A Different Alchemy, page 19
The entire city looked like London—if the city had never been rebuilt after World War II. Some of the skyscrapers had broken open, leaving piles of rubble on the ground. Nearly all of the windows were missing from the corporate offices. A bank had collapsed in on itself. In ten years Philadelphia would look the same way. In fifteen years, Washington would look this way. In twenty-five years, Atlanta would be identical. In forty years, only a few years after the last men and women had taken their final breaths in the great Florida sun, Miami would look this way. Did all of the people heading south think they were outrunning death, or did they know there was only so far they could travel before they ran into southern waters? And Death, taking her good ol’ time traveling down 95, would eventually catch up with them. When they were dispatched, she would load her scythe into a boat and cross the water to Cuba, then the rest of the Caribbean.
It wasn’t until he was heading back toward the highway that he saw the first man.
There was a disconnect between what he expected to see and what his eyes revealed to him. The man in front of him wasn’t crazed, bearded, and wide-eyed, a sawed-off shotgun slung over his shoulder. He was merely a man of ninety, struggling, even with the assistance of a cane, to walk. Jeffrey stopped the tank and opened the hatch.
“Hello there,” he said, smiling at this old man who was almost slipping and falling with every step he took toward the tank.
The man grumbled words that Jeffrey couldn’t understand. Each step brought the pitiful man minutely closer to the tank. Something in the man’s broken down face kept Jeffrey from offering assistance. It might have been how he never took his eyes off the machine. Even when he stumbled, almost fell, he stared, as though in a trance, at the metal monster. The hobbling man was the closest thing to a zombie that the Great De-evolution could produce. A truck could come hurtling down the street and the man would pay it no attention, even as it ran him over, because he was mindlessly staggering towards this armored machine in front of him.
“How are you doing?” Jeffrey said. And then, when that didn’t get a response, “Can I help you? Do you need help?”
The decrepit man continued forward without trying to answer. Then another man appeared. This one wasn’t quite as old, maybe only seventy-five or eighty. The newcomer quickly passed the man struggling with his cane.
Jeffrey smiled at this new man walking toward him. “How are you doing? Nice day out.”
But this man also walked toward the tank without responding. And when he got to the tank, instead of reaching up to shake Jeffrey’s hand, he simply tried to climb up the tread.
“What are you doing?” Jeffrey said, still not understanding what was going on. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
The man started to pull himself up in an attempt to stand on top of the tank’s tread. His grip wasn’t strong enough, though. Right as he tried to lift his first foot up, his fingers slipped away and he fell backwards with a loud grunt.
“Sir, are you all right?”
The man got back to his hands and knees. The original man was still twenty feet away, making a shameful amount of progress toward the tank. He was gasping for air so heavily that it was doubtful he would ever make it to where Jeffrey was. But the second man was now successfully pulling himself up onto the tank, and once there, was trying to push Jeffrey aside in order to descend into the machine’s core.
“What are you doing?” Jeffrey said, but would never get a response.
He pushed back at the man just enough to stop his progress. This seemed to puzzle the grizzled, old man, who was still singularly focused on getting inside the tank.
Finally Jeffrey could understand what the other man was mumbling: “Take me with you. Please, take me with you. Need to leave. Please.”
Two more people, both exceedingly ancient, appeared at the same intersection. They too began making their way toward the tank. The old man standing next to Jeffrey put a hand over Jeffrey’s mouth in an attempt to push him away. Jeffrey pushed back. The man lost his footing and fell off the side of the vehicle before disappearing out of view. But by this time, two of the other men, both walking with the assistance of canes, were at the tank as well.
All three men were clambering up now. Six hands strained to pull their owners closer to the tank’s hatch. Each man begged Jeffrey to save them.
None of them were listening, none of them even realized Jeffrey was heading north instead of toward the remains of civilization. He pulled the hatch shut, then motored the tank toward the other side of the street. One of the men immediately fell off the tank and remained motionless on the ground. Another of the old men hung on to the back of the tank for twenty feet as it dragged him across the intersection before he too finally let go.
A third man tried to jump on the tank as it passed. Maybe, as a spry young man he could have made the leap, but in his old age, hobbling just to get close to the tank, he managed only a slight stumble forward. The tank ran over his foot, crushing every bone in it. The man howled in pain.
Jeffrey drove the tank three blocks away, enough distance to be sure he was out of their elderly range. At a city park, he stopped and popped the hatch again. There was no trace of the crazed senior citizens. One of them was probably crying, another was likely still begging for Jeffrey to take him away. None of them could be heard, though.
The park he stopped at wasn’t unlike parks where he and Katherine and Galen had gone back home. Couples had likely come here, back before the end was signaled, had laughed together, their dogs chasing Frisbees. The harbor would be full of boats coming and going. All of that was gone now.
Another man appeared. This man was slightly younger than the others, wasn’t walking with a limp yet. His hand dangled by his side, a pistol held gingerly, no intent to use it. The sight of it made Jeffrey reseal the tank’s hatch, but on his way inside he thought he saw the man wave his arms as if to mock Jeffrey’s panic.
From inside the tank, Jeffrey yelled out, “Don’t shoot, I won’t hurt you.”
“That’s good to know, friend. I’m no match for a tank.”
But when Jeffrey peeked back out again, the man was still approaching, still carrying the gun.
“Don’t come any closer,” Jeffrey warned.
The man chuckled. “Why not? I only want to talk.”
“You have a gun.”
“My friend, you have a tank.”
“Put the gun down and we can talk.”
“Put the tank down and we can talk.”
When Jeffrey looked over the top of the hatch, he saw the other man had put the gun down on a wooden bench before starting toward him again. The man stopped ten feet from the tank. Without the threat of bullets, Jeffrey pulled himself out of the machine and lowered himself to the ground.
“What are you all doing here?” Jeffrey asked, even though it was this man who had sought him out.
“Someone had to stick around and see our fair city off.” The man looked around for effect. “The park is deserted. As is the harbor. Sadly, even the bars.” This last part made the old man give a pained smile, made him wipe away an invisible tear. “The name is Garth. Nice to meet you.”
“What about everyone back there, Garth?” Jeffrey said, motioning to the other side of the highway. “Are any of them seriously hurt?”
“We have all been seriously hurt, my friend,” the other man said. “At one time or another.”
“But are they hurt, now?”
“I won’t lie: probably they are. Even a minor injury is serious these days. We are old, and there are no doctors. A broken bone won’t get set. A cut will get infected. You know how it goes. But that’s life. C’est la vie. It’s not a sad thing, it’s just part of life. Speaking of which, what brings you here, my friend? You still haven’t introduced yourself.”
“I was just traveling through. Jeffrey. My name is Jeffrey.”
He took his eyes off Garth just long enough to make sure no one else was sneaking up from the other direction. This caused the man to smile.
Garth rubbed the edge of his grey beard with his palm, then motioned to the other side of the highway. “Those were actually the healthier ones over there. Don’t worry, no one is going to hijack your ride.” And then, when Jeffrey didn’t say anything, he added, “Are you really going to make me ask the question?”
“Why am I driving a tank?”
The man laughed. “No, friend. Why are you heading north instead of south?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t want to go the same direction as everyone else.”
“Why are you driving a tank?”
“It gets me where I need to go.”
Garth laughed with childish delight.
Jeffrey asked why he had a gun.
“For my own sanity, my friend. No other reason. None of the other people here have their wits about them enough to cause me harm. That little piece of metal,” the man said, pointing to the tiny pistol on the bench, “makes me feel safe, much the same way I imagine your big piece of metal“—he motioned to the tank—“makes you feel safe.”
“You could have shot me when I had my head out.”
“My friend, if I was that good of a shot I would have done more exciting things in my life than attend board meetings and run marathons back when those things were still in vogue. How about you? What did you do in your life?”
“I was in the military.”
This made Garth laugh again. “You arrived in a tank. Of course you were in the military. But what did you do with your life?”
Jeffrey didn’t know how to answer this. He kept expecting to see the senior citizens hobbling across the street, begging for a ride out of the city. None of them appeared, however.
“So what are you doing next?” Garth said.
“I guess I’ll just keep going north.”
“Until you run out of land?”
“Something like that. How about yourself? What will you do next?”
“My friend, there is no next for us.” He motioned around at the once great city, known for its history, its personality, its pride—now void of all of those things, only barren and quiet. “We stayed here when the others left because this was our home. Some of us were probably scared of change. Some of us were too proud to leave the old life we held dear.”
“And how about you? Why do you still stay?”
The man smiled. He seemed a little more tired each time he gave his fake smile. “My friend, I could say it was because I hate New York, but it’s not. I could say it’s because I like the winters here, but it’s definitely not that either. I just didn’t want to spend the rest of my life picking up and heading south each time a city started to empty out too much. I was happy here, so I figured I might as well stay.”
Jeffrey expected the man to ask again why he was traveling north, but he didn’t. Instead, Garth said, “Do you know why everyone is heading south?”
“To be around other people.”
The man gave a wave of the hand. “Incorrect, my friend.”
“To be where it’s warm?”
The man did his impression of a buzzer going off. “That is also incorrect. They aren’t heading south because they need the comfort of being surrounded by others. And they aren’t afraid of some snow. They are heading south because they are trying to keep things how they used to be. Not the house, not even the city, has to be the same. Those things can change quite easily. What they are trying to keep consistent is the sense of how things were before all of this started. They want to feel like things are still normal for as long as they can. That’s what being around other people, seeing neighborhoods full of happy families, gives them. The sooner they can come to terms with the Great De-evolution, to understand it is out of their power, that they can only have the lives they have today, not the lives they had yesterday, that is when they will be OK with where they are. When they understand that, they probably won’t be so eager to make the next move south.”
Jeffrey didn’t think that was true. Everyone he saw in Philadelphia, Katherine included, really had wanted to be around as many other people as possible. After the blizzard that wiped out Boston, everyone really had wanted to be where it was warm.
Garth saw the look of skepticism on his face, saw the next question that was going to form and answered it before Jeffrey needed to speak. “If that were true, my friend,” he said, “then why are they burning their houses down before they leave? Why are they concerned with being surrounded by Blocks? It’s because they are afraid to have a new set of memories, but the old ones are also too painful to keep holding onto. Going south, trying to outrun the inevitable, lets them ignore how stuck they are. But when you can appreciate the old memories, while also creating new ones, then you are truly a rich man. Richer than if you could turn lead into gold, that’s for sure.”
“What about the people back there,” Jeffrey asked. “They’re still begging to get south.”
The man nodded. “Sadly, they haven’t come to accept this conclusion yet. When they do, if they ever do, they will likely realize getting south doesn’t give them anything that being here can’t provide.”
“Why don’t you explain it to them?”
“My friend, there are some things you have to learn for yourself. I have surely told each of those people back there what I’ve told you, but it’s up to them to accept it. They may never get to that point, but the nice thing is it only takes one day for it to happen, and each new day is a new chance for it to occur.”
Neither of them said anything as Jeffrey considered what had been said.
“Be safe,” Garth said finally, beginning to stand. “And on your way out of here, make sure you take the expressway or 93. Don’t bother taking the tunnels. Someone blew them up a couple of years ago.” And then he smiled once more, but a genuine smile this time.
It crossed Jeffrey’s mind that he should shake Garth’s hand, but he was already walking back to the bench where the gun was. With it in hand, he turned and waved goodbye, then disappeared around the corner to where the pile of broken men were probably still on the ground, each with fractured hips or backs.
The tank rumbled up Highway 1 because it kept Jeffrey close to the water. And when presented with the opportunity, he veered off the highway and took the local road running along the coast so he could see the waves and the sand. After being in the city, he needed to see the beach again. And as the sight and sound of the waves calmed him, he thought about all the things the man had said and if there could be any truth to it.
Chapter 14
Back when he enlisted in the army, he never thought there would be a day when he and the other few remaining officers would celebrate being the last men on base. Appropriately, the cake they were eating had sugary icing designed to look like an American flag draped across an empty battlefield. There were two trenches, some artillery, but no men on either side to continue fighting the war.
They also had donuts and cookies. Some of these had frosting to make them resemble grenades with the pins still in place. There was also beer. But the men didn’t call it beer, they called it End of the Military Brew. Halfway through the party a cork popped—a final gunshot—and champagne sprayed out.
The men were all laughing and clapping and hugging. Jeffrey seemed to be the only one who didn’t understand why they were cheering. They might as well be celebrating the end of the Super Bowl or the final Christmas. The men retold stories they had all told a hundred times before. They toasted to everything they could think of. Meanwhile, Jeffrey stood by the corner and watched them.
Yes, the boxes of paper were tedious. Yes, the routines and bureaucracy were smothering. But there was also history and tradition, and that meant a lot. He was perfectly fine with not having another annual performance review or printing off another series of monthly audits littered with arrow-shaped flags where his superiors had to provide their signature. But this going away party was a celebration that proved all the paperwork they filed was nothing more than a wasted forest. Wasted time. It was a party to announce that their weekly staff meetings were simply time away from their friends and families, nothing more.
Unlike the parties they had for promotions, no family members were around to take part in the festivities. The men with regular children would have felt bad bringing their sons and daughters to a party where the other men had their Block children sitting motionless in chairs around the table. It was for the better. He wouldn’t have to act like he hadn’t overheard such things as: “I hope they don’t make me sick,” or “Look at it. It can’t do anything for itself,” or “We’re going to have thousands of them to take with us to Washington,” or “My parents never used to be sick. Now they’re sick all the time.”
An ancient white-haired man, who no one recognized, sat at the conference room table and told everyone what it had been like to serve in the military forty years earlier, back when most of the men in the room were still pissing themselves. No one knew how he had heard about their celebration, but they toasted him all the same.
As much as the men tried to focus on the celebration at hand, some of them couldn’t help but talk about the upcoming migration south. These were the same men who couldn’t keep themselves from talking about work during holiday parties. One of them said it sounded like another rally was taking place near the stadium, but the rest of the room didn’t pay attention.
After an hour, Jeffrey couldn’t take any more and went back to his office. He closed the door so the noise coming down the hallway was blotted out. The only things he could think about were Galen’s body being dropped next to the telephone pole as if he was nothing more than an empty box or unwanted trash, his next-door neighbor’s burning house, and the drunken man’s threats toward the helpless dog. What chance did his boy have in a world where people did these things? What hope was there for him or for anyone else? The more he thought about the uncertainties of a declining population, the more he gave credence to Katherine’s constant worrying. He shouldn’t be so dismissive toward her.
His fingertips were covered with a layer of thick dust from where they had been touching his desk. He was here every day, yet his office looked like it thought he had been gone for ten years already. It was amazing how quickly the world could wipe something away. Already, there were reports that Great Falls looked like it had been abandoned since the gold rush, void of people, covered in a blanket of dirt, collapsed buildings. It was simply what happened once the city was vacated and nature returned. Parts were flooded while other parts resembled Death Valley.
