Jim Shepard - Lights Out in the Reptile House

When it felt as if he’d walked forever he had lunch. He was well out of town and there was nothing on either side of him but bunchgrass and creosote. He ate the figs and a piece of bread he sawed off with his clasp knife and looked back at the town. A convoy passed. There were seven or eight open-backed trucks filled with ordinary people of all ages. They were heading away from town. The trucks had wire mesh over their headlights and windshields, and the people in the back looked disturbed or thoughtful. Some of them waved or pointed at Karel.

He kept walking. He was headed for the nearest train station, at Naklo. It was too far away to walk to, he knew, but a bus from the south passed a junction that was only maybe two days’ walk by a shortcut trail, and that he could get to. From Naklo he’d take the train to the capital.

At the point the road turned north, he paused at the start of the trail, which continued east. It was a white gravelly track between spiny shrubs, and it cut across what looked like an endless number of deep washes.

It was quiet. Brush mice darted across open spaces and then sat motionless in the creosote, watching him. He was apprehensive about the desert but reassured by the map and filled with instructions, mostly from Albert when they’d traveled for the zoo. He should rest in the shade for ten minutes every hour. He shouldn’t remove his shirt because it would speed dehydration, and he needed to watch at all times for the symptoms. At night he should stay out of the washes and gullies, and watch what he picked up or handled. If he left the trail for some reason he could tell directions from the areas of plant growth along the culverts and inclines: south faces were bare, north mostly covered. There was usually water below the surface near bunchgrass, but when in doubt he should trust the rabbit and prairie dog and mouse tracks, even if they seemed wrong, because those animals weren’t guessing; they knew. He should watch coyotes at night, too, where they pawed and snuffed the ground. He could eat a lot of the berries, and some beans if they were pounded up. The one-leaf pines had edible cone-kernels. He should look for tender green shoots of other plants inside the prickle bushes and prickly pear.

On his map the trail crossed a stream and skirted a dead lake to the south like the one Leda had told him about and then climbed northeast across a low range and descended to the junction. It looked fairly simple. He remembered the stories about the northern mountains.

The sun was over his head for a long time, then behind him. The only sounds he heard were his shoes on the gravel and the swish of his shorts. His head still hurt but his collarbone felt better. As he walked he turned over memories of his father in his head the way he’d examine puzzle pieces, in search of a pattern.

He could see scavenger birds black in the distance against the treeless hills. The sunlight was so blindingly intense it seemed to be splitting the stones. The air was like breathing hot cotton wool. He walked as far as he could and finally found a fair-sized boojum tree and sank to a sitting position in its shade, stunned by the sun. Two sparrows with their beaks parted edged over in the shadow to make room for him, unwilling to be frightened in this heat. His head was buzzing and spinning, and he took some water and salt.

He woke with the colder air at night and the patter of sand against his cheek. He could feel the heat coming off him, still trapped in his clothes. When he stirred a large insect stalked a few feet away and then paused to see if it was being pursued. He stood up, sore and chilly, wrapping his arms around himself, spooked, and then continued walking, the slightly more trampled area of the trail whiter in the moonlight. He was not sleepy.

He walked all night. He passed skeletal silhouettes of dead bitter condalia trees and catclaws, and a dead lagoon that apparently had once fed the dead lake. It was filled with reeds that were gray in the moonlight and brittle to the touch. He passed more brush mice and a ground squirrel, and heard bats. In an uneven and rocky gully he found the trail alive with tarantulas moving like dull, sinister flowers.

In the morning he thought he might have seen a bicyclist off on the horizon, a small dark figure against the stillness, but he recognized that he could’ve been mistaken. He was dizzy. He walked as far as possible while it was still relatively cool and then finally lay down to rest again on the side of a steep wash overhung with peppergrass. The stream on the map was nearby, and he refilled his canteen and washed his face and eyes. He had more water and bread and ate the other plum and fell asleep with his head on his beltpack, his muscles twitchy from the endless walking, and his hands between his thighs.

He woke up terrified of the vague darkness and chill, his mind washed blank of its sense of where he was and what he was doing there. He drank some water in a wary crouch, surprised at how long he had slept, and ate the last of the bread.

The dead lake had been only a few hundred yards away. It was a huge wasteland flat, cratered and broken by traverse cracks so that it looked like an endless horrible cobblestone plain in the moonlight, with things moving distantly across it in various directions.

He changed his shoes and shirt and walked as fast as he could around it while keeping his mind on Leda, until the trail began to climb, and when he crested the ridge and looked back once more at the lake it stretched black and even and still in all directions below him.

He saw a house and a few outbuildings a short way off the trail to the south, silhouetted on another ridgeline, and after some hesitation decided to head for them. There were no lights showing.

He approached from a low draw to stay out of sight, every so often craning his head up to look for movement or danger. When he was very close he crouched low and waited. The front door had been kicked in and a piece of it swung on the lower hinge in a forlorn diagonal. There was no sound from inside, though a shutter clapped gently against its sill every so often. He threw a rock through the open door and ducked down. He got closer and threw a bigger one, and it made a disconcerting crash inside and he lay flat in mortification, but still nothing happened. Finally he got up, brushing off his shorts, and crossed to the door and looked inside.

He could see only as far as the moonlight penetrated, but the house had clearly been ransacked. The smell was horrible. He lost all interest in food, or in spending the night.

He circled around to the back. When he turned the second corner a goat standing against the wall startled him. It moved a short way away and continued grazing, relieved it was not going to be bothered.

He found himself on a rough terrace, flooded with moonlight. Beneath his foot there was a rusty old key, and on the brick wall a hanging twist of wire. He could see off to the east a slope and lights undulating slowly along its base: the national road again. He’d be there by tomorrow, he thought, and let out a small whoop in gratitude and relief.

The smell was still bad, worse than anything he’d smelled. He’d entertained ideas of hunting for food but couldn’t bring himself to and thought now he couldn’t even sleep here, either. He left the terrace to continue his circuit and kicked the body of a woman covered with flies. They rose up in a small agitated cloud. She was lying on her back and her arm was resting on the stone of the terrace as if she’d made herself comfortable. Her hair was over her face in a black sticky wing. There was another body behind her in the darkness with its legs folded and neck back at a severe angle. He ran blindly away from the house back toward the trail, sending the goat clattering in panic out of his way. The smell and the image stayed with him all the way back to where he’d turned off and longer, and he cried and swung his arms and cursed and felt revolted and horrified, and sorry for himself for ever having seen such a thing.