Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (21 page)

Kirk dropped his left hand to the sword at his belt as he paced in front of the dusty chalkboard. “Since stellar behavior seems unaffected, I believe Maxwell's demon, while pervasive, must be confined to an envelope close to the Earth's surface. The balloon payload will contain a strobe light connected to a battery that I've saved that will start blinking when it goes above the demon's limit.”

I was sweating by the time I got the steel cylinder to the roof. Compressed gas cylinders had been dangerous, called “Sleeping Giants” by Dr. Rao in his lab safety course. But since the Change, I had lost my caution, dropping the cylinder with a clang. Kirk waited with a limp weather balloon attached to a Styrofoam payload box. The last of the helium hissed into the expanding sack of white rubber. Those high altitude balloons always seemed so pathetic and droopy when released. It rose rapidly in the last golden light of evening. The harvest moon rose fat and pumpkin orange in the east.

“I'm heading out then.”

“If you want to miss this,” he said as if only a dimwit would pass on the opportunity.

I left Kirk tracking the balloon with his binoculars. He craned his neck back and had the telescope nearby for when it got too high for the low power optics.

I took a quick birdbath using our collected rainwater to remove my sweat. I left through the loading dock; the steel door slammed and locked behind me. I walked across the overgrown campus.

I heard music as I reached University Avenue and fraternity row and, except for the dusty and smashed cars on the street, it made me think of previous autumns when school had just started and all the freshmen were being rushed. I crossed near the burned husk of the Sigma Chi fraternity and arrived at the old Sigma Nu house next door, a formidable brick and tile-roofed structure. Patsy Helmsrud and her crew had taken it over, expanding their control from the gardens to the north into campus. A handful of haggard-looking people milled around on the weed-choked lawn and backed off nervously as I walked through them.

Pennington, acting the bouncer in his green tracksuit, waved me up the steps and shook my hand. He smiled and clapped me on the back.

“Heard a story about you messing up the provost's gang.”

“Just a misunderstanding,” I said. A momentary flash of guilt nearly drove me back to Witmer.

“We had some misunderstandings with them too.” Pennington nodded in casual agreement. “Hey, we're starting a five-man football league, to pass the time, if you're interested?”

“I'll think about it,” I said. I forced myself through the massive wooden door, banded with metal and studs like it was stolen off a castle.

“Don't start any trouble, okay!” Pennington called after me and laughed.

Inside, a three piece acoustic band covered Nirvana, Sheryl Crow, and some other popular songs in the large, first-floor party lounge. The band might not have been particularly good compared to what once played on the radio, but they compensated with enthusiasm. Their music quenched a thirst in me that I hadn't noticed I had until now. Too many silent, sleepless nights had passed in hiding, hypervigilant for any sounds beyond Kirk's faint breathing.

I ate grilled squash and onions and boiled beans with bits of ham served from pots in the corner. The cook had splurged on the black pepper. A pleasant contentment flowed from my belly while I scraped my plate clean.

I surveyed the room, but I didn't recognize the guests, a mixture of older neighborhood couples and college-age kids. They all had forced grins and a vast desperation that came with being lost. I wondered what they had gone through outside that I had escaped by hiding in Witmer. The wood floors creaked as people huddled in small groups and the faint odor of stale beer permeated the building. The bottle-blonde from the gardens—Mandy as I had learned—leaned against the stone fireplace and listened to Patsy Helmsrud voicing her opinions on the Fargo emissaries and the lack of common decency among those who stayed behind within the town limits.

Patsy was no fool, nor was she generous by throwing a party or raising civic morale. Everyone who remained nearby attended and saw her wealth and power over the local food supply. Even if someone grew their own, they'd eventually come to Patsy for help in some way. Rabbits, both two-legged and four-legged varieties, had a way of ransacking unguarded gardens. Everyone gushed their thanks and well wishes as they shuffled past her.

After wiping my beard on a sleeve, I approached Mandy. She had cleaned up nicely in a simple skirt and gray cardigan. She looked at me with a strange desire, as if I had a sports car and a massive stock portfolio. We chatted. She had been an elementary ed major from Williston and had been Patsy's work-study before the Change.

“Dance?” I asked with a newfound bravery.

Patsy nodded at Mandy and she accepted. The band played “Candle in the Wind” as we moved close. Mandy curled against me and rested her head on my chest with her hands tucked beneath her chin in a surprisingly vulnerable gesture. She seemed to melt as I caressed her well-toned back. Her hair smelled of dandelions.

Mandy brought a mug of watery beer to me and suggested we should sneak off into the bushes for alone time. I downed the brew and laughed, picking her up by the waist. She giggled and kicked playfully. Then I noticed that Pennington and the other jocks weren't there anymore. I set Mandy down gently and rushed out the unattended door as she called after me to wait.

*   *   *

At the loading dock, with my knee aching from the run, I banged my hatchet against the steel door. I could hear the hollow echoes inside. No Kirk. I considered the tunnels, but we'd left lead bricks on the grating. I circled around the building, but my fortifications held, even against me, their creator. On the south side, I saw silhouettes in the light of the full moon scaling the thick ivy covered wall. I gripped the tough vines and scrambled after them as if I were on a cargo net at an obstacle course.

The climbers had partially torn the vines from the brick above me, so I had to be careful with each hand and foothold. As I crushed the soft leaves in my fists, the tendrils popped free and I could taste the bone-dry mortar dust. The climbers crested the lip of the roof. The damn rooster started crowing as they disappeared from my view. I found a dangling rope, the explanation of how the climbers had reached the top so quickly, and latched on to pull myself up before they destroyed our refuge.

A grapnel fashioned from a fishing boat anchor was attached to the end of the rope holding it at the top. I heaved myself over the short wall onto the roof. I swung my bad leg over the edge and my hatchet slipped from my belt, tumbling to the dirt three stories below. I wiped sweat from my forehead with my hand and realized I had smeared sticky leaf pulp smelling of peppery lawn trimmings on my face.

The five men were near the coop holding pillowcases and a fishing net. The chickens clucked in uncertainty as the men whispered and lifted the coop entrance. I then recognized the white stripes of a tracksuit on Pennington holding the net.

“Those are our goddamn chickens!” I bellowed.

They turned toward me, standing taller and angrier, no longer attempting to sneak. Pennington lowered the net he carried and the four jocks who were with him spread into a semicircular formation. The short white guy was the hockey player from the gardens. The others I didn't know.

“You're not supposed to be here, buddy,” said the squat hockey player.

He drew a machete that had been strapped to his back. The other four also pulled machetes and came at me.

How did everyone in North Dakota get machetes? We didn't have jungle vines, bamboo, or even kudzu to chop through. As they circled, I lunged for the Weber grill. I snatched the domed lid and the heavy steel Williams-Sonoma spatula, a greasy match for any of the battered military surplus Vietnam-era machetes these jocks wielded. I kicked the grill over to spray a cloud of ashes at the ones on the right and slashed with my spatula at Pennington, their leader.

Pennington raised his arm and the edge of the serrated spatula bit into his muscle like a cleaver. The hockey player lunged at me, but I caught his machete in the impromptu shield. The tip pierced the thin metal. I twisted my wrist and pulled the machete out of the short guy's grip. I roared in fury as I smacked the spatula with a backhand swipe across his face. The utensil bent slightly, hitting with the flat. I continued to slash after that. I bashed them with the now dented Weber lid and hacked at limbs and necks. The pent-up rage from not understanding and always wondering what the hell was really going on flared out. The cathartic sense of bone-crunching tackles flooded back in to my deepest sinews, except there were no pads, no refs, and no rules.

I must have gone berserk. I didn't care about the sharp weapons, but only destroying the enemies who held them. I didn't feel nicks or gashes. White ash clung to my sweaty skin coated with coagulated blood, mine and theirs. I felt where they were, where they moved, my detached mind viewing the battlefield from above and the beast inside me clawing across the pebbled asphalt lunging for throats and seeing red and smelling raw meat.

A disemboweling attack rose from below. I lifted my knee to protect my groin. The machete blade scraped against the metal support joint of my brace. I punched him with the spatula's solid handle. I felt a bone compress and give way in his cheek. The jock dropped with a bulging eyeball, unconscious or dead.

Then the silver arc of Kirk's katana appeared out of the night. A dancing tip of deadly accuracy to my brutal, primitive assault. A handful of dismembered fingers bounced off my face. I sank the spatula edge an inch deep into Pennington's skull and then stomped on his neck after he fell on his back. Bloody black innards dropped from the belly of the hockey player as the katana slashed him open. Kirk was the blade's shadow, a servant rather than master.

Then there was silence and I could only tremble. I had crossed the threshold and there was no going back.

“You were awesome!” Kirk exclaimed. “You fought just like a Bubba of the Apocalypse.”

“What's a bubba?” I asked with someone else's hoarse voice. My ears felt hot.

Kirk feigned surprised as he wiped his sword clean. “No bubbas up here? Well, like a redneck, but without the bigotry and more barbecue.”

I dropped the mangled grill lid and the gore covered spatula. Patsy had to be behind this.

“Oh, Jason,” Kirk said morosely. “This is bad news.”

“Yeah?”

I looked at the mess of dead bodies strewn across our roof. What do we do with these? And, I wondered, who would come next?

Kirk sighed.

“Negative results with my balloon. The envelope extends at least ten miles in altitude.”

*   *   *

D
ECEMBER
21, 1998
S
IGMA
N
U
H
OUSE

I had snuck away to see Mandy often throughout the darkest months. She had holed up for winter with the rest of Patsy's crew in the Sigma Nu house. She had been shy at first, pleading that she didn't know about the raid, but I knew she wasn't involved and told her to shush. I threw a snowball against her plywood covered window and waited by the back door as usual.

Patsy opened it and confronted me like an offended sorority housemother.

“What do you want?”

I put my hand on my hatchet and loomed over her. She had avoided me since the harvest dance and I didn't like her sudden courage.

I announced, “I'm here to see Mandy.”

“She works for me.”

“And I don't. Let me see her.”

“Everyone works for someone. You might as well come over, too. I can always use a smart, big guy like you,” Patsy said. “You can't eat principles.”

“We're doing okay.”

But that's when I fully realized my size had become important again, and not just for football. No one cared about my dismal score on the physics GRE or that I failed my prelims twice.

“I am sorry about my former colleagues' behavior,” Patsy said with an empty smile tinged with nasty. “They must have misunderstood my observation that you'd be competition since we didn't have chickens. I never meant for them to attack you. That's not how you get on my good side.”

“They learned the hard way,” I said.

“I guess they did. Come in.” Patsy led me into the warmth of the kitchen. “Mandy, you have a caller!”

*   *   *

M
AY
30, 1999
W
ITMER
F
ORTRESS

Winter had passed, thankfully a mild one, and we'd survived on the dwindling supply of canned goods, eggs, and the most troublesome chickens. I had collected grasses and fallen ornamental plums from the quad to help feed the chickens. I ground the eggshells to feed to the hens to keep them healthy and laying. I also was glad they were back on the roof and not inside where it was hotter. The previous day had been a scorcher, nearly ninety degrees, and it had brought storms. Kirk had sent me to fetch a sandbag from downstairs.

The wind always blew in the Valley, so I wasn't surprised when I caught Kirk sending up his kite on that blustery afternoon with lightning flashing in the distance. I hefted the sandbag and set it down next to Kirk and a tall plastic bucket.

Kirk had made the box kite with aluminized Mylar and wood in our lair when we could barely feel our fingers from the cold. I had helped scrounge the reels of fishing line from deserted basements and garages. The coppery filament coiling the length of nylon line did catch me by surprise. He had tied the end of the line and copper filament to a protruding rooftop pipe and trailed it through a hole in the bottom of the bucket.

“Dump it in there,” he said as he kept tension on the string.

The clouds looked suspiciously green and roiling. Almost close enough to touch, it seemed. The sand came out in clumps as I squeezed the fraying burlap. I juggled the sack as it emptied.