I can’t remember Mount McKinley any more.
I wake up on the cot Copper provides and I make my bed.
I fold the corners the way I was taught in -
I can’t remember.
Copper reminds me.
I remember dying in the Baker house basement.
Now I’m in Copper’s basement.
It’s nice.
Copper brings us LED lights.
Copper brings in stuff to read.
It’s nice.
I don’t remember the cold.
I remember how to make my bed.
I don’t remember Mount McKinley.
Copper stays put on his porch, day after day, and watches.
Copper watches the cops drive by when they bother to drive by at all, and they don’t wave, and Copper doesn’t wave.
Copper doesn’t cup his wrists in his hands any more, because Copper doesn’t feel the cold any more.
Nobody knows Copper doesn’t feel the cold, no more than anyone knows how badly he felt it over his long, slow passing back in March, except for me.
Copper watches, and nobody knows any better.
Nobody is watching.
Nobody cares.
Copper is watching.
Copper cares.
Copper sees T drive by.
Copper watches T drive by.
T doesn’t turn his head.
Copper doesn’t wave.
Copper and Shiner go away for -
I don’t remember.
I remember how to make my bed.
I sit on Copper’s porch but never in his rocker.
I look out the Baker-house basement window.
I remember Copper.
Copper and Shiner come back in a pickup truck with two other men.
Copper and Shiner meet with the men for I don’t know how long.
Copper and Shiner put away the state maps and the map of the United States and call me and Stout and McFay in.
‘Pack your gear, we’re moving out next week, kid.’
‘I’ll miss you.’
‘No, no, you’re coming too.’
Copper winks.
‘New detail. New plans.’
Copper talks about the big plan.
Lots of towns, lots of houses.
Lots of states.
‘Will we come back?’ I ask.
‘Back?’
‘Home?’
‘Wherever we are, kid, it’ll be home.’
Home.
‘This country is our home.’
Home.
‘We’ll make it our home.’
Plans.
‘This country owes you that much, kid.’
Plans.
Homes.
Cities.
States.
A whole big country, full of grunts like us.
Nobody sees us.
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares about our plans.
Lots of plans.
‘We move out next week.’
Copper winks at me.
‘We’ve got a job to finish.’
Copper lays out the floor plans and points to the street plan and hands his pickup keys to McFay.
McFay and Shiner drive off and come back.
Stout and me stack the copper piping just as we were told to - half in and half out of Copper’s basement window.
Stout leaves two coils of wire in Copper’s driveway, one leaning against the basement-window casing.
Shiner is boarding up the other windows.
Shiner leaves only one window open - the one with the pipes half in, half out.
Copper sits on his porch, watching.
Copper and I sit on this porch.
Copper sits on his porch.
Copper sees T drive by.
Copper watches T drive by.
T doesn’t turn his head.
Copper waves.
Copper sits in his basement.
Copper looks at an old stain on the wall.
Fetus and Shiner and McFay sit on the bench by the furnace, which hasn’t fired up in months.
I sit by the two amputees in the far corner.
Copper sits in his basement with us.
We hear the crunch of gravel outside, footsteps on the driveway.
Copper sits in his basement.
The piping in the window moves.
Copper sits in his basement.
The piping shifts and then slowly slides out of the window frame, into the night.
Copper sits in the basement.
Fetus and Shiner and I sit tight.
McFay sits still.
A flashlight beam cuts in from the open window.
Copper sits in the basement, satisfied with his plan.
We’re positioned just so.
The flashlight beam can’t reach us.
The beam alights on lengths of copper pipes and coils of wiring.
T’s head appears at the window.
Copper cocks his head slightly, listening.
There’s only the sound of T, moving with all the stealth he can muster.
It isn’t much.
T is alone.
Copper sits in the basement.
T leans his head in farther, craning for a better look-see.
Copper gives the order.
Copper’s hands are on T, his fingers locked around the kid’s head, one thumb deep in his left eye socket.
T shrieks like a girl and tries to lash out, but I’ve got his right arm and Fetus is on the other and he’s our wishbone.
We pull as one and something gives and something splashes black from the windowsill and something deeper than shadow pools across the floor, and T’s screams grow louder as we pull him in.
Fetus bends to drink from the floor in a rectangle of moonlight.
I see Stout’s smile.
His teeth are black and violet in the dim light, his chin is wet, dimples deep.
Before he is out of eyeshot, he gulps like a newborn, stopping only once to tip his head back and gurgle with joy.
Window becomes mouth, cellar becomes throat; broken glass teeth slip through T.
T spills inside, and we take him and his and all he ever was and never was, all he ever had and all he ever might have been but wasn’t and will never be.
I help Copper pull T’s wiring and strip his plumbing.
T’s song is sweet, shrill, short. Copper is humming to himself.
Dark, tough laces of T cat-cradle between us, ropes of him spill, stretch, and break. The cement is baptized with beads of him and puddles of him and steaming streams and rivers and oceans of him.
We spread him; he is bread, water, wine.
We dig in.
Blood becomes rust, bone becomes sliver; flesh becomes fire, death becomes home.
Home.
Always home.
IN THE DUST
BY TIM LEBBON
We should have known that one day they’d refuse to let us leave.
I’d already seen the fresh smoke rising from the cremation pits, and a sensation of cold dread had settled in my stomach. But I chose not to mention it to the others. Jamie’s bluff and bluster would only piss me off, and I feared it would send Bindy over the edge. If in the end events drove her to madness or suicide, I didn’t want to be the catalyst.
So it wasn’t until we reached the old stone river bridge that the truth began to dawn.
‘What the fuck?’ Jamie said.
‘Toby . . .’ Bindy let go of the cart and grabbed my hand. Before the plague, we’d only known each other in passing, and there was nothing sexual here, but contact helped her cope. As for me . . . it only made me think of the past.
‘They’ve blocked the bridge,’ I said.
‘And they’re burning something in the pits.’ Jamie jogged off ahead of us, approaching the barrier of roughly laid concrete block and barbed wire they’d built while we’d been searching.
‘Toby . . .?’ Bindy said again, her hand squeezing hard.
‘It’s okay,’ I said, squeezing back. Though I knew it was not.
I looked down at the cart we’d been pushing. The body of a small child stared back at me. She had died during the initial outbreak and had been motionless since the Purge three weeks earlier, but her eyes still held a glimmer of something resembling life. That was always the worst thing for me - not that they’d moved when they were dead or were mindless or craved the gristly hearts of the living, but that in their eyes they looked so alive.
The girl stared back at me, unseeing. I looked away.
‘Hey!’ Jamie shouted. ‘Come and see!’
‘Toby, I don’t want to go up there,’ Bindy said.
‘Then stay with her,’ I said, letting go and walking after Jamie. I heard Bindy’s sharp intake of breath and knew that I could be cruel. But she was weak, and sometimes I lost patience with her.
I reached the block wall and climbed, joining Jamie where he looked through the swirls of razor wire topping it. I could still smell the rich, warm odor of wet cement.
‘Something’s happened,’ he said. For once, his understatement was surprising.
There had been an army camp on the other side of the bridge. For three weeks, the three of us had been bringing bodies out of Usk, back over the bridge and delivering them into the hands of the scientists. We each had different reasons for doing so, and all of them involved dead people. We had found Jamie’s sister on day one, torn apart in a pond in their garden, her chest opened and heart ripped out. There had been a squirrel feeding on her eyes, and I’d been shocked, because I never knew a squirrel would eat meat. Bindy’s parents were two of the infected killed during the Purge, and we’d brought them both out during the second week. Her mother had been covered with dried blood, and in her father’s hand was the remains of something meaty. They’d had those same staring, glittering eyes, wet and knowing, even in true death.
My own dear Fiona eluded me still.
Now the camp was abandoned. There were still a few of the prefab huts they’d used, and a tent flapped in the lonely breeze. The field was churned up, and the old cottage they’d requisitioned as a command post was empty. Its windows and door had been left open, and that just seemed so careless.
The rain will get in
, I thought. I laughed softly.