Christmas Trees & Monkeys

by Keohane, Dan

  Then it came to her. Jared was gone.

  * * *

  “Is that a man?” Jane let go of her mother’s hand, shuffled towards the painting as if hypnotized. Before them, a sixteenth century orgy spread out, all motion and color. Four men and five woman lounged among each other’s limbs, all naked but for an occasional loose tunica—a celebratory salute to the pleasures of the flesh. Always the ode to Bacchus, Serena noted, a whisper of melancholy playing across her face. She missed Jared. Not just because of what they’d shared together. Physically, it wasn’t a whole lot. What would their world have been like, if things hadn’t gone to shit? What would have happened, if the two had reached this dream-like point? Jared holding her, like the Bacchus-image holding the woman. Was this scene real, or some painter’s lurid fantasy? Men and woman. The possibilities seemed endless.

  “Mommy?”

  Serena swallowed. “Yes. Those are men.”

  Jane paused for a moment, then pointed at a flailing penis. “Is that a —”

  “Yes,” Serena said, hoping the interruption would throw some discouragement her daughter’s way, at least with this particular topic. Maybe later. Not in front of the painting.

  Jane stared for a while, moving now and again to a new vantage point. Nine year-old girls had their own methodical rhythm. They seemed to ponder everything, turning things over inexhaustibly, finishing in their own time. “Did Daddy have one?” she finally said.

  Daddy; meaning Jared, of course. As if a virgin birth were some horrifying label to be peeled away. As if it didn’t happen to every sixteen year-old girl these days. As soon as she could listen, Jane learned about her father, about Jared. Serena even named her after him, as close a name as she could come up with. She never truly explained to her daughter what “father” meant. What did it matter? It wasn’t a necessary part of the equation anymore.

  “Yes, he had one.”

  Jane made a face and turned away. “Gross.”

  * * *

  Women gathered on the south end of Devonshire Road, to get a better look at the wonder everyone called “the bug.” Serena’s nausea abated, retreating after a reluctant breakfast of butterless toast and water. The fourth morning waking up like this.

  No word from her father. No word from her brothers. And no Jared. All gone. Every man on the planet replaced, it seemed, by these squatting alien monuments.

  Serena’s mother refused to come out of the bedroom.

  With nothing else to do, only CNN and the local PBS station back on line, Serena followed the growing crowd as it moved purposely along Marjorie Drive, then Devonshire. Leading the mob, the woman who tried to get her mother into Amway two years ago. Mrs. Kyle stood an easy four inches over the next tallest woman in the group. Black hair shot tightly back in a bun, she looked like an old-fashioned school marm searching out delinquent students. She shrieked, “They’re in there!”

  Everyone followed her vindictive finger towards the ship. “All of them. My boys.” She looked at Susan Miller. “And, Sue, your husband, too. All of your husbands.” The finger scanned the uneasy group. “All of your sons.”

  Serena expected the crowd to start gathering up stones. Yet everyone knew better. In fact, warning the remaining population about the ships’ defenses seemed the sole impetus for CNN’s return two days earlier. Mrs. Kyle continued her pleas. “We have to get this thing open. Those warnings are bull shit! The government doesn’t want us too close, to find out what’s really inside.”

  She reached for Susan Miller’s arm, but the woman jerked back like a shell-shocked dog. “Those things are booby trapped,” Susan hissed. “You damn well know that. You saw the vid—”

  “Special effects.” Mrs. Kyle walked confidently up to the ship, bent her head towards the hull’s polished surface. “Andy?” She called like a lover outside a bedroom window. To Serena she sounded like a frightened Aunt Bea. “Andy? Jimmy? You boys are in there. I know you’re in there.” She leaned closer and whispered, “You knew they were coming. Somehow....” The words clouded her reflection. Serena felt a chill along her arms, remembering her father’s nightmare, Jared’s calm certainty.

  Mrs. Kyle turned her head, perhaps to scan the faces in the crowd. The tight bun of hair brushed against the ship, lightly as her breath. “See?” she said. “Am I dead y—”

  It took Serena’s brain a few seconds to figure out what it was seeing. By the time the woman’s head and right shoulder were shredded into something resembling spaghetti, Serena was stumbling away, fighting once more to hold down the toast.

  * * *

  Two or three blurred shapes moved around her, pulled away. The fuzzy outline at the foot of the bed said, “Grandmother Serena? Are you all right?”

  Serena tried to focus. Her heart beat with less regularity these days. Now it strained with fear. Not of the shapes. If she had her glasses they would come back into focus. The fear, maybe apprehension was a better word, revolved around the nightmare. And her daughters.Her daughter; the rest were daughters’ daughters.

  From the moment of that final push to bring Jane into the world, Serena Daws tried to live with a lie. Soon all of the lost pieces would fall back into place like a celestial jigsaw. Sixteen years and two months after that lie began, Serena’s teenage daughter woke up pregnant. Holding grandchild Maura in her arms, Jane sleeping out her exhaustion on the hospital bed, Serena accepted with resigned clarity that the world no longer belonged to her. She was a guest in someone else’s home. Not a single male of the species remained, nor would ever return. The illusion, the lie, fell away, overpowered by her granddaughter’s newborn cries. The iron storm which rolled across the hill, years before, scraped away Serena’s universe and replaced it with something half-done. Or so it seemed then. The Earth did vibrate with a much calmer frequency. There hadn’t been a single war, not since half the population was taken. Borders were dissolving, reforming into new patterns.

  Still, Serena found herself standing before paintings or watching old movies, vying for a glimpse of what might have been. What had been. Now, she lay in bed and reflected, as if to pull some spiritual circle closed.

  “Grandmother Serena? Can you hear me?” The fuzzy shape was Art. She, the only one of Serena’s Line who used the formal “Grandmother” instead of “Grandma”.

  “I’m fine, Art. Just a bad dream.”

  She fumbled with her glasses, managed to wrangle them on. Still, Art was a blur, as were the other two figures beside the bed. One of them took Serena’s pulse. Perhaps the doctor. Lately, everyone had lost their edges, become blurred photographs of the originals. This current pair of glasses was less than a year old, and already useless.

  Dreams were the only part of her life still sharply in focus. The same dream, since the day her neighbor got minced by the bug. It returned in one form or another, now and again. Lately, once or twice a week. She stood at the side of Devonshire Road, sometimes alone, sometimes with other faceless women. Always, Mrs. Kyle, slamming her fists against the body of the ship. Some dreams ended as reality had, the angry woman coming apart as if tossed against fan blades. At other times, like tonight, Mrs. Kyle succeeded. Her fingers gripped an invisible fault in the bug’s hull. A large rectangular door clanged onto the pavement. Liquefied remains of Jared and a thousand other men poured from the ship’s intestines. Sewerage spilling from an open pipe. Brown and crimson. Excrement washing across everyone’s feet. Jared’s pained expression floated among the flotsam toward the sewer drain.

  * * *

  Brenda Singleton examined a box of Saltine crackers with pale distaste. Serena rolled her shopping cart alongside. They exchanged small talk, then symptoms. Around them, a dozen others silently collected groceries, for the most part taking only what they really needed. The supermarket opened now for six hours a day, everyone taking turns maintaining what dwindling stock remained until the proverbial supply chain could wind itself back up. Every cash register was unattended.

  Serena’s attention locked on
to the home pregnancy test sitting on the pita bread in Brenda’s cart.

  “Oh, my God, Bren. How... I mean, no not how... I mean I know how. Who’s the....” But the question died away.

  Brenda looked at her with undisguised terror. “There is no father,” she said, dropping the box of crackers beside the tester.

  Serena whispered, “There has to be a father.” When she reached the aisle with the pregnancy tests, only two kits remained.

  * * *

  The intangible shape of Art leaned over, laid on an extra blanket. Serena liked the way names were going lately. Art would be pregnant any month now, and her daughter’s name would be Time. Art was like that, choosing the name early, always planning.

  This would be Serena’s death bed. Resigned acceptance once again. But it was about time. Ninety-eight years felt to her a good enough span. Most of Serena’s original class had already moved on, accompanied by a flourish of mourning and remembrance from their lineage. Honoring each departing member of the “First Generation.” No doubt Serena’s own clan would do the same. What then?

  The world would move on. Babies would be born. Young girls playing in the grass without fear, never thinking of boys. Waiting with eager longing for their sixteenth birthday. How long would the cycle continue? She’d taken to obsessing over this question. Maybe the pattern would carry on, long enough to populate the world with whomever, or whatever, rolled over the hillside all those years ago.

  She closed her eyes and felt a cool cloth touch her forehead. Her children did appreciate the role their original grandmother played, unwitting as it was, in their existence. They looked upon the dying first generation with a reverence once reserved for royalty.

  Serena felt herself sink into sleep. Maybe the nap would be her last, maybe not. She felt a sense of comfort, knowing that when the moment came her family would surround her. These were the generations Serena Daws had raised and loved. More would surely come without her.

  — — — — —

  About “Two Fish to Feed the Masses”

  OK. So I finally caved and wrote a zombie story. There was a pretty big anthology calling for these stories a while back and I decided, at writer Paul Tremblay’s suggestion, to give it a shot. In the end, though the editor tried to hold onto it as long as possible, it was too close in theme to another story from a volume of stories he’d previously published. Sigh. This happens. So much for being original. I considered marketing it elsewhere, but when a themed anthology closes up shop, there’s usually a glut of similarly-themed stories hitting editors’ desks, so since I was putting this collection together anyway, it’s always good to have some original pieces included.

  After you read this story you’ll understand what I mean when I say it was written during a particular Crisis of Faith. I was basically yelling (read that as whining) to God about stuff, mostly around my writing... we did that a lot back then, argue I mean. I’ve stopped though – realizing God always wins.

  I started this story not knowing where I was going with it. I started with a character much like one named Jack from “Lavish,” preaching to an empty street. As I went along, things started to develop. In re-reading this baby, there’s a lot of various themes I ended up sticking in there - zombies, of course, the Rapture (though I hadn’t realized Left Behind had that kid-angle until I recently read the book) and Richard Matheson’s classic I Am Legend. I was probably thinking of the latter when I made the zombies nocturnal.

  The title, by the way, is in reference to the story of Jesus feeding hundreds of people who’d come to listen to Him with only a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. This is one example of a story not having a title until the thing was finished.

  Oh, one last interesting trivia point. This story was written before my novel Solomon’s Grave. If you notice, I ended up re-using some character names from this story for the book. Sometimes a character name is just too good to squander it away in an obscure story in the back of an obscure short story collection.

  Two Fish to Feed the Masses

  “They stared at you and did not blink. They showed you what lust and greed would give if only you looked deeper into their deception! If only you tore open your souls and let them lick you clean like ravenous harlots. They damned you!”

  The last two words echoed off the buildings, then carried back over Dinneck. He paused, listening to God’s words drift behind the abandoned Federal Reserve building towards the Atlantic. Words were food, to be diluted, perhaps, in water. Two fish could feed millions, the book said. Now the seas overflowed with manna that no one would eat.

  “No one to eat of God’s bounty,” he whispered, then remembered his place, his role in this final safe hour of afternoon. He raised his arms, his voice. The Boston skyline reached up to the abandoned heavens with him.

  “It’s not too late to salvage your souls, stolen by the Face! That which is taken can always be regained.” As he spoke, Dinneck walked slowly from South Station, knowing his words echoed in the vast halls of the subway below. He hoped they did not fall on barren ground.

  Christ the King church was a good half hour walk. Best to be cautious since his watch battery died. Time did not matter, only the setting of the sun. The Shufflers’ pack mentality could corner any living person too foolish to properly plan an escape route away from their slow, methodical snares. Even overcast days were spent indoors. The Runners dared not risk such gloom, but the Shufflers were too stupid to know the difference between the murk of twilight and a thick-clouded storm blowing past. This fact made the Shufflers no less dangerous, unless the sun broke through. Then, Dinneck would walk among the fallen shells of their bodies, eyes smoking, contrails of their captive souls burned free into the air.

  Dinneck would avoid these unfortunates if he came across them. They were dead, of course, insides decaying slowly in crusted shells that once were skin. They were dead before the sun broke through the clouds. But the demons within them, stupid, growling slugs never quite adapting to their new forms might linger still, looking for a new host. These victims of the sun were always gone in the morning. The Runners were efficient that way, as if leaving their lost brethren to lay in the street might make the New Race look bad.

  Shufflers. Runners. New Race.

  That night Dinneck reviewed the names in his notebook as he sat in the church pew. Candlelight licked across his New Race Dictum as if to consecrate the work. He preached by day, begging Hell-imprisoned souls to fight back, reclaim what had been stolen from them. By night, he documented the world as it was, after the Face reached into every house and stole so many away.

  * * *

  “Dad, Dad! Come on, hurry! You can’t miss the first five minutes or nothing will make sense! Everyone says that! Hurry!”

  “That’s OK. I’m recording it. I really have to finish this or Bert’ll have my butt. You and Mom watch it tonight. If you want to watch it again with me tomorrow night you can tell me when the good parts are coming.”

  Nicky’s expression passed from sorrowful hurt to hopeful expectation. “You promise? Really promise?”

  At that moment Albert Dinneck almost - almost - said to hell with Bert and his deadlines. He’d get the galley revisions in a day later. Still, they were already a month late, and tomorrow was “Do or die, Buddy Boy” if Eyes Closed was to make Christmas. After tonight, the novel would be done and Albert could focus all of himself on Nicky and Mira.

  “I really promise.”

  The silence in the apartment had been constant for a long time when Albert finally noticed. He reluctantly clicked save and rose from his desk, stretching his arms above and behind him. In the living room, a clown face glowed from the television screen. Wide, filling the glass, grinning. Albert had trouble looking too long at it, felt an itch on his fingers and neck. Nicky was gone, perhaps to bed after waiting too long for his father to change his mind. Albert reached down and turned off the television, looked at the clock. Almost two hours since Nicky had come in to beg that he jo
in them.

  With the screen dark, he wondered if that really had been a clown on the screen.

  Mira was asleep on the couch. No, that wasn’t right. She was bent backward, twisted in contorted pain. Streams of blood dried in tributaries from her nose and eyes, smeared in places where they had wiped against the off-white cushions.

  “Mira?” He should have run to his wife, held her, called 911. But nothing felt real. The air was thick, an after-image of a massive explosion which he did not see nor smell. A quiet sense of abandonment.

  He looked away from Mira - just sleeping - and walked across the room, down the hall towards Nicky’s bedroom. He was calm, his pulse accelerating only when he opened the door and clicked the light to an empty room, sheets tightly tucked by Mira that morning. Albert checked the bathroom, his own room, the kitchen. His son was gone. Only when certain of this did he return to the living room, lay two fingers to his wife’s throat as he’d seen them do on television, not certain what he was searching for. Finally, and for a long while, he screamed and wailed over his dead wife and missing son.