Planet Purgatory (5 page)

Chikka is amazing stuff. I was injured, and badly too, yet with the help of that magic beet liquor I managed to stagger the nearly two kilometer trek back to my trailer on the farm, where I collapsed onto my bed and fell asleep. I don’t know how long I slept. All I remember was waking with my face pressed against the wall as Rosie adjusted her bulk to take up the rest of the mattress.

She was awful that way. She had her own blanket on the floor, but at every opportunity she would sneak up on my bed, thinking I wouldn’t notice as the mattress tilted and turned to accommodate her two-hundred-and-thirty-pound frame. Usually I would kick her off, but I was so weak I had no choice but to remain pinned against the trailer wall, falling in and out of bizarre dreams until my mother barged her way through the door carrying a corned beef sandwich.

I wasn’t hungry, but she didn’t care. Shooing Rosie off the mattress, my mother forced me to eat while she prepared tea on my little stove. I could barely lift the sandwich to my mouth, but after getting some food in my belly followed by some shots of chikka, I was able to stagger outside, where I collapsed into a chair and gazed emptily into the distance.

Like I said, chikka is amazing stuff, because it wasn’t long before I was back tending my crops. I told my parents the farm couldn’t afford to wait for me to heal, but the truth was I needed something to occupy my mind. All I could think about were the questions my dad asked me: why did I stand there? Why didn’t I run?

Was it suicide? Was that what I was looking for? A way out of this godforsaken place?

And when I wasn’t obsessing over that, I was busy blaming myself for the tragedies that had befallen the eight people touched by the energy orbs. I didn’t even know their names. Forget Purgatory, I was experiencing my own private Hell.

I tried drowning my sorrows in chikka, but even that was losing its magic.

And then one morning, while I was out in the back, back fields, checking on my precious sugar beets, a miracle happened.

It was especially rotten out, with low-hanging clouds serving to make an already depressing day even gloomier, and my mood was such that I was contemplating walking out to the horizon, never to return, when I felt a presence tug at me from beneath the ground’s surface. It was a whale, a massive one, swimming below me. If I closed my eyes I could almost see it, a golden leviathan moving through the darkness. It was joined by other whales, and it wasn’t long before there was a whole host of them, traveling in circles below my feet. I’d sensed them before, but never this strongly, and I got the very real feeling that if I wanted to, I could call them and they would come.

It was exhilarating, and I knelt to the ground, following their movements, when a pair of demons descended from the sky, prompting Rosie to gallop in mad circles while our avian visitors looked on in pupilless bemusement.

It was a wonderful scene, and as I watched Rosie scooting back and forth, tongue hanging out, barking like a fool, I wondered, why couldn’t I be like that? We shared so much. Both of us were brought back from the dead, only to be nearly killed again. How could she be so happy and I be so miserable?

And that’s when I was given the answer. Rosie had a purpose. She was my guardian. It was a role she lived and breathed. If those demons had meant me any harm, she would have been on them with everything she had. I, on the other hand, had nothing.

I was a farmer, yes, but the reasons behind my profession were purely selfish ones. I enjoyed growing vegetables; it was as simple as that. I didn’t care who ate them. I could be the only soul left in this hellhole, and I would still grow them, especially my beets. It was my escape, my rabbit hole. That people benefited from my obsession wasn’t even an afterthought. And that was the reason behind my misery. If I was ever to leave this Purgatory behind, it would be by rejecting my apathy toward my fellow denizens, and taking the burden of their plight as my own.

I closed my eyes, allowing the wisdom of the whales to wash over me. There was a reason I had survived my encounter with the alien, I could see that now. All I needed was a plan.

I arrived in Harkness in the evening. It was the first time I’d set foot there since the alien invasion, and as I walked past row upon row of empty campsites, I worried I’d stumbled upon the aftermath of something terrible. Fires were burning, in some cases food was even cooking, but there was no one in sight. It was the same at my parents’ trailer. Stew simmered in a black cauldron out front, yet inexplicably, my mother was nowhere to be found.

I was spooked. Rosie, too. Her ruff was up, and we were leaving the glow of the campfires when I heard voices coming from further up the road. It was too dark to see anything, and with my gun drawn, we cautiously made our way forward until I discerned a large crowd of people in front of what appeared to be a rather wide, rather tall wagon.

So that’s where everyone went.

Any relief I experienced was tempered by Rosie’s demeanor. She wasn’t simply alert, she was approaching the scene like she meant to do someone some serious harm. I’d learned long ago to trust her instincts, and I followed, only to lose her amid the multitudes. I was getting panicky anticipating the sound of her attack, and I pushed myself through the crowd, when who should I run into but my dad.

“Holy cow! David! Where’d you come from? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah everything’s fine,” I said before turning my attention to the wagon. “What is this? What’s going on?”

My dad shook his head, explaining, “Fella here claims he can save us from the aliens.”

“What? How?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

“He won’t tell you?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“He says the time’s not right.”

I couldn’t believe it. I’d come to Harkness armed with a plan to protect them from the aliens, and here was a stranger promising the very same thing. The timing was not lost on me, and I forced my way to the front of the crowd to find myself looking up at an old man hunched atop the wagon bench, smoking a foul-smelling cigarillo. He was alone, the collar of his oversized jacket rising to meet the material of his cap. He gazed sullenly into the distance, seemingly oblivious to the people gathered in front of him.

I called up to him, ignoring the whispers and stares my presence was eliciting. “You can save us from the aliens?”

He didn’t even look at me. “I told you: later,” he croaked.

“Are you
SYS
?”

“
SYS
? Us?” Somehow that amused him, and he peered down at the bright yellow gun at my side. “Yer the Brew-Master, ain’t ya?”

“What?”

“Yer the fella that makes the chikka. Why don’t you bring us some, and maybe we can talk.”

There was something disgusting about this old man’s presence, something deeply disturbing, and I turned to address the crowd instead.

“Listen!” I shouted. “I’ve come up with a plan that will save us from the aliens.”

I’d never spoken to a group like this before, especially about something so grave. I’d hoped to convince my dad to make my case for me, but there wasn’t time. And so I continued, surprised by my boldness.

“I’m going to the
SYS
building, and I’m going to demand they arm us.” I held my own gun aloft. “Imagine if we all had one!”

Whispers turned into excited chatter, and my father joined me in front of the stranger’s wagon looking relieved. Even hopeful.

“Do you think that’ll work?” he asked. “Nobody even knows where the
SYS
building is.”

“It will. It’ll take a bit of searching, but I’ll find it, and when I do, I’ll return with a wagonload of guns.”

The old man laughed.

“That’s yer plan?” he asked in that bullfrog voice of his. “Beg
SYS
fer some guns?”

The old man’s disparaging tone was met by sounds of displeasure.

“It’s better than anything else we’ve heard!” shouted someone in the back. “Hell, you won’t even tell us what your plan is!”

The old man took a drag of his cigarillo, squinting contemplatively into the sky before rising to his feet.

“You wanna hear our offer?” he asked, motioning casually to the big armored box behind him. “My friend here’ll keep you safe. In return, all he asks is that you give us one of yer own.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

“Exactly what I said. It don’t matter who. You just give us one of yer own and you got nothing more to worry about. It’s that simple.”

The way he spoke, smug and self-satisfied, and delivered in that god-awful croaky voice, conspired to leave me feeling sick. Even more worrisome was the shift in tone of those around me.

“Who is your friend?” a woman asked. “Can we at least see him?”

“Afraid not,” the old man answered, easing himself back into his seat.

A man spoke up. “But how will he defend us from the aliens? Does he have access to
SYS
guns?”

“My friend don’t need no
SYS
guns,” he said, grinning.

I’d had enough of the old coot and his cigarillo-fueled games, and I forced my way out of the crowd to resume my search for Rosie. It didn’t take long. She was at the rear of the armored wagon, engaged in a display of aggression I’d never witnessed before. She was prowling in a figure eight, muscles taut, teeth bared in a permanent snarl, gaze locked on a little barred window on the back of the wagon. She wouldn’t stop, and I moved cautiously forward, frightened I was witnessing a seizure.

“Rosie,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “Rosie.”

But I might as well have been talking to the dirt. And so I watched, taking special interest in the barred window of the wagon. There was something in there, and holding my gun against my chest, I forced myself to peer inside. It smelled of musty straw, and it was dark, too dark. I had just begun to back away when I heard the shuffle of something approach the window. I froze, the fear in my chest overrun by the desire to see what was coming. And then I saw it — an alien green eye surrounded by shaggy brown fur. Its gaze was, for lack of a better word, evil, and I spun around, nearly tripping on my own feet as I raced to put as much space between us as possible. Fortunately, whatever spell Rosie-dog was under had been broken, and together we escaped to my parents’ trailer, where I poured myself a series of shots of chikka.

It wasn’t long before people began filtering back to their respective fires, my dad sitting wearily at his picnic table while my mother hurried to check on her cauldron of bubbling stew.

“Oh dear, I think it’s burned,” she said, hands on her hips.

“So what happened?” I asked, turning to my dad.

He stuck his lips out, gazing into the distance like I wasn’t there.

“Tell me you didn’t agree to his offer.”

Meanwhile my mother was becoming agitated over the state of her stew. “You didn’t stir the stew, did you, Davey?”

“No, I didn’t. So Dad, what happened?”

“Why didn’t you stir it?”

“Because I didn’t think of it.”

“Why not? You were sitting right there.”

“I don’t know!”

“That’s not an answer!”

She was sucking the energy out of me, and I closed my eyes, picturing myself in the back, back fields.

“Is it because you’re drunk?” she demanded, voice growing shrill. “Is that it? You prefer your … your … beet juice to my stew?”

She was getting herself worked up, and me and my dad adjusted our seats in unison as her temper continued to flare.

“You’re a lazy drunk! A lazy, lazy drunk!”

“Ignore her, David,” counseled my dad.

“The stew is right there! All you had to do was give it the occasional stir! But, no! That’s too much work for Lazy Davey! Meanwhile dinner is ruined! Do you hear me? Ruined!”

“I’m sorry, Mummy—”

“A lot of good that does!” she screeched. “You ruined dinner, Davey! You ruined dinner for you! For me! And worst of all, you ruined it for Dad!”

I should have let her continue — she’d run out of steam eventually, disappearing into her trailer until the next morning when she’d come out offering everyone tea. Instead I did the worst thing possible: I snapped.

“What the hell is wrong with you? There’s a guy out there with god-knows-what in his wagon, trying to bargain for one of our lives, and you’re freaking out over stew?”

I glanced at my dad who had his face buried in his hands.

“Shit, David! Why do you have to do that?”

And that’s when it really started.

“How dare you?” she bellowed. “How dare you?” Helpless, I watched as she searched the area for something to hit me with, settling on a wooden spoon.

She must have hit me a dozen times, eventually breaking the spoon on my forehead before storming into the trailer and slamming the door behind her.

Me and my dad sat perched on the edges of our seats, waiting to see if she would return. When it appeared all was safe, my dad took out his pack of cigarettes, offering me one before taking one for himself.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he said, keeping his voice low.

“I know. But she’s so frustrating. Who cares about stew when we’ve got this going on?”

“That’s just Mummy. You should be thankful she didn’t get you with the steel ladle like she did that one time.”

That made me chuckle. I don’t know why; I still had a dent on the side of my head from that stupid thing, and that was years ago.

“She got you good, didn’t she?” asked my dad with the slightest grin.

“Nah. I managed to block most of them.”

“I don’t know; I counted at least four or five clean shots. All I have to say is you must have one hell of a hard head to break a spoon in half.”

I started laughing again. My mother’s sudden bouts of rage were a fact of life for me. As long as I could remember, she would lose her temper, and heaven help anyone who got in her way. And the worst part was, there was never any consistency to her behavior. Something she found amusing or merely annoying one day could see you on the receiving end of a whack to the head with a frying pan the next. I don’t know how many times I had to invent stories to explain a black eye or a cracked rib. My mother even tackled me through a sliding door window when I was a teenager, slicing my forearm right down to the muscle.

The violence occurred less frequently now, but it still happened, and the best I could do was shake it off and attribute it to mental illness. What else could it be? I’d heard stories about her own mother, and her mother’s mother. It was the reason I didn’t want children. I recognized that rage in me, and there was no way I was going to risk subjecting a child to the same abuse I was.

That’s not to say my dad was the gentle parent. He whipped me plenty growing up, using switches cut from our farm’s hazel trees. But his was a controlled violence, used to instill discipline in a boy he felt was lacking. It might very well have been warranted; I wasn’t the best behaved child growing up. That didn’t stop me from hating him, though. I remember that feeling in my gut I got when he watched me doing my chores. He was just as nasty with his words as he was with the switch, and half the time I would end up making mistakes out of fear of doing something wrong. My relationship with my dad could be summed up in two words: fear and loathing.

But somewhere along the way, something happened. We became friends. Oh, he still bullied me, usually over my drinking, and there were occasions when we were close to knocking each other’s teeth out, but a bond was forged, one that comes from the strain of running a family farm. I don’t even know when it happened. Somehow I went from being unable to speak in my father’s presence to trading insults as we labored in the dark fixing a tractor that had broken down in the field. There was only one person I trusted to run things when I wasn’t there, and that was my dad. And I’m proud to say that sentiment ran both ways. I still remember the shock of hearing my dad tell my mother’s brother, Fat Old Uncle Earl, that he could die in peace knowing the family farm would be in good hands. In fact it was the same conversation that I first heard him say I was a better farmer than he ever was. And it was the way he said it. He might as well have been talking about the weather, that’s how matter-of-fact his tone was. It threw me, and I ended up excusing myself so they wouldn’t see the resulting tears.

It was the proudest moment of my life. But it was also a turning point. I finally saw my dad as an equal, who in many ways was just like me. But it also enabled me to recognize his biggest flaw. Behind that cranky veneer was a man who craved authority, and he was not above changing his opinion if it meant being on the winning side of an issue. I used to see it all the time growing up. The mayor or some other bigwig would be invited for dinner at our house, and the whole time my father would be proclaiming what a wonderful thing it was that this guy was in charge. But the moment there was a change in the political wind, my dad would be out there, badmouthing the incumbent while throwing his support behind whoever looked like they were going to take his place. It didn’t matter what the new guy stood for, as long as he showed up at our house for some stew.