Soft Apocalypse (7 page)

I unchained my bike from the rack and pushed off into the street, watched the road wind under my front wheel, my face still red. I swerved to avoid the porcelain remnants of a shattered toilet, ran over a fast food paper cup.

My hands on the handlebars looked strange, unfamiliar. I felt vaguely numb, and wished there was some way to wash away that feeling.

Jean Paul was probably still laughing. Sophia hadn’t even tried to intervene. My only solace was that I would probably never see either of them again.

Bright lights and voices on a side street caught my attention. I took a right and rolled by a little crowd lounging outside a freshly painted storefront with big windows. It was an art opening. Christ, there were still art openings uptown.

What the hell. I didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to hear Colin ask “How’d it go?” I didn’t want to recount the humiliation that even now made it hard for me to look passing strangers in the eye. I needed to get lost in distraction for a while. I pulled onto the curb, chained my bike to a street sign, and wandered in through the wide open door.

The gallery was a dimly lit, cavernous room that had once been a dairy, or an auto showroom, or something like that. A line of ghostly, featureless, emaciated figures made of papier-mâché were mounted to the high concrete walls. The figures were all facing the back of the gallery, and were posed as if they were moving, marching toward some faraway destination that they did not have the strength to reach. It was an eerie scene, lifelike despite the otherworldly look of the anonymous figures. They reminded me of my tribe, and made me wonder what I was thinking, coming to this part of town thinking a SCAD woman was interested in dating me.

There was a commotion at the front of the gallery. I turned to see a priest standing in the doorway holding an assault rifle in one hand, an unlit cigar in the other. He looked like he was part East Indian or Arab. His dyed white hair was set in a sumo wrestler’s bun.

“Outside. Everyone outside,” he said, waving the rifle in a sweeping motion toward the back of the room.

The people nearest him scurried away. I retreated into the shadows at the back of the gallery. There were stacks of folding tables and chairs in the corner—I considered trying to hide behind them, but it wasn’t much of a hiding place. A woman cried out.

“Everyone out the back door!” the priest said.

The back door flew open and everyone poured out. I followed, into a dark alley.

There were two men waiting in the alley wearing round gas masks over mouth and nose.

“Against the wall,” one shouted, gesturing with a gas gun. He was dressed in an old-fashioned army officer’s uniform—epaulets on the shoulders and color-coded commendations embroidered on his chest. The other was dressed in a mailman’s uniform. I stood facing the brick wall.

“What’s happening?” a woman sobbed.

“Shut up. Turn around. Face the wall,” the mailman said. He wasn’t really a mailman—I’d heard stories about a gang, a violent political movement called the Jumpy-Jumps, who dressed in outfits and hurt people, and these guys fit the bill.

I heard the guy dressed as a priest come out the back door. He said something I couldn’t hear to the woman lined up closest to him. She murmured something back.

I only had three dollars on me. If these guys were robbing us, I wondered if they’d be angry that I didn’t have more. I didn’t have a watch or a ring, nothing of value.

I jumped at the sound of a gunshot. Others cried out, startled. I looked over and saw the woman crumple to the pavement, blood leaking from her temple. I turned my head the other way, pressed my cheek against the rough brick and stifled a sob.

“God, what is this?” a man said. I couldn’t see him; I was afraid to turn and look. The priest said something to him, low and emphatic.

“What?” the man against the wall said. “I don’t understand what you’re saying to me. I don’t understand what you want.”

The priest said something else.

“Please. I don’t understand.”

I heard the squeal of a gas gun. Then someone falling, and strangled vomiting. People screamed. Someone was trying to answer a question from one of the other men with guns.

I didn’t understand what was happening; it sounded like they were interrogating people, but not giving them a chance to answer.

The priest walked passed me, went to the person next to me—a black guy in his forties. I strained to listen to what he was asking the guy. If I knew what the questions were, maybe I could figure out the right answer, the response that would convince him not to kill me.

Part of me knew there were no right answers. This was just how they did it, to make it more awful.

I risked glancing around, to see if I might be able to run for it. The alley was long and desolate. They would have plenty of time to shoot me before I reached cover.

“How many graves are in Saint Bonaventure Cemetery?” the priest asked.

“I don’t… please, don’t kill me,” the black guy said.

The priest walked away. He came back a moment later carrying a bucket.

He stopped beside me.

“How many graves?” he asked. His mouth was close to my ear, his breath tickling my neck.

I wanted to tell him he’d made a mistake, that he had been questioning the guy next to me. He poured the bucket over my head. It stank—it was piss, or sewage.

He took a step back, looked me up and down. “Where do you live?” he asked.

“East Jones Street,” I said quickly. I was relieved to know the answer. I wanted to cooperate. I craved his approval.

He raised the gas gun, held it to the side of my nose.

“How many steps is it from here to the Oglethorpe Mall?”

“I don’t know what the right answer is.”

“Are you ready to die?”

“I don’t want to die.”

The blast from the gas gun was coming. He was almost finished with the precursors, then he would push the black mask on the end of the gun over my face and pull the trigger. I tried to think of some way to stretch it out, to get him to ask me more questions, to switch to someone else, even if only for a moment. I didn’t want to die. Through my terror I found myself trying to grasp that this was real. There would be a very painful few moments of dying, and then my life would end.

“Eat this.” He held a plastic lid up to my face. There was a stringy, slimy, whitish thing on it, with lidded eyes, little arms curled in toward a torso. It was a fetus, maybe a rat fetus, or a cat. I lifted it off the lid with my tongue, and I ate it. It was horrible; it was chewy and slimy. I bit what may have been the head, and felt fluid squirt across my tongue. I swallowed dramatically, so he’d know that I’d done what he told me.

“How many cats prowl this city?”

“I’m not sure,” I whimpered.

He smacked me in the back of the head, hard. “Run away now,” he said. “We’re not killing mice in rags today.”

I was running before his words fully registered, my shoulders pulled toward my ears, waiting to feel bullets rip into my back. I sprinted out of the alley, turned down the street with the rush of wind in my ears and a horrible taste in my mouth. I was making some sound as I ran, a sound I didn’t recognize and before this moment wouldn’t have believed was within my vocal range.

A few blocks away I spotted two police officers on horseback. I waved and shouted to get their attention.

“They’re killing people, behind an art gallery!” I pointed back up Abercorn.

“Where?” a female officer asked.

I pointed. “Three blocks up, I think, then right—”

“That’s not our jurisdiction.”

“No, but three men with guns are lining people up in an alley and shooting them! Right now!”

“Get lost,” the officer said. She made a clicking sound, kicked her horse in the ribs. In a nonchalant tone she picked up the thread of whatever conversation they’d been having when I interrupted.

I looked back over my shoulder, heard distant gunshots. What could I do to help those people who’d only gone to look at art? Nothing. I could do nothing. I could save myself.

I was afraid to go back for my bike, so I ran as long as I could, then I walked. As I got close to home I stopped at a table set up in the alley off Drayton and bought a bottle of home brew with my three dollars. The guy didn’t ask why I was shaking so badly, or why I stank of piss. The alcohol washed some of the rancid taste out of my mouth.

Colin and Jeannie weren’t home. I didn’t want to be alone; I couldn’t even bring myself to go inside to change, because our apartment was dark and I was afraid. I headed toward Ange’s.

The pattering of water behind a wrought-iron gate caught my attention. I stopped and peered through the gate at a perfectly manicured garden. The shrubs were trimmed in perfect arcs; there was an oval reflecting pool in the center. In the pool was a statue of a woman perched on the edge of a fountain, drinking, sharing the flow with birds in flight. It was so calm, so beautiful. I would have given anything to spend an hour in there.

I kept going, swigging from my bottle every few steps.

When I reached Ange’s house I pounded on the door with the flat of my fist.

Chair, the guy in the wheelchair, opened it. He called to Ange. She took one look at me, shouted my name, and burst forward, tilting off-balance. She’d been drinking, too.

“What happened? Are you all right? Are you hurt?” She touched my arms, my sides, looking for wounds. I didn’t know how to describe what had happened. I did, but I didn’t know how to make it not sound humiliating. I felt like I’d been raped.

Ange led me to the bathroom, past roommates trying not to stare, which was worse than if they’d stared. She reached behind the shower curtain and turned on the water. I got in, still dressed, and splashed water on my face. The water at my feet was sewer brown as it slid down the drain.

“Do you want to tell me what happened? It’s okay if you don’t,” Ange said from outside, her words a little slurred.

I ran my fingers through my filthy hair. “I stopped at an art opening uptown,” I began. I unbuttoned my shirt with trembling plastic fingers, peeled it off and let it drop.

“Go ahead, honey,” Ange said. “I know it was bad. You’ll feel better when you tell it.”

I told it. I gagged and almost vomited when I got to the part about being forced to eat the fetus. I opened my mouth to the precious water, let it spray my gums and teeth, then rinsed and spit.

The shower curtain drew back, and Ange stepped in. She was naked.

She pressed her face into my neck.

“This is just a thing, okay?” she said. “A little distraction. Just some grown up fun. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

We stumbled out of the tub, letting the water dribble onto the ancient Formica, our legs moving in step like slow-dancers. We fell onto Ange’s mattress soaking wet.

Maybe it’s shallow and male, to be able to set aside something awful because a woman takes off her clothes, to forget that retching death-gag echoing through the alley and instead focus on erect nipples. I don’t care. It worked. Ange transformed those first hours from hellish to tolerable.

And I think it worked like an aspirin administered right after a heart attack, minimizing the long-term damage. There was going to be damage—no one sees what I saw and walks away clean—but Ange slipped an aspirin under my tongue just when I needed it most.

I knew it would cost us later. Some women know they can’t do the friends-with-sex thing without getting emotionally attached. Other women think they can do it, but they really can’t. That’s it—all women fit into one of those two categories. But I wasn’t totally opposed to the possibility of it turning into more than friends-with-sex, so maybe it would turn out okay, for a while, at least. Right then I didn’t care.

I dragged myself out of Ange’s bed at six a.m., feeling the grit of old wood under my feet. I’m not good at mornings. The dog-eared posters covering Ange’s walls were not quite perceptible in the hint of gray light filtering through the blinds.

Ange rolled over, opened her eyes.

“I have to get to work,” I whispered.

She nodded, took a big breath and let it out. “You doing okay?”

“I’m good,” I said. I got out of bed, headed for the door.

“Bye, sweetie. I love you, but I don’t love you.”

“I love you, but I don’t love you, too,” I said. I considered kissing her goodbye, decided that was a bad idea, and slipped out.

Two of Ange’s roommates—Chair and an Indian guy named Rami—were in the living room, hunched over the coffee table, which was covered with charts and notes. Chair blocked my view of the table, gave me a look that made it clear I should keep moving. They always seemed to be working, but they didn’t seem to be students. I had no idea what they did. I needed to remember to ask Ange what these guys were doing.

I walked in the street; it was easier than navigating the homeless asleep on the sidewalks, hugging their possessions.

On York I passed an emaciated little girl sitting on a stone curb, her chin on her knees, ten feet from a woman selling walnuts out of an old doorless refrigerator tipped on its back. A woman appeared around the corner of Whitaker Street and waved to the little girl. The woman had just swallowed something. She ran her tongue over her teeth, then smiled at her little girl, held out her hand for the girl to grasp.

I cut through Chippewa Square, rounded the corner onto Liberty, and stopped in my tracks.

The front of the Timesaver was a sea of broken glass. I broke into a run, flew into the Timesaver and found Ruplu sitting on the counter, staring at his ransacked store.

“Amos is dead, they’ve already taken him away,” Ruplu said, gesturing at blood streaked across the floor by the window. He turned and looked at me with red-rimmed eyes. He’d probably been there half the night. “Can you work a double shift and help me get things back in order?”

“As long as you need me, I’m here” I said. Work was just what I needed right now; something to get lost in. I went to the supply closet and pulled out a broom.

“Can I ask you something? Do you think they did this because I’m Indian?” Ruplu asked.

“Yes and no,” I said. “People around here hate foreigners, so your store becomes an appealing target. They also hate rich people—”