When Gods Fail (2 page)

“
No bud." Bill's eyes
softened up. "You're alive, be thank..." He seemed to choose his
words, actions again. "Come.” He grabbed my collar and hoisted me
up. He was strong. “Besides you’ve been exposed enough.” He led me
down the trap door.

“
Exposed?”

“
Don’t you feel your
skin?”

“
The burning,” I said and
touched my red skin. Then I remembered Carol touching me next to
the fireplace, the heat from her skin, her sex. No, a nuclear war
couldn't be real. Too many stops were in place to prevent it from
happening. Right? This was a joke, and I'd get to the phone soon.
Don't be a sucker.

“
Yeah, radiation. It's
gotten better, used to be you couldn't come out here without a
suit. But best not to stay out too long," he said. "Though you made
it so far.”

I entered the container and realized it was a
bar. Across from me stood a man who oiled a gun. He looked up with
a sneer on his face. He was like a rat-faced, skinny version of
Bill. He seemed much meaner.

“
Who the hell is that?” he
said.

Everything was still hazy; plus down here,
away from the pure air of outside I was having problems absorbing
all the smells. For certain there was Bill’s unique body odor and
liquor, but there was also burning flesh. I double-checked my skin
to make certain that it wasn’t me. I couldn't tell. There was
something insidious about the smell.

“
I’m Tom. Pleased to meet
you.”

The man didn’t look at my hand. Instead, he
sneered at Bill.

I put out my hand.

“
Where’d you find this
faggot?”

I took a deep breath. Not exactly a
homophobe, but I understood the implications of his words. I was a
skinny guy with a meek posture. He wouldn’t respect me unless I
said something.

“
Who you calling a faggot?”
I said.

He cocked his head, and as quick as
lightning, he bounded across the cramped room and pushed a knife to
my neck. “I’m callin' you a faggot, faggot. You got a problem with
that?”

The knife was sharp and pushed dangerously
into my jugular. One slip and I would open up to the floor, smile
with my neck. And yet I still couldn’t feel my heart race; it was
steady. As if the news of the nukes was still combatting my hope
and taking up too much of my energy for me to worry about a knife.
Under the red light, I could see scars all over the man’s face.

“
Are you fucking kidding
me?” I said, and was surprised that not a tremor showed in my
voice. This friend of Bill’s had cold eyes. But as soon as I spoke
he cocked his head back and stepped back, removing the knife from
my neck. He still held it pointed at me.

“
Leave him be Paul. He’s
cool,” Bill said. He rifled through a closet. “Besides, he doesn’t
even know what’s happened the past few months. Tell him, tell him
where you’ve been.”

I told him the story.

Paul tilted his head backwards and laughed.
“Under a rock huh?“ He looked at me with a little more respect,
some warmth returned to his eyes. “Lucky you, you missed some
horrible shit,” he shook his head.

“
He’s looking for his
wife... she was in Portland.”

“
Oh...” Paul gave me a look
of pity. “Sorry bud, she’s probably... The city's gone.”

Could this have been a joke? I hoped so, but
why else would they live in such a dilapidated place? Wasn't
anything to hunt here.

Again my mind started to walk without my
permission. A nuclear war. The forest fire. The air too pure to be
real. No smells out there. No life anywhere. It was too much
evidence, but I prayed for another explanation. These two men were
involved in some practical joke. And yet something about their body
language—how there was no hesitation, how there was real
sympathy—pulled on my intestines and I felt nauseous.

“
Are you serious? This isn’t
a joke?” I said.

They glanced at each other, again with a look
of collaborative knowledge.

“
Come on man, if it is a
prank just tell me. I don’t wanna be rude, but I was hoping to see
my wife soon,” I said again. My voice cracked.

The mention of my wife seemed to sadden them
again.

“
He’s not gonna believe us
until we show some proof. I know I wouldn’t believe someone unless
I saw it with my own eyes,” Paul said and gestured to Bill to open
a case of ammunition.

Bill slowly meandered over to the case and
opened the hinged lock. He pulled out a handful of newspaper
clippings.

“
We’re not joking bud. This
is all that’s left of the world,” Bill thrust the clippings over to
me.

I took them, some were old and yellow, others
were a little newer. The first papers were that flimsy newspaper
paper, and with the accompanying ads I was sure they couldn’t have
created these with a normal printer. Though these days who really
knew? Somewhere in the back of my conscious the realization that
this was real hit me, and a lump formed in my throat. I flipped
through a couple of them, read something about climate turning for
the worse, major food shortages, famine, droughts, followed by
floods that ripped off topsoil—a hopeless cycle. Like the news from
when I went spelunking. This, however, was on a larger scale. Was
there a tipping point where everything went out of control? Then
something else about forest fires spreading. Then there were more
clips about international summits breaking down. China and US blame
each other for not doing enough about resource distribution.
Typical I thought, part of the reason I was taking a break from the
city, life was getting too stressful. Then the last one: dirty bomb
goes off in Shanghai. China blames US, US blames terrorists. Then
Miami hit by another dirty bomb. Then nothing else. I looked up.
The ceiling looked like was going to cave in, and I sat down on the
ground. The article was printed on normal paper; random blogs, that
could've been written by anyone.

Bill shuffled around and came with a bottle
of water and a piece of packaging.

“
Here bud, drink and eat,”
he said.

“
No,” I said and shook my
head. I couldn’t handle not knowing the entire story. “Tell me
Bill, tell me what happened?" I felt a few tears trickle down my
cheek, though I reminded myself that I had to stay strong. I had to
find Carol. “Carol.” I shook my head, when I wanted to rip it out
and end the hollow emaciation of my being. A numb feeling
followed.

“
You sure we can afford the
food?” Paul mumbled, but seemed to quiet down when Bill shot him a
look.

“
Eat up bud,” Bill said and
tore open the package.

I grabbed the spoon he handed me. I drank the
water in a gulp.

“
Fuck, we ain’t got much
water left,” Paul said, giving me a deadly look.

Bill ignored him. “Well, that was the last
major story. Then all rumors. Well...” he hesitated. “That last day
no one was certain what would happen. Everyone was certain that the
last nuke had been launched and people would resort to talking, you
know? Within a few hours the world was dark. That’s what we do
know. We’ve tried to contact some city that might have survived
this, but no luck. The first few weeks you couldn’t go outside
without dying of exposure. Even with a radiation suit. We lost
quite a few people that way. My mother, she had to go see the
world, didn’t want to stay here. Found her a week back. Suit
burned, skin peeled off, eyes burned. Buried her.”

Bill stopped and looked at me. A vein in his
forehead throbbed. “Portland is gone bud. Your wife
probably...”

“
Well how do you know that
Portland's done? I mean there are no networks; maybe it’s just that
the whole world’s cut off from each other and no one knows about
the other, right? I mean have you guys left this area?” I stopped
as they both remained silent, exchanged glares with each other.
Suddenly, I felt unwelcome.

My words died; I finished my food and water,
and stared into the red light that provided the illumination for
the room.

“
Electricity? How do you get
it if there is no grid, right?” I was now looking for something,
something to show these men that their pessimism was misguided.
There couldn’t be nothing else out there. There just couldn’t.
Seven billion people at my last count. So what if there had been a
nuclear war? That still left a lot of survivors. A lot of places
that wouldn’t be hit by a nuke. There had to be. I looked at them
both, hoping that with all the gray matter in the room we would
figure this out. I was a computer nerd. Loved programming. Thought
if you put enough brains behind any problem you could find a
solution. Innovation was the saving grace of humans. Made us more
than a bunch of chimps with tools. We were Created and thus could
create. I searched each of their faces for a sign of what I was
going for. They seemed saddened by my line of
questioning.

“
We have solar panels and
mechanically rechargeable batteries. That’s all. Ain’t no grid,”
said Paul.

No grid. The words hit me. Again I felt weak,
alone, floating in a sea of nothing. Like when I was a child and my
father gave me a pea to represent the earth then walked me many
blocks to tell me where the sun was, and then told me we couldn't
even walk to the first star—I cried then and almost cried now.

“
Then couldn’t we hook the
battery to a satellite phone or radio frequency and keep trying to
reach some people?” I said.

“
Listen,” he said and jerked
his finger towards me, his other hand still holding the knife.
“You’re lucky I didn’t finish you off. The last thing we need is
another mouth to feed. You better learn to earn your keep around
here, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be done with smart ass
questions. You think we haven’t thought of all that? You think
we’re a buncha dumb rednecks? Dontcha?” He raised his knife. “You
better learn.” He looked at Bill, walked behind the bar, lifted up
a trap door in the floor, and stepped down into it.

Now that I could see how
easily he flared up, I wondered how I could tip toe around him. If
I was allowed to stay. His last comment hit me. I couldn’t expect
the same things as when I was back in Portland. I was in
their
house. I would have
to listen to them. And I had to earn their respect. Show them I was
worth something. But what the fuck would a computer programmer be
worth out here? I looked at Bill, hoping for some sympathy. Maybe I
should mention my wife, but it seemed that the time for pity was
over. Bill was staring at me with a stern aggression that I did not
like.

“
You guys low on
water?”

“
Yeah, not much left. We
have a machine that purifies our urine, but it gets less and less
each time. Besides,” he said and licked his lips, troubling me
again.

The others, what happened to all the
others?

“
Besides what?” I
said.

“
Besides, I’m just sick and
tired of tasting piss, you can taste it... once you notice it
there’s no going back.”

“
The cave I was in, there
was plenty of water. Clean too, I’m sure. I was drinking it for too
long for it to be contaminated.”

Bill’s demeanor changed. He smiled once.
“Nice, that’s just what we need. I’ll tell Paul,” and without any
more words he walked down the small trap door.

Something about his smile was off, but I
reminded myself that there were bigger issues at hand.

I tried to sleep, but all I could think of
was my wife, her pretty lips, and how much I missed being in her
arms, her belly slowly swelling in those weeks before my spelunking
trip. I loved everything about her; she was the greatest thing that
ever happened to me. My chest shrank. I shouldn't have gone on that
trip alone. I could've picked a pastime that even she would've
liked. I could have been with her.

I stared at the red light hanging from the
ceiling. This was real. Everything I had seen: the burned
landscape, no one around, not even a plane in the sky. This was
real.

The thought of all those people and all
those dreams gone, evaporated, filled me with a dread. It started
in my extremities, spread to my heart, rushed to my head and
paralyzed me. I wished I could have seen all those people just one
more time. Seen Carol instead of trying to get away for another
trip to be alone.

I sat there thinking about Carol. Her touch.
Her laugh. I would have to go back to our house and see if Carol
was dead. Even a shadow on a wall, like the ones in Hiroshima,
would help.

I picked up the newspapers that lay before
me. All alone; billions dead. Tears should have been forming, but
they didn't. Inside, a piece of me was glad that I had gone into a
cave. Survived. I ground my teeth and got angry with myself for
ever thinking that. But perhaps in this new world things would be
better. Now, people would be forced to rely on one another. They
would care for each other. That would make it a better place.

Bill and Paul had taken me in like good
Samaritans and given me a place to sleep. In the old world I would
have just been kicked off their property. Perhaps this was God's
way of performing another great flood. It had to be.

I squeezed my eyes shut, exhaustion finally
taking over me. Carol's image floated up to me and as I tried to
paw at her, take off her clothes and penetrate her, a loud rumbling
sound shook me.

"Hey, wake up."

I opened my eyes to see Bill with a shotgun.
At least it wasn't pointed at me.