Apotheosis: Stories of Human Survival After the Rise of the Elder Gods (13 page)

“Lexy, it will be okay. I promise. Mommy got hurt, but we’ll fix it. Everything is going to be fine. Why don’t you get your tablet and watch some shows or play a game. We’ll be there soon.” Ben hoped she couldn’t hear the lies in his voice, but it was all he had to give her. Despair had overgrown hope and fear was not far behind.

“Cat, put pressure on it. Hold tight. I know it hurts love, but we can’t stop or he’ll catch us.”

“I know, just drive. I’ll hold on.” She tried to smile at her husband, but even she knew it was more a grimace than a comfort. She lied to him anyway, having spent enough time as the wife of a doctor to know that the bullet had passed through her shoulder, and the amount of blood leaking from it even still sentenced her to death, even if they headed straight to the nearest hospital.

Cat died less than ten minutes later. The blood loss eased her from consciousness into a sleep that turned final moments after. Ben had lied again, telling little Alexandra that Mommy was sleeping, while inside he could barely cope from mourning the loss of his wife and unborn child. Her death brought the reality home. There was no escape from the Mi’go and those who willing served their cause. It was up to him to protect his family, not place them in danger. If he continued on, it only ensured the death of his only remaining child and his sister. Reaching past the cooling corpse of his wife, he removed the gun he’d bought before the occupation for safety, and placed it on his lap as he pulled off to the side of the road.

The truck glided into the truck stop on fumes. Lexy had fallen into an exhausted sleep, which had given Ben enough time to get Cat out of the truck and wrapped into a blanket. He’d laid her in the bed of the pick-up and said his goodbye’s before he leaned against the door, waiting for their arrival. As the first SUV pulled to a stop, he raised the gun to his own head and presented them with the only threat he had left before making his demands.

“You’ll see my wife has a proper burial. I have a sister Katrina; she is spared. I want Alexandra to be with her family. She gets to talk to me whenever she asks. Do this, and I’ll come in peace. Otherwise I’ll blow my own brains out here and now.”

It didn’t take the bounty hunters long to make the decision. They knew the Mi’go would consider it a small price to pay. After agreeing on record, and after copies of the agreement were sent to his sister and a couple colleagues to ensure compliance, Ben gave himself up.

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With the sensors and communication devices connected, it was another form of torture. Endless time to think and realize the imprisonment that would last for eternity. You could still interact with what they gave you, but beyond that you could only think, which is what they wanted you to do. Always be thinking on what they gave you and give them the answers when they made their check-ups. To fulfill his wishes, they’d given him sight and sound. The only thing he could see were the charts and papers they laid before his sensors and the small pink tube. It’d been there for a few hours before they came and hooked the sensors. That’s when Ben learned true despair, as he realized his daughter too had been harvested, while the damned Mi’go had kept to the letter of his demands.

“Daddy? I can hear you, but why can’t I see you?” the voice was robbed of Alexandra’s lyrical tones by the mechanical speakers.

Even when you exist without a body, it’s possible to cry.

by Steve Berman

“Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven.”

—T.E. Lawrence
 

We had survived so long in the abandoned buildings of Kolmanskop because this was a forlorn desert, made so with constant gales carrying fog and grit. A paradox of nature sheltered five of us while the world beyond the Namib went mad.

Sand covered all things. The sand of the Namib retained the bite of gravel while never abandoning its mercurial nature. It forced open every door – every structure in stately Kolmanskop welcomed the desert. This had once been a mining town of German settlers where the wind revealed and hid the shells of humanity. I have walked through a ballroom without chandeliers, a doomed ice factory, and the remains of a hospital. I discovered the tracks I made the prior day gone, erased by the wind, which scratched plaster and color from walls erected more than a hundred years ago when diamonds had been discovered.

I read once that nowhere else on this Earth is wind this constant. It stole words from mouths and ears. It threatened to blind. We had to cover any water, any meals, or else the sand covered them like an inedible spice. I always had the taste of the desert in my mouth, a sensation not so much unpleasant – one became inured to any flavor, however first repellant, after a thousand swallows – but the texture was an irritant; the grit wore down my teeth, my palate, so that anything I chewed became bland. The desert weathered my face, my hands, and any exposed skin. Wrists and necklines were chafed ‘til bloody, became scarred over, then debrided, in a perpetual cycle of scarring. We all stank, changed clothing only when needed, and became familiar with the odors of the others when downwind. I have not had a shower in nearly two years and my body’s topography is no longer the same. Hygiene mattered only if it jeopardized our meager food and drink stores.

When the Internet died – and I still cannot comprehend how anything so rampant, so rife, could die… any more than imagining every bird across the globe becoming mute forever – and smart phones became lobotomized paper weights that would no longer even indicate time or date, I had thought some terrible war had happened. Blinding and deafening Africa south of the Sahara had been collateral damage.

Torschlusspanik
made me decide that my life as a logistics clerk for African Development Bank in Windhoe
k
was over.

I looted books from the public library. I walked in and took what I wanted. No one stopped me. Soldiers watched me with disinterest from the nearby Alte Feste, a monument to the colonial era pressed into service as a shelter.

South I went on roads that would lead me home. As an Afrikaner, a prodigal son of Bloemfontein and a coward. But the car quickly ran out of gas and I had to set out on foot. Trudging along worn asphalt roads, I could not avoid the other refugees. Some travelled in the same direction, some left South Africa. I heard that the City of Roses had fallen to some biological weapon that left buildings full of gall rot and molds. My parents were Calvinists and sure in their predestination, so I didn’t mourn them. I turned back instead.

I entered the Namib Desert because of two German men and their dog. As a young man I read and reread Henno Martin’s
Wenn es Krieg gibt, gehen wir in die Wüste.
My male peers preferred football, the females an undistinguished
plaasroman.
I knew that one could survive the desert, what could be eaten, and
how to find refuge. I began my journey through Sperrgebiet National Park, the Forbidden Territory, believing it would be uninhabited. My fears of contamination left me, taken by the strong winds.

Others, though, had similar ideas. We arrived from different directions and lives. We met at
Kolmanskop and stood and stared. Impasse or concession? Cook is Ovambo, a lapsed Lutheran, and brought a goat-drawn kitchen of pots, utensils, even bags of millet. His younger brother, Toivo, wore a corporal’s uniform, shouldered a rifle, and squinted often. A White Namibian, Ludwigsone, claimed to be a journalist of late who had been covering prejudice at local hospitals. He had stolen first aid supplies, including a great deal of codeine.

We made a pact. We suspected others would come: tribesmen, urban refugees. We admitted that any of us may not last long, that isolation might become an unmanageable burden. We looked long at the cleaver, the rifle, and the needles in Ludwigsone’s bag. I shared the story of an older brother who had been an addict. I saw no need to tell them the truth. Enough years had passed that my perception of brother and lover had no depth.

And so Cook brewed krokodil. We stored it under the sand, above the floorboards of several buildings.

That was, by my estimate, fifteen months ago. I found purpose through everyday chores. With purpose came contentment. At night, I read. I hoped to memorize all of
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
and
Selbstbehauptung des Rechtsstaates
before I died. Both books were dear to me as apologetics for the role of strife in the world.

The fog flowed inland from the coast and brought us water, condensed on plastic tarps stretched taught like sails. Our diet, the occasional lizard, but mostly insects, beetles, and the termites that we found beneath the beautiful and short-lived fairy rings made in the coarse sand, left us with loose teeth and clothes. A treat was goat milk and porridge. We did not hunt game for fear of wasting bullets or wandering too far from Kolmanskop.

At dawn, Ludwigsone spotted four figures stumbling through the fog. The wind on occasion revealed the old rail line that led to Kolmanskop; they must have followed the cracked ties and burnished steel.

As we readied ourselves, I watched Cook use a handkerchief to cover fresh abscesses on his little brother’s upper arm. Toivo would be abandoning us soon, though we may need to amputatee first.

We called out to the trespassers – that was what we named any who came upon us – in Oshiwambo, in Afrikaans, in good German, and in poor English. I waved to bring them closer. They carried nothing. I guessed them Bantu or the like. Their clothes were ragged; they had traveled farther than any of us. Two swayed from hefty stomachs – one man fat, one woman clearly pregnant – and were lead, hand-in-hand, by a pair so lean that the foursome’s stagger up and down the dunes bordered on the comical.

The wind brought back their cries. A scattering of English amid other words that none of us understood.

Salt covered their lips. Why they had not licked the crystals loose I could not guess. Perhaps that would draw fresh blood.

Experience had taught us to keep our gestures and words welcoming. We guided them towards two particular buildings: I lightly pressed a hand on the woman’s back and motioned to the left, while the others suggested that the men stay to the right. The gaunt man leading the woman did not want her to part ways. Cook and Toivo smiled and broke the man’s grip on her hand and gestured again for the trespassers to separate. We offered them water. They saw Cook’s cleave and Toivo’s rifle. They had no choice.

I swept grit off the building’s only furnishings, a single chair and table. I told her to rest and I would bring water.

I took a moment to look in at the others, to make sure that nothing amiss had happened. I had worried that the heavy set trespasser might be difficult to handle, but now I saw how ill he was, bloated and hampered by his round stomach rather than possessing a bullish girth. The makeshift tray I brought had a jug of water, a chipped mug, and a capped syringe. The last I moved to my back pocket. We had seven thin syringes but lacked the bleach to clean them. None of us were really clean, inside or out.

“You traveled far,” I said to her as I set the tray down.

She nodded. Her eyes watched me pour. Once you have been in the desert, you can never look away from running water. It became a living thing that seduced your every sense. The sight of it, the sound, you would hallucinate the taste, the smell, the sensation of it flowing down your throat.

“Why did you come to the Forgotten Territory?” I held the mug.

She mumbled. No food for days can lobotomize a person. I finally understood she was saying, “We are missionaries.”

She wore no cross. Nearly all of Namibia was Christian and the desert beetle had no ear for Jesus’ teachings.

I asked, “Is your heart full, drawn out in prayer unto Him continually for your welfare?” I had heard the Mormons say such nonsense.

She nodded. “I am full. Dof’mru has filled me.” Her hands parted her tattered clothes to show the bare, distended skin of her abdomen. More bloody lines of salt whorled around her navel.

Was Dof’mru one of her companions? Perhaps it was some Bantu name.

“Do you know Ahtu?” I had to ask her twice before she shook her head. I handed her the mug.

We, the gestalt, had agreed to no women at Kolmanskop. We worried they would bring jealousy and discord between us. I had as much use for a woman as my icon Lawrence. I had guessed that the others were suspicions of my tastes and were thankful that I always volunteered to suffer the female trespassers.

I walked behind her as she drank. Thirst had caused the veins in her bared neck to rise to the surface. I did not hesitate – I had never before hesitated whenever I was needed to plunge the hypodermic.

She cried out, but the krokodil worked fast. Faster and more potent than morphine. Her limbs twitched, giving the illusion of a struggle, but it was really easy to lower her body to the sand.

As I went to work – stuffing a dirty rag into her mouth, which caused her caked lips to bleed; shutting her jaw and pinching her nose shut – I distracted myself with reciting a favorite passage from
Der Vater eines Mörders: “Mit seinen braunen, festen Händen hatte er auch zog einmal die Brücke auf Franz 'Instrument um einen Bruchteil eines Millimeters, so dass für eine Weile die Geige war schöner als zuvor klang.”
German was an unrivalled language. I wished I could have seen the Rhineland, but I doubted what I would find now would be anything like I wanted it to be.

The very first time I had to dispatch a refugee, I fumbled around until I broke her neck. Nearly pulled a muscle in my back. Suffocation was simpler, though more time-consuming.

I felt a spasm travel through her body. Unexpected, unwarranted. I looked to her face. Her eyes were still, glazed, I am sure they remained unseeing. But her belly and chest roiled. Despite my grip on her mouth, her jaws were being forced open. A tip of a tongue pushed aside the rag.

A tongue colored not pink but a shade of red so deep as to first appear black until it met the air. It slipped farther and farther past her slack jaws. My own mouth must have hung open in shock. It was no tongue.

Sand slid through my fingers, flew up as my boots kicked, and I retreated a few feet to watch the segmented body escaped the dead woman. Her bloated stomach collapsed. The thing, which was larger than my entire arm, resembled a caterpillar in shape, except it had no tiny legs in the fore, no eyes of any kind, just a lamprey mouth to indicate the head. The rear did have the false feet of butterfly larvae. Above a gaping anus, two branches that ended in something akin to pipe organs wheezed.

That awful sound broke the stupor brought on by shock. I struck the thing first with the water jug, then smashed the mug and stabbed at it with the largest shard. Its blood burned my skin; the pain was not from heat, but the bite of salt poured on an open wound.

I didn’t stop until I had nearly torn it in half. Both my hands and forearms would need to be bandaged. Lost to anger, I kicked the dead trespasser, the thing’s host, before running off to warn the others.

The other three trespassers had been drugged and chained to a wall for interrogation. Ludwigsone slapped the gaunt one and asked about Ahtu, an unfamiliar name several who had wandered across Kolmanskop uttered like a mantra – we had once thought it might be a warlord or a new disease like Ebola, but were still unsure.

I told them about the woman and the parasite. We began to pass words of concern between us while staring at the fat man’s belly.

“They said they came to preach from Natron, which is a lake. I think in Tanzania,” Ludwigsone said. “It was so alkaline people think it petrifies animals, but it just coats them with salt. And it’s blood red from small organisms that live in the lake—”

I grimaced. “This was not small!”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what you saw. I don’t like the sound of it, but the lake’s a fuckin’ flamingo preserve.”

Cook ripped the shirt from the fat man, whose head rolled, his mouth so dry that it hung open without any spittle dripping down to the sand. We could see the skin of his stomach filthy with raw and ruddy patches of salt.

“That ain’t good,” said Cook. “Ain’t right, and I ain’t having it here.”

Toivo shrugged. “Then we kill.”

We were all in agreement. Then the others saw what slithered out of the fat man. Cook swore. Ludwigsone wiped his glasses clean. Toivo took a syringe of the krokodil and walked away.

We would never consume the bodies of trespassers. We were afraid of contamination. But we did drag the corpses to a site and let winds carry the scent to scavengers, like we did with our feces. When you are hungry, what does it matter if you eat a jackal or a dung beetle washed clean?