Michael Sullivan - Hollow World

“No ice,” Warren apologized. “Lack of refrigeration is the biggest disappointment, but you get used to it. I tried cutting ice off the pond with an ax and packing it, but it don’t last. Dex says we need volume. In the old days they had icehouses, big places packed in straw and sawdust. Takes a long time to melt that way.”

“I still don’t understand,” Ellis said. “What are you doing here?”

Warren sipped his tea and rocked back in a casual rhythm as if this was normal—a typical Sunday afternoon with the neighbors. He pointed to his stomach, tapping it. “I got pancreatic cancer just like my old man—runs in the family. Seven years after you left, I started feeling sick and got the bad news. I figured if I followed you into the future there might be a cure.”

Ellis failed a suppressed laugh.

“Glad the news of my impending death amuses you, old pal.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that on the day I told you about the time machine, I left out that I had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.”

“Idio what?”

“My lungs are shot. It’s fatal and incurable except by a transplant, and I didn’t want to take a pair of lungs that some kid could put to better use. I thought your dad had a heart attack, like mine.”

Warren shook his head. “No. My dad lingered. Slow torture. He used to make train noises in the bedroom while we were having dinner. For years I thought he had gone nuts, you know? Later my mother told me he was in so much pain near the end that he needed to scream but didn’t want to scare us kids. So my old man made these choo-choos and woo-woos, like he was three and playing with a Playskool set of wooden train cars. I wasn’t going to wind up like that.”

“Treatments have come a long way since your dad died.”

“Yeah, they wanted me to do that chemo-shit. But that wasn’t for me.” He shook his head with a frown, his eyes looking down the length of Firestone Lane. “I wasn’t going out that way. I figured going forward was worth a shot. Even if it ended up frying my ass, that was better than sucking a bullet out of the barrel of my .38, which I seriously considered.

“I still had your blueprints. Kept them out of sentimentality, I guess. I couldn’t understand any of that crap, but I knew this fella—college kid, electrical engineer at Ford—who used to inspect the line. His uncle had been laid-off from NASA. I took the kid out for beers and got him laid. I became his best friend after that. He and his uncle helped. They thought I was loony, and were convinced it wouldn’t work. But as long as I paid for the gear, and the beer, they humored me. ‘You can’t create a contained gravity well using milk crates, batteries, and an iPad,’ they had said. Course, I knew better…because you’d already done it.”

Warren focused on the two moving the cattle. He stood up. “Goddammit, Hig! Just kick her in the ass! Where the hell is that stick I gave you?”

“I…ah…” Hig, who was wearing a wide-brimmed black hat, looked lost.

“You need to teach Dolly who’s boss.” Warren shook his head. “All these bald bastards ain’t got no gumption.”

“ Gumption? Since when did you become a regular on Hee Haw ?”

“Comes with the territory, my friend.”

Warren resumed his seat, and Ellis marveled. Four days earlier, Warren couldn’t belly-up to the bar and rest his elbows at the same time. As he sat back down, Ellis could once again see the old fullback.

“So how was it you arrived ahead of me if you left seven years later?”

“Not a clue,” Warren replied. “Flunked science, remember?”

“What have you been doing?”

Warren grinned, first at Ellis, then at Pax. “Working my ass off, is what. You can tell, can’t you?”

“Yeah—you look good for Santa Claus.”

“Funny guy.” He hooked a thumb at Ellis while looking at Pax. “Been a laugh a minute, hasn’t he?”

Again Pax didn’t reply, but only stood holding the tall glass of untasted tea.

“I popped in up north in the woods. I’m guessing you did too. Only you were probably smart enough to follow the river, right? I didn’t. I just thought the world was fucked, you know? Everything gone. So I dug in, built a lean-to and eventually a cabin.”

“You built a cabin?”

“We ain’t talking the kind on the maple syrup bottle. The place was a hovel, mostly made of fallen trees, thick branches, and shit, with a sod roof that leaked. Bugs everywhere too. That first winter was hell, but it kept me alive.”

“How’d you eat?”

“I brought my Browning Lightweight Stalker with the scope. It’s just like hunting up north, except the forests around here are packed with game. I’d kill one deer and be set with food for a week. Wasted a lot until I discovered how to cure it. Puked on bad meat a few times, working out the kinks. And this”—he slapped his stomach where his belly used to be—“is what a nearly all-protein diet and constant exercise does for you. Shows you what clean living can do for a man, eh?”

“So how’d you end up here? You eventually find the river?”

“Nope. I never had reason to go south. Most of the best hunting was north of my cabin. Wasn’t until the baldies found me that I realized I wasn’t the last person on the planet. They stumbled on my cabin like yuppie tourists discovering a UFO. Freaked them the hell out when they saw me. Granted, I looked like a bear—not much need to shave—but they were the ones buck naked. Little Ken dolls—all of them.”

Ellis smiled.

“You thought so too, didn’t you?”

He nodded.

“They were skittish as hell. Anywho…they stared for a long time, kinda like your friend here.” He winked at Pax, who was watching every move Warren made. “Eventually I asked what they were staring at, and they freaked again. Guess they didn’t think I could speak or something. We started talking then, and the more I learned the more I was sickened to discover what became of mankind. No more women—you know about that?”

Ellis nodded.

“Everyone masturbates now. Everyone lives underground in one big video game or something. I started setting a few of them straight, telling them how it used to be, how people were supposed to live—like I was doing in my cabin. I talked about taking responsibility for themselves and not relying on others for anything. Talked about individualism, and it turns out these folks are starved for it. That’s why they get these weird tattoos and dress up. They’re all identical, so they have to do something to tell each other apart. So I straightened them out, you know? They saw me as this mystic wise man, like that guru the Beatles hung with.”

“Did they believe you about traveling through time?”

“Never told them about that. They were already spooked. Thought I was a Darwin—which I guess is like a Bigfoot to us. They asked if they could come and visit again. I said sure, but only if they didn’t tell anyone else. I didn’t want a bunch of these hairless clones turning me into a sideshow attraction. They kept their word, ’cause only the same ones ever returned. They’d ask to invite a couple of others, and I said that was okay. I kinda liked the company, you know. Nice having people listen when I talked about society’s problems and the right way to fix them, not to mention finally getting some respect, you know? Some really became convinced I was right, and they decided to move to the purity of rustic life. Soon I had a compound of five cabins. Then Dex had the bright idea of moving down here. They had a fucking farm—a whole town—no one told me. Dex arranged for us to be the caretakers at Firestone. I guess there’s always been people that took turns living here and keeping the place up—mostly college types doing some kind of research or community service or just back-to-earth nuts. We’ve been here about a year and keep to ourselves.”