Bad Glass

“Jesus fucking Christ, kid. I was just kidding. We’ve all got our reasons.” Wendell broke into a trot, trying to catch up to me. “See. See. See.” I turned and found him pointing, with both hands, to a wide, shit-eating smile. “All you kids, you’re all so fucking sensitive. You’d think I broke your favorite toy … corrupted all your motherfucking MP3s.”

“Just tell me where I’m going,” I said.

“Sure, man. Welcome wagon and all of that shit. It’d be my pleasure.” He once again pointed to that creepy theatrical smile. There were way too many teeth there. It made him look positively demented.

As we started south on Monroe, Wendell pointed to our left. There was a thin sliver of green visible between the buildings. “Riverfront Park,” he said. “It’s not that big—just a little slip of green—but it’s nice. A nice place to watch the river. There was some type of famous carousel there once, before the evacuation. When the word came down, though, they just packed up all the wooden animals and left.” An odd look passed across his face. “There are other animals there now, in the park. Not-so-friendly animals.”

“Like what?” I asked.

Wendell shrugged. “Wild dogs, probably. I’ve heard people say wolves and bears.” After a moment of silence, he added in a lower voice, “And some talk about other things, too … animals you won’t find in any zoo.”

I studied him for a moment, trying to read the blank look on his face, trying to figure out what he believed. “How long have you been here?” I asked. “In the city?”

“I was here when the curtain came down. Government motherfuckers came in, and I never bothered to get out. No place to go.”

“You should know, then … you can tell me what’s going on. Out there—” I nodded back over my shoulder, toward the outside world. “The stuff you hear … it doesn’t make much sense.”

Wendell pulled to a stop. I turned to face him and found a bemused smile spread across his face, not the demented smile he’d flashed earlier, but something softer, more sympathetic. “If you’re looking for sense,” he said, “I can’t give it to you. Here, after a while, you stop looking for sense. I don’t know what you heard out there, in America”—the word tripped over his tongue, like it was part of some foreign language—“but in here, it’s just something you live with. Something in the background. There are vicious animals in the park, so you don’t go there after dark. There’s a warehouse on the east side—it’s been on fire for three months straight. So you stay the hell away. And if you see people in the street, people who shouldn’t be there, people whose feet don’t move when they walk …” He shrugged. “You just don’t see it. You don’t think about it, and you try not to remember.”

“And that’s true? All of that stuff?”

He shrugged.

“But why?” I asked. “How? What caused it?”

He gave me an amused look, then once again started down the street. He raised his hand in a dismissive gesture, flicking his wrist like he was tossing something away. “Everyone’s got their theories: chemicals in the air, contagious brain cancer, some type of terrorist attack, mutated animals, fucking aliens and demons and the dead spilling out of heaven and hell … Frankly, it’s all just religion to me. Unknowable. Meaningless.” He crossed himself and rolled his eyes in disdain. But his sarcasm fell flat; the gesture was just a bit too fluid, too practiced. “And if you came here looking for reasons, you’re just wasting your time.”

He picked up the pace, and I followed, staying a step behind.

After another block, he once again pointed to our left. “The government buildings are just over there, on Sprague. The military’s hunkered down in the courthouse. They’ve got armed guards and everything, but if you leave them alone, they won’t bother you too much. Same goes for the patrols and roving vehicles. The military here, they’re too busy to do much actual policing.”

I looked over but couldn’t see anything from this side of the street. Just empty buildings and dark windows.

“What’d you bring, anyway?” Wendell asked, nodding toward my duffel bag. “What’ve you got stashed away?”

“What?”

“Liquor? Drugs? Anything useful?”

“Just clothing and supplies,” I said, bouncing the backpack on my shoulder. “And photography gear.”

“Shit. What a waste.” He shook his head. “I’d have given you a whole shopping list to smuggle in. Some vodka. A fucking Big Mac. People could use some relief right about now.”

“How many?” I asked. “I mean, how many people are here? In the city?”