Tony Burgess - The n-Body Problem

“You better not be dead.”

A long arm with heads nailed into its muscles reaches across the road and crumples the roof. I’m hallucinating. Carnival sounds. The feeling that I am in clown makeup. Why does delirium use such stock figures?

“You better show me you’re alive or I’m rolling you out this car.”

I need anti-psychotics. I need to say something. He’s going to drop me into a sea of bodies. I have to say something.

“ Comme ci, comme ça .”

“What?”

I try to make saliva.

“ Comme ci, comme ça .”

Y Laughs.

“Really? Comme ci, comme ça ?”

I nod.

“Well, okay. You’re doing better than you look.”

There is a wide hole all around me. The underside of ground. Red tree roots and broken mason jars. The snipping teeth of mice. Everything needs to dive. Get below. The bones of dogs. The fat death mask of a grub. The yellow plans of beetles and worms and a moon princess.

Goodbye.

There is a soft light in the clouds this morning. I swing carefully on the porch. Y is in the field. It has been weeks. I saw terrible things. I was kept alive by these jolts. These images. And Y’s portable lamp. I am, for now, in old body. No syndrome. No disease being cooked up by winds in my blood. Y is heading to the house. Pail of radishes. Carrots. I am an old woman swinging on the porch. Grateful to her son. He drops the pail and wipes his brow.

“Surprised these are growing.”

I look out to a copse across the field. It appears like a lead shroud. There is no green anymore. Leaves are grey and black. It gives the land a metallic look. Grass is silver. Odd behaviour in birds. They circle trees in mad spins. Small bushes take on the look of manic gyroscopes. I stop swinging and peer into the pail. Something grew anyway. Carrots look like long teeth. Radishes like filthy buttons.

“Let’s eat them. We got oil and vitamin D. We’re fine.”

We eat inside by candlelight. The vegetables are tasteless and, worse, ugly. Y had followed Dixon out of town while I was out. He was going back and forth between two towns. Y thinks this second town is his next target. I have to call it in to the school board. I can’t afford to be feral. This is my job. I want to get paid. I want to get out.

“I’m calling the school board after dinner.”

Y doesn’t react to this. He pulls a thong of carrot from the back of his throat. He saw it all back there. All of Dixon’s merriment. He wants to hunt. So do I.

“Once I get clearance, we go in.”

Y and I have never talked much. We stick to practical words. What we will do. What we need. A bird hits the window and drops straight down. That happens dozens of times a day. This house sits in a bed of bird carcasses.

Tonight the cloud cover is high and thin. We decide to sit outside and watch the sky. See what it looks like now. We drag reclining lawn chairs and blankets out onto the lawn. It feels like an occasion. We are excited.

“I called the board.”

Y is sitting a pot of tea on a small table between the chairs.

“I don’t know why.”

I lift the pot lid and stir the loose leaves.

“I work for them.”

Y scoffs.

“Really? Are you sure?”

The light shifts from pink-grey to darkness just like that. Nothing gradual. No magic hour.

“They confirm anyway.”

The temperature has dipped abruptly. My breath freezes the tip of my nose. Blankets.

“Ok. Good. So we go in. First thing.”

Yes we do.

“They’ve changed the protocol for Dixon.”

Y doesn’t know the word.

“They want me to do it differently now.”

Y exhales loud. Impatient. Hates me seeking out authority. Teen man.

“No infiltration. No finesse. They want me to find him and terminate him and whoever’s in the room or on the street or near him. They think the town council has covertly requested him, that the entire town’s a snake pit before he even gets there.”

Y likes this. Figured he would.

“So what, we go into town and just start shoot-ing?”

“No. That’ll get us killed. We find a place to watch from. We hope we see something.”

Y lays his head back and looks up.

“There’s guns in the shed and the basement. Hunting stuff. Big shotguns. A couple rifles.”

I figured there was.

“We need to saw those off. Bring me the rifles in the morning. See if I can’t modify them a bit. Be nice to have something automatic.”

Y’s arm stabs up. He points.

“Look!”

I have never seen it like this. The stars are loopy. There are fewer of them but the ones that remain are nearly as big as the moon. It’s an effect of the orbit. Light bends and merges. It looks like white bulbs on a high ceiling. Polka dots, not points. At first it’s breathtaking, because it’s so different, then it crushes you. I feel claustrophobia. Like my breath is being pushed back into me by the sky. We are too big.

“Wow. What do you think?” Y asks.

“I think it doesn’t look like it used to.”

Y whistles.

“It’s like you can touch it.”

Y’s hands wander around through the bodies of light.

A brightness low in the northern sky. Northern Lights, I think. We both watch. A long mane of prickles that spin off and fade. Then a series of puffs: pure white, silent. A few at first. Then more. The puffs appear higher. They hang, snow white then thin and drift. A couple pop closer in the sky above us.

“What is that?”

There is yellow bruising where they first appeared.

“That’s people.”

A sizzling red line in the bruise. It opens like a zipper and an orange column descends.

“What’s happening?”

“Too many peeling at once. They’re going pyroclastic.”

You can see the thrust of the fires, the force. Millions of bodies cremating at once and driving all that energy into the ground. Magma from inner space punching a hole in. It is a terrifying and awesome thing to see. What if it didn’t close? What if the billions came down like bath water through a drain? It would kill us all. The fires would be global. The ash would block the dying light and the heat of the sun would bounce away, never reaching us. The zipper closes. The volcano ceases. Just an ember glow. The pops continue above us. Single bodies incinerating. They look like cherry blossoms. Opening then falling apart in the wind.

“We should go inside.”

“Why?”

“Well, not sure how far away that was but there’s always a shockwave. Let’s go in the basement.”

We are in the basement for only a few minutes when it hits. Glass breaking. Furniture snapping. A heavy roar. It continues after even after the shockwave has blown past. It has left a strong wind behind.

Y has the barrel of a shotgun in a vice and he saws it. I sit with a rifle on my lap. It’s semi-automatic. I am cleaning it. Oiling it. We found a man and four girls on the floor of the root cellar surrounded by broken jars of pickles and beets. They had been lying there for a long time, moving the slop around with tiny seizures. We closed it off but you can still hear them fidgeting a bit.

In the morning we climb the stairs. It is still dark. Probably the ash cloud. The floor is covered in broken glass. Window frames busted in. The door flat on its back. There’s a thin dry patina over everything. Dust.

Y is sliding our guns into a bag and I stop him.

“We carry them. Lose one, you lose one. Lose the bag, you lose ’em all.”

Y nods and hands me the semi-automatic and a handgun. He takes two sawed-offs and tries to hang them in belt loops. I stuff cartridges in pockets, socks, a small bag.