The Seven Habits

the buckets from banging against the walls.

Two right turns later, and there was the crack—a dark fissure in the ground that was like looking into an open wound on the body of the earth. The contents of the buckets tumbled off the crags and outcroppings, disappearing into the chasm below. She took a moment to rub her shoulders, rotate her neck in slow circles, and flex her knees.

But then she was heading back the way she came, retracing her steps without the burden of the buckets bearing down upon her. When she came to the metal door again, she paused, looking at it warily. She chewed her bottom lip, and told herself to just keep moving on. For some reason, it was harder this time. Maybe it was because she didn’t have the weight of the buckets to contend with anymore. Perhaps it was because there was some small part of her that insisted it had all been some sort of a dream, that she hadn’t actually seen what she thought she had.

Never again. If you look, it’ll be just this once and then it will be over with and done, okay?

After all, she wouldn’t be in any more trouble for opening the door twice than she would’ve for doing it once, and she wanted so desperately to believe that she had been mistaken.

Gauge was so busy with digging the latrine that he certainly wouldn’t know. The sound of the shovel plunging into dirt would surely cover the creak of the door opening. She’d just have a quick peek, just to quiet her overactive imagination, and then she’d go back for more buckets of dirt, and it would all be behind her. She could carry on with her new life without even the smallest doubts about her man.

She set the buckets and the wooden pole on the ground and slipped quietly through the metal door. As she had the night before, Ocean walked along the hallway, moving silently, her teeth clenched so tightly that her entire face was tense.

She stood in front of the second door, the wooden one with the barred window and the plank which kept it from being opened from the inside. She held her breath and wrapped her hands around the cool bars as she leaned forward to peer, once again, into the shadows of the cell.

And from that darkness emerged a voice, as thin and weak as someone teetering on the edge of death.

“Help… me.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Yeah, you just keep right on lookin’ at me like my boots aren’t laced all the way to the top. We’ll see who’s crackin’ jokes when this place is swarming with those bastards. You ever wonder what your own insides look like? All those intestines and organs and connective tissue? You’ll see soon enough. We’ll all see and you’ll be sorry you didn’t listen to my warnings, man.

By then, the seven signs won’t matter any more, the infection will be kicked into overdrive and will spread like nobody’s business. Shit will be so concentrated that even the smallest scratch from one of those things will be the signature on your death warrant. It’s so fast, see, so unbelievably fuckin’ fast.

There won’t be time to run or hide or prepare. You know that phrase about the shit hitting the fan? You ever stop to think what that would actually be like? The way something, in the blink of an eye, can just be flung all over the place. Well, this is the world’s biggest turd, my friends, and when it goes through that fan, it immediately hits another. And another… And another.

For your information, smart ass, I have thought about that before. Maybe a crazy person really doesn’t doubt his own sanity, maybe the delusion runs so deep that it just overlays the normal perception of reality. Like those medical books where each bodily system is on a transparency and you can peel them away one by one. But let me ask you this, jack, how often do you doubt your own mental prowess? Oh, we joke about people driving us crazy, about going mad from stress. There may even be times when we wish that we were insane, but the vast majority of us can go years without once doubting the tangibility of our experience, so you’ve got a flawed argument there, man. Faulty fuckin’ logic and fortune cookie psychology.

All I know for certain is that it’s too late now. I’m in here, the infection’s out there, and ain’t nobody is doing a damn thing to stop it. You’re too wrapped up in your preconceived notions of how things are supposed to be, you just can’t dig that sometimes there’s this crossroad where metaphysics and quantum physics intersect. You don’t give a shit about all those people who are gonna die, you couldn’t give a flying fuck about Ocean. All you really care about is stayin’ all nice and snug in your little Ikea box of existence with its bows and ribbons and little pieces of flash.

And it’s all comin’ down, man.

But me, I care, see? I care about her like she’s the fuckin’ daughter I never had a chance to have. I’ll stand over her with nothin’ more than teeth and fingernails and fight until anyone who dares lay a finger on a single fuckin’ hair on her head is chokin’ on their own blood. Even if nobody else in this god-forsaken world gives a damn about what happens to that poor little girl, I do. Which is precisely why all of this doesn’t mean jack to me. Why Clarice fuckin’ Hudson didn’t mean jack to me. Just another walking fuckin’ corpse, man.

See what you did? You done went and got me all worked up with those verbal prods from your pointy fuckin’ sticks. But I’ve still got hope, man. Maybe, I can make you see. Maybe you’ll open your eyes just long enough to glimpse past your own narrow definition of the universe. Maybe, just maybe, I can still save a life or two.

So let’s go back, shall we? Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear… or yesterday, as the case may be.

It’d been a couple days since Steel had hooked me up with something he called a Ruger Bull Nose or some shit like that. Dude showed me how to fix those silencers I’d been makin’ onto the barrel of that gun, gave me all these little tips just like he was Suzy fuckin’ Homemaker explaining how to use peanut butter to get gum out of hair. Afterward, he says, take a hacksaw, cut the barrel into several pieces and just drop ‘em down into the sewers in different parts of the city. No ballistics, apparently, makes the burden of guilt harder to prove or something? You guys would know more about that than me. Probably that GSR crap he was talkin’, as well.

Anyhow, I had the whole setup in a duffel bag on the back floorboard of my car, along with everything else I thought I’d need. For a couple of days I was practically camped out on Clarice fuckin’ Hudson’s doorstep, man. I mean, I got to know her townhouse fuckin’ intimately.

I knew how the paint was flakin’ away up near the gutters, that the six on her house number was just a little off kilter, that there was a raccoon who came around about three o’clock every morning and disappeared into the little row of hedges beneath her window. I knew the spots in her yard where the grass was dead and brittle and kind of a sickly green. If I were an artist, I could sit here and draw you a picture that would be as good as a photograph.

But did I see the star of this little drama that entire time? Fuck no, man. Not so much as the rustle of a curtain or her head peekin’ out the door to check the mail. When night would come around, the windows would stay dark and it really began to feel like I was stakin’ out an abandoned house. I mean, I’ve seen crypts with more action than that place.

I start thinkin’ that maybe the bitch has split town, ya know? Especially since I’ve been by Dollar Bonanza a time or two and haven’t seen her there either. It’s like the blip that was Clarice fuckin’ Hudson has just disappeared off the radar. Which—if she was still around somewhere—would actually make my job a bit easier, ya know? People woulda been used to not seeing her. Hard to tell how much time coulda passed before anyone really started gettin’ worried enough to file a report. But if she’d taken a powder, that was a different story all together. For all I knew, she coulda been spreading her contagion in Detroit or L.A. or any of a thousand places.

Then I get the bright idea to call up Dollar Bonanza, see? I ask for the manager and tell him how I’m Ms. Hudson’s brother, right? I say I’ve been tryin’ to get in touch with my beloved sis but her phone must be out or something, and could he give her a message for me? Dude get’s all hot under the collar and starts sayin’ something about how she called off sick a few days back and never bothered to come back in. Three no calls, no shows at Dollar Bonanza are apparently taken as a voluntary resignation. He’s sayin’ how if I do get hold of her to tell her not