MAGGIE


Somewhere outside New York City, July 7, 2014.


The sky is white-hot blue again this morning. Not the cooling blue we have always known. Blue with a searing reddish perimeter, like a heart wrenched upside down and ripped inside out. The heart that was the world is dying, and soon enough the rest of the body will follow in its wake.

Maggie and I have made it to the outskirts of New York, or what is left of it, yet I don’t think we’ll be able to go any farther east. No doubt everyone this side of the Rockies has tried to get here. It was stupid of me. I should have headed out of Omaha and made for San Francisco, but I’m certain the same thing has happened there. Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle—anywhere there is, or at least was, a harbor with a boat. Yet, had I done that I would not have happened upon this child.

The once-magnificent Big Apple bears little resemblance to the grand old center of culture it was just three short months ago when all this hell started. Nothing does. But the trees I’ve seen along the way are what seem to strike me the most; dead already in the heat. Our lovely elms, stately oaks and cottonwoods—mere ghosts, now. The grass everywhere has withered. The highways have become like heating coils on a stove, jammed with abandoned cars and trucks that explode when the gasoline in the tanks ignites. Cities like Chicago, Cleveland, and Buffalo stand without movement except for the few who’ve remained on their streets to parade around in sack cloth carrying doomsday signs, or roam like rabid dogs cornering anything weaker. A dwindling number of animals that aren’t yet lying dead beneath burnt out bushes stagger aimlessly, their ribs showing and their tongues hanging out. The once mighty Great Lakes have shrunk like rotten fruit, the shorelines almost lost in the shimmering distance. We all head east, but it is a fruitless journey.

Our lovely planet has stopped rotating.

No one knows precisely why, but we all know that it happened. For those lucky enough to still be connected 4-G, we know that physics was turned upside down. We know that the spinning slowed, and then stopped entirely. We haven’t been told why. The leading physicists don’t know why. It couldn’t happen, they said, but it did. The western hemisphere is facing the sun; the eastern is in continual darkness. We burn, they freeze, and all of us watch as the Atlantic rises. We wonder how long it will take until the Pacific is a gigantic graveyard of desert sand. Will the Atlantic and Indian Oceans attempt to fill in the void? No one is certain. Wild storms arise over the Atlantic as the earth tries to regain its balance. Did we cause this catastrophe? No one is certain. No one is certain of anything except that we will all perish, likely sooner rather than later.

We continue on in the direction of darkness and the only hope of salvation, like animals driven by instinct. I’d rather freeze to death than feel my blood begin to boil inside my veins. Who wouldn’t? And so we flock toward the sea, all of us, there only to be caught in a net. If the heat doesn’t kill us, the crazed search for food and water will. We will kill each other in the war to get these two things alone. We will kill each other to find a boat or a log so that we can leave this continent. In time, those left will need no particular reason at all to kill.

Maybe north.

Maggie cries. She wants her “Moomy,” but her moomy is dead. I have no idea about her father or her brothers. Dead too, I imagine, eaten by dogs or those who are starving and have no humanness left in them. Had I left her there outside Chicago two weeks ago, little Maggie would be no more. I couldn’t do it, and though it is difficult enough for me to find a scrap of bread or a thimble-full of water, I cannot abandon her to certain death. One of these animals will rape her and then eat her. Such is the insanity and depravity that has infected us. I’ve seen it.

Maggie tells me she is six years old. She’s black, and very pretty with tight ringlets of velvet hair, eyes the color of jet, and soft, intense features. She attended school and liked reading, spelling and recess, but cared little for arithmetic, she said. She and her family lived in a highrise tenement—I took it to be one, though she didn’t use the word tenement, just home. Two long months after the anomaly, her father and two brothers told Maggie and her mother to stay put; keep the door locked, that they’d return with food and water. Two more weeks passed and they failed to come back. Her mother took her hand in desperation, then, and left. They made it one hundred-fifty miles after having wandered through South Chicago for days looking for her father and brothers. I found her the morning after her mother died. I had to pull her kicking and screaming away from the body, but I knew what would happen if I left her behind.

“You’ll see her again someday, Maggie, but right now we have to keep you safe,” I said to her once her screaming subsided a few miles down the highway. She didn’t answer. Of course she couldn’t understand any of this horror. What six year-old could? How could anyone?

Still, by the time we reached the outskirts of Toledo she began to trust me a little and open up. I told her that I’d been a schoolteacher, that I too liked spelling and reading, but not so much recess as I was afraid of the monkey bars on the playground, and the terrifying prospect of returning to the schoolhouse to face arithmetic when the bell rang. At last she smiled up at me with those sparkling coal eyes.

***

We’ve taken to hiding at “night” under a vicious blue sky that has grabbed hold of the ravaged planet so that even the stars have fled forever. There is no beauty left in the heavens, only an ugly foreboding. The roads are unsafe, littered with the dead and nearly dead; the roving bands, and so when this never-ending hike has exhausted us we detour into the fields that were planted with corn in the spring. None of it has been harvested, nor will it ever be. Like all the other fields, this one we are in stretches over the cracked earth, with tall brown stalks that catch the hot winds and whisper further of death. Still, it is safe here, safer at least than beside the road or in one of the farmhouses.

I have devised a shelter to protect us from the searing rays of the sun out of a blanket we found outside Newark three days ago. Maggie gathered up four light, thin branches with Ys on one end from one of the dead trees near the road, and we sharpened the other to push into the soil at four points—far enough apart to carry the blanket. Without this crude shelter we would be forced to find an abandoned building and the dangers lurking within. I don’t know how the Bedouins stay cool, dressing as they do, sleeping in tents. Ours is stifling, but at least we’ve created a semblance of darkness. She will sleep soon, I hope, but I will not.

Maggie is lying close to me, cradled in my arm. She’s frightened by the occasional shriek or scream far in the distance. I try to comfort her.

“Have you ever heard the story of Rapunzel?”

“Oh yes! I saw it on TV. I liked Maximus best,” she says.

“Maximus? Who is that?” I search my memories of the fairytale for a character named Maximus, but draw a blank. Another shriek pierces the gloom, and then a muffled explosion from somewhere far away. Maggie seems not to notice either, now.

“Flynn’s horse!”

“Who is Flynn?” Whatever fairytale she is referring to seems to have only a girl named Rapunzel in common with the Grimm classic I am thinking of. Maggie cuddles closer and tells me the story. The movie version is something like the land we traverse, desperately wanting for water, devoid of the life it once had. I’m happy she is calm here in this blotted field, unafraid for the moment, but I am listening with my other ear for any sound, watching with both eyes.

I found a pistol tucked into the waistband of a dead man last week. He had no use for it any longer. There are two bullets in the clip. One for Maggie, one for me if it comes to it. God help us.

Tomorrow we will continue north.

***

I roll over and awaken to the harsh glint of sunlight through the tattered stalks visible at the open end of our tent. Maggie is not beside me. I panic and rip the pistol from the waistband at my back and roll outside, which makes the dead corn shucks crackle like an alarm beneath my body. I listen, focusing every bit of my dwindling energy into my ears. Nothing. It’s deathly silent. The rows of yellowed plants stretch straight to my right and my left for as far as I can see. Which direction should I go, I wonder? Did she simply wake up while I slept and wander off in search of something to drink or eat? Or…or…what became of her? Should I call out her name? But no. If I do and someone has her…

I rush to the right down the crust of earth between the stalks as quietly as I can, my pistol pointed straight ahead. The sound of my feet is deafening, though—a stampede of cattle would be quieter. I see nothing, hear nothing. Perhaps I should call?

I move more rapidly, slamming through the dead stalks, now, as though I were a beast in the jungle trying to evade a predator. But, I have a weapon. If someone has her I won’t hesitate to kill him.

“Maggie! Maggie!” I finally yell. The words fall from my mouth as though I’ve screamed them into a pillow. I stop. Listen intently, frozen for a moment. Listening.

Nothing.

***

An hour has passed. I’ve made a wide circle through the field, and I’m back to our ragged home. I curse myself for having fallen asleep. I curse whoever has her. The state of this land. The sun. The silence. Myself.

There is a farmhouse a few miles back in the direction we came from yesterday. I’ll go there. Perhaps she was simply hungry and thirsty enough to have wandered off alone in search of something to eat or drink. The farmhouse is where I would go if I were a child. Maybe she’s safe, sitting cross-legged on the floor in its kitchen, struggling to open an overlooked can of beans, or beets, or fruit cocktail. God, give me this one wish; that she’s there and safe.

***

The county road runs straight as an arrow; north and south twenty yards or so in front of the white clapboard house. The heat has baked the paint and turned it whiter still, purifying it, perhaps, for the Second Coming. It hits me that maybe that is what this terrible upheaval is all about. Maybe God isn’t dead after all. The ridgeline of the dark green roof sags, and ribbons of thermal air rise from it like ghosts, and the windows—those that aren’t broken—are dark. There is an old well pump behind the house with a long gray spout and gently curving handle. My impulse is to run to it, but I check my step—the well is probably dry anyway. The back door is ajar, standing forlornly beneath the lean-to porch atop the four-staired stoop. I have the pistol drawn and walk through the dust toward it, watching for any movement in the shadows of the interior. The weathered wooden steps creak with each step, and even with the gun I am frightened. I’m just a damned schoolteacher for God’s sake.

The kitchen is a disaster. It looks like the storms of Africa have wheeled through with a new fury, driven by demons. Every single utensil is on the floor, the cupboards are open, the doors ripped off their hinges. Paper crumpled and spotted black litters the floor. The smell of urine and excrement is heavy. Broken chairs that once seated a family lay haphazardly. I pass over all of it and walk cautiously down the hallway, stopping to peer into an equally devastated bathroom, a parlor with more destruction, the living room. All devoid of life. The second floor rooms are the same, only hotter. Maggie is not here, and so I return to the main floor.

The barn and an outbuilding stand fifty yards away at the rear, in front of a picket fence that has toppled into the dust and tumbleweeds that are like leggy buttresses. The small outbuilding is empty, save a few piles of non-essential tools and odds and ends no one wanted when they scoured the shelves. I leave it.

As I cross the short distance to the barn, one door moves slightly in the searing breeze. I can hear the sun; the crackling of it. Its death knell. I enter quietly and adjust my eyes to the near darkness, listening for a moment, but the only sound I hear is my heart hammering. She’s here, she must be, gagged and terrified. A thick post to my right affords protection, and I move quickly behind it. If he or they shoot, the worst that will happen will be a non-lethal wound. And then they will die—at least two of them.

“Maggie!”

No response. No gunfire. I call again. No response.

I am from the city and have never seen the inside of a real barn. This one erases my image of a bucolic home for horses. It once housed some kind of animal, though; there are several stalls on the left of the cracked concrete main walkway. Piles of hay, useless as food for starving humans. On the right are stacks of weathered wood on a scaffold-like platform, a few rusted tools hanging from large nails driven into the posts. A dented barrel with what looks like a short chimney piercing the top. No need for a stove any longer. In time it will crumble into more dust.

“Maggie,” I whisper. “Are you…” a foolish question I cut short as I walk down the walkway. Ten minutes later I have turned every strand of hay over looking for my sweet, innocent child. She is not here. There are no hidden trap doors, no concealed spaces in the walls or rafters. I am near to tears. At the rear of the building, however, there is a heavy door, padlocked shut from the outside. Frustration and despair move me to somehow open it, even though hope of finding her alive has faded.

Ten minutes and a frantic search for a hammer or crowbar finally rewards me. The end of the crowbar nearly yanked hold of my eye, jammed as the tool was in between the stacks of boards on the platform.

I am hungry and thirsty and sweating moisture out of my body that screams for water, but I manage to pry the latch free of the large screws that secure it to the planks of wood.

Maggie is not inside. I curse…but there is something. An old motorcycle leaning pristine on its kickstand in the center of the small, dark room. I would trade ten thousand of them for one cup of water. A hundred thousand for Maggie. I wonder if it still works; if there is gasoline in the tank. With such a means of conveyance I could cover thirty or forty miles through these cursed fields every hour in search of her. On this bike I might be able to find little Maggie, but if not, I could aim it at one of the trees with the throttle open, and so be done with my hideous life.
***

The tank, I found, was nearly full, and the well, thank God, was not dry, which is a curiosity in this Bessemer world. A crushed plastic milk container rifled from the kitchen becomes my canteen. It will hold a quart or so of the precious water. I am hungry, but my thirst is abated, and so I am off to scour the area for Maggie.

The sputter-rattle of the engine must alert anyone of my approach. I watch the stalks fall as I blaze through them, and I stand on the foot pegs to see the terrain and anything hiding or running. But there is nothing out here except dead corn until I come to a long, wide ditch that winds through the landscape near the far north end of the acreage. I follow it along its ridge, noting the remains of shoddy camps, praying that Maggie is here and that there aren’t so many of her captors that my two bullets can’t bring them down.

The hours drag on. I’ve covered a vast area, stopping often to drink, ignoring the pangs in my stomach. There is nothing here, and so I backtrack and search again, wishing for a full magazine of bullets with which to kill anything and everything I pray I’ll stumble onto. I am becoming them. Where have they taken her?

***

A week has passed, and I have abandoned hope of finding the only thing left of my miserable life. I cannot bring myself to dwell on my precious Maggie’s fate. Perhaps she is alive somewhere, but the prospect is fraught with doubt. God damn this world.

I am in Canada, now, a land singed and beaten by the merciless sun no less than any I have seen behind me, and I’ve coursed through Nova Scotia to Cape Breton where the angry sea batters the coast. Those clever or lucky or unfortunate enough to survive mill through the ravaged streets, or lay hopeless in doorways. Faces reflect an angst that is written in despair in vacant eyes. I ride through their midst, hoping one last time to see my child, but I expect no miracle. A park stands ahead, overlooking the sea, and in it is a lighthouse. I go there and drop the bike near the cobbled walkway leading to its entrance, and then amble around it to the seaward side. What do I expect to see far out in the gray-azure swells that follow one another toward this end of land? An ark? A spirit rushing like a tidal wave with rescuing arms extended to me?

I see my death in the waves that smash into the rocks below me.

I sit defeated with my back against the red-painted brick of the silent beacon. My pistol has two bullets. I’ll only need one, and so I withdraw the weapon from my waistband, and ask Maggie for forgiveness.

Impressum

Texte: (c) Patrick Sean Lee, 2011
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 18.04.2011

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Widmung:
To the children.