Long Tale Press

Clark—January 1, 2100

A conspiracy of coincidence planted the idea for a Great Adventure deeply within the convoluted folds of Luis’s brain. There was first the silly, imperfect inversion of the names and the fact that we live just across the river from the Arch. The date itself was one of the conspirators--December 31st 2099, the eve of millennial change, which naturally leads one to think of new beginnings, changing tides in the affairs of men that when taken at their flood, et cetera. A healthy dose of intoxicants helped slide the idea in place. Even then Luis wouldn’t have put it all together without Alvarez. Who invited him to the party anyway?

We had advertised the New Year’s Eve party in the usual way—oral invitations to friends who gather daily on the docks to fish. The fishermen spread the word as they trudged home with their daily take of catfish or bass. We have always had a good turnout, as folks are fond of the funny mushrooms that Luis grows in the warehouse out back, to say nothing of my famous blackberry wine—sweet and deadly.

We held the party in the former food plaza in of the old All-Depot, our home sweet home. The food plaza has three story windows looking out on the Arch. Luis had converted the area several years ago into a large greenhouse. Small plots of cabbage, broccoli, sugar peas, and onions were distributed amongst the tables. Several wood stoves around the periphery provided some smoldery heat during the dead of winter to keep the plants alive. A large circular fireplace, a relic of the original construction, kept things warm and festive for the party. A huge circular hood conducts smoke and heat through a three story smoke stack.

People started arriving in late afternoon, bringing contributions of food to cook. By nightfall, the court was filled with the odors of cornbread, sweet potatoes, country ham, and venison sausage. About a hundred men milled about, eating, talking and drinking.

Hunter, on the guitar, and Gills, with his banjo, picked out tunes that were old a century ago. Rhythm was supplied by folks stomping their feet and pounding on the counters. Gills sang obscene lyrics made up on the spot in a surprisingly high nasal voice. Two couples were improvising an enthusiastic if not very precise contra dance.

I had swallowed one too many mushrooms and events were getting kind of fragmented. Wicked looking flames were reflecting off the window as a frigid wind howled and pressed itself against the glass. The man-in-the moon was winking at me from the glowing orange orb that had balanced itself precariously atop the Arch.

Feynman appeared at my side, dragging with him Alvarez, whom I had never really met until then. He was an older man, perhaps in his late fifties, a bookish sort, looking a little lost in this gathering. Feynman had a healthy grip on the right upper arm of Alvarez, perhaps supporting him.

“These are your distinguished hosts, Luis and Clark,” said Feynman in his academic, courtly way. “Luis, Clark, this is Dr. Alvarez, professor of history from Washington U., such as it is.”

Alvarez giggled, a little too drunk already by this time. “The famous Lewis and Clark?” he asked, “The westward adventurers?”

Well, Luis and I were well-known around town. But I wasn’t sure the word “famous” really applied. We had made a westward trek from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee, down the Cumberland and Ohio Rivers, and upriver to St. Louis. For us it was a significant journey. But that didn’t seem to be the adventure that Alvarez was talking about.

“I think you have us confused with someone else,” responded Luis. Which propelled Alvarez into fresh gales of laughter.

Luis, a devotee of hallucinogens, does not generally suffer drunks with any degree of grace. But as it was New Year’s Eve and since he was the host, he was prepared to make allowances.

“You see that Arch?” Alvarez managed to say finally. “It was christened the Gateway Arch, because St. Louis was once the gateway to the West. Before Lewis and Clark, though, St. Louis WAS the West, the last outpost of civilization. St. Louis was where the mountain men brought their furs to sell.”

“So this was some time ago, I take it,” said Luis.

“Yes. Lewis and Clark left from St. Louis in 1804 to explore the West. Made it to the Pacific Ocean and back. Alive. They lost only one man, probably to appendicitis. Quite an accomplishment. They filled in a huge portion of what had been an empty map. At least to Americans. A lot of French trappers got there first, of course, and American Indians had long ago settled the area.”

Feynman, being an educated man, was familiar with the story, of course, but Luis and I and a few others gathered around and peppered the sodden Alvarez with questions. The story, reconstructed is something like this: Merriwether Lewis and William Clark were great friends. Each had at one time been the other’s commanding officer. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the U.S., commissioned Lewis to go on the great journey up the Missouri in order to what discover sort of lands were available for settlement west of St. Louis, to the Oregon Territories. He was also interested in a water route that would link the two coasts of America. In addition, Jefferson wanted a catalogue of animal species, an inventory of Indians etc. Lewis said sure, if he could appoint as co-commander his good buddy Clark. Captains Lewis and Clark lead a ragtaggy bunch called the Corps of Discovery, organized along military lines. They set out up-river from St. Louis. There were desertions, additions, and disagreements with Indians along the way.

Toward the headwaters of the Missouri, the current became swift and it became clear that the group would have to go overland. Fortunately, they had acquired by that time the company of a French trapper and his Indian wife (and slave), named Sacajawea. The latter, it seems, had first hand knowledge of a safe passage over the mountains, and was to lead the group as far as the Columbia River, into what later became Washington State. They followed the Columbia to its mouth at the Pacific Ocean, before turning back.

“You know,” said Alvarez, at the end of his narration, “the continent is, in many ways, more of a blank now than it was in 1804.”

A peculiar gleam entered the eyes of Luis Maltiempo, my friend and partner for a decade now. I hoped he wasn’t thinking what I thought he was thinking.

I looked up and saw the demon in the moon smiling maniacally. I tried to get its attention, but it would not look at me. The moon had slipped its moorings on the Arch and was coursing up through the dark morning sky.

Luis--January 1st, 2100

North and west is the path, I think. The tropical diseases were perhaps not so fierce there. Maybe a town or two was spared, hidden away in the mountains, out of the path of Plagues. Someplace cold and dry where fungus doesn’t grow and bacteria do not easily thrive.

And maybe out there in the Northern woods is a woman waiting for me. I went through so many, in those heedless Pre-Plague days. Now my body aches for a woman, for sex, for companionship, and maybe a son or daughter.

Clark thought I was a madman when I proposed recapitulating the voyage of Lewis and Clark. But he will come around.

Clark--January 2nd, 2100

Luis is off in Fantasy Land again. The man thinks his life is an historical romance novel. Of course, he wants to be Lewis and Clark, three hundred years after the fact. Of course, he wants me to go with him, for what is Luis without Clark. A dash off into the wilderness in search of what? More wilderness?

All I want out of life is good food, good friends, and furniture that matches. I don’t need a grand purpose or too much excitement. I’ve spent enough time in the wild to know that it’s really creepy out there. Snakes and bugs. Funny noises in the night, probably the moaning of ghosts who got lost during the mass migration to the Hereafter.

Luis wants to restore human civilization in our time. I say that the Powers-That-Be must have had a pretty good reason for killing it off in the first place, and we should avoid bringing our continued existence to Their attention.

Luis—January 2nd, 2100

The original Lewis and Clark expedition contained about 40 men, according to Alvarez. I think it will be hard conscripting that many here. Feynman and Alvarez have already signed on, however. I’m a little worried about Alvarez because of his age, but we really need a historian to document our trip.

Feynman is a student of technology; he talks about bits and bytes and microelectromechanical systems, and no one has a clue what he means. All that stuff is pretty useless anymore, but his intelligence may be a valuable asset.

We need Hunter the hunter to bring in venison and rabbits for our supper. Gills could keep us supplied with fish. Clark is an excellent cook, certainly a plus for the morale of the men. Plus he has a talent for organization that would be handy. John, the blacksmith, also brings with him a valuable skill, and he could double as chaplain. We need some foot-soldiers, big strong men without too much imagination, who can carry their load without asking too many questions. The James brothers would be perfect. It is time to do a little recruiting.

Clark—January 3rd, 2100

I’ve been trying to reason with Luis. What’s the practical purpose of this mindless junket to the west? The real Lewis and Clark were sent by President Jefferson. We don’t even know if there is a president anymore. Why trek all the way to the Pacific Ocean to check out Oregon, when we don’t even know the condition of Cincinnati?

Luis has been after me to join him in his delusionary expedition. I must admit he is wearing me down. For what is Clark without Luis? I am Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, Tonto to his Lone Ranger, Robin to his Batman. O.K, so I long to be Juliet to his Romeo—I’ll bet Robin had a few fantasies about the Caped Crusader too. I’ve been with Luis so long it is hard to remember what I was before.

Luis—January 4th, 2100

Recruiting is harder than I supposed. Clark remains obstinate. The James brothers all refuse to leave the side of Suzannah, nor is it likely that they would consent to bring her along. Most of the other hidebound members of our community see no reason for travel. Everything we need is right here, is the general attitude, so why should we go anywhere? Most are so beat down with post-traumatic stress from the Plagues that simply surviving is the limit of their ambition.

I haven’t been able to find Hunter. Rumor has it that he’s off trapping in Kentucky. In the middle of winter? Truly Hunter is a hearty character and would be a great asset to our expedition.

Gills says he’ll come. New streams to fish and new types of fish. He hopes to expand his horizons from channel cat and alligator gar to the various brands of delectable trout and pike that inhabit the northern territories, he says. As primitive as he seems, he’s got the mind of a naturalist, or should I say ichthyologist, given the monomaniacal nature of his obsessions.

John is non-committal.

“What kind of blacksmithing do you need on a boat?” he asked.

I explained to him that eventually we’ll need to leave the boat to travel overland. That we’ll find horses and need horseshoes. That there may be all sorts of metal objects that might need shaping as the expedition progresses.

“People here need blacksmithing every day.”

I asked him to keep an open mind, and he said that he would consult with the Lord about the matter.

The boy Philip has heard about the journey and keeps pestering me to join. I am reluctant. At 17 years of age, he is the youngest member of the St. Louis community, its lifeblood and future, such as it is. Plus he brings no discernible skills, beyond his energy and enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, I must admit, is a rare and desirable, if somewhat perishable commodity.

Clark—January 6th, 2100

I am worried about Luis. Today, he ate several of his mushrooms and spent the whole afternoon sitting by the wood-stove and staring at the arch. I made venison sausage lasagna, his favorite dish, but he just picked at it for awhile, and went to bed early.

Luis—January 7th

I’m on the cusp of a moral dilemma. It was Harding, of all people, who brought it on. I had pegged him as one of the big and dumb variety, one of the foot soldiers I would need. He is strong as an ox, if a little overweight. His belly protrudes underneath tee-shirts advertising sports teams long past and otherwise forgotten. He spends spring and summer cutting and splitting firewood and fall and winter bartering it to people in exchange for food, corn liquor or whatever. I gave him my spiel about the need for the western voyage, and what a wonderful experience it would be.

“A trip like that would be dangerous, wouldn’t it,” asserted Harding.

Yes, of course, there would be usual dangers. Weather. Wild animals. Getting lost, maybe. Running out of food. Viruses.”

“People could die.”

“People have been dying in droves for a century, Harding. What’s your point?”

“Not too many of us left. Each of us is precious, owing to rarity value, don’t you see?”

And I saw, exactly. St. Louis has only about 400 souls left, altogether. I was proposing to embark on an indefinite journey with a significant number of these men. Some, like Hunter, Gills and John, are people of particular value to the community. Any person that I took would be felt as a loss to those remaining, so few are we. And I don’t know, have no idea really, whether St. Louis might not be the biggest town or even the only town left in the country. Do I have the right to risk these people, on a flight of fantasy, a personal quest? Am I so self-indulgent?

John the Blacksmith--January 10, 2100

__And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man. And they found among the inhabitants of Ja’besh-gil’ead four hundred young virgins that had know no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shi’loh, which is in the land of Ca’naan. --Judges 21: 11-12__

The dream is always the same.

I come home from work to find the front door ajar and Elizabeth lying in the corner moaning, her body battered and broken. I stoop to attend to her but she says, “Go, John, go! They’ve taken the girls! They’re on foot. You can still catch them!”

I have come up the only road to the house and seen no one. Beyond the house, the road ends in a wooded cul-de-sac with a single trail leading down the hill. I grab Aisha’s aluminum softball bat and run.

I am bounding down the trail, my breath coming in gasps--before long I hear male voices laughing over the sobbing of my daughters.

The trail winds down through a series of switchbacks. I take a shortcut straight down the hill. I try to be silent; but broken branches crackle underneath my feet. But the young men are distracted. I can see them now, as I peek out from behind a big oak tree. Three of them. Two are dragging my daughters along, while in front, the third watches warily forward, a pistol in his hand. But I am behind them.

One man reaches under Malika’s shirt and grabs her by the breast. I hear her sharp intake of breath, but she is too afraid to struggle.

“Damn, these black girls ripen young. I feel like having her right here by the trail.”

“Careful, there. Don’t spoil the merchandise. We can’t sell nothin’ but virgins.”

I can no longer stand it. I lunge forward swinging the bat, which connects with a satisfying crack, crushing the head of Malika’s attacker like a pumpkin.

The man in front turns toward me, swinging his pistol, anger and determination in his eyes. He is yelling something but the world has gone silent for me. Everything slows down. I push Malika toward the ground. Sunlight gleams off the polished metal of the pistol’s barrel. There is a flash. Then everything is black.

Like always, I wake up with a blinding headache, rubbing the spot where the bullet creased my skull. The dream is even more frightening, more real, than the actual event, which took place in a haze of adrenaline.

I am hoping that writing down the dream will exorcise it for me, make the dream go away, even though the reality will not. My wife is still dead, my daughters are lost forever.

But then again, the dream fulfills a function. It always wakes me up on Sunday morning, in plenty of time to prepare my sermon ahead of church services.

Clark—January 10th

We had a blizzard early this morning. Two feet of fresh snow blanketed everything. I trudged through it nonetheless, across the bridge over the gray Mississippi, to hear John’s sermon and sing a few gospel songs. For the entertainment value.

John holds his services in the Basilica of St. Louis IX, King of France, just the other side of the Arch. A grand name and a grand cathedral for an itty bitty congregation. Old Miss Gibbs and Sadie the prostitute. A gaggle of ancient fishermen praying for a good catch. Two plague-haunted lunatics, Arno and Jeffrey. And me. Jesus on the cross larger than life-size on the wall behind the altar, clearly in pain but looking down benevolently nonetheless.

John talked about how Jesus served the people, washing the feet of the disciples, being humble and so forth. The idea of service as a way of life. Can’t see it as being too all that relevant any more, with so few people left to serve. We might as well go our own hedonistic way. Keep fiddling, cause Rome’s done burnt down already.

Luis stayed in the book department of the All-Depot, the one section that was never looted, reading one thing or another. Catholic philosophy, of all things. Babbling on about Spinoza and Thomas Aquinas when I tried to talk to him. It’s a bad sign; intellectualism isn’t his natural style.

The books in the All Depot are now are all twenty years old, at least. I only like fiction, but it’s hard to get into these tales set in a world that’s past. Relationships between men and women. Even the sci-fi books describe a future that’s past--that just can’t happen anymore. Even the worst fanciful dystopia requires occupants. We just rattle around in this world like a handful of marbles in a barrel.

Luis hasn’t mentioned his voyage of exploration for several days now. Maybe the obsession has passed. When spring comes, we’ll have work to do, planting the garden, plowing the fields. Do him good I think.

Luis--January 12, 2100

I made the trip through the new fallen snow over to Washington University to consult with Alvarez. I told him of my dilemma concerning the planned expedition. Do we have the right, I asked him, to risk the lives of the few people remaining, to deplete our small community?

“St. Louis is not a community, it’s a way station on the road to oblivion” said Alvarez, “Just a group of frightened men, driven by loneliness and need to aggregate against the terrors of Nature. A real community, first of all, has women. It has married couples, children, schools, a future. Without fertile women, a community does not exist. Here we are just a group of sour, bitter old souls, waiting to join our fellows in extinction.”

Alvarez is quite eloquent when he’s sober. He has given me food for thought.

Clark—January 13, 2100

The decision is made, we’re going west! Luis, whose personality is usually a shade on the depressed side of bipolar, is happier than I’ve ever seen him. I could tell he was ready to follow through. I caved in completely. I just couldn’t be left behind.

I tried to argue in favor of traveling up the Ohio. Evanston, Indianapolis, Cincinnatti. These were good sized cities once. Luis says the current in the Ohio is too swift for us to fight our way upstream, with whatever kind of boat we can put together. Maybe that’s true. But it wouldn’t matter anyway. Luis and Clark can’t be the new Lewis and Clark if we go up the wrong river. The whole thing loses its poetic appeal.

Luis was so happy when I signed on that he came after me with the biggest, hardest boner I’ve seen since we left Tennessee. Folded me over the couch and rammed it home. My legs get weak every time I think about it.

Luis doesn’t think he’s gay or even bixexual, of course. Our journey together started back when we were at Brushy Mountain. I was trapped in the bathroom and in the process of being gang-raped when we met. A line of red-necks out the door and down the hall—black, white, Mex, Asian, and Arab rednecks—it was at the beginning of the Plagues and between them they had every sexually-transmitted disease known to man—syph, the clap, AIDs, Hep B and C, Chlamydia, genital warts, chancre. I had already blown six or seven of them and my ass had accommodated three. I had a stew of microbes I don’t even want to think about dribbling down my chin, down my esophagus, crawling up my intestines. I had stopped fighting and was pleading for my life. Luis pushed his way in like the Avenging Angel and started busting heads. Three or four of them went at him at a time, but he is a mountain of a man, and knows his martial arts and a lot of dirty tricks besides. Blood and brains swam on the tile floor and into the urinals.

After that, folks left me alone. And I did for Luis whatever I could. Showed him tastes he didn’t know he had.

“Doesn’t that feel good?” I would ask him. Not wanting to admit to it, he never answered. Just moaned a little and kept on. Always the adventurer, he went along willingly, though. He thought of me as a temporary expedient, a relief valve for a highly-sexed person who had been deprived of women. Little did he know that by the time we got out of prison there would be hardly any women left.

The Plagues killed men and women with equal efficiency, but still more women died than men. We make up stories to explain it, trying to block out our guilt, but the truth is that the extra women were killed by a superstition. It started in Africa back in the 20th century. AIDS, it was said, could be cured by having sex with a virgin. Since virgins were, by definition, generally averse to having sex, this usually meant rape.

Despite the fact that the virgin cure never worked, not even once, the idea spread. With each new Plague that arose, more men subscribed to this wonderful therapy; it is hard to disabuse a man of a false notion when his survival depends on it being true. The good news spread from Africa to Europe to supposedly enlightened North America. Virgin-raping will certainly cure you of HIV infection. Have you come down with SARS? Better fuck a virgin while you’ve still got the energy. Flu-like symptoms? Take two virgins and call me in the morning.

Provision of virgins for the cure of diseases became a whole new class of criminal activity. Gangs specialized in kidnapping virgins supplying them to Plague sufferers for a price. Young men newly booked into Brushy Mountain bragged about their abilities at corralling virgins. Of course actual virginity was messy to prove, so any young girl was deemed sufficient. If their silence about their rape was not bought with death, the ladies generally died anyway from the affliction their young bodies were supposed to cure.

People started dying in droves while we were in Brushy Mountain, starting about 2080. Every morning, the guards would go around with a cart, opening the cells one-by-one and hauling off any bodies they found. The infirmary, where I worked, was filled not just with prisoners but with guards—the warden looking after his own. Civilian hospitals were overloaded. The guards got first crack at the beds. The prisoners could die or not as they chose on the floor.

FlAIDS was the worst—Flu-like Aquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Rumor had it that it was an engineered bug designed to kill off all inmates, a plot to save money for the state. The real story seems to be that it was a mistake, a desperate attempt to create an AIDS vaccine. The idea, as I heard it later from Darwin, was to engineer a vaccine for AIDS that could be transmitted like a respiratory virus. By then, about 30% of the world was HIV positive and the desperate World Health Organization was willing to try anything. Scientists added a few HIV proteins to a defective flu virus. The combined virus was engineered to spread quickly through aerosols as a live vaccine; the immune system would react to both the flu virus and the HIV proteins, thereby protecting against AIDS. Apparently, it worked well in the limited trials that they did. But something bad happened. Probably a recombination event, says Darwin, more of the genetic material of HIV got into the “vaccine” virus somehow. So the result was a type of rapidly replicating AIDS virus that could be spread by casual contact.

FlAIDs was spectacular. One day you were fine. Then somebody coughed on you. Two days later, you felt a little ill. The day after that you had a high fever. A week later, the fever was gone but so was your immune system. Fungus started growing on you wherever you were damp. Feathery wisps of it came out your nose. Bacteria filmed over your eyes. Patches of stuff grew on your skin, and tumors and abscesses and weirdly colored warts popped out all over you. It was like rotting away. People died in a few months max.

In prison, it was even faster. At the first sign of an abscess or fungal infection, somebody would kill you in your sleep. Infection control, it was called.

Though we avoided FlAIDS, Luis and I both got very sick, several times. We cleaned the vomit or shit off of ourselves or each other and kept going. We slept as much as we could, waiting it out. The screams and the groaning in the cellblock were unbelievable, ringing off the cold tile, vibrating the bars, enough to wake Satan. Who was never far away. If this was not Hell, it was sure as hell good training for an eternity of torment.

The prisoners, eventually, all faded away. The guards too. The cellblock got very quiet. Sometimes we remained locked in our cell for a week at a time. No food. No water. Nobody walked by. No hope. We thought we might die there.

One day the warden himself came by, face etched with pain, abscesses running down both arms. He looked barely strong enough to carry his huge set of keys. “You’re free to go,” he said.

“Free to go where?” asked Luis.

“Anywhere you want,” said the warden. “There ain’t much left, no matter which way you go.”

And so we left Brushy Mountain State Prison, with the sun glinting off the razor wire, and the beautiful green expanse of Frozen Head State Park behind it. Nobody came to meet us. We had no parole officers to check in with. No new suit, no halfway house. We walked out the gates and into the Great Void that the United States of America had become.

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