Crystal Eaters (21 page)

2

T
hey run in a nightmare of heat and dust. Everything looks red. The sun pierced by buildings wrapped in tornadic filth. Flames as kites are being pulled endlessly from the windows of several burning buildings and men below in red and gold helmets aim their hoses skyward where the water’s arc disappears just as it begins. Newspapers, umbrellas, plastic bags, fast food cartons, black flies, clumps of hair, dirty diapers, spaghetti, magazines, a million types of colored garbage, all blow across the sky. There’s a howling. It’s so loud because in the city everything makes a noise. Their eyes sting with sweat. They squint as they run.

Into the city streets scattered with people they run. Cabs, motorcycles, sidewalk corners crowded with men who stand in the sweltering heat wearing suits – their faces expressionless shining with sweat in the sun. There is a store that sells just coffee. There is a store that sells just cheese. There is a store that sells just pie. A man holding a plastic plate holding a slice of pie takes a bite and his eyes widen. He turns to his wife and says, “Fresh apples,” while pointing to the pie with his fork. She tries the pie and nods while chewing. After she swallows she says, “Really fresh.”

Remy overhears someone say that the city is moving, it’s crawling over the village now because it’s destiny, it’s what god
wants, hooray! The man stops people by placing his hands on their shoulders. He asks if they’ve seen his gold cross necklace. Everyone shrugs him off and the man keeps running, starts tackling people. City people hate touching so the man is their worst enemy. Eventually three cops stop him, the man saying he’s a cop too, hey, stop that, until he goes quiet in the mush.

City people wear fancy t-shirts. City people don’t show their fear. Babies are pushed in carts by parents in sunglasses so you can’t guess their count. City people run for fun and call it jogging. The howling sound dips lower and pummels legs with wind. Again, the ground moves.

“Hurry,” Remy says, and they cross a street, dodging cars and bicycles.

City people scream with blood-red faces and slap the air with their fists. “You wait for the man to glow in the box to tell you when to walk,” says a small angry woman to Remy and Dad as they cross, the woman’s facial expression stoic in the blowing filth. “That’s what you do.”

“You tell ’em, Mom,” says a man standing next to her.

A car tire comes an inch from running over Remy’s heel and she leaps onto the sidewalk, tilting Mom a little, but not dropping her. Dad says to be careful and puts his hand on her back, pulling her further from the street, but not really doing anything, Remy already jumped. They have no idea where they are going but the hospital is somewhere and there’s an end point they are working toward. The small angry woman begins crossing the street while walking bent forward at a severe angle, the wind pushing her back, her will stronger and pushing her forward, facial expression not changing even as she peels, with finger and thumb, a plastic bag with a red smiling face with pigtails, from her own face, her other hand holding the grown man’s hand and seemingly pulling him along to an undesirable appointment.

Remy bounces Mom in her arms as she runs. Hundred barks at the end of a street lined with trucks that sell food to long lines
of impatient people. A man with a chrome cart sells a product called hot dogs that float in bins of hot water, little puffs of steam rising each time the lid is taken off. The chrome cart has a glossy red hot dog with legs and the hot dog is smiling as a salivating mouth from the right chomps away at the hot dog’s bun-clad body. Remy thinks
They put that in their mouths
.

Another rumbling is felt through the soles of their feet, this one larger, this one knocking people to the ground who curse the sky while trying to stand back up. They look to see what new buildings are rising. They scream and laugh and cry. Everyone in the city is insane. Everyone is touching technology. Free space in the city doesn’t exist. Every inch is filled, and from a cloud’s view, it’s all moving like a tidal wave of concrete and blinking lights toward the village.

“Moms should never be allowed to die because Moms are forever,” says Remy, seemingly to no one, only concentrating on finding the hospital, her eyes trying to read the letters painted on windows. There’s a store that sells just dog food.

“What?” says Dad.

“Moms are a void never to be filled.”

“What are you saying? Slow down.”

“We can’t.”

“Are we close?”

“Just come on.”

The hospital is a towering white building of glass windows with a glowing
+
. It’s so white it blinds through the red sky, the blowing filth of the city. Hoards of people stand outside the entrance. It’s hurricane windy but many don’t care. A woman in a wheelchair smokes a cigarette with her hair flying around her head like a baby’s handwriting. She stares blankly ahead until she sneezes blood and smoke and loses her cigarette. A man dressed in green lights another and places it between her lips.

The earth shakes and blurs and Remy fights back tears as she runs holding her dying mom.

A half-naked man with his face covered in black crosses stands on a wooden box and yells, “THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL, HALLELUJAH, THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL,” and the man selling hot dogs slaps the air. The half-naked man grins and drawn on each tooth is a black cross and the hot dog vendor looks scared. He continues to yell, “THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL, HALLELUJAH, THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL.”

They run down street after street and Remy bleeds as people take pictures and upload videos.

Another ground trembling, another slight tilting of the universe, another inch the sun pushes in.

A collective moan as the sky vines with cracks.

“The sun is to blame,” says a woman named Sharon or Carol or Tammy or Julie or Amy or Mom or Cathy or Kelly. “But you know something, I don’t really know.”

“Everyone is a falling number,” says Remy. “Get inside, protect yourself.”

A boy named Joey, the son of Sanders who has recently begun airing political ads claiming victory over the village says, “What’s that?” and points.

In the center of an intersection a fountain of dirt sprays the sky with a rush like a stream grown after a storm. Men and women scatter away and clog up doorways. A man drops his phone, starts to go back for it, but is pulled away by his wife. Roads split and the earth tilts and those still standing don’t wait to fall. From inside the fountain a giant yellow insect crawls upward.

“COME ON!” says Remy. “PLEASE COME ON!”

They sprint down a final area of sidewalk and reach the hospital, the fountain in the intersection still in partial view from the hospital entrance.
Mom is going to be saved
. There’s a hotel attached to the hospital and there’s a church attached to the hotel and all
three are in a race to consume the most sky. Two men dressed in green standing at the sliding glass doors take the blanket and pull the fabric down to reveal her face.
Mom will be Mom forever
. They call, without emotion, for a stretcher. The woman in the wheelchair smoking, hair in the wind a fighting nest of odd angles, laughs at the sky and then coughs in a way that makes Remy think she’s near zero. The two men look at Remy, ask if she’s okay, and she nods. She hasn’t seen what her feet look like.
Mom is safe now, don’t worry about me
. One of the men looks Dad up and down, Dad trying to catch his breath, he’s so out of shape, his stomach hurts, his back throbbing. But he also feels a strange kind of opening, something like success because they’ve made it.

“She’s red because she’s losing her final crystal,” says Remy.

One of the men turns and looks at her. “What?”

“She’s a red giant.”

“What she’s trying to say,” says Dad, “is that she needs an injection, or whatever, to increase her count.”

“Okay,” says the other man, looking so totally lost that he smiles. “Wait, what?”

The stretcher arrives. They place Mom on it and enter the hospital. Dad stays outside because he can’t stop looking at what’s happening back in the intersection, the fountain growing taller, getting louder, more people screaming. He’s completely distracted by something he’s never seen before, that no one has seen before, all that dirt blowing into the air with this thing, this yellow insect, coming up and out of it.

“Wha,” says Dad. “HOLY.”

There’s another eruption and triangular shapes of street bloom outward from inside the fountain of dirt and the yellow insect rises. It makes a high-pitched whining sound as it struggles to pull itself from the hole. Those on the ground crawl on their stomachs toward building entranceways where people scream to hurry, their heads filled with sci-fi endings. The wind shatters
a bank’s ATM window. A man crouches, holds his head, looks for his ATM card with the password LIZ&MONTY. The sun bends pavement. Laughing teens run in place, the wind holding them in place as they sink into the road. The yellow insect drags itself from the hole and becomes a machine with clumps of dirt spilling around it.

“How is that,” says Dad.

Two black crystals fall off the back as the yellow machine rights itself with two final flops. The engine buckles with the changing of gears, the whine relaxes to a growl, and a part, looks like a rusty pipe, falls under a tire as the machine moves forward.

Z. is hunched over the wheel, covered in gunk, dirt still raining down all around him. A few rocks clang off the metal roof. He screams for everyone to get out of his way and swats the air wildly in front of him. The tires leave two trails of dirt clumps shaped like hexagons in the street as he drives, trying to remember where the prison is. Dad steps back, turns, and runs into the hospital.

Inside, orderlies and patients and doctors and janitors pressed to the walls allow a clear path for Dad to follow. Ahead of him is Remy. The walls are an endless smear of green. Dad has the weird expression of a man terrified but smiling, catching up to her and the wildly swerving stretcher disappearing around corners, then reappearing again and scaring old men glued to the walls, clutching their metal poles on wheels. He runs and feels himself come alive.

Doors fly open and inside are doctors with rubber-gloved hands. They turn their heads, their bodies not reacting. Free-standing fans blow hot air.

Then they take Mom in a sudden group effort. A hand grabs Remy’s wrist and she slaps it away, runs to the table where they lay Mom, but Remy is pulled back again, this time by hands all over her body.

“Easy,” says Dad.

The doctors in green move in smaller and faster packs around the room. They not only unwrap the blanket, but also put Remy on a table, who fights them off with flailing fists and feet – the feet what they are trying to inspect.

“Hey,” says Dad. “Be careful with her. Don’t touch her if she doesn’t want you to.”

Mom on the table is all bone. Her mouth is open under the white lights, her body motionless with electrical cords being attached to her red skin. There’s so many white sheets. There’s so many gray cords and clear bags with clear liquid hanging from metal rods like the old men in the hall had.

The doctors in green speak a different language.

A red light beeps in drip-like rhythm.

A black machine hooked up to Mom warms up with glowing green numbers – 76, 55, 40, 32, 80, 100, 74, 38.

Dad asks if those are what her count will be.

The doctors in green ignore him and inspect Remy’s bloodied feet with tweezers. Again Dad speaks up, doesn’t shut down, tells them to stop hurting her. Remy attacks them.
She’s so strong
. Remy goes limp and slides off the table and runs to the door leaving behind bloody footprints.

“Give her one hundred,” says Dad. “Please give her one hundred.”

1

D
riving in a straight line at a steady rate of speed, oblivious to his surroundings, machine maxed out and containing black crystals, Z. leaves the intersection of screaming people, burning buildings, blowing garbage, and heads to the prison. He finds the path the Brothers previously walked and the prison comes into focus through the swirling dirt in the final sky.

The guards see him coming from the prison windows. They’ve waited for this. They run down and open the gate. Little Karl drops his book.

He stops the machine and the guards circle around and begin inspecting the crystals. The only shine to Z. is a few clean teeth in his smiling head. One guard takes a razor, peels a layer of crystal off, and places it on his tongue. He smiles, says it’s the right stuff, and Z. says as long as it’s the right stuff he’ll take them home.