At the Gates of Nowhere

by Cameron Pierce

      The alarm clock startled Peterson back into the steady drear-patter of rain against his tin roof. Darkness still fluttered over his mobile home and all of Metatron City. Every morning he awoke before dawn because, once the sun rose, he would join his neighbors in the daily struggle to escape Metatron, mankind’s final destination.
      Unlike his fellow comrades, Peterson understood that no escape was possible. Clawing at barbed gates and charging masked guards with butterfly knife arms for eight hours a day left them with what they’d always had: nothing. Yet their work didn’t necessarily go unnoticed. The Headstones, or ruling class, nominated three ants, as working class members were known, each month to join their rank. Curiously, nobody ever recalled having known any of the “immaculate ants,” or even anyone else who had known one. Three per month for the last thirty-six months, and all total strangers.
      Then again, with a reported population of 144,000,000 and no means of long distance communication, ants bonded only with the other ants in their park, forty units holding one ant apiece. Of course, The Headstones ignored this estrangement of the lower class, but then again, so did the lower class itself. A community is forty, the banner waving in front of each park read.
Peterson awoke early, though. Not because he hated sleep, but due to a number that troubled him. Thirty-six. They’d been fighting to escape from Metatron City for thirty-six months, but what came before that? According to birth records, all 144,000,000 civilians arrived in the same month, on the same day. Yet Peterson had no recollection of infancy, almost as if something had imprisoned them and... and what? Erased their memories and installed a hierarchy of futility? No, everyone in Metatron appeared the same--sandy brown hair cropped short, green eyes, near the age of thirty, and a one-piece suit--blue for men, red for women.
      Did he alone wake early every morning to dwell on these facts? Maybe they weren’t facts. Could it be the self-induced sleep deprivation? Peterson poured a cup of sour coffee and lit a whiskey-flavored cigarette, both supplied by the city.

      Nobody received paychecks in Metatron, or at least not any ants. The Headstones might, but discussion of them with neighbors was banned under the first amendment. Peterson closed his eyes and pushed the smoke out his nose. He wondered some more.
      Something inside told him that what he understood, or thought he did, shouldn’t be known. A conspiracy against...nothing? Then he visualized the phrase shouted by all the butterfly knife-men. Total fucking waste. Total fucking waste. Total fucking waste. Chanting it for eight hours a day, no breaks. Obviously the guards meant the attempted flight from Metatron was futile, but why? Could there be nowhere to go? No land to which they could flee and find refuge?
      Peterson crushed his second cigarette against the white linoleum floor and positioned his sockless, blistered feet into his steel-toed boots. He left his mobile home to gather with his comrades, like every other day, at the gates.

      Today the butterfly knife-men attacked first. When Peterson marched up they were already slicing through the front line of ants. Almost grinning beneath their black masks, thought Peterson. He wiped rain from his forehead and stared into the hardly visible morning sun. Since when had it been black?
      Even when the ants seizure-collapsed, bled their red blood, and vomited until only fleshy, raisin-like sacks remained of their bodies, they never failed to rise again. Not zombies, though, because they never died. And perhaps no life existed from which they could be resurrected.
      Peterson stormed to the front. He tucked his untrimmed fingers into his palms and rested his thumbs across the knuckles, forming proper fists. Raising both in front of him and tucking his chin to his right shoulder, Peterson cried out and charged.
      By some rule of the game unknown to him, the masked guards with butterfly knives for arms froze, some of their blades locked halfway through the necks of ants who, however many times they were beheaded, would never die.
      Then the guards fluttered into the sky, perhaps to slash at the black sun that would rise forever, if only to spite them.
      It hadn’t even reached noontime, but all the figures in the sky cast a jagged shadow over the army of ants. Peterson stumbled to the front. An ant puked something that looked like molded chicken liver on his left boot. No matter, the war was over. Nobody remained to guard the gates, all of it over a phrase released from the lips of... who was he?
      Total fucking waste.
      Why had he uttered it? Ants stared up at him from every side, except forward, where the gate stood seventy feet high.
      Peterson found the single door, with its barbed wire handle, and squeezed. As if he had greased the handle with his blood, he turned the handle.
      Bright light dripped in, slowly. Before the surge of light or ants could swing the door one way or another, Peterson slammed it shut. He ripped his hand free of the barbs and turned to face the hushed crowd.
      Fuck my brothers, and fuck The Headstones.
      “We need this war,” he said, facing the species he could no longer identify as his own.
      He crouched and prepared to defend the gates.

      “Why did you do it?” the first Headstone, dressed in the white tuxedo that came with privilege, asked him.
Peterson rose his head and sniffled to keep the blood from dripping over his mouth. “I already told you.”
      A second Headstone popped him with a jab across the chin. “This was our chance to say goodbye to this shithole. Your chance too, you know?”
      “Then why weren’t you,” Peterson coughed, “out there fighting?”
      “The gates are gone,” said Headstone #1.
      “All gone, and now you’re about to be gone too.” said #2.
      Headstone #1 flicked out a butterfly knife. “So tell us where you put ‘em or we’ll cut your nuts off.”
      The blood reached Peterson’s mouth, muffling his words. “Put what?”
      Headstone #2 leaned in. “What’s that he’s saying?”
      “It doesn’t matter,” said #1, “just tell us where you put the gates! See, it’s like this. You stole our gates so all the ants have no purpose. Well if they don’t have no purpose, then me and my buddy here lose our power. And if we lose our power,” he smiled, “you lose your sack.”
      Two in charge. All along, two in charge.
      #2 flicked on a lamp overhead. Its swinging caused a strobe-light effect in the room.
      Like being interrogated by devils about God.
      “No God,” said #1.
      Could they read his mind? Had it always been this way?
      “God,” said #2, “is dead.”
      Headstone #1 dropped the knife and eyed his partner.“What did I tell you about that, huh? GOD ISN’T DEAD. THERE IS NO DEATH FOR ANY OF US. Got it?”
      The light flickered out for several seconds, and when it returned, Headstone #2 had vanished.
#1 grabbed his knife and looked down at Peterson, who was tied to the dissecting table. “Fuckin’ bad move, son. A bad move.”

      Peterson hadn’t felt any pain as the knife popped through his skin and worked into his inner flesh. He’d already fallen into shock. Except he hurt now.
      Thirty-six months ago Peterson finished his life as an ant. Surely his body lived on. He saw it every morning—sleeping in his bed, drinking his sour coffee, smoking his whiskey-flavored cigarettes.
      The pain that he felt, the pain that would never cease, was Time. Peterson screamed, but it hit Metatron City as nothing but one of 144,000,000 alarm clocks.

      Inside that rounded frame of bone stir the numbers carved of human flesh, and every morning Peterson imagines the drear-patter against the tin roof to be droplets of his own blood, fluttering down in butterfly frenzy from the black sun. And when he recalls The Headstones his clock-body shudders, for he knows no one will ever come closer to God.