Skitter

by Ezekiel Boone

  “To the Spinal Tap!” Fred shouted. He lifted his Kir Royale—of course Shotgun had stocked the shelter with cases and cases of champagne and cassis liqueur—and clinked his glass against Amy’s. The two of them knocked back their drinks and got up to go to the kitchen for a refill.

  Shotgun shook his head at his husband’s back and then looked at Gordo. “The only thing that would make it better is if we could actually run the Spinal Tap using music from the movie This Is Spinal Tap instead of running a simple, single, subsonic tone.”

  “Speaking of movies, you know, if this was a movie, this is when the eccentric scientists would try to get through to the White House but be dismissed as some sort of cranks,” Gordo said, “and then we’d have to spend the next few scenes in an elaborate plot to sneak through security so we could talk to the president.”

  “First of all,” Shotgun said, “I think we’re more engineers than scientists. Or, at least, I’m an engineer. I don’t know what the hell to call you. Running programs to take advantage of inefficiencies on the financial market doesn’t really make you anything other than an opportunist.”

  “It’s arbitrage,” Gordo said.

  Shotgun shrugged. “So you’re an arbitrageur?”

  “That’s not a word.”

  “Actually, I think it is a word, but given that you wrote the program that you use to find the inefficiencies, I think we’ll say that’s good enough and lump you in with me. Let’s just say we’re both engineers.”

  “Fine. Engineers. Much better. So we have a spider-killing machine that we’ve named the Spinal Tap, in homage to a fake documentary, and even though we haven’t actually tested our spider-killing machine, and we don’t really know if our spider-killing machine works, the engineers are going to have to come up with an elaborate scheme to sneak into the White House to get the attention of the president,” Gordo said.

  “Or I can just call a guy I know,” Shotgun said.

  “You’re going to call a guy?”

  “I’m going to call a guy.”

  “Oh. Well. That seems significantly easier than my plan. Who are you going to call?”

  “Robert Gibbons.”

  “Robert Gibbons?” Gordo said. “As in the director of the CIA?”

  Shotgun hesitated and then nodded. “Classified and all that stuff, but I’m not sure how much they are going to care about that anymore. I’ve done some work for Gibbons. Technical consulting, mostly. A few design things. He’s loaned me out to the Pentagon once or twice.”

  Gordo stared at Shotgun. If he’d been pressed, he would have said that Shotgun was his best friend. Sure, he talked to his brother on the phone once a month or so, and there were a couple of buddies from college and some other guys he’d known when he’d lived in New York, but since he and Amy had moved out to Desperation, he’d spent more time with Shotgun than with anybody other than his wife. “I’ve got to say, I never really figured you as the type to do military work.”

  “Because I’m gay?”

  “Well, duh. That’s part of it. But more so because Fred’s such a pinko peacenik.”

  “I love that man to death,” Shotgun said. “Best thing that ever happened to me was persuading Fred to marry me. So, sure, on some level it makes sense that I might not want to do military work. I’m not even convinced I really believe in war. There’s the concept of a just war, or a good war, and you could argue we’ve had a couple of those, but mostly war seems like a swampland of immorality. And yes, a generation or two ago I might not have been able to get security clearance because being a fag”—Gordo winced—“made me a risk. In a lot of ways it’s complicated. But on another level it was a simple decision for me: I was overruled by my own curiosity. When I’ve done engineering work for the CIA or the Pentagon, it’s because they’ve called me in to solve a problem they’d already taken a swing at. It’s not that I necessarily like doing military work, but they pay me a boatload of money and the problems are usually too interesting for me to say no to.”

  “Like what?”

  “Classified.”

  Gordo grinned. “Piss off.”

  “Seriously. Classified. But I can give you a hint. Remember that thing when all the GPS satellites went down for a week last summer? That was me.”

  They both laughed, and then Shotgun hesitated again, and Gordo figured that maybe Shotgun was worried about having disclosed classified information, even if what he’d said had been not much of anything. Though the fact that Shotgun evidently had the phone number of the director of the CIA was a little scary. But that wasn’t what was on Shotgun’s mind.

  “Can I ask you a question and get an honest answer?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Is this what you expected?”

  “What?”

  Shotgun shrugged. “I don’t know. All of this. We’ve both been planning for the day when the shit hits the fan. And we’re not the only ones. I mean, forget the Internet, and forget the religious doomsday preppers. We’re smart guys, and I think not too crazy.”

  “We were right about all of this,” Gordo said. “I mean, not about spiders, but about the end of the world as we know it. I think that makes us not crazy at all. We were right.”

  “That’s the thing. I’m starting to feel like maybe we weren’t right. I mean, I did everything I could think of. And I thought of everything. Planned for everything.” There was the sound of glass breaking in the kitchen, and Shotgun winced. “As in, it doesn’t matter if that was Fred dropping his glass or Fred dropping an entire bottle. We’re stocked with everything and then more of everything, and then redundancies of the redundancies. This was one of my prime preoccupations for years. But since the Chinese dropped their first nuke and then the spiders came out and we’ve been holing up here, underground, I’ve got to admit it: I’m bored.” Shotgun looked suddenly relieved. “There. I’ve said it. Hiding out in the shelter is boring. Oh, man, it’s so boring.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Tell me, Gordo, when have you felt most alive since we locked ourselves down here? Those first few hours, sure, when there was adrenaline and fear, but since then? Because I can think of two things that have felt exciting for me, and I bet it’s the same two things for you.”

  Gordo knew Shotgun was right. “Making the flamethrower nozzle and then designing the Spinal Tap.” He winced. “Okay. Amy’s right. That name has to go. Nobody is ever going to take it seriously if we call it the Spinal Tap. But so what if it’s boring? We’re safe down here, right? Wasn’t that the whole point of getting ourselves ready? Otherwise, why build shelters and stock up and move out here? I mean, why else would you move to Desperation if not because you were getting ready for the end of the world? Certainly not for the shopping.”

  Shotgun was already shaking his head. “But that’s not it, is it? It wasn’t ever about being safe. It was about the great adventure. I never thought the point of survival was to figure out how to kill time. That’s what it feels like, right? It hasn’t even been a month and I’m already losing my mind. It’s got to be worse for Fred and Amy because literally all they can do is kill time. No wonder they’ve been drinking nonstop. What else is there to do? No, I think what I liked about getting ready, about preparing this shelter, was that it was another sort of problem solving. It was a way to keep my mind busy between projects. An analytical kind of checklist making. It was sort of a game, and, to be completely honest, it was another way of showing how smart I am. I could see there was a looming disaster, and even if I didn’t predict that it would be an onslaught of spiders, I did accurately predict the end of the world. But now that we’re actually living it, despite all my thinking and planning, it’s not what I thought it would be,” he said. “I don’t want to hide down here and then peek my head out in a few years to see how the rest of the world has fared. It’s just not very interesting. I think maybe I expected surviving the end of the world was going to be some sort of great adventure, but it’s not. It’s boring. Bor
ing, boring, boring. And, honestly, I worry about Fred. Do you really think he’s cut out for just holing up in this hole in the ground?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay,” Gordo said. “I agree. I’m bored too, and while I think it was a great decision for Amy and I to ride this out with you and Fred, you’re right. There’s a limit to how many games of cards we can play, how many movies we can watch. My fantasy about surviving the end of the world was never about sitting in the bunker. It was about what came after. But before we worry about having some sort of great adventure, let’s call your friend at the CIA and see what happens when we tell him about whatever the hell we’re going to call this spider-killing thing now that we aren’t going to call it the Spinal Tap.”

  “How about the Spider Stereo?”

  “Not better,” Gordo said. “Just make the call.”

  USS Christopher Martin Graham, Gulf of Mexico

  The pilot had just enough time to take a piss, pound an energy drink, and eat a granola bar before his crew told him it was time to head out on another mission. He gave the thumbs-up, climbed into the cockpit, secured his helmet, and fired her up, ready to fly his dragon across the sky so he could drop more fire on America’s roads and highways.

  The King Royal Hotel, Chicago, Illinois

  Perry Pozloski, the assistant night manager for the King Royal Hotel, one of Chicago’s most expensive, ritziest, and oldest hotels, couldn’t believe he was feeling wistful for the winter. The winter in Chicago could be something shrill and mean, a lot like his ex-wife. The difference was that when Chicago opened herself up to you, she came alive.

  Pozloski was born and raised on the South Side. White Sox all the way. Chicago all the way. He was the Bears even when they tried to go all offense, the Bulls with or without Jordan, the Blackhawks in triple overtime. He took a week in the summer to go fishing in Wisconsin, and a week in the winter to drink beer in Jamaica with his high school buddies, but it had never once occurred to him that he might live somewhere else. His ex-wife had been from Pittsburgh originally, and Pozloski thought that her heritage might have been part of the problem with their marriage. She was a Steelers’ fan, for Christ’s sake.

  He sighed and put the thought of his ex-wife out of his mind. He got wistful, occasionally, when he remembered what she looked like in her underwear, or, even better, out of her underwear, but the truth was, he had been a lot happier since she’d left him. A year ago, he’d run into Jenny Growolski, who’d been his high school sweetheart—they used to joke that if they got married she’d be Jenny Growolski-Pozloski—and it turned out she was coming off a divorce of her own and had moved back to the neighborhood. They started dating a few days after they ran into each other and Pozloski figured that if things kept going the way they were, he and Jenny might end up married after all. Maybe his ex-wife had ruined his twenties, but he was only thirty-two. He and Jenny were plenty young enough to start a family. They’d been talking about it, in fact. In a general sort of way. No specifics. Not without a rock on her finger, Jenny had said. No. Not a rock. That was one of the things he liked—okay, loved—about Jenny. His ex-wife had insisted on a rock, even though, at the time, he’d only been the night porter at the King Royal Hotel, pulling in minimum wage plus tips, with tips being a joke on the graveyard shift. He’d used a credit card to pay for his ex-wife’s engagement ring, and he supposed that had been one of the things that presaged the end, right there at the beginning, because their money problems had been something else, and it was no real coincidence that his ex-wife had really started cheating on him just after he’d declared bankruptcy. That happened about the same time he realized that going from a single credit card to more than a dozen wasn’t something they could recover from. But that wasn’t what Jenny was talking about when she asked for a ring. In fact, she’d insisted that she didn’t want an expensive ring.

  “I had a rock, a big old diamond ring, when I was married and living in New York, and that didn’t stop me from getting divorced and moving back home, Perry. If I get married again,” she’d said, looking at him in that way that made even Perry Pozloski know that she didn’t really mean the “if,” and that she’d say yes if he asked her, “I don’t need a fancy ring. But I need a ring. I’m not having kids unless there’s a real commitment there, but a real commitment doesn’t need to cost a lot of money. I’d be happy enough with sterling silver.”

  So if Pozloski didn’t miss his ex-wife, he did, sure as heck, at that moment, miss the Chicago winter. Not how the cold could be just a pure hate at times. Not the way the wind came across the plains like a great chomping jaw of ice and pain. Tourists at the King Royal Hotel, in their cashmere coats and cars that had been warmed by waiting drivers, liked to tell you that Chicago was called the Windy City because of the politics, but Pozloski knew the truth. Pozloski knew the way the wind could scrape through the alleys and down the Magnificent Mile, the way you might drink an extra beer so you could put off leaving the bar and facing the demon blowing down the collar of your jacket and tightening your spine so much that you’d wake the next morning with muscle spasms.

  He didn’t miss that part of winter, but he missed the way it made the King Royal feel: it was a grand, old building, and in the middle of winter the radiator heat made it warm and cozy. Not like now. Now, even though they were having a short respite from the unseasonably warm weather, the King Royal Hotel didn’t feel cozy. It felt stuffed to the gills. And the guests, the business travelers and couples and families who could afford to pay for the kind of personalized service that the King Royal Hotel was famous for—people who wanted the gilt and history of a Chicago landmark that also featured six-hundred-thread-count sheets and concierges who’d been trained to forget that the word no existed—had turned into vicious beasts. Not all of them. Some of them were still gracious and warm, in the way rich people could be when they were conscious of being rich and thought it was their job to make you not feel bad about the fact that they were rich and you weren’t and, oh, if it isn’t too much trouble, can we have some more ice and lemon wedges and I need housekeeping to do a better job in the bathroom and can you please do something about the noise of sirens coming through the windows of my eighth-story room? But many of them had dropped the thin veneer of civility, and the King Royal Hotel was as full as full could be. A mix of businessmen acting like spreadsheets still mattered in a world of flesh-eating spiders, travelers on late spring breaks who had checked in but who could never leave, and yes, men and women and families who were refugees, people who’d fled their homes out of fear and who had the means to tide themselves over in a place like the King Royal Hotel.

  The man in the Royal Suite was one of those. A refugee with a platinum card. Mr. Kosgrove was from Las Vegas. The night Los Angeles had fallen, he’d left Vegas in his cherry-red Ferrari without a single suitcase, driving straight through to Chicago and flipping his keys to the valet like he was the kind of guy who wasn’t worried about his bazillion-dollar car getting scratched up by a parking monkey. As the assistant night manager, Perry Pozloski had gotten used to dealing with Mr. Kosgrove’s . . . one might call them eccentricities. A pair of thin blond women who might as well have been twins exiting through the lobby in thick, matching, white King Royal Hotel robes at three in the morning. He had to charge $450 to Mr. Kosgrove’s bill for those robes. A frantic phone call one night from the kitchen asking Pozloski what they should do about Mr. Kosgrove’s order for eleven steamed lobsters and an ice bucket full of melted lemon butter. The request that any furnishings trimmed with pink be removed from the Royal Suite immediately. Actually, the last and most recent of Kosgrove’s eccentricities had been the easiest to deal with, necessitating the removal only of an ottoman, two throw pillows, a chair in the second bedroom, which had remained unoccupied except for a few shopping bags, and a painting hanging in the master bedroom over which there was quite a bit of a heated argument about whether or not the landscape, as depicted by the artist
, contained pink or was, as one housekeeper argued, merely “dawn-tinted.” To be safe, Pozloski had taken the painting down.

  Which was why he was down here, in the subbasement of the King Royal Hotel, looking for a different painting, something suitable to hang up in Mr. Kosgrove’s room. If any of the rooms in the hotel had been empty, Pozloski could simply have swapped the painting out, and he could easily have found a piece of art in one of the hallways or the lobby or the dining room that he could have traded for the landscape painting, but truth be told, he didn’t mind the excuse to disappear for a little while. The subbasement was dark and dingy and cobwebby and Halloween movie horror show creepy, but it was also a really good place to smoke some pot. He could kill two birds with one stone: find a new piece of art to replace the maybe-just-a-little-bit-of-pink painting from Mr. Kosgrove’s room, and, at the same time, he could get high as all heck. He deserved the chance to relax a bit. He did.