Desert Angels

by George P. Saunders

  "What's to do? My wife, now dead these past four years, has come back to haunt me as a bird. What do you suggest?" he asked, staring at her; accusingly, Laura couldn't help but think. Blaming her subconsciously for being alive while his wife had died and come back as something monstrously alien. "Maybe I should talk to Gonthar, the Good Elf King of Alph. Maybe he could tell me what to do, or what potion to drink, or what dragon to slay. Because things like this only happen in fairy tales, right?"

  He was suddenly angry and pacing; on his way, Laura surmised again, to being out of control. "Maybe I should try Ouija boards. Don't think I have one in the house, at the moment, but –"

  Jack chuckled, a horrible contrast to the anger a moment earlier, not bothering to finish his string of inanities. There was a hysteria to the laughter, Laura could tell; and it was infectious. She suddenly found herself wanting to laugh with him.

  But only tears, her old reliables, came in force.

  Jack went back to the window, staring off silently, ignoring her. Laura fled the room.

  Though her mind was deftly performing somersaults, Laura knew what had to be done: she would have to find Angela. She would have to go ghost-hunting.

  Now, won't that be fun, girls? Laura pinched herself painfully; now was not the time to have a nervous breakdown. Keep thinking of Angela, she repeated over and over. Angela. Presumably, she was in feathered form, still –

  . . .but only until midnight, Laura honey, because then the coach and horses revert back to pumpkin and micees

  – a bird. Her mind reeled and bounced off padded cells. Looking for the magic birdie. Oh, there's no place like home. Tears ran down her cheek again; she was losing it and couldn't help herself.

  Panicked, she concentrated on the multiplication tables. Cold, solid integers, the perfect defense against demonic possession – or lunacy. Long ago, she remembered her father

  had conducted tests with prospective astronauts; a special breed of men and women who were being prepared for the two year journey to and from Mars. Generations of analysts had feared that the greatest danger to face these space travelers was not the array of predictable perils, including excessive exposure to ultraviolet radiation or bone marrow deterioration from months of weightlessness; but rather, the human mind itself. It was widely purported and accepted that Man simply could not endure long intervals in space, locked up in the relatively small confines of a rocket ship without going absolutely ape shit. The problem had been beaten on and grappled with for almost twenty years. And never resolved, due to the explosive intervention of World War III. But some prior research had given play to the idea of developing stringent exercises in mental discipline; yoga, meditation, creative visualization were some of the more exotic propositions for battling "space crazy," the very non-technical nomenclature used to describe the kind of psychosis in question.

  Talbot's own brainchild was the simple multiplication table. Constant repetition of basic equations, he suggested, would allow the busiest part of the brain to rest and otherwise distract itself from possible dementia that might include overwhelming boredom, claustrophobia, irritability or paranoia; severe mental disorders that could conceivably afflict a space crew twenty-five million miles away from home. Experiments involving this novel approach to warding off depression or anxiety were performed with rather spectacular results. Participants who employed the Talbot Principle (as if became fondly ascribed) admitted to feeling more relaxed and more focused. Whether it would have been as successfully utilized in the icy corners of outer space was an issue that would never be known. At least for the next few thousand years – or however long it would take civilization to Phoenix itself up from the tonnage of ash it had become to again tinker with the intricate ramifications of manned interplanetary travel.

  But Laura remembered the Talbot Principle. She hoped it would work for her now.

  Two times two is four –

  in my own little corner, in my own little chair –

  – three times three is nine times three is –

  I can be whatever I want to be, fairy godmother

  – twenty seven times three. . .

  But the tears and hysteria weren't interested in fundamental mathematics. Like other facets of her father's science (and Jack's too) the Talbot Principle was useless here in hell. The tears poured out. They were the intense precursors to mental collapse, dutifully pursuing a course of action that would ultimately leave her gibbering psychotically about important things like pumpkins and glass slippers and the kind of lingerie Goldilocks might have worn.

  In short, madness, ready and willing to fill out her dancing card for an indefinite run of fun.

  She sobbed openly, wandering through the Dome, looking under tables, in closets, (she had to be nimble, she had to be quick, if she wanted to jump over the candlestick –) anywhere that Walter – excuse me, ladies and germs, Angela – might be hiding. Angela was nowhere to be found.

  Laura skipped the lab where the Stiffer was caged because, she thought

  what big teeth you have, my dear

  if Angela was dumb enough to hide in there with old handsome, well, good riddance, my dear.

  An hour later, and one last peek in Jack’s room to find him exactly where he had been by the window when she left him, prompted Laura to take the search outdoors. It was reasonable to assume that Angela had discovered her unmasking, as it were, and had made her escape much earlier.

  Outside of the Dome (in the fresh air, she thought cynically) she felt a little better, a little less panic-stricken; her mind at last, treacherous thing that it was lately, was calming and working for her now instead of against her.

  Laura stopped various Edenites, Gleeson as well, asking if they had seen Jack's pigeon in the past hour. Walter was a well-known citizen in the community. No one had seen the bird, and Laura knew, deep down, that Angela/Walter had fled for more distant parts than the immediate outskirts of Eden.

  Jack continued staring out his window; it did not even register in his numb senses that the Ball Job was moving slowly out of the valley, up the high dunes on the horizon, and then out of sight. Distantly, he knew he should have objected to its departure; and berated its operator for such recklessness. Yet he found to some dismay that he could do nothing. Except stare.

  Frozen, he thought only of Angela, saw only Angela – wanted only Angela. A discomfiting wave of guilt (the old Black Song And Dance Hound himself diving into the warm waters of his mind and feeling just grand) tortured him further.

  You're forgetting about Laura, Jack, old buddy; the girl of your dreams, the new Eve. Jack closed his eyes and brought both fists to his temples.

  Laura, who was part of his life now, who loved him, who needed him. Laura, whom he needed.

  But the magic of Angela overwhelmed even the Hound; as it always had when she was alive. There was no one else in Jack Calisto's immediate universe as important as Angela.

  Not now.

  Not ever.

  Jack stared and dreamed, lost in the past.

  In the laboratory, the thing within the Stiffer's body planned happily for victory.

  * * *

  There were hundreds of them.

  Mathias rubbed his hands together gleefully. The corpses from the army post moved in unison, albeit a sluggish, stilted unison that evoked something very close to compassion within Mathias.

  They don't even know they're dead, Mathias mused whimsically. Moving slabs of five year old flesh – soon to be Jack Calisto's worst bloody nightmare. Long live the walking dead. Now there was a lovely oxymoron, Mathias noted impishly.

  Under the dull cloak of sunlight, the eyes of the corpses could be more clearly seen. It was immediately apparent, even to the dullest Maddog, that nothing existed, living or otherwise, behind the eyes of the over two hundred resurrected soldiers. What drove them forward, allowed them to exist, in fact, belonged to an outside power. They were like puppets, devoid of life, conscience and spirit, prodded into action by an unse
en hand dangling invisible, all controlling strings that pushed and pulled at its will. The corpses were not resentful. Their mission was simple and mindless, and they would carry it out blindly, judging not and caring not. The perfect fighting machines.

  Mathias almost loved them.

  Their presence assured the destruction of Big Jack.

  Jack's home was only ten miles away. Mathias could hardly wait. He would have pushed to attack immediately, but the strangely altered Growler rejected the plan.

  "In time," the Growler had replied in such a quiet voice filled with evil that Mathias had only nodded with awed reverence and moved numbly away. Mathias did not argue. If the Growler could raise the dead, then he certainly must know what he's doing with regard to Jack Calisto.

  Spurred on by Mathias' enthusiasm, the remaining Maddog army rekindled its warmongering vigor. Though nervous about the eerie corpse contingent marching alongside them, the Maddogs felt optimistic. None of them cared to ponder too deeply how the Growler had managed such a piece of wizardry; in this

  strange new world, most of them figured that the next natural step of evolution would have to encompass reanimated dead men. If there was a logical progression to a scheme of things these days, then this was it. The Maddogs cheered and gnashed their teeth. They were ready for anything.

  The Growler walked ahead of his army. He did not pause to breathe or rest. Ever. Nor did the Growler's violent, apoplectic bouts of hysteria return. It was as if something had taken possession of the Growler's body – and destroyed completely what the Growler had ever been before.

  In fact, Mathias knew, this is exactly what had happened. And while he had never abstractly considered evil in his life before, or applied the same to himself or others in the past, he knew without doubt that what now resided inside of the Growler's mammoth frame was evil to the very core. It was the kind of evil that lived in fungus, or at the bottom of gullies that ran into sewers. A hidden, resentful evil that wanted to trick and maim and gouge; a petty evil that couldn't realize the bigger dreams of, say, World Conquest or Mass Genocide, but had to content itself to the little victories over spiders, or weeds – or men.

  Interestingly, this knowledge did not dissuade Mathias from following the Growler unwaveringly. The taste of blood and revenge were too strong within his mad brain; the promise of what the Growler could achieve, too great. Too irresistible. If the Growler were the Devil himself, Mathias would have been a willing apostate.

  He would have followed Bo Peep on a Sheep if it would assure Jack Calisto's ultimate destruction.

  "Mathias," the Growler called back to him softly. Mathias estimated that the Growler must be at least a thousand yards ahead of him, yet the voice carried and greeted his ear like a whisper. Mathias shuddered and broke into a run.

  Toward Pa Pa.

  He arrived to where the Growler was standing breathing heavily and clutching his chest. Cancer was still rocking and rolling inside of him, Mathias thought gamely, but at least the pain was not getting in on the action. Thanks to the Growler. He put his hand up into the air – the all-stop signal for the oncoming Maddog army. The Maddogs and corpses, lining out to the horizon behind Mathias and the Growler, ceased their trek forward.

  The Growler looked out toward the skyline ahead.

  "She's coming," he said quietly, not looking at Mathias. "Calisto's woman."

  Mathias was not aware that Jack Calisto even had a woman, but he saw no reason why he should doubt the Growler's word on it, or the fact that she was, as he put, coming. He waited for orders, looking a little like an anxious lap dog. Had the Growler so instructed, he would have rolled over and barked.

  The Growler pointed to a nearby range of rocky hills three miles away.

  "There is where we will meet."

  And with that, the Growler began marching again, though moving in a more southerly direction, away from Jack's territory. Mathias wanted to protest the action, but somehow he didn't think it would be a good idea. He had a good feeling that this new Growler, unlike the old, plodding, moronic Growler that lived no more, would have little hesitation in squashing him like a bug and not give the matter a second thought - regardless of the splendid relationship that had developed between them of late.

  Understanding his recent place in the grand scheme of things, Mathias merely nodded, then raised his arm and brought it forward. With his other hand, he clutched his temperamental penis, which was inexplicably beginning to harden again. He did not hear the Growler laugh ahead of him. Maliciously.

  The Maddog army, like some great tired beast, geared up and resumed its march.

  FOURTEEN – SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

  The night caught Laura by surprise.

  It had seemed like only an hour ago that she had left Eden in search of Walter. In search of Angela. A quick glance at the Ball Job's chronometer told her a very different story. In fact, she had been on the sand for nearly six hours. By now, she knew, Jack would be both greatly concerned and angry. Justifiably so.

  She decided that the search could be continued tomorrow. As it was, turning back now would return her to Eden

  in the dead of night

  extremely late.

  Better to get back then, at least, instead of not at all.

  Sitting here, alone, in the Ball Job had helped Laura considerably. She felt some control returning; for a little while there, her purchase on reason was about as firm as rice paper. She had rolled over the insoluble equation of Walter/Angela in her mind and accepted its truth, its

  irrevocable reality; she hoped that Jack was coming to grips with the problem as well as herself, though she suspected this was extremely unlikely. He was too close to it; Walter/Angela, after all, had been his pet. And wife.

  God.

  It was madness no matter how you looked at it. And here she was daydreaming again

  in the dead of night

  when she should be heading for home.

  She shifted the Ball Job's complicated gears and plotted out a circular route for Eden; hoping fervently that, even as she was chatting with herself so enjoyably, Walter had returned and was talking the whole thing out with Jack over tea. Or at least a couple of beers.

  Her eyes widened suddenly.

  The tornadoes hadn't been there a moment earlier, but typical of this asshole world, she thought, the unexpected came in large shitty chunks, heaped in generous portions; this time, right on top of her. There were three of them, converging upon themselves rapidly, spiraling down from the soot filled clouds like angry snakes. Laura could see that a good deal of wind was about to blast her way; perhaps more than the Ball Job could ever hope to survive. Outrunning the speeding twisters was impossible at best. She considered her options, which totaled up to be zero in number, her eyes landing at last on a small rocky ridge about a hundred feet from the Ball Job's current position.

  If there were miracles still left in the world, she thought, then she must have just found the last one. Her eyes squinted against the ferocious elements without, praying that the salvation she had glanced for only a second was not simply a hopeful figment of her haggard imagination.

  But it was real. And beckoning.

  A cave.

  Laura blasted the bolts to the escape hatch above her, not wasting time with descending through the lower level of the Ball Job. Wind lashed at her body immediately, nearly knocking her off balance and to the ground nearly two stories below. Laura clung to the small ladder that spiraled down the exterior of the vehicle to about two feet above ground level. She released her grip from the ladder and landed in the sand, even now being gradually sucked toward the oncoming twisters.

  She could not stand. Crawling, she strained against the invisible forces behind her, tugging her violently toward oblivion. The twisters growled deafeningly, shaking the ground and filling the air with a terrifying roar.

  Laura kept one eye open in a squint, concentrating on her headway to the black opening in the rocks ahead. She could not afford to
turn around, to see if the Ball Job was still intact. Those few seconds could kill her. Instead, she burrowed ahead, fighting back the tears of pain as sand whipped into her face, beginning their damnable journey into the vortex of the tornadoes now only half a mile away. She imagined herself suddenly slurped up into the massive storms, pounded by the incredible convective powers that surged through the funnels. She remembered the Wizard of Oz movie, and the Wicked Witch of the East, saddled on her broomstick, riding out the rough winds like some supernatural rodeo jockey, cackling in hysterical glee. The picture did not send Laura off into peals of amused laughter; she knew that her turn on the bronco, should it arrive, would be considerably less magical than the one the old witch might have enjoyed.

  Ten feet, five, one – and she was there. The cavern was more a hole than a cave and, to boot, it was cold and slimy. At the moment, it was more appealing to Laura than the warm beaches of Maui. She crawled to the rear of the cave and huddled against the cool walls. Near the entrance, she could see sand and rocks racing past; the end to their ultimate skyward journey to culminate with the joyous union of several million tons of already blasted fallout circling the globe. The size of the rocks were much larger, and Laura realized had she not reached the cave seconds earlier, she would have been shredded by the flying detritus, even now reaching speeds of hundreds of miles an hour.

  The twisters plowed into the rock ridge.

  And Laura screamed as the ground rolled and the world went black.

  * * *

  Even from Eden, the twisters could be determined to be the most massive Jack had ever seen. More than five miles away, the cyclones took up the whole horizon, weaving in a sluggish, lumbering fashion that made them appear almost harmless. It was an illusion Jack recognized; the winds within the storms were exceeding velocities of sound.

  Gleeson hobbled up next to Jack’s Humvee. Jack had remained on top his Humvee, hunched over the gun nest for several hours, not taking his eyes off the skyline.