A Different Alchemy (12 page)

He even included Katherine in his hopes. Maybe, if they had lived on the beach, where people didn’t rush around from appointment to appointment, cursing the rush hour traffic and the red lights, she would have understood that going south wasn’t the most important thing in the world. With the ocean in front of her instead of steel buildings, maybe she would have been more reassured that the world wasn’t some place you needed to fear.

She had lost something over the years. That was the difference between the person he had fallen in love with and the person who was singularly focused on getting to Washington. What was that thing, invisible and untouchable, that was gone? She had still believed good things happened to good people and bad things happened to bad people. What else was there—her loyalty, her priorities? Something had faded away over the years, something that left her seeming like the person he had loved and married, but made her capable of taking their son to a stadium full of strangers.

When he found himself thinking about her and Galen, he closed the book he was reading and went for another walk. The waves crashed no matter what time of year it was, no matter what time of day it was. That was what he liked about them—their reliability, calming and reassuring.

The entire winter was spent that way. Sometimes the snow kept him inside for a week straight. During those stretches, he found himself constantly trying to think what he could have done to change the past, to think of something he might do differently so his boy would still be alive. Other times, he bundled up and went for a walk during the heaviest storms because he liked feeling the crunch of snow and sand mixing together under his boots. And he read every book the library had that had won the Hugo Award. When he was done with them, he started reading every book in their collection that had won the Booker Award. By the time he finished each one, he felt he had learned something else about the world. Week after week went by that way.

Finally, the snow stopped falling and, eventually, disappeared from the ground so that only the sand remained.

A stack of unread books was already sitting inside the machine, an equally big stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches next to them. The tank started up like it always did. He started moving north again.

Chapter 8

“They’re saying we have too many Blocks to be able to transport all of them.”

“Who’s saying that?”

But the skeleton never answered the other man’s questions.

“They’re saying Providence didn’t have this high of a ratio of Blocks to regular people when they moved, and they still had trouble.”

“Who said that?”

“Remember, we have all of New York’s Blocks now too. They’re saying if we try to leave with this many, it will be at the expense of the people who can actually talk—at the expense of the people who have been kind enough to care for the Blocks!”

That was all it took for half of the audience before they stopped listening; they were already packing their bags. It was critical that they distanced themselves from the obvious disaster that was going to unfold as the caravan left for Washington.

The 120 miles between Philadelphia and Washington wasn’t far by traditional standards. But no one could measure the effect of adding five hundred buses full of people who couldn’t help change a flat tire. And then you had to add another hundred buses on top of that just to carry the supplies needed to take care of those people. Each additional consideration was another potential delay. The possible hold-ups grew exponentially with each person sitting in each bus.

Jeffrey was just thankful the skeleton hadn’t used the grocery store analogy again. It had terrified Katherine enough the first time.

With his gaunt cheeks and hollow eyes, he would look right into the camera and tell people that transporting Blocks to another city was really no different than taking them shopping for food. He would pause for a moment before explaining why that should be so disturbing. It might take a single person half an hour to go grocery shopping, he would say. It might take a pair of people forty minutes because they want to stop and talk about their options. A group of ten people would take an hour in the same store. And with that many people, a jar or a drink would be dropped, glass shattered, and an announcement made on the intercom that a cleanup was needed in aisle seven. A group of twenty people might as well plan to spend the entire night in the grocery store. Now turn those twenty people into a hundred thousand and tell them they have to change cities instead of simply shop for ingredients for dinner.

Jeffrey was used to people saying the Blocks weren’t really people, just shells of people. Not a single day passed that he didn’t hear a new joke about the Blocks. Everyone who had ever made a Polack joke changed focus and began making fun of the people responsible for the end of mankind.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it… can it at least fall on a Block?

How many Blocks does it take to change a light bulb?
I don’t know, I’m still waiting for one of them to tell me
.

What do you get when you combine a Block with a blonde? The best date of your life.

When these things were said on TV, Jeffrey turned the power off. If a neighbor or co-worker said it, he turned his back and didn’t talk to them the rest of the week.

On his way to Fort Dix, he passed an old billboard that used to say ‘Make Dairy an important part of your diet.’ Most of that old message was gone, however. The new writing said, “Blocks are NOT an important part of our lives.” He thought about simply ramming one of the wooden supports elevating the billboard, causing it to collapse on the side of the road. His car would be totaled, but he could leave it there and start driving one of the abandoned cars all around him.

The billboards were just part of the problem; there were more and more fliers stapled to telephone poles and taped to stop signs. None of them were complimentary to the Blocks. The fliers were created by different groups, each with a different level of hatred, but they all suggested—or flat out proclaimed—that Blocks weren’t really people at all, and didn’t need the normal consideration given to everyone else. We aren’t taking the city’s supply of mannequins with us, the pamphlets would say, so why are we determined to take the Blocks? At least a mannequin could be disassembled and thrown in a box. Jeffrey tore these down as he walked past them. Two city blocks later, he would have a stack of them in his hands.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Block. Block who? Take care of me for the rest of your life and find out.

When he showed up to work after missing a day, instead of being asked if he was feeling better or asking if he had some unplanned emergency, he was greeted by everyone saying, “I figured you’d left.” He didn’t blame them, it was the first thought he had each time someone else didn’t show up to work too.

He turned to see one of the other remaining lieutenants coming back for a refill of coffee. The man had long ago forsaken his uniform. For the past two years, he showed up to work in khakis and ugly Hawaiian shirts. He was only outdone by the lieutenant colonel who decided the Great De-evolution meant it was finally time to get the earrings and tattoos he had always wanted.

“I figured we’d never see you again,” the man said.

Of course, Jeffrey could have avoided all the explanations if he had listened to Katherine and simply called off instead of just not showing up. Although this, too, had been done by some of the men skipping town, as though calling out sick and then heading south would give them a head start before the military police came looking for them—no one had been arrested for leaving their post since the beginning of the Great De-evolution.

Sir, I’m not paying for a mime who just sits there. That’s not a mime, it’s my Block brother—the mime is over there.

Priorities reset themselves as the world’s population shrank. Workplace snafus, no matter how important they may have seemed before, were taken as minor infractions. Jeffrey would learn that even workplace violence was sometimes excused.

He was still in his early thirties at the time, old enough to understand adult responsibilities, but still young enough to get heated like an out-of-control teenager. The write-up had occurred after he showed up to work following Galen’s birth. Most of the men had sympathized with Jeffrey’s situation as the parent of a newborn Block. But there were a select few who didn’t approve of anyone trying to have kids once the Blocks appeared.

One such man was Sonny. If you were in the middle of telling a story about getting a speeding ticket, Sonny was the guy who said you shouldn’t have been driving so fast. Everything could have been prevented if you just managed to be a little less stupid, a little more like Sonny.

“Where you been?” Sonny had said upon seeing Jeffrey in the office kitchen.

“Had a kid.”

That was how conversations went around Sonny because no one wanted to talk to the man. Everything he said made you want to punch the closest thing you could find, and Sonny’s biggest problem was that he was often the closest thing.

“What would make you want to have a kid these days? Chances are it’s gonna be a Block.”

Jeffrey turned and started back toward his office.

But Sonny followed close behind. “So is it safe to assume your kid is a Block?”

“Yes, my son is a Block,” Jeffrey said.

“Just great. Another kid we’ll all have to take care of when you get too old to do it yourself.” Not even that was enough to hit another man, but Sonny wouldn’t stop: “I gotta hand it to you, you got a big set of balls to have a kid when it’s almost guaranteed he’d be retar—“

Sonny’s next word was cut off by Jeffrey tackling him. On top of the cheap, industrial military carpet that doubled as sandpaper, Jeffrey held Sonny’s face against the ground with one hand while he punched him with his other hand. One side of Sonny’s face was rubbed raw from carpet burns, the other side was quickly covered in bruises and blood.

Roses are red, violets are blue, your Block is boring, and so are you.

Jeffrey would have thought one of the other men would pull him off of Sonny. Instead, he continued throwing punch after punch while straddling the helpless, screaming bully. Other men had gathered around, but they just stood and watched. Maybe they needed a distraction from their own daily sorrows. Maybe they just wanted to see Sonny finally get his comeuppance. It was only when Jeffrey’s boss at the time, a colonel named Baker, came around the corner and saw what was going on that Jeffrey was ordered to stop.

No one offered to help Sonny back up to his feet. Someone in the crowd whooped with excitement as though they were back in high school and the principal had interrupted some good entertainment between classes.

When he got home, Katherine saw his bloody knuckles and asked what had happened. He hadn’t even had a chance to say hello or ask what was for dinner. Instead of yelling at him, she put her arms around him and told him everything would be all right. His head went immediately to her shoulder. Before he could get a single word out he was sobbing. She held him against her, her hands rubbing him so he almost melted.

“Shh, it’s OK,” she kept saying over and over, which only made him cry harder. “Everything is going to be OK.”

Other than that episode, he was the one holding her while she cried. He perfected the approach after Galen was born and she had a hard time adjusting to having a son who couldn’t speak or move but was otherwise healthy. She had cried a lot in those first months. A little since, but a lot in the early days.

He had gone straight to Baker’s office the next day without having to be told to report there for whatever punishment was in store. With the world seeming to fade away before everyone’s eyes, he had no idea what kind of reprimand to expect. How were the base’s leaders supposed to deal with issues in the midst of more officers sneaking away each day to take their families south?

“We’re all in this together,” Baker had started. “We all know we aren’t going to be here much longer.”

That was the extent of Baker’s speech. He didn’t explain if he meant Fort Dix was eventually going to be shut down, the way the Navy’s base in Connecticut already had, the way all military installations would eventually turn into ghost towns, or if he meant that not a single human would be on the earth much longer. There was no long lecture about how an officer should conduct himself. He didn’t bother threatening a dishonorable discharge or a missed promotion.

As Jeffrey was leaving the office, Baker added, “That asshole certainly had it coming.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Jeffrey was expecting one of the men to tell him Sonny had a couple of minor injuries; he wasn’t expecting to be told of a broken nose, jaw, and eye socket. He also wasn’t expecting to hear that while Jeffrey had not gotten in any trouble, the remaining brass had told Sonny not to bother reporting to work again, that his kind wasn’t needed anymore.

He liked to think Sonny would have actually liked being around Galen if they had gotten the chance to meet. What more could a self-centered guy want than someone who would let him talk as much as he wanted? Galen was the perfect audience for any bad jokes or complaints about your awful day or your unhappy life.

A priest, a rabbi, and a Block walk into a bar… oh wait, no, the Block is still sitting wherever the priest and rabbi left him.

**

He went north along the eastern side of a peninsula. The waves seemed to be calling to him. Parts of the road gave him such a clear view of the ocean that he considered pulling over and walking into the water and giving up his journey.

The map showed a bridge further up the road that would take him east. He prayed the mile-long structure hadn’t collapsed yet. But then it came in sight and part of him wished it had deteriorated so he didn’t have to cross it. The structure was intact, but after getting out and inspecting it closer, he saw parts where the pavement had crumbled completely away and water could be seen hundreds of feet below.

Maybe this bridge would last another year, or maybe it was already ruined and he just wouldn’t realize it until the tank was plummeting toward the ocean below. He had no idea if it would even support a car anymore, let alone something as heavy as an entire line of cars.
So be it
, he thought, trying to convince himself that falling into the ocean was as good an end as any other. It was, certainly, better than his son had been given.

His mind presented him with every scenario in which he didn’t make it across the bridge. He could travel ten feet and then have the bridge collapse. The structure might support him until he was almost all the way across before dropping him into the ocean. Maybe the structure would last long enough as it fell apart for him to jump out and run for safety. Or maybe it would collapse as soon as he raised the hatch and looked out. He would be falling before he knew what was happening. The more he thought of it, the more it terrified him.

Even if he did make it all the way across, he would only be on land for two miles before coming to Newport Bridge, a two-mile structure that dwarfed this one. If he made it over this first bridge, only to find the second one washed away, he would have to turn around and hope he could make it all the way across the first mile-long path, or risk being stuck in between the two waterways on a tiny island for the rest of his life.

As a young man, he had imagined himself becoming a grandfather, getting grey hair and growing old while his grandchildren darted past him. He did not imagine himself dying on some little, deserted island he had never heard of before. And he certainly didn’t think he would meet his end after crashing into the water (in a tank!) from three hundred feet above. The tank inched forward until half of its weight rested at the very beginning of the structure, then, after a minute, the entire thing.

“Well, no time like the present,” he said and the tank lurched forward.

He kept expecting to hear the concrete crumble, the steel cables to snap, before feeling himself become weightless, free-falling toward the ocean below. Just the thought made his lunch want to come up his throat. As he fell, he would want to take a breath but be unable to do so. His head became light at the idea.

Every few seconds he thought he heard a pop or a bang and expected to feel himself falling. Each time, he grabbed hold of the steering levers until his knuckles were white.

It took the tank an eternity to reach the bridge’s crest. Jeffrey’s arms were shaking. His fingers ached. He felt sick to his stomach. And then, finally, the tank started down the other side. He prayed for the land to get closer, faster.

And then the shore approached. He’d never been so happy to see a rocky beach. The tank was on land again.

Part of him wanted an excuse to linger on the island between the two bridges so he wouldn’t have to face the next expanse so soon. At that moment, crossing another bridge seemed as good an idea as a second round of Russian Roulette.

Already, the next structure was approaching. Unlike the first one, being fairly flat, this one took him in the air right away. He had no idea how high the bridge was at its peak, but just seeing it made his fingers start trembling again. How long would it take from the time the bridge gave way and the tank started falling to the time it hit water? That was the worst part. He wasn’t afraid of drowning inside the tank as it sank to the bottom of the ocean; he was afraid of the air being sucked out of his chest as he fell through the sky, helpless.

His chest began to burn.

He drove past an abandoned minivan, two of its four tires missing. Further up the bridge, he passed the torn remains of shredded rubber. That must have been the point where a family had given up and decided to attempt the rest of the journey by foot.

The idea lingered in the back of his head that he could rev the tank’s engine to full speed and outrace the collapsing structure if it was falling from underneath him. It had been done a thousand times in action movies. The thought was fantasy, however. If he had the misfortune of feeling the structure give way underneath him as it started to fall into the ocean, he would be going with it. The machine could go faster than he had imagined, but it could never outrace time or decay or gravity.

The land seemed to disappear completely as the tank pointed toward the sky. He imagined getting halfway across the bridge, only to have a small section at the very middle be missing, and then to have a section behind him dislodge after the tank rode over it. That part of the bridge would fall into the water too. He would be on a tiny sliver of pavement, suspended hundreds of feet in the air, a mile from land on either side. The thought made him wish he were wearing one of Galen’s diapers.

The tank passed a pair of old bicycles strewn across the bridge like a pitiful roadblock. At one time, they had probably been Christmas presents for happy children. Where are those happy children now, he wondered? Will they ever remember how excited they were to receive those bicycles on that cold winter morning? The tank ran over both bikes, leaving behind a jumbled heap of aluminum.

Further along the bridge he saw an old American flag, faded under the sun, tied to the bridge’s railing. Anyone riding a boat underneath the bridge would have looked up and remembered the pride and history of the land they were in. Was a British flag hanging over the Thames? Was a French flag hanging over the Seine? Maybe they were. He liked to think they were.

Just when he thought the bridge might keep going into the sky forever, it flattened out, then began a gentle slope back toward the earth. Looking down at the water, far enough below that individual waves could no longer be seen, he thought back to the daredevils who used to attach bungee cords to themselves and fall hundreds of feet for sheer fun. That was a long time ago, before people began migrating south. Why did he always have to think about those types of things?

Finally, the tank was on solid ground again. He let out a long, relieved sigh.

From his map he knew he could veer right and pass a pond so large it should be a lake. A bird sanctuary was also there. But to see those things he would have to cross a third bridge, and his interest in crossing bridges was gone.

His route took him by one golf course, then another, and then yet another. He had already lost track of how many golf courses he had passed on his journey. Each one was overgrown, more a nicely shaped field of weeds than eighteen holes of sport.

Where were all of the men who used to spend their precious days away from work riding a cart from hole to hole? If they had known what was coming, how would they have spent their time instead? For no other reason than he could, he turned off the road and gunned the tank’s engine to full speed. It’s tread tore up the 7th fairway, the 8th hole’s green, and then a sand bunker. And then, like nothing had happened, he veered the tank back on the highway and continued north.

He came to a bridge that was so small it didn’t appear on his map. This one was only twenty or thirty feet long. Of course, this was the one that was destroyed.

“Are you
kidding me?” he said.

A third of the bridge was gone. He pulled the tank to the edge of the crevice before getting out and inspecting the scene. Looking down, he saw the crumbled remains of what used to connect his side of the bridge with the other side. The drop from the bridge to the ground looked to be around fifteen feet.

For a while, he did nothing but rub his chin in slow circles while his mind worked. Some abandoned cars were nearby. A collection of houses was in the distance. The sun was directly overhead.

“All right then,” he said, “Let’s get the show on the road.”

He moved the tank away from the bridge. Next, he walked to the first abandoned car, a four-door sedan that looked to be in perfect shape, except two tires were completely gone. The keys were still in the ignition. After being inside the tank exclusively, it felt odd to be sitting in a cushioned chair with his legs out in front of him, so low to the ground. When he shifted the transmission into drive, the car scraped across the ground. He took it toward the gap in the bridge. Even at such a slow speed, the metal wheels whined against the concrete and little sparks kicked off the ground. With the car at the edge of the gap, he got out and pushed as hard as he could until the front two tires fell over the edge. The car’s weight released from his pressure and dropped into the void. It landed face-first on the ground, then rolled over on its top so two tires and two metal wheels stuck in the air like a surrendering dog.