The Populace

by Patterson, Aaron M.

  “Big enough?” Gene asked me.

  “Looks it to me.”

  He entered first and went to the far end in the sanctuary while I decided to take myself up to the top of one of the towers in the front. Neither of us felt the presence of one another, so it was nice. And naturally, the toilets contained no toilet paper.

  Dinner was eaten and beds of our clothes were made, Gene’s on a pew and mine on a dusty chaise chair near the bells. It was going to be an easy night. The storm was actually peaceful in the amazingly nicely-kept church’s insides. Either this place was left somehow untouched by the Ire or we had stumbled on a time machine. I liked that last idea, but I was pragmatic.

  I picked up the cell. “Kind of nice, isn’t it, Gene?”

  I got nothing. Meanwhile, my cell screen kept flashing the name Blip Blip repeatedly. Somebody was trying to contact me, and this was possibly corrupting my connection to Gene.

  “Come through,” I stated. Not even a picture on the screen. “Gene. Hello? I said hello?”

  Blip Blip again. What? I’d had many messages try to come through when chatting with Gene before back at the development and it never cut out. However, the development had the appropriate towers, not overly reliant on the satellites we used on the road. Blip Blip. Whoever it was, they were making me upset. This went on for nearly a half an hour.

  “Wallace?” Gene’s voice finally came through.

  “What the hell was that? I’ve been trying to contact you for thirty minutes.”

  “Something went wrong. My screen kept saying Blip Blip. Did yours, Wallace?”

  “It did.”

  Mystery solved. Though weird, we knew the issue. Another problem had gradually presented itself. My first battery was dying and fast. I only had two spares. My options were to find another full battery or two, conserve battery life with less use, or to turn back for the development. I hoped for the first option, although such a feat seemed next to impossible in our current circumstance.

  I didn’t hear from Gene the rest of the night. He was probably very tired and enjoying the peace of the church after such trauma a couple days earlier. I know I was. The storm raged on outside the bell tower’s broken windows, the gusts of cooling wind making the tower’s typical unbearable August heat a little more tolerable.

  “Do you want to go outside first?” I asked Gene over the cell in the morning. I heard nothing back. “Gene? Come on, guy. We have to get moving. Rain’s coming back.”

  This was a dead silence, completely void of anything typical. I worried. I worried a lot. I began to sweat. As this went on for two hours, my worst fears were all popping into my head. He had finally committed suicide. He’d done it. He could no longer take the Ire’s painful curse. He ended himself.

  “Gene!” I cried into the cell. “Gene! Gene del Gregory!”

  Silence never hurt so much. I was beginning to lose it myself, mildly dropping a tear from my eye on occasion. Noon had come and there was still no sign of him. I needed to go down to see him, to find his body lying in the grip of death that claimed so many of us in the past twenty years.

  As I approached the sanctuary, something caught my nose. It was dark at first, my eyes adjusting to the low light in the sanctuary, so I had reference as to the source of the smell. But it was not good. I inched closer, my body shaking from what I was about to find. I had never before wanted to feel the Ire as badly as I did at this moment, for if I did it would mean Gene were still alive. The Ire wasn’t there.

  And there, on the red carpet before the stairs leading up to the lectern, was the body of a very large man. Blood from his head turned the carpet to a much darker hue. I wept as I looked down at Gene’s body. I couldn’t see his face, as it was buried in the carpet itself. I didn’t want to. He was my friend, gone like Haydon so many years ago. But I remembered what I had done then and Gene deserved the same. I knelt down, reached out my hand, and patted the top of his blood-soaked head.

  “Stupid man,” I sobbed. “I loved you, Gene. You were loved at the end.”

  I stroked his head more. It took about a minute to realize that his head felt more broken than it should have, as in his head was beaten. I expected a bullet hole or a throat slash, typical suicide devices. But no, his head was mashed to bits. I had to look closer. I attempted to move his head to the right to see his face. It was badly beaten, unrecognizable. Wake up, stupid Wallace! This was not suicide! He had been beaten.

  The moment finally crashed into me with force. The face looked unrecognizable because it was not the face of the same man. His clothes, as well, were different. With the flash of the truth popping in, I became stunned with fear, quickly jumping back onto my butt while slightly dizzied. What I landed on was soft and cold. I looked under me to see the image of another dead man on the floor, his head also crushed to a pulp. I jumped from my spot and turned to see a woman in the floor a little distance from the men, her head literally flattened. And turning again, behind the lectern, a man’s body sitting upright against the large wooden king-like chair, his brain exiting the right side of his head.

  I then realized I’d been walking on one large, growing pool of blood. It was a collective of red stuff. None of the faces, or what was left of them, looked at all familiar. Why would they? I’d not seen faces away from cell screens in a long time. I was sickened, and I knew Gene and Blip Blip were behind it. I ran outside in a panicked daze and fell to my knees.

  “Goddamn it, Gene! What is that?” It felt like Gene were my cat leaving me his kill as a gift.

  I ran all around the abandoned little town of Tracy, never noticing the growing hunger in my body or the weakening of my muscles amidst such non-stop motion. I needed to find the bastard. My friend? Not today, not like this. Indeed, it seemed the heated conversation we had two nights prior had something behind it after all.

  Night came around again. No Gene, no person, nothing. I slinked back up to the bell tower and looked at the screen on my cell with hardly a blink. I think the battery ran out sometime shortly after I fell asleep. It was dead when I awoke.

  “Wallace!” I heard not digitally but loudly from a distance. “Hey Wallace!”

  I stood from my position and went to the tower’s window. Gene stood at the bottom with his cell in his hand and a fresh change of clothes on his body. He wore dark green sweats and no shoes. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do at this moment. All I wanted to do was go back to St. Cloud. I felt that was not going to happen though. I knew myself better.

  “Alright,” I said quietly.

  “I can’t hear you, Wallace!”

  “I said alright!”

  I went back to the area of my bed and replaced the dead battery in my cell with a new one. I turned it on and immediately got the call from Gene.

  “Wallace, what happened to your cell?”

  What happened? He was asking me what happened? The nerve. “Battery, Gene. I only have two left now.”

  “We need to find a new one soon then.”

  His nonchalant speech worried me deeply. Did he remember anything of what occurred in the sanctuary? Was he even there, literally or metaphorically? Regardless, I should have been happy to see him after being certain I’d stroked his lifeless head only hours prior. I was not happy. I don’t know what I was, but the cocktail of emotions stirring through me did me in.

  “Gene, I went to the sanctuary.”

  Gene lowered his head. I saw shame there.

  “Tell me,” I said. “Explain yourself.”

  Still silent and despondent, it was apparent he knew what he’d done. He was previously trying to mask it with his normal jovial personality, but it was a flimsy plastic disguise. He sighed. This is what happened.

  It all started with Blip Blip, that person trying to reach us both. As it turns out, Blip Blip was the code name for a very nearby group of people who had been conversing in close contact for weeks. Their purpose was to be near each other when their shipments of Flegtide were sent. Well, Flegtide
came and this group was more than 100% certain it would work, that they would be able to talk again.

  Blip Blip noticed us in the area and decided to gain our support. I ignored it, but Gene did not. Gene, the proponent of destroying Flegtide—this trip to Oklahoma was solely based on it—opted to intake the drug himself to see if, in the event that he was too late, his sister could withstand its effects.

  It all occurred within the course of two hours. The drug was dropped off near the rear of the church per Blip Blip’s details, as they were aware of the area. Gene ingested one 50mg capsule of Flegtide simultaneously with four other people. They decided to meet in the sanctuary of the church due to its relatively peaceful setting, possibly nothing to set off the Ire.

  They each entered the sanctuary at the same time, 11:33pm. While there existed a mild prick of the Ire sensation, it was almost complete quashed. They conversed for nearly five minutes. The woman in the group served as the moderator as well as the most excited amongst the five. She chatted them up one at a time as the men, Gene included, talked to each other. It was the first time in almost twenty years that these five people had spoken to another person face-to-face without the assistance of digital technology. The red letter day of all days was this day.

  Five minutes was bliss. But it was only five minutes. As the sixth minute began, so did the build of agitation in all five in the group, the worst of which being none other than Gene. He described his feelings to me about the sixth, seventh, and eighth minutes.

  “This urge, Wallace, it was spinal cord-severing in strength. It didn’t matter that I was speaking with them only a minute earlier. Their presence boiled my skin. Their existence was lessening my world and the only way to get it back was to make them go away. It wasn’t just the Ire, Wallace. The Ire I’d known until then was a small scrape. This was a goddamn amputation of both arms and legs by comparison. This urge, it was unfairly amplified to an unknown degree. It built and built and built, all while Flegtide worked in my brain to fight it. I could see in their eyes the growing rage. But mine trumped theirs. I was everything and they were ants needing crushed. It was only a matter of time until the drug wore off and I could finally remove them from their lives, like the world needed me to do.”

  And that is precisely what happened. Gene kicked, he punched, he took each down, snapped their limbs, bit a neck and a skull and some other parts. He bashed one man’s head into the ground repeatedly. The man died fast, but the drug’s effects made Gene not know he was dead, so Gene continued the beating. The man’s head was pulverized beyond recognition as a human head. He drove his big arms into the gut of the woman to the extent that they entered her abdomen. He removed her intestines and some other organs and punched them, even taking a bite of her liver. He performed roughly the same acts on the other two men in the room. Nobody had a chance against Gene, as he was by far the strongest of them, and also the most susceptible to the Ire’s fiercest fury.

  This was not the end of his story, however. Gene’s next statement left me chilled. This trip was unraveling into a nightmare.

  “I took parts of the brain of one of those men, put it my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. I ate his brain. Just as I ate the liver or kidney of the lady. And Wallace, I loved every second of it. Not the taste, but the feeling. I was strong. I wanted more. I wanted lots more. I ran outside to see two men watching on. I ran for them. I was fast, Wallace. I jumped on top of the first guy and killed him fast. I know he was there with the group to observe, but I don’t care. He needed to die. I loved it. I killed the other man too. And with him, well, I took out his heart and had a bite of it. I ran through Tracy all last night looking for more. I wanted so much more.” That was when Gene began to cry.

  So he did not find another person to kill that night. He searched many square miles for nothing. All the while, he knew I was in the bell tower of the church. That was a much deeper mystery. At dawn he realized what he had done and needed to clean up. He entered an old house and found some clean clothes. He then went to a nearby creek, washed the buckets of blood from his body, hair, and nails, and donned his flashy new green sweats.

  It was difficult to know where to start from here. How do I speak to a guy who literally made the normal Ire seem like kindergarten? Perhaps that is why I could not speak.

  “Please say something to me, Wallace.”

  I stared him down over the cell. I was a hundred miles past furious. He was just evil now.

  “Please! I still need you!”

  I caved, but not in his favor. “I heard your voice, Gene.”

  “My voice? What?”

  “When you were describing what you did, I heard the tone in your voice. It was the tone of pride. Your voice told me you enjoyed what you did. I see you crying there, yes, but I don’t think they’re real tears. I believe you are ashamed not of what you did, but rather of how it made you feel. Am I right?”

  “Wallace.” He became fully choked up. “Wallace.” It got worse. He was now flooding the floor beneath him with tears. “I was alive, Wallace. I could feel my life.”

  “No excuse. Flegtide, no excuse.”

  “I haven’t felt my life since I last saw Jack. I miss him so much, Wallace. He was everything to me. We were together eight years and it was nothing short of an immaculate relationship. He made me feel good about everything, most importantly about myself. I haven’t felt anything close to that since the Ire. Well, until last night. It was as though Jack were there watching me. Like he was smiling with pride in me. I removed those things from the planet because he needed me to. I did it for him, Wallace. I love you, Jack. I miss you, Jack. Oh, Jack.”

  This was the most sincere I’d ever seen Gene. He truly mourned his husband, and it appeared all the years of repressing his mourning had caught up to him at once with a little help from the miracle drug Flegtide. Moreover, it showed me how very unstable my friend was. Gene could very easily do this again, meaning he just might be a liability to me. But my whole trip was based on his wishes. I could not abandon him, regardless of liability. The precarious position he’d put me in was one for the ages.

  “Will you say anything to me?” Gene asked me.

  “Listen to me, Gene. I don’t agree with what you did or—“

  “You shouldn’t agree and I want to forget it happened! Do you hear?”

  “I don’t agree with what you did or the reasons behind it, but I do see that you’re hurting. I can’t escape that, and you certainly can’t escape it. Gene, I’ll continue onto Oklahoma with you if you promise this won’t happen again.”

  “Promise what won’t happen again?”

  “Really? You just killed six people and are happy about it. You’re seeing your dead husband smiling at your murders.”

  “Wallace, I promise I’ll try to avoid these situations, but I will not promise to avoid the image of Jack. You can’t take that from me. Damn you if you try to take that from me.”

  Clearly, Gene’s mind wasn’t at full working capacity anymore. The sudden gut-punch of grief did that. Or, maybe more clinically, Flegtide had altered his brain functionality. I knew I hated that drug for a reason.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 11

  Reassemble

  It stood as a foregone conclusion now that Gene was not the friend I thought he was at the beginning. Surely, had I known of what he could do, and how he would feel about it, I would never have agreed to help him reach Oklahoma. Some things just aren’t worth it. Two things kept me going. The first, distance. We were too far now to turn back. Also, there was no telling if I was welcome back at my development. Second, I really did want to see him help his sister. He took the Flegtide for her, to see how it might affect her since genetics dictated that she may react similarly. It was a teaching moment, not a moment of weakness. Unfortunately, it may have opened the floodgates to something awful.

  We stayed in Tracy another day and night to let the situation calm down between us. We discussed at great length how we felt about each oth
er and decided it was a rocky friendship anymore at best. I couldn’t trust him, he wanted me to trust him, not in-between. Still, I was going to get him to Oklahoma.

  Timing, though, became a glaring issue. We should have been inside Iowa by now. We were instead stuck in the town of Tracy for three nights. A new tactic was needed and fast. We sat on the curb of the street in the morning many houses apart, but still within eye-sight of each other.

  “What are you thinking about it?” Gene said to me.

  “That we are complete idiots,” I returned.

  And we were. The answer was there before us, had been all along. Answers, I should say. Vehicles. Fast travel. Road travel. If we played our cards right, we could use vehicles to drive to Oklahoma. The roads were there, although many were grown over and somewhat on the pothole side.

  Of course, countless unknowns existed when it came to vehicle travel. We were unsure what cars would still run. If so, fuel use and fueling locations could hinder all progress. And what about roadblocks from rogue scavengers away from developments? There was a thing known as a car-jacking, and it could happen. And did we even know how to drive anymore? The morning of the Ire in St. Cloud was my last time behind the wheel.

  “Okay,” Gene told me. “When I walked around Tracy yesterday—”

  “During your psychotic rampage?” I interrupted.

  “Yes, then. I passed a police garage. They may have cars in their locked up from two decades ago.”

  “Then we’ll try there. You lead the way, please.”

  The tension was there, naturally. It would be a very long time, if at all, until it was gone. We didn’t banter like we used to. If anything, it would save on my cell’s battery life. Silver linings.

  We walked maybe ten minutes before reaching the police garage in question. Sure enough, a warehouse-like building stood to the right of the station. I opened the side door to the image of twenty-one dust-blanketed cars. Half were police cruisers, the Ford L-State variety like most other police departments in Minnesota in 2030. The other half were brands and models like the Mazda Caniam convertible, Fiat R-class coupe, and BMW Y-Series.