Black Moon

12

UPON STEALING THE TRUCK, CHASE found himself in possession of sheep. He could not tell how many, daring only to glimpse up at the rearview mirror as he negotiated the many curves in the mountain road at an unsafe speed. Maybe four or six or nine, sliding around back there. He could hear the flinty sound of their hooves scuffing against the metal floor of the open bed, their woolly bodies thumping against the sides. The animals complained as they were herded by centripetal force into corners of the careening vehicle. Chase caught flashes of their pale gums and yellow teeth, their wild eyes. His sheep: maybe plural or maybe just one, carouseling past the window. No, at least two. Wow, they were stressed out, braying or barking or baying—whatever kind of sound that was.

He was freaking out too, not knowing if the insomniacs were right on his tail. Here he was driving a truck, naked, fingers and toes shriveled by the icy creek water. Creased soles matted with pine needles, bejeweled with jagged pebbles. Still, he stomped on the worn pedals. The hot seat seared his palest flesh and the steering wheel felt like a red stove burner in his hands.

Yet his erection persisted. It had bobbed out in front of him when he had leapt from the creek and run through the meadow. It was like a tranquilizer dart someone had shot into him, purple as of a few days ago and craning up at the wheel as if trying to see over the dash. Tight and aching, the engorged appendage was a constant reminder that he had overindulged. A physical, artificially induced formality that had no linkage to desire. As if insomnia wasn’t bad enough, he had this additional, armless cross to bear, a cruel miracle of persistence. Death-defying in its own way, since it had not become gangrenous, as Jordan said it would. What does Jordan know, anyway? He’s a pharmacy cashier, not a doctor.

The creek had helped, sitting in the bitingly cold water as long as his body could endure. But now he had no creek. Nor did he have the other stolen pharmaceuticals—the sleep drugs that they had been using to ward off the inevitable.

No drugs and no pants. What he had was some desperate sheep rancher’s truck, and his sheep. The guy must have joined in the caravan of insomniacs that raided the campsite, hoping for at least one good night. Maybe he’ll get it. Maybe they’ll find some loose pills in the creases of the sleeping bag, or in the dust by the water jug, where surely some fell from Jordan’s trembling hands. If they looked hard enough, they might even find the cooler buried in the brush. They’re going to be pretty pissed when they find out those pills don’t work very well. They’ll work a few times, then the sleeplessness comes back stronger than ever, settling like a ball of sparks in your brain.

Macy! Macy must have sent them!

The road straightened for a stretch and he looked back at his sheep, huddled against the wind, struggling for footing. Some of his sheep were panting. Yes, his sheep. He had claimed them, eager to secure possessions, being so suddenly a person with nothing. And there was something else at work—a strange allure of animals, as if the notion of other living creatures was somewhat novel. It was, in a way. After all, he was a kid from the L.A. suburbs who had little experience with livestock. But in his sleep-deprived mind he sensed something marvelous and cosmically awesome about their animal presence. It was possibly a subtle form of emotional hallucination, or maybe he had pulled on a thread of some great, hitherto invisible truth. He didn’t know. He felt ownership, and with it a vague and complicated sense of transcendent wealth.

He owned beasts.

But that didn’t mean he had no need for pants.

HE knew as soon as he got behind the wheel—even before he had discovered the sheep—that he was going back to California. Felicia’s birthday was only days away and he intended to be at her parents’ house, where he knew she was sure to return. The epidemic had most certainly altered the timing of things, but if anything, it made her trip home even more likely, he figured. He aimed the stolen truck down the road he and Jordan had taken in weeks earlier, which meant riding the highway back up and over the towering range before dropping into Yellowstone and angling toward Utah.

The truck had some muscle, powering up the switchbacks to the summit, which was a plateau covered with thick tundra-like scruff and a low haze of purple flowers. Small rivulets cut meandering courses through it like long, dark cracks. The road was lined with tall painted sticks, which measured the height of the snow during winter. He could see the craggy blue peaks of the range all the way to the horizon and, tucked in canyons and craters, white bibs of glaciers and lakes shining like chrome. Thunderheads piled up in the distance, threatening to topple and spread like a canopy of loose wool over the pale sky. The wind passing through the cab was suddenly cool, the air thin. It was a relief to the sheep, it seemed. They were no longer panting.

The only sign of civilization at that altitude was a trading post called Top of the World—a log-and-sod structure with a broad plank porch and a tin roof. Behind it sat a small prairie house, which seemed to serve as merely the foundation for a radio antenna that telegraphed upward several stories like a giant hypodermic needle. Beside the house sat a green swing set, and the ground was littered with brightly colored toys—a surreal sight, given the desolate location.

Pulling to a stop in the parking lot, he shut off the engine and looked around the cab for something—anything—that could pass as clothing. He found a pair of massive mud-caked boots behind the passenger seat and struggled to put them on. Behind the driver’s seat was an open-top toolbox containing a hatchet and a car jack. There was nothing else. Not even a map in the glove box, which he had intended to wear like a towel wrapped around his waist. Given his anxious nature, this was a worst-case scenario. His youthful years were plagued with recurring nightmares of finding himself naked in public. It wasn’t the most persistent articulation of his many fears, but certainly one that came to the forefront of his mind as he exited the truck, hands cupped to conceal his aroused state, thinking, Oh, jesusgod, this is insane.

He stomped toward the storefront in the cool wind, then glanced back at the animals in the truck bed. They peered at him through the racks. There were definitely more than six of them, it seemed. Gaunt, elderly faces—movie villager faces, Chase thought—and black eyes rimmed with gold. So hard to tell how many because they all looked exactly the same and they kept shifting around, changing position, their hooves scuffing at the grit on the floor of the bed. He envied their woolly coats. And what did they think of him? How many times, he wondered, had they seen a totally naked human?

He clomped up the creaky stairs and peered inside the window, past the Yes-We’re-Open sign and those promoting bait, maps, and supplies. He scanned the store for people but his eyes found no one. To open the door, he quickly allowed one of his hands to abandon its post and turn the knob, then pushed his way in, feeling the cold glass of the door’s window against his shoulder. The interior was dense with clutter. An archaic cash register sat below a massive moose head. The walls bristled with antler wreaths. There were a few short aisles of groceries and camping supplies, plus a wall of souvenirs. A jackalope had been mounted atop some glass cases that held fishing flies and pocket-knives. There was no one else in the store.

Rather than call out, Chase moved quickly to the back of the store, where, among the fishing gear, he caught sight of a mannequin dressed in waders, essentially rubber overalls with built-in boots. He kicked off the massive boots he had worn into the store and started stripping the headless figure, peeling the waders off and discarding the flesh-tone plaster corpse. It hit the hard floor with a clatter, chips of its enamel skin scattering on the tile. Fortunately, the waders were large in size, perhaps even extra large. When he pulled them up around him, cinching the straps down like suspenders at his shoulders, the fit was roomy enough to accommodate his stubborn erection.

He looked around for a shirt. In the souvenir portion of the store there were Top of the World T-shirts. He chose one that said I’VE BEEN TO THE EDGE on the front, pulling it over his head.

Now he was suddenly conscious of the fact that, should the storeowner materialize, he might not be able to walk away with the goods. It’s not like he could buy anything. He had no money. The best thing to do was get the hell out of there before anyone showed up. He started for the door but decided to scoop up several boxes of cornflakes. For my sheep, he figured. Probably thirsty too. Near the register, he spotted a bowl of matchbooks. He might need fire. He grabbed a book and tucked it into the front pocket of the waders. There was a metal tub by the door, filled with what appeared to be hand-carved Christmas tree ornaments. Chase bent and flipped it, emptying the tub. He tossed in the boxes of cereal and carried it out. He could stop anywhere for water now.

Walking in the waders was odd. He moved stiffly through the wind in an impenetrable sheath. It was like wearing a diaper made out of an X-ray bib. In the places where his skin made contact with the material, there was a potentially chafing friction. He was already in a highly sensitive state. In the short walk to the truck, he knew this was going to be a real problem. Some underwear would sure be a lifesaver. He looked back at the store, then at the house.

He was startled to see a man sitting on the porch.

Chase’s first instinct was to run. He resisted the urge and instead walked as quickly as possible around the truck to the passenger side, where he put the tub on the seat. Then, closing the door, he started back around the front of the truck, where he noticed a colorful display of insects stuck to the front grille. He waddled around to the driver’s side.

All of his attempts at stealth were in vain, however, because the man appeared to be looking directly at him. He was watching Chase steal from the store but, judging by his slumped posture, didn’t seem to care. His head swung slowly from Chase to the highway and back. It seemed to Chase that the man’s lips were moving, that he was talking to himself. He recalled how he and Jordan had seen Felicia’s dad sitting on his backyard patio at three in the morning talking to himself. That was before Chase believed in the insomnia epidemic, dismissing Jordan’s warnings as slightly psycho ramblings.

He stepped out of the truck, but paused, trying to think up a semiplausible excuse for his actions. Anything that could get him some real clothes. He could tell the guy that he had tried to pay but there was no one working the register. If the man demanded payment, he could leave a sheep as collateral, saying he had to drive back to town for his wallet. He hated the thought of losing a sheep, though. He wasn’t sure how many he had, but whatever the number, he did not want to see it diminished. Fortunately, the subject of his thievery never came up. As he approached, the man had other things he wanted to talk about, confirming Chase’s suspicions about his state of mind.

The man, his eyes heavily bagged and bleary, squinted up at Chase and said, “You can see from up here what they’re doing from being this high up when the clouds aren’t in the way. You can see all their business being conducted clear as day like it was. I watched them change the cards and I’m telling you they swapped those cards like nothing hard. They literally swapped the cards no ifs about it if you can believe that or buts.”

“I can believe it,” Chase said.

“Yessir! They switched the cards to God-knows-what and you might as well burn the black curtain!” He made the whooshing sound of something going up in flames. “No one ever’s going to pull that curtain closed with those cards switched.”

Chase had no idea what the man could mean. He studied him, trying to determine whether he was dangerous. Maybe he’d just push past him and go in the house, pick out something to wear. The man was probably in his late forties. He wore a dirty baseball cap, and his hair, or what could be seen of it hanging out the back, was going gray. He had a big cop mustache that hung over his upper lip, and small icy blue eyes. Those eyes were almost smiling when he said, “So I shut everything down on my own with my own hands one by one because I’m not letting them do it! I’m going to do it myself goddammit and I think it went okay I think it went okay.”

He stood. “Look for yourself and you tell me.”

The man beckoned Chase up the steps to the threshold of the house, where he held open the door. Chase obliged. The rubber soles of the built-in boots softened his footsteps on the hollow porch. Inside the dim space, Chase could see three children and a woman lying on the floor, faceup with their hands at their sides. Their eyes were closed and they had been arranged in order of size: a toddler, then a boy, an older girl, and a woman. Sleeping? He felt a rush of envy. But as his eyes adjusted, he saw that the only movement in the room was that of some flies, flitting about the blank faces, landing on alabaster eyelids. Chase went cold.

“It went okay don’t you think seeing them there that it wasn’t too bad?” the man was asking.

“Wait here,” was all Chase could think to say. He backed away, then trotted down the stairs. He said, “Be right back.” But it was more of a whisper drowned out by the creaking of the rubber waders as he made for the truck.

HE drove with the fear swelling up inside him. It was in his stomach like a mass of cold dough, expanding into a tight void. It generated a disorienting feeling like standing on a ledge, going woozy at being so close to the drop. The guy’s face, his eyes—those small squinting eyes. Something animal was there, and a human thing missing, seeped out, so dumb to the horror. Did he strangle them one by one? A sleepless killer with animal eyes. Chase’s hands shook, so he gripped the wheel and pumped the gas, then the brakes, then the gas again, taking the tight curves through the mountains. The sheep groaned as they slid around, knees locked, like end tables. The shifting weight felt like gusts of wind hitting the truck and Chase wished they didn’t insist on standing.

“Get down!” he yelled out at them though the rear window.

Or was he yelling at himself, that part of himself that still stood? How could he still be aroused after what he had just seen? His state was some kind of punishment, he was now sure. Payback for some ill way of looking at the world. Because that’s the stem, the fuse to a lifelong implosion, the hook for dreams and the on-switch of death. And now there it was, the thing normally most hidden, out in front of him and insisting with its posture, its wicklike attitude, on being lit.

HE began sobbing but he wasn’t sure what, exactly, was bringing forth the tears. It wasn’t the children he had seen, so still and waxy like dolls. Nor was it pity for the man who had, because of some sleepless delusions, somehow executed each of them. Fuck, he just needed to see Felicia.

HE encountered few vehicles on the road, even after completing the descent and moving through more populated areas. As they passed, Chase tried to read the faces of the drivers for insomnia. They blurred by too quickly to tell. There were several cars abandoned at the side of the road. He overtook an RV that was weaving and saw an elderly woman at the wheel, an old six-shooter on the dash. The road took him through a few towns, which were alive with people, some of them staggering on the streets. Chase couldn’t tell if they were drunk or sleepless, but after the incident at the Top of the World, he was too afraid to stop and investigate. The occasionally shattered window of a storefront or streets clogged with haphazardly parked cars seemed to indicate that the epidemic was in play. There was no sign of authorities, not even a ranger.

As evening approached, he could no longer ignore the fact that he had to piss—a basic function complicated by his condition. He looked for a place to leave the highway, eventually deciding on a dirt road that ran alongside a creek through wooded terrain. The sheep, which had quieted as the highway straightened but were now jostled by the rutted road, resumed voicing their annoyance with congested bleating. “Yeah, yeah,” Chase said. “We all need a break.”

The place he chose to park was a grassy opening along the bank, a gap in the trees that lined the creek. He pulled to a stop and walked into the water as the sun set, tossing his shirt to the bank and peeling down the waders. They served their true purpose, protecting his feet and legs from the cold water as well as from his own fluid, which he released in uncomfortable, arcing spurts. When he finished, he continued to stand in the water, his face slack in a stupor of exhaustion. He felt the current pulling at his legs as he watched the mayflies swarm. Frogs started up their chorus and bats dipped and flittered overhead. He recalled how he and Jordan had used a fishing pole and peach beetles to hook bats when they were kids. Standing on the roof of the restrooms at the neighborhood park, casting up at the sky. Chase wondered where Jordan was now. Had he gotten away? Not likely, since he was so dopey with drugs these days. Turns out Jordan had grabbed morphine along with the sleep stuff. And it was the only thing that was given him any kind of relief. Chase insisted that he wasn’t really sleeping on the stuff, but only hallucinating that he was sleeping. “What’s the difference?” Jordan had asked.

He turned and looked at the truck. In the dusky light, the sheep were huddled in the bed, some with their faces turned his way. He wondered if he could let them out so they could eat the grass and drink from the creek. But how would he ever get them back in the truck? They would probably scatter in all directions. They would roam the woods and one by one fall victim to predators—wolves, bears, pumas. He couldn’t let that happen. Not to his sheep.

He waddled out of the creek and around to the passenger side of the truck, where he pulled out the metal tub and cornflakes he had stolen. Everything he owned, he had stolen, he realized. And to think that he had been so uptight about stealing the drugs from the pharmacy. He would have to steal gas too, he knew. The thought of it made him anxious. He told himself to stay focused on feeding and watering his sheep.

When he came around to the tailgate with a box of cornflakes, the sheep moved away from him, pressing into a tight scrum at the opposite end of the bed. They were afraid of him. He tore open the box and scattered fistful of cornflakes on the floor of the bed, which was smeared with droppings. The sheep showed no interest in the cereal. Who would? he conceded. No one wants their food mixed with shit.

He tore open all the boxes and poured the cereal into the tub. Then he lowered the gate and slid it along the grooved floor. Still the sheep kept to the other side of the bed. The closest had their backs to him. He reached in for their stub tails, but they nudged and squirmed away, fighting to be farthest from the gate, from him. The truck shook under their desperate maneuverings. Had they learned to be this fearful? he wondered. Or were they born with the fear built in?

He stared at them, glazing over—their pungent odor and presence somehow soothing and hypnotic. To his exhausted eyes, they were identical. All clones of the same self-replicating animal. There seemed to be more of them than there had been earlier, and they appeared to be smaller. He tried again to count them, but their roiling movements and their uniformity made it impossible. In the failing light, they seemed to merge, then pull apart, entire creatures engaged in bodily mitosis.

Maybe he could no longer count. He seemed to find it difficult. He studied his hand, counting his fingers, but lost interest before completing both hands. What he should do, he realized, is move away from the truck. Maybe they would eat the cereal if he wasn’t standing right there.

From the peak of the grassy bank, where he sat in the waders, he watched the slow churning of the sheep in the truck bed. They had no interest in the cornflakes. They didn’t seem to recognize them as food. After a long while, Chase stood and shuffled back to the truck. He pulled out the tub and grabbed a handful of flakes and stuffed it in his mouth, crunched vacantly, and swallowed hard. He ate more, then tipped the tub, spilling the flakes into a pile on the ground before walking the tub into the darkening waters of the creek. It filled quickly but he found that it was too heavy to carry when full. He poured out all but about three inches of water, which sloshed against the tin sides as he carried it slung against his thigh.

This time, after he had slid in the tub and backed away, the sheep came forward. They mobbed the tub, lowering their heads into it and lapping at the water. Or, it seemed to Chase, they sucked up the water. The fact that they were drinking what he had provided moved him, causing his chin to quiver with a strange current of emotion. The event seemed to prove that all of this was sustainable, that it could go on forever so long as they were all allowed to play their roles.

Again, the animals jockeyed, shouldering and nudging others aside as they struggled to drink, pushing in and complaining.

“Hey, easy,” Chase called to them. “There’s a whole river of water right there.”

Oddly, they all froze and looked his way. He was startled to see all the gleaming eyes swing in his direction, and lock in on him. They looked him in the eye, which he found unnerving. How do they know that these are my eyes? Or that eyes are where you should look on a person? What teaches animals that eyes are where to look?

“What are you fucking staring at?” he shouted. He heard his own voice echoing in the distance.

What are echoes? he wondered. Another me shouting in a different dimension.

One by one, the sheep slowly disengaged, returning to the business of drinking.

He knew they needed food too. His hard-on stabbed at his stomach as he bent over and tore a fistful of grass from the sloping bank. He pulled up a few more handfuls, then tossed the tiny bundle into the bed. They went for it, sniffing with caution, and then lipping it up and into their mouths.

They bleated for more, so he started ripping at the hillside and lobbing loose fistfuls of grass over the side racks. He could hear the rhythm of their chewing, the crunching followed by a chorus of hard swallows. Then they would look out at him, eyes full of longing. They must be starving, he figured. He tried to keep the grass coming. But harvesting was difficult in that it involved stooping over and his inflated anatomy and rubber wardrobe got in the way. He took to bending at the knees and tearing at the grass at his sides. Handful after handful until he had a bundle in his hands, which he would toss in from afar.

The sheep would devour it before it had settled on the floor.

He kept at it late into the night, moving robotically in the darkness as though in a dazed state. At one point, he tried to use the hatchet from behind the driver’s seat, swinging it at the taller grass along the water’s edge. This quickly exhausted him, so he went back to pulling at the grass on the bank. His efficiency dwindled to the point that at times he was throwing nothing more than a few blades, fistfuls of air. The animals ate whatever he managed to land in their tiny mobile corral. Finally he realized how hungry he was himself. He searched the ground for the cornflakes he had poured out earlier. They had been trampled, pressed into the moist earth by his own rubber-soled feet. He picked out what he could, then lay back looking up at the stars, his erection painfully tenting the rubber pants. The sheep, he knew, were watching him.

HE felt sleep trying to arrive in his body. It was like watching a wave rolling forward, advancing on the shore, but never actually crashing. Just rolling in place, endlessly. Frustration welled inside him. This is how it had been ever since the drugs stopped working. This is how it was for the entire world—sleep hovering over, feeling as if it would drop down over you any minute but never falling. It seemed to tease, playing little presleep movies, flashes of visions, yet the full show failed to unfurl. It was like realizing that some vital part of you had been lost. Like waking up in a hospital bed without your legs, or knowing your face has been forever altered by fire or violence. You were grotesquely diminished without it. You would die without it.

He sat up, sobbing mechanically. The night intimidated him. His fearful mind conjured up the usual scenarios—people coming along, bad things happening. He had always been like that, his thoughts running dark at night. Worst-case scenarios playing out in his mind, an endless reel. His anxieties blooming. Now that no one was sleeping, he thought, there’s no need for night.

He remembered how Felicia worked the late shift, waitressing at a coffee shop. He couldn’t bear the thought of her driving home alone and insisted on picking her up at three A.M. every night. He couldn’t sleep knowing she was out there. He started carrying a knife in those days, when he first fell in love. For the first time in his life, he knew he could drive a blade into someone’s chest. He fingered it in his pocket as he watched strangers attempt to flirt with her at the counter. She found it in his glove compartment while searching for a map and threw it away—literally tossed it out the window as they drove through the desert, traveling to her family reunion.

He sat on the hood of the truck, missing her. Maybe not even the real her, but the dream version of her. In waking life, it was too complicated. He was hit with flashes of scenes—their bodies moving together, that fitted connection, the heat of her. That’s the only place—inside a booth of sleep—where he could fully act upon his desire for her. He obeyed an urge to address the always-aroused part of himself, there on the hood of the trunk. The wader squeaked against the metal as he rolled it down to his knees and spat into his hand.

He finished quickly, though no resolution phase followed. His readiness persisted. It was as though he had told his cock an incredible story and it had laughed and cried, then turned to him and said, “Then what?”

LATER he checked on the sheep and found them sleeping. The sight of them crushed together, a huddle of gray mounds in the darkness, angered him. He pounded on the side of the truck and shouted, “Wake up!”

Again, the echo.

“Fuck you!” he yelled to the other him.

It yelled back, “You will sleep if you kill those sheep!”

He thought, “Maybe it’s Jordan messing with me.”

The animals bounded to their feet and scrambled, some trying to escape by leaping up at the racks. Kill them? No way. What they needed was a shake-up. He jumped behind the wheel and tore down the road, bouncing the sheep around the bed. They screamed like teenagers on a roller coaster, slamming against the racks, sliding face-first into the rear window when he abruptly braked. The tub flew into their thin legs, bowling them over.

He had cooled off by the time he reached the main highway, the tires quieting to a soft thrum, the ride smooth. The cries of injured and rattled animals chased him down the road. After a mile or two, he was sobbing an apology into the rearview mirror. “It’s because I can’t sleep,” he told them. “It’s because no one can sleep.”

He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview. His jittery face, the heavy rings around his bloodshot eyes. He felt himself becoming one of the many sleepless he had encountered over the last few weeks. His outburst at the sleeping sheep was the most blatant symptom so far. He would be babbling incoherently soon, stumbling around the landscape. It was hard to say how long it would be, since he and Jordan had slept more than most, leveraging their drug stash. But rather than extend the timeline of demise, it seemed to now rush at him with a vengeance.

There was something in the road. A dark form darting from the shoulder.

He slammed on the brakes and the truck skidded and started to spin. The sheep hit the cab, a lumpy wave of heavy flesh. They moaned hoarsely. He peered into the darkness around the truck, but saw nothing.

AS the sun rose, he found himself driving through a vast prairie. He passed two abandoned checkpoints, where hulking military vehicles crowded the gravel median. He sped through, fearing they would confiscate his animals, but there were no personnel in sight. Far to his right, he could see the tawny pattern of a pronghorn herd, speckling the broad canvas of yellowing grass. It occurred to him that this would be a good place to let the sheep graze. He could see them for miles, should they wander off. But he would try to keep them close. They’d probably just stand around in a frightened cluster, chewing on the grass. That’s what sheep do, right?

The bed needed to be cleaned out, he knew. They were probably up to their ankles in shit by now. They are shit machines.

He drove on, hoping to see a pond or creek, looking for the ideal setting. Like a homesteader, he thought. Looking for a place to put down my roots.

But the land offered no ideal spot for settlement. He decided to pull off and drive the truck onto the prairie itself, away from the highway. It was a bumpy ride but he did it very slowly. Still, the sheep complained. He winced every time the truck was rocked by the terrain and shouted an apology through the back window. “Sorry, guys! Hang in there. Just a little bit more and we’ll park.”

He kept his word, pulling to a stop at the peak of a gentle rise. It was early morning and the truck cast a long shadow. He could see the low blue wall of craggy mountains in the side mirror, far to the north. Ahead, the prairie extended to the horizon. Fat clouds floated overhead and their shadows were like dark shifting continents on the flat parchment map of land. He stepped out onto the withering grass and stood blinking in his built-in rubber boots. The air was still and cool, carrying a hint of fall—the end of the summer without sleep. Maybe winter will freeze it out, he thought distractedly. He thought it again. Maybe winter will freeze it out.

Time to let them out.

He went to the tailgate and peered in. The animals were in bad shape. Roughed up and battered, more tightly huddled than before. In fact, he could now see, they were transformed. The many traumas of the road had caused them to collide and fuse together—a broad-backed woolly spider, conjoined torsos with many legs and heads, rib cages interlaced, spines intertwined. Some noses were bloodied, some eyes swollen shut. A few legs protruded unnaturally from the cluster. He was horrified at the sight of them as he lifted out the rear racks, then dropped the gate and backed away. My sheep, he thought tearfully. My ruined sheep!

The hatchet, he thought. I can separate them.

The sheep came forward, a globbed-together mass rushing out of the truck in a stampeding clatter, their stiltlike hooves hammering through the layer of dung. They dropped to the ground, grunting on impact, then ran off—a small, low-flying cloud. He started after them, calling, “You’ll die out here! Surviving won’t be allowed out here!”

His echo shouted back, “See, dickhead? Now you have nothing to offer! Catch them!”

It was impossible to run in the waders. They were too heavy and stiff to allow his legs to really churn. It was like running through tar. His movements were further slowed by the dry weave of grass that clung to his ankles. A hundred yards or so into the landscape, he fell to his knees, chest heaving. The sheep ran on, down into the basin of the plain, toward the faraway antelope. He watched them go, grasping at his hair. His face warped. His sheep gone.

They were swallowed by distance. He watched the place where they disappeared, waiting for them to reemerge.

The sun moved over him. The day passed.

At one point he yelled up at the sky, “God damn it!”

“I’m watching you,” his echo said. “I never sleep. My eye is always wide open.”

“So?”

“So I know.”

Eventually he stood. It was nearly dark again. His legs were sore from kneeling. He studied the distance for the sheep, but they had disappeared long ago. So he stood as the sun dropped toward the edge of the world, warming one side of his face with an orange light.

When he went to close the gate of the truck, he found that they hadn’t all abandoned him. There was one left, lying on its side on the floor. Its body was heaving, and when he leaned in, causing the bed to dip, the animal looked up at him. Two trickles of blood ran from its nose. “My sheep,” he said. “You are my sheep. My last sheep you are just one. The only sheep of the sheep of mine.”

FORTY miles down the road, he passed a sign for a rest stop. This was funny to him. He laughed hysterically, his spittle flecking the windshield. Rest! So ha-ha-ha! He called the sign to the attention of his sheep, though it lay curled below his limited sight line in the back of the truck. “It doesn’t happen anymore for us humans,” he tried to explain over his shoulder, his laughter dissolving into a dry coughing fit. The sight of so many vehicles gleaming in the parking lot surprised him. Maybe they really were, he thought. Maybe it was where rest was really happening of all places on the planet.

He took the rest stop exit and rolled into the heart of an insomniac carnival. The scene was charged with manic energy: cars, trucks, and buses crowded tightly together, people roaming among the picnic areas and restroom structures, shouting, gesticulating insanely. Intoxicated by exhaustion or maybe something else: there were many semi trucks in the crammed lot that had clearly been looted, and at least one bore the logo of a beer manufacturer. Wide-open trailer doors revealed empty cargo holds, the ground littered with loose pallets and flattened cardboard. Colorful shreds of product packaging tumbled by, carried along by a steady wind. All of it the larval stages of a landfill.

The rest stop was ringed by a wide lawn, where the prairie had been routinely mowed close. People had already dug in, setting up a shantytown of makeshift lean-tos and campsites. Some had tents and canopies, while others had fashioned structures out of boxes and other items apparently from the looted trucks, including office furniture and inflatable rafts. Beyond this improvised residential zone, the prairie extended across the broad plain. Chase could see faraway figures wandering the expanse.

The lot was congested, cars closing off all but a narrow artery of pavement that unevenly parted the jumble of parked vehicles. As he struggled in his sleepless state to navigate through, the truck lurching and stopping, a couple of men who had been standing off to one side began to follow him. Slack-jawed, with heavy-lidded eyes, they kept pace, staring into the bed. He sped up and found himself facing another barricade. This time, his way was blocked by the many cars that had been driven down this narrow passage before him into a dead end and abandoned. All a trap! He threw the truck into reverse, badly grinding the gears.

Driving backward, however, proved to be beyond his present capabilities. His foot was too heavy on the pedal, his hand-eye coordination out of sync. He smacked into a parked car, the back end of the truck biting into the hood. The impact whipped his head back and left the truck sitting on an angle in the tight lane, wedged in on both sides and stalled. The sheep was silent, but he felt its distress and went to it, leaping out the door and climbing into the befouled bed. His foot hung up on the rack and he fell forward, face grinding into the piss and droppings that gathered in the grooved floor of the truck bed. The animal, crammed on its side in the corner of the bed, did not raise its head. It watched with heavy-lidded eyes as Chase sat up on his knees in the waders, spitting frantically, wiping at his face. He edged toward the creature, which appeared to be paralyzed, and pressed his hand into its warm back. Still, it did not lift its head or scramble to its feet. He patted the sheep and dust rose out of the fleece.

“Looks like you got something to give for all this wrecking you did,” someone said. There were several people now, gathered around the truck. They looked through the bars of the side racks: Chase caged, along with his sheep.

“Get away,” Chase said.

“That’s pretty good those kinds of animals once you take the fur off,” someone said, “if you can find the zipper.” It was one of the men, Chase could see, who had followed the truck as he drove in. He glared at the onlookers. All of them sleepless.

“And cook it with some fire, you have to do that to it,” someone said.

A large woman, who reached in with her heavy arm, said, “You give us that animal because it’s the way it works around here especially after you crashed up this person’s car so now its all crunked up.”

“Not going to happen,” Chase said, throwing himself over the sheep. He kicked at the woman’s arm and held the sheep tightly under him, but rose when he heard them fumbling with the gate. He scooped up the filth from the bed with both hands and flung it in their direction. He did it again, splattering those pushing in for a look. They backed away in disgust, cursing at him. “You don’t want this sheep,” he yelled. “This sheep is toxic! You can see that this sheep is toxic!”

“He’s lying,” his echo said.

But the sleepless heard only the word “toxic.” It burrowed in and their fear pulled them back. They wiped desperately at their faces, their necks, wherever he had struck them with the manure, spitting and gagging.

“You are so fucking inappropriate!” someone said.

A woman pointed at his groin. “Look how it arouses him to be so vile like a dog!”

“Oh my crap it’s true look at that gearshift there so jutting!”

Chase continued to scoop up the shit pellets and sidearm them at his tormentors. But they had moved back, out of range, even though he charged at them and leaned far out over the racks. “We are toxic!” he yelled. “Don’t come touching us!”

“He sleeps!” the echo shouted.

“Now who’s lying?” Chase said. But he didn’t yell this. He didn’t want a response. He sat back, his legs splayed out. The sheep was next to him. It wasn’t breathing right. Its side was rising and falling too quickly, Chase thought. Every now and then a little bubble of blood would form from one of its nostrils. It was panting. Chase pushed the animal’s pale tongue back into its mouth, clamped the mouth shut. He patted the sheep on the face, his fingers jabbing it in the eye. “I won’t let them don’t worry,” he whispered, gripping the animal’s ear and twisting it toward his mouth, so only the animal heard. So it was just between the two of them. “They aren’t going to get to do anything.”

He lay back hard against it, knocking the wind out of the dying animal.

THEY came several times in the night for the sheep. Each time he was able to fend off the insomniacs by screaming and throwing sheep shit scooped off the floor. Sometimes he remembered to say his line about the animal, both of them, being afflicted with some kind of toxic disease. Other times he just savagely lashed out at the vague figures that emerged from the darkness, edging in from the boundaries of his vision. He kicked up at them as they closed in, but his feet never made contact and they vanished when he squinted and focused.

In the darkening plain he saw bonfires burning and he was envious of the light and heat. The temperature had dropped as night descended. There were matches in the front pocket of the waders, he knew, but what would he light? Maybe just one leg of the sheep like a torch. He sat shivering in his T-shirt and waders, listening to the murmur of voices, which was sometimes punctuated by shouts and screams—an eruption of unseen conflict. He sensed that a black moon had risen, a sphere of sleeplessness that pulled at the tides of blood—an invisible explanation for the madness welling inside.

Once in the night, his eyes sought out the source of a terrible far-off shriek. He saw a figure cloaked in fire rushing into the darkness of the prairie. He stood and watched as it suddenly dropped out of view, wondering if the burning figure was the source of his echo. The sheep was still in the dark corner, its breathing a wheezing rasp.

It occurred to him that he was in a bed. In bed with a sheep, sporting a hard-on. This realization triggered a fit of laughter that he couldn’t seem to kill. He roared with guffaws and his echo followed. Just as it seemed to be dying down, it would flutter back into his chest and he would shudder in waves. His maniacal spasm must have signaled a lapse in his defenses since, during this fit, he was rushed by a number of people—men, women, and children. They swarmed the truck, climbed up over the racks. Some came bounding over the hood and onto the cab. They threw themselves down at him. He was knocked to the floor and a mob piled on top of him, crushing him under their squirming bodies. He kicked and ripped at anything he could close his hands around. He gouged at any opening his fingers found. Through the flailing limbs, he saw his sheep lifted, swept up and over the rack by a raging current of hands. He screamed until a knee smashed into his mouth. A desperate, raging strength rose in him and he kicked and squirmed until he found an opening in the thicket of limbs. He rolled off the tailgate onto the hood of the car he had hit earlier. He kept rolling until his legs dropped over the side and his feet found the ground. He growled and bulldozed his way though the people jumping down from the bed, bowling them over and stomping them as he made his way to the cab, where he grabbed the hatchet from behind the seat.

Then he was running through the maze of tightly packed cars looking for his sheep. He called out, “Bring back that animal that is mine!”

His echo was still laughing.

He overtook a man in his path and swung at him, driving the blade of the hatchet into the man’s shoulder. The man screamed, his hand going to the deep wound. Chase tugged at the tool, freeing the blade from bone, and swung again as the man tumbled to the side, scrambling to get away from his attacker. The swing caught him on the forearm, opening an angry gash. The man fell away with a groan.

He charged into the dark campsites, stepping on people who were sitting on the ground, hacking wildly at their heads and bodies, knocking down their fragile shelters as he stomped through. The sleepless yelled after him, tried to hold him back, but he plowed ahead. He brought the small ax down on the back of a woman who ducked before him, throwing her arms over her head. She yelped under the blow—like a dog’s bark—as he stormed onward, hearing with satisfaction her ragged inhalation, shattered ribs gouging her lungs.

Chase imitated the sound she let out when he struck her. “Bark, bark, bark!”

“So funny!” his echo said.

He charged a group that had gathered around a fire. “The animal is mine!” he yelled. Chaos opened up before him as people panicked. He swung at the scrambling bodies, catching a man in the face, knocking his jaw askew. Teeth flew, blood in a warm spray, the handle of the hatchet getting slick. Hard to grip as he caught an elderly man in the head. The hatchet stuck in the man’s skull, and when the man hit the ground, Chase kicked frantically at his head to free it.

Someone broke something over his head and he staggered, his legs wobbling under him. He could feel that there was a wound. When he touched it, he felt a strange pressure in his teeth. A delayed rush of pain exploded over him. Hands from a swarm of shouts grabbed at him from behind, but he was too slick to hold. He tore away.

The blow had robbed him of his sense of direction. He stumbled aimlessly, head ducked low and arms raised, waiting for more assaults. He kicked and swung at every nearby voice or moving form, sometimes connecting and setting off screams. But as he wandered on, the chaos quickly receded behind him. Only twenty feet farther on and it was as if nothing had happened. He saw that this was a new world. A kind of dark heaven, a world without consequence.

In the flickering light of a nearby fire, he caught the profile of his father. What was he doing here? He’s supposed to be teaching in Boston. Chase approached him and said, “I had sheep and the one that was the only one left has been taken by these people here.”

“They will send helicopters,” his father told him, “and you’ll see all this come to life, rising on ropes when that wind hits. What’s that angry thing I’m seeing there?”

Chase put his hand over himself, but his father was pointing at the hatchet.

Chase held it up so he could see it better. His father frowned.

“You better hand it over to me with your own hand.”

Chase surrendered it. “Remember what happened to Jordan with the hammer he was swinging at the slugs he was making?” he asked his father. “That’s how he lost his eye when it shattered into pieces against the concrete floor and shot like bullets right through his eyelid closing them didn’t matter.”

“I could use this,” his father said, “for the stripping of the branches so we can see the road from here when the tanks come.”

It was not his father from the front or back, only from the side. He could see that now as the man pulled away and wandered off. Chase followed him with his eyes, thinking the almost familiar will somehow lead him to the familiar. And it worked. He spotted Felicia, moving through the darkness. She turned and, seeing him over her shoulder, gestured for him to follow. He was pleased to see that she had no wounds and that, in his activities, he had not axed her.

But she disappeared behind a shaft of darkness, then was nowhere to be seen. He wandered forward, calling for her, until he found himself at the concrete heart of the rest stop, standing before the cinderblock bathroom buildings. He peered into the complete darkness of the men’s room. An animal sound, one he attributed to the strangling of a sheep, seemed to emanate from inside. He yelled into hard space: “Felicia?”

“No, just me,” his echo responded.

Chase stepped inside to find people there, standing in the darkness or huddled on the floor. The tiled floor and walls amplified their murmurs so that the space buzzed with a hivelike hum. He stepped carefully around people, men and women, he could tell. Animals somewhere, too. He thought he heard the panting of large dogs and smelled the sour odor of wet fur, though it was soon overpowered by the smell of urine, the funk of shit.

His eyes slowly adjusted, helped only a little by the feeble light coming in from the high windows over the row of sinks. He could see his vague form moving from mirror to mirror, like a man passing behind a wall of windows, as he walked down the long row of toilet stalls. The floor was wet under his rubber-booted feet. Probably piss from the pissers, he figured. Yet the stain of fluid coming from under one of the far stall doors was dark. He could see the fat line it made on the tiles, running down the gently sloping floor and into a drain.

Chase was drawn to it. He had to move forward, toward it, pulled by some strange new strand of momentum—a thin tether, yet one charged with an absence of self. He was growing distant from that core he had always felt so compelled to protect, to hold tightly together. He was aware that the dark form moving in the mirrors was no longer his responsibility. He was the opposite of all that he had been. He had been turned inside out.

He stepped over the long stain on the floor. It looked black in the light but he recognized it as blood. Listening at the door, he heard voices, sounds—maybe sex, maybe whimpering. He imagined his whole world behind the door: his family, Felicia, Jordan, his sheep, every escaped prisoner, gangbanger, or psycho killer he had imagined, every monster, human or otherwise, blood draining out of all of them. All crammed into the small space. Did he belong in there with them? He pushed against the door with his shoulder. It was latched shut.

He found himself in the next stall, sitting on the toilet in his waders. In the darkness, he remembered the matches and dug them out of the large front pocket. It took a long time to light one. His hands were shaky and he found it difficult to focus on the simple task. Eventually, one lit with a spark and a hiss and he was able to see that the walls of the stall were covered with graffiti. Pornographic boasts and invitations, sappy sentiments and proclamations of love. Filthy rhymes. Cock-and-balls etchings like some kind of ancient religious symbol. But most striking was the elaborate butterfly drawn on the wall to his left—the wall connected to the stall from which the blood drained. It had the wingspan of an owl and its wings were ornamented with eyes. The butterfly’s head, from which sprang long, wiry antennae, was a dark circle. In fact it was a glory hole that someone had bored through to the neighboring stall.

As the flame crept down the match, Chase leaned forward. He peered through the small portal and was confronted, as the flame bit at his fingers, with an eye staring back at him. Startled, he tossed the match on the floor, but not before glimpsing the wide black hole of the pupil ringed with green. The eye of his echo, he knew. Glistening and open, unblinking in that instant he found it, before the match flame flitted out, leaving him again in darkness.

He felt it watching him, so he jabbed his fingers through the hole, hoping to spear it. Nothing. The eye, he sensed, was just out of reach. He slapped a hand over the hole and, with his other, worked down the waders over that engorged part of himself—that persistent spike—so that they bunched stiffly around his knees. Now he would reach the eye, and blind it. He moved into position, keeping one hand over the hole.

To hear it scream, he knew, he had to scream first.