Hazardous Materials

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  “Look at ’em now. Just junk.”

  “Why are they all here?” Jarrod asked, unable to help himself.

  “It’s an arcade, Jare. That’s where they put video games.”

  “Yeah, but why are they all still here? Why was that door welded shut?”

  “Like I said, junk,” Ludwig answered, but his voice quavered with a new uncertainty. “More expensive to cart ’em off, I bet. Seen a lot of things get walled off like this. People making their own private landfills. Found tons of crazy stuff over the years. Crazier than video games. Heck, I found a gyno table once.”

  “A what?”

  “You heard me,” Ludwig answered, his swagger returning. “Gyno table. Stirrups and everything. Looked pretty used, too.”

  “A gyno table? Like, as in gynecological? As in—”

  “Yes, gyno-co-logical. The vinyl on this thing was pea-soup green. The kind of green you’d see on the inside of an old Plymouth . . .”

  Ludwig’s words went soft in Jarrod’s ears. They diminished to a distant drone. Jarrod kept staring at the games. He wanted to step closer to them, but it was as if his boots were Velcroed to the floor.

  “. . . and it had gone all crackly like—like old vinyl does, you know? So someone had gone and patched this thing up with duct tape. Duct tape!”

  “What’s that?” Jarrod asked, his eyes still fixed on the dead consoles. He didn’t just feel as if they were staring back at him now. He could swear they were.

  “Gyno table. Thing was patched up with duct tape. ’Magine that, some chick goes to the kitty doctor, and the cootchie table’s covered in duct tape.”

  Jarrod shook his head, forcing himself to look away from the games. “And you found this thing where? In an old doctor’s office?”

  “I reckon so.” Ludwig scratched a thatch of salt-and-copper chest hair that peeped from his V-neck. “Actually, might not have even been a doctor’s office at all, now that I think about it. Just in some basement we were stripping. Near the boiler.”

  “And you didn’t think that was the tiniest bit, I don’t know, creepy?”

  “Seen creepier.”

  “So what did you do with it?”

  “Took it home.” Ludwig’s voice rang with a surprising timbre of pride. “Took it right home. Got a couple hunderd beans on eBay for it.”

  Jarrod sighed. He knew that salvage was a major perk of his boss’s gray-market let’s-just-look-the-other-way-for-a-moment-and-not-say-nothin’-to-nobody business. Ludwig wouldn’t report what he found in any of the buildings, and for his “trouble,” he got to keep what he wanted.

  “A couple hunderd beans,” Ludwig repeated. “You’d be surprised what people’ll pay good money for.”

  “Yeah.” Jarrod wasn’t surprised. Just saddened. He knew all too well where the good money went and where it didn’t. “Why just leave them, though? I don’t get it. They’ve got to be worth a fortune. More than a few hunderd beans, that’s for sure. I mean, people collect this kind of stuff.”

  Ludwig narrowed his gaze at the twin rows of consoles. “I’m gonna drag the genny in here and see if these puppies still got any life in ’em.” He turned, leaving Jarrod with nothing but the scant illumination of his own small flashlight.

  Jarrod knew that look, the avaricious glint in Ludwig’s eyes. There might as well have been a pair of cartoon dollar signs there. Ludwig was about to score big, and all Jarrod would get out of it was the privilege of carting his boss’s haul out to the curb. He could have put his fist right through one of the screens. He was the one who had pulled down the lockers. Ludwig wouldn’t have even found this room except for Jarrod and that stupid, stupid Yankee work ethic his father had drilled into him. His father and his father before him and his father’s father before that—father after father after father of crusty New Englanders telling their sons to do a job right or don’t do it at all, as if the second choice was even an option.

  His hands went clammy, grabbing reflexively at the sides of his cargos. Ludwig would give him something, right? It was only fair. Jarrod almost laughed out loud. When did fair ever have anything to do with it? All he’d really wanted out of life was to feel a little special. He’d wished for that desperately from his parents. But there was always his brother, Simon, standing in the way. First as the favorite son. Then as the war hero. And now as the ghost who every year inched closer to sainthood, at least in their eyes.

  Stop it! This isn’t about Simon. This was about Jarrod and his best chance of starting over, his best chance of finding that special someplace else. And that chance rested in Ludwig’s greedy mitts.

  It wouldn’t have to be a lot. It didn’t have to be a fifty-fifty split. Just something. Even a grand would do. Then he could buy a bus ticket someplace—any world he was welcome to—and have enough left over to get settled. He’d pack up his portfolio and head to a place where the cost of living wasn’t so damn high. He’d find a job where the worst injury awaiting him was carpal tunnel syndrome. And when he called his parents, his voice would ring with dignity instead of desperation.

  Jarrod craned his neck, hoping to spot Ludwig, but he was alone in the dark. Alone with the machines. Might as well find the plug, he told himself as he pulled the nearest cabinet away from the wall. Then Ludwig can “fire up these puppies” and start counting his fucking ducats. He dropped onto all fours and shined his flashlight behind it. Some graffiti caught his eye. It was almost lost in the gloom, faded black paint against a gray wall. He squinted, mumbling the words to himself.

  die demon die

  the end draws nigh

  the puppet screamed

  all is lies

  a curse behind hollow eyes

  is lifted now

  die demon die

  “What’s that there?” Ludwig asked, suddenly crouched beside Jarrod like a blue-collar gargoyle.

  Jarrod tried not to jump and failed. He scrambled back, brushing the cold from his arms as Ludwig cackled at his cowardice. “Some kind of . . . some kind of creepy poetry. Take a look.”

  Ludwig did, his lips moving as he read silently.

  “What do you think it means?”

  “It means don’t do drugs.” Ludwig pulled a Newport from the pack and started tapping it against the box. Tappity-tappity-tap-tap.

  Jarrod gritted his teeth. There it was, the fucking tapping again. Not asking for a smoke was bad enough. Refusing Ludwig’s repeated offers was bad enough. But the tapping—the goddamn tapping was pure water torture. He turned his attention away from the pack and fixed it on the graffiti. The tapping followed him, rapping on the side of his skull like a door knocker. Tap. Tap. Tap. Your old friend Smokey here. Why don’t you let me inside, and we’ll catch up?

  “Go away.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.” Jarrod shook his head and focused on the wall, for the first time noticing a few holes in the cinder block. Beside the holes were big black splotches that looked like . . .

  That looked like bloodstains.

  Jarrod’s heart frosted over. Get a grip, he told himself. Just get a grip. That is probably nothing but mold. But his eyes kept Ping-Ponging between the holes and the stains. “Ludwig? Come over here.”

  Ludwig did.

  “What do you think those are?”

  His boss bent in for closer inspection, unlit cigarette dangling limply from his mouth. “Well, Jarrod, those—” His voice slipped like a bike chain from its sprocket. “Those, ahem, those look like bullet holes. Thirty-eights, I’d bet, if I were a betting man.” He fired up his smoke and took a long drag. Then he took another. The ash column broke and tumbled down his shirt. “Jeez, Louise. Sure you don’t want a cigarette?”

  Jarrod did want one, but he kept his mouth shut.

  “There’s something about this that’s—I just can’t put my finger on it.” Lud
wig peered closer at the graffiti. “Die demon die . . . Why does that sound so familiar?” He balled one fist and hammered his thigh. “No way. That was here? That was here!”

  “What?”

  Ludwig shook his head. “Can’t believe it.” He turned to face Jarrod. A rare solemnity had staked his features. “Was a long time ago. I was maybe eight or nine. Some teen went mental and shot up the place. This place. Killed something like nine people, then stuck the gun in his mouth. Boom.”

  Jarrod’s gut turned to cement. Boom . . . boom . . . just like—

  “All hopped up on PCP, I heard,” Ludwig said, cutting off Jarrod’s thought before it could take hold. He ground his smoldering butt out on the floor. “Can’t believe that was here.”

  So those were bullet holes in the wall. Those were bloodstains, no matter how faded. “When was this?”

  “Early eighties. Like I said, I must have been about eight or nine. I remember some congressman, or maybe it was the mayor, blaming it on the video games. I mean, you know, forget about the PCP. Or whatever problems the kid had at home that made him want to get dusted in the first place. Just had to be Zaxxon that did it. Just had to be Ms. Pac-Man’s fault. Video games corrupting the youth or some such line. I mean, you heard it a million times before. Heavy metal, comic books, energy drinks, always something to blame.”

  “People need to point the finger someplace.” Jarrod tried not to remember all of the places his father had pointed his own accusing finger after what happened with Simon. He tried especially hard not to remember the time his father had downed half a bottle of Scotch and turned that finger toward him. Poked him right where it hurt most. “They need a scapegoat.”

  “Don’t you know it,” Ludwig said. “Told my folks not to vote for the guy. Not sure if they listened.” He looked at the consoles with fresh eyes. “Makes sense why they bricked this place up now, though. Good luck trying to sell off a bunch of arcade games with some politician hollering that they’re making kids go all Columbine. Can’t even imagine that kind of publicity.”

  Jarrod turned his eyes, and his mind, away from the bullet holes, from the bloodstains. People went crazy sometimes. And sometimes they killed themselves. And sometimes when they killed themselves, they took other people with them on the way out. It didn’t take a “corrupting influence” for someone to put a gun barrel to his own head—or to someone else’s. It didn’t take much to pull the trigger. Jarrod knew that better than most. And he’d told himself the same thing many times, over many long nights when questions ambushed him in the dark.

  Push it out of your mind. Push it deep like you always do. You made a promise. Jarrod had made that promise to his sister, and he’d made it to himself. No use dwelling on what could have happened. All he could do was focus on what was right in front of him—twelve arcade games that someone somewhere was bound to pay good money for. It might just be his way out. But only if he spoke up for himself first.

  “So . . .” Jarrod said, quietly crossing his fingers behind his back. Crossing them on both hands. “What do we do with the games?”

  Ludwig raised an eyebrow. “We?”

  “Yeah,” Jarrod answered, willing to grind his nerve to a needle point if that was what it took. “I did find them, after all. I was the one who pulled down the locker—”

  “I told you not to funk with the lockers.”

  “But I did,” Jarrod pressed. “And if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t even be talking about this now. I found them, and I figured you’d let me keep a few of them.”

  Ludwig lolled his head back theatrically. His eyes followed.

  “It’s only fair.” Jarrod wasn’t giving in. Not this time. “Fair, that’s all I’m asking for.”

  “Well . . .” Ludwig scratched his chin. “You’re right. You did find ’em. Don’t want anybody accusing me of not being fair.” The final word spilled from Ludwig’s mouth twisted with petulance. “I suppose you should get one. How about . . .” Ludwig’s hand landed on the console nearest the graffiti, nearest the bullet holes and the blood. “This guy?”

  Above the dead screen, the name of the game was spelled out in chunky Future Shock letters.

  Polybius.

  From The Pathology of Mass Shooters by Thomas Fletcher, PhD

  Public shootings have become a sadly familiar spectacle in today’s America. While it is tempting to portray these acts as a strictly contemporary problem, the specter of such violence has been a part of the social fabric for far longer than many of today’s pundits care to admit.

  Numerous examples exist in the postwar and Cold War periods alone. In 1949, New Jersey was the site of the infamous “Walk of Death,” where decorated World War II veteran Howard Unruh gunned down and killed thirteen people (including three children) during a twelve-minute walk through his Camden neighborhood.

  The exploits of some mass murderers have entered the American mythic consciousness. Examples include infamous teenage spree killers Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate—who together murdered eleven people over a two-month period in 1957–58—and Charles Whitman, a former U.S. Marine who killed sixteen people and wounded an additional thirty-two during a shooting rampage from a tower at the University of Texas in 1966.

  Other instances of premillennial mass shootings have been largely forgotten by history. A case in point is the 1981 murder of eight people by nineteen-year-old Army reservist Brian Shaw, dubbed the “arcade killings” by the New York Post. Shaw gunned down his victims in the arcade room of a roller rink in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. And while largely unremembered today, it remained the largest mass killing by a single individual in New York State until 2009. It has been widely speculated, however, that the arcade massacre was the inspiration for the recent terror attack in Times Square perpetrated by Jarrod Foster.

  The fact remains that while the outcomes in the two cases may have been different, the impetus was the same. In each case, the attacker had been plagued by extreme feelings of marginalization and alienation.

  THREE

  Jarrod sat on his lumpy bed, stirring the bowl of lukewarm ramen nestled in his crotch and staring at his newest acquisition. The Polybius cabinet hogged almost half of his basement studio. But at least it blocked his view of the wall smirk. A week, tops, Jarrod told himself as he slurped his salty noodles. Just get it up on eBay, and it’ll be gone in a week. And with any luck, he himself would soon follow.

  He’d done his best to find the going rates for vintage arcade games, looking up what he could on his dinosaur of a smartphone. He’d discovered that prices for cabinets in working order varied wildly, ranging from a few hundred dollars for run-of-the-mill games like Pac-Man or Space Invaders to tens of thousands for more exotic titles along the lines of Death Race, Aztarac, Inferno, and Blaster.

  But when he looked up Polybius, all he could find was a modest entry about a Greek historian with the same name. The man had apparently had a front-row seat for the Sack of Carthage—lucky him. Not the most likely candidate to name a video game after, Jarrod thought. Maybe the designer just saw the word in a book and thought it looked cool.

  Even though he’d promised himself he wouldn’t, he also read more about the shooting that Ludwig had described. He found little besides a few archived articles. Most of the information only corroborated and expanded Ludwig’s story. Indeed, nine people had lost their lives that day more than three decades ago: two children, four teenagers, and two adult employees of the roller rink, and the shooter himself.

  But Ludwig had gotten a few details wrong. The gunman wasn’t “some teen”; he was a twenty-year-old Army reservist who worked at the rink himself part-time. And while he had indeed killed himself, it wasn’t until later, after he’d surrendered to the police, that he’d hung himself in his jail cell. Survivors of the incident who knew the gunman described him as a quiet, go-along-to-get-along type but said that he’d been acting erratically in the weeks
leading up to the shooting, that he’d complained of nightmares and sleepwalking. The Post had printed a picture of him. Underneath was his name, Brian Shaw. The same Shaw who painted the mural we tore down that second day? Jarrod wondered. Possibly. Probably. That mural was definitely the work of someone with loose wiring.

  Jarrod peered at the grainy photo. Shaw was lanky, with jug ears made worse by his Army crew cut. He was smiling, and his eyes were bright. Not the eyes of a killer, he wanted to tell himself. But he knew better. His brother, Simon, had had eyes like that. And Simon had had that same crew cut. And Simon had been a killer, one sanctioned by the United States Government, if not, ultimately, his own conscience.

  Jarrod stood up and dumped the rest of the noodles into the toilet. He needed to focus on getting that game up for sale on eBay or Craigslist or whatever. He wouldn’t get any bids without a picture, though. And pics of a live screen would make the game more enticing to a collector—if it worked, that was. It was well past time to plug it in, fire it up, and find out.

  Groaning, he squatted down, knees popping. He rooted around behind the game, reaching for the power cord. Stiffened by decades of neglect, the ancient plastic sheathing crumbled away as he jammed the plug into the socket, and—

  zzzztttzzz

  Jarrod was hit with 120 volts of electricity he could barely afford. He jerked back, biting his tongue to keep from screaming. He pulled his hand from the wall, head swimming in an electric haze, and looked at it. All the fingers were still in place and still in the same order. With that reassurance lightly gluing his mind together, Jarrod plugged the game in again.

  He stood up and watched the CRT screen flicker to life with a vacuum-tube whine. A helix of white vector lines swirled in the center, while a copyright credit wiggled across the bottom of the display. Sinneschlöshen 1981.