A Chemical Fire

by Brian Martinez

  “What the hell are you doing,” is his response.

  Target practice, thinning them out, whatever you want to call it. I thought this would be okay.

  He says, “Look at them.”

  Then I see it: the pile of bodies is stacked so high the moving ones are standing on the still ones, climbing up from the smoke and reaching. Chests at the ledge, arms smacking at my legs and feet. Victims to the front clambered on by the ones behind.

  Adena, quietly: “They can get up. You idiot, they can get up here.”

  “Panic room,” Daniel says dropping the masks and we twist and run, eyes on the end of the hall as footsteps pound and pound, hearts the same. I turn as we run and look behind, seeing the first victim to get up, crawling his way into the hall and dragging ashes into the carpet, the arms of a second already joining him.

  Daniel and Adena slam to a stop in front of me, me into them. I look up to see what’s halted them: we’re not alone up here. At the end of the hall are two victims looking wet and filmy.

  “How the fuck did they get up here,” Adena shouts.

  I think of the gas station garage, the victim birth in the back. I think of the piles of ash swept into corners all around the hotel. I think I should’ve thought of this sooner, and I think I’m not saying anything now.

  “Turn back, get upstairs,” Daniel says and when I spin I’m only a few feet from a victim fumble-dashing at me. I’m too close to shoot so I bring up my foot and kick it hard in the stomach, my shoe penetrating through the cracked outer layer and into the pink and black inside, getting me stuck in its rotted cavity and keeping balance with my other.

  Daniel leans over my shoulder with his handgun and shoots its face, splatter slapping me in mine. I push the victim off and my foot slips back out, Daniel already firing behind him and then we’re off to the stairs and up- more of them on this floor and we run the other way, to the panic room two doors away. We run in, close the door and slap the deadbolt shut, then the other, then the dresser gets slid in front, its drawers filled intentionally with extra weight.

  Daniel says, “I don’t know how they’re getting in but at this point it doesn’t matter, our priority is grabbing the bug-out-bag and getting to the other base.”

  “We need a pharmacy first,” I say, then add, “I’m still in pain.”

  “We’re not stopping anywhere. The bag has a bottle of pain meds, it’ll last us long enough.”

  “It’s all shit by now."

  Silence. “Come again?”

  “They're dummies, we need to get more,” pissed my artwork won’t be seen before burning up.

  "What, exactly, does that mean," he asks.

  "I don't want to make this into a big deal."

  I hear Adena say Oh Shit as the banging on the door starts. Daniel says, “Let me get this right- I took you in, protected you and fed you, and you’ve been stealing my shit?”

  “Yes. And just as soon as you’re done crying about it we need to find more.”

  Adena, holding the door as it gets slammed from the other side, says, “I tried to tell you about this. However? We really need to talk about it later.”

  Daniel gets closer, presses his gun up into my Adam’s apple. The barrel is warm from firing. “You know something? I could kill you right now and it wouldn’t even matter. Not to me and not to her, and no one is here to stop me. I could fucking kill you, right here.”

  I lean, the gun digging in. “You could. And thanks to you I wouldn’t feel a thing.”

  The door is smashing under a crowd of them, the frame moaning and splintering. Adena shouts, “They’re getting in, can you two stop pissing in each other’s mouths?”

  I say, “Can we?”

  “Y’know what? I’m sorry, John, maybe I should’ve told you before but I’m actually from a little town called I Will Fuck Your Blood,” he screams, his finger tensed on the trigger.

  The door cracks loud and we all look, movement visible through the splinters. “It won’t hold much more,” she says.

  Daniel looks back at me, grinding his teeth. “Alright but no more free vacations. We hit the bottom of that fire escape, you get nothing more from me. Understand?”

  Seems fair to me.

  As the door fragments under the beating of fists we descend the black metal fire escape, soot rubbing off on our palms, down squeaking ladders to warm asphalt. Then we run, scattering the birds feeding on the thousands of cockroaches abandoning hope.

  Shotgun

  His thick spine mapped in sweat, Daniel stops up ahead. “I’m starving.” He puts down the bug-out-bag and leans on a minivan scrunched metal-on-metal into a light pole, inside a thick coat of ash covering the dash and upholstery, blown around by the air conditioning before the machinery gave.

  “And that’s why you look like that,” Adena says.

  Daniel looks up at her, panting. “We’re all supposed to be skeletons like you? No thanks. You have no fat reserves, you wouldn’t last a week if the food ran out.”

  Sunlight is darkening, rats peeking from sewer drains.

  “Silly, little fat man. All you know about food is from commercials and supermarket chains. In your entire life I'll bet you haven't experienced one moment of actual hunger.”

  “What's that supposed to mean? I’m hungry right now, aren't you listening?”

  “That’s not hunger, it's detoxing.”

  “Oh, here we go,” he laughs.

  Victims are coming out of their hide-holes, following voices, their dark faces streaked with the gray-white ashes they’ve been eating. Above them, storm clouds.

  She says, “Your body is so toxic you can’t even trust it. That grumbling in your stomach is more like withdrawal than anything else.”

  “I’m still stopping at the first pharmacy we see,” I say.

  A thunderbolt cracks the clouds, rumble-crack-DOOM, heat purple lightning web-reaching down to touch the Earth. It hits the antenna of a hospital not far away, absorbed as the clouds recharge.

  Daniel says, “I’d love to hear more of this liberal brainwashing but we need to find shelter, fast.”

  “Garbage? It’s my line of work you asshole, and I’m damn good at it. If you gave me the time you have no idea the work I could do on you.”

  He says, “My thoughts exactly.”

  The clouds slice a vein on us, cold rain giving way and beating the ground like applause. All around us, in gutters and tires and squares of grass, ash turns to mud. Adena puts her hood up and says, “Lord, please strike me down.”

  "Well you do resemble a lightning rod." He takes a poncho from the bag and begins unfolding it. “We can’t make it to the other base like this. Visibility is too perfect for an ambush, and even though it’s getting warmer there’s still a risk of hypothermia.”

  “Then let's grab a car, I don't know why we're walking anyway."

  Through his half-on poncho Daniel says, “They don’t work anymore.”

  She parts her lips and says, “Oh, John- you haven’t shown him your little trick yet, have you?” Rain ricochets loudly off Daniel’s plastic shoulders. She says, “Why don’t you show him?”

  Victims in the downpour, getting closer. “It’s nothing,” I say. “I've gotten a car to start.”

  “Twice,” she adds.

  Daniel steps closer, stunned. “That's impossible. Do you know how many I've tried to start? I worked on one for a week, they’re all dead.”

  Adena says, “Meet the exception.”

  ***

  We find a mail truck parked down the block with keys in the ignition and sliding doors left open. I get in out of the storm. The two of them stand on either side and pick off burn victims as they appear slowly from the rain.

  “Why don’t they run at us,” Adena says over her shoulder. "We've seen them faster than this."

  “I can’t figure them out. Either they can’t see us well or they’re not hungry,” Daniel replies. “I mean detoxing, sorry,” he chuckles. I crank the engine once,
then again, again. Daniel fires a round and says, “What a waste. You can tell she was hot.”

  “Gross,” Adena says.

  “Relax, it’s a joke.”

  She says, “I saw what you were hiding behind the locked door, so drop the act."

  He pauses a moment, then pushes it off. “You should be flattered, that’s what I was using to practice for you,” he says, proud of himself.

  “See this?” She swings her shotgun around to a victim-face and fires, bursting it into the rain. “That’s what I’ve been using to practice for you.”

  “If that’s you turning me down,” he says, “it’s doing the opposite.”

  I try the engine again and this time it turns over. Daniel stops firing, stops smiling, gives me a look of amazement. Then it switches to betrayal, at not being told about this.

  “Shotgun,” Adena calls.

  Daniel says, “I’m not riding in the back. Not alone, anyway.”

  She holds up her weapon and says, “Shotgun.”

  He points at me. “I need to feed him directions, you don’t know where the other base is.”

  She aims the shotgun at him through the truck, me in the middle, and I duck. “Let’s be honest, the real problem is I’m a woman. You can’t stand to think of me as above you in any way. Your ego won't allow it.”

  He says nothing, rain streaming down his face.

  “Get in the back of the truck,” I say, ducking and holding the wheel. “because I’m driving, and because I say so. Dead things are coming at us and you two are fighting like children.”

  He glances at me, then goes around to the passenger side, past Adena, staring her down, then jumps up and through the middle into the back of the truck. I tell him, “While you’re back there, see if any of those boxes have anything useful in them.”

  His head comes back out. “You may have the power to tell me where to sit, but I’m not doing a damn thing you tell me to."

  I look out the sheet of water running down the windshield, at Adena finishing one last victim before jumping in. I suck my teeth and say, “Daniel. I’m sure you know how many people get their medications through the mail.” I look at him and he says nothing, just nods. “Here I am, the only one who can get this truck moving, so logic tells us it goes where I say. Right? Now, my first stop is a pharmacy. That’s my priority. Not you, not your base. So if I say get back there and find me something good so we don’t have to drive around longer than we have to, it seems to me that's just what's going to happen. Or should I take the key out?” My hand on it.

  After a moment he disappears into the back. I look over at Adena in the passenger seat and I feel I should explain myself. “Just drive,” she sighs, her big eyes bruised looking as she slides her door closed.

  “West,” Daniel calls, and I go west.

  We drive the wet streets in heavy clothes, a tempest all about, the flooding pushing motor oil up out of the ground. No one says a word. Our world is shrunken down to the size of a windshield and through its view is nature’s violence- rain pummeling, lightning breaking, a mudslide of once living slush. Then from the rear of the truck: sudden buzzing, like a swarm. Adena and I bend necks to look back and we see Daniel, sitting between opened boxes, a vibrator twitching in his hand.

  All at once, we laugh.

  BANG at the front of the truck and I jump, wheels swerving as I hold control back and forth across the slick road. I feel the mass wanting to skid and flip and I fight it with everything, arms and back spasming. I hold it steady and regain until I'm driving straight into the dark again.

  “What the hell was that,” Daniel comes to the front.

  “We ran over a victim,” I point to the greasy slime and hair smeared across the hood.

  “Victim?”

  “Burn victim. That’s what I call them.” I glance at him. He chews on it.

  “Thanks for not killing us,” he says. In his outstretched hand is a box covered in warnings and interactions. “Morphine pops. Save some for when we need.”

  Really it’s Fentanyl, but they taste just as sweet.

  “Ooh,” Adena purrs, “pass me that bag that says Santa.”

  A Gathering of Like-Minded Individuals

  The mail truck is a missile, plotting a course through gloom and rainfall armed with three warheads. Daniel points the way behind my back saying Right or Left and I steer as he calls out, Adena turned to face me with the heavy burlap between her knees, hunched over and going through it.

  She says, “I didn’t realize how greedy kids are.”

  “Were,” I say, the plastic pop stick rattling against my teeth.

  Daniel says, “There could be more in the future. That’s up to us.”

  “Just stop,” Adena says, her shoulders a clothes hanger holding her up, the body a pile of animal bones found in the desert, stripped barren by carrion birds.

  “You’d let mankind die out because you’re not attracted to us? That’s selfish.” Just as suddenly as the rain began we pull ahead of it to where it’s dry. He says, “Haven’t you ever heard that children are our future?”

  I think ‘We Are the World’ is more appropriate.

  “Stay out of this,” Daniel tells me. Feeling ignored, he plops down on packages and says, “Anyway, kids suck. Give them a saint and they ask it for money.”

  She says, “Are you any different?”

  “I have a few things in mind that don’t cost money.” She rolls her eyes. “Not that,” he says, then adds, “Not just that.”

  “What then?” I weave around burnt people. "What would you ask for?"

  He says, “One wish? A chance to push the button.”

  “Which button,” Adena asks.

  “The button. Atomic, obviously. Imagine killing millions of people just by moving your finger. Sitting on your ass.”

  “Heart-warming. It’s too bad I didn’t get to celebrate Christmas with you."

  It makes me realize for the first time. The fire- it happened right before Christmas day. The holidays passed by as I huddled in an empty supermarket with a corpse in the backroom.

  “Listen to this one.” She straightens the crinkled construction paper in her hands, then reads: “Dear Santa, my name is Mary. I’m six years old. I want to write you about my brother Eric. He hits me with his bat. Mom says he’ll grow out of it.” She deciphers a word, then: “If I have one wish for Christmas, can you bring him a softer bat?” She looks up.

  Daniel says, “Smart kid.”

  “How so?”

  “Sometimes you can’t change the situation, so instead you have to adapt to it, change the rules.”

  She says, “You’re forgetting something- even if the world hadn’t ended her wish was never getting answered. There wasn't really a magical fatty coming to her rescue.”

  “She was operating on bad intel, so what?”

  “So the real lesson is you don’t wait for someone to come and solve your problems when you can just grab the bat and kick some shit.”

  “Can’t argue with that. So what’s with the bag, Santa lived around here?”

  “We should look for a really fat victim wearing red,” I say.

  Adena says, “The address is a non-profit group. They usually volunteer to answer his mail.”

  “Any other good ones,” Daniel asks. Ahead in the dark is a vast glow flickering against the windows of the commercial block, a surging in the night. Our tires pull us through the streets and past the buildings lit from the outside.

  “We should be getting close now,” Daniel says from the back. I pull near, screech-stopping the truck in the middle of the road and all jolting forward. Cursing, Daniel claws out from the back and looks out, then up.

  “Tell me that’s not it,” Adena says.

  Low and mournful he says, “That’s it.”

  Six stories of office building, fitted with deadbolts and combination locks and sundries, guns and miscellanea, all color coded and fortified, now heat white and windows shattered. A burning torch
in the night with colossal flames bridging the mighty gap of Heaven and Hell.

  Adena raises a long finger and says, “Look.” I follow it to the base of the building where fire wraps the foundation. Silhouetted against the inferno is a line of Victims with details unseen, crowding dark and staring into the light. They appear mesmerized; framed by flames.

  “What are they doing?"

  “What moths do.”

  “Way too many moths.”

  “There must be at least fifty."

  I put the truck into gear, slowly, patiently, taking my foot off the brake and letting it move to a coast, steering slightly to the right to continue down the street. The dull hiss of the tires. Pollution. Cinders and insulation.

  “Where should I go,” I ask.

  Adena says, “Away.”

  “Just everyone shut up,” Daniel says. We watch the horde as we pass, so many heads motionless and bald. Standing so close their hair is burning off. Then one shifts, turns, following something in a very deliberate movement. Sniffing, picking something up in the air: us.

  “Get ready to drive fast,” Daniel says.

  “Too many cars,” I say to the buses and two-doors, motorcycles and taxis and trucks clogging the way. The mob to our left, now stirring, starts turning our way. And then it’s there: the first sign of recognition.