Zanesville: A Novel

by Kris Saknussemm

  He glanced back to the datascreen and saw luminous blue and green spirals and little icons, which he recognized as the weather vanes on top of the Phoenix station. The constant appearance of these icons made him wonder about the items he’d seen covering the roof above. What if the seemingly dilapidated convenience store was really a weather station? Were these people capable of that?

  “Now,” said Van Brocklin. “Da Nourisher wants to see ya.”

  “Who’s the Nourisher?” Clearfather asked. “And where’s my friend?”

  Why couldn’t he feel Kokomo?

  The alarm bells rang again.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Nourisher

  The rheumatoid muscleman led him forward. The adjacent space was an air shaft designed to incorporate a skylight and a drainage system supporting a series of tiered gardens. Again, Clearfather doubted if the individuals he’d met so far were capable of such things.

  Van Brocklin pushed open a rubber-rimmed door that led to the next chamber. Inside, Clearfather was surprised to see Kokomo. She was lying on the floor as if her leg was hurt, surrounded by girls, fifteen or so, all under the age of ten. They were sprawled on a square of dirty Berber carpet cuddling what he assumed were pets—and then animatronic dolls—but when he looked closer he realized were living babies. Some of the infants were the size of squirrels. Some might well have been squirrels, for they had claw-like hands. Others had oblong heads with bodies like large tapeworms bandaged in diapers.

  The other occupants of the chamber were boys about the same age, naked, inside spheres made of Vistex with breathing holes perforating the surfaces. A couple of the thermoplastic balls rolled around the room or slammed into walls. A few boys had mastered their directional skills and, by contorting themselves, were able to steer through a slalom course of high chairs and Porta-Potties into a concrete area that was set up like a pinball game. Here they had to navigate between various barriers made of nets and rope, roofing steel, or bales of fetid hay. A sweeping gate arm bumped the spheres around while two pressure pads embedded in the walls sent the balls careering whenever they were struck. There were also shallow pits to get stuck in. One was directly beneath a robot shovelmouth, which would rapidly descend and engulf any waylaid balls and then retract to full ceiling height before releasing them.

  Clearfather was startled by these goings-on and even more curious about Kokomo’s affinity for the young girls and their unexpected offspring—but she at least wasn’t imprisoned as he’d feared, so he let Van Brocklin lead him on.

  They reached a cul-de-sac where across the passage a black scrim of microlatticed wormsilk hung. Van Brocklin snuffled loudly.

  “Come,” a breathy female voice said.

  Clearfather reached his hand forward, parting the fabric. The hairs on his arms stirred with static electricity as he stepped into a cross between a large vivarium and a hospital room, dimly lit by an organic cell panel. He noticed the sickly-sweet scent of lactic acid and, beneath that, the greasy personal odors of Vaseline and sweat.

  “Here,” said the voice, and he heard a weight shifting.

  The amber light from the hexagons shone in his face. He thought back to the luminous cocoon that supposedly housed the invalid Ainsley in Pittsburgh.

  “Come,” said the wheezy voice again. “I’ve been waiting for you. Oh . . .”

  Another light came on. The woman—if that was the right word—was enormous, distended. Her bulk hung from a hydraulic chain hoist. Around her neck dangled a container that seemed both transparent and metallic depending on how the light struck it. Clothed partially in gauze, most of her skin was exposed. Immense stretch marks, glistening cold sores, and cracked, scaled patches revealed themselves. The longer he dared look, the more she appeared not to have breasts but to be breasts—rows of teats. He couldn’t stay focused because he was too busy trying to cope with the people that were suckling. They all lay tangled beneath her, butting and wriggling like newborn puppies.

  The woman shook herself like a sea elephant, adipose tissue jellying so hard it ruptured tiny blood vessels. The braided steel wires supporting her sang with the stress. With yelps, grunts, and more than a few curses, all the sucklers rolled away and made their way out of the chamber. The woman applied a power winch to rotate her back. Clearfather tried to look her in the eyes. Her face might’ve been pretty in another lifetime. Now it was a mask of flesh, stretched and wrinkled.

  “Is that . . . why they call you the Nourisher?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered. “I am a source of sustenance and an addiction—which is why they both adore and abhor me.”

  The great female’s voice had the emphatic desperation of a last whiff of oxygen bled out of a tank.

  “I—don’t understand,” said Clearfather. “Aren’t you . . . too old . . . aren’t they . . . ?”

  “LifeForce, a division of Efram-Zev, did this to me—or began the process—long ago. My milk contains a special enzyme that stimulates the production of antibodies. I’m the source of what little health they have—or so they believe. We all survive on belief, don’t we? Until my milk runs dry, they need me.”

  “Where do these people come from?”

  “Doreen and Judd and their adopted daughter Lanette—the one with the fused legs—were here when I returned. She’d been convicted of Security Crimes and sentenced to surgery. They were squatting in one of the trailers here till Van Brocklin brought them below—like Davin, the man in the tent. He found out how to work the Phoenix station.”

  “You didn’t set that up?”

  “No,” the Nourisher replied. “The building looked old and run-down, but it wasn’t.”

  Camouflaged, Clearfather thought. But why?

  “What about Van Brocklin?”

  “I’m not sure how he got here. He never tells the truth. But he and Cubby keep the Celibaters and the other parasites away.”

  “Who’s Cubby?”

  “You don’t want to meet Cubby.”

  “And the kids . . .”

  “It’s the hormones and chemicals in the feed. The boys are all autistic or have Tasmanian Devil Syndrome. You have to stop them from hurting themselves or others. The obstacle course is called the Randomizer. It keeps them occupied.”

  “Are they . . . yours?”

  “No,” she answered. “They’re outcasts from the Celibaters and the research labs. Van Brocklin saved them.”

  Lord, thought Clearfather. “What’s the deal about the wind?”

  “They worship it,” the Nourisher replied. “Tornadoes. They hope for more Gifts. Sacred things the tornadoes bring.”

  “What things?” asked Clearfather.

  “Would you like to view them, my love?”

  “What?”

  “I’ll call Gog and Magog. They were brought here by tornado, too.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The Sacred Gifts

  The Nourisher summoned Gog and Magog by speaking into a palm-sized mike. They were both microcephalics, or what were once called “pinheads”—both without the slightest hint of body hair. Their visible skin had the glistening osmotic texture of newts. They stood or rather leaned about five feet tall, with the girth and sturdiness of Sumo wrestlers. Unfortunately, any such activity would’ve been quite beyond them, for someone with a formidable grasp of orthopedics, microsurgery, and immunology had reversed their arms like bendable action figures. They each had one human hand and one bear paw—and one leg much shorter than the other. As a result they tended to move together, trying to coordinate their four legs as a unit. Both wore dirty T-shirts that read BLACK HILLS PASSION PLAY—SPEARFISH, SD, and old Bermuda shorts.

  They each had one gaping tarsier eye and another that made Clearfather think of a puma. Their ears were long and fleshy like those of basset hounds, but moist and sensitive like the rest of their skin. Their mouths were offset by dewlaps or throat fans, like the colorful sacs sported by tropical male tree lizards, which inflated in explosive orange display as a me
ans of communication. The moment they saw Clearfather they made bubblish exclamations and a gesture that reminded him of the Harijan in the bus depot in Pittsburgh.

  “He wants to see the Gifts,” she said. “Show him. Then bring him back here.”

  The creatures inflated their throat fans in unison. The one nearest to him reached out a bear claw, and Clearfather resisted the urge to withdraw his hand. They escorted him through the scrim in the opposite direction from the way he’d come, past a glass-walled ant farm of impressive dimensions. At several junctions within the labyrinth there glowed clumps of what he took to be the ants’ chemical secretions. He recalled what Sugar Bear had said about the psychic field created by fire ants.

  The so-called Gifts were set out on a stainless-steel table beneath a fluoro light in a small tiled room. Judging from the throat fan action, Gog and Magog felt either fear or awe in their presence, leaving Clearfather alone. He started with the miscellaneous pieces: a vintage Colt .45 revolver with the words U.S. 7TH CAVALRY engraved on the barrel—and a silver spoon commemorating the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901, exactly like the one he’d seen in his mind.

  When he recovered from his shock, he examined the first container, an old steamer trunk. Emblazoned on the top but scraped and worn was the wheelbarrow-of-fire insignia he’d seen in Indianapolis, and the Latin inscription NITIMUR IN VETITUM.

  Opening the lid, he found a clutter of objects seemingly bound for a yard sale: an Egyptian papyrus, a Stradivarius violin, a First Folio Shakespeare, and a brass sextant with a plate that said H.M.S. ENDEAVOUR. Next to the trunk was a strongbox. Inside, bound in calf’s leather, was an ink-smeared holograph of The Confidence Man by Herman Melville and a first edition of The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James—signed with a flourish by the author, out of which tumbled three sepia postcards. One showed a baroque-looking steam-powered roller coaster; another, ladies with parasols strolling between the legs of a giant Uncle Sam—and the third, a masked carnival figure dressed like the Pied Piper, opening his shirt to reveal a nest of gear wheels. Beneath this were yellowing telegrams of congratulations from Percival Fawcett, Arthur Conan Doyle, Aleister Crowley, and Sarah Bernhardt. These were joined by a sheaf of technical schemata depicting the singer Janis Joplin, complete with computer printouts of her DNA and toxicity profile at the time of her death in October 1970. Completing this bizarre assortment was a box made of an undetermined kind of metal, with a hologram of the wheelbarrow of fire again. Inside was a pair of green crystal goggles, very lightweight.

  “Try ’em on,” a voice out of the dark said.

  Clearfather twisted around, expecting to face Van Brocklin’s accusative snout. But there was no one there—just the voice. “I got a camera and mike set up,” it said—and this time he recognized the wheezy inflection of Davin.

  “I got a few links around the place. Borger set ’em up for me before he died. Don’t tell the others.”

  “All right,” Clearfather answered.

  He set down the box and picked up the glasses. The second he put them on he felt a menthol green fire in his eyes and realized he was staring straight into Gog or Magog’s tarsier eye, even though they were still on the other side of the wall. As his eyes became adjusted, he was able to see through the other wall into a warren of rodents—and a small-scale meatworks where a man and woman with hairnets were slaughtering and skinning the little mammals.

  “What are those things?” he asked.

  “What do you see? The prairie dogs? We raise ’em. Taste like rabbit.”

  Clearfather glanced at one of his hands, but the sight was disconcerting. He whipped off the glasses and set them down.

  “Now feel over to your right,” replied Davin.

  Clearfather swept his hand through the empty space but clasped something. Looking at it in the light he saw that it was almost invisible, as clear as Vistex but soft and pliant, about the size of a cigar.

  “Move it,” said Davin. “But keep your eyes on where you put it.”

  Clearfather put the curious object inside the strongbox and closed the lid.

  “Now find it again,” Davin said.

  Clearfather opened the lid and felt around. The object wasn’t there. He examined the interior of the box carefully. The tent man chuckled.

  “Go back to the table. The exact place you found it.”

  Clearfather did as directed. “Hm.”

  “Good trick, huh? Wherever you put it, it always ends up back in the exact same spot. What do you make of that?”

  “I don’t know,” Clearfather admitted. “What’s it made of?”

  “A special kind of energy.”

  Clearfather shook his head. “All this stuff came from a tornado?”

  “Six different twisters. Very small—like a revolving door opening.”

  “To where?”

  “I was kinda thinkin’ you might know something about that.”

  “I don’t,” Clearfather said.

  “You know something,” Davin stated. “I see that you recognized some things.”

  “That’s true,” Clearfather acknowledged. “I had a memory about a spoon like this—or maybe it was a dream. And I’ve seen that symbol, the wheelbarrow with the flames, before—but how these things got here and where they’re from—I’ve no idea.”

  The admissions seemed to convince Davin, who after a silence made an admission of his own. “Not all these things were blown here. The old trunk was already here. It’s like these things wanted to be together—they sought each other out. Gog and Magog? They didn’t come together. Gog, or so we call him, showed up first. Terrified. Two days later Magog comes tumbling in. You shoulda seen them when they were reunited. Their little throat things were ballooning like mad.”

  Clearfather turned this over in his mind. “I wish I could see one of the twisters in action,” he said.

  “You may just get your wish. There’s a system forming. Highly localized.”

  “Any signs of anything else?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact. There’s a freight train stopped two miles away. Fifty unmarked containers under heavy droid guard. You know about that?”

  “It sounds like you don’t think I’m a spy anymore.”

  “I don’t know who you are—but the Nourisher’s pretty sure she does.”

  “Who does she think I am?”

  “You ask. Her temper’s worse’n Cubby’s.”

  “Who’s Cubby?” Clearfather asked.

  “You don’t wanna meet Cubby. Now you better get back before she gets upset.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The Past Comes Back to Taunt You

  “So who do you think I am?” Clearfather began the moment Gog and Magog had led him back to the Nourisher’s chamber.

  “My . . . husband,” the woman answered, shifting her bulk. “My savior! My saint!”

  Clearfather felt bile rising in his throat.

  “You’re disgusted by what I’ve become . . . and you hate me for what I did. I don’t blame you! But this is my punishment! And I’ve repented! I’ve remained loyal—that’s why I came back—to the scene of such love—then such terrible sadness.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said emphatically.

  “I suffered. I prayed. I waited. I believed!”

  “What did you believe?”

  “That you’d . . . come back!”

  “Where do you think—I’ve come back from?”

  “The dead, my love!”

  “The dead?” he repeated—but even as he said the words, a sickening uncertainty washed through him.

  “Tell me . . . ,” he told her. “Everything. From the beginning.”

  The woman wiped her eyes with her hammy flippers. “Is this—my test? Oh, I’m ready! I’m ready! It was . . . thirty years ago. I wasn’t as beautiful as the other wives but I wasn’t anything like this. You looked the same—except your lovely hair was long. That’s what confused me when I saw you. Y
ou see, Chemo has rigged up cameras for me throughout the tunnels so I know what’s going on. But even with your hair gone—I knew instantly.”

  “I had more than one wife?” Clearfather asked.

  “You had thirteen wives—but all the women shared your bed. We were your followers. We built a complex here—The Kingdom of Joy!”

  “I was a . . . cult leader? And you’re saying I—we built these tunnels?”

  “That’s one of the mysteries,” the Nourisher gushed. “We dug storm cellars in case of tornadoes. That’s when we discovered that there were older tunnels here. It was as if you’d been expecting to find them.”

  “What’s my name?” Clearfather asked.

  “You called yourself Hosanna. Hosanna Freed. But I know that your real first name was Paul. Something abominable had happened in your past—and you’d sold Amway—but you’d found your hope again.”

  “And what was—is your name?”

  The Nourisher looked distant for a moment. “My name is Alice . . . Alice Kruchinski. But you . . . you called me Lily. I was eighteen. I’d escaped from the Nelsonites.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I’m from DeKalb, Texas. Where Ricky Nelson’s plane crashed.”

  “Who?”

  “Ricky Nelson. Like in Ozzie and Harriet. And singing. ‘Poor Little Fool.’ And movies . . . Rio Bravo with John Wayne . . . The Wackiest Ship in the Army with Jack Lemmon. He was a big star. He fell in our town. Nineteen eighty-five. The pilots got away but Ricky and his band burned to death. Eleazar Drinkwater was there when it happened. He was the Founding Finder. He started the tradition. Set up a plywood-and-chicken-wire airplane—then lit it on fire while everybody sang Ricky’s greatest hits.”

  “He set a miniature airplane on fire?”

  “No miniature. Full-sized. That was the way it was every year—until Eleazar choked to death on a cruller. Then Dufresne McCormick started the sacrifices.”

  “Sacrifices?”

  “Started burning people in the plane. Drew the name by lottery. I had to get out because my number came up. I was heading to Taos when I passed through Amarillo. Met you and some of the gals at the Dairy Queen.”