American Apocalypse (11 page)

“I guess we are going to have to clean up this mess.” It was more like time to hide the mess, not that there were a whole lot of people who cared.

“I knew you would take the shot.”

“How’s that, Max?”

“Did you really care if it worked or not?”

I wasn’t going to lie; why bother, I knew he already knew.

“No.”

I went over to collect my share. The rule was, if you killed them, you got their weapons, plus any personal belongings of value. Max was right: I didn’t give a damn,
never had. With Max, it was a relief not to have to pretend. He also knew I didn’t care for the old man.

I had come by the Dollar Store looking for a donation from them to show their support of the local police force. The old man had given me a battery-powered nose- and ear-hair remover. At first I thought he was telling me I was missing something in my daily grooming. I went back to my room, and spent some time peering into the mirror. Nope, all clear. I decided what the hell, I would try it anyways. It worked for about two seconds, then it broke. I was not happy.

I told Max about it the next day. “He gave you what?” and then began laughing his ass off.

“What?” A dim light went off in my head. “What did you get?” He just laughed more. He never did tell me.

One of the things that some people—especially older folks who had lived well for so long—had a problem adapting to was how raw life could be. Nasty was how women usually described it; men, well, we just pretended it was nothing. Some of us actually believed that, although a lot depended on your age and how you had come up.

Life was messy now and getting messier, like this. Violence in real life was not like a video game, TV, or the movies. It was infinitely more real. It smelled, and the smell was never good. Left to ripen, a human being became incredibly fetid. It was a stink that got into your nose, into your clothes, and into your mind—and it never left.

Messy also described the way many of us were eating. Chickens were bought live, then killed, and gutted. Squirrels, dogs, cats—they all had to go from recognizable animal to dead meat. There wasn’t a lot of money available to be spent on professionally chopped and wrapped meat
anymore. Then what you got had to be transformed back into something that was palatable. Well, sometimes it was palatable. This, I figure, is why they made hot sauce. A little Tabasco made anything edible as far as I was concerned. Then there was the problem of disposing of all the fluids and inedible parts. It took water to clean up, and you needed to dump it all somewhere where you knew it would go away soon. Back then people didn’t know about composting. Everything was still supposed to be magic. You put it in a trash can, and the trash fairy came and got it—until they quit coming because no one was paying them.

Just like these bodies: In the movies a bunch of blinking, flashing lights would show up. The bodies would be dumped onto gurneys and then—after sitting somewhere and being identified or not—they would go into the ground, usually first being run through a crematorium. If they were unclaimed or the families were too poor, well, an urn’s worth of ashes would be buried in a hole at the county’s potter’s field off of Germantown Road. A lot of paperwork would be generated; Max and I would need lawyers—it would be a big deal.

That was the old way. Now no one in power really cared all that much, especially if the people involved were poor or, like these guys, just out-of-area losers. No ID in the pockets or wallets. Max’s guy by the car had a Costco card that was expired. None of them had Zone IDs—no surprise there. Not a lot of cash either. Mama-san had brought out a wet cloth to wipe off the old man, who had been spattered a bit. He grabbed the cloth from her angrily and finished cleaning himself. He missed a few places, I noticed—not that I was going to point them out.
The old man was showing with angry body language and bursts of Korean that he was not happy that I had shot the hostage taker while he was being held. I hid a smile in a cough behind my hand.

They had a cat that lived in the Dollar Store. Sometimes I would see him sitting in the old lady’s lap as she listened to her Korean radio station. The cat had come out to see what was going on. He brushed against Max’s leg, sniffed at the blood, and began to lap it up with delicate little cat licks. Mama-san got all excited, picked it up, smacked it lightly, and grinned embarrassingly at us before disappearing back into the store. We had started to gather a crowd.

Leather Man was telling everyone in listening range how Max had taken them out. The Apple Couple were adding their little bits of color. I looked around. Nobody had whipped out a cell phone to make calls or take pictures. If they had tried—well, they wouldn’t. We weren’t looking for our fifteen minutes of fame. No money in it anymore, just trouble.

Max came over to me. “There’s more here than meets the eye. They targeted the old man. I asked him how he wanted to handle it. He said he would make a call. We are going to drag the bodies into the empty store next door. The Korean Business Association is going to take care of the bodies.”

I guffawed. “They aren’t going to make barbecue out of them?”

“You eat Korean barbecue?”

“I did once, Max, that was enough, and kimchi is disgusting.”

“So then, what’s the problem?”

Max was right. The reality was they would probably end up in a hole somewhere—or as koi food. “I also called the chief. He wants the AK since I told him there was less than thirty dollars between all three of them.”

“That’s your weapon,” I protested.

Max waved his hand dismissively. “I’m okay with it.” Not much I could say to that. “You can have the one by the door’s gun if you want.”

“Okay.”

It was over except for dragging the bodies into the store. Mama-san had come out with a bucket, a brush, and a dustpan. She was splashing the water on the blood pools. The chunky parts would be swept up. The guy had come in by front door. Now what was left of him would be going out the back door. I checked out the gun from the door guy: It was an older-looking, chrome-finish Taurus 9 mm. I’d have to ask Sarge what I could get for it.

Max had a cell phone but I didn’t. I realized a while back that I didn’t need one. I had no one to call. The time I was spending online was dropping—real life was now far more interesting. Plus, I was mad at the Internet. Yeah, I know how silly that sounds but it was still true. Virtual friends I had known for years turned out to be worthless. When I needed them, they were there. The problem was where
there
was: inside a computer—nice, but essentially worthless. Even stuffed animals would have been more useful. At least they would have been huggable.

The entire Internet experience had begun to seem like nothing more than a dream. Much of the time I had spent in it was already forgotten. So much of my time had been wasted there. What I did remember were short fragments, all of little or no substance. Life wasn’t always about killing people online or offline. This was probably a good thing. Eventually, you would run out of them, and then who would you have to talk to? Or kill, when the need arose? That would be pretty damn boring—not that it was going to happen anytime soon.

I guess it was my attitude that made Max decide to pull me aside a few days after the Dollar Store shooting. He was a little uncomfortable talking to me about it. I can always tell when someone is dancing around what they want to say. He was dancing.

“Look, Max, just tell me,” I finally said, since it was getting kind of irritating.

“Well, look, it’s like this—the killing thing. I know . . . I mean . . . well, don’t get to liking it. You go down that road and you’re not going to like what you find.”

I just stared at him. He looked me in the eye and shook his head. “You know about me. You know where I’ve been.” I nodded. “I saw guys like you in the Corps. You get to liking it—the power, the reaching out and snatching a life or three. I was like that; maybe I still am a bit. I never really figured it all out.”

He was looking away from me now . . . far away. I don’t know whether it was inside himself or out under a hot sun in a place where so many others had died.

“I had my sarge take me for a walk. Wasn’t far—you couldn’t go far there. All that space, and we could only use a tiny piece at a time. That’s when he told me this.” Max closed his eyes and recited:

“Some men are born to a love of violence; others acquire a taste for it. In wartime many consider it a tool to be put aside once victory has been achieved. Nevertheless, all of those who have experienced it will find they remain marked by it until death. For those of us born to it, only a few will realize that it is a gift that must be contained, hidden, and controlled, for otherwise it will destroy us. Like fire, all it knows is that it must burn. Who and what it consumes in the process means nothing to it.”

He told me that his sarge had learned it from an old German back when he was a private and stationed there. He never said one way or the other, but my guess was the German had served in World War II. “What I am saying is, don’t let it burn you out.”

I sat there for a minute and then said, “Well, Max, that was some profound shit. Thank you for sharing that with me.” Then I grinned at him.

“You’re an asshole, Gardener. I don’t know why I freaking bother.” He was smiling as he said it. I knew what he was trying to do. I didn’t really understand it, but it was cool. We had our little moment and then it was back to reality. “We got a job tomorrow.”

“Really? Anything good?” I doubted it, but you had to ask.

“Yeah, it isn’t that bad. The chief wants us to go over to the Forest Meadow development. You know which one I mean?”

I did. It was a development of brick “executive manors” that had once sold for $1.4 million apiece. They had only built out about half the development before the Crash. When the builder went bankrupt there were about ten houses built; nine of them were empty last time I biked through there on the way to somewhere else.

“Yeah, is that the teardown?”

“Yeah, we need to go through one last time. I guess they’re expecting some brass to show up for the bulldozing. Supposedly, the sheriff’s department went through and cleaned the last one out. We just got to make sure no one’s moved back in since.”

I had read about it and heard the talk. The federal government was giving out money so “excess housing” could
be torn down. It would create a few jobs, and the local municipality would get the land once it was cleaned up. Supposedly, a park was going to be built, but I doubted it. There was no money. That is, unless a vacant field fit the description of a park, which it probably did. Word was, the city was going to sit on it until the economy came back, then sell it to a builder.

Good luck with that
, I thought. We made plans to meet at 0800 hours over at Forest Meadows. A couple of the city patrol officers were going to show up to help. We parted ways, and I went back to my room to eat some soup and get some sleep.

I was there the next morning at 0745. Max was already there waiting. It was a beautiful morning—cool, with a nice light breeze out of the east. We sat on a pile of bricks, kicked our heels, and talked about nothing until the city patrol officers rolled in around 0815. I won the bet. Max had figured on 0830 for their arrival; I had taken 0815 or earlier. He was buying lunch next time. I heard him mutter, “What the hell? Was the coffee place out of bagels again?” I laughed.

We did our greetings, spending about ten minutes doing it until Willis—he was the sarge—said “Well, might as well get this over with. You two take this side of the road; me and Robbie will take the other. Shouldn’t be nothing to it—oh, and don’t get lazy on me either. Check downstairs and upstairs. We don’t want anybody getting run over by a dozer in front of the suits.”

“Yeah, yeah, we got it covered,” Max told him over his shoulder as we walked away.

“How we going to get in, Max?” I hadn’t seen any keys change hands.

“No problem—no doors.” He was right: Most were missing their doors, and if it wasn’t a door, it was a window.

“Hard to believe they got more than a million dollars for these.” I had never been in a house that cost that much when they were actually functional.

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t look like they did,” Max replied.

We started checking them. Max would go in through the back and check the basement and garage. I checked the first and top floor. Usually, there was more than one staircase to the main floor, which is where we would meet. There was a lot of space in these houses. My room was about the size of a bedroom closet in these places. They must have been nice once, but not anymore. They had been hit by waves of destruction.

The first wave came with the owners’ departure. Some owners, not all, had gutted them of the appliances. Others, perhaps harder up for cash, went for everything else of value. Carpet would be ripped up, wood flooring would be pried up. Craigslist was a good place to get a deal on cabinets and vanities or flooring back then. The second place we checked was missing all the light switch covers. Sometimes the owners would do malicious damage; sometimes not.

Then the second wave would come through: the scavengers. If the owners left the appliances and everything else intact, well, that was a great day in a scavenger’s life. They went for copper wiring and pipes. The way they harvested it was hard on the drywall. They were like giant rats gnawing through it to rip out what they came for. The neat ones used a knife; the others just punched a hole and began ripping.

The third wave was squatters and kids. They built fires and crapped where they felt like it. After all, there were plenty of houses to move to when the stench got too bad or they were moved along. They never left anything the way they found it. Windows would be left open, and rain would soak everything—eventually the mold would take over. Animals—especially raccoons and squirrels—would come in, take a look around, and build nests. Which reminded me: I needed to keep an eye out for wasps. They loved these empty houses, too.