The Populace

by Patterson, Aaron M.

  And by now, many of the people standing around were beginning to think the Ire may be creeping in, albeit in a mutated fashion. Most turned and walked away.

  “You!” Lela shouted while pointing at me. She climbed over the counter and took to a steady, forceful walk in my direction. “You’re ruining this for me.”

  “Ruining what?” I angrily asked.

  “I have a good thing going here and you’re scaring away the patrons with your neo-Ire bullshit.”

  “Relax, lady. You’re giving the coffee away, not selling it.”

  “I’m giving it to them for now, but eventually they’ll be back and I’ll demand restitution for each cup. But not if they see you come here and let some bastard semi-coherent version of the Ire take you over.”

  “If you think I’m becoming Ired, Lela, why not run for your life right now?”

  Lela swiftly pulled a handgun from her back, hidden very obviously, and stuck it directly on my temple. “Because I stopped running the second people were able to talk. And I am not fucking around anymore. If you are becoming Ired, I will kill you. Your friend here can taste your brains.”

  Yes, now I was scared. I believed she would perform such an act. And being a new kind of myself over recent weeks, I decided to be loathsomely stupid.

  “Are you trying to bring back the money system, Lela? It’s been twenty years since we had it and you want to resurrect that awful disease?”

  “Times are changing, son of a bitch. Money will come back and I’m going to be at the front of the line when it does.”

  I felt her hand squeeze tighter on the handle of her pistol. My time was limited now to only a few seconds. She was going to shoot. I closed my eyes and waited for the green field in the sunlight. All went quiet. I couldn’t even hear the birds in the area. A gust of wind took over my back. Something had happened, but I wasn’t sure what.

  Opening my eyes, I saw J standing before me. His face was yet again smiling, a far separation from the mental angst he displayed only minutes prior. And in his hand was the very gun whose barrel had just been touching my head.

  “How the hell?”

  “Look behind you, Wallace.”

  Lela lay on the ground asleep with a small stream of blood coming from her forehead. She was far from death. I turned back to J.

  “You?”

  “Just a rock,” he said, pointing to the fist-sized boulder beside the ailing woman. “She was going to shoot you, Wallace. I couldn’t have that. You’re real and you’re honest, not placating my emotions to suit me. I don’t want you to be dead. I want you to be alive and my friend.”

  “You could have killed her,” I said.

  “Yes, that was a risk. I really don’t care. She can’t go around killing people just because she wants to become the new capitalist. Understood?”

  “Plainly.”

  It was settled now. J rather forced the friendship on me through his act of valor. I could not resist it anymore. Tit for tat. Even so, I wouldn’t go head-first into this like I did with Haydon and Gene, for they were blazing examples of how not to handle new interpersonal relationships.

  And Gene, oh that Gene. Something about speaking with J made me think of Gene, and I could never put my finger on it. They were not alike—they looked different, had different thought processes, different angles, different styles altogether—yet Gene and J seemed to be cloaked in the same brand of mystery that somehow attracted me. However, after what I’d been through recently, I would be as cautious as an elephant on ice.

  Thinking of how J reminded me of Gene brought out another emotion. I was missing Gene. Of all people, the man who nearly had me killed several times through his own selfishness was at the forefront of my mind. I’d known myself long enough to realize where this was leading. I needed to break my dialogue embargo and chat him up.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 36

  Fidelity

  I called Gene the next day. It was very short.

  “Come to my cabin,” I said.

  “I will,” he returned.

  I was nervous. It had been around three weeks since I’d spoken to Gene, and that was immediately after I arrived back at the development. I had no logical reason to be nervous, however. I never feared the man, nor did I really pity him anymore. After analyzing my recent paths, I realized my trepidation was over telling him about my new friend, the man known as J from St. Cloud.

  To me it truly felt like I was cheating on Gene with J in friendship. No other person that I could ever imagine would hate for me to have another friend more than Gene, and it hurt me to know that I might hurt him with that. I understood he was fragile, especially since leaving for Oklahoma. Still, I needed to divulge this bit of information, to get it off my chest. I was a wreck, unreasonably so.

  He walked the full distance from his cabin to mine a couple hours later. It was strange anymore being able to invite people over since it was absolutely unheard of up until now. Nevertheless, I had him as my guest. He came inside my house, sat across from me at my dining room table, and stared. He just stared, myself doing the same to him in return. Three minutes this lasted before I broke out of the conversational funk.

  “You’re looking awful,” I said, seeing his unshaven face, dirty clothes, and heavy bags beneath his eyes.

  “I look how I feel, Wallace.”

  “How so, Gene?”

  “You’re slipping from me. Fuck it, that is a fucking lie. Yes, I miss you, Wallace, but that’s not what has me devastated. I think I brought ghosts back with me into my cabin.”

  “What?” I chuckled.

  “I’m serious, Wallace. Since I got back it hasn’t felt the same. I think it’s Jack. I think I just miss him so much...” He began crying again. “The fact that I’m able to talk to you means if he were alive today I could talk to him. You’re a great person, Wallace, but Jack was the one person in the world I could talk to for days on end. If I could only speak to another person for the rest of my life, it would be Jack. No question about it. Yet that was stolen from me by the goddamn Ire. I’ve been over at my cabin the last week or so looking at old pictures of us on my slate. I probably shouldn’t because it just makes me hurt. I can’t help it.”

  “You should probably not do that, Gene.”

  “You’re just repeating me, Wallace. There’s something funny about it though. I know I said I feel his ghost or whatever, but it doesn’t feel like a spirit. More like an essence, like he’s not dead at all. Is that possible, might you think?”

  Gene required saying nothing more for me to get where he was going with this. I’d already followed him into Hell without fully recovering. I’d be damned to do it again.

  “Don’t think it,” I said. “Don’t dream it, don’t pretend it’s been told to you, Gene. If you’re honestly considering setting off on another trek to find something that most assuredly isn’t there, I’ll restrain your big fat ass until that thought leaves you. Do you hear me?”

  “Wallace?”

  “Do you fucking hear me, Gene?”

  “I won’t think it.”

  This was the moment I realized the man wasn’t trying anything manipulative. Sometimes we’re able to find the lone spot of authenticity in someone in the most desperate of moments. I saw that in Gene, his head lowered, his bottom lips trembling, his nose trying to catch the tears, his eyes wondering lost across my floor, his fingers trembling excessively. As he leaned forward, something fell out of his flannel shirt pocket. It was a black capsule.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I said.

  “Yes and no, Wallace.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Yes, it is a desire pill. I have it. I have one with me that I carry everywhere anymore. And no, I have no intention of using it.”

  “You dressed yourself this morning, Gene. Poorly, but you still dressed. You had to have put it in there this morning.”

  “I started carrying it a week ago. I just haven’t removed it from my pock
et.”

  “So you were going to ingest the desire pill.”

  “No. Maybe. It’s all blurry. All I know is I have no plans to right now. You see me a disgusting mess of a person, still your friend I hope, and you see somebody who’s lost everything. I feel that way. That said, I know my limits, and the desire pill is not part of that limitation. It’s just in case.”

  “In case you want to die?”

  Gene stood quickly and punched me square in the face with his right fist. He then stood still, looked at the pain in my scowl, and punched me again. I fell to the floor. Gene knelt down and punched me one more time.

  “You think I’m down at the bottom, Wallace, and I’m not! This little black pill, it’s insurance. Think nothing more of it.”

  I remained on my back looking up at Gene. “You always resort to smacking me up when you get frustrated with me, Gene. It’s getting tiring.”

  And yet again, Gene fell along the wall to his rear where he broke down in tears. I saw a man hurting for the lack of good things that would benefit him. He wanted me to be his friend, but he also wanted me to be Jack and I was not. I would never be Jack, not even a small portion. That hurt him.

  A few minutes passed with neither of us speaking, the lull in the air allowing us to collect our thoughts and cool our rage. His rage, I should say.

  “I keep doing that to you,” Gene solemnly said. “I don’t know why. You’ve stood by me through everything. I couldn’t ask for a better friend. Why do I do it, Wallace?”

  “Because I think you want to hate me, Gene. You want me gone for some reason, but you know you really need me around. It’s a nasty cycle.”

  “No. No, my friend. No, I can see my problems. It’s him. It’s Jack. Everything I do is for him. My mind tells me each little act I make, no matter how insignificant, will magically whisk him back to me from the grave. I don’t want to forget him. On the other hand, life would be so much easier if I could. He rules me and never even meant to. He’s dead and has dominion over me. Wallace, does that make sense?”

  I shouldn’t have known what that was like. I’d never given myself to someone like he had Jack. But I did know. “It does, Gene. I get it.”

  I needed some air. Moreover, I needed some alcohol. After he left I took from my cabin, the night air crisper than normal, and headed for the common stores. It was an area in the center of the development, very close to the coffee stand in fact, where the CA constantly dropped off supplies for our use. With the Ire waning, we no longer required our supplies being dropped at the walks in front of our cabins.

  Gene rented a space in my head the whole time. I couldn’t shake the image of his fists laying me down, his tears laying him down, and his sorrow covering him with dirt. Whereas before I couldn’t feel sorry for him, my exhausted soul could only find pity in the man. And boy did I pity Gene.

  Something took my attention away from Gene, something strong. It was what I walked through, and at one point over, on my way to the common stores. There were bodies, many of them. All were once living not long before. And they all maintained one mutual trait—their heads.

  All the corpses I passed, probably fifteen total, had misshapen or worse heads. A couple near the opening between buildings to the common stores lay next to each other with what appeared to be the very tops of their skulls missing, akin to being scalped but not at all cleanly. Their brains leaked out onto the concrete. Others had grossly bloated heads, one with a neck that had filled up and burst, and another with the entire right side of his head, face included, seemingly melted off.

  I didn’t hesitate. I entered the area with the bins, found a bottle of whiskey very generically marked Grade-3 Whiskey, and immediately headed back to my cabin. I wanted no part of the chaos happening in my development, and likely around the world. I knew it was Flegtide. I knew the ultimate side effects were finally coming to light. I knew it and wanted to blind myself of it. The alcohol helped that too.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 37

  Good Morning Winter

  Although we had the common stores anymore, the Centralized Authority still occasionally made strategic trips out to our cabins to drop off supplies, as there remained many that would not venture outside in fear of the Ire coming back. Just like old times. And what could be said of the Ire anymore? Well, it just wasn’t what it used to be.

  These were the days the world had dreamt about in the autumn of 2030, when we were no longer controlled by the sudden bitch slap of rage brought on solely by the presence of another human being. Yes, it still crept out on occasion, but it was rare. The change was abrupt, so abrupt that we truly could not adapt to it quickly enough. The populace should have been dancing in the streets and swiftly re-forming ad hoc governments and printing new moneys. We should have been draped in nothing but smiles. We weren’t.

  It was the third of November. Our cells said it plainly through text, although it probably didn’t say it loud enough. And it was rushed, as told by the poorly worded English translation for us former American readers.

  Announcement ZRR-8-KTYWW-46-2 All Human Existence. 3 September, 2049. 09:34 GMT+1. The Centralized Authority is within power of it to announce the withdraw of SPMS from persons or peoples afforded to this planet. We were strived throughout these years of 20 and ours has persevered for long last. The disease beholding us has vanquished from most us over these last month, which is four weeks. Testings show from Bern that SPMS is a factor in only 2 percent of the population now today. Some of these ones 2 percent are residual effectives felt with little to nothing of forced assaults onto the other ones. A small portion of these 2 percent are permanently ingrained with upon a very more violent version of SPMS. As before mentioned in previously, these few ones must be cautioned against and told to the Centralized Authority fast immediately for extermination. They are the risk of us. Ladies and men, this is this time to at lastly enjoy our lives and build again more. End of transmission.

  Perhaps it was the mangled translation that did it, but we were all less than overwhelmed with the news we’d waited twenty painful, everything-changing years to hear. I hadn’t felt the Ire in some time. I had already undergone the change, likely much sooner than the rest of the population. So, I guess, it wasn’t news to me. Also, I was beginning to feel migraines from the change, and that thwarted a hefty chunk of my enthusiasm.

  The next morning I arose to a very bright image. A storm had dumped about a foot of snow on my property. It was glorious. I wasn’t excited about the end of the Ire, but I was mightily thrilled by snow in Minnesota. My senses, obviously, needed tweaked severely. I opened the front door to breathe in the fresh new cold. Instead, I was greeted with the grizzled, forlorn face of Gene del Gregory.

  “Gene?”

  He simply walked in, right past me, and sat at my dining room table. It was apparent he wanted me to do the same across from him.

  “Wallace, I’m being hunted,” Gene said in a very normal, non-threatened fashion.

  “Hunted you say?” I knew he was being paranoid. And he carried himself very well through it.

  “I read the message yesterday. I told you back at the island, Wallace, that I’m the dead rat. Somehow they know about me, that I still have the Ire.”

  “Are you sure you still have it, Gene?”

  “Oh, I do. I saw a man walking in front of my cabin two nights ago and it took everything in me to not remove myself from my chair and take him down. I mean that literally, Wallace.”

  “But you didn’t go kill and eat him. That has to mean something, Gene.”

  “It might. If he’d come another step or two closer I believe I would have jumped out of the chair and ended him. I heard it. The world telling me he needed to be my food. Maybe it’s changing in me like everybody else, maybe it’s not. I have not gone to seek people out, however. I can proudly say that.”

  “That is very good.” I felt like he needed me as his cheerleader at the moment.

  “Still, Wallace, they know about me
. I keep getting calls on my cell, always from a different name. The people in the picture are darkened so as to not give away their identities.”

  “What do they say?”

  “They usually say nothing. I hear them breathe mostly. One guy simply said ‘Cinder’. The fuck if I know what that means.”

  I looked at the man and said nothing, unable to hide my disbelief in his story. Unfortunately, he was able to read me too well.

  “I figured you would assume me a liar, Wallace. So I recorded one of the calls. Here.”

  Gene pushed play on his cell and slid it over the table for me to view. On the screen was the image of a heavily silhouetted man with the bright sun through a window behind him. He said nothing for one full minute before stating ‘Cinder’.

  “I didn’t lie,” Gene said.

  He attempted to take the cell but I stopped him because something was happening on his recording. The silhouetted man turned to the side and unzipped his pants. Even the urine streaming from him was in a flashy silhouette. He then said ‘Del Gregory’ in a sinister, almost cartoon-villainous whisper. The recording ended.

  “Have you not seen this all the way through?” I asked Gene.

  “No, I keep stopping it after he says ‘Cinder’.”

  Gene watched the rest of the recording. I could see him go from concerned to utterly terrified in just two seconds. This man, who had killed countless people, eaten countless more, was truly afraid.

  “I’m worse than a dead rat, Wallace! They want to do inhuman things to me! They think I’m not a human!”

  Can you blame them? “I’m sure they’re just scared too, Gene. And like we’ve already discussed, your Ire is possibly waning like it has with the rest of us.”

  Like clockwork, Gene began to cry. This time was different, though. He cried over not knowing anything—who was threatening him, what would happen, if I was going to support him. Of course I would support him. Defend him? Well, most likely. I loved him and hated him, but I couldn’t fathom the idea of not standing in to protect him. After all, his cannibalism was never his own fault. He didn’t desire being that way.