Upright Beasts (19 page)

Roberta came bolting in from the kitchen.

“If you couldn't have him, nobody could. Is that it? You've never been happy for me, not once in my whole life!” Roberta started to cry. “There were two of them. We could have worked something out.”

The remaining Arthur knelt down beside the body and solemnly slid down the eyelids.

He stood up and looked at Anne. Roberta stared at Anne and pulled out her cell phone, threatening to call the police. The thunder rumbled softly in the distance. The three of them stood over the body, the seconds doubling and doubling as they tried to anticipate what would happen next.

MEGAFAUNA

WHAT WE HAVE SURMISED ABOUT THE JOHN ADAMS INCARNATION

A
lthough much remains unclear about John Adams (alternatively referred to in recovered documents as Jon Adam, John Adems, and the Adams Abomination), recent drone expeditions into the Charred Continent have unearthed new artifacts that lead us closer to understanding this mysterious entity.

Long assumed to be a prince or demon of a lesser cult, we now know that John Adams was an important figure in the dominant United Statsian mythology. He appears to have originally been conceived as a familiar or minion of George Washington, the first of the hundred tyrants that are said to have ruled the country until its infamous, self-inflicted demise. It was only later that John Adams was celebrated as a deity in his own right. His physical manifestation is a source of debate. Certain scholars suggest he was worshipped as an enormous, goat-like god or perhaps a sentient birch tree—referred to as the Braintree—by the Cults of Puritan that populated the region now known as the Twice-Damned Seaboard. Often he is portrayed as a fat, sullen man, whose lips seem curled in a perpetual frown.

As the second of the early tyrants—likely monarchs who were worshipped as divine, although possibly purely mythological figures—John Adams can be placed squarely in what may be called the “Constitutional Pantheon” of the United Statsian religion. His chief rivals in this group were Alexander
“the Uncrowned” Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, the latter of whom would usurp his throne. It is believed that Adams's symbols were the split acorn, the horned hair, and the first feather of the newborn eagle.

The acolytes of Adams do not appear to have had as much influence as the followers of more prominent gods, such as Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln of the Logs, or the Great Traitor Burr (a title that was perhaps ironic given his apparent influence among the Southern lands). Of all the sacred coins and wood pulp currency sheets that have been unearthed from the burnt rubble, none have featured the visage of John Adams—a fact that is rather unusual among the early tyrants.

Here it must be noted that many scholars now believe these beings were not necessarily viewed as
separate
by the United Statsians, but rather different
incarnations
of the one “founding father” deity, also known as George Washington—the first incarnation—Uncle Sam, or the First and the Last, the Truth and the Lie. The Founding Father, in this conception, was a shape-shifting and eternal god believed to have formed the nation by tearing apart fragments of the gigantic Life Tree with his “teeth of wood” and regurgitating fifty large bark chunks into the sea to form the collected states.

In his fleeting incarnation as John Adams, the Founding Father was pale, bloated, and quick to anger. His commandments were enforced by a set of terrifying minions known only as the Midnight Judges. Scholars agree that this was a tumultuous time for early United Statsian society, as the wars with rival nations such as Imperial France and Britain of the First Decay had taken their tolls on the populace. The newly formed United States was working to define itself and struggling with enemies both within and without. The monstrous John Adams incarnation likely provided a feeling of strength and destiny to the huddled and starving United Statsians.

Although harsh in demeanor and despised among the citizenry, the John Adams incarnation is given credit for defeating the rival gods of Imperial France—almost certainly symbolic of an actual conflict known mysteriously as the Quasi War—in a grand battle that raged “atop the purple mountains and shining seas” for twelve cycles before John Adams emerged bloodied and tired, yet victorious.

With the enemies defeated and peace at hand, the need for the brutal John Adams incarnation had passed. He had served his people and maintained the power of the new nation. When he looked on what he had wrought, John Adams is said to have let out a month-long howl from the center of the sacred House in White—a scream so terrible in force it rendered an entire generation deaf and ripped apart the very earth, forming the great canyon of the western desert, a fissure the Adams incarnation disappeared into only to reemerge weeks later as the kindly Jefferson form.

Hopefully continued archeological expeditions into the continent will uncover more findings to expand our understanding of the ancient United Statsian religion and society. It is important to remember that the early United Statsians were a frightened, but proud, people. Despite the lower levels of spectrum radiation and thinner dust-metal storms, the world was as confusing and painful a place to them as it is to us now. Although their religion may strike us as arcane and barbaric, you must put yourself in their mindset. They were building a new society in a strange and foreign land. The night was dark; the beasts were loud. Death, in all its myriad incarnations, was, as always, right around the corner.

DARK AIR

H
ow we ended up in those backwoods hills was Iris said we needed to “get a little air,” and Dolan added, “country air!” and that was that. Iris was my lover, and Dolan was her roommate I'd never liked. All of us were alive, at that point.

I had no problem with city air. I figured it was the same air out there as in here, but the decision had been made in my presence without my participation.

“You know what we mean, goofus,” Dolan said. “The noise. The lights.”

Iris giggled and put her hand on Dolan's arm. They had their own private definition of humor.

A few hours later we were rolling through the hills. We'd been in the car the whole time, and we had the windows up,
AC
blasting. We hadn't yet felt the country air.

The roads in these mountains were littered with signs. Caution for this, danger about that. Falling rocks, bobcat crossing, dangerous incline. There must have been a dozen ways for us to be crushed or torn apart.

“You never see green like this in the city,” Iris was saying. She clicked away with her phone as we rounded a chunk of mountain that had been blown open with dynamite.

“You live by the park,” I said. “The park is green.”

“That's a fake green. I mean
real
green.”

“This is the green,” Dolan said, “that's good for the soul.”

Dolan was giving out the directions, steering us toward one of the “Top 10 Secluded Spots for Selfies” he'd read about online. There was a basket of turkey sandwiches and seltzer water in the back.

Dolan wasn't wearing his seat belt, and as I drove I imagined the door popping open when we went around a sharp turn, then watching him tumble down the cliff and disappear.

After that, maybe Iris and I could get a fresh start on our own.

The dinky towns and small shops had died out miles before, and we still hadn't found Dolan's spot. Even the danger signs were worn away here, rusted or obscured with splatters of brown goo. The trees were a sickly yellow-green. I rolled down my window, but there was a bad smell in the air.

Iris and Dolan were in the back talking about books I'd never read.

“It's bad air up here,” I said. “Something huge must have died, like a bigfoot.”

“You're so negative all the time,” Iris said. She reached up to plug in her phone's playlist.

“Yeah, lighten up and soak in this country sun,” Dolan chimed in.

I shut up and let the landscape roll past me. I had a lot of things to think about anyway, from where things were going with Iris to what the hell I was even doing with my life. I was at that age where it seemed as if everything was still possible but only to someone else. I lived in the city in a small apartment I hated and crashed most nights with a girlfriend who sometimes wasn't even there.

At the top of one hill, I saw a white goat standing on a rock. Its horned head twisted to follow our car as we passed.

He had some wound in the middle of his forehead that looked like a misplaced eye.

“Maybe it's time to head back,” I said, but no one responded. Dolan had his headphones on, and Iris was pretending to sleep.

“Hey, I said—”

I think that's around when the creature burst from the bushes on the side of the road. It was black and pink and skittered across the pavement without using its wings. When we hit it, the left front tire popped, and we started fishtailing. Dolan and Iris were both awake now and screaming.

I swung the wheel to the right and allowed the rock face to stop us. The car filled with dust, and my face was smashed into the dense pillow of an air bag. The screams were muffled now. Slowly the air bags deflated, and we wiped the blood from our bruised noses with our sleeves.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Iris shouted.

“My car! My fucking car!” Dolan moaned in a continuous loop.

Sitting there, shirt stained with blood, Iris photographing her face “for the records,” I had the feeling that things between us might be reaching the end.

When we went over to look at the creature, it was mostly flattened. It looked like a crow, except the feathers had fallen off its back. Underneath, the flesh was scaly and pink. The exposed skin was split in half by a row of translucent spikes. The spikes were moving slightly, pointing first in this direction then in that. The smell made me wrinkle my nose. It was an oddly sweet smell to find outdoors, like an open vat of lollipop flavoring.

For some reason, bumblebees were hovering above the carcass like buzzards. They made me dizzy. Iris started dry heaving.

“Bees!” Dolan shrieked. He grabbed Iris and held her in front of him. “First my car, now killer bees.”

“Let's get out of here,” Iris said. She sounded defeated. “Let's just go home.”

“Okay,” I said, but I wanted to get a closer look and maybe a few photos of this thing. I figured they might get me some favorites and likes on the internet.

When I squatted close, I noticed that alongside the undulating spikes there were two watery ovals ringed with a ridge of veined flesh. They looked like eyeballs without the pupils. I wanted to reach out a finger and poke one.

When I did, the creature came back to life.

After things calmed down, I saw Dolan on his back in the road. I had closed my eyes and run away, swatting bees blindly with my hands. One of them had stung me on the neck. Dolan was doing much worse, though. His whole face was like an over-inflated balloon. His skin was turning a dark, bruised red. Foam pooled beside his cheek on the pavement.

“Oh my god,” Iris said. “We have to get him to a hospital.”

I'd always suspected she was cheating on me with Dolan. This didn't seem like the time to be thinking about that, but watching her kneel to cradle his head, I couldn't help it.

“There aren't any hospitals around here. I haven't seen a town for miles.”

“We have to do something!”

Her phone wasn't getting any signal, and mine was dead. I looked around and tried to think. A little way down the road there was an old dirt path leading into the woods. It looked sparsely used, but at the foot there was a bashed-in mailbox labeled “The Scintleys.”

“There's a driveway over there,” I pointed.

The creature had made it another fifty feet but was lying still again. The bees descended on it in a swarm. The noise was thunderous.

We got Dolan up on his feet and put his arms around our shoulders. He was looking a little better and even gurgled some words that sounded like either “a plan” or “the pain!” The front of his shirt was stained with drool.

It took us a little while to get in sight of the house. Dolan was still breathing, but Iris and I were doing all the work. There were porch lights on at one point, and I noted it to Iris, but when I looked back they had been turned out. There was a string of faded prayer flags hanging on the porch. In the yard, a metal sculpture covered in glass bottles clinked in the wind.

We heard shuffling behind the door when we buzzed the buzzer.

“Hey! Hey!” Iris said and kept pressing the button. I was stooped under the weight of Dolan.

It was starting to get late. The sky was draining of color, and I could no longer see the sun through the patchwork of trees. I scratched the back of my neck where the bee had stung me and felt the hard, swelling bump.

Iris kept banging away.

Finally, a man and a woman opened the door. They were both wearing scarves around their necks, gloves, and long-sleeve tie-dyed shirts. I myself was sweating puddles in a shirt and jeans. I was worried they were from one of those weird religions that thought flesh was an abomination.