Approaching Oblivion

  Someone yelled, “Get him!”

  Knox was unbuckled and out of his formfit in a moment. Perhaps because he had been already alerted by his talk with Hale. Others were stumbling out of their assembly line trance, beginning to mill around looking for who the “get him” might be. But Knox knew!

  He found a loading dock truck behind his station—it hadn’t been there earlier—but it was there now—someone must have left it, contrary to regulations—and he wrenched loose the long iron rod that served as control handle for the truck. It was only three steps, three long steps, and he was standing over Quintana, who was desperately trying to clear away the pile-up.

  Knox swung from the hips. The rod caught Quintana across the shoulders and he was jacked forward over the line. He half-twisted, throwing up his hands to protect his head, as Knox came around on the backswing.

  The rod smashed across Quintana’s throat, and his head skewed around till Knox heard cartilage snap. Then the others were there, dragging Quintana from his formfit.

  They beat him, the ones in the back forcing away the ones in the front so everyone could have a chance, but in the end, it was Knox himself, Knox with the iron rod, who stood spraddle-legged over the disrupter, that greaser, and arched back till his stomach muscles were drumhead tight, the rod gripped perfectly with both hands, right thumb tucked inside left palm, and brought it straight back up and over and down, and crushed Quintana’s skull with an impact sound like a dead fish hitting a plastic countertop.

  Then Knox flipped the rod into a corner, stood over the dead beaner and looked around with a tight expression. “He won’t fuck us up again. Let’s get back to work.”

  As he buckled in, he looked across the manufactory, and Mr. Hale was staring at him. He smiled, proud.

  Mr. Hale winked and gave him a “V”.

  Charlie Knox. Is a man. Who.

  Is lying in bed dreaming.

  He is dreaming about men in black garments coming for him. Hold that. They aren’t men. Yes, they are. No.

  Charlie Knox cannot tell if they are men or not.

  He thinks (in the dream) that they are men, but they don’t walk like men. There is some small alien movement—the way a lizard scurries, stops, scurries is alien; the way a chicken bobs, catches up, bobs is alien—the way their limbs are hinged. But they are men. No. They must be men.

  No. Definitely.

  “Charlie!”

  Silence.

  “Charlie, wake up, you’re crying, Charlie!”

  “I’m not, I’m okay, what, what’s that…uh?”

  “You were crying in your sleep.”

  “It was the coffee.”

  “Who is Quintana, Charlie?”

  “Nobody. A guy. Nobody.”

  “Charlie, something awful is happening to you.”

  “Shut up, Brenda. Let me sleep.”

  Silence.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Come, Charlie. Lie over here.”

  “Hold me.”

  “Don’t cry.”

  Silence.

  They stood outside the little kike’s store, waiting till the woman had looked at all the rotisseries and decided against any of them. They waited until she left, then Knox and Ernie Buscher went in.

  “Mr. Kapp,” Ernie said, “I’ve come for my sofa and easy chair suite. My friend and I got a truck outside.”

  Kapp was in his sixties. When he looked confused, his face became a cartographer’s delight. “Suite, you say? What was the name, do you mind?”

  “Buscher,” said Ernie. Then he spelled it. “You said you’d have it ready today.”

  “Today? Saturday? I got no deliveries on Saturday. Are you sure it was a Saturday, you’re sure?”

  “C’mon, Kapp,” Ernie said, his voice getting deeper, “don’t play jewdown with me. I paid you, you said today, now gimme my furniture.” Ernie’s eyes narrowed down, his jaw muscles tensed, he made a fist, let it relax, made it again. Ernie was unreliable, moved too fast.

  The sheenie was nervous. “If you’ll wait just a minute, I’ll check my order book. When was it you said you bought this merchandise?”

  “Don’t give me any shit, kike, get my stuff out here on the double before I kick your guts out!”

  Kapp started to say something about the language being used, but Ernie needed no further provocation. He had enough for the investigation by the Party, right there on his recorder-tip. As Kapp raised his right hand to wave a finger in Ernie’s face, Ernie grabbed the hand and broke it. It was too fast for Knox, but it was on, so he went with it.

  “Try to slug my friend, you kike sonofabitch,” he said, very loud and very clear so the tip would pick it up, “how about this!” He whipped the link-chain belt off his waist with a smooth movement and brought it down across Kapp’s thin shoulders with a crack. The sharpened links ripped cloth and broke skin. Kapp screamed, and Ernie fell back to let Knox work.

  Knox felt a sudden, blossoming joy in his mission, and using a chain was too impersonal, too removed. He went at the little mockie with his fists.

  Ernie Buscher threw a table through the front window, into the street. Knox held Kapp with his left hand around the sheenie’s throat, the drumming heels an inch off the floor, the trembling body against the wall. Steadily and smoothly, as though gauging the rebound of the big bag down in the gym, Knox jacked one punch after another into Kapp’s face; right cheekbone, nose, left cheekbone, nose, jaw, nose—and it broke—left cheek, right cheek, nose, nose, nose. The sound of the table shattering the front window, and its impact in the street, brought the others on the run.

  They poured the kerosene over the breakfronts and dinette sets and ottomans and recliners. They tossed chairs into a pile in the center of the store, and yelled for Watson to bring the jellybomb.

  “C’mon, Knox!” Ernie yelled. Knox put two final blows into Kapp’s ruined face, then slung the little kike over his shoulder and carried him to the mound of shattered furniture in the center of the store. He flipped him over, and Kapp fell across the edge of a broken table. His spine cracked with a sound like borax furniture.

  Then Knox followed the others outside, Watson handed him the jellybomb, because it was Knox’s mission, and Knox pulled the tab, and slung the pill underhand, through the broken window.

  They stood on the opposite side of the street, and when the first rush of heat came at them, they turned away to avoid getting their eyeballs singed. It was like a sirocco, then a whump of pressure and bits of what was inside the store, including Kapp, came slicing out through the broken front window. Flames slashed after the shrapnel, and erupted into the street. Then the entire building went up.

  “Damn!” Knox said. A piece of glass had cut him across the back of his left hand. “Damn!”

  Charlie Knox is a man who.

  Refuses to ask the necessary questions.

  And even if he could, he wouldn’t. But he can’t. That’s been made sure of. He can’t. Doesn’t even know. They exist.

  Those questions. And other things.

  Training is very important for Charlie Knox. For Knox, training is important. To stay fit. To stay tough. Because.

  That means.

  Survival. And survival sometimes means getting a little cruel. Weakness kills.

  And then the persons in black garments come and.

  No.

  There are no such things. Those are dreams. Those are delusions. Those are guilt. Those are fantasies. Those don’t happen. Those persons in black garments, when the sky opens and they come in.

  No.

  Think about it. No.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “You know like what!”

  “It’s your imagination.”

  “You keep doing that to me now, all the time.”

  “I’m not doing anything, shut up.”

  “You never talked to me like that.”

  “I always talk the same.”

  “Yo
u don’t. You’re different. You’ve changed, you’re changing.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You’re like an animal now, Charlie. You scare me.”

  “Maybe that’s what you need. To be scared. Maybe that’d shape you up.”

  “What are you talking about!?!”

  “Don’t yell at me, I’ll clip you one.”

  “Charlie, honey, what’re you doing? You scare me.”

  “Stop crying…I’m sorry. Honest to God, I’m sorry. It’s just, oh, you know. There’s another purge coming on at the ward.”

  “But what’s that got to do with me?”

  Silence.

  “Charlie?”

  “Nothing. Stop crying.”

  “Do you love me?”

  Ted Beckwith was Knox’s best friend. They joined the Party together, their wives exchanged secrets regularly, their kids went on camping trips out near the perimeter. Beckwith hated this life of endless and senseless assembly line drudgery, mindless holovision game shows, patch-on-the-sleeve heroism and provincial hatred. Ted Beckwith was a member of the underground. Beckwith tried not to let it show: that he despised everything Knox had become. He thought, at one time, that Knox might come in with him and the others. That he would take a walk out near the perimeter, and he would reveal all of it to Knox.

  “There has to be more to life than this,” he thought he would say, on that day. “There has to be more than the rallies and the fitness sessions and the prayer meetings for the President’s health. There has to be. The world has to be wider than what we have here, Charlie.” That was what he would say to Knox, on that day. But Knox had begun to change. It had started long before the night Knox killed his poor black nobody. It had been long before that. But on the night of the raid, the change had begun to accelerate. And then that business with Quint. Poor devil: he hadn’t been involved with anyone. Just too inept to keep up his beat on the line. But Knox was forming anew, even then. And it had gone on.

  Now Ted Beckwith knew Knox was one of them, one of the heroes with a patch on his sleeve. Now he could never tell him. Ted Beckwith had to go on being Knox’s best friend, and he despised him.

  Ted Beckwith did not think Knox knew about his secret involvement with the underground.

  Beckwith was wrong.

  Ted Beckwith came home. Knox watched from cover. As he walked up the front steps of his little house, Beckwith saw a terrible thing, a thing he could not believe. He had a dog, a beautiful dog, a golden retriever. As he walked up the steps of his house, he stopped and stared, because he could not believe what he saw. Tears came into his eyes and filled them; he slumped down on the top step, crying without being able to stop. Someone had held his beautiful dog by the throat, up against the wooden wall of the house, and had driven a long, thick nail through the throat and into the wood. The nail had been driven in, hammered in, all the way to the head. The nail head gleamed brightly through the fur, reflecting in the porch light. Knox could see it all the way across the street. The dog’s four paws had been nailed to the wall. The dog had voided itself as it died, and the wall was smeared.

  Beckwith sat there, refusing to look at the terrible thing nailed to his front porch wall.

  After a long time, he got up and went inside. The house was dark. Knox saw the living room light go on; through the front window he saw Beckwith staring at the living room wall, at a thing more terrible than the dead animal outside.

  Nailed to the wall, the same way his dog had been nailed, Beckwith saw, all in a row, his wife’s best dress, his daughter’s playsuit, and his son’s T-shirt and jeans. All nailed to the wall at eye-level. The implications of the message were clear. Knox had intended it to be clear; Beckwith understood.

  His family was having dinner down the street at Knox’s house. He was supposed to join them as soon as he had cleaned up after work. He knew who was responsible for this.

  Knox was responsible for it.

  The Party would simply have killed him. But Knox must have said, let me take care of it, Ted Beckwith is my best friend, I will deactivate him.

  Knox has said, with nails: Stop what you are doing. Stop right now. This minute. Or I will do what the Party wants me to do. I am giving you this humane and merciful break because I am your best friend. Now wash up and come to my house for dinner.

  Turn off the porch light.

  Knox was in on the raid at the high school. He was a squad leader, with three patches and a service commendation. He took the leader of the rebellion, a sixteen-year-old girl, to the bell tower of the high school, and raped her three times, and then threw her off.

  Knox was made a Party Lieutenant and gathered the proof of revisionism that removed Hale from the ward. Knox took the contract on him. He also delivered the eulogy at the grinder ceremony.

  Knox headed up the assault team on the Western Quadrant. He wore leather protective garments, moved through a cloud of infiltration gas, used a scattergun exclusively, and joyed in moving meticulously from sector to sector, street to street, house to house, room to room, slaughtering anything that moved or crawled or whimpered or pleaded or twitched. His promotion to Captain and ward selectman followed soon after.

  Knox spent his recreation hours in the ward temple’s interrogation chambers, quizzing malcontents. He began to collect fingers. They retained their look much longer than ears or cocks.

  Knox spent three years getting ahead, but he hardly noticed the passage of time, it flew so fast.

  Charlie Knox. Is. A man who.

  Had been trained.

  “Not me, Charlie…please, Charlie, what are you doing, not me!”

  “Stop backing away. I’ll make it quick.”

  Across the bedroom. She picked up a pink mule with a pompon pouf on the toe. He followed. With the knife. She raised the bedroom slipper over her head, heel turned toward Knox threateningly.

  “There’s a mistake, Charlie!”

  “No mistake.”

  “It wasn’t my name on the list, honey, please!”

  “They don’t make mistakes.”

  A shoe is no damned defense.

  “Charlie, not me, I love you, honey…”

  He. Stops.

  He. Sees movement out of the. Corner. Of his eye.

  He looks for the first time.

  “Not me, Charlie!”

  His conditioning. Breaks.

  Persons in black garments. There.

  They have always been there. Now he sees. Them.

  They stood watching Knox as he backed his wife into the corner at knife point.

  “Oh, my God…Brenda! Do you see them?”

  “Please, Charlie…”

  “No, it’s okay, I won’t hurt you…do you see them?”

  “See who, Charlie?”

  Silence from them. Knox stared at them, fully, openly. And he realized they had been there often, watching him, on the raid, in the manufactory, in the furniture store, as he drove nails, in the bell tower, as he got ahead in the Party. They had always been there.

  “I’m starting to remember, a lot of it is coming back.”

  “Charlie, what’re you talking about…don’t hurt me, honey.”

  “Brenda, listen: right there, standing right there, don’t you see them?”

  “I don’t see anything, Charlie; are you all right? You wanna lay down a while, Charlie? The kids won’t be home for a couple hours.”

  “I don’t know where they came from, another world I guess, but that doesn’t matter. They’re training us, to go out there for them, out there somewhere. But we weren’t cruel enough. They took up where we left ourselves off.”

  She lowered the slipper. He was rambling on now, saying things. The persons in black garments stood watching him, and there was almost a sadness on their faces, as though they had spent a great deal of time building something intricate and lovely and efficient, and now it had broken down. Their expressions did not speak of repair.

  “They gave us the work on the line, and the word
s, and the missions, and the President’s health. When did they come? How long ago? What do they want from—”

  And he stopped.

  He. Knew.

  Charlie Knox is. A man who:

  Had been a man.

  Had been trained.

  To go out there where he would not have been able to survive without their training.

  Charlie Knox is a man who understood what he had been.

  What he had become.

  What he would have to be.

  To be. Out there.

  “Oh, God…”

  Pain. And silence. Knox looked at his wife with eyes that might have belonged to the final moments of a golden retriever.

  “I won’t do it.”

  “Won’t do what, Charlie? Please, Charlie, talk sense, lie down a little.”

  “You know I love you, honest to God I do.”

  He turned the knife and gripped it with both hands and drove it deep into his own stomach.

  For Knox, the porch light had been turned off.

  She sits on the edge of the bed and cannot take her eyes from the memory of the man she lived with for nine years. The memory remains, the form on the floor is someone vaguely familiar but undeniably a stranger.

  Finally, she rises, and begins to dust the room. She cleans thoroughly, mechanically, despite the dim black shapes she sees from the corner of her eye, shapes she takes to be dust. And so she cleans. Thoroughly. Mechanically.

  Brenda Knox. Is. A woman who.

  The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man.

  —CARL GUSTAV JUNG

  Los Angeles, Shell Beach, Big Sur, Oakland, California/1973

  2.

  Cold Friend

  Because I had died of cancer of the lymph glands, I was the only one saved when the world disappeared. The name for it was “spontaneous remission,” and as I understand it, it is not uncommon in the world of medicine. There is no explanation for it that any two physicians will agree upon, but it happens every so often. Your first question will be: why are you writing this if everyone else in the world is gone? And my answer is: should I disappear, and should things ever change, there should be some small record available to whomever or whatever comes along.