Everything is Broken

by John Shirley

  “How about dynamite?”

  “You got any? Me either. The hardware store was on the highway. It’s under three feet of sand and debris. Flattened.” He sighed. “So was the pharmacy, by the way.”

  A man appeared at the door behind his dad, a man maybe in his late forties, looking as dirty and worn down as everyone else, his tired face marked by sardonic affability. He glanced at Russ. “This your son, Drew?”

  “That’s him,” Dad said. “Really pulled his weight last night.”

  Russ felt a trickle of inward pleasure. Pulling your weight was a big deal to his father.

  “Russ—this is Brand Robinson,” Dad said. “Friend of mine. His place was damaged and looted. He’ll be staying with us.”

  “Looted?” Russ was startled. “I wouldn’t think this’d be the kind of place where people would be looting.”

  “Oh yeah,” Dad sighed. “We got all kinds here. Some of those fires were set—and there are people in this area . . . ” Dad shook his head. “Lot of meth heads, biker types, couple of gangs . . . we have our share of thugs out here.”

  “You got anything to drink, Dad? Water, or even a warm soda?”

  Brand reached into his coat, pulled out a half-quart plastic bottle of water, a third full. “Here.” He tossed it to Russ. “Knock yourself out. There’s quite a bit of bottled water around. People here stocked up on it. The water from the reservoir was kind of chancy even before this.”

  “It’s okay for me to drink this off? I’m hella thirsty.”

  “Go for it.”

  Russ drank the water, all at once. It wasn’t enough, but he felt a little better. Strange how good plain water tasted. He’d never noticed the taste of water much, before. “Thanks. I got so sweaty and dehydrated. So there’s no fresh water coming into town?”

  Dad passed a shaky hand over his forehead, leaving a trail of grime. “Water was piped along the coast to the town water tank. The wave smashed that pipe to scrap and the water tank too. So . . . it’s gone. We sent someone to check. Water in the taps and hot water tanks is all but gone.” He shrugged. “We’ll work it out till help comes.”

  Russ rubbed his head. He really wanted a shower. Wasn’t in the cards. “We were here, like, just a few minutes and bang—it hit.” He shook his head in amazement. “It’s like we had an appointment with the tsunami.”

  Brand gave a dry chuckle. “Well. I understand you guys came up the coast. So maybe you missed your appointment with the tsunami. You missed being drowned by just a few minutes.” He snorted. “I can’t believe it. I sound like that damn life coach woman. Wonder if she made it.”

  “Who’s that?” Dad asked.

  “Oh—someone my daughter put up to bugging me this morning. Funny little woman. Hope she’s all right.”

  A little breeze came through the open door from behind Dad and Brand, bringing with it a charnel smell from the sea. A thought came to Russ. He was slow to voice it, afraid his dad would say, yes, we should . . .

  “The bodies on the beach,” Russ said at last. “So many bodies down there. Shouldn’t we go down and . . . do something with them? Move them up for identification, or bury them or, I don’t know . . . ”

  Dad shook his head sadly. “Too late. I’m afraid. We didn’t get to them in time. The tide came in. Most of those bodies were swept out to sea. They’re just gone.”

  Russ felt a flash of relief—and then a flush of shame.

  Dad stood and stretched, grimacing. “Muscles are killing me. Come on, Russ—we’ve got a little food left at our place. Let’s get something to eat before it spoils. I’ve got to empty out the damn toilet tank.”

  “Do what?”

  “We’re reclaiming the water from the toilet tanks. We’ll need it.”

  On the way out, Brand muttered, “I wonder if Ferrara is dead. There were people on the roof of his bar.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever said this about anyone,” Dad said. “But I do hope to God the son of a bitch is dead.”

  And despite all that had happened to make Russ feel the capacity for shock was wrung out of him, he was shocked when he heard his dad say that.

  Nella woke on the sofa, first thing she saw was that brass, cold-eyed face of Jesus Christ staring down at her. She closed her eyes again—but someone hammered on the door, one of the Grummons yelling that they had taken over a house at the top of the hill, and Dickie said to get her ass up there.

  She made herself get up, tried to clean up a little, and went up the hill through the biting wind, the watery morning light. She found the new place pretty easily, a split-level house, brown trimmed with rusty red, at the very top of the hill; part of a strip of identical houses, a small development. She was walking up to the house—knew it was the right one because there was Sten coming out, yawning—when she heard the shots, two distinctive thudding noises. The sounds coming from the house.

  Who was shooting who? It could be they were just taking pot shots at pictures on the wall. But maybe they were shooting that girl the Grummon boys had raped. If she was still whining, like as not she’d get on their nerves, and they’d have shot her. But they’d probably done her earlier, if they hadn’t let her go, or tied her up and gagged her.

  Nella felt like she was going numb, thinking about it. And so tired. She had slept badly and her crotch hurt from Dickie forcing himself on her. She wanted to go back to sleep, go into the house and find a place to lay down. She figured they were all done fucking for a while. But she was afraid to go in, what with the gunshots.

  Sten had a pistol in his hand, held down by his side. He saw her looking at it and stuck it in his coat pocket.

  “Hey, Sten?” Nella asked, as she walked up. “You seen Ronnie? You know, Ronnie Burke?”

  “I know, the one you were hot for. Nope haven’t seen him. Probably dead. Seems like half the town is dead at least.”

  “What’s the shooting?” Nella asked numbly, as he went to the back of the pickup, grabbed the last thing in it, a case of beer waiting on the tailgate.

  He stopped, holding the case of beer, and nodded toward the open garage. “You see those little motorbikes in the garage there?”

  Nella peered that way. It was dark in there. Might be dirt bikes. “I guess.”

  “Couple of weedy frat boy types. Their dad owns the place. Came up here to get those dirt bikes yesterday, they were, gonna ride ’em over the hills, get the National Guard out here or something. One of them had a .22 target pistol. We took it away and tied them up. Dickie just decided this morning what to do with them.”

  She squinted at the dark shape of the motorcycles, silhouettes at the back of the unlit garage, like they were ghost bikes. She nodded. “Both of ’em?”

  “Sure, yeah, kid pointed that gun at Dickie, pissed him off. And he don’t want nobody getting the fucking National Guard out here. If it happened that they got away . . . ” He shrugged.

  “The National Guard?” She shook her head. “This thing hit more than just us. They’re too busy to mess with us here.”

  “For a while. Meanwhile—this is sweet. While it lasts, we got to milk it. Dickie’s got a whole vision of what he wants to do. Just a whole . . . big . . . vision. Come on.”

  Nella followed Sten as he carried the case to the garage, put it down in a greasy corner—and Dickie came through the inside door to the garage, right then, the Grummons with him.

  Dickie glanced at her. “You’re coming with us, Nella.” He turned to Sten. “Let’s get another car, make sure we don’t run outta gas. There’s a Buick down the street. We’re gonna get going right fucking now.”

  He was like a general, giving orders. She always liked that side of him; made her feel safe.

  He had a Glock stuck in his waistband, she saw.

  She hoped he wouldn’t make her kill anyone, this trip. She really didn’t feel up to killing anyone today.

  Dickie hummed an old Pantera song to himself as he rode shotgun in the boxy metallic blue Buick they’d found in
the driveway of a house down the street. If there was anyone in the house, they were hiding. No one tried to stop them taking the car, though they made a lot of noise.

  Sten was driving; the Grummon brothers and Nella were crowded in the back. Dickie had his pick of most any car in town now—and after Sten had gotten this one started up, they’d headed on down the hill, toward Corning Street, where Shipman was. Maybe he was there, still, like he’d heard from Buff and some others, and maybe not. But the current from the horizon was carrying everything to Dickie. This town belonged to him and now Shipman did too.

  “We gonna get some shit, Dickie?” Liddy Grummon asked, trying not to sound scared as he said it. He was nervous about asking, which was a good thing, from Dickie’s point of view. “Sure like to get high. I mean, now, with all that’s happened, we don’t have to worry about keeping, what, under the radar and shit. We can go ahead and—”

  “You going to cook some up?” Dickie asked. “You expect other people to do the work?”

  “If you want me to, shit, I’ll cook it up. We could get the makings from the drugstore. They might have some dexies and shit too.”

  Sten shook his head. “Wave swept the drugstore away. First thing I checked.”

  “We got that shit of Buff’s but it looks pretty rank,” Nella said.

  “We’ll do up some shit when I say,” Dickie said.

  The smell of the Grummon brothers was too heavy in the car, making him feel stifled, so Dickie rolled down his window, but only got a worse smell—the breeze was coming in off the beach, carrying the reek of all the death the tsunami had dumped there. Maybe some of it was the smell of nearer dead people too, from the houses collapsed close to the water. The wave came; the wave cleansed. The smell of rot was also the smell of cleansing. So Paps had said.

  Dickie remembered hunting, when he was a boy, just turned fourteen, one misty morning with his old man. His dad was raised up back in Kentucky, in the hills, and he knew how to shoot. Dickie watched as Paps shot a deer right through the heart at fifty yards with a 30.06 that cold morning; it took a few steps and then said fuck it, blew out a final steamy breath, and flopped right over. Paps sawed away some parts of the doe with that big serrated hunting knife, left most of the animal to rot. “Just gonna leave it there, Paps?” Paps’ half-brother, Gunny, was a full-on poacher, back then, taking wild pig, deer, bear, even eagles, most anytime he wanted, and Gunny said it was better to cover over the carcass. “Gonna stink bad,” Dickie went on. “People’ll find it, know someone was shootin’ deer out of season.” Dickie was showing off, a bit, to his dad, with this wisdom cadged from Gunny.

  “Won’t stink long. Lots of goddamn animals die out here,” Paps had said, dumping the deer’s sliced off rump and thigh meat on a tarp in the back of his truck. He had red-brown deer blood on his gnarled hands and arms, halfway up to his elbows. “Nobody pays it no mind. The stink, that’s just the cleansing.”

  “I start to stink no one’s gonna say it means I’m clean,” Dickie had pointed out.

  “You’re giving me smart mouth shit,” Paps’d said, smacking Dickie on the side of the head with the palm of his hand. He did it almost casually. It had stung some, but Dickie was used to it, and hardly felt it. Mom’s belt buckle treatment, now that one you felt.

  Paps had taken a flask from his coat, pulled thoughtfully on it, and then, staring at the mass of red flesh in the back of the truck, he’d said, “The stink means the germs are getting to it. That’s the start of the cleansing. Then maybe along comes a coyote or a bear, take some meat from the carcass. Then comes the bugs. Yellow jackets, maggots, and such. They clean it right up. You see that deer next year, nothing but white bones. Nature’s fucking way, Dickie. Get in the goddamn truck and shut up, for Christ’s sake. I promised your mom you were going to Sea Scouts today. She’s got it in her pea brain it’s going to straighten your ass up.”

  Paps was dead a year later: he’d taken a handful of black beauties, and driven his car off a cliff—down into that cleansing sea. Mom said it was an accident, crazy-driving on drugs, and not suicide. Maybe. Dickie hadn’t known him that much anyway. When Paps wasn’t in prison, he was just plain not around. Uncle Gunny, he was in prison for poaching, by and by. After Dickie started getting in trouble pretty much 24/7 and went to juvie, not quite seventeen years old, he lost touch with his mom. She moved back east to be with her sister. He never heard from her again. No one was there to pick him up at juvie, when they let him out, once he turned eighteen. Then he met Sten. Shipman had left town already . . .

  Shipman. Funny name, Shipman, for a Sea Scouts skipper. Shipman skipper of the ship. Real funny.

  “Here’s the street,” Sten said, turning the Buick.

  “It’s that kinda brown-colored house, there,” Dickie said, after a moment, pointing left.

  “More tan colored,” Sten said. He was capable of being picky like that.

  “Okay, tan, fuck, whatever, just pull up there, double park to hold that van there.”

  Sten chuckled as he pulled up to block the van. “You shoulda been a cop, Dickie.”

  There was an old U-Haul cargo van in the driveway. The back was open, crammed with furniture, boxes, random things from the house. Looked like they’d got here just in time. But then, with the town hemmed in like it was, where would Shipman go in that van?

  “That him?” Sten asked, as Shipman came out of the house, carrying a metal briefcase. He had gotten chunky. He wore khaki pants, loafers, and a blue windbreaker. He had that stupid fake-looking little beard and that stubby nose. His gray comb-over didn’t do much to hide his balding head, especially with it flapping around in the wind.

  “Yeah,” Dickie said, hearing his own voice grating. “It’s him. Get out, everyone, right fucking now, and make sure he doesn’t run.”

  Another man stood with Shipman, and the guy looked familiar to Dickie. He had close-cropped dyed-blond hair, a tan that looked almost orange, teeth that had been blindingly whitened, and a sheepskin jacket. Waters, that was his name, Ron Waters. Had a hair cutting shop—called it a salon. Dude always looked gay, to Dickie.

  “Hey, there, ‘skipper,’ ” Dickie said, calling to Shipman, as he approached the men at the back of the cargo van.

  They both turned to stare at the group coming toward them. Waters took a step back, bumping into the rear of the vehicle. “Uh—that’s Dickie, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Sten said. “It’s Dickie.”

  Shipman’s mouth dropped open. He licked his lips, turned, closed one of the van doors. “Okay, well, you folks’ll have to move that vehicle, there, I’m about to leave . . . ” His voice was high-pitched with fear.

  Sten nodded toward Waters. “You want this fag to stay here, Dickie? He cuts my hair—we’ll need somebody to do that.”

  “Waters, go back in your house, and keep your gay ass in there,” Dickie said. “You want to save some trouble, get anything valuable you have, put it on the porch. If it looks good, we might not even search the house. Today, anyhow.”

  Waters did something with his mouth that made Dickie think of a goldfish he’d seen gasping for air on the surface of a dirty aquarium. Then the haircutter turned to go, looking ready to just boogie out of there fast—but Shipman, staring at the gun in Dickie’s waistband, grabbed Waters’ elbow. “Wait . . . wait. They’re . . . Ron, don’t leave me here with . . . ”

  “With who?” Nella said, pretending to be shocked. “Kind of rude, put it that way!”

  Randle laughed at that. “Rude, dude.”

  Waters jerked his arm free. “I gotta get home, I . . . ” He rushed off toward the house next door.

  Shipman was fishing in his pants pocket for something—probably a cell phone. “Look, what do you people want?” He tugged the cell phone out. “You’ve really got to stop blocking my van—”

  “You got to know by now, skipper, that cell phone’s not going to work, anymore,” Dickie said. “Not around here. Towers are down.” He pulled the Glock
from his waistband, held it loosely in his hand. “You go ahead and try to use it.”

  Shipman stared—and put the cell phone back in his pocket. “Okay, well, I heard what you said to Ron about . . . valuables. All mine are right here in this van. I’ll just . . . leave it here. And go.”

  He started to push past Randle Grummon who propelled him back with a single stiff-armed motion. Shipman staggered back, almost fell, staying on his feet only because the closed van door was there. “Now look—!”

  “Look at what?” Nella asked, as if genuinely puzzled.

  Sten said, “Ha. She got you there. Ha.”

  “The sheriff—”

  “Word is,” Dickie said, interrupting sharply, “the sheriff is dead. No law enforcement anywhere around here. Disaster all over the damn country, everybody busy, nobody got time for this town. So that leaves you and us, Shipman.”

  “I’m curious, where’d he think he was going?” Sten wondered. “Got to know the roads are blocked off. Moving to another house in town?”

  “What?” Shipman looked startled. “No, I—I’m selling this house.”

  “After all this shit—” He pointed toward the ocean. “—you think you’re selling the house?” Sten asked, grinning wolfishly. “Man, the whole town’ll go for ten dollars when this is over. There’s more tidal waves coming.”

  Shipman looked desperately from one face to the next as he chattered. “No, no, we’ll be able to put things together, and they, we—well, like I said you can have the van—there’s some stereo equipment—not much of real value. I live in Bakersfield, I just came back to town to clear out the house and then the tidal wave came and, you know . . . I’ll find a boat, if I have to. There are trails out of town—I thought I could find some place to store the van and—”

  “And boat out of here, or hike out?” Dickie said, nodding thoughtfully. “Man, I got good timing. But that’s no surprise. The world’s giving it all to me.” He pointed the pistol at Shipman’s middle, tempted to shoot him in his fat gut right here. “We’ve got the trails covered. No one leaves. And you couldn’t boat out. So much debris out there, no draft for boats to get out. We’re watching. Anyone finds a way, why, we’ll see and we’ll shoot ’em. So you got no place to go. You’re coming with us, now, skipper. We’re gonna go all together in the Buick.”