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“Ray,” Stebbins said humorlessly. “Are you a motherfucker or a mother fucker?”
Stebbins flicked a red-tipped match against the lime wall and pressed the small flame that appeared to a squashed cigarette Pete had fished out of his pocket. It looked like a discarded cornmeal puff.
“There a difference?” Ray asked, tracking the way those pale, slim fingers squeezed the cigarette and pressed it to his lips, which were quirked into a wry smile.
“Yeah,” Stebbins said with a cough. He exhaled a cloud of smoke, which briefly shrouded his face. He held up his thumb and pointer finger, showing a loop with the flimsiest diameter. “A space of about two inches.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Ray scoffed. Next to him, Pete stifled a laugh. “It’s bigger than two inches, I can tell you that much.”
“Yeah?” Pete said, a pleased look flickering across his face. “Let me see, then.”
“Nice try. I’m not tugging my dick out, guys. You’ll just have to picture it in your mind’s eye.”
“He’ll be picturing it tonight,” Pete said casually. “With his hand in his pants.”
“Yeah, maybe I will,” Stebbins replied impassively. Ray gave him the finger.
They lapsed into a comfortable silence, staring at their shoes. Ray poked his big toe, which peeked out from the top of his right boot. Pete reached over and stretched the rubber sole that’d come apart, only to watch it bounce back once he let go. And then he did it again and again. Stebbins tracked the movement with serpentine torpidity, his back curved against the wall, the cigarette perched in the corner of his mouth. He puffed it lazily.
Ray knew what they were all thinking about. He could see it in their vacant, oil-slick eyes.
Yesterday, after Art had fallen victim to a brain hemorrhage that’d left him with a bleeding nose and puffy upper lip, Percy’s mother had stolen a big monster truck with the largest wheels Ray had ever seen in his life and roared down the road at about 150 mph, foot pressed on the pedal, and she hadn’t let up until the Major and a sizeable segment of his squad were one long stretch of burgundy ugly on the highway.
This was all the way back in O—, which had a population of about five cows with foot-and-mouth disease, so nobody else but the people glued to their government-issued 12-inch TV screens were around to see when she hopped out of the monster truck with a bazooka as big as her head and polished off what was left of the Major’s crew, some guttural yell trapped in the back of her throat emerging as a prolonged wheeze right before she went the way of the firework.
By the end of it, the halftracks were in itty bitty pieces. The road had been in a similar state. All chewed up and ugly. The stink of rubber and smoke and iron and burnt flesh clouding the air. Somehow, Ray and Pete had avoided the worst of the mess, but a piece of flying metal had struck the side of Stebbins’ face. A long, thin cut now tore across his left cheek, from the corner of his lip to his hairline. When he thought no one was watching, he tongued the split skin with a smile.
“I wonder what ol’ Barky’s doing right about now,” Stebbins said. His cigarette bobbed on his shiny lip. The part of the cut near his lip had opened again. It bled sluggishly down his chin. He wiped it away.
“I don’t,” Ray said shortly.
“Bet you he’s ecstatic,” Pete said. “He’s dancing with the devil.”
Stebbins laughed, a small, throaty chuckle.
“He never did mention what kind of dance he’d do, huh.”
“Square dance,” Pete joked. “Gotta be a square dance.”
“Maybe a slow waltz,” Stebbins suggested, fluttering his hands. “Nice and romantic.”
Ray curled his lip in disgust and stared out the window. A bunch of dainty dandelions swayed in the wind, their white heads like downy chicken feathers.
He thought about his mother. That look on her face she’d tried to pull back as she drove him to the drop-off area, her hands clutching the steering wheel, picking and ripping the leather while he’d stared out at the empty fields and cooled his forehead, his armpits on the AC, reaching into his knapsack sometimes just to touch the stitches on his dad’s baseball. She’d tried to get him to change his mind every thirty minutes, “It’s not too late, we can go back, we can go back,” until he’d just given her a sour look and plugged his ears with his fingertips. In any case, it was too late now.
“Remember when Ray said he’d spit in poor ol’ Barky’s brains?” Stebbins gave him a sly look. The cigarette in his hand sloughed ash onto his thigh. It reminded him of Winter. The factories that coughed smoke into the air and turned all the snow tombstone gray. “Do you remember, Ray?”
“I remember,” Pete said.
“Stop it,” Ray said. His words came out hoarse. “Both of you stop it.”
“Alright.” Pete slid his arm over Ray’s shoulder and gave him a nice, kind look, like you would a half-crazed horse that needed to be put down. “Shut the fuck up, Stebbins. And give me that cigarette.”
Stebbins wordlessly handed it over.
They took turns smoking in silence over his head, staring each other down, the occasional cough spilling from their mouths because the cigarette they kept passing was the only one they’d ever really had, and they all knew it.
There were about four other rooms in the empty, Tudor-style house they’d stumbled into hours and hours ago. Four other places either of them could’ve gone to, but they chose to sit beside him on the floor, in the corner of what once must’ve been somebody’s living room, someone’s home before it’d turned into a ghost house in a ghost town. They could’ve run. They could’ve gone anywhere.
“I need to piss,” Ray said. He used the wall behind him for support as he slowly got up, hearing what sounded like every bone in his body creak and crack and moan as he stood, wobbly, on two whole feet. He leaned over sideways to inspect, then rub his calves, feeling a rush of warmth and color flood his head as he moved. He felt like a plastic doll filled with sewing needles.
“I’ll come with,” Pete said, standing up much more nimbly, smooth, as if it were nothing.
“Well, I surely don’t want to miss whatever party this’ll be,” Stebbins said, his movement cat-like in its fluidity.
Ray stared at them, still bent over, rubbing his calves.
“Y’all really wanna see my wiener, don’t cha.”
There was a small, dark bathroom at the back of the house. It had no windows, so they left the door wide open, hoping that the light coming in from the hallway could illuminate whatever was inside.
They headed straight for the toilet, which was shockingly white, but obviously broken, along with the sink and the clawfoot bathtub rusted over with autumnal colors. The toilet handle jangled insultingly, clanging against the porcelain lid each time he flicked it. He flicked it over and over again, listening to the sound. It was almost kind of nice. Rhythmic. It was something other than silence or gunfire.
“Think Ray’s trying to flush whatever’s left of his brains,” Stebbins said, peering around the doorway with eerie, lambent eyes that glowed blue fire in the half-light.
“Need some help?” Pete said with a sly smile, his hip pressed against the bathtub.
Ray gave both of them stink eyes, then turned sweet.
“Think I lost my sense of direction. I’m going to need you to hold it and point.”
“Anything for you, baby.”
They unzipped their pants in silence and pissed at the same time, their dicks collectively pointed true south. Ray tried to avoid looking, but it was basically impossible. He sized them up and down. They did the same. No one said a word.
On his way out, he flicked the handle one last time. It flew up, hit the lid, and fell off.
Ray sat in a bedroom that’d once belonged to some kid who’d liked dinosaurs. A number of plastic figurines cloaked in cobwebs were still left on the floor. He stretched out on his stomach and drew faces in the dust, occasionally reaching over to fidget with a toy triceratops. Stebbins snored softly on the bed, atop dirty sheets covered in cartoon planets. Pete sat against the bedframe with his knees drawn to his chest, staring at Ray while pretending he wasn’t.
“Ever learn about the Mesozoic Era?” Ray asked, gently urging the triceratops towards a T. rex.
“That’s not government-approved curriculum, Ray.”
“Yeah, I know,” Ray said, reaching for a velociraptor. “My dad taught me. He still remembered from before.”
Pete scooted closer. He picked up a brontosaurus.
“Yeah?” Pete nudged the brontosaurus against his velociraptor. “Your dad had balls of steel, Ray.”
“Maybe. I think he was too smart for his own good.”
“How so?”
“Just would’ve been easier to deal with it all if he hadn’t been, I guess.” Ray knocked over the T. rex and chewed on his fingers. He felt a line of dirt under his nail bed and scooped it out using the tips of his lower incisors.
“Better stupid and pliable than dead?”
“Something like that, yeah.” Ray licked at the spit-laden free edge until it was soft enough to rip off. “Or more like my mom. Smart but quiet. Non-resistant.”
“Smart enough to know how to take it, huh?”
“Yeah. Nice and easy. With a ‘Thank you for the hammer in the ass, Mister’ at the end.”
“Just to tie it all off.”
“Clean and simple.”
The nail edge mostly came off. One end stubbornly held on. He chewed through it until he felt the familiar pain-prick of a hangnail hangover. He looked over at Pete when he spit out that scraggly bit of nail onto the floor, next to his brontosaurus. Pete blinked slowly. He spoke in a whisper.
“I would’ve liked to learn about the dinosaurs, Ray.”
“I think you would’ve liked them, Pete.”
On the bed, Stebbins shot up straight like a weed that’d been foolheartedly whacked.
“What time’s it?” He slurred out, rubbing the corner of his mouth, which was shiny in the dim light pouring through the bedroom windows. They’d drawn the dusty blue curtains when they’d come in, but a small sliver of light still slid through, illuminating the debris that covered the floor, alongside bird shit, animal skeletons, and the remnants of whatever life had been left behind before the country had fallen apart with all the grace of a poorly stifled fart.
“No idea,” Pete shrugged. They’d each tossed their watch into the rubble on the road. Worried that it’d be used to try to track them down. “But if I had to guess, probably around five.”
“Alright,” Stebbins muttered, rubbing furiously at his eyes. They watched him throw off his cap and scratch at the matted hair underneath with his knuckles, until the blonde strands stood up every which way, held in place by grease and road dust. He twisted his wrists, his arms, and flexed his biceps. He brought a leg up to his chest, one at a time, and dug his fingers into the meat of his thighs, his face devoid of emotion.
“Hey, you know what?” Pete said, turning away from Stebbins as he licked the back of his hand and used it to wipe his face. “I’m starving. Feels like my stomach’s just eating itself.”
“Anyone got anything left?” Ray asked, already rifling through his own pockets and food belt, but he knew there was nothing. He’d eaten the last of his food an hour before Percy’s mother had arrived. It was a shame the rest of the food stock had gone up with the Major.
“Think I got some meat left,” Pete said, lifting his ass from the floor so he could reach into his back pocket. He pulled out a tube and threw it on the floor. “My ass warmed it up nice and good for you boys.”
Stebbins rifled through the front pocket of his chambray shirt and pulled out two cracker packs still in their shiny foil. He flung them down next to Pete’s meat concentrate.
“Bon appétit.”
“Sorry, I, uh, don’t have anything.” Ray stared at his empty hands. He could feel the heat rise up in his cheeks. He was so pale and see-through. He’d always hated that.
“All good,” Pete said, inspecting the items front to back. “Far as I figure it, we’re grown men with grown stomachs. So, this’ll last us about, oh,” he ticked his head to the side in feigned concentration. “Approximately three hours.”
Stebbins whistled long and low, stuffing his cap back onto his head. He rolled onto his stomach, propped his cheeks on his fists, and fluttered his invisible blonde eyelashes.
“Wowzah. And is that all for us, Mister?”
“Yes, siree, Bob.” Pete arranged the three items in a circle. “Wanna play eenie, meenie, miny, moe?”
Stebbins rolled his eyes, dropping the coquette act.
“Each pack has four crackers. And each tube of meat concentrate’s got about three thimblefuls. Fairly even split,” Stebbins said, cracking each knuckle.
“S’long as neither of y’all mind sharing spit.”
Stebbins blinked at Ray.
“I don’t mind.”
“Yeah,” Ray said quickly, swallowing hard. “I don’t mind either.”
“Glad that’s settled,” Pete laughed. “Nobody minds. We’re just a bunch of agreeable guys.”
They shared the small tube of meat concentrate, pulling faces at each other as they sucked it free of that silky, soft paste, pushed the material around in their mouths from one side to the other, just getting a real taste for it. On the road, it’d been difficult to focus on anything other than keeping one foot in front of the other. Now, it was hard not to realize just how awful it all was.
“This is disgusting,” Ray said around a gag. He’d been the last one to go, and part of him was sorry for it because it meant he got just that bit more. “Why’d we never talk about how disgusting this is.”
“We talked about it,” Pete said, amused.
“Not enough. Not nearly enough.”
“Tasty, tasty viands, Ray. Eat up,” Stebbins said.
Ray swallowed his share of meat concentrate, shuddering as it slid down his throat with the solemnity of a turd.
They each took about two and a half peanut butter crackers. The crackers were oily. A faint buttery sheen covered the surface and stuck to his fingers. The gritty, salty taste of it made Ray’s stomach lurch. It was dry on his tongue, as if it’d evaporated all of the moisture in his mouth. As he chewed, he wondered about the state of his teeth. It’d been several days since he’d last brushed them, standing in front of the grimy mirror in his bathroom, his mother directly behind him, lolling around the doorway, a lost expression on her face.
He swallowed with difficulty, then poked the thin, slightly furred film covering his incisors with the tip of his tongue. He grabbed his canteen.
“Hey, Pete, do you still have that toothbrush?”
Pete rifled through his backpack, briefly mulling over a scrap of venison he’d forgotten to eat that’d turned foul and gray in its time spent in the hot bag, and pulled out his toothbrush. The bristles were in fine condition. He flicked them with the pad of his thumb.
“Hope you don’t mind the lack of toothpaste,” he said, passing it over.
“Don’t need toothpaste when I have meat concentrate,” Ray said brightly. Stebbins snorted.
Ray wet the bristles with the water from his canteen and brushed away the feeling of grime from his teeth, watching Pete watch him with an indecipherable look on his face. He swished water around his mouth, then swallowed it.
“They’re probably looking for us,” Stebbins said, starfishing on the bed with his head hanging upside down off the edge, getting cracker crumbs all down his front. He gestured to the window. “They may even already have us surrounded. Just waiting until we crawl out the front door. Then they’ll train hundreds and hundreds of carbines on our foreheads while we piss and shit our pants.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Pete said mildly. “Besides, I figured you wouldn’t mind.”
Stebbins thoughtfully bit off each corner of his cracker.
“Nah. I guess I wouldn’t.”
Ray curled a finger through his hair and tugged.
“What are we gonna do? Where are we even gonna go?”
“I dunno,” Pete shrugged.
“Pick a location, Ray,” Stebbins said, finishing off his cracker. He licked his fingers, slow and steady. “Choose wherever your country bumpkin heart desires. This seeded land’s your oyster, you big ol’ pearl.”
Ray thought about it.
“I’ve never seen Vegas. Or New York,” he said, although it wasn’t strictly true. His father’d shown him a few movies from before the industry had shut down and gotten replaced by WeberU and its affiliates. He remembered all the lights the best. The glow of multi-colored neon, swirling and blinking and alive.
Stebbins scoffed. “ We go there, we may as well come equipped with our own toe tags.”
“Fine, then. To be truly honest, I don’t really care where we go,” Ray said, decisively, sticking his chin up. “’s not like it matters much, anyway. They’re bound to find us soon enough.”
“That kind of thinking ain’t helpful, Ray,” Pete said, shaking his head. He looked through Ray’s backpack until he found the baseball and tossed it into the air. The leather thwacked against his skin as it came down. The steady rhythm of it calmed something in him. “Both of y’all need to look on the bright side.”
“And what side’s that?” Stebbins asked, raising a pale eyebrow.
“We’re alive right now,” Pete said simply. “And that’s good enough for now.”
“Moment-by-moment, huh?”
“Exactly, Ray. Moment-by-moment. ‘s all we got and I’m glad for it.”
He threw the baseball to Ray. Ray caught it, gave it a quick once over, just to see if it was still all in one piece, then he threw it to Stebbins, who winced as it sailed towards him, catching it with both hands like a child. Stebbins studied the ball like he’d never seen one before.
“Alright,” Stebbins said slowly, twirling the ball around in his hands. “I’ll moment-by-moment it with y’all until sunrise. And then we’ve gotta figure something out. No amount of kumbayaing’s gonna cut it when the scent hounds are on our asses.”
“Yeah, that’s simple enough,” Pete said, nodding. “Just gotta wash our asses before then.”
That got the flimsiest of smiles out of Stebbins, which made Ray smile in turn. He didn’t ask for the baseball back. It felt kind of nice to see Stebbins holding it, quietly inspecting the stitches, and running his fingers over them. Ray reached over and ruffled Stebbins’s hair, feeling the greasy strands slide through his fingers like slippery mummichogs.
“Chin up, Billy,” Ray said, pulling his hand away. Stebbins stared at him, unblinking, through his messy fringe, a small smile frozen on his face.
Night came for them. The old, dusty house flooded with the sounds of rattling insects. A fierce wind picked up outside as the sun set, tossing their world into shadows. They squeezed onto the bed, limbs pressed side-by-side, feeling each other’s body heat, and tried their best to sleep away their memories.
They’d all left their shoes on. Too scared to see the bruises, the cuts, the weepy blisters encrusted with blood. They hadn’t thought about what was next for them. Ray knew that, even though none of them had really said anything, still just living off the adrenaline that came from standing next to an explosion, walking around with dirt and dust on their shirts and pants, and looking like the front of a building had just collapsed all around them.
There was nothing to it, really. Somehow, out there, on the road, walking until he forgot about where they were supposed to go, it’d been easier. They hadn’t known where they were going, but whatever, wherever that final destination was had still seemed closer than where they’d ended up. It was like he’d been on the precipice of some discovery, tongue wagging out the side of his mouth, only to be yanked back at the very end. And it’d left him with an aching belly and sore feet he could hardly feel.
“Hey, Pete,” he whispered.
“Yeah, Ray?” Pete said, nudging his shoulder. Ray’d pulled his sleeves all the way up to his armpits, and he felt the smooth slide of Pete’s skin against his, and it sent a shiver all through his body, the smallest kind of static shock.
“How’re you feeling, Pete.”
Ray could hear Pete swallow.
“Not so good, Ray.”
“Yeah, me neither, Pete.”
“What the hell is this,” Stebbins groused from beside Ray.
Ray looked at Pete so they could share a quick laugh. His eyes got stuck somewhere around Pete’s lips, the flash of white teeth, then the long stretch of scarred skin tissue.
“I think he’s feeling a little left out,” Ray mock whispered. Pete dramatically widened his eyes.
“Billy, you feeling left out? Come here and I’ll give you a kiss. We’ll both give you one. Two for the price of one, Billy. That’s called a good deal.”
“It’s called a good deal, Billy,” Ray echoed, feeling loose and lightheaded and silly. “Come here, Billy.”
“Yeah, come here, Billy.”
They made wet kissing noises. Stebbins let out a condescending puff of air
“Go to sleep, Ray,” Stebbins said tiredly. “You’re barely intelligible.”
Before he could protest, Pete tugged Ray over and placed his head on his shoulder.
“Light’s out for you Maine’s Own,” Pete laughed. “You’re slurring your words.”
“Oh. Am I?” Ray said, blinking furiously to keep himself awake.
“Yeah, you are.”
“Dang. Well, I feel pretty fine,” Ray yawned. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep more than anything. It’d been days since he’d had the luxury of a horizontal night’s rest. He tried to. He closed his eyes and counted sheep, but his body didn’t want to shut down. He felt his pulse. It beat a rhythm against his skin, like jump rope thumping against hot pavement. “Hey, Stebbins, where’d you build all that muscle.”
“He didn’t tell you? He used to wrangle wild cats. His epithet at the zoo was Billy Bobcat.”
“’s that true, Billy?”
Stebbins shot them a pair of finger guns.
“You know it, tiger.”
“You’re both full of shit.”
Ray fell asleep wondering what his mother was doing. He wondered if she was still standing in the middle of a crowd of onlookers in Androscoggin County, straining to see over another person’s crooked shoulder, wringing her hands over and over again, the way she did when things got too quiet, and the news on the TV told her about how wonderful everything was, and how the country had never been greater or healthier or smarter than it was in that moment, when everything and everyone that’d represented the resistance had gotten their ticket ages and ages ago, so that when she thought about her husband, or her parents, she just heard the sound of the Major’s voice, praising them for their commendable effort.
He wondered if she was still waiting for him to come home. And how long she’d spend the rest of her life just waiting.