A Chemical Fire

by Brian Martinez

  For teamwork we repeat everything, this time together.

  He says, “In every second of combat you have three questions that need answering: where is my gun pointed, where are my teammates, and where are my teammate’s guns pointed.”

  We’re running down the beach full-speed as he shouts, “You’re dumb if you think the body doesn’t experience physiological responses to stress. Vision blur, shaking, and most importantly, loss of manual dexterity.” Adena ready to collapse, he says, “Your blood is rushing to your core right now, away from your pretty little trigger finger.”

  He shouts, “Now fire on your target, kill it, right now,” and we all miss.

  We do it again, and we all miss.

  We do it again, and no one misses.

  Atrophy Wife

  By the end of the day we’ve worked through small town after small town, every one with the same layout, main street and all, and Janet is snoring at the back, the night driving made difficult with no light posts, no buildings to reflect; we have only the headlights and the stars, glowing strong through the absence of pollutions.

  “We need to stop soon.” My eyes are dry and my face swollen. I overdid it with the last handful of pills, and getting my food down to one meal hasn’t helped. According to Adena’s scale, though, I’m already making progress.

  “Turn off at the next rest stop, there should be plenty of diesel in the parking lot,” Daniel says.

  Adena says, “Is the bus over-heating?”

  “No, why?”

  “There’s a smell. And it’s not good.”

  “I don’t smell anything,” Daniel says, sniffing around the dashboard. Then he moves away and says, “Wait, there it is,” following it to the back.

  She says, “It’s probably that goddamn suitcase baby.”

  He goes to where it is, shaking his head. Then he gets closer to Janet, asleep and mouth hinged open, and he gags. “It’s his breath,” he says, back of his hand to his mouth, walking back to the front. “It must be an infection. I almost threw up in his mouth, which would be an improvement.”

  I take the turn-off and come into the parking lot for a highway rest stop. Station wagons and mini-vans sit close to the building, trucks further away in special spaces painted their size. I weave through islands of grass and shrubbery and park close, the long building directly in front of us.

  Shaking Janet, I’m hit with the smell like rotting fruit and meat, much worse than I was expecting. He doesn’t move so I shake him harder, still nothing and I go harder until I look murderous and finally his eyes open, vein-snaked and edge-crusted.

  “What’s going on,” he says, voice dry.

  “Get your machete, we’re sleeping over."

  We rush the building. An old man Victim coming from under a gas sign jerk-runs at us and Daniel takes him down with three shots. We get in with flashlights, past a tourist information desk set with brochures and into the wide lobby faced in by six or seven stores: fast food, coffee, gifts, so on.

  This room alone has four Victims, one with no legs crawling at us, and we work on them. When they’re finished Daniel says, “Everyone take a store and clear it out. If you find any ashes,” he looks at me, “collect them in something and get them out of here.”

  We split up. I take the bathroom at the far end, down a small hallway, my bladder filled with overdose. I piss long and dark in the urinal, toxins in the stream, then realize I haven’t checked the room out. Down low to the tile I see, in the second to last stall, burnt feet in melted shoes and legs swaying slightly.

  At the stall, body pulled back with axe up, I try to kick the door open but it’s locked. Just a scratching grunt from inside.

  The bathroom door opens and it’s Adena saying, “Is it clear?”

  “Let me borrow that,” I say, trading her for the shotgun. I crouch in front of the stall quietly, slowly moving the shotgun until it’s in under the door and angled up, the Victim inside not reacting, not noticing.

  I adjust a little, sweating, resting the butt of the shotgun on the floor to take the recoil, then pull the trigger. In an instant deafening the ceiling above goes massive red-black; a rose shape of dead blood, skull and hair stuck in the stuff. There’s a delay, then the sound of a body collapse onto the toilet, door still closed.

  Shotgun back in her hands, Adena says, “We only found one pile of ashes. Have you noticed we’re not seeing them as much?”

  “Hopefully it’s wind and not birthdays,” I say as we leave.

  Back in the lobby lanterns are set up and fallen bodies are pushed to the walls. Daniel is tying up a bag of ashes and says, “Clear?”

  Janet comes out of the café’s backroom, buckling his pants. Across the front of them are new-looking black stains. "Yup," he says.

  “Same,” I say going to the gift shop to find cold medicine and cough syrup. Daniel opens the door and lobs the plastic bag deep into the parking lot, then it takes all of us to push the information desk so it blocks us in.

  We make camp in one of the dining rooms that has cushioned benches, each of us laying in a different one and eating protein bars. Even Adena, her backpack full of diet pills and a scale off her back, eats some canned peanuts she found in the gift shop.

  To Adena, Daniel says, “I’m going to ask you a question, and I don’t want you to get your period all over me.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “No girly moaning, in that way women can’t separate themselves emotionally from fact. Be a man and answer it, or I won’t ask.”

  "This really makes me want to answer it.”

  “If you can’t handle it it’s fine.”

  She says, “Go ahead.”

  “Did your father do what he did because of you?”

  “Sell real estate?”

  “No,” he says.

  “Why would do that because of me,” she sighs.

  He sits up in his plastic bench. “Those peanuts are the only things I’ve seen you eat in days. It’s obvious you have a problem. We all see it. Maybe daddy gave you a complex, called you chubby as a kid, created a monster, and when he couldn't fix it he blamed himself.”

  Adena says, “I'm fasting. You forget I was a dietitian.”

  Daniel laughs. “So that’s why your elbows are the biggest parts of your arms?”

  Over in the corner Janet is asleep, chocolate on his mouth.

  Daniel says, “When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter. He’d be dead by now anyway. Like John said, everyone’s dead, it doesn’t matter if it was three months or three years ago. I was just curious.”

  She’s quiet for a while, and then: “No.”

  “Then?”

  "You're right, I don't have to answer this."

  "Nope." He lays back down, resting his head on his clasped hands.

  She takes a breath and says, “He was caught having an affair.”

  He sits back up. “That’s it,” he asks, amused.

  “It was with a man. A younger man.” She pauses. “A boy named Joel.”

  The dining room is silent, fading light coming in through the bloody handprints on the windows.

  “When the boy’s father found out he got so angry he murdered his son. His own son. That’s what happened, but it’s not what the courts decided. They always suspected my dad, him being the boy’s…lover. When he hung himself, that was all the proof they needed. Just like that they threw out the case.” She takes a shaky breath and says, “I didn’t go to the court or watch it on television. I don’t know why, I guess that would be admitting it happened. It wasn’t about the boy for me, it was about my mom.” She closes her eyes and I can see her going through it all over again.

  Daniel says, “You don’t have to-”

  “He kept inviting me over for dinner, after the divorce, so we could talk. But I can’t do that, I don’t do…dinner. I meant to stop by and see him but I know my father, he would ask me to stay and…”

  Her eyelids go wet at the edges and sh
e wipes them.

  “So no, it wasn’t my fault. It was Joel’s father, the shit-head, all-American football coach who strangled his own kid, and without knowing it killed my dad.”

  I look at Daniel, seeing his face, remembering our battery run- the plays, the strategy, the advice on children, and he looks over at me, and he knows I know.

  “Sorry I asked,” he says.

  In the middle of the night I wake to Adena, off in the bathroom, a finger in her throat.

  Illicium and Esca

  Before any of us are moving in the morning Daniel is jumping back over the barricade, filthy sword in hand, saying, “Went hunting,” his eyes burning.

  Janet sits up from his bench slippery with sweat. “I feel like I blew a dragon in my sleep,” he says, his tongue sprinkled with black spots.

  “You have an infection, probably from the baby bite,” Adena says.

  “I’ve had so much shit over the years it could be anything. I’ve made some dirty choices in my time.”

  “Thanks,” Adena says.

  “He’s probably talking more about his toe-dip into necrophilia than anything else,” I say.

  Everyone looks his way. “Technically they were still moving,” he says.

  “That’s disgusting,” Adena shouts.

  To me he says, “And who are you to judge, my friend? A man with a dead wife? I’ll bet the thought’s crossed your mind.”

  I grab the axe handle, ready.

  “Enough.” Daniel steps in. “I’d love to see an axe fight but we need to get back on the highway.”

  Janet chomps his teeth at me, his mouth filmy.

  We gather our things and head out to a parking lot of body parts; Victims cut up in the early morning. Daniel takes out a can of spray paint, puts a “D” across the side of the building and says to us, “Mine.”

  Adena says, “Look.” She holds up the bag of ashes Daniel had thrown out and it’s stretched to pieces, burst open from the inside, empty. “Happy birthday,” she says to it.

  We get diesel from a big rig and get back on the road, driving through endless farmland. Along the sides are barns and silos, some old, some new, some of each built right up against each other. We pass a tall sculpture built out of broken farm machines; all over, evidence of people making use and reuse. Long stretches of road pass that I try to remember and can’t, chunks of memory that aren’t there.

  Over dunes a second great lake emerges, up through the trees sticking out of the sand. Most of the dead birds in it are sunken or washed away leaving only the flat surface of the water. Adena says, “We need to stop and wash off. All of us.”

  We reach the lake and get out, killing off a few strays and then fanning out to clean ourselves up. I finish off a bottle of Valium and throw it out into the water, in it up to my underwear and rubbing dirt into the water, seeing Adena’s loose belly and deflated arms and skin splotched in sores and bruises. Bubbles start rising up under me. More and more, all around, frothing.

  Janet says, "Who turned the lake on?" and he's not done saying it when the water goes hot, boiling, and we’re all panicking and sloshing, jumping to shore with scalding legs and arms lifted and things rising to the surface and bumping against thighs and ankles. We yelp and leap to the shore, rubbing red legs and falling to the wet sand.

  “What the hell is going on,” Daniel shouts and we look out onto the water jumping and churning. All the way across, the lake is boiling so violently steam is rising off the waves. It isn’t just part of the lake, it’s the entire thing; millions of gallons flash-heated in seconds.

  We dress, regroup and watch, seeing fish after fish, salmon, trout, bass, bob to the surface. When it stops miles of water are floating with dead fish cooked scales and all. We exchange looks, gather our things, and get back to the bus.

  ***

  Janet is counting sheep out the window and gets to two hundred and eleven when he shouts, a pack of wolves striking and taking one down as we shoot by.

  Daniel says, “The beasts take over without man to hold them down.” Twenty feet from the kill, a Victim watches.

  After half a days travel we stop to piss on the side of a courthouse, eyes on the defense, then get back on and pass wooden churches. We go by rows of corn and giant wind fields with blades spinning slow-motion in the distance, powering nothing. We drive on old metal bridges rusted over, taking us across small creeks and dried up riverbeds. Some have rotting fish, some none at all.

  From the back Daniel asks where the food went, then there's only the sounds of the bus. “Hello? I said where’s the food.”

  Murky clouds out the windows, Adena says, “Who cares.”

  He goes to her and says, “Say again?”

  “We don’t need it.”

  “It’s food. You eat it to survive.”

  “Don’t worry, Dan, Gandhi went three weeks without food, and he was skinny when he started.”

  “I’m not Gandhi,” he says.

  “Obviously."

  “Where is my food,” he asks, slower.

  "I was tired of having all that shit on the bus. You’ll thank me when you can breathe and bend over at the same time.”

  Seeing he’s about to go I say, “We can get more food.”

  “We shouldn’t have to. We had enough supplies for the entire trip and she fucked it up.”

  “We were all tired of powdered food anyway.”

  “You’re missing the point, she betrayed us by compromising our supplies. Although I don't know why I'm telling you this, you don't have a problem with a thing like that.”

  She says, “Why don’t you give up the survivalist crap, no one’s buying it. What were you, a troop leader?”

  The cornfields sway and shake under a heavy wind coming through, the bus getting pushed at the sides by it.

  “I wasn’t a goddamn troop leader, I was…” he stops, “It doesn’t matter what I was, I’m the one trying to make sure we’re the winning team.”

  “Winning?” She laughs. “It’s safe to say we’re not. You can run target practice until your eyes explode and it’s the same outcome. Team Human is done.”

  “We don’t have to be,” he says, and I have to steer into the wind just to keep us straight.

  “Is that what this is about? I’m not having children, Dan, especially not with you.”

  Getting closer he says, “Why, because you’re cold? Because you have no fire left in you, no passions for anything but starving yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Then why? Do you want to kill the species?”

  “I don’t need to answer your pig-headed questions anymore.”

  “Just tell me why,” he says, loud, right in her face.

  "No."

  "Why?"

  "Stop it."

  "Why?"

  "I'm warning you."

  "Just tell me why you don't want children and I'll-"

  “Because I can’t have them,” she yells, and a strong gust hits us. The front-right corner of the bus catches a dead car in the road. In a moment we’re skidding over train tracks and I try to hold it but it’s useless, the bus turning sideways driver’s side forward, then the wheels out from under us and we topple at speed, going over, scraping and tumbling. My face close to the sparks as we slide, then flipping again suitcases smashing around, CB radio mike flopping and cracking me in the cheek, bodies heaving, the cornstalks out the windows wrong side up then right side up then wrong, and I'm impacting with my face, all of us laundry with bones.

  Depressor Anguli Oris

  “For someone gifted with cars you crash a lot of them.”

  My face is wet, fore to neck.

  “Someone try to wake him up."

  I’m awake.

  “Not you.”

  Something is digging into my back. I reach back to feel it and find a handle. It’s the emergency exit, the one recessed into the buses roof, and I’m sunk into it. Four feet above my head seatbelts are hanging down, swaying from the seats.

/>   “Janet, can you hear me,” Daniel says, slapping him. “Janet?”

  I sit up, my head wobble-blurry. At the back of the short bus and against the rear exit is Janet, head awkwardly propped and the two others over him, crouched low under the seats.

  “Look at his mouth,” she says.

  “Don’t scare him.”

  My cheek stings hard when I touch it, like putting my face into blades. I wipe a hand across my chin and get a covering of red, then stand and crouch-walk to the back. “Is he dead,” I ask and they turn to see, their eyes telling me more. “Am I bad?”

  Daniel says, “You’re definitely not good. Help me get him out of here.”

  I lean Janet forward and blood pours from his mouth. Daniel pops the lever on the rear exit and shoves the door out into cornstalks, straining against dirt to open it all the way, then he jumps out and the two of us carry Janet, hands tucked under his arms and legs.