The Desert of En Gedi

Quarantine Zone

The Wharf Rats survived the protester’s revenge attacks because of Shawn and Billy, and their ability to scout and move and keep moving. They were raiders who could find food every day, and find a different hole for the group to sleep in every night. They’d become so accomplished at breaking and entering, none of the others realized that, before the quarantine, neither boy had ever stolen anything larger than a piece of candy in their entire lives.

The “twins” were born five weeks apart, to best friends who one day decided to leave Brooklyn and their lousy boyfriends for the bright blue waters of the keys, adjacent single-wides in the New Town trailer park, and a new set of lousy boyfriends. For the first seven years of life, they were both hungry, and this had bonded them—not just that they lived a few feet apart, or that their mothers did everything together. They were brothers in their stomach aches. Everyone else had plenty of food, but Shawn and Billy, dirty and scrawny, sat by themselves in the school cafeteria. Only they understood the pain that the other felt, the persistent gnawing in the center of their beings.

The mothers always had some low-paying job or another, and at the beginning of each month, after they got paid, the boys had plenty. By the third week, though, the cupboards had been emptied down to the dregs. By the end of each month, after school had let out for the day, they would go back behind the elementary school, and one would pull bread crusts and half-eaten vegetables out of the dumpsters, while the other served as a lookout to make sure that no one saw.

In the third grade, they stopped going to the school dumpsters on the last days of each month, and instead began hitting all the other dumpsters.

Their teacher, Mrs. Webster, would cover all four walls in the classroom with paper, and then have the students draw houses and families for whatever time period or area of world geography they were learning. The boys loved these, especially Billy, who had an artist’s hands. One day, Mrs. Webb put up new clean sheets of wall-covering paper, with brown beaches and blue waves already drawn. They were learning about the history of Key West, and how the island had something called a coral reef to the east, like an underwater wall just below the surface of the sea. Wooden boats used to break on this wall, and then the sailors who lived on the island back in those days would race to the sinking ships and take all the stuff they thought they could use or sell. They got rich doing this. It was called scavenging.

The other children drew their boats on the shore, with their smiling stick figures waving from the decks. Billy and Shawn drew their boats out on the water, next to the reef, to make sure they were first at the wrecks and could get as much of the cargo as they could carry.

Key West had been an island full of tourists and restaurants and beaches, where people threw away expensive food after a single taste, or clothes because they had a stain, or dropped change—they once found a twenty-dollar bill—and other valuables. They collected cans and scrap metal and colorful shells for the women who turned them into jewelry. They made a wire filter and sifted through the sand for shark’s teeth.

Their mothers never cared where they went... or when, or why. Some nights, the mothers came home and found entire meals still on the table. It was not stealing. Coins left in a fountain were abandoned. The boys were scavengers, just like the sailors.

When they were thirteen, Billy’s mother’s boyfriend gave her a new CD player, and she gave the old one to Billy. Just for fun, while the mothers were at work—Billy’s mother wouldn’t let him play loud music in the trailer while she was there—the boys played a set of CD’s that no one had bought at a yard sale, so the resident had given them away for free. They played several that they agreed were shit, and then they put in one that made the entire trailer shake.

“What the fuck is that?” Shawn asked, laughing.

“I don’t know. What does it say?”

Shawn lifted the case. A zombie/mummy thing holding a British flag glared up at them. “Iron Maiden.”

“What the hell?”

“Weird.”

“I like it.”

“Yeah.”

They’d never heard metal before, but the connection was instant. They felt as if someone had put all their anger and frustration onto a sound track, and voiced it over with everything the boys had always wanted to say. They spent most of their collection money buying the modern stuff, like Powerman 5000 and Five Finger Death Punch.

Once, at the checkout counter, a middle-aged doper behind the register just shook his head.

“What, Dude?”

He walked out from behind the counter, and came back with another disc: Judas Priest, Defenders of the Faith.

The boys went back to the trailers and put it on. Halfway through, Billy clicked it off and turned to Shawn, shaking his head. “This is the greatest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

Shawn looked up in wonder. “No shit,” he said reverently.

They grew their hair and wore band shirts. One time, they both dyed their hair black. By the eighth grade, and never well-liked, they were picked on by other students. As the only metal-heads in a school on a tropical island, they now stood out. Everyday, someone said something. None of the girls liked them. Once in a while, the jocks would push and shove and talk shit. Billy drew pictures of them with their flesh ripped open, and the twins talked about the revenge they would one day enact, but really they were content. The music understood. They had the music, and by this time a nice gaming rig and a few comic books. The bullying was not the end of the world.

Then Hunter Grant came back from his first stint in juvenile, and the bullying ended.

Up until sophomore year, the twins didn’t even know who Hunter Grant was, and when he entered the room, scowling, three weeks into the second semester, and handed his paperwork to the teacher, they looked a question at each other. Then he sat down, and didn’t lift his head, and the twins went back to their doodling. He was in more than one of their classes then, for some reason. They didn’t know why, and that first day, they saw no reason to care. The second day, that changed.

All the kids were talking, and the teacher was yelling, but none of them were ready to stop. Then, all of the sudden, the room shook. Hunter Grant, who sat next to a wall, had just slammed that wall with a large, hard fist, and the room fell suddenly silent. This was one of the new rules. When the teacher called for quiet, it was time to get quiet.

The ‘absolutely no bullying’ rule came the next week, when Andy Clement, a year older and considerably stronger, came up behind the twins right outside of class. He shoved Billy, and put Shawn in a headlock. Hunter Grant had just walked out of the classroom. He ended up getting three days of in-school suspension, while Andy went home with an ice pack on his face. When Hunter Grant returned to class, Billy had drawn him standing on a pile of jocks, with rivets showing that his hands were made of metal, scowling up out of the paper.

“That’s really good,” Hunter had told Billy.

They didn’t get to know him, though, as he wasn’t a gamer and he barely talked. During the lunch hour, he tended to go outside and sit by himself, with his head down and his eyes closed, looking as if meditating or something.

One time, Shawn asked, “What do you think he’s doing?”

Lindsey MC, who’d sat with them since Billy got her some dope and they had sex, said, “He’s praying.” She added a little snort, like it was a joke.

“Dude,” said Shawn.

The next day, Billy drew a muscular giant with flaming eyes, white hair, and a beard, playing a massive guitar that shot bolts of lightning in all directions. At the top of the paper, written in metallic letters like the cover of a Judas Priests album, it said: Hunter Grant’s God.

In their minds, they would one day have a band, and bring metal to the Lower Keys, and even though they barely knew him, they imagined Hunter Grant as a young Henry Rollins, neck veins exploding while he screamed into the mic. Billy would be on lead guitar, Lacewood backing up, Shawn on bass, and Face on drums. Every week, they had a new band name for the imaginary group—The Lost Boys, Stage Front Massacre, Fifth Column of Steel, Anger Management, Up from the Deep....

When the disease arrived and the other Rats came and found them alone in Shawn’s trailer, it all became real. This was the band—the Wharf Rats. They should have thought of the name sooner. It was perfect. Billy drew them all in black and red ink, instruments in hand, weapons on their backs. Vera held a tambourine in one hand, the leashes for the hell hounds in the other. Lindsey MC dressed in body-hugging leather, blood at the corners of her mouth, standing behind an industrial-rock synthesizer. They put the picture on the bedroom door, and gave it a slap every time they walked out of the room. The last time they saw it, before the Lacewood house was destroyed, Lindsey MC had come in while they were scavenging and written a note:

Ha! I wish my boobs were really that big.

Hunter and Vera had a shotgun wedding the day after they bombed the Annex. Lacewood held the shotgun, low with both hands, as if he were going to blow off one of the priest’s feet if he held up the ceremony. Billy and Shawn had scavenged the ring that morning from a house they’d previously scouted. Hunter didn’t wear a tux, and Vera didn’t wear a wedding gown, but that didn’t matter to any of them.

Barclay was still reading scripture when Face, peering out one of the shuttered doors, shouted, “There’s a van pulled up in the parking lot. No one getting out.”

Hunter had asked that they hurry up and say their vows, and Vera stumbled through hers, a confused expression during the whole thing, but when they kissed, it was long, and both twins decided it probably included tongue. After it was over, the bride and groom ran, and the entire wedding party ran—out one of the side doors, back to the house.

When they got back, the whole group gave the two of them space as a kind of honeymoon present. Billy and Shawn gave up their room, and joked about what the two of them were doing in the metal room, but really it was cool. Hunter and Vera getting married was cool. Lots of bandmates got married, and then they got divorced and wrote some of their best stuff, singing about how badly love sucks.

Hunter and Vera got two days to go at each other in private.

Then the protesters found them.

They never knew for sure, but the Lacewood address would have been in the church registry, and father Barclay didn’t seem like one willing to endure much pressure to keep their secret. That morning, a group of them hit one of the trip wires that Face had set up around the property. The explosion blew off a man’s leg and sent the others running for cover. It gave the Wharf Rats time to get out, and this was no easy feat, since ‘getting out’ included getting Great Grandma Krasinski up and moving to the rickshaw, in a robe and slippers, her top speed a slightly fast shuffle.

After they snuck into the Krasinski place with everything they could carry, Billy and Shawn went back out. They waited for nightfall, and returned to the Lacewood house. They could hear a group of protesters inside, and over the neighbor’s fence, they saw broken windows. The lights were on as voices inside shouted and laughed, and something crashed down from the second floor—a television set.

The twins carefully unhooked the west side trip line, and Shawn pulled the wire out, cut it, and gave it a good shake, just like Face had told them. Billy then threw the canister through the already shattered rear glass into the kitchen. They didn’t see the explosion, because they ran the instant the bomb left Shawn’s hand, but they sure heard it.

They were still settling into the little shotgun shack when the protesters found them again. The escape from the Krasinski house was a close thing, and never would have happened if Maximus hadn’t sat straight up while the others were eating, and growled at the front door.

After that, they moved every day, never sleeping in the same place twice. They established a routine: the twins went out early each morning to scout out a place that they thought might be promising. When they found for a place, they reported back, and the group would plan the move. Then they brought up the bicycle cart from wherever it was hidden and sat Granny on the padded seat. Some moves were fast, some slow, but all were tense. They moved with all their gear, and every animal except for the bird.

Bird Ferguson never went with them, but he found them every time. The first two moves, Lacewood had pitched him outside, the bird squawking at the top of his lungs. After that, he would just show up sometime during the day, fly down to sit on Lacewood’s shoulder, content himself with a piece of bread or maybe a potato chip, and try and sneak up on Vera. Lacewood whispered to the parrot, and now it usually kept quiet while it was with them.

Billy and Shawn thought it was weird, but lots of things were getting weird—or, according to Lacewood, going back to the old ways.

The island had become not just a wild strip of riots and violence, following the destruction of Highway 1. It was reverting back to what it had been before being settled by the colonists, before their ideas of civilization. Lacewood told them the story the night they stayed in the abandoned bed and breakfast on the north end of Old Town, after they’d fought a group of scavengers that afternoon, and Face said it was like everything was going back to medieval times and Indian tribes. The others counted out their new mosquito bites while he spoke. He told them the island called Key West not because it was the westernmost island in a line of islands that looked like a keychain, but because it came from the Spanish Cayo Hueso—Bone Island. Spanish explorers were told never to set foot on Cayo Hueso because it was covered in the remains of the murdered, and it had seen so much savagery that it would never be at rest. Bone Island, the island of the dead—man had forgotten what happened there, but the island remembered.

“We’re not going back to the Stone Age,” Lacewood told them in a voice like he was conducting a séance. “We’re going back to Bone Island, where the spirits of the dead bleed over into the world of the living. No matter how far the disease has spread on the mainland, it will still be different here.”

Bone Island.

That’s what they said, under their breaths, when they saw the change happening around them.

One night, they laid down their blankets on top of the wall at Fort Taylor, the old Civil War fort on the south end of Old Town. There had been a fight there, and people had tried to barricade themselves in, but someone had smashed a car through the door. Blood covered much of the grass, but no bodies. The Rats awoke in the middle of the night to the sounds of people howling like wolves in the courtyard, and so they held the dogs quiet while they gathered their things and snuck away.

The next morning, Shawn woke up with the sun and shrugged Billy awake.

Billy nudged the others, except Granny.

“What?” said Hunter Grant.

The boys pointed out into the mangroves in Cow Channel.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Wait for it.”

Then they saw it—a pair of close-set eyes rising from the water. The gator swam lazily away until it was out of sight between the mangrove spits, its powerful tail snaking through the water behind it.

They all started talking over one another.

“Ten footer.”

“At least. Maybe fifteen.”

“Didn’t even know they got that big.”

“I never saw a gator down here. Not loose.”

None of them had.

“Maybe someone let it out of the aquarium.”

“Maybe Bone Island had gators.”

“It didn’t have gators,” said Lacewood. “Not in salt water. That’s a crocodile. Friggin’ huge!”

Each day, they walked. Vera and Lindsey held the dogs on their leashes until Terrance got tired, and then Lindsey carried the old dog while Vera walked Maximus and Cleo.

Granny got into the cart and never complained. She told them stories—mostly how all of her friends had died—and went wherever they led her.

One night, they took refuge inside of the elementary school and ate a dinner of peanut butter, canned pears, and walnuts, served by Thyroid with a sprinkle of cocoa powder on top of the peanut butter. They set up for the night in Mrs. Winter’s fifth-grade classroom, and Lacewood began to read to them.

Suddenly, Granny started talking over him, her glassy eyes fixed on something far away. “They’re here now,” she said, her voice excited with a sudden revelation, and loud enough to stop Lacewood mid-sentence. “They’re inside of him. He wanted to show everyone a world without God, but now they found him, and they’re inside of him, and now he knows how wrong he was.”

They wanted to ask her what she meant, because they’d never heard her like this, but they were all afraid.

Hunter Grant finally said, “Granny, are you okay?”

She turned to him, a slow, creaking movement, like a second hand ticking around its dial. “You’ll know him when you see him. You’ll know him when you see him, and you’ll want to make him free, because he’s not like the others, and that’s your way, but you have to destroy him. You have to destroy his body.”

“Granny?”

Her eyes took on a foreign intensity. “He wants the boat, Hunter. He wants to sink the boat. You have to stop him. Don’t let him take the boat down to the bottom.” She nodded as if he should know what she meant and agree with every word.

“I don’t understand. We don’t know what you mean.” He looked at Vera, as did they all.

Her expression was pure shock. This was not how Granny talked.

At that moment, Hunter swallowed... hard... and said, “What happens if he sinks the boat, Granny?”

“If he sinks it?” She pondered as if she’d lost the thread of her thoughts and had no idea what Hunter was talking about. Then her face, with its deep lines, turned hard, a face of granite with one final purpose. “If he sinks it, they drop the bombs.” She nodded intensely. “They drop the bombs and the people die. They people die all over the world.” Then she turned back, transfixed like before.

The others just stared at her.

In the morning, while they got their remaining gear ready to move, Vera asked Granny if she remembered what she’d said last night. Vera’s questions chased and chased in circles, but could never get Granny to talk about the man without God or the boat he wanted to sink.

In the end, Granny looked at the others and said with a shrug, “Bone Island.”

That day, they moved to the other side of the Key West. A storm rolled in late that afternoon, and they sheltered in a car park instead of the wax museum, where the twins wanted to go, but the others couldn’t settle after Granny’s words from the night before. Thyroid and Hunter had to go down one of the stairwells and kill an infected man armed with a pair of box cutters, who shouted at them that none of them were real and that they had to get out of his head. They set up for the night in the stairwell.

Granny said she’d heard the man shouting, and while the storm shook the buildings and Vera held a whimpering Maximus, they waited to see if she would talk like she had the night before. She said nothing.

In the morning, when the others got up, Vera tried to rub her awake, but she didn’t stir. She had died in the night.

They wrapped her in a spare blanket and weighted it with rocks. Then they sunk it off the pier next to Mallory Square.

That was where they met Sri Patel.