A Chemical Fire (18 page)
Authors: Brian Martinez
Daniel says, “Come on, that Victim’s still moving.” We start making our way back through the corn and I hear a faraway static sound, buzzing up and up. Behind us the Victim is following, stumbling our way, us with no tools. “Quickly,” Daniel says, still watching the sun. I look and see the cloud is bigger, double the size, and the noise is louder.
I slow down, watching it.
“What the hell is that,” Adena asks, brittle legs flapping.
“That’s no moon,” Janet says, mask back up.
It must be ten thousand feet thick, blotting the sun. The cloud, more a column, it’s not getting bigger; it’s getting closer. I stop running and the group gets ahead of me and the Victim is still behind.
I say, “Locusts,” and all goes dark.
The swarm slams into us, an explosion of brown thoraxes and abdomens. Fore and hind legs claw at us as we cover our faces and run, around us the crop laid into by grabbing pincers and chewing mandibles. Hiding our eyes we can barely see, antennae in our views and no sun on us. The air so thick it slows us down, corn stalks breaking from the weight of them, the sound screaming into us.
We push through and manage out of the corn and up into the street, Janet already smashing into the SUV with the force of his body. He gets the door open and we all run and tumble in, closing behind, shaking the passengers off and crushing what got in.
“I almost ate one,” Adena says. “It got in my mouth, I almost ate it.”
“Heaven forbid,” Daniel says.
The windows, the entire car, covered in locusts. I look at one of them, deep brown like a dead leaf, long and sectioned body.
“I didn’t know we had locusts here."
“Not in over a hundred years,” I say. “We have grasshoppers but farming killed American locusts.”
“The farmers are all dead now,” Adena says.
“This is too fast.”
Janet fingers the glass.
“And this is nothing. Swarms have been seen thousands of miles long, larger than California.”
A body bashes into the car loudly- it's the Victim. He paws at the doors and wipes locusts from the window; an accident that clears the view of him, covered inch to inch in wings and bodies.
Adena says, “Are they stinging him?”
“They can’t,” I say, getting close to see a female. She chooses a spot on his shoulder and pushes down, forcing a hole with the valves at the tip of her abdomen. She contracts her muscles, opening and closing the valves and drilling in. The Victim sees me and opens his mouth hungry, the locusts crawling in.
“They’re laying eggs.”
“Nice,” Janet says.
Adena asks if that's normal. The locust’s entire, stretched abdomen buried into the skin now.
“Only if he was made of dirt.”
Other females on him are pulling out of the black meat, leaving mucous and eggs behind. I say, “This is called ovipositing,” and the car fills with the stink of Adena’s stomach.
Serpentes
I don’t remember how we got here. I don’t remember the locusts moving on, if they did, or the car starting or any of the drive from then until now. The last thing I remember was the sun blocked by arthropods. Now the night is out, the ground more barren out the window.
“Nine hours,” Adena says. She’s in the passenger seat, sucked into the seat and barely there. “You’ve been driving nine hours.”
“Why didn’t you stop me,” I ask, throat crackling.
“Daniel tried.” She points to him, asleep in the rearview with his lip swollen and cut. “You really don’t remember? He had us stopping every five minutes to deal with any Victims we came across, even if we didn’t need to. At one point he was trying to talk to you and you didn’t answer. Nor did you respond well to having your hand pulled off the wheel.” She looks at Daniel. “I’ve never seen him so angry.”
Mountains are in the distance, tall outcomes of violent tectonic shifts with snow on their caps and evergreens. Then, to our left and right, rock formations rise from the ground to swallow us in.
She says, “Jesus, John, I don’t know where you go when you’re like that but I hope I’m never there.” The headlights fall across the scales of snakes coiled under stones, tasting the air and raising their heads as we pass. They've come out to see for themselves the last of us. Her leg is trembling. “Sometimes you seem like a pretty normal guy, funny even. And then you get that look, and you’re the scariest thing I’ve seen, and I just want to get as far from you as possible.”
Janet snores into his mask, wet sounds and the whistling of broken teeth.
“I can accept if that’s who you are as long as I can trust you. If I know you won’t try to kill any of us again I can pretty much handle the rest. I mean, I can’t even believe I have to ask you that, but we’re all pretty freaked out.”
Rock walls part and we come out from the claustrophobic grip, back into the open air. The Earth opens around us into deep-carved canyons and jutting plateaus, and she says, “Do you promise?”
The highway, line after line, hypnotic.
“Is that a no? Are you even listening anymore?” She shifts and exhales. “Its times like this I miss my Camry. Just me, the radio and the road."
Outside a rattlesnake shakes its tail, the hollow beads of the rattler rubbing dry. A warning to a possum come dangerously close.
“What color was it,” I ask.
“The snake?”
“The car.”
I know rattlesnakes. Their hollow fangs show drops of venom at the tips, different depending on the species. Neurotoxins which cause muscle paralysis, hemotoxins that decompose tissue and blood, nephrotoxins that poison the kidneys, cardiotoxins which destroy the heart.
She says, “Black.”
“Were you ever in an accident?
“No. Well, one.”
I slow us down, bringing the SUV into a stop on the dark, mountain road, steep declines to our right ending in trees hundreds of feet below.
She says, “You need to pee or something?”
If necrosing flesh from a snakebite enters the bloodstream, it causes a rapid destruction of muscle tissue. This is called Rhabdomyolysis, which can also be brought on by trauma. Car accidents, electrocution, drug overdoses, those are also considered trauma.
“Why didn’t you turn around after the accident?”
“Excuse me?”
Trauma is stubborn- a person sustains one kind of injury and treats it, only to have more damage show up somewhere else. Like after-shocks from earthquakes, in seemingly unrelated places.
“When you hit someone with your car, you should turn back to make sure they’re okay.”
The rattlesnake does all this with two, tiny fangs. It can strike without pulling its head back, at a speed which the human eye can’t follow. They’re constrictors, and have been known to suffocate a person by crawling into their mouth.
Her voice a whisper. “How the hell did you know about that, John?”
I don’t remember reaching for Adena. I don’t remember putting my hands to her ropey neck and I don’t remember her thrashing to get away. I just remember Janet, waking up to pull me off, and me squeezing, fighting to keep my grip.
Descenthounds
The engine cranks.
“She won’t let you back in the car.” Daniel talks to my arm as it gets tied. From the passenger side, Janet points at the gear selector and Adena rocks it back and forth, checking the alignment. Then she tries the ignition again.
“Look, I understand. Sometimes she pisses me off and I want to punch her in the mouth. Strangling her though?” His eyes wander to the morning sun bleeding through the cumulus. “Alright I've thought about that, too. But we’re a team, we can get more done together.” The needle goes into skin, pokes for a vein. He faces away from the wind coming down the mountain. “You and I aren’t done with our own business and you go and start this.”
He doesn’t know what she did to me.
“She hit-and-ran you, I get it. How long ago did it happen, a year? Two years? A different life. None of it’s real.”
Pull up, push in, the morphine hits.
Adena pounds the dashboard, a muffled shout through the windshield. She unlatches the hood and gets out, holding an eye on me as she props it open.
“Now she’s a mechanic. We could be into the next town, instead we get to watch her figure out, again, that cars won’t start for anyone but you.”
“I’m good with cars,” I say, eyes loose in the sockets.
“Right.”
She checks the battery, the spark plugs, all the wiring she can find. Janet comes to us, pushing his oily hair back and lighting a cigarette. He says, “Man, she’s choking on it. You really fucked things up.”
“That’s what he’s good at,” Daniel says.
My eyes focus on his face. “You wouldn’t be this close to the dam without me. You wouldn’t even have the idea,” I say, tongue rubbing the roof.
“And I'd be back in my warm hotel, stocked with weapons and food.”
“And dead in six months.”
“Who are you again? Oh, I remember, you’re that junkie. You don’t know a thing about survival past what I’ve trained you.” A few yards behind him Adena is pushing at parts, tapping the distributor cap.
“He killed your father,” I call to her.
She stops working on the car. “What did you say to me?”
"Your father. Daniel killed him."
"What are you doing," he whispers, then to her: “That’s a lie."
“No,” I get closer. “He’s the coach. He’s Joel’s father.”
Her eyes go to him. Daniel’s face fills red and he rushes at me, dropping his sword and taking me down to the cold. We roll and grab and he rips at the wrappings on my face, both of us punching and pulling at each other with glass and rocks in our backs, Janet following along and laughing with the cigarette stuck between mangled teeth.
I get to my feet, the sharp decline to my back and bandages hanging from my face, and I grab for the sword. I pick it up and swing wild as he moves back, the tip catching his hand and slicing into the soft palm.
“Give it back,” he screams.
“You can’t change it,” I say, face exposed and bitter. “You think everything before the fire is gone but it’s still there.”
“You’re a liar. You manipulate us and I’m sick of it,” he says, chest up and down, holding his hand. “You pit us against each other and hold back information until you can benefit from it. You’ve been pulling our strings since we met.”
“I was keeping you from each other, but I’m done with that,” I say and throw down the sword. He picks it up by the blade, his blood down the edge. He turns it around and grabs the handle, ready, shaking his head.
“Is it true,” she asks. He looks at Adena, still at the car. “Is Joel your son?”
“I don’t have a son,” he says to the lion.
“Did you?”
“I don’t have any queer sons."
“Dan,” her voice louder.
A lacrimal lake, a wetness at the lids, he says, “I can’t.”
She steps closer. “You can’t have kids?”
“Not that kind.” The sword comes down, his wrist giving. He takes a few steps away, watching the Bristlecone pines. After a bit he says, “I had plans for him. You wouldn’t- you can’t understand. He was supposed to play college football, get a scholarship, join the Marines.”
“He still could have,” Adena says.
“Yeah, okay,” he laughs through snot. “Try telling him that. When was he supposed to meet with the recruiter, after his theater group?”
“He does sound pretty gay,” Janet says.
“I’ll chew your lungs right out of your chest,” Daniel points. Then he says, “Look. You have all these plans for them. The stuff you didn’t get to do yourself, but they don’t work out. They just,” he looks back at Adena, her bone-and-skin arms dangling. “Go bad.” Thin wisps of graying black hair push against her face, nostrils taking air in, out, looking at him. He straightens. “Was he a good man?”
She says, "He was."
“Well I can only imagine what you went through. It’s unfortunate your old man killed himself and I stayed free, but I wasn’t going to jail for doing what I had to do.” The two of them, on this mountain, clothes fluttering. Daniel says, “In the end we’re alike, you and me. I don’t apologize for who I am, either.”
Blue Spruces and White Firs moan under the push of the wind, scraping bark, their needles blowing across the road. Daniel turns and raises his sword with the length of the blade directed at my gut.
“Right,” I say.
He shakes and says, “Left.” The downhill behind me shifts, small rocks slipping down it. I realize and go left, out of the way, and Daniel stabs. The Victim takes the sword to her heart, black eyes dried with dirt. Then he walks forward, blade in her chest, his blood buried with it, and pushes her off to avalanche down with the rocks and shattered glass.
More of them are climbing up the steep angle, struggling against it. One of them nearest the fallen one, a boy, stops at her. Quickly he falls on her, thrashing and biting at the sword puncture in her chest. Then another one joins him, both of them chewing and crunching the charred meat.
Daniel’s look goes to mine, then the dark, wet spot of dirt on the ground under his hand. “The blood,” I say.
