All That Matters
by Paul R. Klein
Sunday, May 16, 2010
We never saw it coming. We should have, but the signs were too nebulous or maybe we just weren’t looking. Then the first bomb went off and they kept coming, one after the other like the Bible’s storm of locusts.
Arlington went first. The experts—the few who survived and hung around to offer their largely useless opinions—say the missile was supposed to hit Washington, but a strong headwind or something pushed it off course. Oops.
Baghdad and Tehran went next. Those were ours. We had no idea who sent the first missile across the pond, but by then we were at war with the entire Middle East, so what the hell. The strikes pretty much decimated what was left of our Army, Navy and Marine Corps, but at that point I guess we figured ground troops were obsolete.
By that time Fuzzy and I had already left for Higgins Lake, in northern Michigan, where nobody would ever drop a bomb, mostly because Higgins Lake isn’t really on anyone’s map. From there we watched television coverage of New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami and Seattle. By the time L.A. went up, the media figured the best way to document it was to put cameras outside every major city and just wait.
That seemed to work fine.
All of that happened on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, the president addressed the world from a bunker somewhere, but I don’t think anyone was listening. Or maybe they were, because Washington went up on Friday. So did Moscow, London, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, every square inch of Israel and Palestine, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Berlin.
By the end of Week One four billion were dead or slowly dying. Electricity, telephones and TV went out halfway through Week Two. Radio lingered around a bit longer, until the radiation fucked up the reception. Just before the radio went out, the president made another speech, if you could call it that. It lasted two seconds. He said, “God help us all,” and that was it.
We lost running water in Week Three.
The closest explosion to Higgins Lake was Detroit, a good two hundred miles off. Detroit got a smaller bomb, one or two megatons I think, and fortunately for us the weather blew the fallout all over Lake Erie and Cleveland. So it goes. Or so said Vonnegut. He seemed to have it about right.
But Fuzzy and I—we’re good, we’re okay. We have clean water from the lake, and a decent amount of food from the IGA, and when that runs out we’ll have deer and rabbit and the occasional fox. And fish. All the fucking fish we can eat.
I hooked up with a couple of guys on the street, and now we watch out for each other. Little things, like did we have enough food, ammo, that sort of thing. It wasn’t anything too exciting, until the blue minivan showed up. This was during the early part of Week Two, right before we lost electricity and right after Detroit became a parking lot.
The license plate was registered to Wayne county, which is where Detroit used to be. Looked like they were home when the bomb went off, and must have hit the road, trying to outrun the fallout.
In case you’re wondering, you can’t outrun fallout.
They rolled in about four in the afternoon. Fuzzy and I were shootin’ the shit with Harry (two houses up the street) and Tuvi (three houses down) when the blue minivan turned from the main county road onto our street, motored about halfway down, then just stopped, right there in the middle like they just got home.
Nobody got out of the car and nobody turned off the ignition. So we watched for a minute or two, thinking our thoughts, then finally Harry said, “What the hell?” and strolled over to take a look.
I left Fuzzy with Tuvi and joined Harry.
“What do you make of it?” Harry asked me.
Didn’t look like anyone inside the van was moving around much, but the rear windows were tinted so it was hard to tell for sure.
I said, “Don’t know. But I don’t like it much.”
We walked up the driver’s side of the van, slowly, like the cops do when they pull you over. Neither of us had thought to bring a gun.
“Hey there,” Harry said. “Everything okay?”
An arm appeared. Most of the flesh on the hand had sloughed off the bone.
“Whoa,” Harry said, jumping back. I had a similar reaction.
We peered inside the van. The driver had quite a lot of hair on his shirt and very little of it left on his head. His skin, where he had skin, was red and bubbly like boiled cheese.
The woman in the passenger seat appeared to be dead. Her head was resting against the door frame and a good deal of blood had drained out of her face.
And my God – the stench. Seemed like you could actually smell the radiation, and on top of that was burned flesh and hair and feces.
The driver wagged his fingers a bit, and his eyes rolled around the sockets until they met mine.
“Hell…” the driver said. I thought he had it about right.
“My…my wife. Help. Please.” He seemed to be having trouble articulating his words, which I guess is what happens when your tongue melts. I pulled Harry away from the van.
“We can’t help them,” I said.
Harry nodded.
“And I don’t like hanging around that much radiation. It’s not healthy.”
Harry nodded again.
Tuvi joined us.
“So?”
“So we’ve got to do something with them, but I don’t know what.”
Tuvi suggested we roll the van into the lake.
“And contaminate our water supply? No thanks.”
Harry said, “Well, we can shoot them, but that car is hot and I don’t think they’re getting out of it. And I sure as shit don’t want it parked outside my house.”
“I’m not sure we should use our ammunition on something we can’t eat,” I said.
The three of us pondered the situation for a few moments, and Fuzzy played with some rocks. Fuzzy’s retarded – he can’t speak and probably has no fucking clue what’s going on. Which is about the only thing I envy about my brother.
“Anyway,” I said, “we’re not murderers. Besides, by the time we rig up some way to move the van, they’ll probably be dead.”
Harry said, “I’ve got some towing line in my garage. Can we pull the van somewhere?”
Tuvi said, “How do we get them out?”
Harry and I looked at each other, then I said, “We don’t.”
The driver moaned a few times when he realized we weren’t going to help him, then he just lay there, staring out the windshield at the water like he was contemplating a swim. Took us maybe half an hour to get the blue minivan hooked up to Harry’s truck, and off they went.
Tuvi and I shared a beer and waited for Harry to come back, which he did an hour later with a resigned expression on his face. Tuvi handed Harry a beer and nobody asked about what happened to the blue minivan or the people inside, and that was just fine with me.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Funny thing about the end of the world. It’s not as exciting as you’d think.
I mean, at first I was all hopped up on adrenaline—we all were—but now, just over a month since the first bomb hit, I find myself missing baseball and CNN and fuckin’ YouTube, for christsake. I’ve already waded through the dozen or so novels stashed at the cabin – including a galley of the first book I ever sold, a truly awful spy thriller, the only redeeming part of which is the dedication, which says: for Fuzzy. Now I spend my time entertaining my brother or hunting or hauling water. Or writing in this journal.
Sometimes when I go down to the lake to fill up my buckets, I’ll look down the shoreline and see a guy fishing at the end of his dock, or maybe a couple of kids skipping rocks. If I’m lucky they’ll wave, but most of the time everyone just ignores each other. Maybe it’s too soon. Maybe we’re all still a little too scared.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Things have moped along for a couple of months now, and the food is finally starting to run low. You see, we have this rule, me and Tuvi and Harry. We eat only what we shoot or catch. That way we know what killed it. But lately we’ve noticed dead deer and dead rabbits with all these funny lesions, and that makes us worry. We worry that the food we’ve been eating is contaminated, and we worry that if there’s radiation in the animals, then there’s probably radiation in the air or the water.
But the four of us, we stick together and share what we catch. Sometimes there isn’t much, and one or two or all four of us go home hungry. Fuzzy doesn’t like being hungry, and he doesn’t understand, but I do the best I can with him. Which probably isn’t good enough.
Harry and Tuvi, though, I’m starting to think they resent Fuzzy. I mean, I guess I can understand. Fuzzy doesn’t hunt or fish or talk, and he’s another mouth to feed. But it’s not like I’m asking the guys to give up their food—Fuzzy eats off my plate. Maybe I’ll bring it up next time they give me that look.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
I’ve decided that I know that look, and Harry and Tuvi are giving it to me a lot now.
Pure hunger. A couple days ago, at dinner, Fuzzy tugged on my sleeve and made a sad face and rubbed his belly. And Harry, Jesus, fucking Harry, slammed his fist on the goddamned table and our plates clattered and Fuzzy’s glass of water spilled and he started crying.
Harry took off and we haven’t seen him since. Fuck him. He can catch his own goddamned food and eat every fucking scrap. Asshole.
Speaking of food, things are pretty bare at the cabin. Without the three of us pooling our catches, Fuzzy and I have had only one rabbit to share over the last two days. Tomorrow morning I’m going hunting with Tuvi, who, unlike Harry, still comes around to see how we’re doing.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Tuvi and I met at the end of the road and walked to our hunting grounds, about a quarter-mile stretch of woods right along the main river that feeds the lake. We didn’t say much, just a comment or two about the strange, greenish hue in the clouds and the way they seemed to be spinning through the atmosphere.
About half an hour into our hunt, Tuvi nabbed a quail. He blew off a wing and had to chase it down in the brush, but he caught it and broke its neck and tossed it in his pack.
Ten minutes later Tuvi had two quail, a rabbit and a squirrel that I wasn’t convinced he should eat. I had nothing.
“You should give Harry a break, man,” Tuvi said.
I raised my gun and aimed at a bird in a birch about twenty feet away. I pulled the trigger and blew an impressive hole in the branch the bird was sitting on. The bird flew off.
“Damn it.”
“I’m serious, John. He’s just scared. Hell, we’re all scared.”
I looked at him. “Fuck Harry,” I said. “If he won’t be civil, I don’t want him near me or my brother.”
We walked farther into the woods. Tuvi was shaking his head. “He’s not being uncivil, John. He’s just hungry.”
I snorted. “Hungry. We’re all fucking hungry.”
I aimed at a rabbit, fired, missed.
Tuvi said, “I’m hungry, too.”
We made eyes and I saw something in his that I had missed before—there was the hunger, sure, but this was something deeper, something fiery and wild and completely unbounded. And before I could say anything about it, Tuvi spun, brought up his rifle and blew the head off a hedgehog. He dropped his pack and bolted over to his kill. There, he pulled out his hunting knife and started shaving the fur off the animal.
I watched him and noticed, not surprisingly, that I was holding my gun a little tighter.
Tuvi got most of the fur off the thing, looked around like he’d forgotten where he was, then sunk his teeth right into the creature’s back.
I tried a laugh, but it came out all wrong. “You need some wood for a fire, Pocahontas?” I said.
Tuvi turned around and looked up at me. He had blood and tufts of fur stuck to his chin. He looked like he’d never seen me before.
Then he chomped down on his catch and I grabbed his pack and got the fuck out of there.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
I haven’t seen Harry in two weeks. Every now and then I’ll catch Tuvi stalking up and down the road, mumbling to himself. I learned long before the first explosion that if you see a guy in a conversation with himself, you leave him the fuck alone.
Fuzzy has the blisters. I found them a couple of nights ago at dinner. He kept picking at his left arm and crying out, so I rolled up his sleeve to take a look and sure enough—burns. Which either means our food is poisoning us, or it’s in the air and we’re done for.
I found some antibacterial ointment in the closet and got Fuzzy lubricated. I tracked down a bottle of bourbon and got myself lubricated.
Once I’d gotten my brother squared away in bed, I dug through the closet and found my old tackle box. The way I figured it, if the radiation was in the water, we’d be dead already. Somehow the radiation must have infected our food supply, which is okay, since I’m such a lousy hunter.
So, from now on, we’ll only eat fish.
Friday, August 13, 2010
This morning I was on my way back up the street carrying a stringer loaded with lake perch, a couple of bass, and some crayfish. I heard someone sobbing, turned, and saw Tuvi sitting in his front yard, rocking back and forth. He was mumbling to himself and I considered just walking by. A smart guy would just walk away.
So of course I went over and asked if he was all right.
He kind of jumped, like I’d startled him.
“It’s all. Fuck. It’s all fucking.”
“Hey, man,” I said. “What’s the matter?”
He rocked. “We’re all gonna die.”
“Maybe. But maybe not.” Tuvi looked up at me and his eyes were all red and watery, and there was blood on his face, but I couldn’t tell if it was his or not.
“Harry’s dead.”
I almost dropped the stringer. “What?”
Tuvi nodded. “Dead. Shot himself.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.” Tuvi resumed his rocking. “I know why, though.”
I stared at him for a while.
Finally Tuvi said, “He had the sick.” He looked up at me. “You know. The sick. No hair. He bled, John. He bled through his mouth and nose and ears and his fucking eyes, for God’s sake.”
That couldn’t be good.
Tuvi continued, “I told him, it’s the food. You can’t eat what you don’t shoot. That’s what I said. Harry told me to shut off and fuck up. Because he was already gone, John—he was already too far gone. Couldn’t even curse right.”
I shifted my feet and said nothing. Man. Fucking Harry.
“He was itchy, you know, scratching his arms. Scratching and scratching and scratching. And the skin just came right off, like…like.”
Tuvi stopped rocking and frowned. “Like skin on pudding. Just. Ffft. Right off.”
“What did he eat?”
“He was having trouble. No live game. I offered him some of mine, but.” Tuvi shook his head. “Said I should give it to the retard.” Tuvi laughed, but I didn’t think it was so funny. In fact, I thought about punching Tuvi in the face. Instead I took a couple breaths.
“Tuvi,” I said, “listen. It’s in the food. All the food. You need to eat the fish—it’s the only thing we have left.”
Tuvi shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does. The radiation hasn’t contaminated the lake.” I thought about adding yet to the end of that sentence and decided against it.
He looked up at me again. Then he rolled back his sleeve and showed me his arm. I looked away.
He rolled his sleeve back down. “I’m finished,” he said.
I unhooked two of the lake perch from my stringer and held them out.
“Here.”
He wouldn’t take them.
“Tuvi. Take the fish. You’ll get better, you just have to stop eating contaminated food.”
Tuvi shook his head. And I got angry—if this amounted to human resilience, then we were all fucked. So much for forging ahead through tragedy. Maybe we all deserved to die. Let the fucking roaches cash in.
“Fine,” I said. I tossed the fish into the dirt next to Tuvi and walked home to have some lunch with my brother.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Tuvi’s dead.
I hadn’t seen him since that day I found him rocking on his front lawn, but I would leave fresh fish on his porch every morning, and every afternoon when I went back to the lake to fetch our water, the fish would be gone.
Until today. The fish were still on the porch, and had attracted some wildlife.
Tuvi died in his bathtub, which is a good place to be if you’re going to melt.
I didn’t know what to do with him, so I just walked out and shut the door behind me.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Radiation’s in the water now. It’s pretty much everywhere now. The rain started nine days ago and hasn’t let up once.
Fuzzy’s really sick, and all I can do is try to keep him comfortable. Soon I’ll be out of alcohol and then we’re both in trouble.
Friday, September 17, 2010
His skin had started to fall off. So I got the rest of the bourbon and I found some Percocet in the medicine cabinet, and I lay my brother down on his bed and got his favorite blanket, the one with Winnie-the-Pooh. He clutched the blanket right up against his face like it could take away all his pain the way it did when he was a boy and my heart broke right then and I almost just used the gun. But Fuzzy would have understood the gun, and he would have been scared and he’d have died wondering why I shot him.
I put the first Percocet in his mouth and lifted the back of his head up with my hand and he drank it down with a couple sips of water. And Fuzzy, he trusts me, so he took the pill. No problem. He even smiled at me, showing me all the empty places where his teeth used to be.
So I gave him another Perc and he took that one, too, and the next one and the next one and the next one until the bottle was empty, which was maybe a dozen pills.
The Percs started working their magic pretty quickly, and Fuzzy just stared up at me, and goddamn it, I cried because I couldn’t believe what had happened to us, and I wanted to take it back and knew I couldn’t.
I drank the rest of the bourbon, which unfortunately wasn’t enough to kill me, and I watched my brother slowly drift away, and I cried. In the end, just before he closed his eyes for good, his lips moved, forming one word – his first, and his last.
“Goodbye.”
Monday, September 20, 2010
I went down to the lake today and found the body of a child. His foot had snagged on one of the split pilings, and his body just thumped up against the dock with the tide, his dead eyes staring up at me.
I’m so tired. Part of it is the radiation, but another part is the fear. Fear of what I’ve done; what I’ve failed to do.
At least I can choose now how I want it to end.
I’m going to lie next to my brother. I’m going to kiss him on his head where Dad used to when he tucked us in at night. I’m going to pull his Winnie-the-Pooh blanket up and I’m going to hold onto it with one hand for strength. With my other hand I’m going to place the barrel of the gun into my mouth. I’m going to think about my short life and shorter career, and the simple dedication to my only brother, the only person I ever really loved. I’m going to cry and I’m going to breathe and taste the metal.
And this is important; this is all that matters: I’m going to die as I lived – protecting my brother and knowing that, for all of his weaknesses, he was always my greatest strength.
Copyright
2009 by Paul R. Klein