Soft Apocalypse Read online

  “We’re not doing anything illegal,” Cortez was saying, “the energy from passing cars is just being wasted. We’re not bothering anyone. We’re just trying to make an honest living! Since when was that illegal?”

  “Vagrancy is illegal here in Metter,” the cop said. “Y’all need to move on.”

  “Move on where?” Cortez said. “We don’t have homes.”

  “That’s not my problem. You need to move outside the city limits.” He pointed west, down the highway. “Six miles that way. You can pitch your tents there.” Before anyone could protest further, he wheeled and headed toward his cruiser.

  “Metter is closed, ladies and gentlemen,” he said before closing the door. “Gypsies spread disease.”

  We packed up and started moving. It was Jim and Carrie’s turn on the bikes; the rest of us hoofed it. Mercifully, it had clouded over and cooled a little.

  “We need some sort of plan,” Cortez said, throwing his free hand in the air. “This is no good, wandering around aimlessly. We need a better business model.”

  And what’s the plan, what’s our fucking business model? I wanted to shout. I kept my mouth shut. Cortez was always talking about angles and plans, but every day we still humped everything we owned somewhere else, looking for places to skim some energy, places to trade it for what we needed to live.

  I caught up with Colin and Jeannie, and we slogged through the weeds. It was going to be a long six miles.

  A dilapidated Saturn slowed, and the window rolled down. “Hey sweetie, let me see your tits!” a skinny black guy with bad teeth yelled.

  Ange gave him the finger without turning.

  “Hey,” Jeannie shouted as the car rode off, “how do you know he wanted to see your tits? Maybe he was talking to me!”

  Ange spun around, pulled up her shirt, and waggled her tits at Jeannie. I’d never seen them before—they were smallish, but pretty fabulous, like Ange herself. I was disappointed when she dropped her shirt and turned back around.

  “He may well have been talking to you,” I said to Jeannie. “You have fabulous tits.”

  “Shut up,” Colin said as Jeannie laughed.

  “No, really,” I persisted, “they’re beautiful. Big, firm, Italian coconuts.”

  Jeannie laughed harder.

  “No, really, stop talking about my wife’s fabulous tits,” Colin said over the laughter. They were fabulous, though Jeannie wasn’t the type to yank up her shirt and waggle them. Which was a shame, really. She kissed Colin’s cheek, still laughing, and trotted to catch up to Ange, giving her a little shove on the shoulder.

  “You know what’s wrong with that guy in the car, and all the rest like him?” I said.

  “What?” Colin said.

  “They don’t masturbate often enough. They sacrifice every shred of dignity for the Lotto chance that some woman is going to respond to that shit and actually screw them, which would temporarily quiet the lizard brain that’s screaming at them, because they don’t shut it the hell up themselves by jerking off.”

  “Ah. That’s profound,” Colin said. “Thanks, I love talking about other men’s masturbatory habits.”

  It started drizzling. Everybody scrambled. Some of us grabbed the tarps and spread them across the weeds, angling them so the rainwater formed canals and spilled toward one point. Others grabbed our plastic milk jugs and began collecting.

  “We’re a well-oiled machine, you know that?” Cortez said, his head tilted up to catch drops.

  The rain fell harder. The tribe whooped.

  Not ten minutes later, the flashing red light of officer asshole’s cruiser was reflecting off the puddles in the road.

  “What did I tell y’all?” he said as soon as his head was out of the car. “Pack all this shit up and move on, and I’m not gonna tell you again!”

  “Please, officer, we need this water badly,” Jeannie said. “We won’t be here long, and we’ll leave as soon as we’re finished.” The rest of us kept working.

  The cop unsnapped his holster and took out his pistol. He held it at his side, angled just slightly in our direction. “I’m not gonna say it again.”

  We rolled up the tarps. Ange started to say something to the cop, who was watching us like a parent making sure the kids clean up their room. Four or five of us shot her a warning glance. She shut up. We got moving. Officer asshole drove away.

  We tried to hurry, to get out of town before the rain let up, but it’s hard to hurry when you’re carrying a pack filled with forty pounds of shit and you’re dehydrated.

  “Hey!” Cortez said, pointing at a railroad track that disappeared into the woods to our right. “Why don’t we head along the track? We can go a mile or two and set up camp. The bulls won’t even know we’re there.”

  Nobody had objections, so we climbed down a rocky gully and set out along the tracks. The gravel made for a bumpy ride on the mountain bikes, but for the rest of us it was easier than trudging through wet weeds.

  The sounds of the highway receded, leaving nothing but the patter of rain. Long-leaf pines crowded close, littering the raised tracks with golden needles.

  My phone jingled. So wonderful 2 see u. U okay? Both of us tended to suffer from severe post-visit depression.

  I’m good. Run off by cop. On the move again.

  Head west. Toward me. : )

  “What’s that?” Carrie said, pointing up the track. Someone was coming toward us, waving a sheet or something. The track began to hum as the figure came into focus.

  “Oh, I don’t fucking believe this,” Ange said.

  The guy was windsurfing on the track. He shifted from side to side, picking up the swirling winds of the storm, one side of his contraption lifting off the tracks, then the other, as if he were riding waves. The clack of well-oiled wheels grew louder as he approached.

  We split to either side to let him pass. He waved, and pointed back the way he’d come. “About a mile,” he shouted, then sped off on an energetic burst of wind.

  “About a mile to what?” I said.

  We stopped first, to harvest what water we could. The rain lasted another twenty minutes, then we pushed on with our milk jugs filled a few inches.

  A mile on, another tribe was camped in a cleared strip created to allow power lines to run through. Four more of the railroad windsurfing contraptions were lined up beside the tracks. Most of the tribe were lounging in the shade, but a couple stood behind a folding table set up near one of the big, silver power line towers.

  Two women hopped up to meet us, smiling and waving. One was in her mid-forties, though she may have been younger than she looked. Pale white skin is great when you’re young, but it doesn’t wear well, especially if you live in a tent and spend all day in the sun with no sunblock.

  The other was probably twenty-five. She had a willowy-waifish look, tall and slim, reddish hair. Skinny as hell with no breasts to speak of, but damned sexy nonetheless. She had sort of an English look. I watched her walk toward us: she had a grace about her that made me wish I could sit and watch her all day.

  “Are you here to buy weed?” the older woman asked, motioning toward the folding table.

  “No, we just happened to be heading this way,” Jeannie said.

  “Where you heading?” the younger one asked.

  “I don’t think we know yet,” I said. “We just got flushed out of Metter.” I held out my hand to her. “Jasper.”

  “Phoebe, nice to meet you,” she said.

  The other woman introduced herself, and I immediately forgot her name. I suck that way sometimes.

  A guy with a pointy red beard and wire-rimmed glasses came over to join us. “Have you heard rumors about a new designer virus that’s going around?”

  “No. Is it a bad one?”

  The guy’s tongue darted out, licked the corner of his mouth. “We don’t know. Another tribe told us about it, but they only heard about it secondhand themselves. It’s supposed to give you muscle-spasms.”

  “
Terrific,” I said. “You heard any news about what’s going on out west?” Last we’d heard, a rogue army from Mexico had invaded southern Texas.

  “We heard that U.S. troops had been sent down there, but we haven’t heard what happened,” Phoebe offered.

  We went on talking for a while, and eventually just about everyone from both tribes were huddled in groups, exchanging news and information. It was amazing, really, how well and quickly tribes got along. They invited us to make camp with them and stay a while.

  “She seems like your type,” Colin said as we unpacked the tents from the bikes. “Kind of elven. I wouldn’t be surprised if her ears were a little pointy.”

  “I must admit, she caught my eye. Made my heart go pit-a-pat.” An image of Sophia, smiling wide, shot through my mind.

  “You should go talk to her. Ask her out.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  But how do you ask a woman out when you have no car, no place to live, and no money to go to a movie, even if you could get there? I didn’t understand the rules. Maybe there weren’t any rules; maybe they were still being worked out.

  I volunteered to wander over to their camp when Cortez suggested we ask if they had anything to store energy in, and anything besides drugs to trade. Ange thought trading for a little weed would be good for our dispositions (Ange had spent a year in rehab for coke, eight years ago, when she was fifteen), but she was voted down.

  They didn’t have anything for energy storage, so that was a bust, but I used the opportunity to sidle over to Phoebe and get chatting, and eventually I got up the nerve to ask.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to sound as if an idea had just occurred to me, “you want to go into town a little later, maybe get a candy bar, kick around downtown?” I always felt stupid asking a woman out, like I was trying to trick her into something. I had issues, no question about it.

  “Okay,” she said. Just like that.

  “Great,” I said, trying to sound pleased but not surprised. “I’ll come find you in a while?” Something like “pick you up at seven?” might have been clearer, but neither of us had a watch, and I wasn’t really going to pick her up in anything.

  I dry-brushed my teeth with a dollop of the tribe’s toothpaste, then busied myself talking with my tribe, all the while feeling guilty about Sophia. I didn’t understand the rules there, either. Could I see other women, given that she was married and we weren’t sleeping together? I guess the bigger question was, did I want to? At the moment, yes, I did. I wanted to do something normal for a change. I wandered back over to get Phoebe.

  She had put on lipstick and eyeliner, and lots of perfume. I felt a wave of gratitude that she would make the effort to look nice for our date.

  “Ready to go?” I said.

  She nodded, and we walked off, climbing the rise to the tracks and heading toward Metter.

  We went through the “Where are you froms” and “What did you used to dos” (she had a Master’s degree in English lit—another unfortunate soul who had followed her heart), then talked music and movies. She had an easy confidence about her that, instead of radiating “I’m out of your league,” took me along, made me feel confident as well. I liked her, and felt happy that I was able to feel something for someone besides Sophia.

  Which got me thinking about Sophia, got me wishing that I was laughing with Sophia. As we walked, my mind kept wandering away from Phoebe, and I kept struggling to bring it back.

  We split a microwaved burrito at the Minute Mart, and bought candy bars for dessert. When she reached into her bag to get money, I offered to pay, but she said that she was happy to split it.

  We sat on the curb in the parking lot among scattered cigarette butts, beside the air hose for inflating tires, as far away from the stink of the gasoline pumps as we could get.

  A scrawny little Chihuahua came out from behind a green dumpster and started barking at me, flying backward with the force of his barks. He was half-starved, and seemed outraged that no one was feeding him. I broke off a piece of my Butterfinger and tossed it to him. He scarfed it down, then immediately took up barking again. He darted forward and nipped at my feet. Phoebe found this hilarious, especially the fact that he wasn’t bothering her at all, just me.

  When we’d finished I popped back inside to use the bathroom. It occurred to me on the way out that it would be nice if I bought Phoebe something—a little gift of some sort. It would have to be really cheap, but I didn’t want to get her a toy, or gum. It should be something thoughtful.

  A rack of postcards caught my eye. I spun them around, rejecting aerial views of Metter, pigs talking to each other. There was one with hula dancers—clearly a stock photo from Hawaii. The caption read Everything’s Better in Metter. Perfect.

  “I bought you a gift,” I said as we started walking.

  She took the card, examined it, and laughed. “It pictures the famed Metter hula dancing troupe! Thank you.”

  The sky was dark blue. We passed a dilapidated Cinema 9 (which was probably now in reality a Cinema 2 or 3—no way they were showing movies on all of those screens), and I wished we could afford to see a movie. The last movie I’d seen had been with Sophia, probably six months ago. I’d kissed her in the dark, and she’d kissed me back, then after a moment she’d whispered, “I shouldn’t,” and squeezed my hand, and we’d watched the movie.

  Sophia’s smiling face returned to its usual position, as the screen-saver of my mind, and now I felt guilty—like I was misleading Phoebe, because there was no room in my heart for her and she didn’t know that. If she liked me, she was probably worrying about making a good impression, hoping this could lead somewhere. But it couldn’t. Not now, anyway.

  As if on cue, my phone jingled. I’d forgotten to take the god damned thing out of my pocket before we left, because it had been as attached to me as my ears for the past year.

  “Do you have a call?” Phoebe asked.

  “Text message,” I said. “I’ll check it later.”

  “Wow, how does your tribe afford a phone?”

  “For emergencies and stuff,” I muttered.

  Phoebe reached out and took my hand; our fingers laced together easily. We reached the railroad tracks and headed into thick darkness and nighttime insect sounds.

  Telling a lie is kind of like having a piece of food caught between your teeth. I tried to simply forget it and enjoy the date, but the whole date felt like a lie now.

  “You know that text message? I wasn’t being honest about it.”

  “I kind of figured. People don’t usually jerk when their phone rings.”

  “The truth is…” What? I’m seeing someone else? I’m having an affair? “I’m emotionally involved with someone.”

  I told her about Sophia. She was cool about it, very understanding. We talked about it as if we were friends, and after making some thoughtful comments and suggestions, she told me that she was still recovering from a painful breakup. She’d been dating a guy, and he left her a few months ago. He was a black guy, and her parents had disowned her and kicked her out of the house over it, so she and the guy left town and caught up with a tribe formed by some of his old high school friends. And now he was gone, and she had no one but the tribe.

  “The ironic thing is, I don’t even smoke weed,” she said. “I barely drink. Not that I judge people who do, but I’ve always been pretty straight-laced, and I find myself in a tribe that gets by selling drugs.”

  “Here I had you pegged as a wild child, getting high and living by your own rules.”

  “I’m more the read a good book while drinking tea type.” I liked the way she said “tea.” There was a British lilt to it.

  We walked in easy silence. Soon we could hear music drifting from the dual camps. It sounded like heavy metal.

  Phoebe slowed, tugged me to a stop. “We should say goodnight here, before we have an audience.”

  I wrapped my arms around her, and we kissed—a good, soft, date kiss. She was a good kisser. Her br
eath was sour, but I’m sure mine was too, probably worse than hers. We were getting used to smelling bad and having bad breath.

  “This was fun,” she said. “Thanks for asking.”

  “Can I get in touch with you somehow? Maybe we could get together again?”

  “Hold on.” She squatted on the track to rummage in her bag. She pulled out a pen and a scrap of paper, jotted a number, and the name Crystal. “This is the number of a friend. It might take a few days, but I always check in with her eventually. I’ll send a message back through her.”

  We walked into camp holding hands, let our fingers slip apart as we reached the midpoint between our tribes, and each went to join our own.

  “So how’d it go?” Colin asked as soon as I sat in the flattened wild grass.

  “She’s a really, really nice woman,” I said. I watched Phoebe, standing with a few of her tribe mates, probably discussing the date as well. “Sophia texted me right in the middle of the date. I forgot to turn off my phone.”

  “Not good,” Colin said.

  The music was coming from their camp, and some of them were dancing. The forty-something woman whose name I forgot pulled Phoebe by the elbow and got her dancing. She danced a little awkwardly, shyly, maybe because she felt self-conscious that I was watching.

  “I should be interested in her, but I don’t want to lose Soph.”

  “Um, you don’t have Soph,” Colin said. “She climbs into bed with her husband every night. You climb into your tent with your trusty right hand.”

  “I’m a lefty,” I said, but the joke was reflex. I was stinging from the image of Sophia climbing into bed with her husband. I saw them kissing, his hand on her bare breast, couldn’t get the movie in my head to stop, even though the image was like lit cigarettes pressed to my eyes.

  “I have to stop seeing her, don’t I?” I said. And there it was. I’d never said the words before; I hadn’t even allowed myself to think them. But this was killing me, it was torture.

  “Yeah,” Colin said. “If she won’t leave her husband, what do you have? Phone calls and text messages. That’s never going to be enough.”