by Tony Burgess
as you were.
I am back in my box and under my hood. I am faced out to see this evening’s show. The vans are gone. We’re on our own. Dixon will like this. After we finished on the bed no one spoke a word. The doctor said nothing as she dressed. Y shot me a look before he left. A wet filthy grin. He’s a dirty old man now. The doctor placed me here. I see her now below, leading families to spots on the mat. Y is lying in the grass under a tree. Dixon is greeting on the driveway. I remember when we first heard about the dead not dying. We were told they were predators, killers, cannibals. Now we are making the dead. The window is closed and so is my case so I won’t hear what’s being said. I have a great view though. The mat now nearly full. The line of trees back to the road. And beyond that a wide hill specked with cattle.
The mat is lit with no warning. This is the new way. They are not brought to it by an evangelist. There is no ecstatic moment, no praise, no Oracle. The mat contains a powerful jolt. It lights up like an overly full bug zapper. People shake and pop and sizzle. It lasts no more that a minute. In the darkness I see clothes and bodies glowing, then they fade. The scene remains like this for some time. Black fog rising. Silence. Headlights on the road. WasteCorp is leaving. Dixon is a janitor now.
The door opens behind me. I sense two people on either side of me. Doctor and Y. They look out.
“He’s not happy.”
“They told him to go inside. To watch.”
“What do you think he’s going to do? “
They step back from the window. The doctor turns on a night table lamp. She removes her clothes, draping them over a chair. I close my eyes. I’m not ready to do that again. The ceiling light goes out. I open my eyes. The doctor gets into her side of the bed and leans on her elbow. She draws a paper out and starts to read. Y is turned away in the dark. The front door bangs. Dixon. I try to see into the dark yard but he has turned the porch light off. I hear his chainsaw start up. I decide to watch the doctor’s reflection as she reads. Her black hair is bunched up by the pillow and looks bouffant. There is a tail of grey across her shoulder. She turns the page. The chainsaw screams in the oil slicks just beneath her reflection. I lean my head back to rest against the case. I fall asleep.
I am woken by the sound of bed wheezing. They are fucking. I lean up to the eyehole just to confirm then drop back.
I am woken by yelling downstairs. I check the eyehole but they are still in bed. The doctor is reading again. Dixon is breaking the place downstairs and bellowing like a moose. The doctor’s light goes out.
I have been moved while I slept. I am at the top of the stairs looking down. The stairs are worn and shiny. People are in the kitchen but I can’t hear what they say. The voices sound calm. I guess they are getting ready to leave. I wonder about being left behind. There’s a grandfather clock on the wall at the base of the stairs. Stopped at 4:35. I must look a bit like his son. Framed pictures on the walls going down. I can’t see them at this angle. Not hard to guess what they look like. The mom. The kid on a pony. The dog.
The doctor backs in from the kitchen. I strain, listening.
“No. I think this is good news. Give me a second.”
She turns and briskly makes the climb, sidestepping around me.
I want her to be careful coming back. I don’t want her to accidentally knock me down the stairs.
Y swings around the corner, one hand hooks the door frame. He’s up, two steps at a time. I am lifted, quickly, like last luggage in the hall and descend sideways under Y’s arm.
In the kitchen I face the stove. The oven window has been smashed. The range hood is crumpled and pulled down like a prom dress.
“How are we supposed to carry that big mat thing?”
“They left us a trailer. I did it all last night.”
I bet you did, Dix.
“Where is she?”
“I’ll go get her.”
Y hands my case to Dixon. I see him stare blankly. He’s not going to take it.
“Phut him outside.”
I am here again. I am on a stage again. Dixon is there again swinging his arms like a bat man. The crowd is there again, their stupid faces deformed by fat bones. Saliva and pustules and missing teeth and fingers and arms. This is a late crowd. I am the One. I am the Oracle. I am a dead Disney princess.
I see something. Something no one else can see.
In the sky far behind the crowd and the buildings, slowly descending funnel of night and fire. The great ring is falling at seven hundred kilometres an hour, a thousand degrees Centigrade. The great pink death is about to fall on us. I hear the boom, then seconds later the glass bangs and a crack appears. Dixon stumbles back. The crowd drops to the ground. Y runs around in front of me, his balance is thrown. I can’t see the doctor. She may be gone. The rumbling earth beneath my case. This is the death we need. This is a good death.
Dixon runs to the display, to me. I am his most important possession. We’ve come a long way, Dix. Let’s go out with a bang. Just before the hood comes down I see Dixon’s eyes catch fire. His teeth fly from his gums. A far away whip has been cracked and its hot tip flips the brain from the preacher’s skull.
A blast punches my case and I leave the ground. Hot air has filled the hood and sent me into the air. I don’t know how high I am. If I’m ahead or above or inside. The case flies end over end like a manic hourglass in an epileptic’s fist. A panel has shattered and the glass snips my face. I want to go up. I want to go. The air is like a beast. It roars and strikes and twists. It stops. Silence. Wind.
Light is leeching up from the base of me. Cold fresh air is filling the sac. I am floating.
I land in water and it rushes in to drown me. I am tired of dying. I am tired of sleeping. Soon I will be tired of breathing.
It just so happens that I am pulled from the stream by a senile old woman who thinks I am a baby, probably Moses, and takes me back to her house on a hill so she can raise me to deliver her people from bondage.
Apple purée is amazing. I could live on that. Not liquid rice. That is dreadful stuff. Makes me squirt. Tildy has gone to the city today. She explained that it could be dangerous for babies so she has left me in the care of her dog. Candy is a miniature dachshund. She bites. I am only slightly larger than her but our shapes are remarkably similar. On Candy’s birthday, Tildy painted my white wrap black and tan and she darkened my nose. She laid me down beside the dog and clapped. Candy tore the shell of my ear before Tildy could get me back up. Today I am in a high chair far enough away from Candy’s barracuda moods. The tray before me is a flowerbox of straws and baby food.
I have a nice view of the wide valley through the bay window. It is white from the cooled pyroclastic flow. Tildy’s house is high enough up the rim that it was spared. The sky is still black. Been like that for weeks. Tildy has an oil furnace and she keeps the house warm. She tells me that it is like January out there. It’s July. The baby food and formula is giving me astonishing nutrients. I’m pretty sure we will die soon. The oil will run out. The food. Some hungry man will eat us. For now, though, this is the most at peace I have ever been in my life. In the morning Tildy gives me tummy time on her bed and I roil from side to side. Her comforter is thick and deep and smells like tea. In the afternoon she sits in the corner and reads from the Bible by candlelight. There is no sun and the only ambient light comes up from the white shell of cold ash in the valley. It gives off a surprising shine.
Tildy thought for while that I was the baby Moses. She said she ran down the hill that awful day, toward the fire. She says she wanted it. The rapture. She didn’t want to be left behind. And when she ran through the stream she saw the torn black hood. My face inside. Eyes closed and body swaddled. She claims there were bulrushes but I’m pretty certain she made that up. In time she forgot this thread, me being the baby Moses. The day-to-day work of looking after a baby was enough for her tired old mind. There seems to be little Syndrome in her. Her dementia is light and honest. The elderly don’t m
anage neurotransmitters. They believe it is correct to die one day. There is a sadness to Tildy too. She must have had children and grandchildren. A husband. They are probably gone now. Delivered to the sun or burnt by those who fell from the sun. She hums.
Candy is sitting on the settee. Her head is on a pillow and her eyes rock warily from side to side. Occasionally she growls at me. I like her company as long as I am safe. The little machines broke away from my bottom. I must have a stomach after all. You lied about that Dixon. I also have not had a return of Syndrome. And I sleep. In a bassinet beside my Tildy. I constipate easily and I upchuck two or three times a day. Candy gives out a short bark. She springs up on her tiny legs. Someone is here. I see Tildy in her yellow parka dragging heavy cloth bags. She found some things in the city. Candy barks and whines at the door. I try to tell her to stop but only manage sounding like her, only weaker.
The door opens and I feel the cold curl into the room. Snow or dust or ash drifts inside.
Tildy heaves the bags up on the table and slides her fur-lined hood back. She puffs her red cheeks then smiles. She pulls a sac of dog treats out and drops them for Candy while making dove sounds.
“Well, Moses.”
She still calls me that though it’s not meaningful anymore.
“I didn’t get to the city, little man, but I did manage to find a warehouse outside of Mansfield. Not a store proper. Some kind of warehouse and I borrowed some things!”
Tildy lines up the jars of baby food. A tall can of dry formula. Some bags of frozen milk. A stack of three or four TV dinners. She’ll make a fire in the woodstove and heat those. I smile and clap my imaginary hands.
“There’s nobody out there, Mosey. Not a soul. Seems like end of days more than ever. Oh, well. Never mind. We got each other and a warehouse down the road.”
Tildy laughs at her wickedness. I watch her scooping dry formula into a bottle and fill it with water. She repeats this several times then sets all but one just outside the door to freeze. The dead are frozen now. I wonder if they still move. Those seizures and tiny fits cracking the ice in their bones. Maybe shattering them over time. Shards of lung and crystallized eyes. Tildy shakes the bottle I am to drink. She won’t give it to me yet though. She wants to warm it. She sits on it.
The Bible. I listen, mostly to her voice. Her quiet amens. I don’t care what the words mean as much as I love Tildy’s calm, happy voice. She stops from time to time, closing the book on her speckled fingers and she looks out to the dead world as if it were a field of bright yellow wheat. As if her children were running through the grass up the hill. Or angels. She drifts off. We have all the time we need, Tildy and I.
I am genuinely grateful to be here. I have been a violent man. I have brought many people to sudden death. Now I am bundled and free of limbs and speech and pain. I squeeze a small turd through my buttonhole. I watch Tildy sleep. Candy. The black sky and the silver earth. These days can end or not end. I am home.
Tildy wakes when the room temperature falls. It is cold in here. I can see cloud puff from my mouth.
“That’s bitter in here, Mosey. I’ll check the furnace.”
Tildy returns after almost an hour. The house is now becoming dangerous. She doesn’t look at me or say anything as she pulls on her parka. She stomps a boot to keep Candy from the door and she leaves.
Candy walks in a military march toward me then stops and takes her post. She knows as much as I do. She is visibly shivering.
We sit like this, staring each other down for about a half hour, when the door opens. Nine or ten frozen logs fall in with a shroud of dry white particles. I only see Tildy’s arm as she pulls the door closed again. Candy barks and runs to the settee. The cold floor hurts her paws.
Tildy does this three more times until the entire front room is dominated by logs. I can see as she bends down to the stove and lights paper that this has cost her. She still hums but I’m pretty sure this is for me and Candy. It works. Candy understands that warmth is coming. I look up at where the pipe enters the ceiling. Black mould and stains and metal discoloured by decades of tightening and releasing. I wonder when was the last time the inside of this chimney was cleaned.
I have to stop imagining death at the end of every action. That’s Syndrome. I have to stay here. Like Tildy. In the moment. I wonder if I can hum? I try. Of course I can! I hum a tuneless sequence of notes. Tildy drops a log. She closes the stove door as she watches me. I hum louder. What song? What song can I hum for Tildy? I hum “Freebird.” It just comes to me. Tidly’s droopy white skin is drawn up into a smile. Her eyes are blue!
She listens on the couch and twirls Candy’s ears in her fingers. The room is warming. Loud delicious snaps form the stove.
“I know that song, Mosey!”
Tidly hums along with me, matching some notes, on her own with others. She thinks it’s a different song than “Freebird.” Maybe a song she learned in church as a girl. We sit like this humming, laughing at each other, through the evening. I switch the songs from time to time. “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Each time Tildy listens intently at the start, then slaps her thigh, declaring she knows it. She accompanies me with the same melody each time. Eventually, we grow sleepy. Losing ourselves in the solemn fire.
“I’m sleeping on the couch tonight, Mosey. Keep an eye on the fire. Them rooms back there are froze.”
My eyes droop as she pushes logs in on the embers. Droop and drop.
cicada.
I keep thinking spring is coming. I look for signs of thaw. The white mass outside to shrink. I keep thinking it must be late March. It’s not. It’s mid-August.
Tildy has worked hard to keep us alive. Stacking more wood against the house. Bringing it in when the supply inside gets thin. She has lost weight and hums less. At night she holds the Bible open but doesn’t read. She just watches the fire until she falls asleep. I worry for her, not only because she keeps us alive, but because I don’t want her to die. I am her baby. I love her.
Candy disappears one day. I try to calm Tildy by humming “Smoke on the Water.” Eventually she finds the dog frozen in her bedroom. She lays the body to thaw in front of the stove.
Tildy takes Candy in her arms and wanders out into the frigid black August afternoon. I have a renewed fear that she will not return. The fire would go out and I would freeze to death in hours. My Tildy. My Tildy. Don’t leave me.
I want that bottle now. My grape-sized stomach empties in a snap. There is some rice liquid at the bottom of a jar on my tray. I push my lips toward it but can’t reach. The pains are sharp. Not like hunger. More stabbing. I rock back and forth with no clear plan. Either I draw it to me or I fall.
The door opens.
“Somebody’s comin’, Mosey! Somebody’s comin’!”
Tildy lifts me from the high chair and settles on the couch.
“They seen me for sure. Young people. They’ll come.”
Tildy closes her eyes and mouths a prayer. I need to eat.
A rap at the door.
“Look at that, Mosey. Company.”
She lays me on the couch and stands, revealing a baby bottle. I pull the nipple into my mouth and pump.
Tidly opens the door.
“Why, hello!”
I hear a young girl’s voice.
“Hi. We’re freezing. Can we come in?”
The door opens farther. I can tell that ’cause the bottle frosts up. Shoes stomp on the floor. The door is shut.
“Come in! Come in! Oh, you poor loves! You look near dead.”
Three young men sit on the floor near the stove. One turns.
“This is great. Thank you. Mind if I put another log on?”
They haven’t spotted me yet. I am forced to imagine what this looks like. A full-grown man’s head on a larval body sucking formula from a baby bottle. I want to scream at myself. I am grotesque. I forgot about all that.
The young man pulls open
the stove door, burning his gloves and drives a log in. The other two are staring at me. Eyes as long as test tubes. They look to the girl standing behind me. I can’t see her. I hear her though.
“Oh! I’m sorry. What’s . . . who’s that?”
She is being calm. I hear the struggle. The boys have moved back and are looking anxiously to Tildy. Hurry up. Tell us what we’re looking at.
“Oh. That’s Mosey.”
The boys slowly return their gaze to me. I am too much for them and they move even farther back.
“Do you kids want some food?”
They congregate around the kitchen table. Tildy leaves me on the couch. It’s warm here and I have my bottle. I can’t see them.
“You folks been stuck out there for long?”
I hear sighs and low whistles.
“Well, you’re here now and what’s mine is yours.”
Silence follows this. I imagine they don’t know what to say.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, you’re good kids.”
They eat. I’m not sure what. Something form the warehouse bags.
