Walter Greatshell - Apocalypse blues

Julian said, "It's you we need to be saved from, asshole."

Lowenthal suddenly seemed to lose all interest. "I'm sure we're all in dire need of a savior. In the meantime, we have to manage as best we can. Without Miska's data we'll have to beef up our own research, which means we need a lot of test subjects. Fortunately we've just received a big shipment by U-boat: You three will participate in the first clinical trial, starting right now."

"Good!" yelled Jake, losing it. "Bring it on, motherfucker!"

"I will."

"You do that!"

"I am."

"We don't give a shit!"

"You got it."

"Then do it, if you got the stones! Bust a move!"

"Jake, be quiet."

"It's done," said the colonel. "Just a few seconds now…" There was a slithering noise outside the tank, getting louder. "Well, it's been fun."

"You're out of your mind," I said.

"That's what they said about Masters and Johnson." From a row of chrome spouts high up the wall, ice-cold water began gushing in.

I thought I knew what cold water was. I had spent plenty of time mucking around in tide pools, foraging oysters, clams, and periwinkles in the dead of winter, with my numbed fingers getting all cut up by mussel shells as I dug. But this was colder. Cold was the wrong word for this. This burned. Burned like it was peeling off skin as it rose over feet, ankles, calves, knees, thighs, crotch, hips, waist, nipples, shoulders. The boys and I pressed together as tightly as we could, our shouts and moans lost in the deafening torrent:

"Oh my God, it's so cold!" "Turn it off!" "Hang on!" "Get closer!" "Away from the spray, right here!" "Let us out!"

As the lapping tide threatened to rise over my head I had to swim, meaning I was forced to surrender my precious upraised arms to that searing flood, the last warmth I could give without going under completely.

Then the boys were lifting me from either side, boosting me above the swirling, Coke-bottle green pool. My white flesh was rubbery as a half-thawed turkey, but not so dead I couldn't feel the vivid pleasure of warm air.

"No!" I shrieked, fighting the intense relief. "You can't!"

"Shut up, we're taller," said Julian.

"Pretend you're on Girls Gone Wild," Jake said.

I didn't try to resist as they propped me up on their shoulders, cradling my hips between their still-warm heads. My own head was jammed up against a caged light fixture in the ceiling, basking in its slight heat, while my submerged legs were sheathed in a fragile pocket of less-freezing water between the boys' bodies. If they moved at all, colder eddies swirled in like biting drafts. Violently shivering, I watched from my perch as Jake and Julian became immersed, standing on tiptoes and craning their necks until only their gulping, disembodied faces broke the surface like floating masks.

Pounding the intercom in front of my face, I screamed, "Stop! Stop it! Turn it off! Stop!"

The water stopped.

All of a sudden it was so quiet-the only sound was my teeth chattering in that shallow pocket of air, and I was miserably aware that the boys couldn't hear anything with their ears underwater. Nobody spoke. I searched their faces for some sign of what to do, but their eyes stared straight up, unblinking, all thoughts turned inward as warmth and life ebbed from their bodies. They hardly seemed aware of me.

She's bluffing, dude.

If you hand it over we got nothing.

Chick is ice-cold.

"I know where it is," I said.

"Where?" asked Lowenthal.

"Let us out first."

"No."

"Please!"

"No."

Sitting hunched there on the faltering shoulders of my friends was so precarious I expected it to be mercifully short, yet the moment stretched on and on like a detour in time, a missed off-ramp with no U-turn in sight, receding into eternity: all the loneliness, pointlessness, emptiness of it. The waiting. I realized it was not death, but death's delay that was the ultimate cruelty.

To the intercom, I said, "D-d-don't you realize you're d-doing us a f-f-favor?" Lowenthal didn't reply.

As Jake and Julian succumbed, I begged them to hold on, not because I was so afraid of the end but because I was afraid of being left alone. I resented them going first. And yet I continued to struggle: As Jake went under I clung to Julian, and even as Julian's upturned mouth filled with water I tried to climb his sinking body to keep my own head above. In the end I stood upon them both as the cold took its sweet time stealing over me.

Actually, I wasn't getting colder. A deep warmth had started to bloom, and with it a dreamy calm. I knew what this was, this welcome, enfolding dark. I knew these were precursors to the end, and the gratitude I felt was indescribable. Thank you thank you thank you thank you…

But even as I slipped beneath the surface, trailing a string of mirrored bubbles, my alien hand found the necklace, snapped the chain, and held the locket up above the water. Up where the gold would catch the light.

I could feel cool grass against my cheek, and desert wind riffling my clothes. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. I was heavy, immovable, a lizard sunning on a rock. In the hazy distance, I could see our old house in Oxnard, white as a milk carton on the grass, with the peeling eucalyptus trees and the laundry line. At first I sensed the presence of my mother inside and was overjoyed, wild to tell her something. Then I began to notice something wasn't right-the focus was peculiar-and as I reached my hand out, the illusion collapsed: It was a miniature, a fake. A crummy little diorama. I was so frustrated I wanted to smash it! That's why I disliked miniatures and models, even the good ones in museums, because the more real they are, the more daintily inviting, the more they put you at arm's length. But this one was the most crushing disappointment of all.

Or maybe I was just too old for toys. I remembered how delighted I was by the toy circus set on my birthday cake when I was five: the plastic Ferris wheel, the big top, the flags and trapeze, the clowns and camels. There was nothing realistic about it, nothing to scale. It was probably very cheap. But it was the only thing that interested me-the few other presents were so drab and functional I have no memory of them at all. But at the end of the party, the landlord and her daughter wrapped up what was left of the cake and disappeared with it.

Not sure what had just happened, I said, "Mummy, where did the circus go?"

"Oh, honey, those were just decorations. They belong to Mrs. Reese."

"But it's my birthday," I said, tears streaming. "I wanted them."

"Well, she made the cake, Lulu. I'm sorry. Come on now, be a big girl."

My mother's voice was growing faint. The house was empty, a cheap toy, and the more I pawed at it, the more unreal it became. My heart seized up with a terrible feeling of loss, and I called, "Mum!"

As I spoke, the dream shivered apart. I was in bed, naked as a baby, swaddled in flannel. It was no ordinary bed, but a fluffy giant pillow as rapturously soft and warm as a sheltering bosom. The room was dim, but the impression I got was something out of Arabian Nights-a large carpeted tent with hanging swaths of colorful sheer fabric and pillows all over the place. Was I still dreaming? I squirmed deeper, away from bad thoughts and a ghostly hand petting my head.

"Welcome back, Lulu."

I scrunched up my face. It was that blond woman doctor-Dr. Langhorne. She was sitting cross-legged at the head of the bed. Her eyes were red and her face raw-scrubbed, as if fresh from a long crying jag.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Alive," I murmured, heartsick.

"Oh yes. You were never in any danger. We made sure of that."

"Why?"

"Because you have a place here. You've earned a place here."