The Enoch Pill

by Matthew William

  “Don’t you like this song?” Milo asked.

  “I like it, but I don’t like what they’re doing with it. This is what—the third time I’ve heard it today? If they’re trying to make me hate it – they’re doing a pretty good job.” “But it makes money. You might not understand that, but you can’t blame them.” “It makes money sure, but we’ve all got to live with it,” Diego said. He shuffled to the edge of his seat again. “I’m gonna be around forever, you’re gonna be around forever and Banshee is gonna be around forever. Ok? They’ve got to start acting like it.

  They have to tone it down a little bit and play it a whole lot less.

  Have you ever heard music from back before the plague?”

  “Yeah, Father Morrigan has some records,” Milo said.

  “And it’s weird right?” Diego asked.

  “Well, the music itself isn’t that strange, but they sing about the weirdest things.”

  “Yeah, they definitely had something wrong upstairs,” said Diego. “But you could feel the tension, like, they knew they were going to die someday. Their backs were against the wall and they only had so much time on this earth and then that was it. It made the music fresh.”

  “And now?” asked Milo.

  “Now? Now there’s no urgency,” he tossed his hands up and leaned back in his seat. “Don’t get me wrong, Banshee’s ok. But his music doesn’t have that extra thing that the music from before the plague does.”

  “I wonder if that’s why Father Morrigan hates him so much,” Milo asked.

  “He hates him?”

  “Uh yeah. Whenever I’m in the office and one of the songs comes on the radio he runs up changes it right away.”

  “Even when he’s playing that stupid computer game?” Diego asked.

  “Well, he’s always playing that stupid computer game, so yes, even then.”

  Diego smiled and looked out the window. “Everybody’s just killing time.”

  “I was in there this morning actually,” said Milo. He became real serious all of a sudden. “Asking him about the latest shipment of crates out to the farms. You see some of them had double orders of bread or was it fish? Well it doesn’t matter. Anyway I go in to ask him and, as usual, he’s playing away at that game. And he’s not listening to me. ‘Father Morrigan, Father Morrigan’ I say, trying to get his attention you know? Well something went wrong in the game,” Milo’s face suddenly became sad. “And he yelled at me. Told me I was an idiot, said I needed to shape up. It’s not my fault he lost the game.”

  “Sorry to hear about that,” Diego said, patting Milo on the knee.

  “He’s just a dickhead sometimes.”

  “Everything will be alright.”

  “Everything’s just so pointless,” Milo whined.

  “Everything’s not pointless,” said Diego.

  “Sure it is. Especially now. We just go in circles here, until we go someplace else and go in circles there.”

  “But there’s always variety in life,” Diego stated. He was shaking his head, half in amusement half in annoyance.

  “Eh, it’s not that special.”

  “You ever think about moving to another part of the city?”

  “Yeah, of course eventually,” said Milo. “I’m just afraid of getting to the point where I know every part of the city. I think I’d get really depressed then.”

  “But by the time you get to know the last place, the first place will have changed so much you wouldn’t even recognize it anymore,” Diego said, pointing to imaginary places in the air.

  “See,” said Milo. “Pointless. Why even get to know a place then?”

  “Well, maybe your right...” Diego said and sat back. He smiled, but he was annoyed as hell. He was glad he wouldn’t have to put up with Milo’s moroseness for too much longer.

  A police officer entered the carriage. He was slender, with shoulder length salt and pepper hair that stuck out from his navy blue policeman’s cap. He scanned the cabin and his eyes froze on Diego.

  Milo saw the worry in Diego’s eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked and turned around. He spun back towards Diego. “Do you think you should make a run for it?”

  “What? And give him a reason to chase me?” whispered Diego. He turned his gaze out the window.

  The policeman marched down the aisle. His hands shoved into his pockets.

  “Hey, how’s it hanging guys?” he asked.

  “Pretty good,” said Diego, smiling.

  Milo pretended to be asleep. He was a terrible actor.

  The police man sat down in the seat across from Diego. He was leaner than the middle-aged man had been, and definitely scrappier. Diego knew he would lose in a scuffle. He needed to use his wits to get out of this safely.

  The cop smoothly pulled the gun from his holster. He held it on his knee.

  “So it’s Enoch Pill Payday today, huh?” he asked.

  Diego nodded.

  “You guys been to the distribution center already?”

  Diego shook his head.

  “A lot of pills floating around the city today. Do you fellas know what the two most popular pills are?”

  “No, what?” asked Diego

  “Enoch pills and mini-deaths.”

  “What are mini-deaths?” Diego asked.

  “You’re a pretty funny little dude,” said the policeman. Diego noticed his badge read Officer Leo. “They’re illegal is what they are. You could go to prison for 100 years for dealing that junk, last time I checked.”

  “Good thing I don’t know what they are then,” Diego said.

  “Yeah good thing. But, I know you’re lying.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Diego insisted. He thought of the three mini-death bottles in his breast pocket. Suddenly they felt twice the size.

  “That guy you just sold to,” Leo pointed a thumb back towards the door. “He was an undercover. A snitch.”

  Diego forced a smile to show he wasn’t nervous. He quickly eyed the carriage exit. Could he outrun this guy’s gun? “So what, are you gonna arrest me or something?”

  “No, well, not if you cooperate,” said Leo.

  “How?”

  “Those mini-deaths, can they be concentrated more than they currently are?”

  Diego furrowed his brow. “Of course. But it would be lethal, there’d be no point.”

  “I want to buy out everything you’ve got,” said Leo.

  “I can’t sell out my stock,” said Diego. “I’ll lose all my customers.”

  “Customers? Are you serious? You’re in no position to be thinking about customers,” Leo said, exasperated. “I’m about to throw you in jail and you’re worrying about your inventory? Your only other option is to come with me down to the precinct.”

  Diego groaned, and took the three mini-death pill bottles from his pocket. “You’re killing me.”

  “It breaks my heart,” Leo said flatly.

  The train began to slow as they approached the canal yards.

  “What’s a cop gonna do with a 1000 milligrams of mini- deaths?” Diego asked.

  Leo just smiled and put the pills in his pocket, he threw Diego a roll of cash. “This is your stop.”

  Milo pretended to stir to life. He opened his eyes and looked out the window. “Hey Diego we get off here.”

  Diego followed Milo towards the door, he looked back at Officer Leo who gave him a little wave.

  “That was a close one,” Milo said as they walked towards the office.

  “Hey, thanks for the help back there,” Diego said. “That was really heroic.”

  “You didn’t get arrested did you?”

  “No, but I lost all my pills,” Dieg
o said. “And I only got cash for them.”

  “Looks like you can pay your rent then,” Milo said.

  “Hold on,” Diego said. “Father Morrigan pays us cash for the Enoch pills we get. But me and him have an agreement where he lets me take half. He’s going to think I’m stealing them.”

  “Why don’t you just tell him what happened?” Milo asked.

  “He’ll stop letting me deal.”

  “Why can’t you give him the cash?”

  “He only wants the Enoch pills.”

  “So he’s like you,” Milo said.

  Diego shook his head. He had no idea why Father Morrigan wanted the Enoch pills. He was only sure it wasn’t for the same reason that he kept them. “I’ll just have to pay him cash instead,” Diego said. “But I’m $30 short. Do you have anything?”

  “I had to pay your part of the rent this month remember. Can’t you just buy Enoch pills off somebody? Everyone gets them for free.”

  “Yeah, but who wants to grow a day older for missing a day? The junkies pay with them because they want to get high and they don’t care if they’re aging.”

  “Promise me you don’t take those things,” Milo said as he walked. His eyes were concerned.

  “I never touch the stuff,” Diego said.

  They entered the canal office where their boss Henry was lounging on the couch. They could tell by the smell of the room that he was smoking Enoch stalks. Diego swatted away the smoke and started to arrange the invoices on the display screen.

  “Looks like we have a big shipment of beans coming in?” Diego asked.

  “Do we?” Henry asked, with his high-pitched voice that didn’t match his large chubby body. “Hey did I ever tell you guys why it’s called the Enoch pill?”

  Diego looked up from the screen for a moment. “It’s named after Dr. Enoch isn’t it?”

  Henry stared at him for a moment as if he was trying to remember who he was talking to. “Well, they gave him that name after he invented the pill.”

  “Why did they give him that name then?”

  Henry nodded happily and laid back onto the couch. He pushed his long gray hair back behind his ears and patted his belly. “So Enoch man – he was like this real righteous dude, right? He lived way long ago, like thousands of years. And with him being so good, it didn’t jive with people back then. So they get together to try to kill him, you know? ‘Cause he was making them look bad. So they’re about to kill him, but then God takes him and put him away someplace else and nobody knows where. And the dude never died. In fact, some people say he’s still alive today.”

  Diego smiled and ignored the goosebumps on his forearm. “Where did you hear that stupid story?”

  “I don’t know,” Henry said rubbing his neck. “Probably one of the people who come through here from time to time. Hey, maybe it was Enoch himself. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  In one of the loading warehouses Diego and Milo went through the latest shipment of crates that came in from the country. Diego stared at the mountain of wooden boxes that sat in front of him.

  The crates came from the mutant’s farms and they contained all the food and raw materials that the city needed to function. The factories in the city transformed these materials into finished products and shipped them back out to the farms in the same crates. The most important material of all was the Enoch beans. Food and wood and coal – the city could go without those for months. But a bean shortage would bring the city to its knees. They needed to be constantly supplied for Enoch pill production.

  Three days, that’s as long as you could go without an Enoch pill. The human body had become so reliant on the compound that it could no longer live without it. You could skip two days for as long as you liked, but as soon as the sun went down on the third day you were a goner. The scary thing was that most people only had a one month supply at home. If the beans stopped flowing, the city would die.

  Organizing the crates was mind numbing work. Diego had to keep reminding himself that he only had to endure five more days of it.

  “Are you ever worried there’ll be a mutant from the country hiding in one of these boxes?” Milo asked. They unlocked a box and opened it up. It was filled halfway with wheat.

  “Why would they come here?” Diego asked.

  “Maybe if they were disturbed or something,” Milo said. “Like they wanted to bring the plague into the city.”

  They rolled the crate over onto the scale to be weighed. Diego scanned the bar code on the side. The computer registered which farm would receive the payment for the wheat. They rolled the crate over to the other end of the room.

  “Then I guess we’d be in trouble,” said Diego. “I just doubt it would ever happen.”

  He pressed the red button to bring the next crate over from the mountain. They unlocked the box. It was filled with Enoch beans, but there was something strange on top. It was a white paper envelope. Milo looked up at Diego.

  “What should we do?” Milo asked.

  “Have you ever heard of this before?”

  “Never,” Milo said. “You don’t think they’re trying to poison us, do you?”

  Diego grabbed the envelope and opened it. There was $30 inside and a small handwritten note.

  Can you please buy the latest Banshee album with this money and send it to me in a supply crate? Thanks.

  “What does it say?” Milo asked.

  “This letter is laced in poison.”

  “What?”

  Diego smiled. “No, some mutant wants the new Banshee album.”

  “Are you actually going to get it for her?”

  “Well, I have the album already,” Diego said quickly. He didn’t really. But he needed all the money he could get to pay off Father Morrigan. “I’ll just send her my copy.”

  “Don’t you think we should tell someone about this?” asked Milo. He looked over at the hourglass shaped alarm on the wall. They were to ring it if a mutant tried to break into the city.

  “No one needs to know about it,” Diego assured him.

  “I feel like it’s a bad idea,” Milo said. “I think we should ring the alarm.”

  Diego slipped the envelope into his pocket. “Forget about it. It’s my problem now.”

  It took a few hours to go through the rest of the crates. They brought the imports to the proper stations where they would be sent to the factories. The Enoch beans however had to go to a separate place.

  They carted the bean crates out to the large square in the middle of the supply yard. For some reason there were two armed soldiers guarding the fence that surrounded the well.

  “What’s this all about?” Diego asked.

  “Someone tried to bomb the well last night,” said one of the guards.

  Diego raised his eyebrows and looked past him. There didn’t seem to be any smoke or damage done. “Is everything alright?”

  “Yeah, the machines inside fixed whatever happened. Everything’s back to normal. You guys have ID?”

  Diego and Milo flashed their work badges and were granted access to the concrete well. One by one they dumped the Enoch bean crates down into the darkness. An automated factory down below took the beans and processed them into the Enoch pills. It was the reason the city existed.

  “Who do you think bombed it?” Milo asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Diego, watching the beans disappear as they fell.

  “I wonder what would happen if we fell down there.”

  “Probably get thrashed to bits and pieces,” Diego said.

  There was an urban legend about these bullies who had thrown some poor kid down there. They said he screamed bloody murder for a full minute as he was torn apart by the shredders. Supposedly the Enoch pills came out pink for a couple days after th
at. Of course no one could verify the story.

  At the end of the day Diego walked with Milo to the train station. His body was tired and spent from the hard work.

  “You coming home tonight? Or are you going to disappear again?” Milo asked.

  Diego smiled and walked off. Leaving the station and the crowd of people who awaited their trains home, he wandered back into the long row of warehouses. 17 doors down, a turn to the right, 8 doors down. He took a key from his pocket and looked over each shoulder. Quickly he opened the door.

  Inside was a bed, a workbench and motorcycle parts. In the corner hung Milo’s red sweatshirt. Whoops. He really had forgotten to give it back. On the workbench was an old coffee can. Diego took the Enoch pills from his pocket and counted out ten of them. He tossed them into the can. The other ten went back into his pocket for Father Morrigan. He felt the anxiety surge up in his heart as he thought of handing in so few pills.

  He picked up the coffee can. By his estimation there were about 700 Enoch pills in there. That was enough to last five years if he took a pill on every third day, the bare minimum.

  Still it would have its affects. He would age on the days he didn’t take the pill. So he would be 23 and look like 20 at the end of the adventure, but he was alright with that. It was a small price to pay for freedom. Five more days, he thought. Five more days.

  He felt at his pockets. There was an envelope in his jacket. What was that? He took it out and smiled. It was the letter from that stupid mutant in the country. What a waste of money. His saints must have been watching over him, he needed every penny. He took the money from the cop and added it to the $30 in the envelope. The bed and apartment looked inviting, but Father Morrigan was expecting him. The anxiety came back, turned up like a volume knob. The last dealer who didn’t pay up, had to get by nowadays with only seven fingers. Diego shoved his hands in his pockets. It was gonna be ok, he told himself as he walked out the door. It was gonna be ok.

  7

  Officer Leo waved goodbye to the young dealer as he left the train. He felt sort of awful for taking advantage of the kid like that, but he sort of had no choice. He looked down at the three black pill bottles in his hand. 1000 milligrams should be enough for what he had in mind.