A Different Alchemy (9 page)

That was exactly what had happened, though. But instead of being left behind in the comfort of his own home, the man was stuck on the side of the road, in the middle of what used to be a congested highway where truckers battled with commuters to see who could get road rage first.

“Didn’t you hear about the fire?”

“We did,” the man said, “but it’s just the three of us.” The dog panted happily upon being included.

“What if they loaded your dog in a stadium and burned it to the ground?”

“Why would they do that to a dog?”

“Why would they do it to Blocks?”

The man didn’t offer a response. Jeffrey rubbed the dog behind its ear while the man continued to scan the horizon for a sign of vehicles returning to get him.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” the man said. “Why are you leaving? Heading north, I mean.”

The sky to the south was still dark. Jeffrey needed to see the plague of ashen clouds to remind himself what had happened there. The dark sky was Jeffrey’s answer for the man. His boy wasn’t at home with Katherine but had been burned alive next to thousands of other silent people. The last thing his son had ever seen wasn’t his father’s face, but a stranger’s.

“Your friends have abandoned you. You shouldn’t try to join them. You won’t make it, and you already have everything you need. There are houses just off the highway with food processors and power generators. You’ll have a nice yard where you can give your daughter a proper burial. That’s all you need. Call your wife. She’ll understand.”

But the man continued to stare down the highway, waiting for a van or a monster truck to come back.

Jeffrey could swear there were so many flies gathered inside the man’s car, collected all over his daughter’s face and arms, that he could actually hear their buzzing above the hum of the tank.

“You can do anything you want,” Jeffrey said. “But you’ll be waiting here the rest of your life. Your daughter is just sitting there. Give her some peace. You could find a nice house and live in quiet.”

The man was still staring south. The dog whined as if wanting its owner to shift his attention to anything else but the road. There was no point in Jeffrey waiting with the man any longer. He shook the man’s hand, patted the dog one last time, and climbed back inside the tank.

Even if the man did somehow manage to catch back up to the group, he would just be abandoned again a day or a week later. Surely, he had to realize that. Jeffrey liked to imagine the man living out his days with his dog in an abandoned mansion, just the two of them, living without any worries, a nice marker in the backyard for his daughter.

More likely, the man would wait patiently on the side of the road, night after night, next to his broken down car and his decomposing child. His dog would be there by his side, waiting for someone to come back, even though no one would. They would remain there until the man starved to death or an animal got him. And then he would begin to rot next to his daughter. Maybe then, at last, the dog would have enough sense to wander off, get food for itself, and make a new life.

As the tank rumbled up 95 toward New York City, Jeffrey wondered how a man could refuse to see what was happening. How could a man let himself die by the roadside out of blind faith that someone would value his well-being above their own? Why couldn’t he see the tragedy of what was unfolding? Was it because it was too painful, or was it because holding onto hope and dying was better than living if it meant you were forced to see the world for what it was?

The poor bastard was going to let himself die on the roadside just because he didn’t want to admit he was alone. His daughter, who had never hurt another living thing, would be eaten by bugs in front of him until she was a skeleton. If that was how he was going to be, the man should have taken Galen’s spot in the stadium. At least then Jeffrey would have his son, and the dog wouldn’t feel forced, out of blind loyalty, to sit on the highway next to its master until the end finally did come.

Chapter 6

“Wake up,” Katherine said, her head still resting on the pillow next to his. “You’re going to be late for work.”

When Jeffrey opened his eyes, the sun was already welcoming him. It never stopped shocking him that a world existed in which the black of night gave way to the brightest mornings one could imagine; nature was amazing for working in such a perfect way. Each day had the potential to be a new start to a new life. Birds were even chirping.

The alarm clock said it was ten o’clock. He couldn’t remember the last time he had woken up so late.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, pulling her closer. “I’ll go in tomorrow and everything will be fine.”

He could just as easily never show up to work again and it wouldn’t make a difference. Better not to say those things, though. Those comments made alarms go off in Katherine’s head. Any reminders that life as she knew it was now coming to an end still panicked her. That was why he didn’t add, “Hell, there’s no one to write me up. Double hell, I don’t even think it’s possible to get written up. Triple hell, I don’t even get paid, so they can’t really reprimand me, let alone discharge me.”

“You’re not even going to call just to be polite?”

The high school version of himself would have had to spray paint a billboard to get this kind of a worried reaction from her. He wasn’t sure whether it was an insult or a compliment that as a middle-aged man, simply not calling out of work warranted the same concern.

If he really wanted to disturb her, he could tell her that he didn’t even know who his current boss was anymore after his last boss, a wrinkly-faced commander named Gibson, didn’t come into work and would be, like the rest, never heard from again. Commander Gibson had been Jeffrey’s third new boss in as many weeks.

In Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, with no other generals or even lieutenants left, a squadron of F-22s were loaded with fuel and missiles, for no other reason than the partying pilots wanted to see how much damage they could inflict on a single mountain. The men had nothing better to do with their time. Within a week, a video of the mountain assault had over a million YouTube views. And the only supposed reprimand they got came directly from the Pentagon. All it said was, “Please don’t do that again.” What else could Washington do? They weren’t very well going to send a battalion of men across the country just to arrest some pilots who weren’t hurting anyone but themselves (the only fatality came when one of the planes, its pilot too drunk to land properly, crashed in a ball of fire).

Shortly after the target practice on the mountain, all of the men involved had also disappeared. It was rumored the military had in fact sent an assassin to dispose of the pilots in order to keep them from further embarrassing the country. Other people said the massive series of explosions on the mountain uncased an old treasure that had once been featured on “Unsolved Mysteries”. The men had disappeared to South America with thousands of pounds of gold and diamonds. Others whispered that the men realized their treasure, which would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars at one time, was now virtually worthless, and they all went crazy. Still other people said there had never been any gold or any assassin. The men simply blew up a mountain and then went south to Texas to live out the rest of their lives.

At Fort Dix, the only mischievousness had come in the form of the men using General Warrington’s portrait as the official latrine for a day. These were the types of things he didn’t tell Katherine. If she knew there was no chain of command at a popular military installation, it would just reinforce her notion that she should panic. If he told her there was a hangar full of jets that no one bothered guarding anymore, she would run into the streets yelling as loud as she could. If he told her there were nukes all along the east coast that no one cared to guard, she would go stark-raving mad.

“Now,” he said, wrapping her up in his arms, “the important question is what are we going to do together today?”

She smiled and said she would think of possible activities while she made breakfast and he checked on Galen.

Because a nutrient bag kept his son healthy, the boy never had to eat and thus, never had a need for healthy molars and incisors. Even so, the thought of Galen’s teeth rotting and falling out made him sick to his stomach. This was why he brushed his son’s teeth every morning.

He had even broached the subject one time with Katherine of whether or not they should take Galen to the orthodontist to get braces. She had laughed him out of the room, one of the few times she didn’t try to hide that she was laughing at him instead of with him.

It would have helped his cause if she had seen the same TV program that he had watched about how much some of the parents of Blocks were willing to do for their children. Some took their kids to get their haircut in ridiculously expensive salons. Some took their Block children to spas for pedicures and facials. In the south, it was popular for parents to take their Blocks to Cub Scout and Brownie meetings so they could be around other happy, laughing kids, even if their own kids sat quietly in the corner.

A small stack of chocolate pancakes was waiting for him when he got back to the kitchen. He wheeled Galen in between the chairs where he and Katherine would be sitting.

“I was thinking we could drive out to the beach,” she said. “Or we could go to the park and have a picnic.”

In their high school years, they had made sure to go to Fairmont Park every autumn. In the middle of the park, red, orange, and yellow leaves covered everything. Back in those days, they had actually needed to search out empty spots in the park. Every acre of land was packed with a hundred different couples all with the same idea.

When they went on this day, theirs was the only car in the entire parking lot. Not even a maintenance van or a park vehicle could be found. A series of bikes was leaning against a bike post, all old and rusted, some missing tires or seats. Why should anyone want one when there were abandoned cars lining both sides of the highway?

Not even the homeless, Philadelphia’s forgotten, lived in the park anymore. When he got back from being stationed overseas, the park’s homeless population had seemingly taken over the public land. The vagrants weren’t there now because they had moved into the mansions and luxury townhouses left abandoned after the filthy rich decided to get a head start on the migration south.

Instead of going deep into the park, he put their blankets under the first tree offering shade. Remaining close to the car meant less distance to transport Galen when they were done. Katherine carried the sandwiches and drinks while Jeffrey wheeled their son across the tall grass.

A collection of squirrels formed around them immediately. The critters kept sneaking up to the edge of their blankets like birds poaching breadcrumbs. Katherine counted how many of the little animals were at a tree further down the park, then multiplied that by what she guessed the total number of trees in the park might be.

“Well, that can’t be right,” she said, frowning. “I came up with about twelve thousand squirrels.”

But it may have been close. Ten squirrels were on top of their car, surveying the terrain. Another one was nibbling on the end of Jeffrey’s shoelaces. Katherine gasped—a squirrel was in Galen’s lap, looking up at the boy’s face. Without thinking, Jeffrey lunged for it, but it darted away before he could get it.

Katherine spent her time under the tree re-telling stories of their earlier visits to the park. They had once lost a Frisbee in the top limb of a tree and Jeffrey, in his younger years, had been too stubborn to believe he couldn’t climb up and get it back. She reminded him of the time a policeman warned them not to get too friendly with each other back when all they did was make out.

A faint smell drifted toward them from the trees. It wasn’t pleasant. Once they noticed it, though, it became impossible to ignore. The smell, like smoke, clung to their clothes and their hair.

He left Katherine to fold the blankets while he investigated the stench. It didn’t take him long to find the source. Only twenty yards into the tree line, a blanket of white replaced the normal green and brown ground. It covered an area big enough to lay his house on top of. His first thought was that an entire section of ground must have been spray-painted. But why? It would have gone down in history as the single most senseless act of vandalism in the history of the world.

But when his eyes re-adjusted to the reduced light under the trees, he noticed it wasn’t spray paint at all. It was bird shit. Hundreds of pounds, maybe a ton, of bird shit. Not a single blade of grass could be seen under it. His search for its source was as simple as looking up. Above him, returning his stare, were hundreds of owls. Every branch was covered with the slow-blinking creatures. His very first thought—his survival instincts kicking in—was whether owls hunted in packs. He could handle one owl, only sustaining minor cuts, but if they worked as a team he wouldn’t make it back to his car. Katherine would be left to wonder why her husband disappeared one day, vanishing into thin air at the park.

He heard a little squeak next to him. A squirrel. The next sound he heard reminded him of the air slipping out from a new jar of peanut butter. One of the owls, its wings making a whooshing noise, flew past Jeffrey’s face, scooped up the screaming squirrel, and took it back to the top of the tree. Once it was safely back to its nest, the owl crushed the life out of the little creature with its talons. The other owls all looked extremely excited. The successful hunt, the sound of crunching bones, was driving them insane. Each bird tittered under the cover of leaves. Their wings began twitching. They made eager squawks.

Without taking his eyes off the army of birds, Jeffrey started walking backwards, retracing his steps to where the picnic had taken place. With dogs, you were supposed to walk away slowly. Running would make them dash after you. Was the same true of owls? He had no idea. Each time he took a step backwards he expected a thousand wings to launch themselves at him. But the owls only stared at him as he left.

Galen was waiting to be lifted into the wheelchair and taken back to the car.

“Come on, let’s go,” he said to Katherine. Looking behind him at the trees, he was already closing Galen’s passenger door and walking to his own door.

As their car exited the park, hundreds of owls took flight, ready to annihilate just as many squirrels. The mound of bird crap would get larger and larger until it crept up the side of each tree or spread further across the land. A million years from now every acre of Fairmont Park would be covered in white. Fuzzy tails scattered next to little twig-like carcasses, the only reminder that the squirrels had been there at all.

The day ended the same way it started: with the three of them at the table. Jeffrey and Katherine ate shrimp pasta while a nutrient bag dripped into Galen’s arm to keep him healthy. When dinner was over and the plates were in the dishwasher, Jeffrey took his son outside so they could sit on the porch and watch the sun set.

Once there, he recounted the entire day to Galen as if the boy would have forgotten it already. “Everyone else can go their own way and do their own thing. As long as the three of us stick together, we’ll get through this.”

It made him sad when he realized he could say these things to his Block son but not to his wife. Not sharing his belief that love and hope and good feelings won out in the end just because you wanted them to, she would snort and laugh. Life, she would say, wasn’t that pretty and perfect. She was too practical for that. What they needed, she had told him, was to be among an entire city, to be a part of a congregation of people all struggling for the same thing, to know that everywhere she looked people were worried about the same things she was concerned about.

Every once in a while he could hear a baseball hitting an aluminum bat. At the end of their neighborhood, some of the younger men were reliving their days of playing high school baseball. There were no leagues anymore, not even for fun, but a few guys still got together to play once a week after their Block children were in bed for the evening.

Katherine told him he should join them one night.

“I would if Galen could play too,” he told her. “I’d be there all the time then.”

He never did go down the street and join in one of the games. It would be nice to swing a bat again, to feel it make contact with the ball. But it wasn’t nicer than spending time on the porch with his son. Nothing could beat that. He hoped, somehow, his son could know that was how he felt.

**

At the intersection of 95 and Interstate 1, he had the option of going west into Newark, or even further, to the mountains and the reservations. Or he could go east, past Jersey City into New York City. He paused to look at the abandoned cities surrounding him. New York, the great city, looked like it could have been abandoned for a century already.

The skyscrapers, once part of the greatest skyline in the world, were scabbed over with cracked windows or no windows at all. If water and ice could chisel away a little more of the Grand Canyon each year, the man-made structures didn’t stand a chance. Without people to maintain the roofs, water leaked into the walls, windows, and floors. It had only taken one bad winter for the ice and water to sneak inside each building. Instead of men and women in business suits, the lobbies were filled with ankle-high standing water, birds flying about, and rats searching for their next meal.