Black Box 86ed (17 page)

“How’d you do that?”

He freezes like he had to reboot to answer. His head snaps
up as he looks behind us again.
“What’s that coppers?”
He asks. “It’s what?
It’s closin time? Well shoot where’d the day go? You busy bessies best be getting outta the store cause theys closing up!”

“What happened to your mother?” Grace asks again

Lowering his voice to just above a whisper
.
“The stores closing you best be getting outta here before they turn the lights out on you!” The man starts to creep slowly
towards us. His eyes fixed on G
race.

“We aren’t going, we have to get food.”

“Yous gona have to come back tomorrow when we open. We gotta close up, get home to our mamas.”
He continues to slowly walk towards us his eyes never waver from Graces, never
blinking. He gets about fifteen
feet away.

Roger pulling his gun, “that’s close enough I think.”

“Ooooo you don’t wants to be doin that boy George!”

“And why’s that?”
Roger asks.

They man’s eyes break from Grace’s. Shoving his hand into the back of his underwear, pulling it back out
in the shape of a gun.
“Now I didn’t want to have to do this.” His eyes widen, his mouth curtailing into an almost impossibly large smile as he slowly continues to creep towards us.

“Hey! I said that’s close enough!” Roger’s voice giving way to a slight tremble.

The man flings up his hand pointing it directly at Roger. “When they turn the lights out on you, your sins are the only things that know the way through the darkness. Now coppers get em!” He screams twirling
around into a dead sprint, and runs into the toy section laughing manically.

We stand silent and stunned.

“Do… do we go after him?”
Grace asks

“Not unless one of us has a PhD in crazy, what we need to do is get the hell out of here. I’ll head to the packaged food they should would still be good,” I offer
.

“That sounds good, I’ll go find some bowls and silver wear. Grace could you come with probably best to have some sort of buddy system
with that guy here,” Over asks. G
race nodding in reply.

I head to the end of the aisle towards the can goods. Turning the corner my feet slipping out from under me as my head bounces off the tile floor now covered in,
uhh I think an odd mixture of ketchup and soy sauce. I look
down to a painting going most of the way down the
aisle. Like so many
pictures on my fridge at home, a mural about twenty
feet long. It’s, it kinda looks like a story. The first part a woman and a small boy standing in front of what
looks like a church. Smiling little red ketchup smiles,
holding little red ketchup hands. A little farther down, it’s what looks like
a
man added to the picture, the child in the middle they are all smiling and holding hands.

“O LORD WHO ART IN HEAVEN!” I hear the crazy SOB shouts from what sounds like halfway across the store now. Trying my best to ignore the chill going down my spine I continue down the condiment art show.

The next one is the just the child and the woman but they are both sad. The next another man comes into the picture, this time the boy is on the side by himself as the other two hold hands smiling. The boy this time his face completely filled in with ketchup. Like a balloon just red, in the middle of his chest a blob of grape jelly. I guess he was never into the subtle nuances of modern art.

“O LAWRD WHO ARTITH IN HEAVENS,
HOLLOW IS THY NAME!” He sounds like he’s screaming from the other end of the store now.

Shivers once more flow down my back as I start grabbing everything that looks good and head to the end of the aisle. Roger, Over and Grace already waiting for me.

“Let’s just get out of here that guy is really fucking with my mind,”
Grace says.

“THY KINDOM HAS COMES! THY KINDOOM IS COMING!!!

“Ya defiantly,
” I agree.

We head towards the front of the store. I scan the aisle of clothes half expecting him to pop out and try to eat us alive. But there is nothing but the latest fall trends
the
attention getters on each rack filled with women whom if they weren’t so celebrated for their sexuality they would be treated for anorexia.

“God what the fuck is up with that guy?” I ask.

“He was obviously committed. Did they really just forget him in the insane asylum?” Over asks.

“I don’t know, maybe they weren’t prepared for such a big attack ya know. They must have just rushed out of there.”

A crash comes from the electronic section towards the back of the store, followed shortly by the fumbling of radio stations settling shortly
on a hard rock song then quickly shut back off. “DAM DEVIL MUSIC!” We hear shouted over the shelves.

Grace pausing then parts a line of clo
thes. There’s a dollhouse, a man and woman
are sitting at the table in the little doll
living room with a drop of spaghetti sauce in from of them.

“Holy shit,” she
gasps.

I look over the house to a display couch; a mannequin with a nightie
and smeared lipstick sits perfectly straight on it. A little travel pillow in its lap with what looks like a drool spot on it. A bowl of spaghetti
sitting on the armrest
next to it.

“O my god that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen!” She cries. “We can’t leave him, we have to do something.”

“Hey we have to go, he could have killed his mom who knows what he’s capable of.”

Grace hesitates but doesn’t argue as we leave through the broken window.

A helicopters hovers down the block.

“Ok looks like we gotta stick to the back yards,” R
oger advises.

“Ya the streets are way to open,” I agree. We take off down the building. Running around the side towards a subdivision, we head north passing around the bags of chips and lunchmeat we took from the store
.

“What do you think is going to happen to him?”
Grace asks obviously wishing she could do more to help.

“Well he defiantly won’t starve to death. When this all blows he’ll probably just get arrested and they will send him back to the hospital or where ever he was at,” I comfort.

CHAPTER...

“Where are we going to go?”
Grace asks as she stuffs a handful of potato chips in her mouth.

“I don’t know where do you want to go?
”

“I want to see my parents.”

“You want to go to Florida?”

“I don’t know I just want to know if they are ok. I don’t know they are probably not home anymore, I doubt anyone is still in their homes.”

“Where would they go?”

God I don’t know they could have tried to go to my house for all I know.”

“Here how about this we’ll get out of the city, circle around and go through Elle. If they aren’t there then we can drive to Florida.”

“You would really do that?”

“Ya of course if my parents were still alive they would
be the first things on my mind. P
lus I don’t exactly have any major plans for the weekend,” I smile.

“Thank you Will” she says wrapping me in a hug.

I pull her as close to me her hair wafting into and whipping my face. I hold her, letting her decide how long this embrace will last. But, something catches my eye. Something very distant yet very shiny at the edge of the horizon.

“What the hell?”
I hear
Ro
ger exhale behind me.

“What is it?”

“You… You don’t think it’s some kind of bomb do you?”
Roger asks.

The question ignored as we stand watching awe struck as the light slowly grows.

“We... we need to get the fuck out of here,
” Over whimpers almost to himself.

Grace turns and looks a
s she grabs my hand.
“O my god it’s a bomb it’s gotta be!”

“What no, it looks like it’s already on fire though,
” Roger observes.

“O god you don’t think it’s a plane do you?
Like someone accidently shot down a plane?
”

“Why the hell are we just standing here to find out what it is, we need to get away from it” Over cries.

A soft sound floats to us, like air flowing out of a teakettle. Slowly growing louder. The object finally getting close enough to where we’re able to see what looks like it’s shedding it
self.

“It’s... is it falling apart?”
Grace asks.

“Well ain’t no bomb I’ve ever seen but we sure should be getting to some cover.”
We side step under the nearest tree as it slowly careens overhead. Bits of metal and god knows what sprinkle down on us.

It’s certainly not a plane, I think as I watch it fly overhead. It’s mostly made of what appears to be metallic cylinders with what looks like
the remnants of pretty good sized square solar panels. The once soft
teakettle noise now a full throttled squeal of hot air and twisting
metal. Flying almost directly over us straight south to downtown Chicago.

“A satellite?”
Roger questions.

“Looks like it to me,
” I reply.

“Jesus they even got satellites raining down on Chicago. God how’d that happen?
”

“I don’t know, I means it’s not like the rebels shot it down you know?”

“Ya but they could of brought it down, like with some science mumbo jumbo bullshit?
”

“And what are the odds of that?”
Ov
er asks

“About as good as us having satellite pieces rain down on us,” Rog
er retorts.

We hear a man shouting down the block. Following the voice a man in maybe his early seventies standing on his porch waving his arms over his head.
“Hey, hey, help!” He yells over the wind.

“Hey, look.”
Grace points.

“What should we do?”

“I guess there’s no harm in seeing what he needs help with,”
Over sighs. Walking up to the house I immediately noticed his eyes sunken with heavy bags under them.

“What’s the problem?”
Roger asks.

“It’s my wife. Can you help me?”

“I mean it kinda depends ya know,” Over replies
.

“Here follow me.”
He
turns in
to his house.

Walking in the stench of old mothballs and stale cigarette smoke hit
s my face.
The house obviously suffering from a lack of upkeep, the hardwood floor having a
noticeable give with each step. We follow the man into a
stuffed and stifled living room.
I stair at cobwebs in the far corner of the room just under a series of yellowed cigarette smoke stains on the ceiling. The old man
kneels down in front of a woman in a wheelchair. Her breaths shallow and wheezing. From the back her paper white hair matted and stringy lacing over a Technicolor robe. The old man whispers something into her ear. Shuffling through
the room Roger, Over, and I make our
way in front of the woman. Her face a shallow grayish white, the veins under her eyes lightly showing
as they lead down to nasal cannula
hooked into her nose. The man kneeling beside her
adjusting a dial on a large oxygen tank with its needle
in the red. I look to Roger his face sunken knowing the questions abo
ut to be asks by the old man.

Whispering to him,
he nods getting to his feet with a crackle coming from his kneecaps. He bends over the table grabbing a pack of Virginia slims, he lights one handing it to her.

“I’m guessing you know what I’m going to ask of you folks” he sighs.

“We can’t get her out of Chicago if that’s what you’re asking,
” Over says almost bitingly.

“No…no it’s not that. We are staying here it’s just her oxygen. You see she has emphysema and without her oxygen she’ll ahh… she’ll more or less suffocate without it.
”

“What do you want us to do about it we don’t know where one would be,
” Over spits.

“Hey calm down,
” Roger whispers.

“Well, it just so happens that I do know of one only a couple blocks from here I would of gotten it by my arthritis keeps me pretty limited in what I can carry.”

Over sighs, “Where is it, and how heavy is it.
”

“Well I was bird watching the other day off the back porch. I saw an ambulance hit a light pole. The they just left it, I guess given the circumstances they have more to worry about than towing an ambulance.
”

I look back to the woman her face expressionless as she takes shallow puffs off her cigarette in between gasping breaths,
staring lifelessly into a blank TV screen.

“Could we have a minute to talk this through?”
Roger asks.

The man’s eye light up “yes, yes take your time! Mr....?”

“My names Roger, this here is Over, Grace, and Will.”

“It’s a pleasure, my name is Cliff and this is Cynthia.” Shaking each of our hand he turns leading us into the kitchen. “Here take as long as you need.
Would you like some coffee or tea
?”

“We’re fine thanks.”
The man
leaves heading back
to the living room.

“We don’t have time for this. And I for one do not think it’s a good idea to take unnecessary risks for a woman who’s basically already killed herself.”
Over says.

“It’s barely two blocks away” R
oger replies.