Heaven's Center

[Worm of Despite]

Might as well post this, as it's been quite some time since the 07 Anthology came out. My entry for it, Heaven's Center:

Heaven's Center


Can there be too much of heaven?

I believe my finest night was a few weeks before the war. I had owned a house and a little balcony, and I often sat on the edge of it, just overlooking the wrought iron fencing. That bit of metal border kept me from the considerable drop to the ground floor. It was exhilarating, sitting out on that jutting edge, feeling like nothing but the chair below me was holding me up. Never mind the fact that there was also a staircase of concrete and brick supporting that.

It was my greatest night, but it was not unlike others before it. Something of it spoke to me more clearly; perhaps because it was my last night, my last true one that I took for granted.

I was a God on that balcony. I am a mortal man now. Only a God could have done what I did and not thought much of it. In this world there is a longing, a tense wish that transcends the letters that form the word "nostalgia." It is a sweet song, a tune I dare not speak; I would not dash its mystery. But there is a longing. There is a longing for what once was so simple and overlooked; there is a longing for what had always been and what was perceived as always going to be. Now neither exist; both are no more. I sit and wish for what I was doing: sitting and wishing.

I sat on the edge of my balcony, sitting in my wrought iron chair in front of my wrought iron fence, and I wished. I wished that I had a plate of cheese or a bottle of some fine wine. I had neither. I had only a wrought iron table to balance my feet on, a dim candle to combat the dying light, and a Montecristo No. 2 perched between my right hand's fingertips.

I remember now; it is so simple to remember. It was so sweet to remember. It is what God does, for God is not a man who stands up and sings in the rain. There is no descriptive phrase or image that makes God a piece of animate flesh; no. He descends in simple terms; his essence is silence, his purity dissonance. He leaves no dust; He is His coming and His going. God is; God was; God follows none but all follows Him. Such simple lines, but a few strands holding them together. Cannot a God remember, then?

But I digress. I was sitting on my balcony, a -- yes, I remember! A Montecristo No. 2 was balanced between my lips -- or was it dancing between my fingertips? It matters not. Memory fades but the serenity persists. I know only that the cigar was balanced; I know only that its smoke was inhaled, and that there was sadness. There was sadness that I had not brought more Montecristos back from my stay in Italy. I damn myself even now, even when the world I knew is gone. I know now I will never taste a Montecristo again. It was such a feeling, that. I remember not being very impressed at first; it was my first Cuban and I thought, 'This -- this is it?' But there came a light rain, and the day was dying; it was high in the day, a long summer night coming soon. The night fell slowly, gradually. The candle in front of me bobbed; I believed that it held the secret to perpetual motion. I watched it closely, watched its dance; day waned to night more and more, and the candle grew its brilliance; I saw it etch its orange glaze over the wrought iron pattern of my fence. At a certain point, the falling water from the sky stopped. I had not noticed the fact that the Montecristo tasted nothing of smoke and everything of tobacco. I had only noticed a sharp tang of relax in my mouth; I knew only that the line between myself and the candle had terminated. I knew only the deepest pangs of forgiveness and regret. I knew everything that a human submerged in the hot abyss of forgetfulness can embrace. I knew that there was something in all, something human and not quite human. I knew there was a point to forgetfulness, a very important, salient thing:


1

I opened my eyes.

'MacDonald, wake up.'

I have learned several truths from war.

Some of the truths were too terrible for my old self to imagine, let alone mention now. I will let them pass. But there are other maxims -- bright kernels pulled forth from the raw pool of experience -- that shine brilliant before me now. There are three of them, in fact:

It is easier to kill someone than know them.

Peace can exist within war.

One can find heaven within war.

Those are the three maxims, or perhaps the last two are one. Either way, they stand whole and indefatigable. It is not compassion or mercy that brought me to greatest understanding. It was not dreams of flying or endless sex orgies that gave me the feeling of humanity's naked whole. It was suiting up and killing people.

'Mac.'

I live in South Africa, or what is left of it. The war has made all lands one, though. The names, the borders, the people, the colors of their flag. All of that was burnt and made as one dust, as one stretch of untouched black. The new world is an endless plain of no light, of no shape. That reminds me:

War has taught me that the idea of an image or ideas deposited upon an image are the source of sublimity, rather than the image itself. It was an easy lesson to encounter -- still is. I will show it to you now.

'Yeah, I'm up.'

I sat up in my bunk, felt the cheap springs squeak as my weight arose. The covers were old and thin; they might have been towels before they became my bedspread. My quarters were like everybody else's, not much bigger than a small bathroom. You had some empty space for your meager bunk bed, and the rest of the space was to let your legs touch the ground. A few inches from my feet was the door to my room. Above my bed, two planks of wood ran along the wall, holding my few articles of clothes. I had awoken with my combat boots and my gray work pants on. It was hot as hell in this little cube I called home. I cursed myself for neglecting to strip.

I stood up from the bed, and already part of me was outside the door. So little room, I thought. I don't miss home, though. Give me a place where there is constancy--some place where I know what my job is, where I'm at, and what I'm doing from A to B to C. That's all I ask. I don't care if the meals are shit and the showers cold.

Speaking of showers, I thought. I ran my hand over my forehead, felt the grime that had been building up. It was hard to measure the timeline of your life anymore. Was it last week that showers were turned off for maintenance or this week? The dirt under my fingernails told me this week.

I walked down the tight corridor extending from my room. Doors were opening everywhere, people waking up right on time. There were at least ten rooms on this stretch of hall, counting mine. We were all shoved in tight like roaches. The community bathroom was just around the corner.

I turned the corner, let the sliding door fly up into the ceiling. I ran my hand over the sink, waited for the water to spill. The bathroom started filling with more bodies. Men were yawning and grumbling and cursing their fate.

'Shit,' one said. 'I've got five hours overdue duty.'

'Man,' said another. 'You gonna do it all today?'

'No way. Got 16 regular hours. Not stacking five on top.'

'But then you'll have six.'

'Shit,' the complainer said again. 'I know. I'll keep letting it go.'

'Yeah. You're going to have to work for two days straight!'

Several men laughed. Two bodies were on either side of me, their hands splashing pools of water on their dry faces.

I heard the turning of a faucet in the hollow space of the shower room.

'Goddamn! Still no water!'

'What next? No lights?'

'I don't know, man. I'll work extra volunteer hours for one drop of shower water.'

'I'll suck your dick for a giant steak.'

'You're sick, man.'

I listened to them chatter on, their speech dreaming of bygone days when they could wake up under their own roof, under their personal area. They could go to their bathrooms and run their water and not have to think about another man soaping up ass-naked next to them. Not that we were shy anymore. No one is shy after this routine for two years. Or has it been three? The war erased time along with civilization, I think.

'Well, Mac,' I heard Bob call from the empty shower room. 'No water today either.'

'I know,' I said, examining my face in the mirror.

'Don't break the glass,' Bob said, slapping me on the shoulder now. He moved around the room like a gnat, I thought. Nervous bastard.

'You suiting up now?'

'Yeah,' I said. 'I've got 12 hours.'

'Lucky bastard!' Bob bellowed. 'You need to look at my work schedule.'

'Nah,' I said. 'It'd give me nightmares.'

'Well, let's go out together,' said Bob.

'I thought that was a given,' I said, turning from the mirror with a smile. 'You know, you don't have to ask. Just follow me along anytime.'

'Hey, pal!' he said. 'I've led your ass around plenty.'

'True,' I admitted, and we both exited the bathroom and turned down the hall again.

'Meet me at my room in thirty minutes,' he said.

'I'll be there in ten.'


2

That's right, I thought. I had had some crazy dream before I woke up. Something about home. It was a good one.

I reached under my bed and pulled out my duffel bag. The gear was all in there, packed haphazardly as usual.

I was a neat freak before the war. I would have thought this dusty, dirt covered duffel bag was somebody else's. Never mind that the contents look like a tossed salad. I always stacked my stuff neatly, folded it and such. Now I don't even make my bed; the sheets get tossed aside, I jump up and take off.

There is a new neatness, I thought; it's in me. The new cleansing is the routine of existence, the purity of what I do. I really do prefer this life to the one I had in South Africa. South Africa had presented me with the onslaught of a loud world: bills, media, crime, music, food, transportation. Man's little framework of anxieties crumbled after the war, though. There are only bare facts now, whittled down by the destruction. Things are so much easier, clearer. No access to drugs, no ringing phones, no wailing babies. If you're hungry you die; if you're sleepy you sleep. If you've killed you did it because you wanted to or had to. No hand drops down, no voice falls on your shoulder. You are man unfettered from man's inhumanity. You are the basic essence of the first ancestors. There is only survival now; there is only lunging for shelter and pushing the sheltered out of the way. There is no more moral white and black or even ambiguity. There is no more ticking clock, no more fear of enlarging conservatism or liberalism. There is no more global warming, no more race riots, no more races. There is no more skin color and no more competition. There is no more monetary value, no more inherent value. There is no more name for man. There is only what we remember of the past, and that it is fading.

It is perfect, really. We have been delivered from our old grime. We have become simplified. We are the new monks, and all over the world are monasteries like this. That is what we hear, anyway. Rumors say there are more bases, though no scouts have located them.

I began to gear up. Our suits consist of five basic pieces: the pants, a long-sleeved shirt, head cover, gloves, and boots. There are two layers to each piece: there is the outer cloth lining, a soft material with about as much give as leather. It offers little protection against heavy projectiles or sharp objects; its main function is collecting the dust and grime of the outer atmosphere. From there, the inside coating performs its vital duty: that of filtering deadly molecules -- gas, unclean air, radiation -- and making them breathable.

The suit is a funny thing to see when all five pieces are connected. There are little metal connecting rims, such as around the wrist part of the glove or the neck of the head cover. These come together with other connecting metals, such as the neck part of the torso. You align the rims that are supposed to connect and then twist them just slightly; there's a hollow clicking sound, and then you know your suit's pieces are conjoined. It's a bit of a scary feeling when you first start doing it; you think one of two things: either the connected parts won't come off easily, or it's going to be awhile before you see home again. Both are true.

I had already put on my boots and pants -- woken up with them, in fact. I don't remember doing that, and I usually don't. It must've been a long and torturous night out there. I probably stuffed what I could in my box, shoved it under the bed, and then collapsed and fell asleep.

I heard a rap on the frame of my door. Bob? I looked up and saw only black, as I was struggling through my long-sleeved shirt. It was the hardest part, as it was a tight bastard and you had to hold both arms all the way up to slide through. Tightness was a prerequisite, though; you needed nothing to enter or escape the outer layer -- including yourself. Many people go a little nuts out there their first time. I suppose it's like walking on the moon or floating in space or jumping off a diving board for the first time. Whoever remembers doing that for the first time with a true sense of joy? If anything there's that snaking dread, that trepidation before the big leap. Some people have tried to rip themselves out of their suits. I remember one; his voice still haunts me when the lights are all out and my eyes have nothing to latch onto:

'I can't breathe!'

He had his hands around the connecting rims of his neck. He was going to take his helmet off.

'You can speak! You can breathe!' I heard myself bellow. He was some twenty feet away, but it felt like a mile. I walked over the unsure ground, its rock hard texture. I put my arms out in a clumsy fashion, balancing. I fell to one knee in my hurry to get to him, to stop him.

'Ahh,' I heard emit from his helmet, heard it streak across the air.
'No!' I let out, a long howl to meet his.

'Mac,' said Bob, and I shuddered.

I pushed my head through my shirt. Bob was standing in front of my door, already suited up.

'New record, huh?' I belted. 'This is the first time you've been ready before me.'

'Probably means bad luck, too,' he said.

'Well, let me get my headpiece on and then these gloves--'

'All right, no hurry. You said thirty minutes and it's only ten.'


###
We rode the lift a few hundred feet up to the surface. It was a little skeleton of an elevator, all black and thin, its metal grating allowing you to see the air of space that filled the shaft around you. You couldn't see the end of the tunnel -- the surface -- because there's no light up there. It's a funny feeling, but whenever I ride this shaky bastard I always think the light will get brighter as I ascend. Well, it doesn't. There a few random miner lights along the elevator's shaft as you go. You can see the sporadic dots climbing, illuminating the vertical heights above. It's all human construction: thick steel rods rising up and going out of sight, gray concrete wall behind that, and right above your head the pulley and chain that keep your lift in the air. It shakes and wobbles every now and then, twisting a bit; feels like you're a bird in a cage and somebody's idly twirling it with their hand.

I cleared my throat, flushing a bit of adrenaline out. I do this every day, and still the ride unnerves me a bit. The dusty air that threatened to suck me back down and let me fall entered the space below my tongue as I yawned. It was a wretched sense of towering height, of dropping--

I looked down, saw the lights of our little colony burning like a furnace at the bottom of the shaft. It was about four hundred feet below, I judged. We were almost there; the black space of the outside world was becoming a larger and larger square. The last lights of the shaft were disappearing into it, and the elevator was creaking as it made its last few paces, readying itself to haul our asses into the open air. Bob looked at me through the thick glass of his visor. It needed a cleaning, I thought. The glass had a long scratch or scrape mark over the left side.

''Where'd you get that?'

'Some crazy bastards shook the hell out of me.'

'What?'

His index-finger pointed up the shaft, to the surface.

'No worries. They were ours. I turned a corner in the darkness and smacked right into them. They were scared shitless.'

'What happened?'

'They just grabbed me by the shoulder, shaking the hell out of me, asking me who I was. I couldn't get a word in edgewise. The scrape on my helmet isn't near as bad as the bruise on my shoulder.'

'Jesus. It tear your suit?'

'No, just a bad bump -- no tear, thank God. They were scared, those guys. They were ours -- just got lost.'

'Man,' I said, and the lift pushed up into open air. There was a jarring halt, and the metal chain that had hauled us up replaced its clinking with a light swaying.

[Worm of Despite]

3

The outside world assaults one with two distinct facts: the presence of wind and the absence of all else.

From every angle is an endless sphere of black, its hue reaching beyond the pale of mere darkness. It stretches on and on, knowing no horizon, until the air seems to swallow it with its deep unfurling. Getting used to the wind is the first important trial. There is usually no room in it for speech; there is barely enough for thought.

To accompany this deafness is blindness; there are only two sources of light, both of them scant. The most integral is the one you carry with you. Each suit has two small flood lights, one for each shoulder. They barely emit ten feet of visibility in the choking dark, but that's enough to dumbly navigate amidst the rocks and stones.

There is little depth perception; it's hard to tell if you're stepping off a fifty foot drop or heading for another strip of level ground. The area can be quite treacherous, as the first scouts learned. Their errors caused the engineers to quickly construct a bit of aid -- radar, in this case. Our radar looks like a PDA, but it straps tightly around the wrist using, well, an elastic band. Modern technology, huh? We do what we can.

With our radar, we can tell where we are for the next mile or so. It displays all in red lines, giving the curvature of the land and alerting you to any noticeable landmarks. The only trick is you have to input the landmarks. A new radar unit has nothing on it, so if you ever find something it doesn't have, just enter the coordinates and a description and it'll save it for future memory.

As it stands, only two or three groups are allowed to go out at the most. We only have about eight fully functional radar units. On the bright side, these radar units are constantly traded off to the next unluckies who have to go up. Whatever the previous person discovered and entered will be on that unit. So far, our most comprehensive radar unit has over 28.2 square miles uploaded to it, all of it barren wasteland. We haven't discovered any other colonies, but we have run into other humans. They wear similar clothes in the outdoors: the full-body outfit and ventilation system. That's no surprise; it was all standard nuke protection, issued before the war. What was surprising was that they carried several guns that weren't standard for this region, much less this continent. On one guy's body was an M17 repeating cannon, and that's Nakati. Nakati never dealt out any weapons to Africa or the neutral territories; keeping us unarmed and compliant was their motto. To even find a weapon -- and one produced in an American factory by Nakati Steel -- is quite a shock.

But we've been collecting more and more lately. Perhaps the MERPA Council issued them to civilians? Most likely. But how did they get a hold of Nakati weapons? Did Nakati strike a deal?

My thoughts wandered about those questions as we navigated the dark. I had long ago exiled the wind's brooding howl to the back of my mind. We were to walk about half a mile up to the checkpoint. The checkpoint was the last bastion of humanity -- the only one our colony knew of, anyway. It was established by us, for the use of groups going up into the outside world. The checkpoint was a strange thing to see, when you stumbled upon it. It looked like a giant outhouse -- twice the size of the ones I remembered -- and it was balanced on the bare, brown rock of the earth. You walk inside, seal the door, and let clean oxygen filter in. You can take your headgear off, your gloves, your shoes, anything. It's pretty cramped in there: two toilets to the right and left, a sink on the north end, and above it (where you'd expect a mirror) a clipboard and a pen. You could leave information for future groups, such as where you're going, the details of your job, who's with you. Lifesaving stuff.

Half a mile is nothing, and we were already upon the checkpoint as my mind was imagining it. It was a sickly lime color, though most of its paint was peeling off. There was a flood light attached on its roof, hanging over the door. It was still running, though flickering just a tad. Someone needs to change it, I thought. Oh well, not giving up one of my precious bulbs.

I turned around to Bob, my shoulder lights illuminating his black suit brightly. Clumsily, he put a glove over his visor.

'You gotta take a shit?' I asked, my head motioning behind me, at the outhouse.

Bob didn't say anything, as if he were smiling under his suit. I realized the asshole couldn't hear me, because I had been an asshole and forgotten about the wind.

I gave up, turned around, and opened the outhouse's large door. It was big enough for two people. Crapping with another person was a given in this day and age. Personal privacy flew out the window with the rest of civilization when those nukes landed. If you want to live in today's world, expect doing it shoulder-to-shoulder and elbow-to-elbow. I remember reading about the Romans, when I had books; they used to crap in public and think nothing of it. It was almost an ice-cream social. They'd sit there, shit dropping out their asses, and talk up a storm. The stench didn't bother them, as they stank anyway. They used a sponge on a stick to wipe their hind quarters. Not bad, I thought, but I later read that they all shared the same sponge.

Well, we're not so bad off, I thought. It does stink like hell (we try to shower at least three times a week), and there's toilet paper beside each of the crappers.

Bob put down the lid on his toilet, and I did too. Neither of us seemed to want to take a crap, only sit. I almost didn't want to take off my headgear, as the suit's filter kept a bit of the stink out. The outhouse's internal door locked, and you could hear the unclean air that we had brought in being whooshed out. We waited for it to stop completely; that's the signal that you're good to go and can take off your head cover.

I pulled mine off the same time as Bob did. We both looked at each other, kind of smiling; we wanted to take a breath of fresh air, but there was no such thing in this outhouse. I leaned back against the wall, letting my body soak up as much rest as possible. The surrounding walls made the wind dull, a faraway dream. We'd leave when we felt like it.

'Hey,' Bob said.

'Yeah?' I asked, keeping my eyes closed and my head cocked back.

'You won't believe what I brought, man.'

'What's that?'

'Two Cubans.'

I craned my head down, let a sniff of laughter.

'You're kidding, man!'

'No.'

'Well,' I said, looking around the tight confines of the outhouse, 'maybe this isn't the best place to smoke a cigar.'

'Well,' said Bob, 'you're right. Not very charming. Maybe the smoke will get rid of the shit smell.'

'Man,' I said, 'Cubans have no smoke smell.'

'You're right.'

We were quiet for a while, and then I said:

'Tell you what. When we come back from the job and walk by here on the way back -- and if we're really tired -- then we can have a smoke.'

'I dunno,' said Bob, 'it's only a half-mile to the base from here.'

'Right,' I acknowledged. 'Would rather just smoke there, in some clean air.'

'Sucks, man, doesn't it?'

'What does?'

'That the only two places you can smoke in this world are your room or a shitter.'

I smiled lightly. 'I miss it too. I had a nice balcony.'

'Did you have -- a family?'

'No,' I said.

I leaned forward. 'You know, I've met more people after the war than before.'

'Well, you have no choice, really. We're roaches -- or sardines in a can. I hate it.'

'I don't know. It's not so bad.'

'You amaze me, man,' said Bob. 'You've got that cute little smile plastered on your face and you don't have shit. No roof, no wind, no rain, no trees, no music, no books--'

'Well,' I said quickly, 'it's hard to explain.'

'Explain it.'

'I've just -- I've always felt at home as long -- as long as I know I'm somewhere where I'll wake up and know where I'm at, what I've got to do, who I'm doing it with. Doesn't matter if I'm in hell or--'

'Hell!' Bob laughed. 'Welcome to it. Mile upon unrecorded mile of hell.'

'So do you think it's like this around the rest of the world?'

Bob thought for a moment. 'You know, I heard a rumor they nuked Australia. I mean, if they nuke a beautiful place like that, then the madmen must've got everything. Let's see: Trimur must've began with Nakati's capital, Tokyo, then New York, London--'

'France,' I added in.

'Yeah, France; they probably hit it in the first wave. Then Nakati must've got Moscow, parts of China, all over India.

'That first wave was all the major cities. Then the second wave was, 'Oh, so it's going to be like that?' and they began dropping on secondary options like Prague, Chicago, Oslo, Manila. They just started scattering those nukes, you know. And then they saw the other nations, the neutral ones in the Middle East, us, Australia, etc. They must've thought, 'Well, we can't allow the enemy to hide there or use its resources,' so they eliminated them. Isn't that crazy? Took us out, and we had nothing to do with it!'

'Crazy,' I admitted, leaning my head back.

There was silence for a long while, until Bob asked:

'So what's our job? You know?'

'Well,' I said slowly, 'I believe they want some fresh water cells. The coordinates they gave me are about five miles up from here.'

'Five miles,' said Bob.

'Yeah, it's not that much. I've gone as far as ten, sometimes eleven.'

'Really? What's it like?'

'Same as here. Rocks everywhere, wind that won't shut up.'

'Dark, too,' said Bob.

'So, they gave you cells, right Bob?'

'Yeah. I was wondering. I guess those coordinates go to an enclosed lake or some shore or something?'

'Yeah. We're near a shore. Just fill up those cells, bring them back, and bam they'll shut up about water for a month or two.'

There was another silence, and then a thought struck me:

'Say, how many cigars you got?'

'Well,' said Bob, 'before the war, I saved two hundred for myself.'

'Jesus!'

'Yeah. I figure, if we both smoke two each year, we'll have enough to last us a lifetime.'


4

As I stepped out of the outhouse, I noticed the second source of light, aside from my floodlights: heat lightning. It would illuminate the sky and ground in a sheet of iridescent blue for a second or two, then it would all snap back to dark. You could see a vague tracery of the clouds as they surged forward, as if pushed by an invisible current.

It was really more like smoke than clouds. Since the nukes hit Africa, I hadn't seen a patch of sky. So much ash and debris had been carried up into the stratosphere, I guess. You'd look up, and there'd only be a swath of black soot, rushing forward too fast for its own good, never able to form clumps or mass into independent shapes. It was all one agitated soup, never giving down rain or thunder. The only things we got from it were silence and lightning.

We walked among it for a long while, stumbling intermittently. The light emanating from our shoulders went out in a cone for about ten feet and terminated. We walked slowly, paced our steps deliberately. The air did not feel thick or rarefied with dangerous chemicals or the energies of radiation. It was so deceiving; there was always that soft lull, asking you to take your headgear off and breathe the air. Had I not done it for thirty years before the war? I used to walk outdoors, roll windows down, stick my head in the breeze and not think a thing. But this -- this land I no longer recognized! Perhaps I had walked over it when it was a street corner or a grassy field or a slice of beach. Perhaps waves had fallen over this. I knew we were close to the shore, if my radar was at all correct.

I lost my footing a bit, almost slipped. I felt the old adrenaline rise up, its little tendrils tingling around my nostrils, emitting waves of energy through my torso and coursing blood. I balanced myself, turned back to Bob. He had checked his pace, slowed down. I nodded to him, to show him I was back on track. I pointed at the ground to the left of him, a silent sign that he shouldn't make the same mistake. He nodded back.

I took a deep breath, let the nervousness elapse. I began to step forward again, this time with a stronger resolution toward not falling.

My lights went ahead of me, as always. The landscape was always the same: a marquee of brown, hard rock that dipped slightly or jutted out, just enough to make your feet uneasy. It had always been like that, ever since the war. I don't know what type of nukes they used these days; perhaps they were so powerful that it only took a small handful to do this to the entire world. Perhaps they are capable of turning level ground into melting magma and then this dried up mess. That's what it looked like to me: opaque, brown glass that curled and twisted without any thought put into it; complete and total randomness. It was hard to imagine a city used to be here -- or even a place with a name.

The land and my thoughts carried on like this for longer than I recall. The coordinates continued to tick down, the landmark on our radar for home growing weaker. I began to fear that this trip would take us fifteen miles into the darkness -- a distance I had never traveled before. Men had been lost at ten miles. The man who had lost his wits and taken his helmet off did it at seven miles. It's funny out here. The sense of time begins to bleed out, stretch away. Anything that your civilized mind could relate with or latch onto becomes isolated in yourself. You begin to wonder if you're the only one who holds the past: the sun's heat, the bustle and thud of burgeoning city and all its gleaming patches and dark infestations -- even the beggars that blocked your path for money. It comes down to the point when you question if you're the only one who is alive in this far-gone plain -- if you're the only one who knows you exist. Does it matter if you exist in this black? Why did we have to do it? Why, you question repeatedly; why did man let it drop? He held so much, so much. The sense of loss is crushing, absolute; you have unwillingly severed yourself from men, society, and then you come dangerously close to severing yourself. For me, it is both beautiful and terrifying; it is a meditative state. The man who took his headgear off must have felt the opposite.

I tried to stop him, tried to scream 'No!' but my word were frail, wingless. They died on my lips, I know it. The wind had died, too. He heard my words, but he wasn't listening. Perhaps the wind had kept his dark thoughts from erupting; the sound was therapeutic for him, distracting. I remember it fading; you hardly ever hear the wind leaving, but when it does there is complete silence. I remember following that silence, enjoying it, thinking nothing of it -- and then disbelief stabbed; I heard:

'I can't breathe!'

'You can speak! You can breathe!'

'Ahh,' and his hands were upon the connecting rods of his helmet.

'No!'

I remember stumbling, scraping myself. I had a tear in my suit, but I also had tape. I stood on one knee, coming to my senses. I wasn't going to risk myself for this man. It was a sad thought, but I was injuring myself to save him. I remained there on my one knee, applying the tape to the cut in my suit. I watched as he took his helmet off. After ripping it off, he laid there on the ground, panting. His chest heaved, his muscles relaxing. He seemed at such a point of release, at such peace. All he wanted was to be back in his room. The wind came back down, a deafening tone. His chest continued rising, but I could no longer hear his breath. His headgear fluttered away like a piece of paper. I was no more than ten feet away from him; I feel it was my fault, because I was so close. But I had never seen a person die. I wanted to help -- had tried to --but my frustration and my need to tape the hole in my suit--

His chest stopped.

I looked at the body for a while. Seeing a man die was a bit disappointing. It came quietly and was there before you knew it, like a rising or falling sun. I stood up, wishing I had tried to save him. His chest remained still, the wind creeping down in its long notes.

That was the first man I killed. I like to claim that to myself, anyway.

I looked at my radar. The coordinates were down to five miles. This would take no less than one hour. Bob would just need to get some water in these empty cells, and that'd be that.


5

We were two miles from our objective when we came upon the "unforeseen element" in our trip. There was a small rock hill that we were bypassing, about ten feet tall. I was thinking of an old conversation Bob and I had had, concerning morals and death and such:

'But that's outrageous!' he had exclaimed.

'Well, I don't see any harm,' I reasoned, 'as long as you don't bother anybody else.'

'I guess you're right.'

A smile cracked my lips, and I said, 'Really, though, I don't think anything's wrong. Heck, it's okay to hurt somebody if you have their permission!'

'Well,' he began.

I barreled on. 'I mean, I'd blow up a whole supermarket, full of people, as long as the employees and the shoppers asked me to.'

'But that's wrong!' said Bob, incredulous with laughter. 'I mean, that's killing people.'

'You're not stepping out of your social framework.'

'You're damn right. I don't want the rules to make it okay for mass-slaughter. I'm perfectly happy with being affronted by it.'

I gave a small grin. 'So am I. I'll take away small freedoms like blowing up supermarkets full of consenting people in order to preserve a bit more safety.'

'Good idea,' said Bob.

'But,' I began, my right hand cutting the air, 'the rightness or wrongness of blowing up a supermarket does not exist.'

'But--'

I carried on: 'There's a thing called a social universe, you see, and it creates its objectivity. If I and all the people in the supermarket see nothing wrong with imminent death by explosion, then there is nothing wrong with it. If there are only two people on earth, they make the rules. They can say whether it's right to work together or kill each other for survival. Nothing but human constructs, my friend.'

'Where did you learn all this bologna?' Bob asked.

'Always knew it,' I said. 'But I repeat: rightness and wrongness is a human invention. It is created by the breeding of circumstances with cultural relativism. When there is no culture and circumstances are strait, then the man who once abhorred killing may raise a hand to preserve himself. It's that simple.

'If all humanity went extinct, morals would no longer exist. The past does not exist. It's all human concepts, all air formed by the energy of the mind. When that energy dissipates -- and I believe one day that it will -- then 'right and wrong' fade. Words are meaningless when no one speaks them. If man is not there to embrace his symbols, his sounds, agree on the name of 'table' and 'chair,' wear the colors of his race, manicure his lawn -- then those things return to their natural state.'

'What's that?' asked Bob.

'Nothing. Entropy. Humanity has done nothing -- nothing -- but convince itself one thing after another. It has danced, drunk, laughed, searched, screamed; none of it works. No technology, no written word, no spiritual quest will unfold any truth. Humanity is only going in circles, only finding paths that will lead back to itself. If there is any growth, it is toward the black of space; we are coming closer to nothing, and that's it. What are we, here? The bombs have wiped out everything around us. As far as we know, all that exists is you, me, and the rest of our little group underground. We can make rules, evolve them, bend them, break them, bend ourselves, kill each other, make it right, make it wrong--'

'I don't like this talk, Mac.'

'I don't like it either, Bob. I wish everything was steel fences and unbroken columns. But it wasn't -- isn't -- and I speak what I feel is truth. Rules, right, wrong, culture, religion, Gods, Jupiter: all are consigned to human memory; all fade. We're fading. We're in the middle of nothing, and we're fading. Right and wrong are as flimsy as opinion, and we hold them dear only as long as they sustain us. Soon, none of the war's survivors will remember our values, our mores. They will only see a wasted hell about them, feel dryness in their throat and a hunger in their belly.

'Humanity is not becoming omnipresent, we are becoming esoteric. We are drawing tighter walls around ourselves, forming jagged points, constricting lines. We are another animal -- perhaps the maddest. We have slit our own throats, drawn all that we held as beautiful and golden into a curtain of black--'

'All right, Mac, give me that beer.'

I leaned forward, handed the bottle across to him.

[Worm of Despite]

6

When I go out like this with Bob -- to do a job -- I view it less as work and more as a long walk. The land, ravaged and sterile as it is, reminds me of the desert. It is a clean land, an unspoiled place. Nothing else but solitude dwells here. Destruction came and peeled back the dingy foam of man. There are no more faces behind counters to give you a hard time, no more drunken screams in the night to unnerve you. There's no more car accidents or big hunks of internal combustion to run you over. There's no more questions like, 'Can I speak to your manager?' or 'How much will it cost to fix this?' All that remains is a quiet recess, just the same as a contemplative mind. That's all destruction is: a forced enlightenment.

One would think that there is nothing left but chaos in the aftermath, but what I see is a cleansing, a purging. It is a curious feeling: that all you see now is the essentials laid bare, the shining core. You know, as you look at the toll of devastation, that none of man's complications remain. Only natural law stands.

But it is more than that. Even nature has been wiped, to some extent. There are no more trees, no scurrying creatures through the leaves. There is nothing outside of your own stupidity. If you die, it is your own damn fault and nobody else's. It is perfect responsibility out here; the hardest, most undiluted facts reside among these dark fruits. There are no disturbing elements, no smudges to beguile or far-off engines echoing up the hills, coming down the roads. There are no roads, no cicada calls. It does not matter if you survived the war valiantly or hiding under a table. In all means, you find the same end: strained clarity, forced enlightenment. Modesty is the watchword, the path of sheer continuance of life. War has pushed you through the world's loudness and into unending silence. Destruction is sublimity. Destruction is rebirth.

These thoughts raked me softly as we walked past the hill. As I was about to leave it behind, something flashed in the corner of my eye: a flickering flame. It was fifty yards northeast of the hill. It was perhaps dim and weak, I could not tell; uncounted leagues surrounded it, black and brilliant with possibility. It was vibrant red, pulsating yellow in the center. It forged its blaze silently, the furrows of the wind matching its luster. To see it was a shock, almost a mirage. I turned slightly to Bob, and he nodded that he saw it too.

We could have walked right past it, ignored it, but my mind was carrying me other places. I held a finger up to Bob, and he waited.

Slowly, clumsily, I navigated up the hill on all fours. The wind was dying down, and by the time I reached the top, I could see something new:

Three human figures were assembled around the fire, forming a triangle. Their silhouettes were quite plain to my eye, and their talk was skirting up the hill.

They were speaking Afrikaans, which I barely understood:

'Ek onthou hierdie plek. Ek dink.'

'Rerig?'

'Ek het 'n huis gehad -- daar naby.'

There was a new detail to the fire that caught my eye: something thin and bulbous was over it, shielding it from the wind. It looked like some sort of clear plastic bag, and yet the fire did not scorch it. It sat there, firmly grounded, and billowed its spherical mass over the flame. Without the roof it created, the fire surely would've gone out, never mind it getting started in the first place. I had never seen such technology -- not from our base, anyway. It fascinated me, and the boys back home would probably want a look at it.

Quickly, I looked behind me. Bob was still at the bottom of the hill, waiting. I did not hesitate. I killed my shoulder lights, pulled up a fist-sized stone, and let it roll down the hill.

The wind picked back up, but not before the stone sent its rolling sound out. It stabbed the silence like a knife -- and kicked up a decent dust cloud, too.

The three silhouettes shifted their black faces toward the hill. The man who formed the triangle's top waved his hand, and the man at the lower-left stood up. Tentatively, he paced away from the flame, stalked toward the hill. I kept my back on the ground, could just barely hear him struggling up the hill's opposite slope. I heard him stop at the top, could feel his presence standing right over me. My heart was buzzing, my hands--

The man flinched, the dirt beneath him shifting. He must have seen Bob.

I reached for his black form, found his left heel, and jerked. He went down to me, a stream of what I'm quite sure was profanity flowing from his mouth. I rolled toward him before he could struggle up; my hands found the soft fabric of his head gear, and through it was the hardness of his skull. I gripped the base of his chin and the back of his head, twisted. Beneath the wind, I could hear no twig-snap of bone, but his complete stillness told me he was dead. I looked down the hill, at Bob; his shoulder lights were spotlighting me; he was frozen, surely staring in awe or fear. Turning then on my elbows and knees, I came back to the top of the hill.

The other two figures had left -- or were hiding. I licked a bit of sweat off my upper lip, and then motioned for Bob to join me.


7

I can remember, just faintly, the moments after the first bomb hit. It comes to me in broken snatches, like bits of unintelligible chant. I doubt I'll ever be able to piece it together, just like some dream I can hardly--

I believe I was on the first floor of my house, just above the ground. I was sitting in the kitchen, at my brown table. I think it would seat about three or four, hard to remember. There was a white refrigerator right beside it; I remember distinctly wanting to get up and open it, take out a glass of milk and pour it over something--

There was a sudden flash, and my eyes blinked, but the flash remained for a while, as if my eyelids were made of paper. It receded slowly. In a split second, I stepped up from my seat, but everything seemed to slow down. The edges of my sight were tinged with dark corners, as if I had been staring at multiple suns. Through the black spots I could still make out my refrigerator: it seemed to be coming toward me, slowly, and the cords that had connected it to the wall were trailing. Bits of wood and plaster and the broken pattern of wallpaper were rushing forward in one mélange behind it; I stepped back, toward the window above the sink. My body was screaming to crawl out of the kitchen, to reach the ground floor below me.

I don't remember how I made it out; wait, I do. I was hanging out halfway through the window, jagged slices of glass sticking up through the window pane and through my shirt. I felt the wind stirring me somewhat, like a piece of loose vine that gets pushed around during a storm. But I was still attached to the wall, to the hole in my house that had been a window. I braced my hands around its pane, steadied myself. I didn't know if I wanted to climb out of it and reach the outside -- the ground ten feet below -- or return to the more immediate ground of my kitchen behind me. Something told me -- perhaps the waves of oppressive heat -- that I should drop to the ground. I remained hanging there a bit, though. The fire didn't seem that close, and I felt sleepy or in some kind of dream. Whimsically, I looked along the outer wall of my house, saw that its wood and plaster paneling had been removed in sections. The insulation was showing, sticking out like pieces of tissue and muscle. The inner wooden boards that made up the house's framework were also exposed, some of it blackened in spots. I began to worm my way out of the window, dangling more and more, until the sensation that I would soon fall began to crest. Better than the flame, I thought, and the drop came.

What came after was a quick blur of gray and brown and smoke. I knew I was somersaulting in the air; my back neared the ground. I never felt the hit, never felt the gravity suck me to my final destination. Those were my last memories of the old world, before the hands of other survivors found me and brought me here.

Now there are no more years. We might as well call this date 'zero' and the day 'null'. It is one blur of leaving the underground to go outside and going back underground. You are given a job to collect some precious resource that somebody else previously collected a month back. When you return, that resource is doled out to a machine that converts a miniscule amount of liquid or oxygen into life-sustaining heat, water, air. Whatever you need. I do tip my hats to the engineers and doctors we have working with us. The history of our colony fades; it is so small and was created under immense duress, anyway. But what history remains is a proud one: one of subsistence and man relying upon man; our flesh is pressed together in a way that is not love or cannibalism but feels stronger than both. It is hard to describe.


8

Bob and I stood over the fire, its light flickering in our visors.

'Well,' said Bob.

I bent over the flame, examining the bag that surrounded it. The fire radiated a satisfying warmth, and yet the bag was untouched -- not scorched. I touched the bag's material, flinched a bit. It was cool, not hot. There was no special feel to it, none that I could detect; just a thin, clear bag.

'Well,' said Bob, 'are we going to take it or go?'

'Why not both?' I muttered, and I lifted the bag up.

The flame instantly sputtered out.

'Strange,' Bob said.

'Very.'

We turned about face and headed back for the hill. The wind had been dead for too long, so Bob and I exchanged a few quick words.

'That bag,' said Bob. 'Do you think it created the flame -- or just protected it?'

I rubbed my thumb and index fingers together, thinking of the bag's absence of heat. My gloves should have blackened, burned.

'No,' I said. 'I think it sustains it, at least.'

'Well, how the hell did they make the fire?'

'Good point,' I said, and I thought for a long moment. 'Yeah, can't make it out in the open.'

'So you got the bag, right?'

'Yep. Left thigh pouch.'

'Good.'

'But really,' I continued. 'Bag had to be over it. Maybe something on bag turns the fire on?'

'Let the engineers ponder that one,' said Bob, and I did.

Quietly, with our shoulder lights killed, we made the fifty yards back to the hill using our radar. I flicked it up to my face, much like a wristwatch. The LCD screen was a vivid glow, rendering thousands of tiny red lines on black background. It made a convincing wire frame of sorts -- an overhead display of the surrounding area's physical layout. The hill was marked as a small dot on the screen, growing bigger as its coordinates trickled down.

The wind was rising to a slow crawl, and Bob had something on his mind:

'Mac. That guy you killed.'

'Yeah?'

'You didn't have to do it.'

The wind began to zip by in ragged breaths, emitting a few gasps of silence between.

I turned around, shoved a gloved finger at Bob's visor.

'Listen to me. Two things we didn't have before we ran into those three men and that fire: one, new technology, bud; two, a limitless source of goddamn fire.'

'That's one thing, Mac.'

'No,' I said, raising my voice over the trawl of wind, 'it's countless. Countless things. Whatever knowledge our boys back home extract from this here bag--'

I ripped it out of my deep leg pouch, shook it before his face.

'Is going to be incorporated into new technologies, innovations. They might find a way to incubate water with this bag; it can keep fire; might stop water from evaporating -- keep it a glob or puddle or something. This bag might keep flesh better protected than our suits!'

'I'm not walkin' in no bag, Mac.'

'Neither am I, but I'm not joking. Our suits can burn, but fire does nothing to this bag. Do you see what I've been saying? See what I've done, now, Bob?'

'Yeah, killed a man for your own skin.'

'Our skin. Your skin. The colony's. Bob, where the hell are we?'
'The middle of nothing.'

'Exactly,' I said. 'When you see something in nothing you damn well take it or regret it later.'

'Why not both?'

'What?' I asked, cocking an eyebrow beneath my head gear.

Bob pointed at the bag, which I was still clutching.

'A thing that fancy is being tracked. It has to have something in it, or someone put a radar marker on it. You want those assholes to follow us -- or better yet, lead them back to the base?'

I bit my tongue. Bob would be right, I was sure. The two other guys were out there; they wouldn't just walk away from such a priceless tool without purpose. They were out there, yes, and I had no idea how to address them. If we make ourselves noticed, they'll know it's a trap or they'll spring theirs. If we just returned home -- ha!

I gritted my teeth.

'I've got no idea what to do.'

Bob nodded, just barely hearing me through the wind.

'Whatever happens, happens.'

'Usually does.'

9

As Bob and I killed the last few minutes to our objective, I thought of an anecdote I wanted to tell him. I couldn't, of course. The wind was sawing too high, and I knew what he'd say, anyway. He'd offer his low laugh and clever replies. It panned out in my mind thus:

'You know, Bob. I had a grandmother once.'

'Did you?'

'Yes; lovely thing. She did something very clever one day.'

'What's that?'

'Write the word 'love' on a slip of paper, put it in a tiny box, and gift-wrap it.'

'What's clever about that?'

'Well, cute, then. Anyway: she had a little poem to go with the box -- saying how love was in it and it should never be opened.'

Bob let a low laugh. 'And what'd you do?'

'I rattled the box, heard the slip of paper inside, opened the box, and then became disappointed.'

'Why?'

'Well, a slip of paper hardly encompassed my cosmic idea of love; I also half-expected something decent in the box, as its presentation was so nice.'

'So what did you expect? Jesus to pop out and give you a hug?'

I laughed. 'No, just some candy or something.'

'You weren't supposed to open it, Mac. The point was just what you said: nothing can contain the ideal, contain love. Can't define, can't prove it -- sure as hell can't rationalize it.'

'I just wanted an answer, Bob.'

'And I just wanted to keep talking to you in this imaginary conversation, but we've reached our objective.'

Oh.

Something tickled my eyes, made them strain. I had focused too long on my radar; I needed to see something else but its neon splash; plus, the night of day was beginning to stifle.

I flicked my shoulder lights on, watched them fall in a white blaze over Bob's shoulders. He twisted, snapped around in shock. I'm sure curse words were falling from his lips, though no sound was allowed by the wind. His head gear looked like a welder's mask, his visor an opaque black. Nevertheless, I could taste his anxiety, his raw stare.

'Calm down, Bob. Just me, not them.'

He did not hear my words, of course. Stiffly, he turned, and then we realized:

Oh. The next five feet in front of us went off into a sheer drop; we had almost stumbled over a ridge or some cliff. We had been lucky for my lights, in the end. Bob said nothing -- couldn't. I'm sure he wouldn't have, had he been able to. Got to let a man stew when it's good for him.

Bob was going to walk away from the ridge, find a way around it. He flicked his own shoulder lights on, began to go to the right. I put my hand on his arm, not wanting to lose him just yet. Something had hit me, up there on that ridge. Perhaps it was the tiredness of being out in the 'vault,' as we call it. Perhaps the LCD screen had put a swirl on my brain; I had stared into its man-made 'fire' for too long, maybe.

In any case, I felt something along the ridge -- something I had not felt since before the war. I knew there was a long gasp of air before me, an unknowably long drop below. I knew that and nothing else; there was only a canvas of black -- a scentless, sightless block of extending night that no light or sound but the wind could pierce. It would remain that way for centuries, long after I had left it. Others would pass it by, and it would not change its stance. The 'nothing' would perch there, let its garish pinions rest for some indeterminate time. In the meantime, though, I began to ponder something. In that gulf of voiceless energy, I felt that I knew the beach again. I felt the days of my youth and summer come hovering over me. There was no smell of thick brine or roll of beach water; no heady swath of sand ascended to my nostrils or lightened my head. The only thing my head was filled with was longing as I stared into that mindless void.

That's all it took, will ever take again, I thought. I no longer need the real world to feel the grains beneath my toes, the ripples running up from the last wave. I no longer need to wish there was the actual existence or tactile awareness of what the past had. All those pockets: trees, light, running water, laughter, bodies walking down sidewalks, sweating; I no longer needed them, had said my goodbyes to them. I could construct it all in my mind, bring it to fruition with no help but the blankness before me.

The old would fade, anyway, I thought. My memory of the beach would recede as age and fragility grew. The details of what the beach actually looked like: the melding of the horizon with blue ocean, the thousands of ridges that white foam and cresting waves paved, the length of the beach's strip and the carpet of people upon it; all of that would ripple slowly and lose its name and numbering and various labels. All the umbrellas on the shore would reach the translucence of my radar and then wilt into air; it would be a puff, a recession. My life would become a few distantly linked cobblestones, each step leading up from one emotion to the next. And even that would whitewash. Memory would become a collection of moments, a few crystalline shapes with no linear connection. Names would pass and mean nothing more than falling rain; voices would try to awaken me but never form words, never transmute into urgency. All would climb in vast reaches until it became too sweet and thin to taste anymore or show color. It would be a gray constancy, a mass, and--

'MacDonald.'

I opened my eyes.

I stepped backwards from the ridge's edge, my wrist bumping past Bob's. He must have been looking at me quizzically. It must have been a strange thing -- to see a person finally say farewell to the old and embrace the new. Everyone who survives does it at one point.

Sometimes you think you've already done it, but when you truly do, you know it distinctly, and all those previous moments of clarity are lessened.

The wind swaddled me a while. Bob would want to ask me about this when we got back, I was sure. We turned down from the ridge, went to find a way around. The shore would be near.


10

You're lucky, Mac. I had told myself that God knows how many times.

But you are, Mac. Lucky. You had no children; you lived alone when the bomb hit, when the old world writhed and died. The greatest treasures you could have had were not taken; the deepest bonds were not severed.

Perhaps there is another woman out here, in this hell. Perhaps I still have a chance to create in that special way -- what the others say is the prime act of creating. Giving life, forming eyes and hands and hearing it erupt out in a baby's wailing cry. I could still do that, you know. In this darkness, here. I could find someone, take them unto me.

If only we had anybody, I thought bitterly. Our colony was all male, every one. Or maybe one of them was hiding something, I thought, sniffing a bit of laughter. It's sad, though. We can sustain ourselves for oh so long under that dirt we call home, but we're dying nonetheless. Age hasn't been solved. Engineers won't go near that one; doctors are afraid to answer it. Too big a question, I guess. Maybe if man hadn't been busy gouging his own eyes out, he might have had time to search for answers, for reason. But I doubt it. No technology will ever cheat death--can't duck out of that monster.

We had found the water.

Our shoulder lights slanted out over it for ten feet, forming a rectangular spotlight on the precious liquid. You couldn't see it, only hear: even through the wind, it made a deep reverb, an echo as it lapped under the cold mash of red earth and black stone that engulfed it. It was salt water -- the first hint of an old beach humans had once frequented. There was still a beach, yes, and there were still sands. It was several miles off from this source of water. Of course, nothing to see when you got there. The sand looked so dull under our artificial lights, and you didn't dare take your toes out and let them wiggle. You could only look, only wonder. It was a little square, a tiny window into the home we'd never return to. You could walk a bit further past that, run smack into the ocean. Unfortunately, it did not strike up similar memories. Too dingy, too packed with bits of loose rubble and the cake of dirt.

But as I said: that was several miles off, and this water was our colony's nearest source. It had wormed its way from the ocean, found a narrow canyon -- if you could call it a canyon. No wider than our wrists. It would have been impossible to reach through such minute space, but luck would have it that the canal ended in a convenient little cul-de-sac. The water sat in the middle of it, two feet down. Bob needed only to reach into the hollow space of the cu-de-sac and scoop it out.

And yes, the water was filthy, but that's all we needed for our cells. Fill it with any kind of water, even if it was unrecognizable as a liquid, and our boys back home could twist it through funnels and process it till it was sparkling clean. It only took a square inch of water to make enough for fifteen days. Our cells could hold about that much. We didn't want to risk anything bigger, as too much water would weigh you down. With these cells, you could stick them in your pocket and forget it. Carry a huge cell, you say -- even a medium-sized one? You carry the backpack for that, my friend. Things are cumbersome enough with our suits alone.

Bob was on one knee, his back bent down at the rocks. He had already unscrewed the first cell cap, and he was reaching down into the earth, to draw the water out.

I looked past him, through the black. I felt I could hear the waves of the ocean from miles off, rolling their long song. Just the wind, though, I thought. It sounded so airy, though, so pristine, like through a seashell.

I turned my attention back to Bob. The wind was low, and the water was splashing underground like a madman.

'Problem?'

'No. No. It's shallower than usual.'

Bob got completely flat on his stomach then, stuck his arm in the hole, all the way up to the shoulder.

The water was still rocking like a boat. I put a gloved hand to my head gear, felt my chin through the fabric.

'You know,' I said. 'Maybe you should wait for the water to settle?'

'Don't know, man, if it ever will.'

'Did you stir it up or something?'

Bob was struggling, grunting.

'Let me get down there. Think my arm is longer.'

Bob shoved up from the ground, looking a bit nervously at the torso and legs of his suits.

I let my shoulder lights stay on him for a while. 'No cuts, man. You're good.'

'Thanks,' he said. I took his place on the ground.

I was on my chest, feeling inside the hollow space of the hole. Felt like a miniature opening to some vertical cave shaft or something. The air must be thick as hell, too.

'Well, gentlemen--'

From my prone position on the ground, I twisted my head around, looked over my right shoulder blade.

There were two figures behind Bob.

The one on the right was unarmed and staring down Bob. The man on the left was holding a pistol. He poked it in the air, towards me.
'No stupid stuff, now.'

Calmly, slowly, I untangled my arm from the hole and pushed myself up from the ground.

The man with the gun resumed his self-satisfied tone:

'I see we use the same watering hole.'

'How did you find us?' I asked.

'Very easy. Our fire that you took? Bugged.'

I looked at the man's visor, as if I could see through its black strip and into his eyes.

'Look. I'll give it back. I'm sorry I can't give back the man I took from you, but I suppose this thing is more valuable than him, anyway.'

'Not going to be that easy,' he said. 'But you will give it here.'

I fished inside my left thigh pocket, pulled out the thin, clear bag.

He jabbed the gun in the air again, and then said:

'Throw it.'

I balled the bag up. It conformed into a sphere more easily than I would have imagined. I gave it a good lob toward the man. To my utter chagrin, he caught it with his free hand.

Goddamn it.

'What else is in there?'

'Nothing,' I said.

'No, no. None of that. Out with it.'

His gun poked at me again. I'm getting tired of that, I thought.

'Nothing,' I said evenly. 'But if you must know, my friend has two water cells in one of his pockets.'

The unarmed man who had been focused on Bob came to life. He padded the outside of Bob's pockets, paused, and then reached in the left one. He pulled out both cells; they were unassuming shapes: clear cubes that seemed to be made of a thick plastic.

'What's in them?' asked the man in front of Bob.

'Water,' I lied.

'Don't trust you,' he said, and he began to unscrew the cap off one of the cells.

The man with the gun scoffed. 'I can't believe you idiots. Thinking you could just take something like that? We hardly believed it when we saw the fire move. It was there -- still -- and then the dot started moving.'

He laughed lightly, all too pleased.

'I mean, it was obvious we had walked away from it for a reason. You don't just--'

The man's left arm exploded, and he crumpled down. The gun in his right hand fell out of his dead fingers, clattered on the ground.

The man who had been next to Bob was also on the ground. A hole was gaping through his chest, the red earth staring up through it. A pink mist wafted where he once stood.

Bob was standing frozen, staring down at the bloody massacre before him. Aside from the mental shock, he looked unscathed enough.

I decided I'd let him recover on his own. Silently, I watched him as he plodded numbly past the corpse on the right, looking at it a moment. He then passed over the corpse on the left, gave it a moment of his time. Slowly, he bent over the gun on the ground, picked it up.

He twisted it in his shoulder lights, looking at the bright spots on its reflective surface.

'Bob? You all right?'

'Yeah,' he said, his voice distant, his visor on the pistol. 'I just realized--'

He turned the pistol on me, fired.

I flinched, but it was too late. A bullet had planted itself somewhere around my kneecap. I couldn't tell if it had shattered it or merely stopped beside the joint. I never had such an injury before. All I knew was that I was on the ground.

I did not cry, though it was excruciating. A better man had caught me, I thought over and over again. Caught me.

Bob strode toward me, his clarity rising back up again. He seemed a new man, a violent creature.

He bent down beside my face, said:

'Well, old buddy.'

His fist came down, struck my jaw. My head recoiled, almost bouncing on the ground. I ignored the numbness, began to speak.

'You did good, Bob. Real good. Tell me how you figured it out.'

'Well,' he said, his sarcasm building with each word, 'when the second cell exploded, you know, I figured it was for me.'

'You were right,' I said, and a funny thought struck me.

I began to laugh, in spite of my knee and swollen lip. I decided I'd have one good laugh before I died.

'What's so funny?' Bob asked.

It took me several seconds to control myself. 'Well,' I finally said, 'you were number four. I was going to tell you this, after you died:

''Well, Bob, my boy. I've seen a man choke to death, one stabbed to death, another roll off a cliff, and now I've seen one blow up. Thanks.''

Bob shook his head, disgusted. He stood up, aimed the gun at my forehead.

'And you would have enjoyed that?'

I was before death, I knew it. Its judgment was bearing down, and I felt I was damned enough as it was. Best not to lie.

'Seeing you with a hole where your torso had been?' I asked. 'Yes.'

'I enjoyed all of it,' I continued. 'I enjoyed seeing their eyes, most of all. Every man knew he was dying, every one. You wouldn't have, though.'

'And that,' said Bob, 'is why I'm going to give you the same courtesy.'

I stared at the muzzle of the gun, unable to see Bob's face through the glare of his shoulder lights. I could tell he wasn't done talking, though.

'I have to know, Mac, what it's like.'

'What?'

'To feel like you do. To wake up in hell every day and be a demon in it.'

'Heaven,' I said. 'Bliss incarnate. I loved it. I love this blood swelling under the flesh of my lip. I love the fact that I will be bone and cloth clinging to these old stones soon. I love you, even if you don't believe it.'

Bob was silent for the longest time, and then he said something I somehow expected:

'You know, Mac. I learned something from you.'

'What?' I asked. I honestly wasn't angry at him.

'It's easier to kill a man than know him.'

Yep, I thought, as I waited for my bullet.

[Kaydene]

Yay! Man, that last scene is huge. I liked it the first time, and its grown on me, too.