Into the flashback, p.2
Into the Flashback, page 2
And then it came: Then she screamed, although it wasn’t so much a scream as a shriek, a wail—an extended howl the likes of which I’d never heard (and pray I never hear again). Then she was yowling like an animal even as I stepped back and kicked in the door; as I found her hunched over the toilet and starting to mumble–pitifully, incoherently. Defeatedly.
As I rushed in and knelt beside her, turned her to face me—not yet noticing the obvious; not yet noticing the mortal difference, the cruel jest that had been played on her. “Cecilia–what, what is it? What–”
But then I did notice it; noticed her flat stomach, her thin, gaunt face. Her haunted, terror-stricken eyes—and, also, the complete lack of blood anywhere.
“What happened here?”
“No-nothing—nothing happened. Don’t you see? He was just—he was just here, inside, kicking ... and then—then the kicking stopped.” She batted the tears from her eyes. “It just stopped; do you understand? It—”
She turned and retched into the bowl; forcibly, violently—just retched and retched, her entire body shaking.
I looked at Hank—who was already on the phone—then reached up, slowly, and flushed the toilet.
“Now, listen. There’s, ah, there’s people on the way here who are gonna help us with this—this thing, okay? So, until then, you just lean on the big white telephone here and try not to move—and I mean not a lick. All right? Ya hear?”
And then my phone rang, and, God help me, I had to take it. Then Donovan’s girlfriend was on the line demanding to know why I’d made him walk around the cemetery in the middle of a thunderstorm—and that I had better go look for him, and give him a ride, like, yesterday.
Because he hadn’t come home yet, she said, and he wasn’t answering his phone.
But that wasn’t really what alarmed me. No, what alarmed me was: I hadn’t made him cut around the cemetery. And then thunder struck somewhere close; krack-kakroom! And I got a move on.
He lay spreadeagled like a ragdoll—like he’d been making a snow-angel—his tongue fat and blue; as if he’d been eating pomegranates—his entrails unspooled. The cumbersome poncho rustled as I dialed my cellphone and waited for it to ring—and ring.
Dammit, Bennet, pick up ...
“Hello, you’ve reached the personal number of Bennet ‘Benny’ Firth—Deputy; Sandy Chain Police Department; Badge Number—well, Badge Number 2, I mean, it’s a small department—winner of the 2017—”
I hung up and looked at the body—at its bloody hands, as though Donovan had been trying to shield his face; at the grass and dirt-turning-to-mud, which—
Well, wasn’t that odd.
I knelt and examined the ground—which was soaked in blood and rain. It was almost like—yuh, there; and there. Anterior and lateral support impressions. Nude; no shoes. And toeprints: one, two ... three—just three, with no evidence of a heel, no posterior support at all. Not human, obviously. Not dog. Not bear. More like a fucking ostrich; or—
Ka-crack! Karoom!
I jumped as lightning struck a nearby tree—my heartbeat surely stopping, if only for an instant, my bladder feeling as though it might void right then and there. Then I was up; I was standing, looking at the split trunk and the tree’s glowing pulp; looking at the burning branches, which crisped and fell away.
Fire extinguisher ... Dammit, get the fire extinguisher!
And then I was hustling, running for the truck as fast as I could, pausing at Cynthia’s grave—or at least where her grave should have been—feeling dazed and disoriented; spying the patrol truck where I’d left it—at Wilber’s—sprinting for it only to skid to a stop next to the fence and lean on my knees, panting.
Only to wait there where Oreo would have normally greeted me—just as he greeted everyone—with a hail of yaps and spit—but didn’t. Holding and looking at all the blood—then following that blood directly to his doghouse ... to where the poor thing had died half in and half out of its door. Where the poor thing had retreated to lick its mortal wounds and curl up in the cold, familiar straw; to wonder if it had protected its people and its property; to bleed out and die.
There was a crashing sound and I froze—the sound of wood splintering and glass breaking. A sound which had come from behind Wilber’s house.
I listened carefully, intently—heard only the wind and the rain, the thunder of lightning, dogs barking in the distance. At last it came again, only muffled somewhat, more muted: another splintering, another breaking of glass. This time, however, it hadn’t come from outside. No, this time it had born a kind of echo, a kind of interiority—as though it had originated from an interior space. As though it had originated from inside Wilber’s house.
As for what I was thinking as I gripped the shotgun and stepped through the shattered doors, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it was just the fact that it felt good to have it in my hands again—the shotgun, I mean, the Remington 870—“Fat Man,” as we called it, our nuclear option—the one Bennet wasn’t ever allowed to use. Or maybe it was Mollie’s newscast with its mentions of President Tucker’s refusal to concede and Steve Dannon’s Daedalus Seven returning to Earth, the connection being—I suppose—that both of them seemed about as possible as a baby suddenly vanishing or a killer ostrich wandering the peninsula.
Or maybe it was something else entirely; the fact that I’d been so focused on grieving Cynthia (and, paradoxically, perhaps, boning Mollie) that I’d lost track of who I was. It’s possible even that, as I raced through Wilber’s house armed to the teeth and—having heard something shatter in his bedroom—paused outside his door, I just felt like myself again.
All I know is that all of that went out the window the moment I stepped out and levelled the shotgun—which also happened to be the moment that anything that wasn’t, well, whatever that was (although, I confess, having seen Jurassic Park, I had a pretty good idea), simply ceased to exist. Rather, it seemed as though something else took over: something primitive, even primal, something deep within my mammalian DNA. A holdover from when we were frightened, possum-like creatures hiding in the trees, perhaps—an ancestral memory. Wilber, for his part, just slept like the dead.
The thing is that I completely froze as it turned; froze to the extent that I saw every detail of its skin even as I glimpsed Bennet aiming his pistol outside and dove for the floor. As he opened fire and the thing began bouncing off the walls and smashing bookcases, as it thrashed about like a deer I saw on the internet once (which had crashed through the window of a city bus and then proceeded to destroy everything in its path) and basically went insane—reminding me of the crazed deer and yet not, for it was—in the end—a thing utterly without comparison in this world.
A thing which nonetheless wound up in my sights and got blown away—even as Wilber yelped and clasped his ears and Bennet hit the dirt. Which, in the end, only impacted against the wall and collapsed, twitching and convulsing, as I looked outside with my ears still ringing, and, despite the fact that we were on an evergreen peninsula in western Washington State, saw the tops of palm trees swaying in the wind.
That’s when I saw them: the people who were left—the shell-shocked survivors of the Flashback (or whatever they call it where you are). That’s when I knew that their friends and loved ones had simply vanished—simply ceased to exist—no less than Cecilia’s baby—or Cynthia’s grave marker; no less than Mollie—who I would come to learn had disappeared during the interview. That’s when I knew that Time had melted and that we (and maybe a few others) were all that were and had ever been; that, indeed, the world had been (at least partially) reset to primordia; and that most of those who’d existed, existed no more.
In short, it was when they looked at me and I looked back, knowing my purpose, knowing my role. And finally it was when I patted Wilber on the shoulder and went out—feeling oddly invigorated, oddly at peace. Feeling as though I might yet make a difference—even as I sucked in the post-storm air.
SUN-DOGS (2022)
Her voice, once so lyrical to me, so melodic, positively grates:
“The scene here again ... I hate to draw the comparison, but it is the same thing that we saw thirty years ago in this same area ... this, this part of the city just destroying itself, burning itself up. The streets themselves are, ah, extremely dangerous. There are cars running—we clocked one at about sixty miles per hour—ah, just running down the street; no lights on, nothing, we see that constantly. We took a break, to brush some of the glass off of us, and, ah, get something to drink. We were next to a shopping center. A car drove into that area and just started firing shots randomly into cars parked in the parking lot. Even now we’re circling what appears to be a holdup—of a gas station at Florence and Normandie—I mean, that’s what it looks like from the air; people running, waving pistols, taking cans, or whatever they can find, and filling them up—presumably to start fires. It is just absolutely out of control here in South Central Los Angeles tonight. I—wait a minute. There’s something developing right here in the middle of the intersection. A truck driver has exited his vehicle—there’s, ah, smoke billowing from inside the cab—and seems almost to be, to be ...”
I look around the viewfinder and squint, seeing nothing—just pools of light from the streetlamps and the glow from various structures on fire. Just the chopper’s busted side window—its edges smeared with blood. “I don’t see anythin—”
But then I do—see him, I mean. Then I see him stumbling back into the light and waving up at us: sweepingly, expansively, a skinny, bearded, shirtless man—it is easily ninety degrees, inexplicable for November—a desert island survivor. “He sees something, someone is coming.” I glance at Peter but find I can hardly look at him, hardly look at either of them. “He’s in trouble—serious trouble—whoever he is. Take us down.”
Peter frowns. “After what happened at the shopping center?” He glances at Sunny, privately, knowingly. “That’s a negative.”
I look at Sunny, who also frowns. “He’s right, Preston. We shouldn’t risk it.” She shakes the hair out of her eyes, lifts her mic. “Are you rolling?”
I peer through the viewfinder at the man—at the desert island survivor who is backing toward his truck, his semi, the cab of which is on fire—and press ‘record.’
“Well? You’ve got the telephoto lens. What’s going on?”
“There’s someone approaching him. Some kind of mob. But I can’t—” I grind the finder and zoom in. “Okay, yuh, they’re gathering beneath the canopy of that Chevron; I can see their shadows.” I look at Peter. “It’s no good, I got nothing. Can you take us lower—say, to about two hundred feet?”
“With all those wires and powerlines, and in all this smoke?” Peter laughs.
“Just do it,” I say—as the studio feed crackles back to life—and continue recording.
Peter harrumphs. “Just do it,” he repeats—and harrumphs again. “Look, flying a helicopter isn’t like running—”
“Sunny, expound on that some, on brushing the glass off, if you would. Is everyone alright? What happened out there?”
“Yes, Sam, I’m here, and we, we were at the corner of Denker and Slauson, just, just flying low near the Slauson Shopping Center, where a crowd had gathered, and, ah, there was a man there—just sitting in the middle of the street—ah, he appeared to be an Asian man. Just sitting there, drenched in blood. There was also a, an African-American man—who appeared to be some kind of minister—who was standing over him, trying to shield him from all the, the projectiles being thrown. And so we landed—we were trying to find a way that we could rescue him; that we could get him out of there—but it got to the point where it was either him or the rest of us, because we were taking rocks and bottles and there was occasionally some gunfire. We had to get ourselves out and in the process of doing that, our side window got smashed. One of the rioters even tried grabbing us through the window. And, ah, you know, I hate to tell you this, but, we felt really guilty about that, about having just ... left him there. And I pray to God that he somehow managed to get himse—”
“Jesus,” I say, just as plain as day, before I stop myself. Before I can deny the evidence of my own eyes, which I attribute to all the smoke and fire and darkness, and to fatigue. Which I attribute to the night before and to still being hungover, and to the Incident, which rides with us still. “No—ah. Never mind. It’s ... it’s just ... all this destruction. It’s nothing.”
But it is something, says a voice (even as I wipe my eyes and peer through the viewfinder). It’s something and you know it; same as when they were dancing together. Look closer.
And I do—look closer, I mean—at the shadows beneath the canopy and how they move so—so precisely; so primly—so haltingly, like cold-blooded animals. At the white of the truckdriver’s eyes and worse, his hurt, wounded expression (as though he can scarcely believe the trick the world has played on him). At the swish-swishing—again—of some kind of appendage; some kind of tentacle (or tail). At his assailants’ wet, shiny backs (it rained all day prior to the announcement of the Seattle verdict and the streets are still slick with it) as they rush forward, darting, bounding, leaping!
“What on earth, I mean, what the—” Sunny is dumbstruck, taciturn. “Are those, I mean, are they using dogs now?”
“Get us out of here,” I say, ceasing to record, and then lie: “Some of them are pointing guns.” But they only look at me, confused. “Go on, get us out of here: split, vamoose, head for the hills. God knows you two know how to do that. There’s nothing we can do.”
And then we are clear, the blades of the chopper going whump-whump-whump, like the blood in my brain. Then we are once again arching out over South Central L.A. like carpetbaggers, like opportunists—which I suppose we are—exchanging sweaty glances, reeling from the awkwardness, listening to the blades which pound faster and faster and faster—like war drums, I fancy, or fevered congas. Like the pulsing rhythms of a crowded nightclub—or more specifically Johnny Depp’s own Viper Room in West Hollywood—at 1:30 a.m.
“This is the Los Angeles County Emergency Broadcast System—this is not a test. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is now in full mobilization; all off-duty sheriff’s deputies are directed to contact their unit of assignment as soon as possible, or contact the nearest Los Angeles County Police facility. Due to the escalation of the situation, and seriousness of the problems that are occurring, the sheriff has mobilized all department personnel. The curfew has been extended to include the entire Los Angeles city limits, and to include Los Angeles County boundaries of Vernon Avenue on the north ...”
I look at Sunny, who looks at Peter, who looks at me.
“So what do we do?” he says, covering the mic of his headset.
“We keep at it,” I say, curtly, plainly. “We stay up until it’s resolved—the riot, I mean. We, ah, we just do our jobs.”
“... and the Long Beach Freeway on the east. The California Army National Guard has been deployed to assist the Sheriff’s Department and Los Angeles Police Department in a mutual aid operation to restore law and ...”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“... protect life and property. This concludes this activation of the Los Angeles County Emergency Broadcast System ...”
He faces forward, leans into the controls. “Well, which job is that? Gazing through that camera endlessly and making smart comments, or keeping us in the air? Because they are not the same.”
I titter a little. And then it happens: “Oh, you know, the job I helped you get after you got canned from KTTV for sexual harassment. The one that saved your whole career. I mean, it’s funny. Because some people might actually be gr—”
“Stop it,” snaps Sunny.
“Might actually be—”
“Okay, okay, let’s go there. Might what? Be grateful that they’re indebted to you?” Peter nods his head, which shines. “Oh, I see. You mean like an indentured servant. Like, some kind of house nigger, is that it?”
I just shake my head. “Oh, no. No, no. I didn’t bring race into it. That’s your bullshit. It’s not anything I would—”
“I said stop it, both of you. This isn’t the place for it. The studio is talking to us.”
I glower at her a moment before reaching out and cranking it up.
“... have been speaking to you over some video shot a while ago by your sister helicopter Sundog 9, which is in the Long Beach area, of the fires you’ve been describing, and they seem to be everywhere. Can you talk a little about that?”
Sunny straightens and fusses with her hair, even though she won’t be on camera. “They are indeed everywhere, Sam. Ah, and we can see a bunch of vehicles, I mean, there’s gutted cars, fire gutted cars, just about everywhere you go. Ah, ah, the fire department, unfortunately, in too many instances, can do nothing. They don’t have police backup to protect them to go in and fight these fires and so they are left just to watch them burn. I should also tell you that as we monitor the police activity, ah, hardly a five-minute span of time goes by without us hearing the call of an officer needing assistance, an officer being fired upon. It’s just lawlessness, Sam. Absolute—”
But I’ve stopped listening, choosing instead to rewind the footage, to confirm what I already know, which is that L.A. is not, in fact, being overrun by monsters, by murder birds (which is what my niece calls velociraptors—which is what the wet-backed things looked like), and that, as a result of my best friend having fucked my fiancé, I am simply losing it. That I drank too much before we even went to the club (which we somehow got into, probably because of Sunny’s good looks and/or local celebrity) and that I passed out while they were dancing and had to cab it home (where Peter answered the door; even as Sunny—my fucking fiancé!—stepped from the shower). That I’m in no condition to be on this fucking helicopter while L.A. burns, much less with them.
I hit ‘play’ and grind the viewfinder: see dark forms rushing the truckdriver, rushing him and piling on, their (tails?) whipping about, and yet nothing is clear, nothing concrete. They’re just forms, just blurry dark streaks, streaks that could be anything.
