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Shoo, Fly
I don't want to speak for what's left of humanity. I have no idea how they thought the world was going to end. Or even if they thought about it at all. If they did, I imagine they thought pretty much along the same lines as I did: a World War III nuclear blast scenario, a fast-acting pestilence—hell, a zombie apocalypse. But I do guarantee that nobody—not the Mayans with that calendar they always talked about on the History Channel, not those Nostradamus freaks, not the Nike-wearing Koolaid-drinkers who waited for that comet—believed that the kingdom of man would be destroyed by houseflies. The Mayans did get one thing right, though. It all hit the fan in the year 2012. We, the survivors (if you can call us that … it seems more like we're just waiting for Our Turn), have not a single real clue among us what it was turned the flies homicidal. There is, of course, speculation. Somebody always has a theory. That's one thing that hasn't changed. Present a problem with no simple solution, and everybody and his mother has seventy-three different ideas about it. Burt—he's one of the nineteen people I bunk with in this place, and he snores like a grizzly with severe nasal drip—figures a bunch of flies over in Afghanistan must have gotten into the anthrax or some other bio-weapon that Osama Bin Laden was hiding in the mountains. Sounds as reasonable a theory as any of them, I guess. My favorite theory, though, comes from Nadia, an obnoxiously cute foreign student that I've been trying to get into my sleeping bag for the last month or so. According to her, at least 20 percent of the crap in New York sewers must be laced with home-made crystal meth. She speculates that a good number of flies must have dined on some of that tainted excrement (just based on the law of averages), and, there you have it: pissed-off mutant flies.
I found out about it the same way I suppose most people did: somebody I loved got infested. Even then, I was sure it was a freak accident, until the CDC got involved. By then, I had started seeing and hearing about more patients with the same problems. But I'm getting ahead of myself. What's important is that what happened to Dierdre, my girlfriend, would have happened, even if I hadn't been so insistent that we go out that night. At least, that's what they tell me. And that's probably true. I still feel like a jerk for making her go out, though, in light of what happened. When I came to Dierdre's to pick her up (we were celebrating a year of being together, and I was taking her out to Jaques'—a place I'd hoped she'd never know I couldn't afford), she was laying on the couch, with a washcloth over her eyes. Evidently, her headache had just hit, since she was dressed for our night out, in the slinky black dress of which I'd grown exceedingly fond. Her voice was weak when she greeted me from beneath the folds of the warm cloth. "Hey, babe." "Hey, darlin'," I said. "You feeling okay?" Dierdre lifted the cloth just enough for her eyes to call me an insensitive jackass, and an idiot, too. Her eyes weren't wrong—they tended to be among the more articulate of her features (although, sometimes, her hips spoke to me, and, man, did they talk dirty!)—and I was a little ashamed for not knowing what to say to let her know I cared. I tried again. "Can I get you anything?" She shook her head, but I was rewarded with a weak smile. "It's just my head. If feels like something is trying to push my eyeballs out." "I'm sorry," I said. "I hate migraines." "I took something," she said. "I'll be okay. I already feel it starting to go away." "Well," I said, "you know, eating in a nice, darkened restaurant is always good for headaches." "Is that right?" "Oh, yeah," I said. "And you know, I've read studies that actually say some of the best therapy for a headache is after-dinner sex." She started to laugh, and then pushed the cloth tighter to her eyes. "Don't do that," she said. "It hurts to laugh." Still, the pain subsided, and we went out. I kept my eye on her to make sure she was still okay and, through the main courses, she was. There was a slight twitch to her eye I hadn't noticed before, and I switched seats with her to get her out of the direct light. The twitch subsided somewhat, but came back in full force about the time our waiter brought out the tiramisu. Still, I wasn't prepared when she suddenly screamed and clutched her eye. Then she clawed at it, leaving angry red scratches on her cheek and eyebrow. When she grabbed for her steak knife, I finally stopped gawking and grabbed her hands. I held tight as she struggled with my grip, feeling the rubberneckers staring down the back of my head as I made sure not to break my eye contact with her. As I watched, looking into her eyes, I noticed a small, but sudden bulging just below her bottom eyelid. It took on a more frantic pace, this pulsation. It wasn't a simple twitch, a nervous tic; I knew what that looked like. This was something else. My brain caught up with what I was seeing, and incredulously pieced together the information it was receiving. The pain on Dierdre's face was heartbreaking, but I could neither let go of her hands nor drop my gaze from the thing that was in her. When it finally did escape, I threw up. I'm a little ashamed to admit it, though I heard many of the onlookers react the same way. But I couldn't help it, and neither could they. What emerged from beneath the blue eye of my girlfriend, like a black and hairy and malignant teardrop, was a fly. Neither the waiter nor the hostess tried to stop me as I grabbed Dierdre and helped her to the car. I had a twinge of guilt that I hadn't paid. Whatever— I just needed to get Dierdre to the hospital. If it bugged them that much, they could try to find me. She insisted she felt better, as we drove for the emergency room—that, however it got there, the fly was gone now. But I noticed that, in spite of this claim, she was still talking slowly and quietly. Still acting like her head hurt. And maybe it was just my maleness, but dammit, I wanted to know what had happened to her. She demurred, after a few more minutes of coaxing and arguing, and within the next half hour, she was in a hospital gown and waiting for an MRI. Maggots, as most people would probably expect, look much the same under MRI as they do out in the open: small, white and writhing. After seeing the fly, I had steeled myself to see a minor infestation—though I was still confused about how it had gotten in there in the first place. What I did not expect to see was a colony of larvae numbering in the hundreds, or perhaps thousands. One of the technicians fainted. She, apparently, was also not prepared. The colony had set up shop in the parts of Dierdre's head which consisted of softer tissue, especially around her nose and throat, near the brain, and the eyes. Some of them had also begun traveling down and working on other major organs. It looked bad. And it was. When the doctor came out to talk to us, she could barely form words. At first I thought it was simply the sheer horror of what was happening to Dierdre. I understand now, of course, that it was the shell-shock of having so many cases with the exact same diagnosis—and prognosis. There was nothing to be done but to make Dierdre comfortable. She was going to die, probably in about a week. I'm not willing to explore our goodbyes again. We said them. And true to the doctor's word, the bugs worked painfully through her system until she succumbed, finally, to being eaten from the inside. Dierdre, (and about a fifth of the population of New York state), was dead within three days. Dierdre's family and I weren't allowed to bury her. Somebody from the hospital must have recognized the signs of an epidemic and called the CDC about what was happening, because within hours of her diagnosis, white-suited men had quarantined the hospital—allowing some patients in (those, I assume, with certain telltale symptoms)—and allowing nobody to leave until, after several hours, we supplied clean stool samples and negative MRI results. The bodies of those who had been infested were quickly and quietly cremated, while families of each were allowed small, half-hour memorial services in the hospital chapel. Dierdre's parents had dropped everything and headed to the hospital as soon as I called to tell them we were checking in. Unfortunately, they lived several hours from their daughter and, by the time they arrived, weren't allowed inside. I mourned Dierdre alone in the chapel, and they alone, among the dozens of others mourning their own loved ones from outside the hospital. I went home that night alone, humiliated and exhausted. I burned my clothes in the trash bin in the kitchen, and showered for as long as the water stayed hot, and then another twenty minutes or so after that. The CDC guys had also told me to strip my bed, and burn anything Dierdre had been near. "In fact," said the guy I took to be the supervisor or head honcho of some kind—an officious sort of prick, by the way—"it would be best if you burned everything that insects could hide in and then bug-bomb the house or apartment." This was read off a sheet of paper that seemed suspiciously like a cue card. I wondered then as now whether the CDC is literally prepared for every type of situation, or if the global infestation had been in the works longer than most of us ever knew. Of course, talk of government conspiracy is all academic. Nobody is in charge now, though some crazy lady from San Francisco keeps going on the radio and saying she's the President ("To be fair," Burt tells me, "it is her turn."). Whatever. We're down to about a third of the world population, and we're doing whatever we need to, to survive. If some lady wants to shout off about how she's the Queen, it doesn't actually change anything. For all intents and purposes, the government has ceased to be effective, so it has, for those of us trying to eke out a living, ceased to exist.
While all this was going on, though, the government was still very much in charge, and it was telling me and everyone else to keep our uninfested asses indoors, keep the windows shut and have a flyswatter nearby. Though we were still being kept largely in the dark about what, exactly, was going on, we were also issued warnings about how to sleep (using a face mask from the local hospital or hardware store) and to be certain to keep all wounds or other … orifices … covered. Most people I talked to were understandably skeptical, given the lack of information; but after what I had seen with Dierdre, I couldn't help but think the precautions were maybe a little light. After taking my shower, burning anything suspicious in my tub and disposing of the ashes, I redressed, and headed to the hardware store for some masks, earplugs and lots of duct tape. I remembered something being said about the importance of duct tape the last time our lives were in danger, so I figured it couldn't hurt here. I added to these supplies a couple bug bombs and several cans of Raid. "Bug problem?" asked the clerk. "Have you not been watching the news?" I was incredulous. "Nah," he said. "All a bunch of liberal BS, the news. I have better things to do with my time." "Turn it on," I said, and paid for my purchases. It was on my trip back home—actually, just the walk out from the store to my car—that I began to hear a low, incessant droning. I didn't know what to make of it then, but given the weirdness of that past week, I knew it couldn't be good. As I drove, too, I started noticing the number of people swatting at buzzing little critters on and around them. It had never been anything I paid attention to before—the action itself is as unconscious for us as swishing the tail is for cows. But I noticed every swipe and swat this time, and it seemed to me that it was getting more and more frequent. The drone was louder when I got back to my building. And it was starting to gain clarity. It was less a drone and more a loud buzzing. My mind put the pieces together and I got my hardware purchases and got myself inside. Once inside my apartment, I threw some earplugs in, grabbed some eye protection and a face-mask and set the bombs. I waited just outside my apartment while the bombs went to work. Even from inside the building, I heard the droning, getting louder and louder. In the last couple hours, it had gone from the equivalent of a ringing in the ear to that of a phone ringing in the next room. As I waited in my protective glasses and face mask, my neighbor Carlos passed by. He shot me a quizzical look, and I nodded at him. "Hey, man," he said. "What's with the mask and stuff? You remodeling in there? 'Cuz Jake'll be pissed." Jake was the landlord. "Seriously," I said, "does nobody in this town watch the damned news?" "Oh," said Carlos. "That. Hey, don't worry, man. That's just the government trying to scare us." I ripped off my face mask and exploded at him. "Scare us? Dierdre's dead, Carlos. Is that a scare tactic?" His eyes widened in shock, and then his face dropped. "She's dead? I'm sorry, man." "Look, Carlos," I said, "I didn't mean to yell at you. But yeah. She had fly larvae living inside of her, and they killed her." "Fly—dude, maggots eat dead things. They don't kill people." "Oh," I said. "Guess I should tell Dierdre." "Shit," he said. "I'm sorry, man. But, I mean, really?" "Yeah," I said, and I put my mask back on. I don't think Carlos ever did take the warnings seriously. Maybe you had to see it. From what I can tell, everybody still alive knew somebody personally who had been infested—hell, there were more dead than alive, how could you not? Either way, by the time the week was out, Carlos was dead, and I wasn't.
As for me, as it turned out, my timing couldn't have been better. By the time I'd finished taping up the opening between my door and the floor and sealing any and all cracks around the windows, the buzzing I'd heard outside was audible even inside my apartment. I looked out my window to see a great black cloud coming down Jefferson Street, like the angry hand of God Himself. And there it was; Dierdre wasn't a fluke, nor were the other patients. As I watched, parts of the cloud broke off and went after those individuals too too ignorant or too slow to get inside. The flies (I hadn't known until I saw it then that houseflies traveled in swarms; maybe before this, they never had) went right for the faces, finding places in the ears, mouths or even eyes. The pedestrians had no chance—it just isn't possible to cover every opening in your head fast enough, even if you have presence of mind to think of such a thing—and were quickly overcome. The lucky ones suffocated. I stayed in my apartment for as long as I could. It had turned out I was ridiculously short-sighted, in that if you hermetically seal a room —or even a group of rooms, like my apartment—after a while the air gets stale. I found myself having dizzy spells and shortness of breath. After seeing the swarm taking over the town, I hadn't really paid any attention to the windows, but now I did, if only because the air was making me claustrophobic. It was the fog on the windows, obstructing my view of the outside, that really woke me up to the air problem. So, less than a month into my stay, I packed as many supplies as I could into a backpack, grabbed my goggles, ear plugs and face-masks and headed out. The rush of air, though it carried in it the sickening-sweet smell of decay, was such a cool and refreshing respite from the stuffy apartment that I nearly forgot myself and removed my mask. As it was I simply stood in my doorway for a while, enjoying the relative cool, before finally adjusting my pack on my shoulders and heading out. Except for the dead, rotting in their vehicles or on the sidewalks, the town was empty. Ghost towns are nothing new now, of course, but that first time out … Where there had been the constant hum of city life, the cars driving by, the voices of shoppers and businessmen and children carried on the wind, the echoes of hundreds of footsteps—sounds you never knew you registered until you stopped hearing them—there was only the buzzing of flies, so loud and insistent that I heard it with perfect clarity, even through the ear plugs. Underneath the droning, I could almost hear the buildings groaning as the wind pushed past. The city, without benefit of people, was dying of uselessness. With my first step out of my building, I felt, rather than heard, the snap, crackle and pop underfoot. I looked down to see thousands of maggots wriggling their way between the dead flies. Though I heard living flies, I only saw clusters of a few hundred here and there along the street. Most of them, it seemed, had done what they came to do, and died. I closed my eyes against the sight for fear that it would make me throw up in my mask—an issue I knew I couldn't afford with the living insects still looking for a host. I swallowed the bile that was forcing its way up my throat, wincing as it burned its way back down. I opened my eyes and started looking for useful transportation. As much as I knew I would need supplies, more than anything at that moment, I just needed to get the hell out of town. There was an abundance of cars, but there I faced a dilemma. I knew the cars with occupants (dead, though they were) were most likely to have the keys inside. And though, looking at the corpses littering the roads and sidewalks, I wasn't squeamish about showing a dead driver out of the way, I also knew that if they were dead, that meant flies. And as good as I felt about my protection, I really didn't want to test it by closing myself in a small space with a mini-swarm. On the other hand, it was hit-or-miss as to whether the empty vehicles had keys, and, let's face it, the movies don't actually show you how to properly hot-wire a car. For all I knew, I'd just blow the damned thing up instead of starting it. I mentally flipped a coin and decided the remote chance of blowing myself up was preferable to the chance of getting cozy with a hundred of the flies. I found an empty car, windows rolled up, but with the doors unlocked. I got in, and closed the door against the outside and started looking at the dashboard. I was in way the hell over my head, and I knew it. I knew from the movies that carjackers would pop off a panel somewhere near the steering wheel, but from there it was like trying to put together a puzzle of the blue sky. No real beginning point, and no frigging idea where to go from there. I had, about twenty minutes later, managed to get the panel off the underside of the dash, right below the steering wheel, and was in the process of looking blankly at the jumbled mess of wiring, when the distinct sound of metal knocking gently on the glass window broke my concentration. I jumped a little, and smacked my head on the steering wheel. "Shit," I said, and sat up, trying to push the coming headache back into my brain. I turned and jumped again, when I saw the face of a large, black man nearly pressed into the window. Most people will probably think of my skittishness at the sight of a black guy to be somehow the product of my racist upbringing. Who the hell knows? Everybody's dead and politics don't mean much. Mostly, it was the fact that here, in this city of the dead, was another living, breathing human being. "Where did you come from," I shouted through the window. It was a stupid, guilty question—the kind you ask when you get caught with a cigarette at school, or peeking at your old man's porno. And he didn't bother answering. Instead he looked into the car, at the wires hanging down below the steering wheel, and grinned. He motioned for me to roll down the window. Electric windows, like most cars, so I cracked the door open. I saw that he, too, had earplugs, the green foam kind you just sort of wad up and shove into your ear canal. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he said. "Um," I said, "hot-wiring this car?" He started to laugh out loud, and caught it in his hand, remembering that he was out in the open with no protection on his face. "Not like that, you aren't," he said. "You got another face-mask?" I nodded. "Several." He considered this and, evidently making up his mind, nodded back. "Shove over," he said. I slid over and grabbed another mask out of my bag, and handed it to him. "Thanks," he said, and took out a pocket knife and started on the wires. As he bent over to his work, I noticed he was carrying, what looked to be a Glock. "So," I said, attempting nonchalance, "are you a, um, gang member?" He looked up for a moment, with a look I couldn't read, but might well have been something like, "Screw you, Jack," and got back to work. The car started after a moment, and he sat up. "The name is Al," he said. "And I am a police officer. Or was, I guess." I nodded. "Sorry about the gang member thing," I said. "It was just …" "The gun?" he interrupted. "Combined with the fact that I was hot-wiring a car?" "Yeah," I said. "That." "Yeah." He smiled. "Don't worry. I know you pasty white folks see a black dude with a gun and think 'gang member.' I'm used to it." "No, really …" He held up a hand. "I'm used to it," he repeated. "Still friends. Where are you headed, Friend?"
As it turned out, Al had a friend who knew some people. Survival-types who had holed up in a small office building about a hundred and fifty miles from town. When he'd last heard from his friend, there were about twenty to twenty-five people in the building. They were looking for more people, but only if they could take care of themselves. Al was a shoo-in, since he was a cop, and he told me he figured I'd done well enough on my own that they should be more than willing to have me on board. Between points A and B was a small town, taking up about as much space on the highway as the sign itself did. Al pulled into a corner gas station and put the car in park. Of my questioning look, he said, "Supplies." "I thought they had supplies," I said. I guess I figured if they needed supplies, they'd send out raiding parties or some such. "It's sort of like a dinner party," he explained to me. "You go to a dinner party, you bring along a bottle of wine or something, right?" Hell, the last party I went to involved pizza and plastic cups of cheap beer. "I'll have to take your word for it," I said. "My word?" He sounded incredulous. "I'm a cop. We don't do dinner parties." "What makes you think I do?" "Well," he said, "I just thought …" "Since I'm all clean-shaven, and pasty white?" I supplied. "Yeah," he said. "That." "It's okay," I told him. "I'm used to it." We put our masks on and went into the store. If the owners hadn't been dead, I'm sure we probably would have been; I found a shotgun under the counter, and I'm certain the proprietor would have had no compunction about using it on two masked men who came barging into his place of business—flies or no flies. Still, I figured even if it didn't work on flies, the weapon would come in handy at some point. I took it, and found a couple boxes of ammunition to go with it. I had just started grabbing bottles of water out of the drink cooler when I heard Al speak up—the first time I'd ever heard him nervous. "Oh, shit," he said. I looked over to him, and gasped. The wall in front of him was black, and crawling. I realized then that both of us had been lackadaisical in our personal protection. Though we'd both donned masks, neither of us had bothered with ear or eye protection. There had to be thousands. Hundreds of thousands. "Dude," said Al, barely above a whisper now, "Run." The directive issued, Al turned on his heel and started toward me at a pace I wouldn't have thought the big man capable of. At the same time, and as if on cue, the flies lifted off from their perch. It was as if the entire wall had come to life and was moving in for the kill. Al was overtaken—buried in a cloud of flies—before I had even managed to collect myself to run. Even as I pivoted, my vision became nothing but black specks flying by. All light was blocked out, and I heard nothing but constant and angry buzzing. I walked in the general direction of the door, remembering that the car was just outside, feeling my way through as well as I could, while simultaneously waving one hand in front of me trying to clear the swarm. I wanted to yell for Al, to make sure he could find his way out, too, but I didn't dare open my mouth, even with a mask. Somehow, I made it outside, though it did nothing for the claustrophobia. Bad enough that I could neither see nor hear anything other than the swarm that engulfed me, it was also starting to become difficult to breathe. In part, I knew, this was because of my body's reaction to the insects, but also because of the sheer number of them pressed against my face. As the fact of my breathing difficulty became clear, I started to panic. Though I was now near the car, and though I couldn't think for the constant buzzing in my ears, it was clear I was out of options. I closed my eyes and mouth and curled up, holding my hands over my ears and waited to suffocate. I don't know how long I remained that way—but I know I heard the buzzing start to subside, being replaced by a sound like aggressive white noise. "Up!" A voice cut through the din, though I couldn't make it out. I looked up and saw a man, wearing a gas mask, and brandishing a fire extinguisher. I took my hands off my ears. "Get up," he yelled, a little impatiently, I thought. "Back to the car, now, and follow us." I nodded, still a little dazed—okay, a lot dazed—and turned back to the car. I saw with relief that Al was also running toward the car. "Hey," I shouted. "You made it." He grinned and gave me a thumbs-up as our rescuer called back to us. "You ladies can catch up later," he said. "Right now you need to get the hell back in your car." He was right: though the cold blast from the extinguisher had incapacitated many of our tormenters, many of the insects were still flying around, and just as deadly as ever. We got in and I started the car, as our savior's truck started pulling out. I followed, and slapped the steering wheel. "Shit," I said. "What are we doing? We don't know who those guys are, or where we're going." Al, oddly subdued, I expected from our near-death experience, stared ahead and nodded. "The survivor camp," he said. "I knew we were close." And he was right. My White Knight was Burt, and the office building he led us to was indeed the one Al had heard about. "A guy named Ricky," Al said, when Burt asked him how he knew they were there. "I found him online a while ago, and he emailed to tell me where you all were." Burt's eyes dropped some. "Is he here?" Said Al. Burt looked up, eyes full of sympathy and sadness. "He died a few days ago," he said. Then, "the flies." I started at that. "Wait," I said. "You mean, in the camp?" "Supply run," he said. "Same thing we were doing out there today, but a bug got into his mask somehow." "And what," I said, "it killed him instantly?" "No," said Burt. "You bunk in this room," he pointed into an office with its desk pushed against the wall. "With me."
Al and I spent the first day meeting everybody, resting and re-equipping. I was surprised when I was given, along with my gas mask and fire extinguisher, a Colt .45 with two clips of ammo. "It's not for the flies," said Burt, when I asked him about the gun. "Mostly it's for looters and anarchists." He shrugged. "Some people don't want to have to work for supplies." I nodded. "Makes sense." But Burt wasn't finished. "Also, this is what you get to take with you if you have to leave us." "Why would I—?" "Infestation," Al said quietly. "Can't risk infesting the rest of the survivors." Burt nodded. "You know the score," he said. "If you got bugs, you're dead anyway. It's the only way to protect the rest of us." "Okay." "Which reminds me," said Burt. "There is one remaining unpleasantness we should discuss." I don't know who thought all this stuff through, but this colony turned out to be extremely thorough. Burt's bit of unpleasantness was actually a two-parter. First, since we were new, our stools for the next two weeks would be subject to inspection. Not only that, but the same was true every time we came back in from a supply run. This was a little off-putting—who wants to let some guy or girl he just met sift through his shit?—but not bad. Worse was the second part of Burt's news: that every person in the colony was expected to pull stool duty once a month. Gag reflex or not. "Shitty job, huh?" I said. Nobody laughed.
For two weeks, aside from my first shift as Crap Inspector, I almost forgot that we were a dying race. Sleeping on the floor of an office building isn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but it beats the hell out of camping outside with sticks and stones trying to knead your insides or flies trying to find their own way into you. And there were amenities. Arcade games and table tennis in the break room, as well as a TV and DVD player—if the guy who brought the movies had been with me, I'd have called him an idiot; I was happy I hadn't been there to talk him out of it. And, of course, there was Nadia. Now don't go thinking I'm a heartless jerk. I was torn up about Dierdre—as heartbroken as you can be. It's not as though I was hitting on her—not yet—she was just nice to look at. And I spent a lot of time looking. All in all, it was like being at work—except that we lived there—and talking to people and playing games instead of working. Not a bad existence. Then Al pulled me aside. "Can I talk to you?" he said. "Sure." Since our adventure coming to the colony, Al and I had talked about quite a lot and become friends. I had often felt like his priest more than his friend, but it never occurred to me to wonder why he was getting so much off his chest. He was scared. We all were. For all we knew, it was us and a few looters left on the planet—it was some scary shit. But it wasn't fear, as it turned out. "I'm gonna die," said Al, once we found a corner to talk in. "Shut up with that," I said. "I'm serious. It took 'em a while to find it, but I'm infested. I knew I was, and that I'd have to leave. But I couldn't. I wanted to make sure we—people—were gonna be okay." I didn't know what to say. The others were nice to talk to, but Al had saved my life. He was the only real friend I had left. Maybe the best friend I'd ever had. I said, "When?" "You know when," said Al. "Dammit. Why didn't you say anything?" "Told you. I needed to be sure everything was okay." I just nodded. Like an idiot. My heart was in my throat, and I was disgusted with myself that I was struggling to stay sad and scared for him, instead of wondering whether I'd been infested in that swarm as well. "I can feel 'em, man," he said. "I can feel them in my guts. In my brain. I'm not thinking straight." "You sound fine," I said. He did. But I'd known how he was during our trip here, and in the days following, and I knew something was off. I hadn't seen it before—hadn't wanted to, maybe. But it was there. A slight slurring of his words. Taking longer to figure things out. They were in his brain. They were eating him alive, and he could feel it, and it was taking its toll. "I'm still a cop," he said. "You can't lie to me." He was right. "Now what," I said. "I'm not going far," said Al. "I want you to come with me. To be my witness." "Witness for what," I asked, dreading the answer I knew was coming. "I can't live like this, man," he said. "I'm a dead man, just waiting for the bugs to finish their job. God'll understand." I didn't want to. I wanted to do anything but. I wanted to pretend nothing was wrong. Pretend Al had never existed. But I couldn't. I'm a selfish bastard, and I know it. But he was my friend, and it was time to be his. So, I grabbed my mask, my gun and my extinguisher and went to follow him out. The rest of the colony said their goodbyes and we were ready to go. Burt stopped me at the door. "You know if you leave, you're crapping in a bucket for two weeks." I kept going. It didn't matter. (Burt's mad at me, reading this. He says it makes him look like an asshole. "You are an asshole," I tell him. He's finally taking the hint and leaving me alone. Good. I don't want to do this with him over my shoulder.) Al and I walked for about a half hour, in silence. There was nothing else to say. Whatever absolution he felt he needed, either he got from me during our long talks in the past two weeks, or from God, if He's up there. We walked until we found a burned-out house. It looked like looters had grabbed up any valuables and burned the place down, just out of—I don't know, spite I guess. He found a clear spot near a wall, and handed me his gun. "I want you to do it," he said. I shook my head. I had never shot anybody, and I had no intention of starting with my best friend. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'll be here for you, if that's what you want. But I can't pull the trigger." He smiled. "It's cool, man," he said. "No, it's not." "You believe in God?" It's weird to think about it now, but in all our conversations, we'd never talked about religion. I guess it was as good a time as any. "Don't know," I said. "Honestly, I don't think much about it." "Well, I do," he said. "And maybe that's my problem. I don't know if I'll be forgiven for killing myself. I'd like to think so. But I don't know." "That's why you wanted me to do it." Tears started to come to his eyes, and he just nodded. "Man," I said, "I can do it. Just give me a minute." Now he shook his head. "No, man." He reached into his pocket and grabbed a cigarette. I didn't know he smoked, which made sense. Either you're in a building or you're wearing a mask. Standing there, watching my only friend light up, I was annoyed that the only thought in my head was how grateful I had never been a smoker; the withdrawl would have killed me. He checked the pack and grunted. "Four left. Guess I'll finish the pack first." So we talked for another hour while he smoked, one cigarette after another, savoring every breath. Every second. Then he said, "The ground is soft here. Good for burial. Will you?" "Of course, man." "Good." He pulled his gun from his jacket. "Now take a walk, man. God and I have some things to hash out first." I heard the shot fifteen minutes later.
I came back to the colony and sat alone for a while. I had let him down. First, I couldn't pull the trigger, and then I let him down again. I hoped, sitting there, that there was no Heaven, just so he wouldn't know I couldn't bury him. I wanted to. I was prepared to dig, even with my bare hands, to give him his proper burial. It wasn't the sight of him lying there, a neat hole in his forehead, eyes opened, that stopped me. It was the matter behind him. His brain splashed across the back wall. Not the part that was him, so much, though. I didn't want to see it, but could force myself to, in order to grant his last request. But what stopped me cold—what nearly forced me, in spite of all the warnings and every ounce of common sense, to remove my mask and throw up—were that some of those pieces were moving. Al was right. The little bastards had gotten into his brain.
I've been here four months now, have gone out on one supply run, sifted through too many piles of shit, looking for maggots. Tonight is my last run. Nobody knows it yet; I simply told Burt and Nadia and everyone that I was writing my memories down for those who came after, to explain what happened. And that's true. It's concievable, after all, if humanity survives, that there won't be many left who can remember exactly what happened to us. As I said before, we don't even know ourselves, really. Just theories and ideas. Maybe somebody who comes after—somebody who reads this, maybe—can figure it out. Or maybe Nadia's right, and it was the drugs. Maybe Burt's right, and it was the terrorists. I hope, for their sakes, that they find out soon. But it's too late for me. Somehow, in spite of all my care, in spite of all my worrying, one fly—a single, black housefly, has managed to find a way in and lay its eggs. I feel them now. In my stomach. In my head. It's time to take that walk. I hope there's a Heaven, and I hope there's a God. He and I will have a lot to talk about on that walk, so I hope He'll be listening. I hope I see Al again. There's a burned-out house about a half an hour from here, with soft ground, perfect for grave-digging. This time, I have a shovel, and I will dig myself a nice hole before putting a bullet in my brain. But first, I'm going to bury my friend.
Randy is the Senior Editor of Digital Dragon Magazine (www.digitaldragonmagazine.net). His work has appeared in Daily Tourniquet (www.dailytourniquet.com) in both written and spoken-word formats. He hosts the morning show at Q102 in Northern New York, where he lives with his wife and four kids.
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