The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

FEEDING THE MASSES by Yvonne Navarro

The man on Seymour Tussard’s front doorstep smiled pleasantly.

“You realize, of course, that life goes on. There are thousands of people just like yourself who have suffered even greater losses, yet they continue to be loyal Americans and do their duty—without complaint, I might add.” The man pulled a pen from his pocket, clicked it open with his thumb—a clean, well-manicured thumb—and ran it down the information sheet on his clipboard. “It says here you have a wife and two daughters, Mr. Tussard. It also says that you’re a successful attorney with an average income before deductions of approximately one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year. Is that correct?”

Tussard squinted at him. “I—well—no, I don’t have a job—”

“But you did have a job, isn’t that true? Up until a month ago?”

“Well, yes, I suppose I did.” His eye was burning again and Tussard resisted the urge to scratch at it. He’d rubbed the left one too hard last Thursday and it had popped; though it had been sightless for weeks he’d felt slightly off-balance ever since.

Bennigan—Tussard remembered the man’s name from the I.D. he’d flashed—stretched his neck slightly to see over Tussard’s shoulder. “May I come in, Mr. Tussard? I’m sure we’d both be more comfortable.”

“Uh, sure, sure.” He stepped back and pulled the sheet covering the doorway of his ranch-style house to one side so the younger man could enter; his fingers left a sort of smudgy print on the already filthy material.

Bennigan didn’t seem to notice. He breezed into Tussard’s home as if he’d been invited to dinner, glanced around quickly, then made himself a place to sit by turning a plaster-dust encrusted chair pillow upside down to expose its unmarred underside. He didn’t lean back as he placed the clipboard on his knees; instead he folded his hands demurely on the clipboard’s paper-covered surface.

“All right, Mr. Tussard, let me lay it out for you. Based upon your last return and assuming your wife and daughters haven’t worked—by the way, where are they?”

“The cart took them the day before yesterday,” Tussard answered. His limit on pain—physical and emotional—had been reached long ago, but saying those words so matter-of-factly to the parasite sitting across from him was like rinsing with a mouthful of motor oil. He hadn’t realized he could feel any dirtier.

Bennigan smiled benignly. “My sympathies.” Like magic the pen appeared again and he returned his attention to his papers. “Where were we? Oh, yes. Well, you’ll still be able to claim a deduction for each of them for last year—this year, too. Keep that in mind for next April. Now, assuming an income of one hundred fifty thousand dollars—which is probably low but we’ve given you the benefit of the doubt since the computer records are gone—that would put you in the thirty-three percent bracket. As I said before, you can still claim your wife and daughters even though they’re dead, so that makes four dependents. It says here that you normally itemize, but I’m afraid we’ll still require detailed records for you to take the kinds of deductions that you have in previous years. Are those records still available to you, sir?”

Tussard’s eye drifted blearily toward a blackened doorway at the far end of the living room. Through it he could see little besides the scorched ruin from the electrical short that had triggered the fire. That same room had been his home office, holding all the written recordings of a once happy and shamefully oblivious life. One of the shockwaves had caved in an area of the roof; the rain had been the only thing that had kept the fire from spreading to the remainder of the house. He wondered how Janet had felt, alone here, with the girls at school. He had been downtown, if such a word could be used for the business district of this small city thirty miles southwest of Chicago. By the time he’d made it home, it had all been over.

“Mr. Tussard?” Bennigan said patiently, jolting him back to the present. “Will you be able to substantiate itemization for this year?”

“Uh, n-no.” This can’t be happening, he thought. Of course, there were other things he’d thought couldn’t happen too. Why not this?

“Very well. As a married couple unable to itemize, you’re entitled to the standard deduction of five thousand dollars. You’ll also be given nineteen hundred and fifty dollars for each dependent—that’s four—for a total deduction of twelve thousand eight hundred dollars. As a self-employed person for the first time this year, you have made no payment to date on your tax bill. Using the aforesaid figures, we’ve come up with a rounded-off amount of thirty-four thousand, four hundred and eighty dollars due.” Bennigan looked immensely pleased with himself and Tussard heard a faint click as the pen was closed and whisked into a hidden pocket beneath the man’s suitcoat. “The fifteenth was last week. We’d like to know when we can expect payment.”

“My hair,” Tussard said slowly, “is falling out and my family is dead. And you’re sitting there expecting me to pay you thirty-some-odd thousand dollars in taxes. You must be out of your fucking mind.”

Somehow the younger man managed not to look offended. “On the contrary, Mr. Tussard. I have it all right here, in our Condensed Pamphlet on Relevant Policy. Let me read it to you.” Like the elusive pen, Bennigan suddenly held a crisp white booklet, already open to the appropriate page. He began to read in a clear, righteous voice.

“The Internal Revenue Service will begin collecting taxes again as soon as possible after the event of a nuclear holocaust. In hard hit areas, payment of taxes may be deferred at the discretion of the agent performing collection services on behalf of the taxing body. However, in those areas not sustaining direct hits, there is no discernible reason why payment of past due taxes cannot be made on an immediate basis.”

Bennigan closed his booklet with a muted snap and it was gone in the blink of an eye—or maybe that was the reason Tussard couldn’t see everything. His remaining eye wasn’t functioning at full speed. “I’m afraid I see no reason why we shouldn’t expect payment of your taxes, Mr. Tussard.”

Tussard struggled to make his brain cells work, but he was having difficulty comprehending Bennigan’s words. “But Chicago was hit,” he said. “That’s why so many here are dead, my family—we’re all sick…” He coughed, feeling phlegm rise in his chest. He swallowed, forcing the vile mucus to stay down, unwilling to spit on the floor of his home in front of this man who had miraculously escaped harm. He had the fleeting idea that Bennigan—and thousands like him—had been retrieved by the IRS from deep underground storage vaults and were now scurrying around the country like hungry spiders. “What would they do with money anyway?” Tussard asked. His eye burned and teared and he stopped his hand only when he realized his scab-covered fingers were a few inches away from his face.

“Many things, Mr. Tussard. I won’t bore you with political details. Suffice to say we do expect to be paid. Yes?”

“No,” Tussard said with finality. He struggled to rise from the gripping softness of the ripped sofa. “You’re sick. You, the government that made this mess, and all you fuckers that try to keep it going. You should just let me—us—die in peace. I have no money.”

“I’m sure you realize the extent of the food shortage at present. In addition, it’s unlikely that vegetation will resume growth for several years. We can, of course, be paid using foodstuffs as an alternate method. Cans of vegetables are going for ten to fifteen dollars apiece. Fruits are even more valuable—why, a single unit of peaches is worth almost twenty-five dollars, simply because it contains a higher vitamin C content.” Bennigan waited complacently.

“I don’t have any money to pay you. My food supply is only good for another couple of weeks, if I stretch it. And I’ll be damned if I’ll give it to you or anyone like you. There’re others that need it more, even more than me. People are dying all over this place! Don’t you even care?” Tussard realized abruptly that he was screaming. His hands had curled into fists and the oh-so-soft fingernails had sunk gently into the yielding flesh of his palms. He forced his fingers to relax; now they felt like a spoon pulling out of warm taffy.

“Nonsense, Mr. Tussard. You’re really very lucky.” Looking at Bennigan, Tussard realized with a sick certainty that the man passionately believed every word. “The citizens to the east are the hardest hit. Boston, Washington, D.C., New York—now that’s where you have the big problems. The cities are gone, of course, having sustained direct hits, but like here there are still plenty of folks left in the surrounding areas. Not only is it a concentrated area, they had to deal with the fallout that the air currents carried eastward from the rest of the country.” He shook his head sadly. “Like being hit twice, if you ask me. You’ve lost some hair and a few fingernails and think you’ve got it bad? People out there are losing fingers, hands, faces, Mr. Tussard. Which explains why we have to insist that the people in the central states remit their taxes immediately. It’s hard, I know, but they’re carrying the load for most of America, what with the new coastline in the west.” Bennigan shook his head again and gazed at Tussard. The man’s eyes resembled a hurt puppy’s and he nodded. “California… all those taxpayers, right into the ocean. You and your neighbors have been fortunate indeed.”

Tussard watched numbly as Bennigan sighed and stood up, then calmly stepped to the small, slowly fading fire that had been built on the hearth. The homeowner had been afraid to use the fireplace because of the damage to the roof and chimney, but most of the smoke escaped through another hole in the roof and at least it ate through some of the cold in the room. Tussard wished he could just crank up a space-heater, as he had in the poorer apartments of his younger days. In the short silence, Tussard could hear the gentle dripping of water from somewhere else in the house—the kitchen, maybe; the sound brought with it the soft-focus memory of a once-annoying faucet in the middle of the night. The water that dripped now was semi-deadly; he drank it anyway.

“Well, Mr. Tussard,” Bennigan said finally, “if you’re not able to pay your taxes, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.” In another second the agent was at his side and snapping aluminum handcuffs around his now-frail wrists; it was queer how the man could move so quickly. Tussard thought of resisting, then remembered what Bennigan had said about people out east losing fingers and hands. Beneath the heavy chill of metal, his wrists were as thin as twigs and covered with crusted-over sores. If he pulled against the metal bonds, would they snap off like the dead tree branches they so resembled?

“Come along, sir,” Bennigan said softly, taking him by the elbow. Tussard was almost surprised that the younger man would touch him, then realized Bennigan was wearing nearly invisible flesh-colored gloves. “We have to go now.”

Well, Tussard thought, this isn’t so bad. At least I’m warm. Most of the time.

He was in a prison, though where he didn’t know or particularly care. At first his thoughts had been little more than distorted electrical impulses in his brain, bouncing from point to point but never connecting. By the time his mind cleared enough for him to actually speculate on the terrible windstorms that battered periodically at the building’s walls, his curiosity was more than satisfied at his own guess that he might be in one of the plains states, such as Kansas. Beyond the fact that this was where he was, and therefore that was the way it was, he was not concerned about anything. This was his place, and he was content. It was new, it was… pristine.

Now there was a word, he thought smugly. Pristine, with a capital P. Clean and sanitary, that’s how he felt. Sterilized. And that was okay, too—it felt good to get out from under the layer of filth that had covered his skin for so long, and his sores had even healed. Some of his hair was coming back, not that anyone cared; there were no mirrors, but he could see himself vaguely in the small sinkful of water they allotted him for drinking and washing each day (he had learned early not to wash until right before the water was changed). Sometimes, if the murky yellow light that squeezed through his small thermopane window was bright enough, he could glimpse skin that was a mottled light purple on the same side as his long gone eye—the eye socket itself was now a puckered but still tender scar.

He might not look like much, but he was healthy. The American Way had come through again, sheltering him, feeding him in the hardest of times. Now he knew what he’d paid taxes for all those years, and he still owed—oh, yes. But there were other ways of paying.

Down the hall and beyond his visibility he heard the jingle of keys and the clanging of a cell door, then a babble of voices raised in argument. In the time he’d been here the pungent smell of alcohol he’d come to associate with the keysounds had never grown normal. Some inmates still protested, but not him, and when the young medical officer—a boy, probably only twenty-one and barely trained—arrived outside his cell, Tussard rolled up his sleeve without hesitation, though he couldn’t help shivering a little. No one—except maybe Bennigan—had been totally bypassed, and this doctor (was he really a doctor?) was minus an ear, though the army had allowed him to grow his hair in a style designed to draw attention away from the hole in his head.

Sometimes Tussard could tell by the color of the food-paste they gave him that he was getting back what he gave, albeit in a roundabout way. But most of the time he knew his contribution went to feed the long lines of people who gathered at the prison gates each morning with their ration stamps.

He gave a pint a week. At two hundred dollars a pint, they would let him out in a little under three and a half years, depending on the needs of his country.

Give me your weak…

Give me your hungry.