We was driving north through California then. Midday sun so hot ants were incinerating on the highway asphalt, little explosions shooting acidic shrapnel all over the tires, people were pulling over, crashing into other cars, a sixteen wheeler lost all sixteen simultaneously and the driver stranded there, Central Valley shithole destiny. Man got out and walked into the fields, pulled up some string holding the grapevines to sticks and wrapped it around the neck like an African beauty necklace, so tight it snapped and he lay there breathing, rising and falling like the Romans or a half-slain elephant.
Man in spotty oil bluejeans stepped into the skeleton of the truck and came out with a gun and a half empty can of warm beer. Walked back to his truck on the shoulder, shot the windshield shattered into the car, drank the remaining beer and drove to the next stop. We stopped and walked to the heaving body in the grapevines, my buddy rolled him over onto his stomach and took his wallet.
: Asshole, he ain't got shit.
: Maybe check the truck.
Ain't nothing in the truck. Figured we should get something for our time so I took his hat, Thom pissed on the guy's ass. Sun was still in my eyes and the guy still wasn't dead, so we cut our losses and moved on.
Stopped for food next exit. No truck stops, just white trash non-town with A&W and bus station, maybe a Burger King and Carl's Jr. Burger place abandoned, we went to the A&W, parked, walked in, instant nausea. Hundreds of people inside, everybody in the whole area. No occasion. Just nowhere else. Ask the nearest moving thing -
: Why so many?
: So many what?
: Living things here.
: Don't know what you're talking about. Nobody here in years. You mean them, I don't know where they from. No cars around, though. Musta walked.
The eyes of the bodies all grey. Touch 'em and they crumble like moth wings. No houses anywhere for miles. Just hundreds of people stranded, their belongings and means of escape melted by the sun. Thousands, perhaps, of lives rotting like overripe fruit in a town without a name or reference anywhere outside. Few of them seemed to know their personal names or the answer to any other question. I notice Thom is lying on the ground now, pulling his clothes off and scratching chest with fingernails. Before I can do anything - what would I do if I could? - he is down to the bone, pulls open the flaps of his ribcage. Takes his wallet and keys from pockets and secures them inside chest cavity, closes flaps.
: Can't be too careful in this fucking place. They'll kill us to get out.
He's wrong though, even though he dies for his beliefs. Nobody here realizes there is anything outside, so they have no reason for misery or desperation. Almost as if the classic Flat Earth model, with ends that lead nowhere and tumble off into nothing. Like old cartoons a man exits a room through one door leading to the opposite side of same room. They have lost interest even in changing their position within the restaurant, though. People with no reason even to move, born on the floor, grown, staring with blind grey eyes at the soda fountain, dying, being eaten. Memory has become an obsolete technology, served to those who had it only as a Darwinian disadvantage. They went extinct long ago.
Realize with terror that the car has been sitting in the sun for hours. The clocks move backwards in the restaurant but I have not checked my watch until now. Run out to the parking lot and it's still there. Pray to a God I don't know even through rumor. Just figure somebody might want me dead or assimilated, maybe I can dance for him instead.
Open car door, get in: paralyzed. The air is thicker now than any prison bars. Even my heart freezes, but since all my blood and the necessary oxygen molecules are frozen as well there are no terminal consequences. I am still alive, but unable to move or process anything new.
Years later, finally, I understand. They don't trap you. They don't destroy your car or kill you or seduce you. They don't even know I was ever in there. They are simply unable to conceive of something other than exactly what they know because it never gets to them. The only way for them to survive is obsolescence.
But I reach ahead of it: I sit static in the driver's side, keys hanging from finger. Dust settles into pupils. I am like this when the army arrives. They don't stay long enough to suffer many causalities, they are here to take control from the heat. The bodies in the A&W are taken and transported to power plants where they are burned as fuel; their deaths, at least their bodies serve some kind of stimulus. The building is left standing as a frozen museum. I am taken to intelligence and chained as the only survivor. I am now aware of the passing of time and of each new breath and of the movement of molecules in the air and in my body.
Army moved me. Chained to the wall, rats breeding beneath me, shitting above me, spider eggs birthing in the scalp, my beard grew out like an old man and my language regressed until I babbled and dribbled like a child. My tongue hung out like an excited dog's. This was freedom. The Professor walked into the room with a hot mocha, steaming into my eyes and he ordered the woman into the room; she immediately crouched to her knees and folded my penis out of what was left of my pants. Took it into the mouth, stayed there until I spasmed a bit and the man held out an empty glass catching the rotten jissom, held it up to the light and hummed.
: You may go now.
She stands up and answers the phone. Man tears open a small wrapper, remove a small porous sheet; collects sweat from my skin.
: I'll let you know the results.
Leaves. Saliva creeping down to testicles, skin flakes off like snail shit along the trail. More time. Probably very little, but my brain rot has left a decayed sense of hours, days... What is a second to a corpse, no electricity, no event marking difference? An instantaneous moment of pain, not made distinct by change, is deceptive.
Professor returns.
: You are who I thought you were. Congratulations, and please feel free to remove yourself from the wall. I am Professor Salter. It's good to meet you, Ethan.
Let down arms from the wall. Strawberry seeds in the blood, heavy limbs, unable to keep eyes open. Drop to knees (nice hardwood floor),
: Please, feel free to use the bucket,
spitheave fluid into rusty tin mask. Finally, dry and clean, I am able to stand. Song from ceiling, uncatchable. Escapes. Turn and look at the Professor. Innocent eyes. Perfect teeth. Hands enveloped by deep purple veins, like ivy embracing an obsolete building. Pointed face. Shorter body, though I look up at his face.
: Thom?
: Long dead. Before we got there.
: What did you do?
: Little. I am not a man of intervention; I promote.
: How did your men survive the Valley?
: Never thought they were there. Veterans from 'Nam, every mission they think they're winning the war, burning straw huts, raping Charlie's whores. Never left, they think. Very useful children. Good boys.
: I didn't burn.
: No. Neither were you beyond our grasp; most we find, you can scratch their eyes out, break 'em like old fruit, they don't know anything has happened. You're exceptional.
: How?
: You screamed.
: I don't remember.
: You wouldn't. What we have left of your brain is approximately eight mL in volume. Again, exceptional.
: How can I communicate?
: Enough questions. I will explain to you later. Now, I have a demand. There are several women ovulating in the colony. The men have little seed left. You will breed. Because you have survived out there, the children may inherit whatever characteristics saved you. Go now.
: I don't like women.
Terror. Stops breathing for as long as I can remember. Sits in small wooden chair at desk, opens drawer out of my sight. Sound of metal clicking as arm drops into his lap.
: Faggot?
: No. Don't like men either. I'm dry. Nothing left.
: You won't have to give. They'll take. Go.
Step out onto small patio, like grandmother's backyard. Rows of mattresses, women lying in them, legs in mechanical stirrups, prone. Spread. Rows back to the horizon. On either side, small fields of men. Impaled on pikes in the earth, arms stretched out like scarecrows. Scared, old. I notice there are no children. They must need me badly.
I stepped back inside.
: We're going extinct.
A pause. He considers.
: Yes.
: You need me.
: We think so.
: I don't see the need. It doesn't affect you, whether the children live or die. You'll finish breathing and then die. Why the organization?
: You're right. But there is no more food.
: Go on.
: All available sustenance comes from birthing women; the placenta provides much, but not all, so the children have gone next.
: My children will kill you, you realize.
: Not stillborn. The women have been failing, the uterus has been drying out and the ovaries mostly dead. There are few fertile women now and those that are fertile birth corpses.
No choice left; I embraced the old man, pushed back the head, ate the neck. Wet, first good wetness I can remember. Didn't die. Just paralyzed. Looked in the mirror. Painted face. Innocent eyes. Perfect teeth.
Looked down at my father. Dragged by the legs out onto the patio. Women standing on their beds now, bone legs and fat guts. Hair grown in on the stomach and back, reverse evolution. Eyes like raped Vietnamese.
: Ladies, he's all yours.
I walked down the eroded patio steps towards the scarecrow fields as they took him.
Back.