Mad Tales

Chapter 5 - City of Salt

CHAPTER 5 City of SaltI’m on the floor of someplace I’ve never seen, looking at a boot worn by a man I don’t know. The carpet is plush and full, decorated with blue and yellow in swirling patterns. Head aches. Blood in my mouth from when the boot on the man I don’t know kicked me, or where I fell. I don’t know. I can’t remember. I lose time.

Try not to let the blood drip on the carpet. It’s a nice carpet, and I don’t want to ruin it, but the blood drips onto it anyway.

Last thing I remember is the house on the edge of town. Looted. Porch stooped and leaned like a dirty old man. Black windows like black widows. Spider web in the corner of the porch blew in the breeze and I remember thinking “This is good.” I stared at the web for a while. It was caught in the full cracked moon, and then I felt it creep across my brain, an electric spider web spreading out like a wash of prickers, and then I wake up and I’m on the floor, looking at the boot and bleeding carpet. I try to speak, but my voice is little more than a croak.

“Salvation?”

Laughter from the room. More than just the boot-wearing man. All around me.

This isn’t Salvation.

“Water.”

More men laughing. Gravelly and bitter. One snorts.

My hands are tied behind my back to a chair. Feet to feet, leg to leg, so we’re like one crooked thing spilled out on the floor.

“Set him up, please,” someone says. Male, high-pitched, smooth.

The chair swings up and I get dizzy, skyrockets in my head in the back, right where it meets my neck. Spider web lightenings across my eyes, but none in my brain. I lose no time. And then I’m up, head pounding whump whump whump with my heart. Fat man on the other side of a fat desk in front of me smoking a fat cigar. The smoke burns my eyes and throat and I cough. You can smell smoke in somebody’s hair from fifteen feet away. Fifty if the wind’s right.

“Give him some water, Chuck,” the fat man says. He doesn’t drop his letters, doesn’t say “‘im,” asks politely. He’s educated; he’s in charge. Then he coughs, harsh and hoarse, like an old man on that dirty old porch.

Something wet pours over my head. Water. Chuck giggles. I can’t see him but I know he’s looking over his shoulder at his friends. The fat man leans forward and clasps his pork roll fingers in front of him on the table. He chews on the cigar in the left corner of his mouth, lips shine with spittle.

“Now to drink.” He raises his eyebrows. “Please.”

Laughter stops. Bottle to my lips. Water cools my mouth, my throat, my belly. No sediment. Clean. Bottled. I gulp so hard that it spills down my chin and neck. I gasp when Chuck takes it away.

“Fugee,” he snarls, and smacks the back of my head so hard that my hair falls in my face.

My hair is long, and it’s wet with the water he poured all over it, and when I whip it back the water flies off and spatters all over him.

“Goddammit!”

Fat man motions him away with one impatient and thick hand. Cigar smoke trails above his head in waves.

The cigar smoke masks the other scents. Good scents. I let my nostrils flare.

Chuck smells like manure.

Manure means animals.

Animals mean food.

The fat man smells like alcohol and soap.

Soap means showers.

Showers mean hygiene.

This is a good place. I won’t be allowed to stay.

Fat man is speaking:

“. . . going to help us get it.” Leans back in his chair. It creaks. His belly sticks out like a watermelon in a sheet, his white pants pulled up almost to his chest.

“Get what?”

Skyrockets in my brain. Pain in my temple. It takes a while to fight off the spider web, and I lose a little time. When I come back the room is empty but for the fat man and me and Chuck. Something running out of my nose, over my lips.

I run a dry tongue over them. Cracked. Blood.

“You back with us?” Fat man.

I nod. Keep my head down, hair in my face. People don’t like the looks I make when I’m angry. It scares them. So I hide it.

“Get what?” I ask.

The fat man puffs on his cigar.

“Salt.” A carpet of smoke erupts from his lips.

“Salt.”

I think until I feel the spider webs creep up my spine, and then I stop. No salt on the way into town. I remember I smelled the river, dank and earthy. I smelled the smoke from the fires carried down by the wind; the ash burned my eyes, my nose, my throat. I heard the crickets and the frogs by the river. I saw the houses, most of them burned down to the ground or only standing halfway.

“For the meat?”

Fat man smiles.

“You’re not as dumb as you look.”

“Where?”

Fat man stubs out the cigar on an ashtray with the words Visit Niagara! written in thick balloon letters. Rolls the edges. It glows for a minute in the center until he plunges it down.

“The city.”

The city. Fire flies streak the air. Screams. Blood running down my leg. Flash of rotten teeth, pale arms. A meat cleaver.

“No.”

Fat man nods and leans back in his chair.His pig eyes fall on Chuck over my shoulder. Nods once. Curt.

Do it.

Flash of skyrockets in my head.

Spider web over my brain.

I lose time.

My hands are still tied behind my back. I’m in a car, moving fast.

I must have mumbled something because a voice to my right says, “Hey, Pete. He’s up.”

Chuck.

“Untie me.”

Pete’s driving. He says, “What’s he sayin’?”

Smoke. Sweat. Manure. Alcohol. I can smell them all from fifty yards away.

“He wants me to untie him.”

Pete laughs.

“Not yet.”

Look out the window. Let my hands feel along the waistband of my pants. My knife, a little shank of metal, is still there. My head cracks against the window. Stars in my eyes. Chuck hit me.

“Water?” he barks.

I blink the stars away. Nod.

He holds a bottle to my lips and I gulp, gladly, once, then spit a mouthful out all over the seat in front of me. Piss.

Chuck, laughing, coarse, Pete cusses in front of me. I wait until Chuck closes his eyes for just one second.

Throw myself at him, aim my forehead for the soft of his eye. Stars for a bit, then I am on top of him. My mouth finds his ear.

Chuck yells, “Get him off me!”

Screams to squeals. Blood on my tongue, something hard lands on the back of my skull. Stars explode again, but I don’t let go. A thud. More stars. I lose time.

On the edge of the city. Smell the ash. Burnt metal. Rot in the distance. Fires deep inside, I can see their glow, the heart of the animal. Their fires.

Chuck presses the barrel of a shotgun against my temple, the left side of his face is awash in blood.

Spider web around the base of my skull. I lose time and then I’m up and Chuck is under me, his arm at an angle. My knife is buried past the hilt in his skinny, red farmer’s neck. Pete has the shotgun now, trained on me, but not against me, and his eyes are wide and his mouth is shut. The other man’s mouth is shut, too. My mouth. Was wide. Open.

The other man says, “What should we do?”

Pete swallows.

“Fat man wants his salt.” He nods at me. “Wants him to get it.”

“Look what he done to Chuck.”

Pete lowers the barrel a little. His eye skitters over Chuck. He says, “Maybe Chuck shouldn’t have did that.” He says, “Maybe Chuck deserved what he give him.”

Lowers the barrel all the way.

“You wanna get it by yourself?”

The other man stares at Pete. Takes a step back. Pete smiles. His teeth are straight and white. Raises the barrel at me.

“He seems to know what he’s doing.”

“Yeah,” the other agrees, fast, voice shaking.

Upwind as we pick over the barricade. Fires somewhere burning. Smell smoke and flesh burning. The asphalt is a river bed in drought. Half buildings, skeleton arms poking up into the sky. Jagged windows like broken teeth.

Pete says, “Where to?”

I don’t speak.

Pete says, “Where to?” again, harder.

I don’t speak.

“He ain’t talking,” says the other one.

I stop and turn around, hold up my wrists still bound.

They stare at me. A long time.

“What do you think, Pete?”

Pete pulls the keys off his belt. Throws them to me, jingling in the air. Can hear that a hundred yards away. Scrape on the broken concrete. Wind shifts when I kneel to pick them up.

We walk for a mile or so, me between the other two. Pete points at a tall, old apartment building.

“What about that one? Bound to be salt up in there.”

I shake my head.

“Well why the hell not?”

“Palies.”

“Pale what?”

“Palies.”

“What the—”

Scrape of feet on the asphalt behind me.

“Whatcha doin’?”

Pete. He’s next to me now. We’re a triangle.

The other one says, “I ain’t going a step more till he tells us what we’re doin’.”

Pete ducks his head. Eyes me.

“Don’t seem like much of a talker.”

“Shouldn’t talk too much here,” I whisper.

He eyes me. Says to the other one, “Fat man wants his salt.”

“And he’ll get it! But not till I know what’s what!”

Pete eyes me. He says, “Well?”

Spider web on my brain. Knock it down. Not now.

Wave my hand at the burned-out holes of the building the other one wants to go into.

“Nothing there,” I say.

Wave my hand at the street in front of us.

“Nothing there,” I say.

The other one points up at the building again, leans forward, eyebrows up, head first, like a rooster. “How the hell do you know there’s nothing in that building?”

I shrug.

“Been in there before.”

He laughs, short and harsh, but he stops when he sees I’m serious.

“When?”

I shrug again.

“Been in.”

“When?”

Blade teeth. Bloody black smile. Flash of pale arms.

Look away up the street. Look back. Spit.

“Week ago.”

“Bullshit!” He points again. “What’s in there?”

I look up and behind me. The top is bone fingers stretching for the sky.

“Nothing.”

He makes a hissing sound.

Pete eyes me again. He says, “What about up over there?”

Points the barrel across the street.

Don’t even look.

I say, “Nothing in there but rats and dry rot.”

I say, “What you want’s farther in.”

Pete points the barrel at me.

“I didn’t ask you that. Where’d you go in there?”

Return his stare second for second, wait until he steadies the barrel, leans it in at my chest.

“Number three one three. Corpse in a chair by the window.”

Pete lowers the barrel, still looking at me.

“I didn’t do it.”

Pete says, “Go on up there and see.”

I don’t move.

“You heard him,” the other one growls at me. “Go on up there and—”

Pete puts a hand on his shoulder, shakes his head.

“Not him.”

Sit on a crack till the other one comes back. He’s a little pale. Wipes his arm across his mouth. One arm behind his back.

Pete says, “What’s tha—”

His friend shoves a corpse arm up in his face.

“A gooligooligoo!”

Pete smacks the arm away with the barrel. Shatters to dust. The other one left with a forearm splintered like a knife.

“Cut the crap!” Knocks the rest of the arm out of his hand and into dust.

“Aw c’mon, Pete. Least we know he’s telling the truth.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re finally convinced, princess. Your curiosity satisfied? You ready to move on? Or do we have to climb another fence for you?”

Wind changes direction every minute. I can smell their sweat, the animals they raise. And so can they. I palm a handful of ash from the gutter, rub it under my arms, scrub my face and arms. The other one giggles at the sight of the corpse’s shattered arm. It echoes in the empty street.

If I can hear him. The wind shifts.

I button my lip tighter.

Princess opens his arms, hands splayed.

“Ready when he is.”

Later.

The sky turns from death gray to widow black. Search the skyline, what’s left of the buildings, the broken bone fingers, the empty eyes, and listen, listen, always listen, and smell the air. The fires will grow bright soon. Then the drums. Then—

“Why ain’t we going into any of these places?”

Princess. Whining again. He smells the strongest of the two. He’ll be first.

I don’t answer.

“Hey!”

Pete says, “Leave him be.”

Princess stops walking. A pile of ash and dirt behind a husk of a car. I take a handful, rub it on my legs, rub it on my face. Wind shifts.

“How the hell do we know where he’s taking us? How the hell we know there’s any salt at all?” He raises his gun at me. “I mean, Jesus. Look at him.”

We make it to the intersection. Green canopy on the corner, ripped, pools of ash weighing it down, nosing forward over the sidewalk like a stumbling drunk. Just like I left it. Strings of yellow traffic lights and wires and poles all in a tangled web in the middle of the street. The buildings surrounding us are hollow shells of broken metal and glass. Mountain of black rubble to the right. Burned out brick, half-jagged black windows to the left.

Pete says, “He’s managed on his own so far.”

I point at the torn green canopy.

Princess and Pete’s heads swivel on pistons.

Princess says, “What? There?”

Flash of black teeth.

I nod.

“Salt,” I say.

The canopy frame is metal. Solid. Salvageable. I pull on a leg. Ash sifts underneath, a snake under a pillow. Princess stands in the gutter at the end. He stares doubtfully up at the sign overhead. Pete puts the barrel of his gun on my forearm and I look at him. Don’t let go, just look.

“Let go,” he says.

I pull the leg hard, yank the leg out, break the leg, and the canopy lets loose a high pitched squeal and comes crashing the rest of the way down to the sidewalk. Piles of ash slough slowly off and all over Princess.

“Hell!” he sputters. Can’t see him through the ashes, but when it clears he’s a puppy in a fireplace. Shakes his hair, ash in all directions.

Pete is laughing.

“Dammit!” Princess snaps. His white eyes glow in the dark. They’ll see that.

Pete says, “Well, he got the door clear,” and points at the entrance to the restaurant.

Keep my eyes on the skeleton fingers behind. Keep my ears pricked. The wind shifts and I smell the air. Just a hint, just a hint, but I can smell them.

Princess kicks a leg of the canopy away along with small pebbles. A few bounce high in the corner of my eye, and I watch them until they disappear in the twilight. Up there. On the building across the street. A round head pops over the top of the finger. Princess reads the letters on the sign again.

“What’s that say?”

Pete tries to read it, spelling out the words.

“M E X.” He stops and shakes his head. “Who cares? It’s a food place. Hot damn!”

“What’s M E X?”

“Never mi—”

“Mexican,” I say.

They both look at me.

“It was a Mexican restaurant.”

The wind shifts. “What’s Mexican?”

Princess.

I don’t say anything.

Pete stares at me for a second, then says, “Who cares? It ain’t been looted. Canopy must have blocked it. Let’s go in.”

Tables inside still whole, still clean. Chairs pushed under. Long counter on the left. Steel door behind. Smell of dust and fire and smoke. Under that, rats. On each table a full cellar of salt. Just like before. All the blood, the blood from before, is gone. But the floor is still sticky.

“Hot damn!” Princess yells. Pulls a plastic bag from inside his shirt. Throws the cellars in one at a time. They clack and click.

“Careful, you i***t,” Pete says. He gently places his cellars into his own bag. “They’re glass.”

“Have you ever seen so much?” Princess asks, his eyes wide enough to drool.

I inch toward the metal door in the back. If I can get it locked from the inside . . .

“Hey!”

Pete.

I turn.

He has a pillowcase. Balls it up and throws it at me. I catch it on my chest.

“Fill it up.”

Slink slowly to the nearest table. Drop a cellar in the case.

Keep my eye on the window.

Two more round heads on the skeleton finger across the street, perched on the tip like insects. Pale and glowing white in the darkness.

“Damn!” Princess calls out from the kitchen. He pushes through the saloon doors, a large cardboard box cradled in his arms. “Hit the jackpot back here!”

I shuffle to the window, the case dangling from my right hand. Peek out of the corner of my eye. Stop dead.

There. And there. And there.

Quickly shove more cellars in my case.

Pete snaps: “Hey! Careful with those!”

Drums roll in the distance.

Princess stops, goes pale.

“What was that?”

A firefly shoots off the finger across the street, two more behind it. They arch high and loop down at the window. An explosion of white and red fire washes against the glass. I jump behind the bar. The window cracks. Then the other two hit and glass explodes. The spider web swarms up the back of my brain, and this time I don’t fight it.

I lose time.

Standing in a black hollow of rubble across the street and a block away from the MEX. Breath comes in heaves. Arms and legs and back ache. Covered in blood. Soaks my clothes, hair. Gash on my right leg. White meat. I have Pete’s shotgun and both of their bags of salt. My pillow case is empty, covered in blood. Ragged red hole in the bottom.

I can smell them.

Hundreds of them.

Poke at the meat around the wound in my leg. I’ll need to clean that, sew it up. Step out of the hollow and suck in a hiss.

MEX swarms with palies. Cover the place like a pile of ants, front, top, sides. Naked blue-white skin glows in the night.

Something pops out of the mass, arches high toward me. I lose it against the sky, then it bounces with a thick thud in the middle of the tangle of lights and wires.

A handful of palies disengage from the swarm, pounce on it. See what it is before they get to it. Pete. Mouth open, lips ripped off, teeth punched in, blond hair matted red.

Wind changes directions. The whole swarm raises their blind eyes to it, their slit snouts flaring, snuffling sickly. A hundred white eyes turn as one in my direction.

I raise the shotgun and back away.

The spider web flows over my brain.

Turn to run.

The fat man will get his salt.