The Alex Crow (11 page)

Cobie Petersen proved me wrong on that statement, too.

It turned out that,
as a group, the counselors of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys—to a man—were not the kind of people most normal parents would give their boys away to for six minutes, much less six weeks.

This is what happened to us while we explored the hidden secrets of the counselors' locker room that had no lockers:

As I sat there folding Larry's underwear into the neat pile from which it had mostly scattered, Cobie Petersen decided he would keep one of the bottles of vodka from Larry's cabinet.

“You guys ever been drunk before?” Cobie asked.

Max shook his head. “I took a couple gulps of my dad's beer one time when he wasn't looking.”

“Well, I don't think I'll try Larry's vodka, but I'm gonna steal it anyway,” Cobie said. “You never know.”

I had heard people use that phrase—
you never know
—many times since I came to America. To this day, it still perplexes me. I never knew what
you never know
was supposed to mean. If you
never
knew, you would probably be incapable of thinking at all.

Max shrugged and said, “Yeah. You
do
never know.”

Cobie and Max argued about what to steal. Cobie wanted to take as much as we could carry, but Max insisted on taking what he called “small shit,” so our thievery would be less detectable. The boys went deeper into Larry's cabinet. Max pulled out a plastic bag with what looked like wads of velvet moss inside.

“Holy shit. Larry's a pothead,” Max said.

Cobie Petersen took the baggie from Max, opened it, stuck his nose in, and inhaled.

“This is good stuff,” he said.

I folded, and tried to ignore what Cobie Petersen and my brother were doing. That was another thing I'd noticed since coming to America—particularly since enrolling in the ninth grade at William E. Shuck High School: An awful lot of boys smoke pot. I had never seen pot in my life before starting high school, where it seemed to be just about everywhere. Boys smoked it and sold it in the toilets and locker room as though school were a never-ending orgy of fun, so by the time I entered Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys with my ninth-grade American brother Max, I was acutely aware of what pot looked and smelled like.

And I could smell Larry's pot from where I sat folding his boxers.

“Don't take it all,” Max said.

Cobie pinched two thumb-sized nuggets from the bag and slipped them into the front pocket on his shorts. And they found some rolling papers and a lighter. I knew there would be trouble ahead.

Max flicked the lighter and said, “Now I really
can
burn down Jupiter.”

“But don't, okay?” I said.

“Let's see what's in Horace's cabinet,” Cobie said.

Horace was the counselor from Mars. Nobody liked Mars. Well, at least, none of the relatively
sane
boys at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys liked Mars, which meant Cobie, Max, and me.

“This is like being on a shopping spree with someone else's credit cards,” Max added.

And Cobie told me, “Hurry up. Put Larry's underwear back. We're moving on.”

At Horace's cabinet, Cobie Petersen announced, “This is like a goddamned pot dispensary.”

As it turned out, five of the six cabinets we looked in had pot in them. And every one of them had some type of alcohol. Also, Max found an open box of condoms in Horace's cabinet.

“Check this out.” Max held the condoms in front of Cobie Petersen's face.

Cobie said, “Dude. Who would bring a box of condoms to summer camp?”

“Horace would. That's who.”

“
Why?
”

“Uh. Why do you
think
, Dumpling Run Boy?”

“But there's only
guys
here,” Cobie Petersen pointed out.

“Duh,” Max said.

“Oh. That's really gross,” Cobie said.

Max pulled one of the condoms out of the box. It was sealed inside a square red foil packet, about two inches wide. “I've never actually touched a real condom before.”

“Is there such thing as a fake one?” I asked.

Both Cobie and Max stared at me as though they couldn't believe I had willingly joined their conversation about condoms.

“Well, I'm taking one.” Max slid the condom into his pocket.

Cobie Petersen repeated himself. “
Why?
”

“You never know,” Max answered. “Might be fun sometime when I need to
squeeze home the runner on third
or something.”

“Dude.”

“What?”

“Do you play baseball?”

Max shrugged. “Doesn't everyone?”

“You are so gross.”

And Max held the box of condoms out to Cobie Petersen.

“Admit it. You want one, too, don't you?”

Cobie Petersen thought about it. He looked at me. I could clearly see his cheeks reddening.

Then Cobie nodded and shrugged. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

Max handed one of the red condom packets to Cobie.

“How about you, Ariel?”

I was horrified by the offer. But I was also touched that Max had somehow managed to cross the bridge between us and begin to act as though I existed in his world.

I shook my head. “No, thanks. Horace probably needs them more than I do.”

“Yeah. There's only one left, anyway,” Max said. “You'd be a real dick if you took Horace's
last condom
.”

Before we left, Cobie Petersen summed up his assessment of the six counselors of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

“These guys are a bunch of drunk, druggie perverts.”

And I thought, considering the things we'd stolen from the counselors' cabinets, this was an amusing and hypocritical accusation for Cobie Petersen to make.

“Who apparently don't read books,” Max added.

That was because we'd found Mrs. Nussbaum's book on male extinction on the bottom floor of every counselor's cabinet, usually beneath pairs of muddy tennis shoes or piled dirty laundry, which I was enlisted to lift out, because Cobie Petersen said the only place better for hiding things you don't want people to find than beneath your clean underwear is in a pile of a guy's
dirty
underwear.

In the end, we added a small flashlight, three warm cans of beer, and a signed copy of
Male Extinction: The Case for an Exclusively Female Species
to the loot.

I wanted to read Mrs. Nussbaum's book.

Like my American father, Jake Burgess, I was fascinated by the idea of extinction, especially after meeting our anguished family pet, Alex.

We took our stolen trophies and followed Cobie Petersen along the trail in the dark woods that led to the old well house.

It was half past two in the morning.

“We need to find a good spot to hide this shit,” Cobie said.

“If anyone comes, we should all take off in different directions,” Max offered.

Cobie Petersen nodded. “Probably a good idea.”

Jake Burgess
'
s first attempt
at de-extinction focused on a species of worm with legs.

In those days, just out of graduate studies and newly married to Natalie, Jake had been eager to stumble upon anything at all that might please the directors at Merrie-Seymour Research Group and Alex Division. He had been moved to Alex Division after inventing a type of eyeglass that stimulated the visual centers in the brain and made blind people
think
their vision had been restored.

The higher-ups at Merrie-Seymour Research Group were very impressed by Jake Burgess for his extreme dedication, creativity, and unique talents.

Everyone knew the eyeglasses Jake Burgess invented were absolutely useless, and all the people who tested them injured themselves or walked out into the path of oncoming buses. But Jake and the Merrie-Seymour people weren't as interested in those minor consequences as much as they were interested in finding out what, exactly, the sightless people saw when they put the glasses on.

Since they had no words for the things they saw, none of the subjects of the eyeglass research could precisely say what the eyeglasses showed them.

The ones who survived needed a new language, apparently.

Jake Burgess's resurrection of the worms with legs succeeded, but there were only male specimens from which the Alex worms could be created. Another strange thing Jake noticed about the worms was that in an experiment to test conditioning responses to negative stimuli, the worms consistently moved themselves toward the small metal electrodes they were
supposed
to avoid.

All the worms electrocuted themselves.

Alex, the crow, came from a species of Polynesian crows that had gone extinct in the late 1800s. Jake Burgess was confident sufficient male and female samples of the birds' genetic material had been accumulated in natural history museums around the world to repopulate a self-regenerating species.

The crows had gone extinct because their blue-black neck feathers were highly prized in the British hat-making industry. It took roughly twenty-seven crows to make one hatband.

Jake Burgess's Alex crow project was a resounding success, and he brought home one of the first young crows he created from the cemetery of the past as a gift to his wife, Natalie, just sixteen days after Max, my brother, was born.

That also happened to be the exact day that I was born, and precisely fourteen years from the day when a broken refrigerator would save me from extinction.

F
RIDAY
, J
ULY
30, 1880—
L
ENA
R
IVER
D
ELTA

Mr. Warren and I used wood mallets and chisels heated in a fire we'd made at the entrance to the cave to free Katkov's beast from the ice.

While we worked, Murdoch stood guard outside with our bear rifles, even though we knew there was nothing human left to guard against. I am convinced I must be insane, and there is little justification I can present for the selfishness of my actions unless to offer as an excuse the debilitation we have all suffered consequential to what has been nearly a year-long ordeal trapped in this ice.

We are all the same as Katkov's beast, and the time has come for us to be free.

Five months here at the Lena Delta have driven us to once again attempt to seize control of our fate.

This was entirely unplanned—let me assure you. When the argument with Katkov intensified this morning, the drunken Murdoch—in his steadfast loyalty to me—drew a knife and stabbed the man several times, delivering a mortal wound to Katkov's neck.

Most of the inhabitants of the village were away, hunting and fishing in the clear summer weather. Those who remained behind—three men, including Mr. Piedmont—were executed with Murdoch's rifle, and burned inside Katkov's shelter.

I must be insane.

The weather has improved dramatically and it is our plan to make a crossing to the Russian outpost of Belun, where we hope our tale of survival and the destruction of the
Alex Crow
will earn us transport west, toward civilization.

I have Katkov's map and have studied our course. We will either escape or die in the attempt.

S
UNDAY
, A
UGUST
8, 1880—
B
ELUN

Arrived at the Russian outpost of Belun this afternoon, having traveled here with Mr. Murdoch, and the newspaperman, Mr. Ripley Reed Warren.

It is entirely by some miracle that Warren and I managed to bring our small party to the commandant here at Belun, where I truly feel that we've been delivered from hell.

Mr. Warren will not speak to me about the incident at Lena River Delta.

His distance troubles me greatly.

We are all that remain of the
Alex Crow
expedition, and the only survivors—if one could call us that—of the deadly events at the village on the Lena River Delta. Murdoch, poor demented soul, is almost entirely sightless from our months in the ice. He insists he has been stricken blind by Mr. Katkov's beast.

I have bandaged Murdoch's eyes—and we led him here as one would lead a dog on a leash—in the hopes that some days resting the nerves will find his vision restored.

It is the strangest family imaginable—two men who do not speak, and a third who cannot see.

- - -

So I will say this:
As a child, I was adopted by my aunt and uncle, and after I came out of the refrigerator I was adopted by a soldier named Thaddeus. Then I suppose I was adopted by the small family at the gate. There were still two more families ahead of Ariel—three, if you count the time I spent with Major Knott.

I have had many lives before we met, Max. I have been extinct, and brought back again and again and again.

- - -

Once we had all crossed through the gate, the four of us walked until well after dark. I offered to share my water, but the man—his name was Garen—told me they had their own water in the wagon, which was piled quite high with the family's belongings.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“There is a camp. It will take us two or maybe three days to walk there,” Garen said. “You could go faster if you went on ahead of us. We are slow.”

“I don't mind,” I said. And then I thought, what if they didn't want me to walk with them? So I said, “I don't have anybody. I don't mean to bother you. Would it be all right if I walked to the camp with you and your family? I could do things—help out.”

The woman—Garen's wife—was named Emel, and the baby—a girl—was called Thia. I think the woman may have sensed that I was scared to be alone.

Garen asked, “You're not a thief, are you?”

“No.”

“Did you pay for the bottle of water?”

“A friend gave it to me.”

“Friend? You told me you weren't from around here.”

“I'm not. But it was my friend's. I knew him from school. I found him dead in a market stall. The water belonged to him,” I said.

Garen nodded.

“I can pull the wagon for a bit, if you'd like me to,” I said.

“Why would you want to do that?” Garen asked.

I shrugged. “To help.”

Garen kept his eyes forward, focused on the empty road ahead of us.

He said, “You're too small.”

“I'm fourteen years old.”

Garen stopped walking and looked at me.

“I thought you were younger. Maybe it's the clown costume.”

“Maybe it is,” I said.

Then the woman, Emel, spoke. She said, “We have some clothes in the wagon that would suit you better.”

“I don't have any money,” I said.

“It's all right,” Garen said. “Maybe you could pull the wagon for a bit, and I'll find you something better to wear in exchange for helping us. I am tired of pulling this thing.”

I looked down at my clown suit. The knees were torn open on both legs, and the seam under my right arm had completely separated.

And I said, “It would be nice to finally get rid of this thing.”

- - -

The melting man met
Crystal Lutz at a thrift store in Lafayette, Tennessee, where he went clothes shopping two days after wiring Francis MacInnes's cell phone to his red mercury atom bomb.

“Everything is working out perfectly,” Joseph Stalin said.

“Well, except for all the boils on your skin, and your bloody diarrhea. And hair loss,” 3-60 pointed out.

“Other than that, things couldn't be better,” Leonard Fountain said.

Leonard Fountain woke up in the jumble of rags and matting he fashioned into a bed in Mom's Attic in the steaming and gaseous, fetid petri dish of his converted U-Haul moving van.

“Does she ever
shut
up
?” Joseph Stalin, as always, was irritated.

“Sometimes she does,” the melting man answered.

“You are getting out of bed. You need to pee,” 3-60 narrated.

“Yes, I need to pee,” the melting man agreed.

Leonard Fountain realized two things while urinating outside his van, which was parked down a dirt road in the woods outside Lafayette. First, the metallic drone that had been sent by the Beaver King was watching him pee, which made him nervous, so it took a long time before he could manage to get a stream going.

Nobody likes being watched by the Beaver King when he pees.

Second, his clothes were pasted to his skin, and he didn't have anything clean to change into.

Leonard Fountain was a nonstop reality show to the people at Merrie-Seymour Research Group, who had actually been watching him for many years.

“The Beaver King is watching you pee,” Joseph Stalin told him.

“So are you,” the melting man pointed out. “It's hard to pee when Joseph Stalin and the Beaver King are watching me.”

“Your clothes are ruined, and I am watching you pee, Lenny,” 3-60 told him.

“Everyone needs to stop watching me pee,” the melting man said.

It always made Leonard Fountain nostalgic when 3-60 called him
Lenny
. It reminded him of his little brother. He had tried to phone his brother twice the evening before, but there was no answer. The melting man had only a vague idea of where his brother might be; it had been years since the two had actually seen each other.

“You need to find some new clothes, Lenny,” 3-60 said.

The melting man's zipper was so clogged with goo and filth, he couldn't close his fly.

“Your zipper's down,” 3-60 pointed out.

“I wish I could slap you both,” Joseph Stalin said.

Leonard Fountain, his zipper hanging open, shut the cargo compartment of his van, climbed up into the cab, and drove into the town of Lafayette.

Leonard Fountain decided to shop for a fresh change of clothes at the Lafayette First Church of Christ Charity Thrift Store. The thrift store had everything the melting man needed, even underwear. For just a moment, the melting man found himself wondering who would actually donate old underwear to a charitable organization, and what type of person would buy someone else's used underwear? Even the melting man had standards, but despite this reluctance, he selected two pairs of boxers and three pairs of briefs, anyway, along with some socks. And on the top of the rack where the men's underwear dangled from clothespinned hangers was an assortment of hats of all types.

The melting man, who had lost nearly all his hair from the toxic mix of radiation and mercury in his van, thought a hat might be a good idea. He picked up a dark gray homburg and lifted it above his head.

“Hey now! If you try on anything, you're going to have to buy it!”

Leonard Fountain didn't realize a fat man wearing suspenders and long johns behind the counter was watching him.

“Huh?” the melting man said.

“You heard me. No trying on unless you buy it,” the man said.

“You should kill him. He's been watching you,” Joseph Stalin said.

Leonard Fountain put down the homburg. “I left my gun in the van.”

“That plaid stingy-brim would look good on you.”

At first, the melting man imagined it was 3-60 who'd directed his attention to the plaid hat, but it was someone else. A woman stood on the opposite side of the rack of men's underwear. She pointed out the hat for Leonard.

Crystal Lutz worked at a sausage factory in Farmington Hills, Tennessee. Her typical eight-hour shift involved preventing traffic jams on the bratwurst line. She monitored quivering chunks of meat and fat as they marched along a metal conveyor belt and into a pulverizing machine.

Leonard Fountain—the melting man—looked like sausage meat to Crystal Lutz.

Of course, Crystal Lutz didn't actually exist. The small, malfunctioning tissue-based machine Leonard Fountain had been paid one thousand dollars to have implanted behind his right eye had been scripting and broadcasting its own show for the past decade.

“Huh?” the melting man said.

“You are turning red and getting aroused because the pretty girl is talking to you, Lenny,” 3-60 told him.

“Don't try it on,” the man behind the counter said.

“That one there.” Crystal Lutz pointed again. “I think it would look good on you. My name is Crystal.”

“Um. Hi, Crystal,” Leonard Fountain said. He was sweating and melting, and insanely horny. And Crystal Lutz was exactly like Joseph Stalin and 3-60, except for one thing: The melting man could see her.

“What's your name?” Crystal Lutz asked.

“Igor Zelinsky,” Joseph Stalin told him.

“Igor Zelinsky,” Leonard Fountain said.

Crystal Lutz smiled like she could eat Leonard Fountain on the spot, if she were real, and if she were a cannibal. “Igor's a bitchin' name.”

“Say thank you, Lenny,” 3-60 instructed.

“Thank you,” the melting man said.

With Crystal Lutz accompanying him, Leonard Fountain purchased two pairs of pants, three button-up shirts, two pairs of boxer shorts, three briefs, and a plaid stingy-brim hat.