Sawkill [Omnibus]

by Matt Fitzgerald

  “Don’t forget the soda machine on two.” Anna said.

  The food held for sixty five days. In that time, Mueller had died, and they had taken turns digging. Day and night. Had they been able to see the building from the outside they would have known they were digging in the wrong spot. The south and west faces of the building had a football field’s worth of rubble around them. The Silver Tower itself had collapsed in that direction and two adjacent buildings had added to the barrier. There was no way Burke could have known that when he picked that direction to start digging, and he was right to stick to the plan. Digging several holes would have been foolish.

  “It’s gotta end some time.” Burke had said.” Sooner or later we are gonna reach the Hudson.”

  Had they picked the north facing side of the building they would have been out in a week.

  On the morning of December eighteenth they all woke still tired and weak. Kim had the Mueller dream again last night; the crying and the sobbing and all that blood. There was so much blood.

  Mueller had been digging up on three when the others heard the screaming. When Burke got to him he was on the ground screaming and trying to keep his intestines on the inside.

  “What happened?” Burke asked.

  “I fell on my axe.” Mueller said.

  Burke looked around and understood.

  Mueller had taken to drinking while he was digging. When Burke found him he had six of those empty Japanese beers lying around him.

  “I was walking back to get another one and I tripped. I landed right on the goddamn thing.” Mueller said between ragged breaths. He lived for two hours screaming and sobbing and bleeding. He asked Burke to shoot him and put him out of his misery, and Burke would have, but Mueller died and Burke was relieved.

  They wrapped the body in bed sheets they found on three, said the Lord’s Prayer and tossed him into the gas line hole to rot with the others.

  As Kim got out of bed, she found that she was glad Mueller was dead. He ate the most out of any one of them and drank ninety percent of the alcohol. But that wasn’t very fair. In the beginning, the five of them ate like kings. None of them ever thought it would take more than two months to get out of the Silver Tower. It took forty days for them to realize they needed to start rationing and by then it was too late.

  “Where are you going?” Anna asked.

  “I’m going to start at 301 and see if we missed anything.” Kim said.

  They both knew this was a futile effort. They had torn each apartment apart looking for food a week ago. They checked night stand draws for hidden stashes of chocolate and under beds for secret bottles of booze. They found plenty of drugs and guns and vibrating dildos, but very little food. Kim remembered last night’s dinner: seven fortune cookies, two packets of soy sauce and a bottle of water. They at least had water. Dixon found four cases of Poland Springs at the bottom of a linen closet next to a value pack of paper towels and an eighty four ounce vat of laundry detergent. They were allowed a bottle each every other day. It was up to them to make it last. They knew the water would be gone in fifty days at the rate they were consuming it.

  “We just have to keep digging.” Burke had said. “We are almost there, I can feel it.” Kim and Anna had stopped taking their turns a week ago. Burke told them they were too weak and they were wasting digging time. Dixon and Pratt weren’t too happy about that, but Burke was right. They were going to get themselves hurt and they were only gaining half a foot or so in a four hour rotation.

  Kim was about to go into 301 when she heard the gun shot. She found Burke and Dixon in the lobby high fiving. They heard Kim coming down the escalator and turned.

  “What happened?” Kim asked.

  “We got one.” Burke exclaimed and held up the bloody rat.

  “Cook the fucker.” Kim said. “I’ll go get Anna.”

  The five of them split the two ounces of meat they got off the thing and called it a feast. It was the first meat they had in over a month. The only one that wasn’t happy with the meal was Paul Pratt.

  “This is what we’ve come to? A mouthful of rat?” Paul said as he slurped down a packet of soy sauce.

  No one replied

  Kim and Anna had been sleeping in 308, Dixon was in 304, Pratt in 310 and Burke was in 312. It was sometime around five in the morning when Kim heard another gunshot. A few minutes later there was knocking on the condo door. She expected it to be Burke, telling her they were having rat for breakfast. When he opened the door it was Burke, but he had no rat, just a horrified look on his face.

  “What?” Kim said.

  “Paul is dead. He shot himself.”

  To her horror Kim didn’t feel any sadness in Paul’s death. Only a sense of opportunity and a hunger pang in her stomach.

  “That’s awful.” She said.

  “I’ll get him wrapped up after breakfast.” Burke said and went to close the door.

  “Burke.” Kim said following him out into the hall.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “I want you to listen to me, alright. Don’t talk until I’ve said what I want to say.”

  Burke looked at her with raised eyebrows.

  “Alright.”

  “We need to take a good hard look at our situation and decide if we are going to do what it takes to survive.”

  “What do you mean?” Burke asked.

  “Burke, we need to eat Paul Pratt.”

  Burke laughed, but Kim just stared at him stone faced.

  “You’re serious?” Burke said after looking at her.

  “I know it’s harsh.” She started.

  “Harsh?” Burke said and snorted.

  “You said you would listen.” Kim reminded him.

  “I’m listening.” He said.

  “We can get enough meat off him to last for days. We can eat and get strong and finish digging our way out of here.”

  Burke just stared at her.

  “If we don’t do this we are going to starve to death. We are down to fifty fortune cookies and a thousand packs of soy sauce. When that runs out we are all going to be eating that gun.”

  “Jesus Christ Kimberly, I can’t cook a human being.” Burke said wiping his mouth.

  “I’ll cook him.” Kim said.

  “I’ll help.”

  Kim spun and saw Anna standing in the open doorway.

  She turned back to Burke.

  “We’ll do it. Tell Dixon about this and tell him breakfast will be at our place this morning.”

  “I’ll help you move him.” Burke said.

  “No. Leave him at his place. We will do it there and eat here, ten o’clock” Kim said.

  Burke nodded and walked down the hall.

  Kim and Anna went back into their condo.

  “Anna.” Kim said. “Are you alright with this?”

  “Yes, I’m fine with it, I’m fucking hungry.”

  Kim had to laugh at her blunt response.

  “I’ve never cooked anybody, how do we do this?”

  “Like a ham I suppose.” Anna said.” We carve off what looks like meat, take out the bones and grill the motherfucker.”

  “You never cease to amaze me.” Kim said.

  “What? I saw the Lion King. All that circle of life bullshit. That dude is dead. We can let him rot or we can flame broil him and have a Paul burger.” Anna said.

  Kim couldn’t tell if this was a façade to hide her fear, or if she was so hungry that she didn’t care where her food came from.

  They dressed in jean shorts and white tank tops and walked to the condo Paul was staying in barefoot. They brought knives and forks, serving platters and matches. They knew Paul had a small grill in the kitchen that they had used before the meat ran out. They dragged the body from the bedroom into the white tiled kitchen and stripped it.

  “Too bad we didn’t think to eat Mueller, that butt was pudgy. This boy doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him.” Anna said admiring the muscular arms and washboard abs.

  �
�Help me turn him over.” Kim said.

  “What’s the plan, Julia Child?”

  “Going with your ham theory I’d say we go for the ass first, then the calf, then the thighs.”

  “I think we should do all the cutting at one time. I don’t want to have to do this again.”

  “How are we going to get the blood off?”

  “Easy. The fish tank in 312.” Kim said.

  “The fish tank! Why haven’t we drunk the fish tank?” Anna asked.

  “Fish poop.” Kim said smiling.

  Anna just stared at her.

  “It’s salt water. I checked two weeks ago.”

  Two hours later they were done. They had butt steaks, calf cubes, thigh meat in long deep red strips. They had thin strips that looked like liver from Paul’s small love handles and chunks that looked ready for a stew that they carved from his arms, shoulders and back. They knew they had so much meat that it would go bad before they could cook it all, but Anna had insisted they keep cutting.

  “We need to practice in case we have to do this again. Better to see what’s easy and worth the effort.” She has said.

  “You are twisted.” Kim said as she sunk the knife into Paul’s left bicep.

  “This was your idea, sister.” Anna said.

  When the meat was stacked, and Paul’s body and bits covered with a sheet, they went into the bathroom and stripped naked, leaving their bloody clothes in the tub. They ran down the hall to 312 giggling like coeds taking a dare in a fraternity house. They washed away the blood with the salt water and wrapped themselves in towels they found in the closet.

  The girls dressed and brought the meat back to their apartment once they cooked it on Paul’s grill. They had used salt and pepper for seasoning and truth be told it smelled damn good. Kim was surprised to realize her mouth was full of saliva as she carried the platter.

  They waited until five past ten, neither of the men showed. Anna made the fava bean crack and they dug in. Paul tasted wonderful. He was moist and flavorful, melted in their mouths. By quarter past the women had all but forgot this was a human being they were dining on.

  “Lamb.” Anna said as she finished her second steak.

  “I was going to say bison, but I’ll go with lamb.” Kim said.

  At half past Burke showed up in the doorway, drawn by the smell.

  “I just wanted to make sure you guys weren’t sick, I mean physically.” He said.

  “You should eat.” Kim said. “It’s good.”

  “Probably cold by now, but you could re-heat his ass.” Anna said and the two women laughed.

  Burke was worried about them.

  “Seriously, we think it tastes like lamb. Just don’t think about it.” Kim said.

  Fifteen minutes later Burke and Dixon were sitting at the table while Anna went back to the other apartment to reheat the meat.

  The men didn’t say much during or after the meal, but they ate well and thanked the girls for “preparing it.”

  After dinner Kim and Anna searched for some way to preserve the leftovers, but ice was long gone and they didn’t have more than a shaker of salt.

  “We will have to binge and hope the plan works.” Anna said.

  Half an hour after breakfast Burke and Dixon were back to taking turns in the tunnel. They hollered for help and sang as they dug. This was something they did at the beginning, but gave up on quickly.

  They ate Paul for breakfast lunch and dinner the first day and again for breakfast on the second. After that they were nervous about spoilage.

  Four days later, the singing and the hollering had stopped, and so had the digging for the most part. It wasn’t all that big of a surprise when Dixon had his little “accident.” Burke never even asked who did it. He assumed they were working as a unit. He had this crazy vision of Kim on her hands and knees behind Dixon as Anna pushed him like a school yard bully. Regardless of how it happened, they let Burke “discover” the body at the bottom of the escalator on a Thursday morning.

  Two days after they got rid of the spoiled Dixon meat the three remaining tenants of the Silver Tower were eating their fortune cookies and soy sauce packets in the sushi restaurant. None of them were speaking very much, but they all had plenty on their minds. Burke broke the awkward silence when he took the revolver from its holster and placed in on the table.

  “We have all seen Survivor on television, right?” he asked.

  The girls nodded.

  “Well, this is tribal council and I have the immunity idol.” Burke said nodding at the gun. “I can’t get voted off. The question is which one of you ladies is going with me to the finale?”

  Kim smiled at how short Burke’s memory had become. She pulled the trigger of the gun he had given her when this all started. She had it in her lap since they sat down. The bullet took him just above the junk. Her second shot went through his right eye.

  “The tribe has spoken.” She said.

  Kim and Anna took the chance and ate Burke three square meals a day for two days. Neither of them did much digging even though they both felt great. Now that Burke was gone they knew they only had each other.

  “So?” Anna said lying in bed a week after the last Burke burgers were gone.

  “So.” Kim repeated.

  “When should we do this?” Anna asked

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “What are the rules?”

  “I think we go with what we discussed yesterday. One knife in the empty spare bedroom of 308. We put it in the middle of the room and see who makes it out.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to volunteer?” Anna asked

  “No, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s settled. Fair is fair.”

  Later they “showered” with shampoo and water from the bottles. They went into a fresh bed with clean sheets and made love for the last time. They said their goodbyes as they kissed and gasped and cried. When it was done they slept soundly in each other’s arms.

  Kim had done her mourning while she carved the meat from Anna’s mutilated body. The spare bedroom in 308 had been a long and bloody affair. Kim got the knife from the start, but it wasn’t like in the movies when the blade sings through flesh like its warm butter. It was like trying to puncture a thick blanket with a spoon. Once she got Anna on the floor and was able to put some weight behind the blade, it punctured the skin and sank deep into Anna’s stomach. But she didn’t die… not for a long, long time. She sobbed and bled and begged Kim to make the pain stop. When she pulled the knife from Anna’s belly blood and intestines came out with it. The smell was horrific and Anna’s screams were intolerable. Kim drew the bloody knife across Anna’s neck, but that wasn’t like the movies either. She didn’t cut deep enough to kill her, and the screams were now mixed with wet gurgling and choppy coughing.

  “I’m sorry.” Kim kept repeating over and over as Anna flailed at her with her arms.

  In the end Kim held the knife two handed and drove it straight down into Anna’s throat and that ended the agony for both of them.

  She did all the carving in one session and was done crying for Anna when she started the grill. For two days she took turns eating, sleeping and digging the tunnel. She sang as she dug. She sang the songs that Burke and Dixon and even Paul Pratt had sung. Once, she thought she heard someone yelling and stayed very still, but she didn’t hear it again and knew it must have been her imagination. On the morning of the third day she threw Anna’s remains into the abyss where Whole Foods used to be. She did the math and figured she could last two more months with the water and fortune cookies and soy sauce she had left. When the water was gone she would throw herself into the abyss with the friends she had eaten.

  She dug for five days after Anna was finished. She sang and hollered when she had the energy, but that wasn’t often. On the sixth day she woke up, ate her fortune cookies and said: “Fuck it.”

  She never dug again. She slept most of the sixth and seventh day and
woke up with a start on Friday. Was that thunder? She put her head back on her pillow and was almost back to sleep when she heard it again, and then again. She got out of bed and went downstairs. The noise was coming from the wall opposite to the one they had been digging at for the last four months. Someone was banging. Was that a sledge hammer? Had she really heard something days ago? Why hadn’t she heard it since?

  “Hello?” She yelled when the banging stopped.

  “Hi.” She heard in a muffled voice. “Stay back.”

  “OK.” She yelled and stepped back to the middle of the room.

  She watched as the wall first shook then crumbled. Then there was blinding sunlight. Her eyes were so used to the gloom that it took a long time for them to adjust. Once she could see again there was man standing in front of her. He was wearing a winter jacket and ski gloves.

  “Hey, are you alright?” The man asked.

  “Yes.” Kim replied.

  “I heard you a couple days ago, but the snow got bad and I had to take shelter.” The man said.

  “Are you alone?” Kim asked.

  “My group is uptown. I was down here scouting. I have food in my bag. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.” Kim said as she pulled the gun from her sweatshirt pocket.

  The license in his pocket said he was Fred Green from Yonkers. He was nineteen and tasted much sweeter than the others. Kim made Fred’s offerings last two weeks. She poked her head out and loaded some buckets with snow and kept the meat packed in the sushi bar’s freezer. During the two weeks she contemplated how to proceed in this new world. She had no real idea of what this new life would be like, and was afraid of how she would adapt to whatever she found up there. Kim knew she could never tell her secret. She would have to stay by herself, or be very careful if she ended up joining some group. It would be easy to keep what had already happened quiet, all she had to do was keep this place secret. No one could ever know she was here. She was worried about explaining her actions if someone caught her in the act.

  She knew the city was still full of canned goods Spam, Pop Tarts, Snickers bars and Twinkies, but that didn’t matter. She knew only one thing would satisfy her.