The Veil (Testaments I and II) Page 5

  The rest I’ll have to do with my bare hands and, once again, I pause.

  All around me the park is silent. I look back to the iron railings and, in a gap between lumpy brown vegetation, Ike and Trixie are watching me. They look tense. I look around me and the whole park is moving in barely perceptible waves. At first, I think it’s a breeze giving everything a lazy sway. It’s as though we’re all underwater and a current is making everything undulate so slowly you can’t quite see it. Even I’m moving. I look at the flowers. They are moving too, though I have to watch so carefully to see it I still believe I’m imagining it. I stick my index finger in my mouth and hold it up. It stays warm. There is no wind. I listen. There is no sound. The trees do not rustle, their leaves do not sigh.

  There is no wind.

  I look around again, beginning to feel that sense of too much reality, too much present moment. I can’t take it all in. I look at the flowers. They are not moving. I look back at the trees. They are not moving. Nothing in the park moves except me because I am freaked, filled up by what we suddenly know. There is nothing in the park to fear.

  I kneel and stick my two hands into the earth beneath some flower stems as though they are two shovels. The soil parts easily, a rich, friable mulch. The clump of brown flowers, my little piece of spring, comes free, black roots and all. I place them on the grass, take a few more double handfuls of earth and dump them in the black plastic bag. Then I lift the flowers in and press them into the protection of the soil. I stand, brush my hands off and carefully lift my flowers. They are coming with me to the Station. The other Stoppers will be amazed.

  ***

  There’s a tension that builds when you don’t go out on the Kill Crew. You can find your place on the wall, say, looking out of a window over the street, and keep your weapon handy. This makes you a guardian of the Station. If any Commuters stray too close to the wall, you can shut them down and you can give covering fire for the crew as they exit and return. But Commuters, most of them at least, don’t try to get through the wall anymore. Just an occasional lost soul will come here now, like the one that broke its teeth on the padlock, and it’s easy to believe that they’re just as suicidal as we can be at times.

  All we do in the Station is wait and we don’t even know what we’re waiting for. There’s no foreseeable end to the problem unless it’s to waste every Commuter in the city – hundreds of thousands of people slain, a few a night, for uncountable years. Some of the guys have sat down to do the math. If we whack between twenty and fifty Commuters a night, they say, we’ll be running a Kill Crew for the next twenty to thirty years. Course, the math doesn’t work because we can’t say how many of us will be left by then. These are the kinds of things you can’t help thinking about.

  What we lack here in the Station is freedom. We can get out by day and make trips several miles out on foot. On a bicycle you can go even further. As long as you remember that if you want to come back you mustn’t go further than the distance you can travel back before nightfall. It’s like wearing an invisible leash. We’re all trapped here.

  If we want to stay alive.

  That gets to being a big if.

  Human nature is such that we have an instinct to survive like all the other animals. We resist life being taken away from us. Unlike most animals, however, we can also make the choice to end our lives when we see that there’s no point in continuing. Each night you don’t crew, you sit, either on top of the rubble or peering out through the grille of a shop door, or looking down from a fire escape. You’ve got your gun in your hand and out there in the green haze of the new night you hear the Kill Crew popping heads. You know that it’s never going to end. Not if the other cities out there are in the same condition – and they must be seeing as no one has yet arrived to liberate you. The government, the army, the police force - they’re ancient history. Shit, you’ve probably wasted a minor politician or two without even realizing. You’ll definitely have shot a few desk-jockey cops.

  In the daytime, you do your best to clear away the bodies – bodies that never decompose – because you don’t want to be tripping over them come sundown on a tough shift. You build walls with bodies but the other Commuters climb them easily. At night you make a mess again. Cleaning crews go out again in the daytime. In between you pass time as though you’re in some kind of penal colony. You scratch the days off one by one if you’re like Ike. Or, if you’re like me, you stopped counting a long time ago.

  The tension builds on nights when you don’t go out.

  On the nights you go out, you blast the tension away.

  But you lose sight of a reason for doing it.

  You find more reasons for doing it to yourself. So easy. Suck on Cain or Abel. Simple. Or, like the many wistful souls we’ve lost, you just take a walk as though everything was normal. Just take a walk and don’t ever come back to the Station. In that final act they must find some freedom. But only some. None of us curse them. We all understand. The worst thing about it is knowing it could be you next time. Just a little change of attitude is all it takes.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Over a camping stove, Ike boils a tin of asparagus soup we found at the deli. We also found some rye crackers and on those we have spread wild boar pâté. We have a big jar of kosher dill pickles and some pimento-stuffed green olives in olive oil. It makes a change from spam and beans.

  In the corner, Trixie is playing solitaire, a game I showed her how to play today because I wasn’t in the mood to roll dice. Part of me never wants to play another board game – bored game – ever again. Part of me wants a reason never to have to.

  Ike opens a bottle of Montepulciano, sniffs the cork, and nods in approval. I don’t give a shit what it tastes like as long as it takes the edge off my nerves. Right now I’m wired tighter than a time bomb.

  “Ready for some soup, Trixie?” Ike asks.

  “Nuh-uh. Just give me the wieners.”

  We found wieners too. Big ones in brine in a large glass jar. None of us have eaten a fresh vegetable for as long as we can remember. It doesn’t make any difference to Trixie. All she wants is processed meat and ketchup. I guess tomatoes are almost vegetables even if they’re not fresh. I guess asparagus is too. My stomach growls and I’m reassured that I haven’t lost my appetite. Creatures that don’t want to eat don’t want to live. I’m thankful for my ravening.

  On a second camping stove, Ike fries wieners.

  “Come and get it,” he says.

  “I want to eat ‘em while I play.”

  “You come and sit with us. The game’ll still be there in five minutes.”

  There is silence and I fear he’s really gone too far this time. Why doesn’t he understand that Trixie is fragile, already broken inside somehow? He can’t stomp around on her that way.

  Trixie stands up from her cards, approaches and then kneels beside Ike. He hands her a plate with two scorched dogs. She takes it. He hands her the ketchup.

  “Eat plenty of that red stuff. It’s good for you.” She smiles.

  “Soon as you finish you can go back to your solitaire, Trixie. I just wanted us to be together while we eat. We’ve all lost our families but that’s no reason to behave like we can’t make new ones. We can pretend it’s old times until we find some new times.”

  “I never ate with my…family.”

  Either of us could say something to her about this but neither of us does.

  Ike passes me a glass of wine. He passes one to Trixie. I want to question this but I’ll have to do it later, not in front of her. It’s not my place.

  He holds up his glass and looks at each of us.

  “To finding new times.”

  We tap our glasses together. Trixie giggles when she drinks her wine and then makes a face. “Yeugh.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” says Ike.

  “I don’t wanna get used to it.”

  “Good. More for me.”

  For a few seconds I almost believe we can pretend
to be a family. Then I think very hard about where we are and what we are doing and I know such a thing will never be possible. Not even as a game to pass the time.

  I’ve decided not to tell anyone about the flowers. You never know how they might react.

  My apartment is one of the highest in the Station. I’ve placed the flowers in a blue ceramic pot on the small balcony where people looking up won’t see them. Even if anyone looks across from the opposite building they probably won’t notice. If they do, I’ll say the flowers are silk imitations I found outside. I must be fucking nuts to bring them back in here because whatever is wrong with the Commuters is probably wrong with them too.

  But they’re only flowers. They can’t move or spread. They won’t come wailing and forlorn in the night to torment me. If they do, they’ll get stomped and burned and that will be the end of them.

  They are not beautiful. All they do is remind me that there were once real flowers in the old world. These doppelgangers have petals like brown smears of dried blood. Their stalks and leaves are greenish but, really, they’re brown too. The petals are shaped like daisies but they’re much larger. Almost like a kid’s idea of what a flower might look like. Except a kid would have ignored the brown crayons.

  I’ve been waiting for a moment alone in which to test their scent. Right now Trixie is out and about somewhere in the Station. She might be with Ike for all I know, developing this thing they have. This entirely unexpected and, I’m quite certain, fragile attempt at a father and daughter relationship. So there’s me and there’s the flowers. Alone.

  I slide open the glass door and kneel down. I bend over the flowers. I allow myself a generous inhalation.

  Imagine you’re in the countryside somewhere remote, somewhere heather and lichen and moss cover the wet ground. Imagine you’ve dug a few inches into the earth and forced your face down in there. That filth and readiness, that deep fecundity, that feeling of soil on your lips and nose, it’s almost offensive it’s so alive. But it does not smell perfumed in the way I’d hoped. It’s the opposite of that. These flowers smell of rot and decay just like the mulch of the richest, blackest earth. It’s offensive because it smells of potential and of growth. A smell from which all things – any things – may spring.

  I can’t move fast enough once I realize what’s going to happen. My vomit comes in one spasm and I am empty.

  I dump the flowers back into the black sack I brought them home in before I even think of clearing up the puke. I know which smells worse. I lay the bag down so that the air can escape and I crush the flowers into their tainted humus beneath the soles of my boots. When the bag is good and compressed, I pick it up and walk down the many flights of stairs to the incinerator in the basement. Next time we light it up, the flowers will be first into the flames.

  In my apartment, I swill mouthwash again and again to rid my mouth and nose of the scent of corrupted flowers.

  ***

  The knock is wrong. I have to think about it for a while before I’m able to guess who it is. I put my eye to the peephole just to be sure. I hesitate over whether I’m in or not. He knocks again. I step quietly away from the door to the other side of the room and do my best to sound pissed.

  “Get lost.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “No we don’t.”

  “All right. I need to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t want the whole Station listening.”

  I move back to the door, snag the security chain and open up. Just three or four inches. “What?”

  “Just let me in, will you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about Frieda Hartley.”

  “Neither do I, Sherri. I just want to talk to you. Five minutes.”

  “Two.”

  “Okay.”

  I unlatch the chain and walk away. He enters. Cautiously. Cap in hand, almost, but doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t suit him, this big man, unable to speak.

  “You’re down to about ninety seconds.”

  He looks up, grinding his teeth over whatever he wants to say.

  “Shit, Sherri. I need you.”

  For a moment I misunderstand. Completely. Surely, this isn’t how it sounds.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He sees what I’m thinking and is quick to dispel it.

  “On the crew, I mean. Kicking ass. Popping heads. Like you used to.”

  I look away and shake my head.

  “Please, Sherri. It’s getting tougher out there.”

  “I can’t do it right now, Monty. If I could, I would – you know me. But I need this time off. I need to get my head together.”

  “The only way to get your head together is to make Commuters’ heads bust apart. Get back in the saddle before you lose your courage.”

  “Don’t call me a fucking coward, Spence.”

  He holds up his hands. “Jesus, Sherri, I’m not calling you anything.”

  “You’re implying it. You’re saying I don’t have what it takes to crew any more.”

  “No. No way. I would never, could never say that to you because it isn’t true. But I am afraid. I’m afraid for you and I’m afraid for the regulars on the crew. Most of all I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to the Station if we don’t stay committed to wiping out these freaks of the night.”

  “You don’t need me for that. You’ve got dozens of regulars that love to pop heads.”

  Monty sighs. Suddenly he’s a smaller man. An older man than I remember from just a few nights ago. There’s grey at his temples. Has he had that all this time or has it sprouted there since the last time I saw him? Monty Spence is tired. I can see it now. He’s exhausted. When was the last time he didn’t crew, I wonder? I can’t remember.

  Monty’s always been there.

  He leans back against the wall for support.

  “Whether you know it or not, Sherri, every Stopper in this Station sees you as something of a trailblazer. You’re one of the few women who chooses to crew. Not only that, you’re out there more often than most of the guys. You crew almost as much as I do. That means something to people. It’s important. But what it means when you don’t crew is even more important. Every Stopper’s wondering why you’re not out there. You know what it does to people’s heads when things don’t go right in this place. There’s a black shadow that stalks every soul in the Station and you know its name. If they think you’re giving up, that’s another reason not to keep going themselves.”

  “Fuck you, Monty. You’re blaming the future mass suicide of the Nielsen and McKinley Station on me just because I haven’t crewed for a few nights.”

  I’m trying to make a joke of something that can’t ever be funny. I’m trying to exaggerate something that cannot be any worse than it already is.

  “Yes. I am. You have to keep this Station alive. Whether you like it or not, whether you’re scared or not, there’s only one way you can do that. Pick up your guns and join the next shift. Get out on the Kill Crew, Sherri. Do it tonight before this whole place melts down.”

  I feel guilty enough about things without Monty giving me this speech of his. If he knew what was in my mind he’d probably deny me the privilege of suicide by shooting me himself. The fact is, Monty doesn’t understand what’s really going on. He doesn’t have a clue. All I’m trying to do is stay safe, keep out of harm’s way a little longer.

  Course, now, all that’s out of my hands. If I want any kind of future, my schedule for the next few evenings at least is already written in the diary.

  I’ll be on the Kill Crew.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Commuters are changing. It’s taken everyone by surprise. Especially tonight’s crew. Why it’s taken all this time and why this is happening so suddenly, I can’t tell. No one knows why.

  Tonight has been too awful for me to take it all in. We took a hammering out there and I don’t think it’s one we’re going to recover from. I don’t want to remember i
t but I’ll try because it’s important. People should know what happened. You know what I mean, don’t you? – if there are still people after we’re gone.

  It comes back to me in flashes, in bytes, disordered.

  We prepare in an alley because we’re going over the wall tonight. I feel resolved about crewing again and I know that’s down to my history on the job. I’ve done it ever since I popped my first head from a first floor window. It became a requirement. I’ve served far more than an apprenticeship out there; I’m inured. And I’m trained. As near to a soldier as a civilian will ever be, acting on reflex and the education provided by exposure to night after night of extremity. I’m an old hand.

  And then I snap one of my laces as I tighten my boots and all that confidence bleeds out. I sit for way too long studying the frayed end poking from a boot eye and the frayed end in my hand. Paralyzed. It’s a really bad fucking sign, something like this, a ripple in the placid pond of the way things ought to be. The ripples reach all the way to the shore and I come out of it. But I come out with no strength and no belief.

  Sure, you could say the night went bad because I believed it would, that I created my reality out of my state of mind. You could say it was all my fault. To which I say, fuck you. Fuck you because you weren’t even there. You haven’t had to live through this shit. Harsh, I know. Maybe what you’ve survived is worse than what we’ve faced here at the Station. I don’t know. I just feel like you don’t really understand anything that’s happened here. I can say that because, truly, none of us know. Especially not me, the future ghost of Sherri Foley – if ghosts still happen in this new, silent world.

  By coincidence, we head out to the memorial park. I think Monty wants to make an easy night of it. Ease me back in gently. My re-laced boot feels wrong around my ankle but there’s nothing to be done about it out here. Because of what the three of us saw that day, I’m nervous about being here. There’s so much the crew could discover. So much we don’t want them to know.