David Means - Hystopia

Hank looked out at the water, his voice low and weary. Well, a duel is an arrangement, a formality, an unnatural structure around death. It’s a way to solve disputes. It’s a way to make sure two men shoot at each other no matter what. It doesn’t make sense that men up there, trying to reclaim their glory days, would resort to duels. It seems too orderly. Too pat. But then maybe that’s why it’s a rumor and not necessarily true. Maybe it’s something hoped for, deep down. Not by Rake but by whoever’s out there dreaming. Someone thought about duels and then they imagined a story behind it, or they were delusional and believed what they imagined, something like that.

He knew what he was feeling — a chill went through him and he shivered. He was resisting the urge to unfold himself, to reverse the treatment he had given himself, to go back to the water, to put his feet in the lake, to dive all the way in and hold himself under. He sat next to her and looked at the sky, at the pearly whites and heavy grays and deeper silvers out to the horizon, gripping the water as it reached up — close in color, not too different — and the sky reached down to form a slice of deeper dark where the two met, and the heavy waves, closer in, lumbering slowly with large gaps between as if avoiding each other, and he could hear — in the sound of the waves, in the lift of the wind — the way it spoke to the trees behind them, and the trees were speaking back, with a deep sigh, carrying the far-off scent of wide, boreal forests in the high reaches of the Canadian Shield, where an answer to the eternal question was forming.

It takes two to fight and five to riot, Singleton thought, struggling to keep his attention on the road as they drove to her father’s house. Kids were throwing rocks, darting out of yards with their arms raised, aiming at whatever was moving. The trick was to keep to a moderate speed, not too fast to kill someone if they ran out, but fast enough to scare, and it was important to stay on the side streets — empty, sad-looking, arched over with trees.

“Didn’t your old man have some kind of escape plan?”

Wendy stared ahead and said, “He said he’d stick it out. We’ll have to drag him out. It’s going to take force.”

“Good old force,” Singleton said, abstractly.

The horizon was a rubber gasket of dark clouds. Looters were gathering.

“He’s incredibly stubborn. He’s been through a lot. He’ll see this as one more thing to go through.”

She spun the radio dial through static and signals of the Emergency Broadcast System. Finally she found Iggy All the Time, another spin of Fun House , the beat quicker than usual because the turntable was fast. Iggy’s voice had a fresh manic edge. Two blocks from Wendy’s house, they passed kids lugging cans of gasoline. A block later, they passed the kid in the yard, the one who had been striking the charge pose, and he turned with his middle finger raised.

“L.A. Blues” ended but the needle stayed skipping and popping into the runout groove.

Her father’s house sat serenely amid the unusually green trees. The Zomboid sat in his wheelchair with a rifle on his lap, the wind ruffling his long blond hair. As they pulled to the curb he raised one hand, slowly, and made a victory sign. Wendy put her hands over her face and sighed, sliding down.

“Peace,” he shouted. “It’s good to see the Cav arrive to save the day. Never too late, never on time.” He wheeled himself forward, pressing his foot supports against the chain link.

“Guess he got the use of his hands back,” Singleton said. They watched him back up and shove against the fence again.

“He’s always had the use of his hands. Believe me, he knew how to use his hands.” Her voice was low and sad. “I should go and say how sorry I am that we can’t take him along with us. I should reconcile with him somehow. But I can’t do it.”

“Man, the sound of a skipping needle,” Singleton said. “You go in and talk with your father. Tell him we’re heading north and we need him with us for support, armed support. Make sure he understands we’re heading on a mission. Throw him a bone. Make him feel he’ll be part of something big.”

She got out of the car walked up the path. He dragged his duffel into the front seat, unzipped it, and took the gun out from beneath a pair of pants. He snapped open the chamber, checked it, snapped it shut, and sighed because his hand felt a kinship with the crosshatch, no-slip surface of the grip, the heft. He thought of Rake’s face in the file, the face in the dream. He tucked the gun into his pants and pulled his shirt down and got out of the car and stood in the evening light. There was a faint tannic smell in the air. In the yard the Zomboid, his hands lax on his gun, called out, “Wait, man, wait. Come over here, man, and help a fellow out.”

At the fence he saw that the Zomboid’s eyes were slightly off in some kind of high.

“You’re packing, man. I saw your gun.”

“I’m not packing.”

“You can’t fool me. My own eyes saw you in the car.”

“What do you want?”

“You see these hands? They’re of no use to me. On occasion they come to life, but for the most part they’re attached to my arms, and my arms are dead. Maybe my hands are fine and the arms are dead so my hands won’t work. Or maybe it’s the other way around. How would I know?”

“You got ahold of that gun, somehow.”

“My old lady put it there for me and told me to guard the fort.”

“Where is she?” Singleton scanned the lot — the same accumulation of garbage, old bed springs, a car chassis (on blocks), and a double set of ruts from one corner of the yard to the other and then from the house to the fence, forming a cross.

“She split to Port Huron to pick something up. Then she’s going to truck her ass over to Sarnia, Canada, where her folks are from.”

“You’re alone?”

“I’m alone, partner. I need a hand. If you could just position the gun higher, I’d appreciate. Lean it on my shoulder so it looks menacing. I’ve done it before. Scared the fuckers off. Nothing scarier than a guy in a wheelchair with a gun.”

Singleton went through the gate and gently shook the Zomboid’s hand. It felt dead.

“Up against my right shoulder,” he said. “Lift my arm up slightly and I’ll use the dead weight to hold it in position. Then when they come I’ll heave my ribs — because I can at least do that much, for Christ’s sake — and the gun’ll fall into position. I’ll depend on the luck of gravity to make it look like I have the complete and full control of my faculties.” His eyes, two dried-up beads in a sea of tears, were set deep below the dirt and grime of his brows.

“You sure you can’t will those hands to work?” Singleton said.

“I was sure the hands were dead the second that RPG hit my ass, man. The minute I was in the air, I knew. Legless slash handless. Right up there, spinning head over heels, I knew what was coming.”

Singleton backed away a few steps, gave a salute, and then went back around to Wendy’s house while the Zomboid shouted, “You’re going to at least back me up, right? You’re gonna help a fellow out, enfolded or not…”

* * *

The picture on the television was in disarray, not only riding the vertical but also twisting around an invisible pole, as if trying to straighten itself out but failing because the main towers were down and the station was on backup. The old man was sitting in a massive easy chair, a rifle on his knees. A cigarette was burning in the ashtray next to a glass of something — it looked like scotch — with ice. He had a grim look, working his jaw side to side.