Desert Angels (10 page)

"Scrubby!"

She grabbed the corpse and trundled off, cradling her dog and talking in sing-song to it. Denise had begun laughing; Jack didn't notice. Brandon began to protest, but Jack held him back.

"Let her keep him for awhile. It was her dog, after all."

Brandon, not a bad fellow by nature, (just your normal schizophrenic, dog-killing twinkie, Jack thought) smiled and nodded in understanding.

"Poor thing. She's crazy, you know; not like us!"

Jack said nothing. He continued taking the bandage off of Mimi, (who was properly amused by the Scrubby incident) and watched Sheila cry in the distance.

Of course, Aunt Sheila never returned the dog to Jack. Jack didn't mind a bit. Thereafter, Aunt Sheila carried Scrubby with her everywhere. Brandon's (and thus Garbo's) skill in taxidermizing Scrubby's corpse allowed her this luxury; Scrubby never rotted and could only be smelled if one was in extremely close quarters with Sheila. Few people were
ever
close to Aunt Sheila, so her strange corpse-fondling idiosyncrasy was tolerated by most everyone in Eden.

Eden grew more crowded in that first month of the new year, as yet more people kept coming and coming and coming. Jack continued to work like a madman, taking care of his children - and his brain-child fortress - Eden.

And Jack's Special Types, in their way, also took care of Eden.

Jim, the ex-drunk, ex-Basso Noble, sang to it – to keep spirits up.

Aunt Sheila and her Scrubby-boa moved from tent to tent and offered lemonade to one and all – to keep Eden from being thirsty (in her mind, anyway, Jack guessed).

And Brandon, the gentle, dog-killing, schizophrenic nursed at Jack's side – in his mind, a dying Florence Nightingale who would love Jack in silence forever – and who, at last, was seeing his dream come true of helping people without having been "doctorized."

This was Jack's world now. Narnia, Oz, Wonderland … now Eden.

A post-nuclear Anatevka, Eden was a place of new beginnings; and like, Tevye, the main character living in Anatevka, Jack often times wondered if he, too, was as crazy as a Fiddler on a Roof.

* * *

Months passed. On occasion, when not working straight for 20 hours at a time, Jack would fall into clinical depressions he referred to as the Black Hound. On those occasions, he moved about his daily functions like an automaton. The Black Hound was an unwelcome companion, but a reliable one. He had no idea how to fight the old Hound except through alcohol, and that at times took a toll on him, more psychologically than physically.

The good news was that when he pulled out of his funks, the Hound was assuredly dispatched for weeks, and then Jack could function quite efficiently for protracted periods of time.

This was the way of things for Jack Calisto in post-fuck-you Earth.

He would continue to deal.

He had no choice but to do so.

The alternative was the dissolution of Eden in its entirety.

* * *

Eden was attacked by Stiffers now almost nightly, deterred always by Jack’s electrified bulwark.

After eight months, Jack constructed an ancillary barbed wire deterrent a quarter mile beyond the main gate, where many Stiffers found themselves hopelessly entangled nightly, to be dispatched to whatever hell may be by Jack the next morning.

Mathias’ group, now renamed by Mathias himself as the Maddogs (a far cry from the original Children of Perdition Free) occasionally showed up to fire errant gunshots at the residents of Eden, missing everyone by a barn-size, but their appearance was always troubling for Jack. He felt that one day the Maddogs would mount an attack en masse, out of desperation for lack of medicine and food, and commit a suicide run against Eden which would still result in casualties within Jack’s domain.

That day was still far off – but Jack dreaded it, nevertheless.

Of course, Eden was not comprised solely of Special Types.

Thank God, Jack thought often, for people like Gleeson. The barbed wire secondary tier to defense had been Gleeson’s idea and a good one.

Ronald Edward Gleeson was among the last Edenites to arrive at Jack's desert sanctuary. He had been the assistant governor to the state of Nevada, wherein Eden was located. Scarring and sickness had made Gleeson a far from pretty thing, but in fact, he had changed little from his former appearance. Small, compact and smart, he most resembled a bull dog, outwardly menacing but overall gentle and even a little shy. His gentility was not extended to Maddogs and Stiffers, but this was a prevailing prejudice that neither Jack nor the Edenites faulted him for.

When Blast Day came, Gleeson had been driving with his family back from Las Vegas to Carson City, Nevada's then state capitol; it had been the first vacation the Gleeson tribe had enjoyed in two years. Ronald Gleeson, III, a fourth generation descendant of the Baron Gleesons who helped found Virginia City nearly a hundred and fifty years earlier, was always a busy man back then; time off with the wife and kids was a rare thing indeed. But at Trisha's insistence, he had made the time. Nothing fancy, though; three days would have to be the limit. Besides, Roy and Ron, Jr. were only three and four respectively; any longer than three days away from home, in the mellow company of two hyperactive toddlers who derived enormous joy in either trying to kill one another or fray daddy's nerves while driving, was the kind of simple little diversion Gleeson was determined not to appreciate. Not this time around, anyway. In fact, not ever again – but Gleeson didn't know this yet.

Trish seemed to understand; besides, she knew her husband was a bit edgy these days as it was. Lately (and she knew it was because of the news in the papers or on TV) Gleeson appeared worried, anxious, preoccupied.

"Dear Christ, they're going to do it," Gleeson was known to mumble occasionally while watching the news on television at home, about a week before Blast Day.

"Do what, dear?" Trish would ask.

"Blow it up."

"Blow what up, dear?"

Gleeson continued to shake his head. "The world, Trish. The world."

"Oh," Trish would respond, and then drop the subject.

Gleeson loved her without reservation; he did not object to the fact that his wife possessed the intellectual aptitude of a gnat. Perhaps, it was because she was so simple that he loved her more. Gleeson himself was rather brilliant; he concluded that, as the old saying went, opposites attract.

Trish knew things were bad in the world, sure; but things were always bad. Lindsey Lohan back in rehab, baby whales trapped in oil slicks, wars; these were horrors (in that order for Trish Gleeson) that were the Earth's daily fare of misery. They would continue 'til the end of time, certainly long after she and Ron and the kids were dead and buried. But, heck, Trish Gleeson figured, if you worked all the time and worried too much about things, you could get an ulcer. Or
worse
.

It was the "worse" that Trish Gleeson worried most of all about with Gleeson and which prompted her to suggest the idea of a vacation. She did not know, then, that her own worries were soon to be ended forever.

Because it was close and warm (and had great slots, Trish bubbled), the Gleeson Family Holiday was to be enjoyed in Vegas rather than, say, St. Croix or Mazatlan. Trish proved to be something of a genius after all; for Gleeson found the rest invigorating. He gambled (and even won on occasion), ate too much, swam, made love to his wife (for the last time) and played miniature golf, by the hours, with the boys. During that three day vacation, he was able to forget about the duties of his high office and the world hurdling itself toward destruction. Years later, he would look back at that time, his last vacation, with fondness; it was, symbolically, the final meal to a man condemned to death.

When the bombs began to drop, the Gleesons had been fortunate enough to be fairly distant from both Carson City and Las Vegas, thus escaping much of the initial blast and fallout effects. They had a small recreational vehicle filled with food and water and beer, so they were well stocked. Though both cities were not even targeted or hit directly by the giant ICBM's, they were both located close to the missiles' primary targets, which, in Carson City's case, was nearby Drew Air Force Base and for Las Vegas, Hoover Dam. The resulting blast damage all but leveled both towns; certainly, enough fallout was thrown into the air to poison a hundred square miles. The Gleeson's had been on the periphery of this hundred mile "zone of death." Far enough away not to be killed quickly, but still close enough to imagine the horror and destruction of thousands of lives.

But like most of the human race, they could not repel the more subtle forms of radiation; it was this long-term fallout that would continue to poison the earth for hundreds of years to one degree or another. Within a week, Trish Gleeson and her children were dead. Gleeson himself was very sick, saved only from excessive radiation exposure by his wise decision to not leave the confines of his RV for many, many months.

When he guessed that fallout levels had diminished to the point where survivability might be possible, he left the RV, and began to walk. Two days later, he found Eden.

Jack immediately commenced a treatment program on Gleeson that included high dosages of tetracycline and penicillin. The antibiotics failed to neutralize the progressive deterioration of Gleeson's lymphatic system, thus controlling the stability of all vital organs, but they did manage to postpone the inevitable. Gleeson would not die immediately, though like the other Edenites, he knew he was on borrowed time.

Gleeson rarely spoke; what private tortures he may have had (and Jack was sure he had many) he kept to himself. Jack could not recall once when Gleeson made mention of his family. Jack did not pry; his own ghosts were intensely private and he understood, even appreciated, the other man's silence. As he no doubt suffered, like everyone else in Eden, Gleeson's contribution to the struggling community was still enormous; what personal trauma he may have suffered in no way interfered with his effectiveness as Eden's Chief Defender. While Jack fought daily to ward off disease and Maddogs (and the ever lovable Black Hound), Gleeson supervised various tasks necessary for Eden's continued survival, not the least of which was laying down thousands of feet of electric wire even further beyond the barbed wire fencing, burying land mines and conducting mini-war games with those men still strong enough to function effectively as defenders of Eden's boundaries.

Jack suspected that few of the Edenites, Gleeson included, had a case of Black Hound as bad as he. They were all too intensely aware of the physical pain and deterioration of their bodies, Jack thought, to have much energy to devote to their mental health. Back in those beginning days, Jack's Black Hound was only in its infancy; it would take several more years before the old beast would be a real problem to Jack. Still, even as a "puppy," the Black Hound made its presence known. A man of remarkable strength and endless self-pity, Jack could not imagine anyone suffering from as much neurosis and guilt as himself. He was right; Eden was an open, puss-filled wound of agony that cared little or nothing for the world's – or Jack's – tortured ethos. Eden would allow Jack to monopolize that kind of pain completely.

"Be kind to my hero," Angela had begged him at one time in one of her typed missives to him in human form. “Without you, there is no Eden. And no future.”

But while he could be kind to everyone else, Jack Calisto would never be kind to himself.

No more than Gleeson could be kind to himself – though Jack would never know this about his second in command. However, where Jack was often times bereft of any punishment for his various sins, Gleeson had no doubts as to what kind of absolution he needed.

For as long as he lived, Gleeson would never forgive himself for that one transgression; letting
them
die. It was for this reason, primarily, that he worked feverishly to make Eden as inviolable as possible; it was, in fact, his obsession – as if protecting Eden might (but not likely) serve as a kind of penance for the great sin of outliving his family. It was an intensely private indulgence he paid to the universe – though he, more than Jack, suspected that absolutely
nothing
was keeping score out in the cosmos that would justify such humility. Still, in his own mind, he had a duty. A sentence, really, he thought; to be served for the sin of failure.

For not being able to save
them
.

He accepted the verdict of the gods (such as the gods
were
, in Gleeson's mind) without protest. He had appointed himself Eden's Defense Minister – unofficially, of course, though no one, Jack included, could dispute that Gleeson more than lived up to the silent title twenty four hours a day. Within three weeks, thanks to a formidable bulwark designed by Gleeson solely, which included booby traps, land mines, and electrified fencing, only five men in Eden had been lost during confrontations with either Stiffers or Maddogs. The toll for Eden's enemies, on the other hand, was astronomically high.

Gleeson found Eden on the same day Brandon had presented his unique gift idea to Jack. He had wandered off the main road a day earlier, after burying his wife and children. Later, he realized how lucky he had been (ah, luck again! he thought) in spotting Walter flying above. He had followed the bird back to Eden.

Even while Jack was administering treatment, Gleeson was assessing Eden's strategic positioning. He had already had some slight dealings with the Stiffers. With the help of a lighter and several cans of WD-40, he had kept the mutants at bay. Of course, if he had not seen Walter or found Eden, these meager deterrents would have eventually waned dry – and the Stiffers would have had themselves a feast, starring Gleeson as the main course. Eden, Gleeson could see, was a gaping wound, ready to be bled.

Many years before he had entered into politics, fighting battles of a very different order, Corporal Governor Ronald E. Gleeson had fought in a war far from home at the age of eighteen. It had been a dirty war in a dirty jungle called Vietnam. Though the reasons for that particular war were never made clear to him, nor did he gain a clearer perception of it with the passing of time, Gleeson had returned from that alien land a smarter man than when he had left. During his two year stint in the Marine Corps, he had faced the enemy almost daily. Not once, had he ever been injured. He had always considered himself extremely lucky. Lucky he may have been – but Ronald Gleeson III was also a very careful man. He learned in the jungle that the best offense was a good defense. And most importantly, there was never
enough
defense.