Hystopia: A Novel Read online

  “You’re packing, man. I saw your gun.”

  “I’m not packing.”

  “You can’t fool me. My own eyes saw you in the car.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You see these hands? They’re of no use to me. On occasion they come to life, but for the most part they’re attached to my arms, and my arms are dead. Maybe my hands are fine and the arms are dead so my hands won’t work. Or maybe it’s the other way around. How would I know?”

  “You got ahold of that gun, somehow.”

  “My old lady put it there for me and told me to guard the fort.”

  “Where is she?” Singleton scanned the lot—the same accumulation of garbage, old bed springs, a car chassis (on blocks), and a double set of ruts from one corner of the yard to the other and then from the house to the fence, forming a cross.

  “She split to Port Huron to pick something up. Then she’s going to truck her ass over to Sarnia, Canada, where her folks are from.”

  “You’re alone?”

  “I’m alone, partner. I need a hand. If you could just position the gun higher, I’d appreciate. Lean it on my shoulder so it looks menacing. I’ve done it before. Scared the fuckers off. Nothing scarier than a guy in a wheelchair with a gun.”

  Singleton went through the gate and gently shook the Zomboid’s hand. It felt dead.

  “Up against my right shoulder,” he said. “Lift my arm up slightly and I’ll use the dead weight to hold it in position. Then when they come I’ll heave my ribs—because I can at least do that much, for Christ’s sake—and the gun’ll fall into position. I’ll depend on the luck of gravity to make it look like I have the complete and full control of my faculties.” His eyes, two dried-up beads in a sea of tears, were set deep below the dirt and grime of his brows.

  “You sure you can’t will those hands to work?” Singleton said.

  “I was sure the hands were dead the second that RPG hit my ass, man. The minute I was in the air, I knew. Legless slash handless. Right up there, spinning head over heels, I knew what was coming.”

  Singleton backed away a few steps, gave a salute, and then went back around to Wendy’s house while the Zomboid shouted, “You’re going to at least back me up, right? You’re gonna help a fellow out, enfolded or not…”

  * * *

  The picture on the television was in disarray, not only riding the vertical but also twisting around an invisible pole, as if trying to straighten itself out but failing because the main towers were down and the station was on backup. The old man was sitting in a massive easy chair, a rifle on his knees. A cigarette was burning in the ashtray next to a glass of something—it looked like scotch—with ice. He had a grim look, working his jaw side to side.

  “Don’t explain why you’re here,” he said, glancing at Wendy. “Wendy, you go upstairs and check through your room to see if there’s anything you want to save. I’ve got a good plan and I’m sure we can hold out here for a while, and maybe save the place.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything I want,” Wendy said.

  “Just do it for me. It’ll make me feel better knowing that you went and took one last look. Look in my room, too, and see if there might be something of your mother’s you want.” He waved her away and reached for his drink. “This is just a precautionary measure. I don’t mean to scare her, but you can’t go fooling yourself in these situations.” He lifted the rifle and sighted through the scope and held aim on the television.

  “I can see that you’re thinking this old man’s crazy to think he might have a chance. You’re standing there—and this isn’t a friendly visit, we aren’t going to sit at the table again and trade stories—thinking I want one last hurrah. But let me tell you, you’re wrong. I’m just helping out that kid next door, with his wheelchair and his gun and his delusions. He thinks I’m going to go up into the attic and snipe while he lures them in. They’ll hesitate to kill a vet in a wheelchair, he thinks.”

  “Well, sir, we’re going to take you with us.” Singleton sat down. From outside came a pop of gunfire and the sound of the Zomboid laughing. On the television, Cronkite’s voice was reporting calmly that riots had broken out in Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles. The Year of Hate was back in swing. It was unclear if Kennedy was officially dead. Had it been confirmed? The voice was steady, avuncular, calm, and dissociated from the reality at hand.

  “Wendy wants to help you, and she needs your help. It has nothing to do with me.”

  “I’d like to go with you but I’ve got my honor and like I said I’ve got to take care of that kid out there, even if it’s the last thing I do. You know, I worked the line at Ford and made a living and put her through nursing school.” The old man pointed to the ceiling, there was a thump of footsteps and drawers opening and closing. For a second, Singleton again felt an urge to go up and to throw her down on her childhood bed and have a wartime fuck, Graham Greene–style, the way they’d done it during the Blitz, with bombs blasting and walls crumbling and the fear of death. The urge swung through him and dissipated into the buzz in his eardrums, disappearing, one more shameful thought arriving from his primal past.

  The old man said, “I did what a man’s supposed to do, I tried not burden Wendy with too much of my past. Your generation doesn’t understand. Which is to say I’m going to go in the style of a man my age and time.”

  “But we’re still going to take you with us,” Singleton said flatly, so that he could tell Wendy he’d said it.

  The old man shook his head knowingly. “Let’s do it like this. I’ll tell her you tried. Better yet, when she comes down here we make a show of it. You can even try to take me out to your car by force, but I’m not going with you, no matter what. But, see, if we do it that way we both win her forgiveness. I’m her father, and she knows it’s not in my nature to run from this house that I built with my own hands—and the help of Sears—and you did your best to help her out. That’ll be your gift to me. It’ll be the last thing you do for me until we see each other again, hopefully, and then I’ll talk to you not only as a fellow soldier but like a son-in-law.”

  Singleton stood up and shook his hand. When Wendy came downstairs, carrying her mother’s wedding dress (resting on top: a small maroon jewelry box, and a copy of Little Women), the two men began the act. Singleton, as a member of the Psych Corps, a direct link to the commander in chief, ordered her father to head out. The old man, standing up, arms on his hips, a fireplug of a torso, countered by arguing that the commander in chief was dead now, so his orders were worthless.

  “I’m ordering you, as an outranking officer, a former captain, to come with us,” Singleton said.

  Wendy’s father touched his shoulder and said, “Kid, I outrank you. You must’ve forgotten. I’m not budging. Wendy, believe me, honey, I’d like to go but I can’t cut and run as the last thing I do.”

  * * *

  In the neighborhoods on the outskirts, most people had fled ahead of the riots. As soon as Kennedy was shot, or presumed shot, the few remaining millworkers had probably headed to Chicago, which for some reason had a low response to historical upheaval, or to their fishing cabins in Canada.

  A new sense of mission seemed inherent in the road as it crossed the Flint line and entered a no-nonsense desolation. They stopped at a gas station with two old pumps and a big orange round Gulf sign. The attendant had a cigarette dangling from his mouth and a holster on his belt. As he came around to the front of the car, he patted the gun and nodded as if to say: no funny business. Singleton said, “Fill her up,” and then, “Pay phone?” The attendant pointed at the side of the building. “She’s all yours.”

  “Good luck,” Wendy said.

  On the phone, Klein’s voice was weirdly soft and muted as he explained that they were in lockdown mode. The connection was weak and filled with clicks—they were being monitored—and his voice seemed to struggle through the wire. “You get it, you’re getting it,” he said. “I sense you have a clear sight line no
w.”

  “Yes, sir, I think so, sir,” Singleton said.

  Done pumping, the attendant was eying him suspiciously, his hand on his gun.

  “You don’t really get it, do you?” Klein said. “You can’t put two and two together. I’m under orders not to say to you what I really want to say right now. You’re a good kid. Can you put two and two together now? Can you do that for me, son? Can you think a little bit about whatever you’ve unfolded? Because I know you’ve unfolded, and I can’t say it, so you’ll have to say you’ve been fraternizing with a young lady, a fellow agent, against orders, against the Credo. From me it’s just speculation—you get it, son, speculation—but from you it would be a confession that I could confirm and send up to Command.”

  Singleton held the receiver out and looked at it—earholes cracked, the handle smeared grimy with grease. Wendy was in the car, waiting. Nothing wanted to make sense except the sky, milky white, holding the world together.

  “Say it, Singleton. Say it and I’ll respond. I can’t say anything until you say it. Say it. Say it.”

  “Say what, sir?”

  “Say what I said you might say, about your fraternization state.”

  “What about it?”

  “You know. Admit it to me is all I ask.” Someone else was definitely listening on the line, there was a click and then another click.

  “OK, why not?” Singleton said. “I’m with Wendy right now and we’ve been together all summer, fucking each other senseless, and now we’re striking out on our own.”

  “There,” Klein said, “I’ll send that statement to Command,” his voice lowered. “I’m going to confirm that you’re officially wayward, that you’ve gone AWOL, but I’ll use the Corps lingo. Now, if you were to say, I mean if you were to draw a conclusion looking back, accessing all of your actions and everything you learned in your training—if you were to look back, the way I taught you to look back, would you remember our talk about the proper way to write an operations report?”

  “Yes, sir,” Singleton said. The pop of gunfire came from the distance. A single pop followed by another. Brittle small-arms fire. Another pop—deeper, woody, a different tenor, a rifle—that seemed timed in response. Snap and woof. Another exchange of some kind. Behind that the dry, lonely sizzle of cicadas going about their afternoon business.

  “So if you were to write a proper operations report, you might find a pattern…” There was a faint wheezing sound, and Klein coughed. He was lighting his pipe, speaking around the stem. “Again, I can’t say it because it would be a betrayal of a promise I made to Command, but if you were to say something along the lines of, well, along the lines of being suddenly aware that you’re tracking Rake, who from your unfoldings—I’m just speculating that you had a vision of Rake, that you’re aware that he’s in your Causal Events Package, that you might also conclude—and if I were to hear you say it I could confirm or rather, at least, send your understanding to Command—that you are under a form of advanced treatment.” He began to cough the way he did when a bit of tobacco somehow traveled up the length of the pipe and got to his throat. The gunfire was getting close.

  “I’m unclear, sir. Are you saying that you want me to say to you that I’m aware that Rake is part of my CEP, part of my past, enfolded in treatment, and that I somehow figured out that I’m under a form of advanced treatment?”

  “Did you say it, or are you just asking?” Klein snapped.

  “I’m saying it, I guess,” Singleton said. Wendy was beckoning to him. The man in the station had his gun pointed out at the field.

  “There you have it. I’ll pass it up to Command. You not only went AWOL, but you also—to put it in the proper lingo—became aware of advanced treatment methods and thereby nullified said treatment. You drew your own conclusions.”

  “Got to go, sir,” Singleton said.

  “Take care, Singleton.” A paternal urgency had entered his voice. “Shoot and then ask the dead questions. Get to the safe house if you can. Locate Rake. Get up there and terminate him. Don’t ever quote me on that.”

  “Got to go, sir,” Singleton said. He left the phone dangling and went to the car.

  “Sounds like a firefight,” the gas station attendant said. “You folks better get moving.”

  “Who’s fighting?”

  “That would be anybody with a gun,” the man said.

  “Get in the car,” Wendy said. She had a look of fear on her face that he had never seen before.

  Two more pops—closer this time. The attendant aimed at the sky and fired two shots into the air. Then he waited a few seconds and fired another shot. “They won’t bring their firefight into my firefight.”

  * * *

  Singleton drove with both hands on the wheel.

  “What did Klein say?” Wendy said.

  “Let me think through what he said and get back to you. I was distracted by the gunfire.”

  “You get back to me.” She climbed into the backseat and began taking an inventory, lifting one gun and then another, putting them back. There was a kit bag from the Corps with pills. There was a first-aid kit and her mother’s wedding dress. When he looked in the rearview her face was shrouded by the veil. When he looked again she had it flipped back over her head and was talking about her mother, who had married when she was eighteen, just before her father went into the service. Then she was explaining that she’d never agree to marry a man who kept secrets. She climbed back over the seat, still wearing the veil, and remained quiet.

  “Well, he asked me to say and I said that I’m under some kind of advanced form of treatment. Rake was part of my CEP. He was there with me in Nam.”

  “An advanced form of treatment,” Wendy said. She took the veil off, folded it, lifted it to her nose, sniffed it, and then put it gently on her lap.

  “That’s about it. Some form of treatment.”

  “As if he knew we were together in the afternoons, and that was part of the treatment?”

  “I’m thinking, if I’m reading him correctly, they took me out of enfolding, put me into Psych Corps, made damn sure I connected with you, and that’s as far as I can go, because it seems virtually impossible. It’s like what he was alluding to was not a treatment structured by the Corps, but some kind of impromptu field operation, a seat-of-the-pants thing of his own devising.”

  “You’re saying Klein figured out we were fraternizing together. He saw that and decided it would be good treatment for you?”

  “I’m saying he saw that I was breaking the Credo, going off with another agent, and he made note of the reality in the field. That’s the kind of thing he was always talking about, the reality in the field.”

  “You’re saying he went renegade. He knows we’re heading up on this mission and it’s against orders and all that but he is sanctioning it on a personal level?”

  “It’s one way to figure it,” Singleton said.

  * * *

  A half hour later, there was nothing along the roadside to indicate they were in the Year of Hate, or that the riots had bled far out from the urban centers. This part of the state had been desolate to begin with, folks eking out a living from bad tillage, land overused, dejected-looking homesteads spaced far about, yards filled with trash. He wanted to tell her about the face in the file, but he was unsure how to proceed because she’d been quiet for miles, not moving, the veil resting in her lap, and he guessed that she was thinking about her mother, or her past history with the Zomboid. I’m the kind of man who doesn’t know how to respond to a woman’s deeper silences, at least in the car, he thought. There’s only so much you can do in a car. A car has its limits. Yes, he felt her emitting sadness when he glanced over, something in the position of her fingers resting on the faded tulle. Finally, he found a quiet, straight stretch of road and pulled over so they could get out and move their legs, get the blood flowing. They stepped out into the lingering smells of a hot day, tar and dust and a hint of something—lavender, bindweed? It was an inland s
mell, far away from the lake, although they were only ten or fifteen miles from shore. Together they walked a few yards from the car, keeping an eye out for movement, down a slight decline, through a gully, to a clear spot between two trees, hidden in shadow. He turned and gave her a kiss and felt destabilized, as if they might settle down at that spot, slide to the ground, two young pioneers staking a claim on a barren patch of land, full of hope, the wide expanse of emptiness quivering around them on all sides, full of portent and possibility in a land unsettled but waiting eagerly. Then he told her about the photo in the file, the face of the burned man, the termination stamp, and he watched as she turned away from him and took a few steps toward the field. Her body was tense and it seemed to him that at any moment she might bolt. Then she turned around and walked past him, up the verge, to the car. “Let’s get going,” she said.

  KILLDEER

  The world’s not gonna end with a whimper but with a bang, Hank said. It was just a thought. It came to mind and he said it, channeling deep into Old Hank, who knew that the best way to cut into the illogic of Rake when he was super high was to throw a non sequitur back at him, pushing him further away from a train of thoughts, because a train of thoughts always led to violence. They’d been exchanging non sequiturs deep into the night.

  The only way to die is to kill the death within, Hank said.

  You hear a whimper you want to make a bang, Rake said.

  A good ship has a captain who doesn’t know he’s a captain, Hank said.

  The only bad war is a war that I haven’t started yet, Rake said.

  Drugs that really hit hard hit the hardness first and the softness second, Hank said

  Meg’s a token of something I want to feed to the slot machine of death, Rake said.

  A tree that needs to be cut says so before the wind picks up the scent, Hank said.

  When I feel a hankering to kill I appreciate the fact that blood is still flowing from the top of the state to the bottom, Rake said.

  If I kill Haze it’ll be because he’s already close to dead, Rake said. I still have a little bit of honor left, such as it is.