David Means - Hystopia

A gas station. A liquor store. A tavern with a cop car — a star on the side panel, faded, gray — parked in front. Past a stoplight (blinking yellow), the lake revealed itself, a vast gray corrugation of waves, an inland sea.

“Give me a hit,” he said.

Headed east from the Harbor of Refuge as per instructions, he’d write, if he wrote. Took Deer Park Road. The lake was relatively calm .

They drove through the wind-battered landscape. This part of the state looked completely untarnished, but it was deep into the so-called Zone of Anarchy. At any moment a gang of bikers might appear beyond the bug specks on the windshield.

When they got near Rake’s encampment, Singleton pulled over and parked the car in the grass. Wendy kept lookout while he checked the weapons. He handed her a gun and watched as she kissed the barrel for good luck and tucked it into her waistband. The night was getting cool. She put on her leather jacket with fringe. ( In the report, he’d say they were wearing the regimental uniform with badges, as per regulation. Pants clean pressed and shirts neatly tucked. He’d say they made it clear that they were agents from the Corps. He’d say they had assessed the road situation — dead quiet — and assured themselves that no one was coming. He’d say they were keenly aware of the idea of north, remembering, from the manual, that northern climes enhanced the intuitive clarity of agents while increasing the psychotic intensity of failed enfolds .)

“Hug,” she said, pulling him close. He would omit from the report the desire he felt for her. There was a faint smell of smoke in the air.

“Time to reconnoiter,” he said.

“I fucking love that word. Reconnoiter .”

Approach the perimeter and establish the target in relation to the landscape and make necessary adjustments , he might write in the report. They stopped and listened. A clear intuitive drive. That was the phrase he’d use. What does it mean, he thought, that all I can do is try to frame this in the technical terms of a report I might write. He shook his head. He was feeling lonely, isolated.

There was a single goat in the field to the left. It made a sound like a laugh. Then another.

The gun slung on his shoulder; the grenade hanging from his belt.

Farther down the road they came to a driveway with a mailbox, a sign that said KEEP OUT, and a skull impaled on a stick. The skull was clearly human, not dog or goat. It was missing the jaw and bleached clean and white.

Merle had said the hideout was at the end of the paved road. Two rutty tracks ran through thick weeds and plunged into a dark hole in the woods. To the right, what Singleton would call a windrow in his report. Windrow was the word he’d use. The windrow formed a perimeter of deadfall with a clearing that was visible as a brighter glow of purplish light . He put up his hand to signal halt. They listened to the faraway sea sound of the surf and the wind rising in the pines, dying away, rising again. Nonspecific vibrations at the coordinates’ location, as specified in prior vision. Dangerous vibrations, northern negative lure. This had to be the feeling you got being on point in Nam.

Singleton crouched down and Wendy crouched beside him. You can enfold the trauma but you can’t enfold the age and time. In the field you’ll be thinking about the war, starting from the moment you stepped onto a Pan Am airline flight and heard the stewardess sweet-talk you, serving coffee, knocking hips, flirting, to the final moment you were lifted up and out of the hellhole to return home, passing fresh grunts on the way in, their assholes clenched, their faces fresh and bright as they went to their destinies. Just can’t wash all that away, no matter what, Klein had said. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

The smell of her patchouli and the glow of her hair beside him. He stood and she stood. They walked forward a few yards and stopped.

“What about the zip pills?” she whispered.

They were in the brush near the edge of a yard. Sheets on a line luffed softly, straining skyward, as if to gather whatever light remained. The house’s clapboards were shedding paint. There was a light in the back window, presumably the kitchen, and a thin thread of smoke from the chimney. The breeze lifted, and the sheets stretched out in unison, and then luffed down again.

“We won’t need them,” he said.

A few minutes later they heard a screen door slam, and an old woman came out onto the back porch huffing, grunting down the steps and shambling into the yard with a basket in her arms. She took down the sheets one by one, folding each one over her arm and then in half and then in quarter before laying it in the basket. Then she began to unfold each one, lifting the corners up to the line, pinning them back into place.

“Sure this is the right place?”

“I’m sure,” he said. “You know what they say. Every failed enfold has a hefty old lady tending to his needs, some mother figure who believes he’s a pure little angel. The hardened cases are often the most pathetically in need of maternal care.”

“OK, but she looks nondangerous in a deep way.”

“All the better for us.”

The old lady took the sheets down from the line again and stood with her arms at her side and her face to the sky. What happened then was hard to see from their position. She’d fallen to the ground and was partly obscured by the basket. Holy holy, she seemed to be saying.

The subject appeared to be speaking in tongues, he thought. Glory and holy, or holy and glory — the wind rose and covered the words — and then something about the wrath of God being torn away. She seemed to be running in a supine position. The screen door slapped again, and a similarly large man (a son, Singleton thought) with a beard strode across the yard and said, Mom, MomMom, it’s OK, go easy.

Wendy took a step forward, her gun out.

“Wait,” he said.

The man was helping the woman into his big arms. Likeness of physique indicated a genetic relationship. No sound from the house. We held our position and assessed the situation. Male subject assisted female subject up the steps to the porch …

The screen door creaked open as they approached. A young woman emerged, wiping her hands on a towel, and let them into the house.

“That might be the one Rake kidnapped out of the Grid.”

“Total weirdness,” Wendy whispered. “They don’t look dangerous. I get a vibe of a loving relationship.”

“The closeness of these folks, from what I understand, is even more intense than the closeness of normal folks. They practice violence externally and live in small-group formations, or whatever the Corps calls them, an intense familial groove. A failed enfold often doubles not only his psychotic intensities but his sentimental attachments.”

We posited that the familial vibration derived from a projection of mother-son love as he had experienced it in the field of battle heightened by an abnormal dose of Tripizoid to an abnormal intensity .

“I know that. But I don’t necessarily see it in front of me.”

“When we’re sure they’re inside we’ll get up to the porch and take a look.”

Northern darkness fell slowly, and they waited until the yard was dark and the window in the back glowed brighter, throwing bars of light onto the floor of the porch. Over the yard a bowl of stars appeared.

“Now,” Singleton said. “Cut around as far as you can to the side of the house and then we’ll cross one at a time. Keep me covered. I’ll go first. If anyone comes out, give them a warning shot. I don’t want an element of surprise in any form but gunfire.”

He mentally set aside the report and placed himself in the moment. He felt mosquitoes biting his legs and the heavy pull of the rifle on his shoulder as he moved swiftly around to the driveway, taking the shortest exposed approach between wooded cover and porch, and without thinking, without even saying go, he ran across the gravel and flattened himself against the side of the house. Moving in a side step, he slid to the corner of the house and peered around it — gun first, always gun first. Then, removing his shoes and glancing back to sight his cover, he walked heel and toe up the steps and onto the porch.