Cameron Pierce - Abortion Arcade

I nod. “I’m going over the wall.”

“Where’s Pym?” Robbie asks, cocking his flat, horned head.

“Only one of us could make it down. I’m coming back for her, though. She’ll die before morning if I don’t.”

I grab his shit-covered forearm and yank him to his feet. He jogs along, matching my pace. “Where are you going to go when you get over the wall?”

“We’re going to City, Robbie, and you’re coming with me.” I don’t know why I decide to bring him. Maybe because I don’t want to be alone. Maybe because I have no idea how I’m going to rescue Pym. Maybe because I may need someone to throw in the way of danger, or to eat if there’s no food out there. Maybe because he’s small and will be easy to bring along. Maybe I like the little retard after all.

“I don’t know…”

“You want to die here?”

“Well, who will look after your child?”

“Pym, who is carrying my child, will die before morning if we do not find a way out of here.” I’m not totally positive that she’s pregnant, but that’s beside the point at the moment.

“How are you going to climb up the wall?”

“I’ve got these. They’re from Pym.” I raise the breasts strapped to my hands.

“Oh.”

“Come on, let’s go.”

As we jog through the rows of little shacks I imagine what things would have been like if Pym had been naturally chosen as my bride. It would have been tender, sweet, loving, probably. We would have consummated our lifelong love. And then I would be dead. At least now we can aim for the impossible.

A happy ending.

Survival.

I feel like a child.

I miss my mother.

I want to go back.

I want to hold Pym’s bleeding body, kiss the bloody meat where her beautiful breasts had been.

I cannot let her down.

The farm is strangely deserted. Everyone must have passed out early from the feast. No one is wandering about and no fires are lit.

I must have spent more time in the tower than I thought.

I am kicking up dust, walking fast.

We jog along in silence for several minutes. Final y we reach the west wall. I decide that will be the best to climb because it’s on the complete opposite side of the farm as the wedding tower. It will provide the most darkness for cover.

I cringe a little as I lift Robbie up onto my back. He smells strongly of shit, and his clumpy hands stick to my flesh as he clasps hold of my shoulders.

I fumble around with the suction cup breasts for a moment. They are soft and pliable. I wonder if they will hold our weight.

I tighten my grip and press the left breast against the wall. It holds. I swing my right arm upward. The second breast slaps against the wall and holds. I pull us up slowly, not slackening my arms for fear that I won’t be able to drag us level to the breasts again.

My whole body shakes with the effort. Halfway up, a brick comes loose under my foot. It lands on a shack built against the wall. There is a loud clanking sound. For a second we hang motionless. “Oh no,” Robbie says.

“Shut up,” I snap.

If anyone is in the shack, they must be too drunk to get up and investigate.

I peel the left breast from the wall and swing it upward.

We are leaving an obvious trail of bloody breast prints.

When we get to the top of the wall, my arms feel like putty. I can barely move them. They tremble at my sides because I cannot bend my elbows, but we still have to get down the other side.

“We’re pretty high up,” Robbie says, leaning over the edge. He is holding on to one of the small steel spikes that protrude from the top of the wall. Fortunately, so many of the spikes have fallen that there are flat spaces large enough to stand in.

We stand atop the great wall, feeling small beneath a night sky more vast and dark than any we have seen in our lives.

Ringing the farm like sunrays is a network of steel girders, canals of blood and soggy carcasses, wooden buckets whose rusty-toothed jaws betray to us their purpose: debraining skulls. The decrepitude and disrepair of the slaughterhouse suggest grander days. The farm today must be a pale shadow in light of former glories. I feel sorry for what my recent ancestors must have endured.

Robbie exhales a gasp of horror. I turn to him but he’s unaware of me, his uncomprehending eyes fixed on the area beyond the immediate ring of death.

I turn to see what he’s seeing, and reiterate his noise.

Beyond, there are trees. People trees. Trees in the shape of people, or people as tall as trees.

“What are they?” Robbie says.

“Houses. The zombies live inside of them. Bill told me about these, although I never believed him.”

I know this because the tree people, or people trees, crook their arms so their palms lay flat to support a helicopter. Their hands are helicopter bays.

“Are they alive?” Robbie asks.

Green lights illuminate the eyes of some houses like hazy, dilated pupils, but most eyes are empty, lightless.

Their flesh is most perplexing of all.

These houses are made of brains.

This means two things:

1) The dead may eat our brains, but sustenance is a secondary purpose.

2) We are being farmed by the dead so they may use our brains as building material.

I keel over and vomit. Robbie gets sick himself. We puke over the wall, onto the dead side.

We live our whole lives believing we’re food. We eat people too (out of necessity, of course) and so somehow it seemed okay that one day we would end up as food ourselves. It’s the natural cycle.

Being house material is not part of the natural cycle.

Underneath the sickness, I’m enraged.

If we’d grown up knowing the complete story of death, maybe we’d get used to it by the time our turn came around.

Seeing our bodies wasted like this, though, is such a shame. If they wanted to build houses out of us, why not use our bones as well? Surely bones are more useful than brains.

Robbie and I are doomed. The brain tree people houses extend to the farthest reaches of the dark horizon.

“We’ve got one option to save Pym,” I tell him.

He rubs his tear-streaked eyes. “What’s our option?”

“We steal a chopper and fly like hell.”

In silent agreement, he climbs onto my back and we descend, marking the first successful escape from the farm ever.

Although we haven’t escaped yet.

We’ve only climbed a wall, and climbing a wall seems small in comparison to the unimaginable terror awaiting us at the bottom.

“Come on, Robbie,” I say, squishing the breasts against the wall.

With some help he clambers onto my back again and I lower us down.

I untie the nipple straps and press Pym’s breasts against my chest. They stick, secure.

“The ground is hollow,” Robbie says.

“No it’s not, you retard. We landed on something.”

It is too dark to see so I feel around on the ground. It is smooth, cold, and uneven. It feels like metal. Robbie crouches a few feet away, his pale green skin glowing in the darkness. Then he lets out a choked gasp and vanishes.

“Robbie!” I call hoarsely. I scamper to the spot where he disappeared. The metal ground drops out from under me. I am falling.

I land painfully on one leg. There is a resounding crack, probably a bone breaking. Pain shoots through my body, white hot and blinding.

Robbie lies beside me. “Are you okay, Grieves?” he rasps.

“Help me up. I think I broke my leg.

“There’s a thing here.”

“Don’t touch it.”

Of course, Robbie touches it.

A whirring hiss electrifies the air.

A single light clicks on. Fortunately, Robbie and I are alone. I breathe deeply, pull myself up against a wall, and test my leg. Blinding pain. I collapse.