Everything is Broken

by John Shirley

  “We went through most of the empty houses, and some not so empty, before you got here,” Dickie said, snorting up a lot less meth than the others. He grimaced at the burn. “Ow. Shit. Yeah, we checked that block out, we got a lot of stuff from there, I don’t think anyone’s there—lot of the residents are sort of hiding out at the high school—”

  “Tell you something,” Cholo said, rubbing his nose after a line. “Tell you something. Tell you what, I scouted over there a bit, yesterday, when we were looking for that Mario asshole, and I came down out of the woods a little too far north, and I seen some people look out their windows on some fucking street over there—uhhhhh, Breezy, Breezy Street it was called.” They were all looking at him with fascination because he didn’t talk much normally, even less than Steve.

  “Ha,” Sten said. “Breezy Street.” What was funny about that wasn’t clear.

  “So I figure, tell you what,” Cholo went on, rubbing a shaky hand on his bleeding nose, “they’re in there, they got all their stuff in there. What stuff I don’t know—but they got a Jaguar out front, nice looking Jag . . . ”

  “Now that’s a real possibility, there, Cholo,” Dickie said. “It could be that we’ll send a coupla official representatives of the militia over there—”

  “Ha,” Sten said. “Militia.”

  “It is a fucking militia,” Dickie said, slapping the table. “Not because Ferrara called it that—he was an asshole.”

  “Yeah, I’m glad we’re not going to see that guy again,” Sten said. “Hypocrite. I don’t do high-fives. But if I did, I’d high-five you for shooting that fuck.”

  “Consider yourself non-high-fived,” Dickie said, and they laughed. “But I’m just sayin’, why shouldn’t we be a militia? Militia for our own little nation-state. Let me take another hit of this toxic nose-rot and think this through a little . . . ”

  Cholo jumped to his feet, reaching for his gun. “Fuck!”

  The others tensed, seeing what he’d seen—the face at the window of the back door. Two of the panes had been shot through, were patched with plywood, and he looked through the third: It was Lars, the old stoner with the dreads. Yelling, “Hey! I gotta . . . !” Something, something, she couldn’t make it out from here.

  “Sten,” Dickie said, fractionally relaxing.

  “Yeah.” Sten got up, pulling his gun out, looked out the window to either side past Lars, then out toward the woods. Didn’t seem to see anyone back there either. Then he opened the door a crack. “What?”

  “They’re up to some shit,” Lars said. “What you got? You got any opium? I’ve got this craving on for opium. I used to go down to Santa Cruz, there was a guy down there, he had a connection came in from Vietnam—”

  “Stop fucking babbling,” Sten said. “Opium! Ha! What do you think this is, a fucking opium den? We’re all sitting around in a haze listening to Chinese gongs?”

  This was a lot of gassing for Sten, and the others laughed at it. They were all pretty fucked up, seemed to Nella.

  “Ask him what he’s got for us,” Dickie said, toying with the meth, sniffling. A little blood ran from one of his nostrils.

  Lars heard and shoved his head a little way in the door to answer. “Um, not sure, but they’re like shooting at target shit and they won’t talk to me and I know you gotta deal with them and I dunno but . . . it’s all, like, kinda, fucked up, but . . . maybe they’re cool but, uh, dunno . . . ”

  He went rattling on like that, not really coherent.

  “I want him out of here,” Dickie said. “First, close the door.”

  Sten closed the door sharply, almost catching Lars’s nose in it. The men laughed.

  Dickie gestured for Sten to come close. She couldn’t make out all of what he whispered. Something about the woods. Don’t trust the fucker. Knows stuff. Runs his mouth too much. Walk him out. Don’t be long.

  Sten nodded, sticking his pistol in his waistband. He went to the door, opened it, gently pushed Lars away from it as he stepped through. “Gonna show you some big pot plants we got in the woods, you can, like, cultivate that shit for us,” Sten said. “You can . . . ”

  Couldn’t hear the rest as he closed the door and, one hand on the old stoner’s arm, escorted him into the woods. They were hidden behind the trees.

  “Open the back door so I can hear it,” Dickie said.

  Cholo, still standing, went to the door, opened it, and came back to his chair. Seemed to have to think about it, before sitting down. Sit or stand, sit or stand, could go either way. Finally he sat.

  They didn’t say anything for a minute—and then they heard the shot. A second shot. Not that far off. Just inside the woods. Another minute or two and Sten was walking back toward them, waving, all cheerful, grinning. Chore done.

  “That was quick,” Randle said. “Didn’t bother to even stick ’im in a hole.” He chuckled. “I hate those fake Rasta fuckers like that Lars.”

  Sten came in, gun back in his waistband. He closed the door, seeming thoughtful.

  Dickie whoofed up another line, and then the doorbell rang.

  They whipped their heads around with paranoid speed toward the front door. This was too many visitors in too short a time. Guaranteed to spin anyone whoofing meth.

  “What the fuck!” Randle Grummon said, for everyone.

  “We should’ve had a watch on the doors,” Sten said, pulling the pistol from his belt.

  “Maybe it’s the high school gym people,” Steve suggested. “With the stuff.”

  “Better not be,” Dickie said, standing, pulling his own pistol and cocking it. “This isn’t the address we gave ’em. That fucker Mario—might be him . . . ”

  “You think the cops are back in town?” Steve asked nervously.

  “No. No way,” Dickie said. “I’d know. It’s not them. Authorities are dealing with like millions of people smashed by the wave in other towns, man. No. Nella—go see who it is.”

  She thought, Maybe it’s Mario and he’ll shoot me.

  So she immediately got up and went, in her underwear and bare feet, and just unlocked the door and opened it, and stood right there in the doorway almost undressed, ready to be shot dead.

  But no shotgun blast came. Instead, just the cool air on her feverish body and a rank sweaty smell off three pimply early-teen boys. They stood there blinking at her, their mouths hanging open. The pimpliest one had long blond hair and a Wolverine T-shirt; the tall gawky vulpine one wore a Necro T-shirt; the big-nosed one wore a dirty hoody. “Is Dickie here?” he asked.

  “Who are you?” Nella asked.

  It was the tall one who said, “I’m Jeremy. This is, uh, my brother Abe and this is, uh, Evan? And, uh, we’re looking for Dickie because we want to join up. With him. And . . . his thing. Just—join up with you guys. I mean, if this is the right place, if Dickie’s here . . . ”

  “Who told you to come here?” she asked.

  They all gawped at one another. “Uh—nobody.”

  “I mean—how’d you know about this place?” she asked.

  “Oh that Mario guy was saying where it was. I mean—he used to live here, right?”

  “Mario?” She’d been wondering about him. “What’s he doing now?”

  “Talking about killing you guys. But he just drinks a lot. He got some vodka somewhere and he’s drinking it. He’s not sharing it with nobody.”

  “Okay.” Nella saw they were staring at her body. She wasn’t sure it was because it looked good to them. She knew she was emaciated now and she had some scabs. “Hold on.”

  She turned around and saw that Dickie was standing, his face twitching, gun in his hand, in the doorway to the kitchen. Gesturing for her to get out of the way.

  She nodded and backed away, turning to see out the open front door, feeling bad for the short one in the Wolverine T-shirt. Nella wasn’t sure why she felt bad for him and not the others but that’s just the way it was.

  She saw Sten walking up behind the three teenaged boys on the
front porch, pistol in his hands stretched out at the end of his arms, pointing at them. “Who the fuck sent you here?” Sten demanded.

  The boys spun around at that, jumping on the porch, all three of them, almost like they were doing The Wave. She almost laughed. Except she felt bad for that Evan kid.

  “Uh—nobody sent us,” Jeremy said.

  “Nuh, dude, nobody.” Evan said. “That a real gun?”

  “What the fuck you think?” Abe said, “Course that’s a real gun.”

  “Should we raise our hands?” Evan said.

  “Yeah,” Sten said. “You should. What do you mean nobody sent you?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering,” Dickie said, making them spin around again, their hands raised. Spinning with their hands raised, it looked like a Broadway dance routine.

  Maybe I should eat something, I’m getting all ditzy, Nella thought.

  “Nobody told us,” Jeremy insisted, shrugging. “We just . . . decided. But we can, you know—go away.”

  He was staring at the gun held loosely in Dickie’s hand. It was not even pointed right at them. Dickie’s confidence was scary enough.

  Evan licked his thick lips and spoke up. “The thing is, we were . . . these guys thought . . . well, we were hella bored. Our fucking games totally don’t work. We thought . . . ”

  Sten walked up behind them—snorting. “You wanted to join us. Because . . . you’re bored?”

  They whirled around in tandem again. “Yeah!” Jeremy said.

  “Totally!” Evan said.

  “For reals!” Abe said.

  Dickie laughed, lowering his gun. “Makes perfect sense to me, Sten! No way these idiots were sent here by anyone. The Three Fucking Stooges here.”

  “Ha,” Sten said. “Three Stooges!”

  “Okay, Stooges,” Dickie said. “Come in the house. Entrez your vous right the fuck in here.”

  He stood aside and waved them in and if it hadn’t been for the gun it would have been like a butler making a welcoming gesture.

  They came filing into the living room, gawking at Nella and at the Grummons and Steve and Cholo coming in from the kitchen.

  “Nella!” Dickie snapped. “Put some fucking clothes on and clean yourself up, like I fucking told you to already. I never expected you to open the door wide and stand there in your fucking panties. Christ, what a whore.”

  She went to the hall closet where she kept a few things and got dressed and went to the bathroom, ignoring the smell of unflushed vomit in the toilet, and used the bucket of water to bathe and clean up a little. She found some ibuprofen and took three of them.

  When she came out she found them all crowded into the kitchen, the grinning men standing around the owlish boys, who were sitting at the table—Jeremy trying to get the hang of snorting speed up his nose, the other two watching him, big lines of meth laid out on the table in front of them.

  “Ow, shit! It hurts!”

  “Ha,” Sten said.

  “What are you laughing at, Sten, that’s what you said just a few minutes ago,” Dickie observed. “Now you three—” His face was tightened into something between a wolfish grin and a stoned rictus as he regarded the teen boys. “You want to be part of it, you got to take the initiation!”

  “Yeah!” Randle chimed in. “You said you were bored, right? Well, you’re gonna be too fucked up to be bored!”

  “Initiation!” Sten said. “Ha!”

  Dickie caught the tip of his tongue between his teeth, tittering to himself. Even from here, Nella could feel the meth-energy vibes leaking out of the room, squiggling out across the floor like spastically dying eels. Dickie looking from one boy to the other, saying: “And the initiation starts with sucking up the really nasty bad shit right into your brain. It’s going to fuck your brain all up just precisely the way we like it to be!”

  Dickie grabbed Abe and Evan by the hair, from behind, one kid’s head in each hand, and he shook their heads around by their hair, and high-beamed at Jeremy. “You look like you’re getting there. Now these two!” Then he shoved Abe and Evan’s heads down so their faces went right into the meth powder. The other men hooted with laughter and Dickie yelled, “Snort it up, get it, get it, get it!”

  “Get it get it get it get it get!” the other men chanted.

  Faces mashed in the caustic meth, the boys started coughing and struggling. Dickie held them a few more long moments, then let them go—they straightened up, wheezing, cheap yellow meth—like urine crystals—stuck to their faces, their hands shaking.

  “Now you can be just as fucked up as your pal here,” Randle said.

  “Jeremy was already pretty fucked up in the head, before we got here,” Abe said, his teeth chattering, nose running red from the shit, wiping at his eyes. “Without any . . . Oh, this stuff . . . oh, my fucking God . . . ”

  “Ho ho ho!” Cholo said, barking it out, his teeth clacking from his own speed hit. “ ‘Oh, my fucking God’ he says! It’s hitting him now.”

  “And, and,” Jeremy said, breathing hard, looking around with a kind of translucent sweat-sheen of desperation, “and, and we just came from our house, checking out our mom’s body again, and we showed it to Evan here.”

  “Yuh, their mom’s body is hanging in the rafter of their house,” Evan said, through chattering teeth. “The wave left it there and it’s all twisted up, up, up and they were just, like, all like, like ‘Dude, that’s our moms up there, check it out, ha ha.’ You know, all fucking ‘ha ha!’ ” His upper body heaved; he made a gagging sound. “Hey, I think I might throw up now.”

  “Throw up in the sink there if you got to!” Sten said.

  Evan lurched up from the table and vomited in the kitchen sink and everyone in the room howled with laughter and applauded and he laughed and choked on it as more vomit came up and they hooted and clapped their hands again.

  “Important to get that done,” Steve said, laughing softly. “I did mine this morning.”

  “Liddy,” Dickie said suddenly, “you stay here and watch the house. Sten, you’re gonna take some of this shit to the boys at the bonfire, on the road east. Here . . . Here’s another baggy for ’em. And take that walkie-talkie thing of Ferrara’s, in case I got to call you. I want everybody on the same wavelength, more fucking ways than one. You others, we’re taking these boys to check out that house on Breezy Street, Cholo’s gonna show us where it is and the Three Stooges here are gonna have some more initiation . . . Nella, you come with us, you’re gonna initiate these teeny-boys a different way.”

  She winced. They were probably going to make her have sex with these boys. That was going to be unpleasant—and it would hurt too. She hoped she could just do blow jobs.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Pendra felt like she was going to go lose her mind in this clammy, dim, dingy garage; that her mind was going to be stuck in here, maybe up in that spidery dusty dark corner of the garage ceiling, stuck there forever. She felt a blunt amazement that no one had come to rescue them. She was starting to believe they never would come. Her wrists burned and ached.

  For about the sixth time, she said, “Jill, there has to be a way to get out of these chains. If we both pull on the pipes long enough we can wrench something loose!”

  “Last time we tried to pull out the pipes, they heard us,” said Jill, with maddening reasonableness. “When they were drunk last night, Dickie came in and kicked you in the stomach. So if they can hear a noise and check on us when they’re drunk . . . I mean, it’d take awhile, and by the time we got the pipes halfway pulled out, they’d be in here. Maybe if they’d all leave the house but I don’t think they’ll go all together. Some of them left for a while but there’s others . . . ”

  Pendra felt like hitting the older woman. “Jill—there has to be a way to get out of these fucking chains!”

  “Pendra, girl, listen to me—” Jill’s voice soft, though Pendra could see the strain in Jill’s face. “We are going to do this a different way. I think. I have an idea that
if we wait for our moment—”

  She broke off when the door from the kitchen into the garage opened and Liddy Grummon came in.

  Pendra shrank back. She was afraid of him. A long flexible face, that seemed all tensed up on one side, like he was squinting all his sight through that eye and squeezing something in his mouth on that side. He wore a tattered San Jose Sharks jersey, long over his jeans. His arms looked too long for the sleeves. Arms a few inches too long for his torso as well; they hung motionlessly at his sides when he moved, never swinging like a normal person’s. Black fingernails, yellow teeth, dishwater hair pushed back to drip to his shoulders, lank and greasy from not being washed.

  But it was the look on his face that scared her. Grinding teeth, pupils dilated, hands trembling, heat coming off his body as he came to stand over them. Powder around his nostrils. She thought: He’s stoned, fucked up on meth. He might do anything.

  Liddy rubbed at his nose, blew bloody snot onto the back of his hand, wiped it on his pants. “Nobody else here, girls, but us kids, and we’re gonna have a—what do they call it now—a playdate!” He said it fast, with something he imagined to be a grin. “So here’s the deal.” He held his long-fingered hands up palms toward them and flicked his hands in the air like a surgeon shaking water off his fingers, with the end of every statement. “We get busy, first one, then the other.” Flick. “Then whoever I want.” Flick. “And you get fixed up and you say nothing to Dickie or I will have to kill him and then you.” Flick. “See, he’d be really mad so I’d have to shoot him before he could do anything and I am fucking sick of him anyway so I’m tempted. So then I’m going to for sure kill you after that happens.” Flick. “Maybe my brother can have you when he comes back too. But for once, it’s me first.” Flick.

  He licked his lips and, hands trembling, pulled up his shirtfront, fumbled with a San Jose Sharks belt buckle.

  Pendra thought maybe she could strangle him with her chains, like Princess Leia in Star Wars did with that big fat outer-space fucker, but then Liddy got his pants down to his ankles on his pallid, hairy legs, squatted down, grabbed her ankles, and jerked her flat on her back with a painful thud. That took up the slack on her chains. She kicked at him, but her legs felt weak in his grip.