A Rage for Revenge

52 Afterburn

I was tired.

Tired of fighting. Tired of running. Tired of living.

I was looking at a concrete bridge abutment as it raced toward me. I was thinking how easy it would be to just end the pain once and for all. A quick twist and it would be over.

Or would it?

With my luck, I would live.

I'd probably just knock a bridge down on my head; army vans were supposed to be as strong as tanks. But then again, maybe not . . .

And while I was frowning over the crashability of the van, the bridge abutment raced past-

-and I realized how close I had come to actually jerking the wheel sideways.

I pulled off the road.

No, not here. The highway was too open. Too unprotected. I wanted a place to stop where I could feel safe.

I couldn't stop here-and I couldn't keep going. Who was it who had once said hell was an endless highway? Everybody, probably. It was too easy.

Twenty minutes later, the highway narrowed to four lanes and curved up into the foothills.

There.

A shaded rest area on a rise. I could turn on the detectors. Nothing could approach without setting off the alarms.

I pulled the van onto the dirt and pried open the door. I almost fell out onto the ground. My hands were shaking with exhaustion. I lay there with my face in the grass, just smelling the greenness of it. And the pinkness. That smelled good too. Like cotton candy.

And then I focused and I saw the little pink sprouts coming up here and there. And the blue as well. That's what I was smelling. I sat up and looked around. Next year, there wouldn't be any green on this hill at all.

I got up. I walked around the van. I walked away from it. I started to feel nervous. I walked back to it. Maybe I should get my rifle. No, maybe I shouldn't. If something was going to eat me, let it eat me.

I didn't know if I wanted to live or die.

"Do you know how a Chtorran likes to be burped?" I said.

"No," I answered. "How does a Chtorran like to be burped?"

"From the inside," I said.

It wasn't funny.

I shoved my hands in my pockets. I took them out. I felt restless. I wanted something to eat and I felt nauseous. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. Was this me or was it the effect of all the pink and blue and red and orange I was seeing around here. Did all those Chtorran plants put something into the atmosphere that made people crazy?

That was as good an explanation as any. I walked away from the van, just for something to do.

"Did you ever notice," I said, "that people always have to have a good reason for being crazy. There's always a justification. Something is doing it to you. If it isn't your parents, it's the army, w the government. Or the Communists. Now we have the Chtorrans to blame it on. The Chtorran ecology is making me crazy. Shit! Doesn't anybody ever go crazy because they want to? Just for the fun of it?

"I mean, being crazy is a great way to get attention without having to be responsible. They come and get you and put you in nice padded room arid take care of you forever after. Being crazy is a great way to escape. I think I'll be crazy."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I was already crazy. I'd been crazy for years.

"We're born crazy," someone had told me once.

"We spend all of our lives trying to get sane. That's what keeps us crazy. If we'd just relax and be crazy, we'd be all right."

"Huh?" I said.

The voice went on. "Trying to prove that you're sane is crazy. If you're crazy, be crazy. That's sane."

It didn't make sense. "Shut up," I said to the voice. "This neurotic pursuit of sanity is driving me bananas."

"You got it."

"I got nothing."

"Right. You got it. There's nothing to get."

"Shut the fuck up!" I shouted at the sky. "Leave me alone!" I remembered something I had seen once, a long time ago. We had been visiting my grandmother in Los Angeles. We had been driving west on the Ventura freeway one evening at dusk, when suddenly this bright, bright light appeared in the sky. It looked like a star, only it was too brilliant for that. As we watched, it started to spread streamers of glow through the hazy atmosphere. Wider and wider. Traffic around us slowed. "What is it?" my mother had asked. My dad hadn't said anything.

I said, "It's too steady to be a missile. Missiles move."

"Are we at war?" asked Maggie.

Dad said, "If it were incoming, we wouldn't see it like that. If it's a launch . . . but it doesn't look like any launch I've ever seen."

I said, "Maybe it's a nova."

"Too bright," said Dad.

"A supernova then-?"

He didn't answer, and I knew for a moment I'd guessed right. I was absolutely certain. Oh, my God. We'd been reading about supernovas in school. They exploded and put out great scouring waves of radiation. For us to see one this big and this bright meant that it was close enough to destroy the Earth. I was certain of it. I was looking at the end of the world.

We were probably already being bombarded by lethal radiation. We were already dead. I remember feeling cold and alone and totally helpless as I stared at that light in the sky. I wanted to cry.

And then the light puffed up, exploded and disappeared, leaving only a few glittering twinkles like fireworks.

I was glad I hadn't said anything. I would have looked like an idiot.

Dad said, "It has to be a missile launch. Vandenberg is just up the coast. But it sure was a weird looking one, wasn't it?" He switched on the radio, and a few minutes later the announcer confirmed that a test missile had been fired and destroyed when it went off course.

Why did I remember that now?

The feeling in my gut-that I was caught in the end of the world, that feeling of smallness and helplessness.

That was it. I was carrying that feeling around with me every day now.

I walked without purpose. It didn't matter any more.

There was no escape. The green grass had pink and blue threads in it. There were puffballs everywhere. They blew across the ground and stuck to your hair, your clothes, your eyebrows. You were always sneezing from them.

There were worm trails everywhere. There were millipedes everywhere. Sometimes you couldn't walk without stepping on a pipe cleaner bug. They were so stupid. The Chtorran cleanup machinery was everywhere. There was no escape.

It was going to take longer than the hard radiation, but it was going to happen. I was a witness to the end of the world.

First the plagues. Now the infestation. What next? Suicides? Oh, yes, we were already seeing a suicide plague. One out of ten people could be expected to die of self-induced causes within the next three years. That was supposed to be a secret, but it wasn't. It was, they said, the reaction to an environment gone out of control.

I felt like once, in school, we had done dust. We weren't afraid of the side effects. We could handle them. I had sniffed it. And the walls of the room had begun to bulge and wobble and vibrate. Reality threatened to shred all around me. I had started to scream in terror. Because I knew that I was all that was holding the universe together. And if I let go, the universe would let go-when was that?

Just before the plagues, wasn't it? I'd let go and the world had come to an end. It was my fault.

Where was I anyway?

My life was blurring. I didn't remember who I was or what year it was? Had we conquered the Earth yet? Oh, yes, we already had. We just hadn't found out yet.

What did that mean? What did anything mean? I blinked awake. Where was I?

I didn't recognize the area. l turned around slowly.

The van was on a distant hill. Somehow I had walked down the slope and away from it. I was a good half-mile away. The green had faded away; the other colors ruled here.

They smelled so . . . interesting.

I got down on my hands and knees to look.

There was still grass here. Underneath the other things. I guess they were plants, maybe they weren't. They looked like silvery little threads crawling up each blade of grass. Where they touched them they leached the color out of the grass stems, leaving the grass a peculiar bleached white color and brittle to the touch. The grass crunched like old leaves.

The threads were almost shiny. The thinner threads were white. As they grew older?-yes, older-and thicker, they turned pinkish. Where they had established themselves completely, the ground looked like a pastel tangle. The pink stuff fed on the green. And the blue stuff fed on the pink.

Naturally.

Where the pink threads were smooth and clean like noodles, the blue threads were scraggly and barbed. They looked like little insect legs encircling and leaching the flesh of the pink spaghetti. I wondered how many levels of evolution I was looking at.

A parasite that fed on grass. Plant or animal? Or something that was a little of each, but not enough of either to be one or the other. And then another parasite that fed on that one. Was there still another and another beyond that? When would we see those life forms? Just how vicious was the Chtorran ecology anyway.

Wait around. You'll find out.

Shut up, little voice. Get out of my head. Am I going mad again? No, I'm still mad. Is that me or the plants?

Stop and look. No, that's just me. I recognize my own craziness. How long have I been crazy, anyway?

All my life.

The pink stuff had roots. It could survive by itself. But it ate the green out of the grass when it was there. Smart. If it had to earn its own way it did. But it preferred to freeload.

What about the blue?

I pressed the ground with my fingers. It felt spongy. My head felt suddenly cavernous. I was hearing echoes of my own thoughts again.

I straightened up, blinking.

What had happened? I'd gotten out of the van. . . .

I'd been hallucinating. Or something. I was tired and-I'd fallen down on the grass. There was something in the grass. Yes, the pink and blue.

I recognized the pink. I knew the blue. I'd seen them before. Jason had showed them to me.

I knew what they were.

Candyland.

All the prettiest colors of sugary pink and spicy lavender bobbed in the summer sun. The air was thick with their sweet, sharp scent. There were tufts of cloud-white blue and marshmallow white, there were stalks of candy-cane red, there were tuffets of frosting and puddles of pudding--everything stretched and rolled out to the horizon, which was lost in the dust of yellow infinity.

The air was so sweet, it was like standing on top of a giant angel cake. I imagined I was-and that the stalks were candles and that all the sparkling colors were the candy sprinkles on top of a three-meter layer of caramel frosting. And underneath that-you could dig through the richest, thickest, sweetest layers of pure white cake until you hit the deepest layers of rich chocolate fudge . . .

But you had to be naked.

You had to take off all of your clothes and roll around in the candy and get good and sugary, and then when you had grown a big corkscrew snout, then you could start digging.

I laughed as I kicked off my shoes, and giggled as I pulled off my shirt and peeled out of my underwear. This was going to be fun.

Yes, I knew the pink and blue. Jason had showed them to me, just before the Revelation. And now, here I'd found a whole field of Revelation plants, all to myself. I wasn't just going to meet god here. I was going to be god.

The sun was a big red rose in a fat yellow sky. All the plants were singing on the tufty fields. I laughed and burbled. I skipped and sang across the field.

Until I stopped.

I stopped to stare at the giant pink gumdrop.

It was too big to eat. I'd have to live in it instead. I didn't think the worms would mind.

Their candy cane was out front, all sugar and melty. It said, Vacancy. Inquire within.