The Concrete Veldt

ATTENTION!-2

They needed to go, I decided, peering over the scope at the windows of 24 Taps Burgers and Brews—and fired; the AR 15’s muzzle flashing, making a fiery cross; the glass shattering and raining down—like sparkling glitter.

“The bus,” said Clinton, his voice piqued with excitement, and laughed. “Hit the bus.”

I aimed at the STA coach and fired—raking it with bullets, obliterating its windows, blowing its windshield out as we passed.

“Here,” said Clinton. He reached behind him and groped for something—came up with a package of red-stemmed bottle rockets. “It’ll save on ammo.”

I took the package and looked at it. “What are we saving it for; the Afterlife? We’ll need two, one for you and one for me.”

“Well, who says you get to have all the fun until then?” He glanced at the road and then back to me. “So—switch it up.”

I steadied the rifle between my legs and reached for my knife. “Sure, I guess.” I slit the package open and removed a rocket. “I’m going to miss the Nunnery, I know that.” I slid the stem into my empty beer bottle. “Especially ... you know.”

“Alexa.” He scoffed at the idea. “Dude; she isn’t going to miss you. Your toilet paper, maybe. The antibiotics ... But you, as a man? Forget it.”

I guess I must have shrugged. “Yeah, well.” I reached for the lighter and held it to the fuse. “Over there—iguanodon by the Dodson’s clock. Corner pocket.”

“But that’s—”

And then he was ducking, ducking and covering his head with an arm, as I pointed the bottle at his window and the fuse sparked, hissing. As the paper projectile launched without warning and bounced off the window frame; then ricocheted about the cab like a bullet, like a punctured gas cylinder—sizzling, screaming, colliding against glass, careening off the seats and the dashboard even as Clinton pulled the car over and ratcheted the break. As we piled out of the doors and the rocket burst: flooding the cab with white light, showering the pavement with sparks.

“Just—holy-f*****g-Christ,” gasped Clinton. He jumped up and down—doing the bug dance. “Are you insane?”

I laughed even though I could hardly breathe—then steadied myself against a tree. “No, no. Just—I’m just really a shitty shot.” I looked at him through my bangs. “Sure you don’t have anything to live for?”

It was, of course, an attempt at levity. A way to lighten the load—lessen the burden—to laugh, even, at what the world had become, what we’d decided to do. At making that decision bearable. Instead, I think, it came across as a challenge.

“Oh. I see.” He looked me square in the eyes. “So—it’s a joke, then. Is that it? The pact, the promise—”

I started shaking my head.

“No?”

He went to the car and shut it off—curtly, decisively, even as I attempted to dig out. “Look, Clint—”

“Shhh,” he whispered—and held up a finger. “Just listen.”

“Look—”

“Do it.”

I did it; scanning the broad, empty avenue and the dark, silent buildings, the cars scattered helter-skelter, the stark, tumbling debris. “I don’t hear any ...”

But I did hear it. The emptiness. The vacuum (or nearly so). The sound of the iguanodon foraging even as a pterodactyl squawked somewhere in the night and a newspaper skittered, crab-like, across the street. The sound of the world after people; after cities. A concrete veldt.

“Listen,” he repeated—and gestured expansively. “Look. Look at those cycad bushes, those stands of palms ... see how they crowd the evergreens, the so-called natives? And look there; at that bus driver—see how the tree has simply, amalgamated him? And what’s that—that ghostly light?” He looked at the sky and the clouds shot through with green; at the hovering lights—which glimmered and pulsed. “Only our ‘friends’—whoever, whatever they are. Only that force; that phenomenon—as indifferent as Nature herself—which has selected us for extinction; for the trash bin of history.” He stared at me feverishly, intensely. “As though we never existed. As though the millions, the billions, who have been vanished—the husbands and wives and children, the entire families—the whole f*****g cities!—had never been born at all.”

He took a step back, smartly, crisply—as though to punctuate what he was saying. “And you think that’s worth living for? Or that I would want that? Or even—”

“Look, forget it,” I said, and went to the car. “It was a f*****g joke.” I got in and slammed the door—turned the key enough to power the stereo. “Let’s go!”

He hesitated as AC/DC played “Squealer”—then shouted over the music: “We check out at dawn, asshole. Just like agreed. Because I ain’t doin’ Hell alone.”

“Okay, okay, just shut the f**k up, would you?”

And he got in—lighting a cigarette before shutting the door, fetching us each a warm Genesee (which I snatched and twisted open), putting the car in gear as I flicked the cap away and saw her for the first time: the Girl on the Dinosaur—and a predatory one, at that—the Girl in the Custom Saddle. The girl crossing Stevens Street at Sprague—just as cool and calm as could be.

The girl I tried to follow until we rumbled up Riverside Avenue and she disappeared behind First Interstate Bank; though not before she looked at me and smiled, I swear. Not before I’d fallen in love with her; a ghost, an eidolon. A figment of my imagination.

––––––––