Hystopia: A Novel Read online

  Wendy poked through the ashtray and found the half-burned joint. She lit it up.

  “Late May the snow finally breaks and then in mid-October the snow begins. Not much of a season for riding a chopper.”

  “Want a hit?” she said.

  “Keep it low, don’t let it show. I’ve got to maintain an edge.”

  A gas station. A liquor store. A tavern with a cop car—a star on the side panel, faded, gray—parked in front. Past a stoplight (blinking yellow), the lake revealed itself, a vast gray corrugation of waves, an inland sea.

  “Give me a hit,” he said.

  Headed east from the Harbor of Refuge as per instructions, he’d write, if he wrote. Took Deer Park Road. The lake was relatively calm.

  They drove through the wind-battered landscape. This part of the state looked completely untarnished, but it was deep into the so-called Zone of Anarchy. At any moment a gang of bikers might appear beyond the bug specks on the windshield.

  When they got near Rake’s encampment, Singleton pulled over and parked the car in the grass. Wendy kept lookout while he checked the weapons. He handed her a gun and watched as she kissed the barrel for good luck and tucked it into her waistband. The night was getting cool. She put on her leather jacket with fringe. (In the report, he’d say they were wearing the regimental uniform with badges, as per regulation. Pants clean pressed and shirts neatly tucked. He’d say they made it clear that they were agents from the Corps. He’d say they had assessed the road situation—dead quiet—and assured themselves that no one was coming. He’d say they were keenly aware of the idea of north, remembering, from the manual, that northern climes enhanced the intuitive clarity of agents while increasing the psychotic intensity of failed enfolds.)

  “Hug,” she said, pulling him close. He would omit from the report the desire he felt for her. There was a faint smell of smoke in the air.

  “Time to reconnoiter,” he said.

  “I fucking love that word. Reconnoiter.”

  Approach the perimeter and establish the target in relation to the landscape and make necessary adjustments, he might write in the report. They stopped and listened. A clear intuitive drive. That was the phrase he’d use. What does it mean, he thought, that all I can do is try to frame this in the technical terms of a report I might write. He shook his head. He was feeling lonely, isolated.

  There was a single goat in the field to the left. It made a sound like a laugh. Then another.

  The gun slung on his shoulder; the grenade hanging from his belt.

  Farther down the road they came to a driveway with a mailbox, a sign that said KEEP OUT, and a skull impaled on a stick. The skull was clearly human, not dog or goat. It was missing the jaw and bleached clean and white.

  Merle had said the hideout was at the end of the paved road. Two rutty tracks ran through thick weeds and plunged into a dark hole in the woods. To the right, what Singleton would call a windrow in his report. Windrow was the word he’d use. The windrow formed a perimeter of deadfall with a clearing that was visible as a brighter glow of purplish light. He put up his hand to signal halt. They listened to the faraway sea sound of the surf and the wind rising in the pines, dying away, rising again. Nonspecific vibrations at the coordinates’ location, as specified in prior vision. Dangerous vibrations, northern negative lure. This had to be the feeling you got being on point in Nam.

  Singleton crouched down and Wendy crouched beside him. You can enfold the trauma but you can’t enfold the age and time. In the field you’ll be thinking about the war, starting from the moment you stepped onto a Pan Am airline flight and heard the stewardess sweet-talk you, serving coffee, knocking hips, flirting, to the final moment you were lifted up and out of the hellhole to return home, passing fresh grunts on the way in, their assholes clenched, their faces fresh and bright as they went to their destinies. Just can’t wash all that away, no matter what, Klein had said. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

  The smell of her patchouli and the glow of her hair beside him. He stood and she stood. They walked forward a few yards and stopped.

  “What about the zip pills?” she whispered.

  They were in the brush near the edge of a yard. Sheets on a line luffed softly, straining skyward, as if to gather whatever light remained. The house’s clapboards were shedding paint. There was a light in the back window, presumably the kitchen, and a thin thread of smoke from the chimney. The breeze lifted, and the sheets stretched out in unison, and then luffed down again.

  “We won’t need them,” he said.

  A few minutes later they heard a screen door slam, and an old woman came out onto the back porch huffing, grunting down the steps and shambling into the yard with a basket in her arms. She took down the sheets one by one, folding each one over her arm and then in half and then in quarter before laying it in the basket. Then she began to unfold each one, lifting the corners up to the line, pinning them back into place.

  “Sure this is the right place?”

  “I’m sure,” he said. “You know what they say. Every failed enfold has a hefty old lady tending to his needs, some mother figure who believes he’s a pure little angel. The hardened cases are often the most pathetically in need of maternal care.”

  “OK, but she looks nondangerous in a deep way.”

  “All the better for us.”

  The old lady took the sheets down from the line again and stood with her arms at her side and her face to the sky. What happened then was hard to see from their position. She’d fallen to the ground and was partly obscured by the basket. Holy holy, she seemed to be saying.

  The subject appeared to be speaking in tongues, he thought. Glory and holy, or holy and glory—the wind rose and covered the words—and then something about the wrath of God being torn away. She seemed to be running in a supine position. The screen door slapped again, and a similarly large man (a son, Singleton thought) with a beard strode across the yard and said, Mom, MomMom, it’s OK, go easy.

  Wendy took a step forward, her gun out.

  “Wait,” he said.

  The man was helping the woman into his big arms. Likeness of physique indicated a genetic relationship. No sound from the house. We held our position and assessed the situation. Male subject assisted female subject up the steps to the porch …

  The screen door creaked open as they approached. A young woman emerged, wiping her hands on a towel, and let them into the house.

  “That might be the one Rake kidnapped out of the Grid.”

  “Total weirdness,” Wendy whispered. “They don’t look dangerous. I get a vibe of a loving relationship.”

  “The closeness of these folks, from what I understand, is even more intense than the closeness of normal folks. They practice violence externally and live in small-group formations, or whatever the Corps calls them, an intense familial groove. A failed enfold often doubles not only his psychotic intensities but his sentimental attachments.”

  We posited that the familial vibration derived from a projection of mother-son love as he had experienced it in the field of battle heightened by an abnormal dose of Tripizoid to an abnormal intensity.

  “I know that. But I don’t necessarily see it in front of me.”

  “When we’re sure they’re inside we’ll get up to the porch and take a look.”

  Northern darkness fell slowly, and they waited until the yard was dark and the window in the back glowed brighter, throwing bars of light onto the floor of the porch. Over the yard a bowl of stars appeared.

  “Now,” Singleton said. “Cut around as far as you can to the side of the house and then we’ll cross one at a time. Keep me covered. I’ll go first. If anyone comes out, give them a warning shot. I don’t want an element of surprise in any form but gunfire.”

  He mentally set aside the report and placed himself in the moment. He felt mosquitoes biting his legs and the heavy pull of the rifle on his shoulder as he moved swiftly around to the driveway, taking the shortest exposed approach between wooded cover and p
orch, and without thinking, without even saying go, he ran across the gravel and flattened himself against the side of the house. Moving in a side step, he slid to the corner of the house and peered around it—gun first, always gun first. Then, removing his shoes and glancing back to sight his cover, he walked heel and toe up the steps and onto the porch.

  He crouched, glanced through the window, and ducked back down with an image in his head: The image might have been called “Domestic Bliss”: three people were seated at a table, lit by a lamp hanging down over steaming dishes, and eating together with their bodies relaxed, no sign of a gun, no sign of intensity (and no Rake, no Rake at all). The man with the beard was sitting on one end of the table, the girl named Meg (if this was Meg) was at the other end, the old woman between them, with her back to the window. Singleton briefly raised his head again. The man with the beard was lifting his fork while the girl laughed about something. (Her laugh came through the glass, a flutter, delicate-sounding.) Beyond the table was a dark doorway.

  It was possible that Rake was away (or actually dead) and they were holding down the fort. Also possible that the bearded man was Rake with some extra weight after a summer of killing and eating, killing and eating. Target had gained weight. Target had facial hair. Singleton struggled to get an intuitive read on the situation.

  He waved Wendy in. She came running silently and crouched down beside him. She indicated the door with her gun. He pointed to the window with his own gun and made a poking motion. “Break the glass and hold them,” he whispered. “I’ll go through the door.”

  She spread her fingers, clenched her fist, and spread them again. Count of five. Everything on a count, the manual said. Decide upon a course of action, using hand signals if necessary, and then, on a count, strike.

  At the count of five she shattered the window with her gun and yelled, “Don’t move,” before they registered her gun and shouted and jerked in terror, for a split second, forks and spoons midair in the warm kitchen. Singleton passed through the mudroom—its smell of rubber boots and tools and mink oil—and burst into the kitchen as they froze.

  “Move, I’ll shoot.”

  The old lady heaved up from the table and began to howl.

  Wendy went in with her gun raised, moving it from Singleton’s target—the big man—to her target, the girl.

  Norman Rockwell, he’d write in the report. We approached target in cover formation—Wendy covered—and entered a Norman Rockwell scene. Total element of surprise accomplished. No reactive counterattack in relation to our action in the field.

  “Christ, what took you so long,” the man at the table said.

  HOMECOMING

  Jesus Christ. What took you so long. The words came to Hank swiftly, and he said them and felt himself grow still in the brilliant tension of the moment. To project a sense of knowingness, to center the fear, to draw everything into an assurance that it was unexpected. This was his instinctual reaction to the breaking glass and the sudden appearance of two guns. Not sarcasm, but basic survival in the form of nonchalance with a dash of sarcasm as MomMom slid down against the stove, hands up, waving, making an unusual screeching sound, like a wounded animal, her watery, rheumy eyes bulging, a sound that somehow matched the persistent buzz in his ears. The man in the doorway was blinking and lowering his aim slightly. The woman, beautiful, with startling eyes, in a leather jacket, her legs spread, her arms up, looked like she was Psych Corps. Both were, Hank speculated, keeping his elbows on the table, a finger on his chin, scanning the room. It was clear they were Corps from their careful adherence to their training. Or maybe not. The man had scars and was holding his gun in a soldierlike way, in a zone, breathing hard with his eyes pinpointing. But the woman was clearly leaning on her training, with her legs properly apart but her finger off the trigger, down around the guard. An agent for sure. A renegade, one of Rake’s old customers, a Black Flag member, would’ve trigger-fingered and shot the ceiling or hit somebody by now.

  Don’t move, the male agent was saying. He had a burn scar that ran down from his neck and disappeared under his collar, only to reappear on top of his wrist. It wasn’t a stretch to guess it was a combat scar, not at all, and the scruff on his face and his hair, grown out beyond regulation, seemed to tell a story, too.

  Who are you? the female agent said, directing her question to Meg. He located a slight, faint quiver in her voice. Before he could speak, Meg answered from her seat at the table, giving her name.

  We’re agents from the Psych Corps, the male agent said.

  There it was in the guy’s voice! A tiny trace of a stoner’s quiver, leftover desire for Trip, a need for substance and maybe a hint of enfolding around his eyes and in the way he held the gun, as if he half remembered how to maintain his aim in this kind of situation. The scar confirmed it. He’d seen action, been enfolded, taken the treatment, and was out to save the world.

  The male agent tightened his grip and steadied his aim. Don’t move, he said. His hand was shaking and he didn’t sound so sure about what he was doing.

  Let me soothe my old lady, Hank said. She’s frightened off her rocker, but she’s harmless. Keep the gun on me if you want. I won’t bolt or move against you. If I were a failed enfold you two would be smeared on that wall there. I would’ve had a gun at hand, of course, at all times. You know that, I know that.

  Go ahead, the man said, following with the gun as he went over to MomMom, who was leaning back against the stove, her mouth wide open, shaking her head but remaining unusually quiet.

  These folks are good folks who are here to take care of some business that doesn’t have a thing to do with God. God’s outside the house right now. I’ll take you out to see him as soon as we talk a little bit with these people.

  Keep her inside, the man said. The woman agent had lowered her gun.

  Where’s Rake?

  So I was right. You’re looking for Rake.

  That’s right.

  It’s just the three of us—me, Meg, and the old lady. Rake’s out of the picture.

  Is he in the house? the agent asked. He moved around to the doorway and glanced down the hall.

  No, he’s gone. Take a look around. You probably don’t believe me, I can understand that, but when I get around to explaining it to you, I trust you’ll agree that we did what we had to do beyond the law—not that the law means a whole lot up here—and in accordance with the nature of nature, such as it is. I’m a lumber runner, you see, and Meg here is a survivor, an enfold—you probably know, I’m sure you have a file on her, I’m sure you could tell me more about her story than I could.

  The two agents seemed to calm down. Window glass covered the sink, and once again a breeze came through the broken window. Hank took a deep breath and smelled a tree, a faint itch of pollen from Canada, and he thought of the roles that he and Meg had played. They’d cast them off in the past weeks, but it might be necessary to revive them now, when they were looking into a gun barrel (no darkness like that of a gun barrel). Meg was totally out of her old role, her face clear and healthy from relaxing in the open air. But there remained a chance that these were rogue agents, acting in bad faith, a couple who had their own dramatic license to play a part.

  His muscles had hardened from chopping wood and cleaning around the house. He’d enjoyed relaxing with Meg, but there was still the rumble of motorcycles at night. The locals would keep away, thinking Rake was still around, but others might come flowing in from the Lower Peninsula, now that the fires had started.

  I’ll go take a look around, the male agent said to the female. You stay down here but keep your gun trained. Get the old lady to sit down at the table.

  Hank’s telling the truth, Meg said to the female agent. As a matter of fact, he saved my life and I saved his. A few minutes later the man with the gun came back into the kitchen and put it on the counter. No sign of him, he said. He motioned for the woman to put the gun down.

  Sit down at the table, Hank said. Join us. We got nothing
to hide from you, nothing at all. And we don’t have much against the Corps. As a matter of fact, we’ve both had a form of the treatment. She had the official version and I had my own version. Black market or not, the Trip is Trip. I’d like to exchange names, Hank said, if that’s all right with you. I’d like to establish an atmosphere of trust quickly because, in case you haven’t heard, all hell is breaking loose downstate and it’s heading up this way, the chaos, not that it hasn’t been here already. It’s not going to take folks out there long to figure out that Rake isn’t around. When they do, they’re gonna come to extract some revenge for the things he did and the things they imagine he did.

  Where is he? the agent said.

  Hank leaned back and tweezed his beard. To let them know Rake was out of action would be to open the door to a new place, and that fact would either placate them or, if they were rogue, give them a new sense of freedom and lower their fear level a notch.

  * * *

  In the mission report, he’d describe it as a static scene with a domestic aura. The smell of baked bread. He’d say the girl looked rested and calm, with a small scar on her face. Eyes: blue. Hair: dirty blond. Targets offered hospitality in the form of drink and food. He’d explain that he withheld trust as was warranted in this kind of field situation, assessing for hints, taking as much time as needed, avoiding any kind of interrogative stance until it was proved necessary on account of the fact that it seemed possible that information would be forthcoming if trust could be established. He’d try to describe the old lady, leaning back against the stove and shaking violently, making strange guttural sounds—and the solitude, the sense of seclusion in the kitchen—the exchange in the tension of the guns, the heated delusional space in the fear, and the sense that he had of knowing exactly how to handle it, aiming away from time to time. He’d try to explain how the big one, named Hank, had gone to his mother, kneeled down, kindly, gently, with his big hands on her shoulder, and soothed her, speaking gently, urging her over to the table and pulling the chair out for her, telling her to sit, making her sit down and getting her a glass of water from the sink. The woman was mumbling things, speaking of the end, something about the end, the beginning and the end together. (He’d summarize in the report, explain that the old lady was demented in the way of someone hearing voices that are speaking what seems, to her at least, to be the truth.)