THE CLOUD SEEDERS

by James Zerndt

“Again?”

  “They were here yesterday. Going through the house. Like they were looking for something.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Dustin says. “Anything’s better than the last dump we stayed at.”

  Understatement of the millennium.

  We climb out and while Twink brings the giant crane to life, I run and get the cruiser. I park by the pool and we watch in awe as he lowers a five-foot wide magnet onto the hood and lifts it up, the wheels spinning in the air like the cruiser’s trying to make a run for it.

  By the look on Dustin’s face, I can tell he’s salivating for the chance to take the controls. Twink must see the same thing because he waves Dustin over, lets him take the captain’s chair. And, for some reason, as Twink goes about explaining what each of the levers are for, I’m not at all nervous. Not even when the crane lurches and swings the truck from side to side.

  “Should he be doing that?” Jerusha says.

  “He’s fine. He needs this sort of thing.”

  The words a father get stuck in my throat, but I manage to swallow them down.

  Not now.

  Not today.

  We spend the rest of the afternoon packing our gear into the pool, me and Twink working together to tie the canvas-top back down.

  “What if we have to pee?” I ask as he secures the last rope, leaving just enough of a flap open so we don’t all suffocate.

  “I have a portable Recycler set up behind Jerusha’s car. I’ve been emptying it at night.”

  For light, we use candles.

  And, with the blue of the walls and the wavering light, after a while it really does start to feel like we’re under water. For dinner we splurge, each getting a food kit from the cruiser. It’s pretty much the same fare we used to eat, but I swear even their horse pills taste better than ours.

  For dessert, Twink hands us each a salal berry.

  “This is all I had left to eat,” he says and smiles weakly. “If I never see another berry in my lifetime, that’ll be just fine by me.”

  All the delicious food we ate in Rehab comes to mind, but I decide to tell Twink and Jerusha about it later.

  Maybe much later.

  Before we go to bed, I see Twink alone in Jerusha’s car holding a candle over a photo. It’s the photo from his bedroom, the one of his wife. Her face shines up at me in the candlelight and suddenly her name rises to the surface.

  Theresa.

  That’s all it takes for me to connect the dots.

  Teeth.

  Theresa was Teeth.

  There’s no mistaking it.

  The height, the big smile.

  The eyes.

  It’s her.

  But what am I supposed to do? Tell Twink? And cause him to worry even more? Or worse, do something stupid like go back for her?

  Not a chance.

  I can’t risk it.

  Instead I keep it to myself and that night Jerusha, Dustin, and I all sleep in the same tent.

  A Jerusha sandwich.

  That’s exactly what Dustin calls it before we fall asleep.

  How to Raise an Artist

  Break both his legs at birth

  and every time thereafter

  when he shows any interest

  in sports.

  Change his last name

  to Zilla so he sits

  in the back row for life.

  Make him Ivy-intolerant

  so he pukes

  upon hearing the word Harvard.

  Name him God

  to instill wrath

  and let the attack on New York begin.

  17 Water is Good. Water is Great.

  In the morning, after we each scarf down some more food from the cruiser, Twink asks what our plans are.

  “Plans? You mean, like, for the future?”

  “Sure,” he says. “Once things settle down a little.”

  “Honestly, I hadn’t thought about it,” I say and turn to Jerusha. “What about you?”

  “I want to go home,” she says and I can tell it isn’t easy for her to say it, that she knows what that might mean. “We can’t keep running. I can’t anyway.”

  Dustin comes back from the Recycler just as Jerusha’s saying this. “I’m not going back home. I won’t,” he says, and I realize that the idea of him being anywhere other than right by my side has never really occurred to me before.

  “We’ll give it a week,” I say. “See what happens. Who knows, maybe none of us is going anywhere.”

  I think of Mom and Dad, wonder what else the cops did to our house, if they had the decency to re-bury their bodies.

  Twink, after rummaging around in Jerusha’s car for a bit, comes back carrying a box.

  The box with Dad’s initials on it.

  “Your dad sent this to me about a year ago. I tried to reach him, but when he didn’t call back, I just assumed he was busy. Now I guess we know differently.”

  Twink removes the lid and inside there are a stack of blue prints. “This must be what your friends at Rehab were looking for.” He rifles through the documents a bit. “I’m no expert, but it looks to me like plans for weather control. If I’m reading correctly, your father figured out a way to reduce a hurricane to a tiny squall. He must have been worried they’d use it for weather warfare.”

  Twink stops.

  Pulls a photo from the box and hands it to me.

  It’s an old photo of me and Dustin. I’ve seen it before. It was taken on Dustin’s first day of school. One of Mom’s favorites.

  “He wrote something on the back,” Twink says. “I think you should see it.”

  I read it to myself, then hand it to Dustin.

  If anything happens to us, please take care of them. You’re the only person I can trust now. All my best, The Seeder.

  “Jesus,” I say once it sinks in. “He knew it was coming.”

  “It does appear that way,” Twink says. “I only wish I’d done something sooner.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped,” I tell him. “Those monsters would have gotten to them sooner or later.”

  Twink nods his head, and I can tell he’s doing his best to hold back the tears. It’s funny, but even though the message is beyond grim, it’s somehow nice to know Dad had at least one good friend.

  I always thought the only person he knew was Mom.

  “Well,” Twink says, slowly regaining his composure. “I think it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. You all can stay here for as long as you’d like. And that includes you, young lady.”

  Jerusha gives him a pat on the knee, smiles, but doesn’t say a word.

  *

  Twink’s hooked a modified CB up to the Jerusha’s battery, one with an extra long antenna for better reception, and throughout the day we check both the radio and the CB intermittently, taking turns flipping through the channels, hoping to hear news of a revolution.

  But it isn’t the CB that eventually gives us our first real news. Shortly after lunch, a special announcement from the President comes on over the radio.

  “As a lot of you may have already heard, there’s recently been an attempt to discredit our government. Somebody hacked into our system and broadcast those foul lies. There wasn’t, and isn’t, any truth to the claims made by the two criminals who took over one of our radio stations. There are some Citizens out there, though you can hardly call them that, some Leftovers, I should say, that would like nothing better than to see this country fail.

  “Don’t get me wrong now. My heart goes out to those two boys who lost their parents. But the truth is, their parents committed suicide. Horrible as that may be, and while we lost a great Cloud engineer, those boys are going to have to deal with the reality of what happened. And not this, this fantasy they’ve dreamed up about murder plots and your President wanting to control the weather.

  “I can assure that the drought we are in, and have been in, is very, very real. I cannot tell you how disgusted it makes me to listen to these lies when all we
’ve been doing is striving for your well being.

  “To the people who still love and trust their country, please rest assured that we understand your concerns and are doing everything possible to catch these animals. And that’s exactly what they are: very sick, very disturbed, animals.

  “Please, remain calm. Remain Green.”

  “Remain douche-bag,” Dustin mutters.

  “You think people will believe him?” Jerusha asks, turning to Twink for an answer.

  “I don’t see why not. They’ve believed everything else they’ve been told. Life’s a whole hell of a lot easier that way.”

  Jerusha and I continue to check the radio throughout the day while Dustin and Twink practice their Jedi skills and Wookie calls. Something I didn’t think Dustin would still be interested in.

  As I watch him parry with Twink, he seems different somehow though. Like he’s just going through the stages. Even the smile he’s sporting seems a little off.

  Like he’s playing, but ironically almost.

  *

  It’s nearly dusk, and I’m fooling with the CB, scanning the channels, when something comes over the airwaves...

  Since when is food and water a perk? Since when is freedom a fucking perk?

  They’re replaying it.

  Somebody recorded it.

  “Holy shit,” Dustin says, staring at the CB along with the rest of us. “That’s me. Holy, holy shit.”

  We spend the next few minutes listening to our President incriminate himself. When it’s over, they play it from the beginning again. We flip through the channels.

  It’s the same thing on each one.

  We continue to monitor both the CB and the radio, but spend the majority of the evening dreaming and planning what we’re going to do Post-Drought. Dustin says he wants to go back to school, but I can’t help but wonder how his classmates will handle the Stamp on his neck.

  I tell myself he’ll be seen as hero.

  I tell myself he’ll have to fight the ladies off with a light saber.

  *

  “Dude, wake up.”

  It’s Dustin.

  He doesn’t have to say anything more.

  I hear it immediately.

  Popcorn popping in a microwave.

  I climb the ladder and when I poke my head out, I’m hit in the face with the most glorious, most wettest, most delicious thing ever created.

  Rain.

  And lots of it.

  You know how sometimes you wait and wait for something and when you finally get it, it’s not as good as you thought it would be?

  Well, this isn’t like that.

  It’s better than I could have imagined.

  I open my mouth, stick my tongue out like I’m trying to catch snowflakes, and in the distance I can make out an army of clouds marching toward us, shields of rain advancing, Betsy returning with a cavalry of friends.

  By the time I convince myself what I’m seeing is real and climb back down, they’re all huddled around the CB, Dustin clicking from one state to the next:

  (21)...Friends, we have rain in Nebraska! Do you copy? Rain in Nebraska!

  (22)...It’s a beautiful rainy day in Wisconsin, people! I’m not making this up. It’s dumping!

  (23) ...(We’re not sure what state this one is, but there are no human voices, just the sound of rain tap dancing on a tin roof)...

  It’s begun.

  *

  It rains all night and into the next, hard, like it’s making up for lost time. Which is great, but it turns out the roof of the pool leaks, so we have to evacuate, move our things back into the house before Betsy and her minions drown us.

  When I ask Twink if he’s going to take the cruiser out, he says no. That it’s poetic.

  A true baptism.

  After we move our things into the house, I see Twink carefully setting the photo of him and his wife back on the nightstand.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say from the hallway. “I saw her.”

  “Saw who?”

  “Theresa. Your wife.”

  It’s like I’ve stabbed him. A wince travels across his face before he manages to say, “Inside?”

  I nod. “I didn’t realize who she was until after. Until I saw the photo of her again.”

  “She’s alive then?”

  “She’s alive,” I tell him. “They’re holding her in a cell. But she’s okay.”

  “Did you speak to her?”

  I remember her mouthing the words button, button, button. “No,” I say. “Not really.”

  “No,” he repeats to himself. “No. Okay. That’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry, Twink. We would have saved her if we could, but there just wasn’t any way.”

  “I’ll get her. It’s okay. I’ll get her.” I can see his mind working, trying to figure out how he’ll do it. He looks up at me and his eyes are wet, shining. “She’s alive, Thomas. My wife is alive.”

  Hopefully, I think to myself but say nothing and pat him on the back.

  I don’t mention Dustin’s nickname for her.

  *

  Dustin has decided to stay with Twink.

  Twink says he’s going to put him to work fixing the place up, wants to start a legit business again, maybe convert classic cars to electric for when things get back to normal.

  “And besides,” he says, “Have to clean this place up for when the little lady comes home. Who knows, they could start freeing folks any time now.”

  We just smile at him.

  It’s too heartbreaking to even think about.

  When Dustin asks me if it’s okay, I want to tell him no, that he’s only a kid, that he needs his older brother to look after him.

  But that isn’t true.

  It hasn’t been for some time now.

  As for me and Jerusha, we decide to leave in the morning. Now might be the best time to sneak back and take care of certain things. Things like giving Mom and Dad a proper burial.

  Twink insists on us taking one of his cars even though the chatter on the CB is that most of the check-points are going unguarded now. The fact that the charging stations are unmanned has me wondering how many people in our government really knew what was going on. Is it possible that only a very few at the top knew what was happening? It would explain why only Dumb cop was allowed in the Cloud Lab.

  Why the President “worked from home.”

  It’s not much, but it’s something.

  Either way, this isn’t over by a long shot. If the President could control the weather, there’s no telling what else, who else, he can control.

  *

  For our last night, Twink borrows a VCR from a local friend so we can watch Return of the Jedi. We all watch it together, and, once I see Dustin glued to the couch again, I find myself wishing they made a hundred episodes.

  I’d buy the entire set for him.

  *

  In the morning, Twink stands in the doorway watching us say our goodbyes in the pouring rain. I hang back a bit as Jerusha hugs Dustin, probably telling him to be safe, not to get into any more trouble. Then, from over Jerusha’s shoulder, just as she’s giving him one last squeeze, Dustin rolls his eyes at me.

  How touching.

  When Jerusha finally tears herself away and goes to wait in the car, I’m left standing alone with Dustin. The eye-roll I’ve just witnessed suddenly makes the speech I’ve prepared seem hugely stupid.

  “I guess every cloud has a shitty lining,” I say, trying out what I considered to be my best line.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. You going to be okay out here?”

  “Stop asking me that.”

  I nod.

  “I wrote you a poem,” Dustin says and hands me a folded-up piece of paper.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “It’s not a big deal. Don’t get all weepy about it.”

  When I start to open it, he tells me to wait, to read it after I leave, that he wants me to savor it.

&nbs
p; I tuck it into my jacket. “You’ve still got Mom’s book, right?”

  “Yep,” he says. “Haven’t lost it since the last time you asked.”

  “Right. Well...” I can’t think of anything more to say, but then I remember the CB. “Twink gave us a CB so we can keep in touch. How about channel 2? Nobody’s ever on that one. I think it’s Delaware or something like that.”

  “Channel 2. Check.”

  “Every night at six. That way we can keep tabs on each other.”

  “Six. Check.”

  “I have to do this, Dustin. I have to give Mom and Dad a decent burial. They would have wanted that.”

  “No, yeah, I know. I get it. I just can’t is all. Besides, I think Twink sort of needs me right now.”

  I hadn’t thought about it that way, but Dustin’s right. If two people ever needed each other...

  “We’ll be back before you know it,” I say. “I promise.”

  “And then what?”

  This wasn’t anywhere in my speech. “Listen, I’m not going to lie to you. You’re an adult now. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Things could get ugly.”

  “Uglier, you mean.”

  “What I mean is I don’t think this will be over any time soon. It could get a lot worse.”

  Dustin taps his shoe in a small puddle. “Just make sure you come back.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  He taps his foot some more, then holds out his hand like he wants to shake. “So, I’ll be seeing you then.” “Yeah,” I say and take his hand.

  I don’t shake it though.

  I kneel down in the mud, pull him close to me, wrap my arms around his back and hug him for all I’m worth. He fights it a little at first, isn’t sure what I’m up to, then, when he realizes I mean it, I can feel his body relax into mine.

  Then, ever so slightly, him hugging me back.

  “You know you’re not a bad person because of what happened, right?”

  “Then what am I?”

  I remember something Mom told us once. How the world’s made up of two kinds of people: steak knives and butter knives. For the steak knives life is easy, they cut right through things without any trouble. For the butter knives, things are a little harder, take a little longer. But they always get the job done.