Pym: A Novel

by Mat Johnson

  It was then that I noticed something even more shocking: a cold breeze that I could feel even in all of my padding. The window just past Mrs. Karvel was open. I must have let out a bit of a gasp at the sight of this, because my sound made her shoot her head back up, and her mind back into the present. It was Garth, though, who said what I was thinking.

  “Hey,” a wounded sound, less a word than an emotion. “I thought this place was supposed to be hermetically sealed and self-contained and all that?”

  “Yeah, well, you gut a couple hundred feet of high-yielding plant life from the plans and replace that with lawn sod and rhododendrons, and you kind of have to throw that whole ‘self-contained’ thing out the window.” And then, coming to the end of her smoke, Mrs. Karvel did just that, flicking her roach out the open window in such a practiced, casual motion that I imagined there must be a huge pile of similar butts forming a frozen mountain in the snow below.

  “There’s the door over there, that’ll get you up on the roof, boys. I’ll just wait here till you’re done.” Lighting a cigarette from a produced pack, Mrs. Karvel motioned to the metal door with her elbow. The little room was clearly a storage room, filled with tobacco cartons and identical yellow boxes with illustrated dead vermin stuck on the sides. “Tommy likes bunnies, but he sure don’t like rats,” his wife offered by way of explanation. Mrs. Karvel had stacked some of the poison boxes in the shapes of chairs and a table, a group of eight with an old blanket on top formed a makeshift bed against the far wall, rumpled women’s magazines lined in a neat pile just beside it. It looked poisonous but comfortable.

  “Mrs. Karvel, you don’t have to wait. This could take a long time, trying to find out which of the solar panels is making the noise, out of a whole roof of them,” I told her.

  “Nope, that won’t take you long. There’s only one out there, and they’re all together on one hinge.” Mrs. Karvel took a long puff on her cigarette after that. “The original redesign, it had solar panels all over the roof, but then Tommy changed that so he could add satellite dishes aiming in six different angles. Y’know, so that damn satellite radio never goes on the fritz or nothing, God forbid. The solar panels there, they’re just so our accountant could get us a tax break. Mostly, this whole place runs on gas. Tommy likes to forget that.”

  “Well then, what will you do when your gas runs out?” I asked in disbelief.

  Mrs. Karvel thought about it for a moment, sucked on her menthol, then blew a cloud out. “ ’Spect that solar panel is going to get mighty useful.”

  The entire roof surface, we saw, standing outside, was painted in the colors of the American flag. Red and white stripes ran in front of us, and there was a patch of blue with white stars all the way at the other end, in the corner. If he was trying to hide his heaven, he wasn’t trying very hard. The dome was covered in snowdrifts along its sides, part of the reason we hadn’t seen it at first when we originally arrived here. It was a flat roof at the very top, curved on the sides; it wasn’t as much a dome as it was a giant jelly mold. But it was all-American. Whether Karvel wanted to make sure the helicopters had the right place or he thought Old Glory was some kind of talisman, I never discovered. Even the communications satellite dishes had been painted, each according to the stripe it sat on.

  We sat too, Garth and I, on the flat roof of Thomas Karvel’s BioDome for a long time. Appraising this scene. Sitting in our snowsuits with our asses cold and numb, but not as numb as the rest of me was becoming. The solar panel was right beside us, positioned perfectly to take the place of one of the flag’s white stars. It was the size of a Ping-Pong table. On a good day, a day of sun and light, it might have offered enough power to operate the coffee machine back inside. This was good news, because when this place ran out of power, we were going to freeze to death, and I imagined a good cup of coffee might bring comfort as we died.

  “It’s about to get dark down here. Not nighttime dark, but winter dark. There won’t be any sunlight for months. These panels don’t work without sunlight. And there’s just one. What’s he going to do then?” Garth said, his voice cracking.

  “What’s Karvel going to do? Man, are you crazy? Forget him. What the hell are we going to do?” I asked. Garth said nothing. For a long time, he kept saying it. I started talking again when I felt like he was going to start crying.

  “First we have to get them to turn down the heat in there, turn down the lights more, anything we can. Then we have to go get some oil. There’s a tanker back at our base camp. We could get our old solar panels too; even the Creole camp had more than this.”

  “And the rifler. Maybe we can drill for some damn oil.”

  “We don’t know anything about refining crude oil.”

  “Dog,” Garth told me, “I’ll burn that shit in a cup to stay warm if I have to.” Thinking of this image, he drifted off.

  “And now we bring the others. Angela, my cousin, the other guys. This is our leverage, Karvel can’t say no now.”

  “The snow monkeys,” Garth whispered so low I could barely hear him over the wind. His eyes widened as he said it, and his jaw dropped when he was done and I could see the horror that was engulfing him.

  “Yeah, but Karvel’s got some guns. We’ll do what we have to do to defend ourselves.”

  “No, the snow monkeys,” Garth said, pointing. I followed his gloved digit out onto the snow-covered plain. And there, past a ridge not far from the direction I recognized we too had come from only weeks before, I saw them as well. An army of a hundred or more pale, shrouded figures, camped out. Rough igloos constructed in a circular formation. I didn’t know how long they had been there, but I did know why they were there. They had come for us.

  “But then why so many, dog? If they’re just hunting us down, why bring an army when one could kick our collective black ass?”

  * Unfortunately, the greener than green grass that surrounded our little three-fifths house, so mossy and moist beneath our feet, took its brilliance from a different source: it was fed by the runoff of the BioDome’s septic system.

  † Scrapbooking, her husband told me.

  WE wasted a lot of time just getting Karvel to believe what we were saying: that they existed, that they were out there, that they had come. It was only because we were so relentless, and because the painter started to respond to our fear with ample fear of his own, that Karvel finally relented and agreed to at least see what had made us so excited.

  “Nobody’s busting in my dome, I’ll tell you that right now. That’s where I draw the line. I didn’t come all the way down here to get bushwhacked by some mythological creatures.”

  To protect himself from being exposed to even a room that had been tainted by the outside air, Karvel insisted on wearing protective gear before entering the work area behind his grand illusion. I think he would have preferred a space suit, something airtight with its own supply of oxygen. In lieu of that, however, Karvel settled for a beekeeper’s suit because it covered his body completely, particularly his head. It seemed the BioDome was originally intended to house a hive population as well, for the purposes of pollination and honey production.

  “I like honey, hell, I love it. But I don’t like bugs. I like butterflies, we got lots of them. And ladybugs.” Karvel nervously chattered as he dressed. It was clear during our ascent to Mrs. Karvel’s little room that Thomas Karvel rarely ventured behind the set of his own masterpiece. If ever. Garth and I, the recent visitors, the newly arrived guests, had to direct him through the scaffolding to navigate the place. His whole time back there Karvel wore a look of mild disgust, as if he was being forced to peer into the putrid bowels of his beloved. When we finally found our way back to Mrs. Karvel’s poisonous little storage room up high, a wave of floral air freshener greeted us. Its spray was so recent and heavy that the smell of ozone hung nearly as heavily as the ones of weed and nicotine beneath it. Nobody bothered to mention these aromas, of course, because now there was something far more disturbing in the room than rat b
ait. A cache of rifles was leaning against the far wall. Mrs. Karvel was vigorously polishing the largest of them.

  “Honey,” the painter asked. “Did you see anything funny out—”

  “I’m not looking out there, Tommy. You’re looking out there. You look out there, and you deal with it,” Karvel’s wife interrupted him, rubbing the oil cloth down the shaft as if she thought a genie might come out. There was a scope on the camouflage hunting rifle in her hand, and for the moment she had no problem looking through that, her bloodshot eye engorged and magnified on the other side. Satisfied with its cleanliness, Mrs. Karvel handed it to me firmly. I took it to the window, looked down the gun’s sight to the place of interest below.

  “There,” I said, looking up from the weapon, calling Karvel over to take my place. “There” were the igloos. “There” were the tracks in the snow. Even through his beekeeping helmet, Karvel could make that out, or at least something out.

  “Oh boy. Yup. I see something.”

  “Shoot ’em!” his wife yelled. Though she wasn’t getting any closer to the window, Mrs. Karvel threw me another hunting rifle from where she was standing. I handed it to Garth, so she threw me another one.

  “Look, I take care of in here. I always have taken care of in here, in our home. And you’re supposed to take care of what’s out there. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the pact. So get outside and shoot them.” Karvel lurched up from the gun’s scope in response, face hidden behind the mesh of his helmet. There was a moment when I expected protests about air quality and biological warfare to emerge from behind the metal mask, but after a few seconds the only words that managed to make themselves heard were “yes” and “dear.”

  Thomas Karvel looked even smaller outside, in the open world, the one he didn’t create. The painter was clearly not someone who was used to being out of his element, and even as we walked those few feet, I noticed a change in his demeanor. I could see the Tekelian base camp from where we stood; the rifle’s scope helped, but it wasn’t needed. I could see them moving around individually as well, even make out their robes flapping lightly in the polar wind. Squatting down, I lifted the heavy Browning to my head, undid the safety with my thumb, and aimed the barrel up and over in the direction opposite the camp, and pulled the trigger. Everyone jumped: both men beside me and all of those creatures down there.

  “What the hell are you up to?” Karvel demanded, the mist of his exhalation rising up through his mesh face mask.

  “I’m scaring them off,” I told him, and I said it like I knew what I was doing.

  “But how you know them things even know what a gun is?” asked Garth, and I nodded back that this was an excellent observation, then proceeded to take another shot directly at the Tekelian stronghold. This bullet made a definite impression, taking a block off one of the structures they had created, spraying a cloud of sharded ice. The impact sent robes running, robes hiding for cover. Who is God now? I thought, but then tried to calm my heart and temper.

  “I still can’t hardly see anything. Are they leaving?” Karvel asked me. When I looked over at him, he wasn’t even facing the right direction. He was already staring back to the roof door of his precious dome as if he was embarrassed by my action, or just bored.

  “Down over there, they’re coming toward us,” Garth shouted, and I looked to the far side and saw a line of five or six of the pale beasts trying to come wide around a snowbank and make it closer to the dome. Aiming again, I took another shot just in front of them, somewhat relieved when the bullet missed and only more clouds of snow were created on impact. To my surprise, though, the invaders kept coming. This platoon of Tekelians didn’t run for cover, try to protect themselves behind a snowdrift or simply haul ass in one direction or the other. Crouched down in their garments, slowly stepping, they kept coming toward us. I reloaded, clicked the barrel back together loud enough for them to hear at a distance, but they didn’t pause, just continued. It was then that I realized they weren’t worrying about being seen. It was absurd, but from the way they were moving, it appeared they were worried I would hear them coming. They were so convinced that their supposed whiteness camouflaged them against the snow, they seemed to think they were invisible.

  “See who?” Karvel asked when I said this aloud. “I don’t see anybody. Are you sure somebody’s out there?” the painter asked, annoyed. In frustration I whipped off his beekeeper’s mask, took his head in my hands to aim it at the scene below as these monsters of the past came at us.

  “There, right there, in front of your face. Those gray things,” I told him, not even aware of my tone until Garth put a firm hand on my arm to calm me down.

  “What? What? I don’t see nothing. Is this your idea of a joke?” Karvel repeated without a hint of awareness, looking right at where the Tekelians crept.

  It was then, looking past the painter and his biggest fan to the other end of the roof behind us, that I saw what we should have been worried about the whole time. First, at the far lip of the roof plateau we stood on, a small dot of albino head popped into view. Then, several more heads alongside it. Before I could even utter my warning, I saw the band of creatures those heads were attached to. They were pulling themselves up the side of the BioDome, over by the forty-nine stars and the one solar panel. A second line of attack. Garth turned in time to see the first creature hoist itself completely onto the roof to get us. The creature stood at almost the opposite end of the 3.2 Ultra BioDome’s roof, its colossal frame nearly reaching the sun. Silhouetted as it was against the blue sky, Thomas Karvel finally saw what he was up against.

  “Cheese and crackers. What the hell is that?” he asked, pulling on my sleeve as if I could truly answer him. “Man, he’s huge. Look at the size of him. What’s he doing? I think that thing’s making a snowball. Well, if they’re just going to throw snowballs then—” Karvel said, stopping abruptly when the first frozen projectile hit the side of his head, knocking him to the roof and into a mild concussion. More iced balls drilled into our backs as we struggled to pull the unconscious master back to the exit door.

  The BioDome door was metal, meant to keep out Martians and snow-loving Islamic militants, so for the moment it held attacking hordes at bay. This was good, because the Tekelians were really trying to get in, and we really didn’t want them to. Cowering as we were, we listened to the thunder of the door shaking under the brutal onslaught. Piling every heavy rat-emblazoned box we could in front of it just in case, we also locked the door to the corridor as we left the room. Dragged unconscious out into the hall, Thomas Karvel lay on his back before us, unaware as the three of us discussed our options, trying our best to yell over and otherwise ignore the sounds of angry fists that seemed to come from all over the outer hull.

  “Well that plan didn’t work, did it?”

  “No, ma’am, it did not,” we agreed.

  “Then you boys need to call for help,” Mrs. Karvel told us with so much calm and acceptance of our improbable situation that I began to realize she was probably heavily medicated as a rule. Trying to match her subdued tones, I made the point that unfortunately there was no one whom it was possible to call: no police, no national guard, no anything.

  “Get your friends, the co-workers you said they captured. Whatever you have to do, you do it. We got guns, we just need the people to hold them off, kill them if they try to come in here. And get me some ice for Tommy’s head too, he’s going to have quite the lump on him.”

  In the excitement of the moment, motivated largely by a desire to simply run away, I seized on the request to get help as if it was my destiny. Not a thought did I give to the actual logistics of how we would manage to escape the 3.2 Ultra BioDome unprotected, or make it back through the frozen wasteland and repeat the journey that had almost killed me, or how we would do all this in time to make it back here for whatever siege this white woman had in mind. These questions must have also occurred to Mrs. Karvel, because as she stared down at her husband’s slack face
, her plans became more specific.

  “We got two snowmobiles: Tommy got him a real good blue one, and got me a pink one to match. But you can’t take ’em, can you? Because the garage door is right down there, facing their camp. As soon as you open it, they gonna be all on us. All on us,” she repeated, standing up and grabbing me by the shoulder as if I intended to disagree with her. I wasn’t. “You boys, you take the exhaust tunnel. Exit’s in the mechanical room. Don’t go near the boiler, that thing’s an accident waiting to happen, just head for the back door. That’ll get you far; that tunnel comes up out past where you say they are. You take that, you get out past them, and you get us some goddamn help. You hear me?”

  I heard very well. Packing my old snow gear with Slim Jims and PowerBar gel this time, I was ready to get the hell out of there. The exhaust tunnel, it seemed, was perfect for our escape, a better solution we could not have asked for. In his fear that his precious dome would somehow be located by rogue nations with heat-seeking satellites, Thomas Karvel had also provided himself with the perfect escape hatch. Walking past it, I could easily see that this boiler system was a truly monumental construction, something I would have paused to be awed by had the moment allowed for it. After cranking off the water of the waterfall, Garth and I walked under its last sweet drops to get to the mechanical room’s door and make our way out of Karvel’s utopia. Without the waterfall, it was loud. In the room, though, it was absolute cacophony. The roar was the first thing that attacked my senses as we began our trudge. Clogs, pistons, lubes reverberating like a junkyard orgy. Before the vibrations could overwhelm me, I was hit by another assault. The heat. We walked through what felt to me like a nearly solid wall of heat. The main interior of the 3.2 Ultra BioDome was kept at a perfect seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. Within the boiler room, though, it felt like twice that.