise to the bait like she always did; just let out a slow sigh before answering, “It’s kind of hard, without his license.”

  Stan got the burritos out of the microwave and munched as he listened. Larry drove a car dealership courtesy shuttle until he got pulled over with weed. License suspended for two years, owing to past history.

  It didn’t hurt so much that she’d asked Stan to leave because he wasn’t a provider, only to replace him with a shiftless pothead. It was that Morgan seemed to really see no essential difference between them. He was a spare part, swapped out for a newer, equally defective model. “He got a good offer from double-W-C, but they’re out in Imperial County. He can’t drive, but. . .”

  “You’re not thinking of moving out there, are you?”

  “It’s not like we have much choice, unless something else comes up. . .”

  “You’d move my daughter farther away for your boyfriend’s dumb job?” He was trying not to shout. He sounded like a little dog defending a yard full of shit. Every one of these tapes was like slamming his dick in a door. What had he ever seen in this bitch?

  “I’m not up to fighting you, Stanley. We’ll just keep scraping by, at your pleasure. We’d hate to put you out.”

  His stomach rolled over but finally relented, opening up to accept the blobs of bean and cheese mush. It was good hangover food, grease to soak up the acid in his belly. But it began to hurt, a shooting pain that radiated from his stomach and down to his colon like it was lined with fish hooks. He’d eaten too fast. Probably going to let out a ripe one. Too bad Morgan wasn’t here. She always appreciated a good Dad-fart.

  “Are you going to marry him, then?”

  Stan turned the tape off and dropped it in the box before she could answer.

  WWC was either World Wrestling Corporation or Wilder Waste Control. It figured: Breadwinner Larry, the trashman.

  Maps showed him the WWC regional depot in Calexico. He searched and skipped around on some business news sites. Wilder Waste Control was a subsidiary of a conglomerate called ConAmAg Food Solutions, which also owned the company that made the dog food.

  He called work to plead sickness as the shooting pain kept spreading and heating up, like metal melting inside him. He doubled over as he gasped that he wasn’t feeling well.

  “Jesus, don’t overdo it,” his manager said. “We’re overstaffed anyway.”

  Stan threw up his breakfast all over the receiver. At the same time, his bowels spasmed and expelled violently in his pants. He thanked his manager and hung up, crawled to the shower, stripped and lay in the tub under a feeble spray of lukewarm water.

  It must be food poisoning. It could just as easily be nerves. Fuckers nearly murdered him in his bed. He didn’t dream it. This was happening. No denying it. But what the fuck was it?

  The nausea broke like a fever, leaving him ravenous. He dragged himself out of the shower and padded naked and dripping into the kitchen, following a sweet scent-trail like the aroma of fresh-baked pie.

  The trashcan was almost empty; he’d been proud of Morgan for volunteering to take it out. Now he cursed her. The cardboard container from the breakfast burritos cut his gums, but his mouth overflowed with bilious, caustic syrup that seemed to melt everything he could fit in his mouth. He tore it to shreds and ground it to sweet mush between his molars. Saliva spilled from his lips and made sizzling craters in the linoleum. In no time, he’d eaten the whole box, biting his fingers twice in his eagerness. He reached into the trash for more.

  Aluminum foil tasted like hard candy. Plastic milk containers gouged divots in his mouth even after he cut them up with scissors, but he let the strips melt on his tongue and gobbled more. Ravenous as a goat, he went to the bottom of the can, then ripped out the Hefty kitchen bag and proceeded to chew it up like string cheese. Then he ate the can.

  Lying on the floor, naked and wet and eating his own garbage, he no longer wondered what he was becoming. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he simply felt good, and did not need to think, at all.

  The drive out of town was uneventful. Traffic at a crawl until it passed downtown and then, as if they’d passed out of some kind of citywide stupefaction field, the cars around him began to speed up. The 5-10-101-110 junction was one of the busiest in the nation, and had the world’s most sophisticated traffic control network, a massive command post on a bluff above the convergence of grand canyons overflowing with almost-molten steel; so maybe the traffic was not a bug, but a feature. His head began to ache. Maybe the stupefaction beams hurt you, if you became aware of them.

  Laye
rs of control.

  Stan ate burger wrappers off the floor as he drove.

  Radio news harped on a beef recall after twelve people got sick from salmonella in fast food hamburgers. They promised to say which burger chains had been implicated, at the top of the hour, then cut to an ad for McDonald’s.

  Parasites didn’t want to kill. It was only the new ones, the exotic, the crude and overaggressive immigrants, like bad burglars causing violence because they couldn’t get in and reproduce without wrecking their hosts. As they evolved, the ideal parasites did no harm, indeed, they benefited their hosts. Not much of what humans ate could be digested without the bacteria colonies in their guts.

  It was only natural for a parasite to seek to convey some benefit to its host, just as it was only natural for humans to try to take control of the process, and turn a parasite into a product.

  Cramps struck outside Riverside. He swerved out of his lane, doubled over the wheel, eyes squeezing out melted cellophane tears, and nearly went under a gasoline trailer. The horn blared at him. He slammed on the brakes and pulled off at a rest stop. Bathroom stalls, vending machines, a few cars and a couple dozen semis. A softheaded kid in a bicycle helmet ran in circles around a tree on a leash while his family had a picnic.

  It burned coming out. He cried in the stall for twenty minutes before his bowels moved, and it was like hot grease and battery acid laced with pistachio shells. He dry-heaved onto his shoes.

  The bowl was splattered with a black-brown mess like used motor oil. Kaleidoscopic rainbows dazzled the surface of the water, and curling wisps of steam that smelled like burning plastic curled up out of the bowl.

  It took half a roll of toilet paper and many squirts of hand sanitizer to clean himself. He felt recharged, euphoric and ravenous. The vending machines were full of disgusting shit, but the trashcans beckoned. Under the miasma of decayed food and infant shit, he smelled the subtle musk of his new diet, the plastic and waxed paper that would lie in a landfill for centuries before it spoiled. He didn’t want to look like a derelict, fishing around in the can, and it all smelled good, so he hauled the entire bag out and hustled back to the car.