Just a Couple of Days (31 page)

General Kiljoy set Miss Mary's remote control on the bar and pulled his own out of his pocket. He dialed a number, and apparently got the error message again. “The electronic communication system is breaking down, just as expected with a Pied Piper outbreak,” he said with a certain satisfaction. “Soon we won't even get a dial tone. If this were a field test, we could pronounce it a tentative success.”

Miss Mary picked her phone up off the bar and tried a few of her own numbers, with the same result. Tynee watched her anxiously. “We're cut off from any lines of communication?” he asked.

“Cellular towers have probably lost power, as they would in the absence of human coordination and communication. But we also have a direct satellite link between this compound and the Pentagon, designed to withstand nuclear attack.” He raised his gun to me once again. “Quite a situation, eh?”

“I didn't call anyone,” I lied again.

“Maybe not, but I have no way of knowing how long the cell tower has been out of commission. Either way, there's still criminal intent. What were you doing with Miss Mary's remote control?”

“She gave it to me,” I said, gushing with honesty. “She was afraid to check the limousine.”

This information rendered General Kiljoy silent, for it was the first he had heard of it. Miss Mary filled in the explanation with, “The chauffeur was frozen.”

“What are you talking about?” General Kiljoy demanded.

Hence followed a lengthy explanation of the vault door being open and the consequent disinfection of the garage and Volt as well, from which the limousine was apparently protected. This information infuriated General Kiljoy, for the vault door was not supposed to open in the first place. He declared us fools for risking exposure to the virus, which could have been inside the limousine. I blamed Miss Mary. She shrugged and sneered that we obviously weren't exposed in any case, for it had been over an hour and a half already. Then she searched her handbag again for a cigarette.

Meanwhile, perpetually oblivious to the desperate human drama unfolding around him, Meeko strolled over and sat at General Kiljoy's feet, panting. “What about Agent Orange?” General Kiljoy continued to interrogate me. “Did you see her body anywhere?”

“No.”

This information made General Kiljoy pause. “I don't understand,” he muttered, rubbing the panicky spasms bouncing around his brow. He looked down at Meeko. “Hey boy!” he
said, suddenly enthusiastic, bringing Meeko to his feet and setting a wag to his tail. He patted Meeko and glared at me. “Enough bullshit, Fountain. You still haven't answered my question.” He lowered his gun from me and pointed it at Meeko. “Bang!” he shouted, and Meeko joyously threw himself down on the floor as if shot. “Bang! Bang!” Meeko yelped and convulsed happily. “Bang! Who did you call?” He spoke over Meeko's gleeful yips and yelps. “Bang!”

“I called Dr. Korterly,” I blurted, choosing, you see, between rancid and rotten.

General Kiljoy nodded, then, as suddenly as I say it, shot my dog. It was an explosion of sound, much, much more than a bang, and everyone jumped except Meeko, who whimpered feebly and ceased all movement. Stunned beyond horror, I could only scratch him behind his ears as my dog exhaled that which had animated his form.

 

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Accomplishments are wastes of time. Dogs accomplish nothing. They have no ambition, for ambition only makes a virtue out of perpetual dissatisfaction. Dogs may chase their tail, but they give it up quickly enough and move on to other curiosities. Perhaps they recognize its futility and inherent limitations, or maybe they become bored with focusing all their energy on just one thing when there is so much else to do and see. They may be on to something. We modern humans live impatient lives chasing our dreams instead of living them, chasing the tail end of our lives, chasing the end of our tragic tale, ever eager for the future and our own demise.

Dogs are happier than humans. Hence, just as we strove to
imitate birds for their ability to soar through heaven, so should we imitate dogs for their easygoing vibe, their ticklish personalities of whimsical caprice. Is this not desirable? Is this not heavenly? Dogs live life wagging their tails and getting excited about every little thing. The life of a hound is a runner's high, panting and goofy but rhythmic as a heartbeat. They run high and free, unaware of any race, uncaring of any leash, running for the run, running because it's fun, our canine counterparts, our kinder better parts, helpers in the hunt, protectors of the plate, living and accomplishing nothing but infinite frolic and limitless levity, no lines on a résumé, no citations on a curriculum vitae.

How to eulogize a dog? What accomplishments can I list, what achievements can I enumerate? He learned to do dumb tricks at my command. He learned to hold it until I walked him, or should I say, until he walked me. I would have never taken walks if it were not for him. But to list such accomplishments is akin to saying he was as constipated and unintelligent as a modern human, which he was not. He learned to live within human parameters, to be sure, like any child who learns to go to bed before they're tired so they can get up before they're awake. But unlike children, dogs learn our rules, sit pretty, deal with our crap, and go on wagging their tails. The playful puppy is always present in a dog, but the innocent child has run away from the adult. Dogs are trained; only people are brainwashed.

Children grow up, become boring and bored, responsible and rational, as loath to play as Meeko was to orange peels. Dogs, on the other hand, will cavort as long as their bones allow, sprinting after sticks, performing all their tricks, and delighting in every scent from pumpkin pies to cow pies. Every scent, once again, except orange peels, as I established one dismal day
watching Meeko sniff at an orange rind in my hand. Out of great nastiness or lethargy, I squeezed the peel, causing a mist of orange peel spritz to coat his sensitive nose and sending him into a fit of sneezing as intense as any hilarity, but without the fun. I possessed the amusement, and for as long as he sneezed, I did nothing but laugh. He existed in a world of sneeze, and I existed in a world of laughter. After that day, he avoided every form of citrus.

Meeko did not like it when I did that to him, but he had forgiven me within minutes. Dogs aren't man's best friend, what a diminutive statement! Dogs are our guardians. They comfort our loneliness and put up with the accomplishments of our egos. Meeko taught me that I enjoy taking care of beings other than myself, and though he howled at fire engines rather than the full moon, his mournful, piteous cries echo through the black hills of my imagination. My dog accomplished nothing, I'm proud to say. He was a mutt, a bastard son of a bitch in the finest sense of the words.

 

 

 

 

PART THREE:

 

 

 

 

108
Every day is a day of reckoning, as any accountant worth his business card will tell you. If you're going to stay on top of your life, you have to be aware of what's coming in and what's going out. Come tax time at the end of time, some say, all accounts must be settled, and unaccountable actions tarnish your credit record. On your audit bed, it is said that your entire life flashes before your eyes, a comprehensive snapshot of your existence, every moment contained in an instant briefer than the moment of conception. All actions are examined, all decisions dissected, and ultimately you are alone, left to find your way out of the labyrinthine lies you have constructed to convince yourself that you exist separate from everything else.

The day I have been describing, the most eventful day of my life, a day that began with Agent Orange waking me before dawn at the country retreat of Valhalla Acres and ended with the murder of my dog, with the outbreak of the Pied Piper virus somewhere in the middle, was just another day of reckoning. As
I pen my penance, I cannot be certain how my actions will be evaluated, but please keep in mind that I am but a pawn. It's a lame excuse, I know. Even pawns can decide a game. Act or be acted upon? Patience, please. That's like saying kill or be killed. As Sophia once told me, “There are always other options. Tickling, for instance.”

This is my penance, my act of contrition, my day of atonement. You are eavesdropping on a confessional. This is, however, different from my childhood experiences with Catholic confessions, where, because I couldn't think of any decent sins, I often made up some impressive mischief and misbehavior on the spot, and then proceeded to confess that I had lied a few times as well. Unlike those occasions, I have striven to be honest here, although slight exaggeration is to be expected in any story worth ten Hail Marys.

The most eventful day of my life concluded with my confinement in the small adjoining room where I had earlier talked with Blip. It was a symbolic gesture. After all, I was already imprisoned, though there seems to be no boundaries to the amount of freedom society can force you to sacrifice, no limit to the levies on life.

 

109
Animals sustain themselves by consuming other forms of life. While plants draw their energy from the sun, animals consume plants and each other. Life feeds off itself down through the levels of predator and prey. Hungry? Have some life. Rocks won't do, nor plastic, though shoe leather may keep you going in a toe jam. The best sustenance is the freshest, that
which was most recently alive, still a source of life and not yet decaying. Sadly, the food stored as emergency rations was all but rotten, leftover government surplus forever preserved in a suspended state of decomposition, providing just enough flabby nourishment to keep us breathing. It was never actually intended to be eaten.

Despite my accommodations, I slept as soundly as a baby sloth for over ten hours, and only awoke when General Kiljoy roused me the next morning for a breakfast of canned chicken. He and Tynee spent the morning disposing of the remains of Meeko and Volt, then went searching for Agent Orange and any clues as to what exactly had happened the day before. I spent the afternoon in my makeshift holding cell while nicotine weanling Miss Mary huffed Wrinkle-B-Gon fabric relaxant and watched satellite television. Local stations were no longer broadcasting, the situation being what it was.

I was lucky to be separated by a steel door from her. She hadn't smoked a cigarette in over fifteen hours, and like a klismaphiliac without a rubber hose, there was just no way she could be satisfied. Despite her efforts, neither television nor Wrinkle-B-Gon sufficed to ease her craving. By the looks of her at breakfast, she had not slept all night, and she spoke to us as if we were squirting water pistols at her. Fortunately, having located some instant coffee, everyone else's addiction was appeased.

I thought I might watch some television through the small window in the door, but Miss Mary switched the channels en-ragingly often, like a chimp perusing endless varieties of pornographic bananas. Having nothing else to do but sit in the chair
and stare at where Blip was yesterday, I examined the contents of my pockets and found the toilet paper transcription I had made of Blip's voice-mail greeting. Racing on three cups of powdered coffee, I resolved right there to pay my debt and honor Blip's request. Not quite knowing what to think of the second part of my penance, I focused on the first part and began to write a record of these events, and now here I am.

 

110
A host of unsatisfactory first paragraphs later, I got up to stretch and happened to glance out the window at Miss Mary. Apparently confident that nobody was looking, she held a half-eaten apple in her hand, a desirable commodity given our current food situation. She was chewing furiously, perhaps satisfying her oral fixation, taking bites without pausing to swallow. In so doing, a bead of apple juice lingered on her lower lip, glistening in the piped-down late afternoon sun like an orb of paradise. As she licked the nectar away with her tobacco-stained tongue, she looked around and made dead eye contact with me, startling us both. She froze, transfixed with a grimace of horrific self-consciousness, a sick look of frantic guilt, as if she were not in a bomb shelter but a garden, a plentiful, perfectly balanced garden of Earthly delights, and she had just devoured the forbidden fruit, the fruit of knowledge, self-awareness, self-consciousness, and was now facing an eternity of alienated existence filled with all manifestations of egoism.

Compared to the potential excesses of pride or anger, hiding and then hogging the only fresh food in the compound is a minor misdeed. It is gluttony, however, and all such behavior is
motivated by the same fundamental selfishness, though now is not the time for such mealy mysticism. Miss Mary had concealed her possession of an apple and was as far from any Garden of Eden as could be imagined. She asserted herself by turning back to the television screen and finishing her apple, effectively pretending my perspective out of her reality.