“Mom, Joe will tell you. I tried to get home for your birthday, but it looks like I’m not going to make it. I’m sorry, Mom.” The young man pounds on the floor with his gas mask as though he is smashing someone’s skull. He stands and addresses himself directly to the red eye. “Billy Jenkins here.” He bows melodramatically, then clowns a little, making rabbit ears with his fingers, making goggles with his hands and peering through them. He wiggles his hands, adjusting an imaginary focus. “Hey, that’s better. Happy birthday, Mom. You know what’s weird? I camped at Paris airport all night to make standby for this flight. Slept in my sleeping bag, and it was worth it. I was the last standby, the last one let on. I was so happy, I called Joe from the gate. They were boarding already. I said: Joe, surprise, surprise, I’ll be there! Don’t let Mom know, it’ll be a surprise.
“Got that one right, didn’t I?
“Not the kind of surprise I meant.
“It’s so weird that it’s gotta mean something, but I sure can’t figure out what. I mean, what am I doing here with all these Martians? I don’t come from the same planet as these guys, and I sure don’t buy this marshmallow shit about death. Peace and light, dancing? Forget it? I’m madder than a hornet in a jar. I’m twenty-two years old, I just graduated, I don’t want to die, and I damn well won’t. I may be late for your birthday, Mom, but I’ll get there, okay?
“What the hell is the matter with you wimps?” He swings around to address the alien Martians, his back to the red camera eye. He flails his arms like a preacher. “What is this? Obedience training? The man says Die, so you lie down like good little doggies? Get off your padded asses, you losers”—he has moved to the wall and is running his bare palms across its surface—“and start feeling for fissures and for cracks, because that’s how—oh shit, my eyes …!”
He shields his face with his arms and leans his back against the wall and rocks himself. “Jesus H. Christ, that’s the mustard gas,” he says. “Attacks the eyes first. I just got a B.S., I’m a chemistry student, right? Okay, so this is what you all need to know, listen up.” He looks like Oedipus, blinded, his eyes puffy and closed, his arms lifted, his pronouncements oracular. “We got sarin and mustard gas here. Mustard gas’s never lethal, okay? You got that? Temporary blindness, then blindness, but it can’t kill us off.
“The sarin can, in minutes, lungs and blood and sputum, that’s what—” He draws in deep shuddering breaths. “Oh shit, clogging up my lungs already. That’s what got ’em. Asphyxiation.” He jerks his head to the bodies beneath the red lamp of Death. “Oh heck, oh heck, my eyes! This is worse than peeling a hundred pounds of onions at summer camp, which I had to do at Camp Saranac the year I was twelve. Remember that, Joe? Man, what a punishment.
“And why?
“All I did was lead a panty raid to the girls’ camp.
“Weird thing, though—it’s freaking me out, the stuff I’m remembering—next day, the day after the onions, was Girls’ Camp Visit, and I’ve got a face like the Pillsbury Doughboy, all puffy and red, my eyes bloodshot. No way I want any girl to see me, so I go crawling off into the woods, feeling sorry for myself and hard done by, and I’m climbing over this humongous fallen tree that came down in a storm, and I bump into—well, I thought she was a goddess, she was that gorgeous, long blonde hair down to her bum. She’s wearing tight jeans and a halter top, and get this, she’s got bloodshot eyes and tears running down her cheeks.
“So I say: ‘Did you get onion duty too?’
“She just stares at me like I’m holding a gun at her head. She stares and stares and she doesn’t move and doesn’t say a word. And I stare back because she’s so damn beautiful, the sort of girl who can give you wet dreams for years when you’re twelve years old. I’m scared to speak, you know, in case she’s not real, in case she disappears, and because I’m nervous, this stupid thing comes out of my mouth. ‘You dumb, or something?’
“And then she gets up and just walks away. Two nights I dream about her. Two days I’m figuring how I can get to see her again, I’ve got to see her, I’ve got to see her now my swelling’s gone down and I’m back to my good-looking self.
“Then the third day, at breakfast, we get this announcement. Her body’s been found in the lake. Her picture’s on the Saranac Times, front page.
“I haven’t thought of her for ages, but it’s come back to me because of my eyes. This mustard gas’s worse than onions even, so look, so look, I’m losing track of things here …
“So look, to get back to serious business, we’ve each got max, about eight minutes, right? We’ve gotta work like a team, like a relay, make good use of our time, eight of us by eight minutes, that’s an hour to find a way out. Hopeless with the gloves, so we each take our turn with bare hands, right?”
He is reading the walls with his fingertips as though they were braille. “What is this stuff? It’s not brick, it’s not stone, well, it feels like stone, but there aren’t any joins, it’s not cement …” He moves faster and faster, reading surfaces, working his way through the library of the walls. He scratches it with his fingernails. “I think it’s chalk. I think it’s some sort of chalk, no, limestone, maybe. Hard chalk. But that’s porous, you get it?” There’s excitement in his voice. He’s moving faster and faster, feeling higher up the wall. “Can somebody lift me?” And two of his fellow prisoners do, making a saddle with their arms. “Higher,” he commands. “Higher. I can’t feel the ceiling yet. Lift me up to the red light, that’s where we should—”
He starts gasping, his breath rattling and bubbling through mucus-thick lungs. “Put me djow … djow … down,” he gasps, with whooping-cough sounds. “Gotta get my breath … right in a minute … listen up, now … this’s important …
“Sarin’s deadly, but it’s volatile. No staying power. Same for mustard gas. Low persistency rates, and they settle low to the ground, so stay high, okay? Don’t lie on the floor. Now, what we have to do is find vents, leaks, cracks … oh shit, uhh … uhhh … can’t get my …” He leans against the wall, exhausted. “Sweating … like a pig … hot flashes … funny, huh, Joe? Me … hot flashes.” The camera picks up the gleam of moisture on his skin. Water drips from his hair. “Okay. Listen … lis’n up. Shit, I’m drowning in here, I’m drowning inside my friggin’ suit … Okay, lis’n … ’nother chemistry fact … As y’can see, high activ … cuts down s’vival time … so okay, quick re … cal … cu … lation.”—his words slur and pile up against each other—“eight of us, sixminseach, thssstill for’y-five mins, ’nough time … find hairline crack. Get fresh air … toxic’s seeping out anyway … ’coz porous … walls porous …” He licks his finger and holds it up. “Weak draft, see? Hellhole’s not airtight … shit’s dispersing … not fast enough, though …”
He breathes noisily, raspily, for several seconds, then taps an adrenaline riff. He throws his body and arms against the wall, making great sweeping arcs. “If they got us in, there’s a way out … stands to reason. Why can’t I remember …? Ahhh, my eyes, ahhh … ahh …”
He slumps against the wall and shields his face. “Anyone remember … how they got us in? Trapdoor … ceiling? floor? A door? Anyone know?”
In slow stately fashion, bodies encumbered, his Martian cell mates sweep the walls with their gloves.
“Must have drugged us … bricked us in, walled us in … but there’d be wet mortar, we could push … can’t find any joins … I don’t get it.
“Must be the ceiling … a trapdoor … has to be … ahhh … ughugh!” He doubles over and shields his eyes with his arms, but as though taking up his crusade, the Martians group themselves and make arm-saddles, and others climb onto the saddles and push at the ceiling, testing for wet mortar that might give way. It’s swarm activity, a hive of frenzy and hope.
“Damn thing is …” Billy Jenkins gasps, “same time your eyes adjusting to dark, same time you’re just starting to see, you go blind …”
He begins to laugh in a helpless hysterical way. “Like getting last standby seat, huh? Been there, seen God, he’s a joker.”
He is staggering now, admonishing himself, “Don’t fall, don’t fall, gases settle low, gotta stay high,” but he is gasping, crumpling to his knees, until the shadow-swarm, acting as one, lifts him and raises him high above their heads. He lies there, on an elevated bier, and speaks to the red eye.
“That girl? With the onion eyes? They said accident, but rumor went around it was suicide … mother cancer jus’ before … sh’didn’ wanna go camp … father thought, good for her, good to get away … color photograph in camp newspaper … cut it out … still in my wallet …
“Mom? Dad? Joe? I don’t get it. I don’t get death, I just don’t get it. Who th’hell thought it up? F’life, y’know. I’m for life. Love football, booze, getting laid.
“And now I won’t ever—
“Larissa Barclay, that was her name. Girl with onion eyes. Picture’s in my wallet.
“Uhh … can’t … got fucking great wad of spunk in my throat …
“Joe? Joe, you there? Do something for me? Call Mary Sue … tell ’er sorry about abortion … really sorry. Tell her … just realized … stupid moron I’ve been. Tell her … she was the one … only one.
“Dad? I was saving … surprise for y’ birthday? Super Bowl, air tickets, everything. You ’n Joe ’n me. Dad … promise … you ’n Joe? Send word upstairs, eh, if Pittsburgh wins?
“Mom? I don’t get it, Mom … last standby … ten min’s later … I woonta made’t’ome … just live instead … God’s a joker, eh?
“Hap’ birth … Love you, Mom.”
The hum of the bee swarm rises to cover him, a sonorous chant, but as the shadows bear him aloft to the corner and lower him, he sits up suddenly, in a final access of energy, and says clearly and desperately, “Volatile … low persistence … sarin dispersing … find cracks.”
And then he begins to convulse and moan and …
CUT
William Jenkins
Born Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1965