A Savage Generation

by David Tallerman

  Ben’s heart sinks further. He could go, right now. Walking up to the first person he meets, sticking his gun in their face, and demanding their wallet is as sound a plan as this. A few hundred dollars will get them free of the city. Even with prices as they are, they can load up the car with food and fill the tank; get out, before things become truly bad.

  “You coming or not?” Brody calls. He has his own gun in hand, is waving the pistol like a pennant. Not waiting for an answer, he pushes upon the glass-paneled door.

  Ben catches the door on the backswing and steps in behind him.

  By then, Brody is already screaming: “Nobody move! You, you antique fuck, you empty that register.”

  The bell above the door is jangling crazily, so Ben lets it shut. The sour electric light is equally as bright inside. There are refrigerator cabinets along the right wall, bottles of spirits displayed to the left. In between are islands of piled cans and unopened boxes of beer. Near the counter, as if to break the alcoholic tedium, stands a rotating magazine rack: pornography at the top and, in surreal contrast, superhero comics around the lowest tier.

  The only customers are two Chicano kids, both wearing ‘seen it before’ expressions, like they could just as easily be the ones with the guns. Brody swings his piece on them and barks, “Hands where I can see them!” The Chicano kids wrap hands behind heads in a well-practiced gesture, smirking all the while at the stupid Gabacho.

  Ben turns his attention to the counter. Brody was right about one thing: the man behind it is ancient. He’s stick-thin, his hair a wispy mop of white over almost blue-black skin rutted by countless lines. Ben points his .38 at the two kids instead. They grin back at him, as though pleased at the attention.

  Brody takes a step toward the counter, aiming his own gun at the storekeeper. “Hurry it up.”

  The storekeeper has the register open, is methodically piling bills in ones and twos upon the counter. Ben finds it hard to judge if he’s stalling or if this is genuinely the best he can do.

  Either way, Brody is losing patience. “How’s about I shoot you and do it myself?” He takes another step forward.

  The bell above the door jangles.

  Everyone turns to look: Ben, Brody, the storekeeper, the kids. Half through the doorway stands the suit from before. Flecks of spittle dot his lips and chin. The bloody blackness in his eyes has swallowed retinas and pupils, leaving fathomless holes.

  He’s sick. Really sick. Dangerously sick. Ben doesn’t know where to point his gun.

  The suit shudders softly and releases the door. “Has anyone get a…ah….” He staggers.

  Brody, who so far has been keeping his pistol on the storekeeper, changes his mind. But he maneuvers clumsily, trying to turn in the narrow aisle without upsetting a monolith of beer cans near his elbow. Maybe that’s his mistake, or maybe it’s not making his move sooner. Whatever the case, the suit goes for him – and is quicker. Catching Brody by both shoulders, he flings his own head forward, colliding his forehead with Brody’s face. Beneath the impact, Brody’s nose ruptures like a flung egg.

  The suit pulls back, and Ben assumes he’ll do the same again, but this time he snaps open his jaw and clamps his teeth on the ruin of Brody’s nose. Brody roars. When he draws away, his legs go from under him. He and the suit are tangled enough that they trip together. Brody, clutching the suit’s arms, has nothing to break the fall with except his head.

  Ben takes his gun off the Chicano kids. Immediately they start toward him. He dodges aside and they push past, out into the street. Brody is still screaming, a strident wail that climbs and climbs. The suit is scrabbling at Brody’s neck and face, as if eager to dig his way inside. Ben points the .38, attempting to work out whether shooting the suit in the back at this angle will hit Brody and how much he cares. He only remembers that his gun isn’t loaded in the moment that Brody’s own goes off.

  One of the refrigerators hemorrhages glass and alcohol. A second shot takes out a striplight, darkening the perimeter of the store. The third and fourth demolish another fridge, turning the river of liquid and glass shards into a flood. There’s a pause. Brody’s scream changes in modulation, takes on a frustrated note.

  His fifth shot blows a chunk off the suit’s right foot.

  The suit, though he hardly seems to have felt the impact, gives up on Brody’s face and cranes to glare at the gun. Then he catches the neck end of a broken bottle and grinds it deep into Brody’s exposed forearm. Brody’s scream goes off the scale. Instead of stabbing again, the suit keeps his grip on the bottle and twists until the glass fragments. Ben can see exposed cords of muscle amid the bubbling blood.

  Brody’s pistol fires one last time, as though of its own accord, then clicks, clicks, clicks. The suit almost has Brody’s forearm off now, and appears to be losing interest. Go for the old guy, Ben thinks, the old guy. Please, not me.

  A roar that makes the earlier shots seem hushed crashes through the store. As Ben flings himself instinctively backward, his heels catch on some obstruction. He falls hard against a refrigerator cabinet. He can hear nothing but a tinny buzzing, can see the tiled floor, scuffed with tracks of dirt. When he manages to look round, the first thing he observes is the old man. He is standing in front of the magazine rack, a break-action 12-gauge jammed close to his chin. Smoke is oozing from its left barrel. The suit is still crouched over Brody, but much of his head and a chunk of his shoulder have vanished. His neck is pumping thick dark blood. Even as Ben watches, he keels sideways, tumbling into a pyramid of Coors boxes.

  The old man walks forward, carefully appraising the suit. Satisfied, he turns his attention to Brody, who is twitching and jerking, apparently at random. First the remains of his bicep go, flapping the mostly off forearm. Then one foot jolts. Then his head bounces up and slams against the tiles. In that instant, Ben glimpses what’s left of Brody’s face, whole at the edges and mangled at the center, nasal cavities teasing through ragged flesh.

  The old man hefts the shotgun and empties the second barrel down at Brody. At such range, the effect is practically cartoonish, as if someone has dropped an anvil on him.

  The old man turns toward Ben. His once-white apron resembles a butcher’s castoff. He cranks open the shotgun, struggles over the spent shells, takes two fresh ones from a pocket, and slips them into the barrels. Tucking the stock under one armpit, he snaps the action shut. Thrusting the shotgun at Ben, he asks, “You sick?” His speech is low and breathless.

  Ben shakes his head. “No, no, I’m not sick. Brody wasn’t sick.” Or conceivably he had been, and drugs weren’t what had been making him crazy. Anyway, didn’t they say the infection got passed quickest via blood? The old man did the right thing, taking Brody out like that. “We were just…I’m sorry. I wanted to get my girl and kid out. I didn’t want this.”

  Ben is dizzy. He’s never in his life seen so much blood. Perhaps he banged his head, too, as he fell. He craves to throw up, but he feels certain that, if he does, the old man will shoot him. Maybe not even for being sick, maybe for making a worse mess of his already messed-up store.

  Yet when he looks, the old man is walking away. He navigates the gap in the counter and disappears again, through a door in the back. A few seconds later, Ben hears, faintly, the old man speaking, in short, muffled bursts.

  After that, there’s a long silence. Ben expects the old man to reappear, but he doesn’t. Though he ought to get up, should get out of there, Ben can’t convince his legs to work. Blood is pooling in the center of the room. By scrunching his knees, he can keep his feet clear, but the moment he stands he’ll have to step in it. He doesn’t know if he can do that. The pain in his head is a throb broken by sudden, shuddering stabs. The nausea rises and falls in waves.

  “You! Put your hands on your head.” The voice comes from his left. “We’re coming in. Jesus, what a mess….”

  Ben laces his fingers behind h
is head, feels wetness stickying his hair. He hadn’t heard the cop car arrive. There are two of them, in uniform. The first – white, not young, eyes shadowed and wild with sleeplessness – is holding the door open with one hand, using the other to train a .38 much like the one Ben has lost. The first cop waits while the second cop – olive-skinned and younger than her partner – enters and scans the room.

  “Where are the guns?” the first cop asks.

  “One there, near the bodies,” the second notes.

  The first cop aims a kick at Ben’s leg that doesn’t quite connect. “Hey, asshole, you have a gun? Nod if you have a gun.”

  Ben shakes his head. “It’s not loaded.”

  “Was that the question? Where’s your gun?”

  “I dropped it.”

  “You better have.”

  “It’s over there,” says the second cop.

  Ben looks where she’s pointing, and sees his gun lodged half under a rack of Corona bottles.

  The first cop looks too. “Well, that didn’t do all this.”

  “I’m coming out,” the storekeeper wheezes from the back of the store. When nobody contradicts him, he steps slowly through the door behind the counter, the shotgun gripped above his head in both fists.

  “Yeah, that’s more like,” the first cop acknowledges. “Put it down on the counter.”

  The storekeeper lowers the shotgun, to lay the weapon beside the cash register.

  “This your store? These trying to rob it?”

  “Not the well-dressed one. He was sick.”

  “Yeah? What a fucking mess.”

  “Are we going to take him in?” The second cop indicates the old man with a wave of her gun.

  “Are you kidding? Way things are going, the whole city’s going to be like this by the end of the week.”

  “What about that one?” This time she points her gun at Ben.

  “Hey, old man. Sure you don’t want to do this one into the bargain? Save us a trip? Got my word we won’t write you up.”

  The storekeeper shakes his grizzled head. “Nah. I’m done.”

  “Shame.” The first cop sounds authentically aggrieved.

  Ben holds up his wrists. “Look, I’m sorry,” he says. “The gun isn’t even loaded.”

  “What’s he doing?” the first cop asks his partner, as though Ben’s behavior is a new phenomenon to him.

  “I think he wants you to cuff him.”

  “Yeah? Do I work for him?”

  The first cop holsters his gun and unclips the baton at his belt. He flicks it free and swings in one neat gesture. Ben hardly has the opportunity to register the motion, let alone to get his hands in the way, before the baton strikes his head with a crack like bottled thunder.

  Chapter Two

  Right then, Austin can’t say who he hates more.

  All he’s managed to conclude is that it comes down to different kinds of hate. What he feels for his mother is something brief and blazing that will burn out eventually, leaving pain behind. Not like his hatred of Martin, which is hot coals, hot embers – too hot to touch, and capable of smoldering forever.

  His father? Different again. Austin doesn’t know yet how that hate feels, not entirely, but there’ll be time enough to discover it. For they’ve finally told him where they’re going, and he sees now that he should have guessed, because it’s the single worst thing Martin could have done to him.

  Austin Carter, born Austin Johnson, gazes out through tinted glass at the trees whipping by, stiff pines crowding the road’s edge. They seem to go on interminably. He is already homesick, a dull ache in the pit of his stomach that’s very much like actual sickness. There’s nothing out here, nothing for him.

  Then, without having thinned at all, the trees are gone, and to either side is an expanse of dead earth, the SUV’s tires rousing plumes of desiccated dirt. Ahead, he can see their destination: gray-white concrete walls, a gate of reinforced mesh, and the shadowy impression of low buildings beyond.

  His mother has rung ahead, she told him. They’re expected. Sure enough, the gate is sliding aside. Austin can hear its monotonous rattle even at such a distance. In the gap is a uniformed figure. His dark skin is indistinguishable from the navy blue of his shirt; amid the brightness and the grime, he’s all of one shade. As they draw closer, the figure begins to resolve into a human being: tall, broad-shouldered, head clean-shaven except for an oblong of stubble around the jaw. His eyes are narrowed and his face tense, an expression Austin recalls too well.

  His father isn’t a man who relaxes easily. Nor can Austin ever remember seeing him smile.

  He has a first instinct, then, of what form this particular hatred will take, of how he will feel toward the father who walked out of his life all those years ago with such apparent ease.

  Martin pulls up the SUV just before the prison gate. Austin’s mother rolls down the passenger-side window, and his father walks round to it. “Hello, Rachel,” he says. He glances into the back seat. “Austin.” Martin he ignores.

  “Hello, Doyle.” His mother’s voice is careful, precise. She takes this tone with Austin sometimes, on the occasions when she predicts conflict and is readying for it. “Austin, say hello to your father.”

  Rather than look at Doyle, Austin glares at the back of his mother’s head. “Hello.”

  “Like I told you on the phone,” she says, speaking to his father once more, “we’re going to Martin’s parents. But they don’t have much space. And I don’t—”

  “This is a prison,” his father cuts her off, emphasizing each word.

  “So he’ll be safe here.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Have you seen what it’s like out there?” She shudders. “You have walls. You can keep them out.”

  “It’s a disease, not a—”

  She silences him, in turn, with a glare. “You haven’t seen.” Then, almost pleadingly, “You know this is the safest place for him.”

  “What I know is, you wanted the responsibility and now you don’t.” Austin’s father looks with undisguised disgust at Martin, who still has his hands on the steering wheel, drumming fingers impatiently upon its leather arch. “What I know is, it doesn’t suit you anymore.”

  “That isn’t fair.” Austin’s mother sounds genuinely wounded.

  “Fine. It isn’t fair.”

  “And you don’t have a choice.” Her voice has grown hard. “He’s staying here. You deal with it.”

  Austin’s father sighs, brushing a palm across his eyes. “Have you asked Austin what he wants?”

  “It doesn’t matter what he wants. We can’t keep him safe. You can. There’s nothing to discuss.”

  Austin can bear no more. The sense of betrayal is like a point working its way up through his innards. “I don’t want to go with you,” he tells his mother. “I’d rather be anywhere else.”

  She shivers again, as though the car has suddenly grown cold. But rather than answer, she says to his father, “You see?”

  Austin thinks his father will keep arguing, is sure that he will argue for as long as it takes. So he’s surprised when Doyle responds, “This is temporary. Until things calm down. Until you work something else out.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Austin, get out please.”

  Too eager to be free of the car to resent his father’s order, Austin does as he’s told. His mother reaches a hand through the open window, clutching for his. He moves aside, out of reach.

  “I know this is hard for you,” she says. “I know you didn’t mean what you said.”

  “You don’t know,” he insists, not looking at her but away, toward the forest.

  “It’s just for a while.”

  “Bye,” he says.

  “I love you.” He can tell that she’s close to crying.

&
nbsp; He won’t meet her eye, won’t let himself. When he does look up, it’s because the SUV’s engine, which Martin had left idling, has revved back into life. Austin catches only a glimpse of his mother, before the vehicle’s abrupt arc and the swirling shroud of dust snatch her from sight.

  Austin understands then, with a certainty he can’t explain, that he will never see her again. He turns to his father, not knowing what to say, not knowing if there are words for such a sensation. But surely saying anything is unnecessary. It’s impossible that he should feel like this, like he’s falling into a gaping hole inside himself, and his father won’t notice.

  Yet there’s nothing in his father’s face, no sympathy, no recognition. “Come on,” he says, “let’s get you inside.”

  * * *

  “I realize this must be tough for you,” Doyle tries.

  It isn’t true. He has no insight into what might be going through his son’s mind. But Austin lets the comment go without acknowledgement.

  “It’s not forever.” Doyle wishes he could think of something to say that isn’t a lie.

  He has already decided he’ll go to Aaronovich. He has no idea what to do with Austin, no idea how to keep him safe. While the doctor might not either, at least she will appreciate the problem for what it is.

  Except that between him and Aaronovich is the whole of Funland. White Cliff, a part of him contends – but it’s hopeless. He only has to look around to see that there’s no such thing as White Cliff Penitentiary anymore. Its existence has been tenuous for years now, decades: its original incarnation, the White Cliff Prison Farm, had been deemed uneconomical ten years ago or more; then the fences came down and the walls went up, cutting off most of its estate. What remained hung on in its reincarnated form for a few years, as a low-security prison mostly taking overflow from the larger state penitentiary fifty miles east. Then a wave of cutbacks saw it flagged for winding down, and so its lifespan would have ended, but for the intervention of one man.

  Plan John Howard is sitting on the balcony of the Big House, contemplating his domain. He’ll have watched Doyle go out to meet the SUV, have watched him reenter with Austin, Doyle knows. He knows because Plan John watches everything.