Desolation (5 page)

 

“
Sta-an-an-an-an
.
Hydraulic depressu–
[STATIC]
One moment pl–
”

While Jerri waited, she glanced uncomfortably down the alleyway,
expecting to see the man she had just cut emerged out from in-between
the tents.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” a man said behind her.

Jerri startled but quickly recognized the voice. She turned towards
a heavy-set man sitting in one of the tents erected by her building. He
wore a tattered t-shirt, checkered golf pants, and a grungy red scarf that
covered half of his face from the blistering sun. He had an awful stench.

“Hey Ted,” she said with a fake smile.
He wasn’t buying it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, coughing.
Jerri shook her head.
“Nothing,” she said.

Jerri’s hand was shaking and her coat had some of the nurse’s
blood on it. She stared at one of the archaic signs hung next to the sally
port, waiting for what felt like forever.

Ted laughed.

“One of these days those Nazis are going to get you for keeping
that blade and cutting people,” he said as he pointed at the blood droplets
on her hand.

She felt embarrassed and exposed. She quickly wiped her hand
off on her jacket, thankful that the apathetic police officers she walked
past didn’t notice it.

“Only if you snitch,” she snapped. She didn’t like the fact that he
knew about her weapon but he was the one who sold it to her in the first
place after all.

If you wanted something illegal inside the camp, Ted was the
man to see.

Ted shook his head adamantly.
“No way, no how,” he said. “Old Teddy isn’t a snitch.”
Jerri nodded.
“I’m glad that your time inside taught you something,” she said.
Ted grinned and his golden tooth glistened in the sunlight.

“I’m the most loyal con there ever was. Things fell apart, I broke
out, and then I ran right into another prison,” he said gesturing to his
surroundings. “I still can’t get over that!”

Jerri smiled. When he wasn’t drunk, Ted had a way about him
that lightened her mood. She wasn’t sure if he really did escape from a
prison, but she knew he loved to tell his story to anybody who had time to
listen.

“They’re a bunch of buffoons,” he said. “The people in here, I
mean. They’re pretending that everything will be okay.”

“Why do you say that?” Jerri asked, blinking.
“There ain’t a helicopter coming today. It’ll be the same as last
week and the week before that and the week before that. We’re cut off,”
he said matter-of-factly.

Jerri frowned. Ted wasn’t usually the pessimistic type.
“They’re coming,” she said.

“If you say so. Hell, it doesn’t matter if they don’t feed me,” he
continued, ignoring her statement, “I have enough to last me for a while.”
Ted slapped his portly stomach and chuckled.

 

“You’re a drunken old fool, Teddy,” she said with a grin.
“They’re coming.”

 

She looked around his tent and noticed that Teddy’s scrawny
German Shepard was missing.

 

“Where’s Bo?” she asked, pointing towards the dog’s empty food
dish.

 

“Motherfuckers,” Teddy muttered, shaking his head. He lost his
smile. “They took him from me last night. They said he was a stray.”
Teddy’s eyes reddened as he shook his head, staring at the
ground.

“But I thought he was registered,” Jerri said.
Teddy spat in the sand.

“He was registered… I tried to show them his papers and all I
got in return was this,” he explained as he lifted his shirt up and revealed
large purple bruises all along the side of his chest. A large tattoo of dragon
wrapped around a sword hid underneath the bruises, memories of a time
long ago. “I got a lot of beatings from cops when I was growing up… and
this one was one of the worst.”

Jerri cringed and looked away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. There was something false about her
apology however. She knew where the meat in the mess hall was coming
from and she knew why the police were constantly hunting down feral
animals and placing traps; she wasn’t stupid. She just couldn’t price the
life of an animal above the life of a human and it made her feel like a
desperate scoundrel. Like everybody else, she tried not to think about it
and ignored the facts that glared her in the face every morning.

Teddy lowered his shirt and looked up at her, wiping the tears out
of his eyes with his dirty sleeve.

 

“Those motherfuckers took my best friend,” he said, staring at
her. “So stay out of trouble. Old Teddy doesn’t want to lose you too.”

The sally port door opened.
“You won’t,” she said.
“
Depressurization is complete. Thank you for–
[STATIC]”

Jerri stepped inside. It reeked of smoke and burnt hair inside. She
pressed the button and held her breath as she expected the normal plume
of smoke to shoot out of the shower head.

The door slammed shut behind her.

 

“
Atte– Please stand in – above y–
[STATIC]
Do not m– the
decontaminat–
”

 

The walls made a loud grinding noise, louder than she ever heard
before.

 

The shower spat out sparks and then a plume of smoke.
Jerri was badly startled by the sparks and then started coughing
on the thick black smoke.

The sparks were something new.
“
You are now c–clear–clearclearclearclearclear–
”

The second door opened and Jerri stumbled into the dorm, still
coughing.

A woman in her thirties with a horrible sunburn stood in the hall,
leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. She looked at Jerri and took a
long drag, exhaling her smoke up towards the non-operational smoke
detector in the ceiling.

“That thing is on its last leg,” the woman said, cackling. “Been
getting worse all day. Won’t be long till we can walk in and out as we
please just like building three.”

Jerri didn’t say anything, kept her eyes fixed forward, and walked
past the woman. She made it a point not to talk to strangers unless she
couldn’t help it. Strangers always wanted something.

“You got any spare rations, baby?” the woman asked. “Or
smokes? I’d fuckin’ chop my own dad’s balls off for a pack of decent
smokes.”

Jerri didn’t make eye contact and kept walking forward.
The camp was full of predators.
“Bitch,” the woman called out.

As Jerri walked away the woman took another drag and narrowed
her eyes, watching her as she retreated down the hall.

Jerri got to her room, opened the door, and walked inside with
her eyes shut. Once she was safely inside her room, she collapsed on her
cot and started sobbing without making any noise. Her sobs were deep
gut wrenching sobs that stole the air out of her chest and made her
stomach heave. Her whole body shook.

She cupped her face with her hands and tried to control herself.
Her lungs took deep angry breaths, making her whole body jar.
She was tired of offering fake smiles and empty laughs.
She was tired of being afraid of everyone all the time.
She was tired of feeling helpless and hiding behind a knife.
She was tired of feeling useless; she couldn’t even help her friend.
She was tired of existing just to exist…

She closed her eyes and exhaled. Her body was starting to come
down off the adrenaline high from her altercation earlier.

 

Emotionally exhausted, she drifted off to sleep.
“H
ey. Babe...” a soft-spoken man said. “Are you going to wake
up sometime this century?”

Jerri opened her eyes and saw that she had fallen asleep in Mitch’s
living room again. His place wasn’t the best, but the location was decent
and the neighbors were pretty chill. The only thing that bothered her
about his cramped place was that it always had the most ungodly stench
of Doritos mixed with weed.

She stretched and yawned. She was wearing her usual sleepover
attire; an oversized t-shirt and panties.

 

“Was I dreaming?” she asked.

 

Mitch was already dressed and rolling a joint on the glass coffee
table.

“How would I know?” he said with a shrug. He was fairly tall,
thin, and had dirty blonde hair. To the uninformed he looked like a stoner
but there was intelligence hidden behind his handsome eyes.

Jerri looked at the TV and saw that VH1 was doing one of their
usual marathons. She glanced at the cable box’s digital time display and
then looked over at Mitch.

“Eleven? You let me sleep in?” she asked, almost accusingly.
Mitch smirked.

“They canceled classes again,” he said as he finished up his joint.
He slid it behind his ear and grabbed the remote off of the coffee table.
“That flu thing still?” Jerri asked.

Mitch flipped the channel to CNN. The news footage showed
army vehicles barricading a highway with lots of helicopters flying
overhead. The caption read ‘Piedmont Flu spreads to six states in fortyeight hours, government issues pandemic alert’.

“Yeah babe, apparently shit’s pretty bad,” he said. “I hope it’s
better by springtime. I’ll be pissed if we get the flu when we fly out to
NYC.”

Jerri was excited about the trip. She didn’t get the chance to leave
Arizona much, but that all changed when she met Mitch. He was a huge
adventurer and he seemed to love to take her new places.
She smiled.

The news footage showed a CDC laboratory. The camera panned
across a row of chimps in cages and the caption read ‘Government
announces Acexa approval’.

“We could always settle on Seattle,” Jerri said, rocking back on
the sofa. “I always wanted to go there.”

 

The caption on the television read ‘Homeland Security orders
mandatory inoculations’.

“I know, but still…” Mitch said, turning the channel back to
VH1. “…New York is our plan this year. We voted. Besides, it’s not like
Seattle is going anywhere. You can wait another year.”

Jerri gave a cattish grin and threw a pillow at Mitch.
Her eyes fluttered opened and she felt disoriented.
She hated dreaming.

J
erri made her way down the waterlogged hallway towards
Krystal’s room. She wanted to check on her and let her know about the
medication situation. Afterward she planned on going down to the mess
hall to see if they were serving anything before she went to bed.

Sometimes they served dinner, sometimes they didn’t; it was a
gamble.

Jerri stopped at Krystal's door and knocked.
“Krystal, open up. It’s me,” she said.
Nobody answered.

She must be sleeping, Jerri figured, and decided to just wait and
check on her in the morning.

After another shower of sparks and smoke from the dorm’s
broken sally port, she found herself standing outside in the cold desert
night.

Despite being the end of summer, the desert heat was unbearable
during the day and at night the cold air was capable of freezing you to the
core.

There was something about the desert nighttime that Jerri always
liked. Growing up in Arizona, the desert was all she knew. The cicadas
were quiet and the dust had settled; nights were peaceful even inside the
camp.

She bundled herself up in a burlap blanket and looked at Teddy’s
tent.

He was huddled underneath an old sleeping bag reading a book
by flickering candlelight. Given his girth, he glistened with a thin layer of
sweat across his forehead despite the cold. She wondered if he even
needed the cover at all.

“Feeling any better?” Teddy asked without looking up.
Jerri wrapped her blanket tighter around herself and nodded.

“I don’t suppose you want to talk about it,” he said, turning a
page.

 

Jerri shook her head and walked over to him.
“What are you reading?” she asked. She had the curiosity of a cat
but had none of the luck. “Isn’t that…”

“The same one from last month? Yes, yes it is,” he said, showing
her the cover. “It’s one of my favorite westerns. I’d thought I’d try to read
through it again.”

Jerri never was much of a reader. It always strained her eyes.
“I’m heading to the mess hall,” she said. “Want to walk with me?
I could do with some company.”

 

Teddy smiled and shook his head.

 

“I’m sorry, but I’d rather stay low and out of everyone’s way,” he
said, flipping a page. “They’ve been patrolling all evening.”

“They like to remind people they exist, I think.” Jerri said,
shrugging. “What got you so spooked? You already stay low. You don’t
break many laws.”

Teddy shook his head and stopped reading. He looked up at her
with a tired expression.

“I remember one time inside a few years ago… I was still green
back then. It was a week before Christmas. I woke up after the morning
count and couldn’t shake this feeling in the pit of my stomach. Most of
the old cons stayed behind in their cells and skipped their meal.”

Well, obviously I like food and I didn’t know any better. I went to
breakfast with my buddies… but none of us said anything. I could tell that
they felt it too.”

Teddy laughed but there was pain in his voice.

“This one kid… he was greener than me. His name was Marlowe.
He was doing a stint for robbery. He worked as a gardener for these old
rich folks. One morning when the couple was out at church he broke into
their bedroom and stole a box of jewelry.”

“And I’m guessing they caught him?” Jerri asked, folding her
arms across her chest.

 

He chuckled and licked his chapped lips.

“Hard not to catch him when he forgot to clean his boots off
before he pulled the heist. They followed his muddy tracks all the way
back to his work shed in the back of the house. Fucking idiot, he was a
good kid but a terrible criminal.”

Jerri laughed.
“Anyway, Marlowe used to hang around me, you know? He had a
mouth on him. He lost his temper with some wetbacks the day before.
They laughed him off and we all figured that was the end of it. So there I
was, sitting in the kitchen with that sour feeling in my stomach. Marlowe
was sitting next to me running his mouth about something from the
outside, cause, you know, when you’re inside, you talk about the outside a
lot. So he’s talking, we’re listening, and then next thing I knew, he was
quiet.