SIXTEEN

I stood there staring at the dark form of a man, my lips puckered from the bitter taste of lemonade. My chest felt tight, like I couldn’t breathe. Static roared in my ears.

“Is this death?” I croaked.

“You wish, loser. It’s time to go.”

But when I tried to move, my arms and legs wouldn’t respond. They felt locked in place, paralyzed, the way they do in nightmares.

“Aiden, man. Get up.”

The figure in front of me wasn’t there. My eyes weren’t even open. I woke to find myself on the couch, Jimmy pressing on me, shaking me.

“Dude, you were out cold,” he said. “You wouldn’t wake up.”

“What time is it?”

“Shit, man. I don’t know what time it is. Afternoon. We’re gonna put your plan into motion.”

My head felt bulky, like it had increased in size. My ears screeched. I was starting to worry that sound would never go away.

“How long have I been asleep? What have you guys been doing?” Jimmy moved to the ottoman and smiled.

“Glad you asked. I made a list of dudes, just like you said. These guys either work for me or owe me money or both. I picked them based on where they live and the chance we can find them. It’s not like I could get them out of my phone, so Bart and I went through old mail and did our best.”

“That’s great,” I said, not feeling great about Jimmy’s list or anything. My brain was like a lead weight sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The plan to siege a grocery warehouse seemed, after my nap, like a hopeless waste of time and resources. The EMP hadn’t happened by accident: God clearly wanted the world to end. Who were we to fight against His wishes?

“So this is your list,” said Jimmy.

He handed me a sheet of paper, which contained several names, addresses, and a crudely-drawn map.

“Bart and I each have five guys to find. You have four. I assume we won’t get them all, but hopefully we’ll end up with something close to ten.”

“This is going to take a while.”

“A day or two at least,” Jimmy said. “But it’s not like we’ve got much else to do.”

“You mean besides get high?”

“Yeah, well. That’s only fun for so long. Eventually we have to figure out how to move on from all this.”

I could have asked him why anyone would want to move on, but Jimmy’s not that kind of guy. He sees the world in simple terms and debating the relative merits of survival wouldn’t compute. The EMP presented a challenge to be solved. Until then, little else would matter.

“Anyway,” he said. “I’m also giving you this.”

Jimmy handed me a pistol. It was a SIG Sauer, similar to my own.

“I figure each of us should try to find one guy this evening. We already heard some gunshots like an hour ago, and I bet it’ll get worse after dark.”

“Gunshots?”

“And there’s another fire going on a little west of here. Couple of miles away. I think people are looting.”

“If that’s the case,” I said, “maybe we’re too late.”

“No way to know. But the longer we wait, the less chance we have. I also heard a few running cars. I don’t know if they’re police or military or what. Bart tells me older cars may still work if they have a mechanical ignition.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Me neither. But if he’s right, and we see someone with a car, we could motivate them to donate it to our cause.”

“If we had a car,” I said, “we could round these guys up in a few hours instead of a few days.”

“Exactly,” Jimmy said, smiling.

“So are we going now?”

“Yep. Just get yourself something to eat, drink, whatever. I see you already found the lemonade.”

He pointed at my glass on the coffee table. It was half empty.

“Chelsea whipped up some mashed potatoes if you want a homemade dish. Speaking of, the girls are going to stay behind. Too risky for them to be out.”

“Where’s Keri?”

“In the kitchen. Bart is taking a shower. The water is still hot, but we’re losing pressure. You might want to rinse off before you leave. Then the girls will fill the tubs and all my bowls and buckets so we don’t run out of water.”

A lot had happened while I was asleep. I didn’t see how anyone had the energy for it. But unless I wanted to take the SIG and shoot myself in the head (an idea more alluring than you might think) there was little choice but follow the plan.

“Okay. I’ll wash up first.”

“You can use the shower in the west bedroom. Back that way.”

Jimmy was right. The pressure was so low I could barely rinse shampoo out of my hair. But the water was hot, and I stood beneath it for what seemed like forever, wondering if it would be the last hot shower I would ever enjoy. To this day I haven’t had another one.

* * *

For my trip to Dallas I brought three T-shirts, two pairs of jeans, five golf shirts, and five pairs of golf shorts. Unfortunately, I’d already worn all these clothes at least once, so I grabbed a T-shirt that smelled the least offensive and my other pair of jeans. I hadn’t noticed till after the shower, but the clothes I’d been wearing since Thursday evening reeked of cigarettes and booze and B.O.

After I brushed my teeth and applied deodorant, I felt almost normal … except for the low-but-constant screeching sound that seemed to originate deep in the bowels of my brain.

“Well, hello, handsome,” Keri said when I walked into the kitchen. “You clean up good.”

Judging by the light, it was maybe five o’clock in the afternoon. Bart and Chelsea were at the kitchen table. Jimmy stood in front of the stove, drinking what appeared to be a cocktail.

I found a paper plate and carved myself a heavy spoonful of mashed potatoes. There was also a box of crackers and a plastic jug of beef jerky. I helped myself to a few pieces and sat down to eat. I was ravenous.

“Any questions about your assignment?” asked Bart.

“What should I know beyond the names and addresses?”

“The first guy on your list is less than three miles away. Mitch Brown. If he decides to come there’s one other guy you might try. He’s two more miles to the south. That’ll leave you a longish walk back here.”

Keri sat down beside me.

“I still don’t know if this is a good idea,” she said, and leaned into me. “But I don’t see what the alternative is.”

“The alternative is we eat all of Jimmy’s food and then starve to death.”

“Geez,” said Chelsea. “Downer alert.”

I wasn’t surprised by the untroubled mood in the kitchen. No one here was accustomed to the routine of an 8 – 5 work day, the rhythm of family life, or even obeying the law. Bart and Jimmy understood the gravity of the crisis, but they also believed our plan was achievable, and didn’t appear worried. Chelsea and Keri seemed oblivious to the risks we faced, or the consequences for failing to succeed. Probably they were both high on opiates.

When I finished eating, I folded the list and dropped it into my pocket. I shoved the gun into the back of my jeans and smiled like all this was perfectly normal. I didn’t imagine my mind as a spool of fishing line that was slowly being unraveled and pulled into the dark ocean.

“Ready to head out?” I said.

“I’m going to check on Amy before I leave,” Jimmy answered.

“Gonna finish this dinner,” said Bart.

Several bottles of Smart Water stood on the kitchen island. As I grabbed one, Keri walked over and hugged me.

“Please be careful. I’ll miss you while you’re gone.”

I looked down at her blonde hair and perfect cleavage and felt split nearly in half by competing emotions. One part of me could imagine playing this silly game, returning to Jimmy’s house with both my charges in tow, celebrating with scotch and sex.

The other half of me was sickened by all this nonsense, especially how Keri had contorted our two days of drug-induced debauchery into a faux relationship. Her behavior reminded me of the time I watched, in a single weekend, an entire season of The Bachelor. I could never understand why twenty-five women would refer to the preselected guy as “their boyfriend” and “the man I’m going to marry” when they had spent a grand total of six hours with him. The desire to formalize such a fleeting connection seemed absurd and desperate and I was thrilled to be getting away from Keri and everyone in the house for a while.

You could definitely say I was there for the wrong reasons.

* * *

I found my way out of the neighborhood by reversing our original route. The wind, which had been almost calm during our journey to Jimmy’s, was blowing steadily from the south. Also, the haze was thicker than before and carried a harsh, chemical odor that made me wish I was breathing through a surgical mask. On my right I saw a black tower of smoke rising into the sky, and I wondered for the first time if the whole city might burn to the ground.

As I neared the gated exit of Jimmy’s neighborhood, I heard gunshots. A quick and distant pop-pop-pop. My hands reached behind my back and felt the reassuring weight of my weapon. I stopped for a moment and looked at the map, memorized the next two navigation points, and put the paper back in my pocket.

On the main road I felt vulnerable the way a child might. It seemed like I was in another country. Another world. The stalled cars on the road might have been Hollywood set pieces, the haze generated by digital effects. The ambient silence was so profound, so unusual, that the whole city felt like it had been trapped under a giant dome. After a while I noticed the distant sounds of people talking, someone shouting, dogs barking. It made me think the city wasn’t so much silent as forsaken, as if it had been abandoned and left for dead.

For years I’d been convinced climate change was a hoax, that China and the liberal media had purposely stoked the fears of uninformed citizens to undermine American economic dominance. I came to be this way because, like my friends and family, I believed most of the news on TV was fake. No matter what the “scientists” said, there was simply no way humans could measurably affect Earth’s enormous atmosphere. But then thousands of commercial airliners had come down at once, and smoke from fiery impact sites had grown thick enough to make breathing uncomfortable, and I wondered if all this time I’d been wrong about the human impact on our planet.

The real problem, which I came to understand as I walked ghostly streets north of Dallas, was all the people. There were too many cars to drive us and too many planes to fly us and too many farting cows to feed our desperate little mouths. The only way to fix the problem was to cull the herd, and that’s exactly what the EMP was meant to do. It was like a modern version of the Great Flood, only this time God also wanted to get rid of nonstop news coverage and social media and working shit jobs for corporate overlords. Only the chosen few would survive.

If you’re wondering what makes me special, you should know I’m His perfect candidate. I’m happy to assist. I’m ready to kill.

See, I’ve been angry for longer than I can remember. Angry that a company would fire me instead of more deserving losers. Angry that my sister had exiled me over a stupid mistake. Angry that the promise of America turned out to be a lie. Every generation in my family was more affluent than the one before, at least until I came along, even though I’m the smartest person my family has ever produced. It’s almost as if the entire enterprise was a big joke. As if, on television, the Hollywood elite made America look shiny and full of promise, but down here in the trenches, where real folks lived, the place smelled like shit.

But finally there were no elites to steal my dignity and no government to fuck me over and no police presence I could detect. God had put power back where it belonged: into the hands of the people. Into the hands of His chosen.

My brain whistled and screeched and I smiled a pleasant smile.

At the first major intersection, on the other side of the road, five or six men were clustered in front of a nursery. One of the men was talking to the others, gesturing wildly. I turned south and kept walking. The animated man banged loudly on the nursery door. He yelled at someone to let him in. Eventually there was a gunshot, and the men broke open the door. One after the other they disappeared inside.

I began to see more people, almost all of them men. Some were in pairs, some on their own. I came upon a shopping center, a folksy collection of shops and restaurants built to look like log cabins, all of which appeared deserted. At the south end of the center stood a Subway restaurant, where a woman emerged from the doorway looking panic-stricken. She was maybe thirty, dressed in a stretchy T-shirt and high- waisted jeans. She looked like the kind of woman who was always trying to lose ten pounds.

“Sir!” she yelled. “I need your help!”

Her brown hair was long and had been thrown together in an unruly formation on top of her head.

“I don’t have anything to eat.”

“I’m not looking for food,” she said, as if she hadn’t just stepped out of a Subway. “I need insulin. My daughter is sick and I’m completely out.”

“She’s diabetic?”

“Of course she’s diabetic! She seemed fine yesterday, but today she didn’t wake up from her nap!”

“You don’t keep extra insulin for emergencies?”

Her eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets. I thought she was going to rear back and hit me.

“I could always drive a block to Walgreen’s and get it. But I walked down there today and it’s like a bomb went off.”

I hadn’t thought of this before, but it made sense. If Jimmy hadn’t been around to fix her up, Keri would have tried to steal pills. That’s how desperate she was.

“Please!” the woman said and put her hand on my arm. “I need help!”

“Let go of me.”

“Please, sir. My Hailey is going to die if I don’t get insulin.”

“What do you expect me to do? I don’t know where to find any.”

In the distance I heard that terrible high whistle again, the sound of anger and insanity, the voice of God. I reached behind my back and felt the reassuring steel of my gun. The pistol was hard and smooth and carefully designed, whereas this woman was a mess.

“Please!” she cried.

“Get out of my sight,” I said, and pushed past her.

“You bastard! Fuck you!”

The gun was hidden under my shirt. Blood pounded between my temples as I turned toward the woman again. The whistle screamed in my ears. Was this my first test?

I gripped the weapon and pulled it free of my pants. Slowly, deliberately, I pointed it at her head.

“Oh my God!” she screamed and threw her hands in the air. “Please don’t shoot me!”

My finger slithered over the trigger. There was no one to stop me. America was a big, fat blob of ignorance and debt, and the bill had finally come due.

“Please,” said the woman. “My poor baby. She’s got no one but me.”

“That’s too bad, because you are a shitty parent.”

Rivers of mascara-stained tears poured out of her eyes. Her sobs were choked by congestion.

I closed one eye and mimed a gunshot. All at once the screeching in my head disappeared.

“Bang.”

While the woman screamed, I placed the gun, safety still on, back in my pants.

Then I turned south again and smiled a Jimmy Jameson smile. For years, liberal snowflakes and social justice warriors had thwarted the American merit system. Their socialist agenda had weakened the country, exposed a soft underbelly, and it was time to make things right again.

I wouldn’t be so merciful next time.

* * *

Eventually I reached a bridge that crossed the George Bush Turnpike. Beneath me, people walked along the access road or sat against a concrete retaining wall. I might have jumped to my death if not for a chain- link fence adjacent to the sidewalk.

Instead, I sat down to rest and considered the woman with the diabetic child. Even if she was a moron for letting the insulin run out, the problem was larger than one worthless woman. There were a million other idiots who every day made terrible choices that incurred no consequences. Liberal college professors who taught students to hate America. Simpleminded voters who elected presidential candidates based on nothing more than hope and change. Postmodern scientists who pretended as if theirs were the only facts that mattered. I had been raised to believe in a merit system, a country where the best would thrive, but the only happy people I knew were those who contributed nothing.

Now there was no room for emotion. No quarter for political correctness. You either survived or you didn’t. You either won or you lost. No more trophies just for showing up.

By the time I reached the first name on my list, dusk had nearly fallen. The sky was striated into layers of orange and pink and gray that made me think of the Grand Canyon. Mitch Brown’s neighborhood had been new in the 1980s, rows of single-story ranch houses that no one here could afford to maintain. A white pickup stood in the driveway, and when I finally knocked on his front door, Mitch didn’t answer. Eventually I wandered into the back yard, in case he was grilling dinner. He wasn’t.

This beautiful new dusk, filtered through the haze, made the world look dreamlike. Unreal. It was absurd to believe we could find ten men this way, walking the streets of a city made enormous by single-passenger commutes. I looked straight up, as if answers might be found in the sky, and saw stars twinkling through the haze. I considered how many suns must be out there, and how any of them could blow up with no warning. The more I thought about it, the more I could appreciate how something that appeared stable on the outside could be volatile on the inside …that a star, or anyone, could blow in an instant, killing everything around it. Everyone around him.

I walked out of the back yard and found myself on Mitch’s driveway. The light was so low I could barely read the map. If I went looking for the next guy, Paul Wilkins, I’d be out well after dark. That didn’t seem like a good choice, so I decided to head back.

I was stuffing the map into my pocket when I noticed a man approaching from the house next door. He was broad-shouldered and muscled, dressed in a red polo and jeans. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see his features clearly. Other than his size there was nothing special about him, nothing noteworthy to describe.

“Hey, there,” said the man. “You know Mitch?”

“I came here looking for him. You know where he is?”

“Not sure. He works in McKinney. Maybe he never made it back.”

I had no idea where McKinney was, nor did I care. The whistle in my brain rose again, screeching, shrieking.

“You need him for something? You come here on foot, you must really have wanted to talk to him.”

This man meant nothing to me. His presence here was pointless. He was fat waiting to be trimmed.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“What doesn’t matter? Mitch got something you need?”

When I reached for my gun, the world turned black and I nearly lost my balance. For a moment I thought someone had hit me. But I quickly recovered and pointed my weapon at the man’s head.

“Hey,” he said in a terrible voice. “Hey, buddy. I didn’t mean nothing. I was just looking out for Mitch.”

Like I said, it was dark and difficult to see features on the man’s face. Without a face he hardly registered as a man at all. My gun was pointed at the shape of a head and I wondered if I would feel remorse. If I would feel anything at all.

But I had been chosen for this and there was no turning back.

I flipped off the safety. The man’s knees buckled.

“Please, buddy. Please. I don’t want to die. Please don’t shoot me.”

I stared at this crouching figure, this miserable beggar. For such a big man he was awfully chicken-hearted. I stepped closer, pointing downward at his head. My finger wrapped around the trigger. The whistling in my ears faded until I could barely hear it at all.

“Please, man. Please don’t kill me.”

The sound of the gunshot was enormous. Unreal. It seemed to echo around me in a spreading wave. Blood and bone and brain matter splashed into the grass. The body buckled and reached as if trying to find its missing head. I watched, transfixed, as these animal arms and legs began to comprehend a new reality and slowly lost their will. What did it feel like when consciousness was replaced by nothing? Did it feel like a warmth or glow, a kind of full-body euphoria? Did the terrible sound finally end?

I was still standing there, considering the body, when a screen door opened. A figure staggered out of the same house, what appeared to be another man. This fellow was shorter and slimmer than the meathead I had executed. Instinctively I backed away from the body, and when this new man saw why, he fell to the ground and began to make an awful sound. It was something between a wail and a scream and I couldn’t bear to hear it.

“Why did you do that?” said the fellow, his dark face looking up at me. “Why did you kill my Tanner?”

Then the man rose to his feet.

“I loved him! He was only trying to protect me! Why did you hurt him?”

My head felt expansive again, like when I ate mushrooms with Keri. My mind whistled and shrieked. The gun felt heavy, like gravity was trying to take it from me.

“Why?” the man cried again and took a step forward.

With great effort of will I raised the gun and pointed it at the approaching figure. It stopped walking and put up its hands in a protective stance.

“Don’t do it! Please! He was only trying to protect me.”

I couldn’t stand there forever. Eventually someone would come looking to see what had happened.

“What’s your name?” I asked, but somehow I already knew.

“Mitch!” it cried. “Of course my name is Mitch! What do you want from us?”

“Mitch Brown?”

“Yes! How do you know me?”

You might think, after the day’s events, that I’m a bad guy. But I don’t believe in bad guys. Instead, I think good guys are sometimes forced into tough choices.

What would you have done, right then, if you were me? Maybe it wasn’t Mitch’s fault that I killed his friend, but how could I take him to see Jimmy after what I’d done? What I’m asking you is, if you were in the same situation, would you have let Mitch live? Or would you have corrected the problem so it couldn’t come back later and ruin your life?

The guy would have starved to death in a few weeks anyway. That was the entire point of the EMP. So what I really did was save him a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Honestly, I think I did Mitch a favor.