The Last American - Chapter Four

Goodson drove down a dark road, pitch black and shiny from fresh rain. His jaw felt sore from chewing a mouthful of tasteless gum. He could feel the presence of clouds in the sky; he even knew their particular shade of white, but he couldn’t see them. An incoherent scattering of Botts’ dots covered the asphalt, reflecting a rainbow of iridescence from headlights his forklift shouldn’t have. A memory of something that hadn’t happened yet - but that felt years old - reminded him the dollhouse should be coming up soon and there he would be able to find more bulbs to repair the headlights - he still had no idea how they were even working. His mind drew back to the sensation of chewing. The gum took up so much space in his mouth that he grabbed fistfuls of it, stretching and tearing them out. He pulled handful after handful but there was always more. It distracted him so much that he didn’t see until too late - a low-hanging power line caught itself on the forklift’s roll-cage. Instead of a mast and tines, the lift had a bright orange snow plow illuminated by a blurry halo, disproportionately bright. He balanced atop the fluorescent blade, steering with one foot, trying desperately to pull the wire from the cage. With all his might, he pushed with one foot against the air and it managed to stop the forklift before plunging off a cliff. The thick rubber insulation of the power line snapped, revealing a thin metal cable. The edges of the rubber had shiny metal caps, as if the whole thing was a giant cylindrical fuse with no glass. The power line flopped onto a railroad track that ran parallel to the road. Goodson couldn’t just leave it there for someone to get hurt. With an impossibly-seamless transition he stood over the rails. He picked up the cable by the rubber coating and the thin wire touched the rail he stood on. There was a jolt and everything went black. His heart had stopped.

He woke with a shout, spitting out pemmican mash. He threw himself forward with his abdominals, gasping for breath, standing up in a panic. He stood up with such force that the backs of his knees launched whatever he had been sitting on backwards. It sounded like a metal chair. Its legs scraped across the floor, catching and turning the chair on its side. It crashed into something he couldn’t see. The darkness disoriented him. His heart raced. His shoulders, back, and the backs of his legs suddenly felt cold. He felt himself. Still wet.

“Where the fuck am I!?” he shouted, still heaving. It does not matter; we are alive. His right arm began throbbing, and he cringed as he imagined the unseen damage beneath the bunched-up sleeve wrapped around his arm. Goodson put his good hand out, blindly waving in a lemniscate pattern. He felt nothing. He stretched out a leg to feel for any low obstacles. Feeling none, he took a step and continued searching with his hand and then his foot. He could hear the size of the space with every scrape of his foot across the floor. A lobby, maybe? “How the fuck did I even get in here?” Survival instinct? Body keeps moving even when the mind shuts off? “Shit… I guess. I don’t know. All I remember is falling onto the sidewalk.” After a few steps, he felt the thing he had been sitting on. He traced parts of it with his foot before kneeling to feel it with his hand. “Some kind of bench seat.” Lends credit to the lobby theory. “I think I’m gonna throw up.” Not here, please. Not in the dark. Just beyond the bench he found a wall which, after palming all around to make sure there was enough of a surface, he squatted down to lean his back against.

He became aware of the sound of the storm still raging outside. The sounds came from all around him, though they were loudest directly in front of him, indicating a door or window to the outside. He stood back up and stepped forward carefully, alternating sweeps with his arm or leg. He came to a cold, glassy surface and felt a breeze. “It’s a door,” he said aloud. “What the hell building is this?” Your guess is as good as mine. You were walking toward the library. “Mmm…” he groaned, pressing his face into his hand. Bright, colorful static washed over his vision as he rubbed his eyes. “Maybe the Judicial College…” More than likely. It was the closest building.

Either the door or the jamb was warped because the door could not close all the way, leaving a gap for air to come in. It felt frigid against his wet skin. He shivered as he pushed the door. Its hinges gave with a dry, ear-splitting creak.

As soon as he stepped outside, lightning made the world so bright it felt as painful to see as daylight did during a migraine. “Aww, Jesus…” he complained. “That’s all I need.” Just get to the library. Goodson swayed, trying to stay awake. Walk, Goodson!

He had been right. As he turned around to get his bearings, he had indeed been in the Judicial College, one building over from the library. He walked with a limp, his left hip strangely stiff. He walked into the small parking garage that overhung Evans. His eyes were closed more often than not; he navigated through his memory of the space, blinking every few seconds to reorient himself. He followed the walls and corners. His fingertips caught repeatedly in the grooves between the bricks, breaking a few of his fingernails. Being miserably exhausted, he didn’t care. As he limped up the handicap ramp, he pulled the remote out of one of the pockets of his vest. Holding a button down, the scissor lift drove forward a few feet - enough to open the door. "Why do I feel like I need to shit?" Fight or flight? Adrenaline. Evacuating your bowels will make running a lot easier. "I ain't gonna be runnin' anytime soon."

Once inside, Slapshit brushed up against Goodson’s leg, his purr audible even over the storm and the whine of the reversing scissor lift. Goodson bent down to feel for the cat, patting his ribs. “Hey, buddy. How’d you even get up here?” Why do I have the impression that he was worried about us?

Slapshit me-yawned.

“I don’t know about you, but I… feel like shit. I need… to lie down.”

It felt like it took an hour to get there, but once inside the back office of the Special Collections room, he collapsed onto his bed made from ottomans, barely managing the strength to pull a blanket over himself.

…

When he woke up he felt clearer. He lay on his back, thinking about how dry his throat felt. It was so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat and the blood pumping in his ears. His whole body felt sore. “I need to piss.” I think I was dreaming about peeing. “Oh, god,” he moaned while standing up. “I hate those dreams. I’m always afraid I’m doing it in real life.”

Groaning as he got up, he suddenly remembered his birds and broke into a run. His feet hammered down the steps. He ran into the orangery where he examined the TKs. They were dark green, completely empty. He lifted up the curtain to find Jeannie staring at him, indignantly clucking her disapproval.

“Ahh, ladies… I’m sorry. I’ve had a hell of a night… apparently a couple nights.” Goodson scooped out some extra corn and scattered it everywhere to give the birds something to distract them. “But… guess what? You’ll forgive me. That’s right. Know how I know? You’re idiots.” They were already fighting with each other over choice pieces of dried corn.

It was still raining, though lightly. It must have been daytime. Barring some extreme celestial phenomena, there was too much light for it to be night.

After pissing in the grey-water tub and putting his boots in front of a fan, he removed the bunched up suit from his arm. It looks pickled. “Heh. Yeah, it does.” The bleeding had already stopped. He soaked his arm in a hot salt bath for a while before covering the wound with petroleum jelly and wrapping it up in clean cotton rags. He grabbed one of the numerous slings he had in a plastic crate full of first-aid stuff. How is it that your whole life you have never had an infection? “Just lucky I guess.” He stripped and looked into the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the wall in his bathing area. His chest had a burn on it from where the Blooms shot him. “Hmm…” Maybe that is why we had that dream. From the ache in every muscle he was afraid he might have nerve damage. “You a fucking doctor, Goodson?” he asked himself in the mirror. “No. Get over yourself. You got work to do.” He stood for a moment. Well… take a bath. Then get to work. “Yeah. Bath.”

He laid back in his oversized tub with his eyes closed, listening to the rain. He snacked on pemmican, positioning the mash in his cheeks and pressing it with his fist to squeeze out flavor. There was something about sitting in warm water and eating protein that energized him. It was almost euphoric, like his body was rewarding him for doing the right thing. A tingle began where his neck met the back of his head and went up through his scalp, spreading out in overlapping tangles.

It was impossible to relax completely; he felt impatient. He wasn’t sure how many days it had been and he needed to recover the cart. After his bath, he threw the camo-suit into the wash and put on his camouflage pants and brown hooded jacket. Not having any choice but to use his old hand truck, he grabbed a stack of TKs to take with him and bungeed them to the hand truck’s pipe frame. He felt his right cheek tighten into a smirk as he reminisced about the weeks and months spent collecting water heaters, one-by-one with the same hand truck. “Looks like it’s gonna be you and me again, pal!” He started whistling as he wheeled out the museum doors.

…

It was an interesting game, avoiding the dummies on his way to the cart. It wasn’t difficult, but it did get tedious. Since they couldn’t really be killed except by incineration or chopping them into tiny pieces, Goodson had long ago adopted the method of simply taking a whack at their lower legs with anything available. Even if their bones were shattered, they didn’t seem to stay down for long, but it was long enough to avoid them at even a casual pace. Unfortunately, he only had one arm available, and he was using it to push the dolly.

Another concern was the fact that the train had recently dropped off some Processed. The newbies might still be able to run. “Yeah… they might actually pose a threat.” A lot of time was spent looking over his shoulder.

When he wasn’t jogging in an annoyingly inefficient circling path to avoid toyfulls, he entertained himself with trying to find just the right angle where he could let go of the hand truck and it would continue rolling on its own, balancing for a short time. As soon as it started falling over, he grabbed the handle and kicked at the axle to get it going again - unless it fell forward. Then it would clatter to the ground and he had to restack the TKs. Goodson, this is not the best time for playing around. "Like you can stop me." I depend on you being reasonable.

The cart was exactly where he had left it - under the stadium seating. Now that it was daytime he could see the dummies. There were so many that swapping out the TKs took a ridiculously long time. Every few seconds, he would have to walk away from the cart and get the dummies to follow him, then walk back to the cart and do as much as he could in whatever time it took for the dummies to approach again. One particularly ornery fellow moved faster than the others. This one must be new. “Yeah - he still looks human. Hell, he looks great!” Every successive batch does look a tiny bit healthier. Goodson took a break from the cart to lead the toyfull around into the arena.

Once inside the arena, he imagined the seats full of people. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! Who wants to see me fuck up the new fish?” He imagined uproarious assent from the crowd. “Well then… let’s not stand on ceremony.” The dummy shuffled towards Goodson as he paraded around with arms raised, earning enthusiastic cheering from the invisible audience. Goodson turned towards the dummy and curled up his fists within his heavy leather gloves. “Normally I wouldn’t bother with you,” he said to it, pretending to look at a watch, “but I got time.”

He spent a few minutes dancing around the toyfull, jabbing at it and sweeping its legs. At one point Goodson cringed after landing an accidentally-brutal uppercut which knocked out a bunch of teeth. “Ahh...” he cringed. “I am sorry, man. You… you alright?” It staggered from the shock but recovered quickly and continued coming after him. Black ooze dribbled down its lips. “I think you’ve had enough.”

Goodson abandoned the audience and led the creature up the bleachers. While watching it follow him he realized dummies weren’t usually capable of climbing stairs, but the long steps of the bleachers and the creature’s relatively recent transformation had not yet relieved it of coordination. “You just gave me an idea: Dummies and Stairs! That’ll have to be one of my experiments.” He led the creature up to the top of the bleachers, then maneuvered around to push it off the top. It tumbled over the rail, falling a good fifty feet, landing with a splash on its back in a large pothole filled with brown water. The trauma seemed to be enough to stun it.

Minutes went by as Goodson finished connecting TKs, putting the empties in the bed with the rail clamps. Next to him the toyfull thrashed wildly in the deep puddle, its head completely underwater. “Jesus, man… can you even drown?”

He drove home at as consistent a pace as he could, though errant trees poking up through the asphalt made it difficult. As much as he wanted to plow into every dummy he saw, it would only slow down the cart. I know you really want to crush them. “Yeah… but there’ll be time for that later. I got a plan.” Do your plans ever work out? “Sometimes.” He smiled in anticipation.