Love in the Age of Reptiles

The Big Empty-3

Now, you might ask: Didn’t I find it odd that she’d be so adamant on sleeping separately—in spite of the cold and her earlier flirtatiousness—that we had to drag a bed into the antechamber? And my answer is: No. Not really. Rather, I just took it to mean she was establishing a boundary, and that the apocalypse itself couldn’t turn her into something she wasn’t—which, frankly, I respected. Besides, any man who knows anything knows the coin paid going in is the same earned staying out, which is to say Time, however scrambled it had become, was on my side, and I knew it.

More than any of that, though, was that I wanted to try out the radio, which I did, drinking scotch from the caretaker’s stash and looking out the window—which framed the breakers and gathered pterodactyls like a picture—wrapped in one of the keeper’s thick, filthy blankets. At which I was delighted to discover that the batteries were good and that it in fact worked— and so began scrubbing the dial; hoping, against hope, to catch something, anything (an emergency broadcast signal, a test tone, anything) but finding only static; until, suddenly, even as I was about to give up, there were a flurry of sounds—sounds such as I hadn’t heard since before the Flashback—which, taken together, constituted a thing I’d thought no longer possible, a thing as extinct as the terrible lizards themselves, which I turned down immediately in order to keep all to myself, and soaked up as though fresh from the desert—marinating in it, breathing it all in, drowning.

Woah, Georgia ... Geoorrgia ... No peace, no peace I find. Just an old, sweet song, keeps Georgia, on my miiind ....

I think I must have sunk to the floor, sunk to it in a veritable puddle, spilling the bottle of scotch which clinked and sloshed, forgetting about the cold and the lantern and the pit raptors—which may or may not have still been out there—forgetting the lost country and its hopelessness.

I said just an old, sweet song, keeps Georgia ... on my miiind ...

Until it was over, and the instruments and back-up singers had all faded to nothing, and a voice came on—a new voice, a speaking voice; a woman’s voice—and said, mellifluously, “And that was the immortal Ray Charles, with “Georgia on my Mind.” And this—this is Radio Free Montana—with Bella Ray, broadcasting from Barley Hot Springs in what some used to call the Great White North—which was not intended as a compliment.” She laughed. “So just trust in God and keep your powder dry; and stay with us here wherever you may be—whether that’s a cold water flat in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, or a high-rise hotel in Miami-Dade—wherever you are out there in the Big Empty, we here at KAAR-RFM will try to have your back. And now it’s back to the music and Patsy Cline, with “Walking After Midnight.” Take it away, Patsy!”

I was up and moving down the hall almost before I’d realized it, double-timing it for Amelia’s room, using one of the flashlights I’d found to see the way, knocking on her door (which seemed thick as a vault now that I thought about it and just sort of absorbed the sound, like solid rock).

Jesus, I remember thinking. I’d searched for a mere signal and found a whole community! It was like we’d gotten rescued from Gilligan’s Island; escaped from the Land of the Lost. Like we’d come home from Oz itself. And I simply couldn’t wait to tell her— although how the music hadn’t awakened her was completely beyond me. I mean, surely—

But she didn’t answer the door, which seemed impossible, not even when I pounded on it with my fists, which literally shook off paint peelings. “Amelia!” I shouted. “Amelia!” I pounded again and again. “Wake up, Amelia!”

Until at last I thought, f**k this, and tried the knob—only to find it locked. At which I resolved to kick it in (fat chance), or find an ax (she could be dying in there!), and was backing away from it to try just that, when it occurred to me I was acting like a psychopath and a fool.

The fact was, she was a heavy sleeper, I’d seen it myself the previous night. And she was in the habit of wrapping the pillow about her head, which would have further blunted any sound. And that door—Jesus Christ.

I wandered back into the living room and turned off the radio, to conserve the batteries. It would just have to wait until morning, like digging the key out of the corpse’s pocket. The fact was—everything was going to be all right. And with that I found another bottle of liquor—Jeppson’s Malört, whatever the f**k that was—and settled in on the couch; after which the grandfather clock struck 8 and what looked a plesiosaur, only huge, like a small whale, leapt from the ocean—to snatch one of the pterodactyls from the orange-painted rocks.

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