A Savage Generation

by David Tallerman

  Resentment doesn’t make the need go away. He’s gone as far as he can go alone. He requires an ally, and his choices are few.

  As they reach the Big House, Austin glances at Kyle – trailing behind, striving to keep pace – and observes all the curiosity and confusion he’s attempting to hide. Theoretically, the Big House is open to everyone these days. In fact, though that may be true of the lower floor, which houses the library, laundry, workshops, and other facilities, the top floor belongs to Austin’s father, who prowls around up there like a monster in a movie. Austin hears him often, steps echoing and magnified by conduits of dull metal, hears too the woman Carlita, and sometimes overhears their conversations. No one knows she’s there, no one even knows she exists, and Austin thinks about what would happen if they should learn. But doing so leads him in a tight circle back to the night of the gunshot, to blind terror and gashing his flesh on rough-cut steel in the darkness, wanting only to escape. So Austin keeps his father’s secret, for now.

  Passing the main entrance, Austin steals another glance at Kyle. Reading people is easier for him these days. Get far enough on the outside and certain things make a different kind of sense. Faces are one of them. Nobody is that good at hiding their thoughts, not when you see them how they really are. Kyle is confused, yes, and eager, and afraid, all of those at once. But mainly he’s curious; Where are they going?

  They round a second corner, to where Big House and cellblock abut, brick the white of a snake’s belly meeting gray concrete: a place grown so familiar to Austin yet probably new to Kyle. Austin takes a couple of steps back and runs toward the wall. At the final instant, he leaps, taps the wall with his toes, and throws an arm up. From above comes a metallic groan and then a frantic rattling. When Austin lands, he has the lowest rung of the ladder clutched in one hand. It’s a technique he’s been refining, day in and day out, for the last month. He allows himself just a moment to enjoy Kyle’s awestruck expression, and says, “You don’t leave it down, or anyone can find it.”

  Kyle nods, though clearly he doesn’t understand why someone discovering the ladder should matter. He’ll get it soon – or else, and Austin’s chest tightens at the thought, he won’t. What then? Something terrible, possibilities he doesn’t want to imagine. Austin forces the doubt aside. He can only deal with one dilemma at a time.

  Austin hauls the ladder the remaining distance to the ground and starts up. He climbs with easy grace these days; swinging up the rungs is no harder than walking. He’s at the top before Kyle begins his own ascent. It’s satisfying how he struggles, taking the rungs one by one, barely able to use arms and legs in concert. Austin leaves him to it, gazing instead toward the distant center of the roof.

  He waits for Kyle to reach the summit, his hands and feet scrabbling, his breathing heavy with exertion. Austin gives him space to drag himself over the lip of the wall and then works the crank that retracts the ladder. It rises with a complaining rattle, and as always Austin tenses until he’s done and he’s sure no curious footsteps have followed that unique, inexplicable noise.

  When he turns back to Kyle, Austin studies his face once more, and finds there everything he’d hoped for. He recognizes all the anxiety and excitement of before, the same confusion too. But now, lighting him like an electrical charge from within, making those other emotions dull by comparison, there’s wonder.

  “Come on,” Austin says, feeling as good as he has in days or weeks, not letting his pleasure show even slightly, “you haven’t seen anything yet.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The man hasn’t moved one inch in the seconds since Ben first spotted him. Nor does he do so when Landser arrives to stand next to Ben, muttering, “What the fuck?” beneath his breath. Houseman also stays perfectly motionless, the shotgun threatening empty air.

  The man is wearing blue overalls, or overalls that once were blue. They’re faded almost white at the knees and elbows, stained in dark patches across the front, and in many places scuffed and torn. His face is covered with a thicket of beard. What skin is visible is deeply lined and tanned. It’s hard to say what reveals him as sick, since he’s stood so still the whole time. But then, isn’t that precisely it? Anyone else, even if they were frightened, even if they were plain dumb, would have moved by now. His immobility is inhuman.

  “Sicker,” growls Landser, as though to confirm Ben’s thoughts. Yet Landser doesn’t seem unsettled at the prospect, more like intrigued.

  Ben takes a few more shallow steps toward Houseman. From the corner of his mouth, Houseman says, “He turned up out of nowhere.”

  “Out of nowhere?”

  “I mean, from in the shed, I guess.”

  “And that’s all he’s done? Just stand there?”

  “Well, I guess.”

  They could get into the truck and drive away. But the Sicker might come after them, and shooting from within the cab will be far more difficult.

  “You need to get closer,” Landser tells Houseman.

  Houseman shakes his head in fierce jerks. “No way.”

  “Then give me the gun.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I’d bet good money you can.”

  “He’s right, Houseman,” Ben mumbles. “You need to get near to him.”

  “I can’t,” Houseman repeats.

  “Then,” Landser hisses, “give me the fucking—”

  “No. Okay.” Houseman takes a step forward.

  The Sicker doesn’t flinch. Houseman takes another step. He keeps moving, inching forward, still pointing the shotgun at nothing other than sky. The closer he gets, the shorter his steps become, the longer the pauses between. Ben wants to scream at him that he’s only making this worse.

  Then the Sicker bolts into the shed. Houseman’s shotgun explodes. Most of the shot peppers the side of the doorway, tiny craters imploding in unison. A few stray pellets are consumed by the blackness. Into the Sicker? No, the angle had been entirely wrong.

  “Hell, Houseman,” Ben mutters, the words made faint by the ringing in his eardrums.

  Landser mutters something under his breath that might easily be useless fuck. “Now you get to go in after him,” he says aloud.

  Houseman’s eyes have gone wide as saucers. He looks to Ben, his expression pleading. What does he think is going to happen? They’ve come too far. “You’ll be fine,” Ben assures him.

  Houseman holds Ben’s gaze a moment more, no longer begging but just stunned. Finally, he starts moving again. To Ben’s surprise, Landser stays behind him. Ben’s first thought is that the big skinhead is backing Houseman up. His second is that Landser probably intends to ensure Houseman doesn’t bolt.

  Ben sets off after them. He knows he’ll be useless in a fight with one arm in a sling, but to hang back will be to lose face, and leaves him dangerously alone. Closer and he can see that through the doors is a narrow walkway between railed enclosures. There’s no sign of the Sicker. The shed is windowless, so that the only light is what’s gathered around the entrance. A few feet in, the gray fades to blackness.

  Houseman is outside the doorway. He is trembling visibly, causing the shotgun barrel to bob and weave. Landser is almost at his back, Ben perhaps ten paces behind. He wants to move nearer, but his feet have grown stubborn.

  “You see anything?” Ben’s voice sounds thick to his own ears.

  “It’s real dark. I think there’s another level.” Houseman squints upward. “Christ but it stinks.”

  Ben can smell it too, a chemical sickly-sweetness like slurry, and some odor behind that, a submerged perfume of rotting meat.

  “Go on,” Landser says. He taps Houseman’s shoulder.

  “What?”

  “Go. On.”

  Houseman shuffles over the concrete lip of the doorway. “Can’t see shit.” He dips the shotgun into the left stall, then the right. He shakes his head. “This
is crazy.”

  Just as something drops onto him.

  No, not something, someone. They must have leaped from the upper tier. Houseman has time to squeal before the impact flattens him to the ground. The body on top of his is a woman. She’s wearing jeans and a sweater, both black with filth. She clings to Houseman, gripping with hands and knees, and Houseman lies there like a passive lover. His arm is pinned beneath her knee, and the shotgun slides out of his fingers. In that same moment, a second figure falls from above: a man, younger than the first. He clamps himself over what little of Houseman is uncovered.

  An ambush, Ben realizes. This is an ambush.

  Landser starts forward. Ben assumes that he’s attempting to help Houseman, until Landser veers toward the shotgun. At that range, he’s as likely to kill Houseman as the Sickers. But what can Ben do, with one good arm? Indecision turns his thoughts to glue.

  As Landser clutches and pumps the shotgun, a shape barrels out of the darkness, the first male Sicker. It’s like watching a car crash into a wall. Landser nearly stays upright, would have if not for Houseman, whose legs are thrashing behind him. As it is, Landser staggers, and the shotgun belches fire.

  Whatever the shot hits, it isn’t the Sicker. He’s gained a hold of the stock and is trying to wrest the weapon free. Landser, already scrabbling to his feet, responds by pounding the man’s nose with a bony fist, every blow drawing sprays of blood.

  Houseman, meanwhile, is no longer moving, except for the occasional twitch. Abruptly, the female Sicker gives up on him and dashes at Landser. She attacks like a mad dog, leading with her head, driving her skull hard against his ribcage and only afterward thinking to wrap skinny arms around his thighs. Her momentum wrests the shotgun free of the male Sicker’s grip, and Landser seizes the opportunity. In a moment, he has the gun back in both hands. He’s on the ground, though, by the time he’s pumped it, the woman snapping at his wrists. Landser drives the toe of the stock into her jaw prior to firing, and that’s his mistake: he’s ruined a clean shot.

  Still, the damage is catastrophic. The blast gouges a crescent in the man’s side, peeling strips of flesh and cloth from his left arm. He reels, to collide with the shed door. He shouldn’t be standing, let alone walking; Ben can clearly identify jagged extrusions of bone amid the dripping horror of his side. Yet he manages half a dozen steps before he flops onto Landser, trapping the shotgun under his own flayed body.

  Only then does it hit Ben that he’s just watching this, like here he is at the Super Bowl or something. He doesn’t dare to run, so instead he risks a step backward. The two on Landser, busy scrabbling their way inside him, don’t look up. The second male, however, is crouched in the open doorway, and – as though intuiting the movement – he glances in Ben’s direction.

  If Ben runs, the second male will be on him. Ben knows without the slightest doubt. He can’t outrun these things, which look like people and behave like wild beasts. Ben takes another step backward. The young male cocks his head. Ben takes a third step, and still he doesn’t follow.

  Slowly, so slowly, keeping his eyes on the second male, Ben retreats toward the truck. He tries not to see what’s left of Houseman, on the edge of his view. He tries not to hear as, just as slowly, it seems, the other two tear Landser apart.

  * * *

  The rooftop is a world of its own.

  That’s the appeal. It makes sense to Kyle. He considers the structures of ductwork that rise like a futuristic city in miniature, clustered about the skyscraper of the shack that stands near the far end. All of it makes perfect sense.

  Austin is already trotting around the edge, with a loping stride that Kyle can barely keep pace with. Every so often, Austin stops to indicate some detail, monosyllabically or simply with a gesture. When he goes close to the edge and looks over – something he does with care, having made certain no one is observing from below – Kyle feels obliged to join him. Only in those moments does he suffer from an awareness of height. Though the Big House and cellblock are of a lowly two stories, their high ceilings make that seem more like three.

  The altitude doesn’t appear to trouble Austin. “See?” He points. “You can get up on the admin wing the same way.”

  Kyle traces the line of Austin’s finger to another ladder suspended from the administrative wing’s north wall.

  A few paces later, Austin adds, “There’re ways onto the walls as well.”

  When they’ve finished a full circumnavigation, Austin continues to the corner and leans over the parapet again. Below, two right angles join: the junction where Big House and cellblock meet. The cellblock roof is maybe four feet lower, and has no wall around it, just metal guttering. There’s no ductwork, either, merely an expanse of tarpaper layered with grit, like a desert highway leading nowhere.

  “You can walk on it,” Austin says. Obviously restless, he abandons the parapet to take a seat on a tube of segmented metal, which burrows through the roof like some huge, misshapen worm. “But I don’t in the day. Too easy to be seen.”

  Kyle nods. Of course they can’t be seen. No one can know this secret, their secret. Kyle thinks he recognizes the faintest satisfaction in Austin’s eyes then. Have they reached an understanding?

  “There’s something else,” Austin says.

  Austin swings over the silver worm and ducks beneath a pipe. Kyle follows hurriedly, as though the ductwork is a maze and he might lose Austin for good. Yet he finds him immediately, leaning now against the wall of the shack. Kyle scrutinizes the small shelter. There’s nothing obviously interesting about it; he guesses it must provide access from below. Or is that what Austin means to show off, a back route inside?

  “You keep a secret?” asks Austin.

  Kyle nods once more. Yes, he can keep a secret. He has no one to tell.

  Austin kneels beside one of the ducts. There’s a panel there, a framed mesh of knitted wire. As Austin grips one edge, Kyle notices how the screws are missing. There are only the holes, shiny and scratched. The panel comes off easily, and thunks onto the roof. The cavity it concealed extends in either direction.

  “Where does it lead?” Kyle says, suddenly breathless.

  “Everywhere. If you’re careful.”

  So this is how Austin spends his days. He’s dug into the cracks of Funland, burrowing like a tick into its underbelly. Or maybe there’s more to be revealed. If Austin has spent weeks this way, who knows how vast the borders of his hidden world might be?

  It doesn’t even occur to Kyle to ask why. Being on the roof for this short time has given him a sense of security he’d practically forgotten. There’s none of the subdued threat that runs so thickly through Funland as to seem a quality of the air. Kyle has been lucky to find a place in the farm, where he’s spared the worst, but the farm has its own tensions. It isn’t safe, not as this is safe.

  “Are we going inside?” Kyle’s voice, of its own accord, has hushed to a reverential whisper.

  Austin looks at him. Something has shifted in his face. “Why?”

  The question throws Kyle. “I don’t know. To see.”

  “What makes you think I trust you?” There’s no aggression in the inquiry. On the contrary, Austin appears genuinely curious.

  “I said. I promised.”

  Austin tilts his head. “So?”

  “I thought—”

  “You thought what?”

  “I just—”

  Quicker than Kyle can register, Austin’s face is close to his, Austin’s arm is pinning his shoulder, and there’s something sharp and cold held to Kyle’s throat.

  “You listen,” Austin hisses. “This is mine. You don’t come up here unless I agree. You don’t tell anyone. You don’t think about it. Or else….”

  But there’s no need for Austin to say what else. It’s there in his eyes, in the ocean of rage swelling behind them. Kyle wants to nod, can’t for
the blade against his Adam’s apple. He hopes that his own eyes, the fear surely betrayed there, will answer for him.

  As abruptly as Austin jumped him, he backs off. Kyle has the briefest glimpse of his weapon vanishing into a pocket. It looks like a vegetable peeler, though the edge glints cruelly. Austin gives him one more glance, and Kyle is surprised at how entirely his anger is gone. There’s only the hint of some unspoken reconciliation, as if this has been no more than a handshake.

  Austin picks up the vent cover and hammers it back in place with the heel of a fist. Then he swings up into the ductwork and disappears. Seconds later, Kyle hears the patter of his soles on the ladder, the thud as he drops the last couple of feet.

  Kyle touches two fingers to his throat, confirming that the skin is unbroken. Now that his shock has abated, he feels sure that even Austin’s abrupt violence is another step in his befriending, a necessary stage. Austin will come to him again. Whatever has adjusted in his brain to make him seek out companionship after all this time won’t simply shift back.

  He’s enjoyed this, Kyle comprehends, all of it, the fear included. It’s different from the kind he’s grown used to, thrilling where that’s only numbing. Kyle sinks to the ground, his spine against the cool metal of the duct.

  He’ll have to go down soon, he knows. But, for a while at least, he can be here and feel safe.

  * * *

  Before he leaves, Doyle goes out onto the balcony. He considers the stains on the concrete, almost scoured to invisibility now. One more heavy rainfall will do it. You’re a murderer, he tells himself, and wishes he could find something within him that felt like a correct response to that word.

  After going back inside, Doyle washes his face and upper body in the bowl of water he keeps near the bed, studies his features in the small mirror above – without knowing what he expects to discover there – and then pulls on a shirt and leaves the apartment, not locking the door behind him.