Ben Winters - Countdown City

Martha is untroubled by the specifics. Martha is borne forward by gusts of joyful anticipation. “I can’t believe it,” she says—sings, almost, like a schoolgirl. “We’re just going to walk in there, and Brett’s going to be waiting for me. I can’t believe it.”

But she can believe it. She does. She’s walking so fast down Main Street on the way to the bridge that I have to hurry to keep up, even with my long stride. I loop my arm through hers, try to temper her pace. Walking quickly isn’t safe—too many loose stones and ruts in the sidewalk. She’s in a simple black cotton dress and I’m in my suit, and when I see our reflection in one of the remaining plates of the plate-glass window at what used to be Howager’s Discount Store on Loudon Road, we look like time travelers, like voyagers rocketed forward from another era; the roaring twenties, maybe, or postwar, a fella and his dame out for a noonday stroll, who accidentally took a wrong turn and came out on a rubbled path in a collapsing world.

There’s no sign to identify the building on Garvins Falls Road, no indication of what businesses are here, or used to be, just the number “17” stenciled in rust-colored paint on the brick wall outside. Inside, the lobby is decrepit and bare, and there’s no passenger elevator—just a heavy fire door with the single word STAIRS, and the rusting gated doors of a freight elevator.

“All right,” I say, looking slowly around. “Okay.”

But Martha is already in motion, rushing across the empty room and tugging open the door to the stairs. Then she steps back, confused, and I whistle lightly in surprise. Behind the door is nothing: the stairs are gone, literally gone, it’s just an empty shaft with a railing running up the walls. Like the staircase has turned invisible, like it’s a staircase for ghosts.

“Huh,” I say. I don’t like this. It’s purposeful, defensive, a fortification. Martha hugs herself as she stares up into the darkness of the stairwell.

“We’ve got to get up there,” she says. “What do we do?”

“Freight elevator. I’ll go first. You wait here.”

“No,” says Martha. “I need to see him. I can’t wait anymore.”

“We don’t know what’s up there, Martha.”

“He is,” she says, jaw set, certain. “Brett is up there.”

The doors of the elevator open immediately when I press the button, and Martha gets on, and I get on behind her, and my stomach tightens as the doors draw closed behind us. We lurch into motion. There’s a skylight in the ceiling of the elevator car and another one way up somewhere at the top of the shaft, sending down twice-distilled sunlight like a message from a distant star. As the car works its slow way upward, Martha, for all her bravado, tenses and takes a step closer to me. I can hear her murmuring prayers in the darkness, and she gets as far as “who art in heaven” when the elevator shudders to a stop and the doors groan open and reveal a room full of supplies: crates, pallets laden with jugs and cans, water bottles, shelving. And then a man hoots and launches himself into the elevator car, directly into my midsection, knocking the breath from me and forcing me backward into one dark corner. He lands on top of me and clamps a hand down over my face. I am smashed into the dirty floor with this man crouched above me like a wolf, a lycanthrope, his knees pinned into my shoulders, holding my mouth shut and jamming something hard and cold into the side of my head.

I writhe. I try to speak and cannot. The stranger’s eyes are bright and narrow in the dim refracted light.

“It’s a staple gun,” coos the man in my ear, low and lover-like. “But I modified it. Juiced it up a little.”

He digs the staple gun harder into my temple, and I try to twist my head away and cannot. In the corner of my eye is Martha Cavatone, her mouth agape, her eyes distorted with fear. A tall woman is behind her, one hand pulling Martha’s head back by the hair and the other holding the keen end of a cleaver to her neck. Their pose is biblical, brutal, a lamb at the slaughter point.

We’re in this tableau, the four of us, as the doors of the elevator creak closed and we start down again, listening to the rusted clang of the chains.

“It takes about thirty-five seconds for the elevator to get down to the ground floor,” says the man on top of me, leaning his body forward to flatten me further. “The way we do it is, it touches down, the doors open, we roll out the bodies and hit the Up button.”

Martha screams and thrashes in the grip of the tall woman. I breathe through my nose, deep breaths.

“I don’t know what happens to the bodies. It seems too early for cannibalism, but who knows? They keep disappearing is all I know.”

The man’s chin is square and jutting. His hand is rough and it smells like Ivory soap. I started counting seconds as soon as he started talking; there are twenty seconds left.

“What I did was, I rigged the staple gun to the motor of a hedge trimmer, so it can really do some business. I got guns, but I’m saving up my bullets. You know how it is.”

The man grins, shining white teeth, a gap between the two in front. The elevator descends, the chains rattling deafeningly like exploding ordnance. T-minus ten seconds—T-minus nine—who’s counting?

“My friend Ellen, she just uses a butcher’s knife. No imagination, you know?”

“Fuck you, you dick,” says the woman holding on to Martha, glaring at the man. He puffs out his cheeks, looks at me like can you believe this one? T-minus two. One. The elevator touches down with a thud. My bones rattle. I brace myself.

“Who are you?” says the man, and takes his hand off my mouth, and I say, “My name is Henry Pal—” and he fires the staple gun with a whir and a click and my brain explodes. I scream, and there’s another scream, in the corner, it’s the woman, Ellen. I crane my neck and try to see through the pain-sparked flickers, red and gold stars flaring across my field of vision. Martha is biting the woman’s arm, kicking free.

“Fuck!” screams Ellen, raises her knife like a butcher, and Martha screams, “Phillips! Mr. Phillips!”

“Oh,” says the man, and eases off. “Well, shit.”

Ellen lowers the knife, breathes heavily, and Martha sinks down against the back wall of the elevator car, her face in her hands, sobbing.

A password. Of course. Mr. Phillips . Palace, you idiot.

Blood is rushing from the side of my head, down my forehead and into my eyes. I raise one finger and touch the wound, a hole the size of a dime, the small sharp object of the staple buried in the thin flesh of my temple.

My assailant tosses his weapon on the floor of the elevator. “Ellen, hit the Up button, will you, honey?”

There are more goods than I saw in that first glimpse, many more: a room full of boxes, each box overflowing with things—useful things. Batteries, light bulbs, portable fans, humidifiers, snack foods, plastic utensils, first aid supplies, pens and pencils and big pads of paper. The man, the one who just shot me in the head with his staple gun, he pats me on the back and grins wolfishly, opens his arms and does a proud half-turn around the room.

“Pretty nice, right?” he says, and then answers his own question, settling back in a swiveling chair. “It’s very nice. I obtained an Office Depot.”

He pilots himself across the room on the wobbly wheels of the chair and docks behind a wide L-shaped glass-topped desk, where he puts up his feet and unscrews the lid of a plastic jug of pretzels. I’m holding my palm up to the side of my head, blood flowing freely down my wrist, pooling inside my shirt sleeves. Martha is holding herself, trembling, looking fearfully at the woman with the butcher knife. A couple years ago, at this time, Martha Cavatone would have been at Market Basket, picking up something for dinner, or maybe at the bank, the dry cleaners. A year from now, who knows?