After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

“Bury it!” he said to Jeremy.

Jeremy stared back blankly.

Dad pointed at the bloody place where his pants pocket had been. “Metal. Any metal. They were going after the change in my pocket.”

Jeremy started pushing sand over the change. “But they really were interested in the cell phone,” he said. “More than the money in Mom’s purse, or her keys.”

“Yeah,” Dad said. “I think anything with an electromagnetic field. Anything with an electric current. Remember how they went for the electrical transmission wires first?”

Jeremy froze. “Shit.”

Despite her tears, Laurie giggled, and Mom’s eyes got really big. “Jeremy Bentham, what did I tell you —”

Dad held up his hand. “What’s wrong, Jerry?”

Jeremy took his GameGuy out of his hip pocket. “It’s mostly plastic, but electronics and a battery, too.”

“Ah,” Dad said. “Yeah, that could’ve gotten ugly. It’s off, right?”

“Yeah. I had it charging when the power went off, and I didn’t want to play it since I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to recharge it.” Jeremy started to put it in the hole.

“No. We can use it, I think.”

Dad took the trunk key off of Mom’s key ring and dropped the keys down on top of the coins. They mounded the sand above them, perhaps six inches high, and Jeremy marked it with a circle of stones.

Dad took the GameGuy and headed back toward the car.

Jeremy followed him, threading through the cholla with care. He stepped on a tinder-dry mesquite twig, which popped loudly, and Dad jerked around. For a second, Jeremy thought Dad was going to order him back to Mom, but Dad closed his mouth and nodded.

As they got closer, Jeremy heard a humming and then a cracking sound. Most of the bugs on the car weren’t flying, so their buzzing wasn’t the loudest thing. It was the car.

“Noisy,” Jeremy whispered.

Dad laughed without humor. “I don’t think you have to whisper. I don’t think they can hear anything outside the electromagnetic spectrum. That and detect metal. That cracking sound is the internal stresses of the metal being released as individual molecular bonds are broken.”

The bugs covered the entire car, including the trunk. The plastic fender liners had slumped down onto the ground, and the tires were flat. Paint was peeling off in shreds. The plastic parts had holes in them too, but they were incidental. The bugs went through them to get to other metal.

Dad looked at the GameGuy, then handed it to Jeremy. “Turn the volume up to max. I figure the more juice to the speaker, the bigger the electromagnetic field. It doesn’t broadcast on an antenna like Mom’s cell phone, but it’ll do something.”

Jeremy rotated the volume knob all the way up with a quick swipe of his thumb. His index finger went for the power switch, but Dad said, “Not yet.”

Dad held up his left hand, the trunk key encased in his fist. “I want you to turn the GameGuy on, then throw it over the car so it lands in that thicket in front. Don’t hit the car—we don’t want to knock it hard enough to stop working. The electromagnetic field needs to persist.”

Jeremy heard what Dad was saying, but his eyes were on Dad’s hand. “Dad, what about your wedding ring? Oh, Christ! What about your pacemaker?”

Dad froze. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.

“Oh, God!” Jeremy said. “What about your crowns?”

Dad shut his mouth with a snap. Then he said, “Let me see your mouth.”

Jeremy opened wide, and Dad sighed. “Right. Your mom always insisted on composite fillings for you kids. No mercury silver amalgams.” He looked down at Jeremy’s pants. “Shit. Take off your pants.”

“My pants?”

“You’ve got a brass zipper, a brass snap, and copper rivets reinforcing the corners of the pockets.”

“What about your zipper?” Jeremy said.

Dad shrugged. “You’re right about my pacemaker. I’m not going near the car. You’ll have to do it. We need the water and the clothing, if they haven’t already turned the containers into Swiss cheese.” He looked down. “Looks like your shoes are all leather and plastic—punched lace holes, no grommets. So get out of your pants, and we’ll try this.”

Dad took the GameGuy while Jeremy took his pants off. He felt funny about it—standing outdoors in his underwear—but had his shoes back on in just a few minutes.

Then Dad gave Jeremy the key. “Stick it in the lock, turn it, and flip the lid up. Don’t try to get the key back out.”

Jeremy nodded solemnly.

They moved around until they were lined up behind the trunk, about twenty feet back. Dad had Jeremy show him the GameGuy’s on switch. “Yeah—thought so, but wanted to be sure.”

He swung his arm back and flicked the switch.

There was moment of stillness on the car as every bug stopped moving; then iridescent blue wings exploded into view and bugs buzzed into the air, headed for them. Dad flung the GameGuy through the heart of the swarm, and most of the bugs shifted to follow, but a few still headed toward them.

“Damn it,” Dad said, and bolted. Jeremy dropped to the ground and shoved his fist, the one with the trunk key in it, into the loose sand. With his other hand he scraped sand over it, mounding it high.

One bug flew by, ignoring him, but another hovered for a moment, shifting back and forth in the air over him. Then it dropped to settle on Jeremy’s discarded jeans and began eating the brass zipper.

Jeremy loosened his grip on the key, then dug his other hand into the sand and lifted a mound up, the key inside. He didn’t know how much sand it would take to shield the metal from the bugs, but hopefully, with the car, the GameGuy, and the cell phone, the bugs would have higher-priority targets. He walked slowly forward, dribbling sand as he went. Bugs were returning to the car now, but the trunk lid was largely unoccupied.

Jeremy brought his mound of sand right up to the lock before he let the last grains pour out of his hands. For one frantic second, he nearly let the key slide out of his hand with the sand, but he caught it, aligned it, and jammed it into the lock.

The bugs on the trunk lid were twitching, but they kept eating even as the lock clicked and the trunk rose on sprung hinges.

There were a few bugs in the trunk, but it wasn’t too bad. Jeremy grabbed the baskets of clothes and flung them behind him, far from the car, then snatched the two water jugs and backed up.

The motion of the trunk lid had stirred the bugs up, and more were in the air. One bumped into his head and snagged on his hair. Jeremy could feel it moving, and pictured it eating into his skull. He shook his head violently, and the bug flipped off, buzzing into flight before it hit the ground; but now it was closer to the car than to him, and it flew to the vehicle.

Jeremy quickly gathered the spilled clothes back into the baskets. He dragged the water into the shade of a mesquite bush, well away from any metal. Then he took the clothes back to where Mom and Laurie were still sitting. “Where’s Dad?” Jeremy asked. Dad should have circled back to them by now.

Mom looked around. “I don’t know. I thought he was with you.”

Jeremy guessed she hadn’t overheard their conversation about the crowns and Dad’s pacemaker. He didn’t want to worry her. “He’s probably looking for shelter.”

“Where are your pants?”

“Too much metal,” Jeremy explained. “Metal zipper and snaps and rivets.”

He dug out a pair of basketball shorts, baggy and long but with an elastic waist, and pulled them on over his shoes. He pointed at the clothes baskets. “You should probably change out of anything with metal on it—unless you can remove the metal itself.”

“Where’s my purse? I’ve got scissors in them.”

“We buried them, Mom. Metal, remember?”

He went back and got one of the water jugs, dropping it on the sand by Laurie. “Here. I’ll go check on Dad.”