The Cloud
Since many of my fellow Storytellers are posting fiction this month, in celebration of Halloween, I wanted to play along. But I mostly write novels, with very little short fiction. I set myself a goal one weekend, a couple of weeks ago, and wrote two shorts–not quite short-shorts, but close, I think.
They’re very different in tone and intent, but both conceived and written, in first draft, in the same 36-hour period. I posted Staking a Claim yesterday at my regular blog, and saved the darker of the two for here:
The Cloud
by Jeff Mariotte
A vortex of vultures. Hundreds of them, maybe with a few ravens mixed in. Black, winged carrion-eaters, scavengers, spiraling in loose formation against the blue, blue sky, as if the valley was a tub and someone had pulled the plug and all the water, full of jagged black specks, whirlpooled down the drain.
#
Bradley hadn’t intentionally killed anything larger than a cricket since his twelfth summer. That summer, he had felt plunged into horrifying darkness, and he had inhabited that darkness fully. He had tried to limit his killing to wild creatures, but a couple of neighborhood cats had found themselves buried in vacant lots and under the roots of trees, along with assorted raccoons, squirrels, rabbits and the like.
He had lived in suburbia in those days, his parents the very definition of white middle class life. He had thought he’d follow in his dad’s footprints, wearing a tie, working in an office. Then, that summer, he had figured he’d be in prison by the time he was eighteen. Maybe get life, maybe the chair. That was what they used in those days, at least in the stories Brad (never Bradley, not at that age) had heard. They strapped you into a chair and sent electricity through it and smoke came out your ears as your brain cooked.
It hadn’t happened that way. Whatever he had been going through that summer, he had moved past it. Instead of taking him over, killing had lost its appeal. He had still fired guns from time to time, on ranges and in the service, but not at living things. Nor had he stabbed anything or twisted a furry little neck between his hands.
These days he lived in a small rural town. Unlike most of his neighbors, he didn’t own a firearm. He had come a long, long way from that twelfth summer.
He had farther yet to go.
#
The night before the cloud came through, Bradley had been reading his son’s math book (Benjamin was—coincidence?—twelve this year), trying to stay far enough ahead to help with his homework. He had been sitting at the dining room table, head nestled in his hands, the book open in front of him, numbers swimming before his eyes, when Benjamin came out of his bedroom. He stood, blinking sleepily, barefoot in plaid pajamas. The pillow had sculpted his light blond hair into abstract forms. “I forgot to tell you,” he said. He stifled a yawn while Bradley waited for the rest. “Mom called this afternoon. She wants to have me on Sunday for a picnic with Jerry’s family.”
Bradley had hemmed for a moment but then agreed, unable to come up with a legitimate reason why he shouldn’t. It was because of Suzanne that he lived here, out in the boondocks, in a small mobile home because that was all he could afford. When he had announced that he would be telecommuting instead of working in the office—he had followed his father’s path, that way—he hadn’t been fired, but his salary had been slashed considerably. But Suzanne’s family had always lived in the high desert. After their divorce had been finalized, she hadn’t wasted much time moving out here. To keep seeing Benjamin, Bradley had followed. It was Suzanne’s place, not his, and he had never truly felt comfortable there. For Benjamin’s sake, he tried. He could think of nothing he wouldn’t do for the boy.
The next day, he dropped Benjamin off at school, where Suzanne picked him up in the afternoon. That night, the cloud passed through.
#
They weren’t hard to find. The tornado of birds gave away their location. He hiked toward them carrying two rifles, a shotgun, and a revolver he had found in neighbors’ abandoned homes. He had emptied boxes of ammunition into his pockets to avoid the hard corners; the bullets clanking like change when he walked, the shells poking almost as much as boxes would have. And he’d have to sort it on the spot, he realized. Boxes would have been awkward, but he could have used a bag of some kind.
He wasn’t thinking clearly, that was all. Who could blame him?
#
Bradley watched the news on TV. No one knew what it was or how it did what it did, and experts debated even what the effects really were. Nor did the experts agree on how best to deal with it—whatever it was. Tactical nuclear weapons, some said. Inside America’s borders? others countered. Boots on the ground, that was the way to go. Search and destroy. Our armies had plenty of experience with house-to-house combat, after all.
Bradley’s response was to stay indoors for several days after the cloud passed—trying to reach Suzanne by phone every twenty minutes, then every hour—with the doors and windows closed, sealed off with plastic kitchen wrap and Scotch tape. He didn’t know if it would work. When the next morning came and he hadn’t died and developed an intense desire to eat human flesh, he guessed that maybe it had.
But not knowing what had happened to Benjamin drove him mad. He tried to watch TV or listen to the radio but they just kept running the same meaningless drivel, possibly of interest to those outside the cloud’s area of impact but not to him. He cleaned his kitchen, his bathroom, scrubbing until his arms hurt, his fingers became red and chapped. With the radio and TV off he heard strange noises, his mobile home groaning in the buffeting wind that had accompanied the cloud and that hadn’t ended, even though the cloud had dissipated (or moved on, press reports differed on this point too), and it sounded like someone trying to speak to him from the other side of the grave.
That Saturday, he decided it was safe to go outside. He drove to the home where Suzanne lived with her new husband Jerry, on the town’s wealthier west side. Suzanne’s family had been upper middle class, and Jerry’s was downright rich by local standards. Between the two families there must have been a couple dozen relatives in town. Their family picnics were legendary, thirty people, forty, sometimes more, with buckets of food and organized sports and games. No wonder Benjamin hadn’t wanted to miss this one, even though Sunday should have been his day with Bradley.
No one answered his knock. Hardly anyone showed on the streets at all, and when Bradley saw anyone he veered away. They were soldiers or they were the dead, he figured. He had no interest in meeting either one. Traffic lights cycled through their colors at empty intersections. On every block, Bradley saw carrion birds, perched on power poles or street lamps or roofs.
He couldn’t find Suzanne. He couldn’t find Jerry. Benjamin was with them, no doubt. Dead, alive, or somewhere in between, he didn’t know.
#
He loaded all the guns. It had been years since he’d fired one, but the Army had drummed the basics into him even though he never saw combat. He knew how to load one, how to aim, how to adjust for wind and distance, how to squeeze the trigger.
He had staked out a position on a rocky slope overlooking the meadow. He had guessed this was their general vicinity, although there were plenty of wide-open spaces around where a large family and assorted friends could congregate. The vultures ha
d confirmed his hunch, pinpointing them precisely. Vultures could smell death.
From his vantage point, he was able to pick them off, one by one. They didn’t run away when the bullets hit. He blew out one’s brains that one dropped right into the lap of the woman next to him. She pushed him away and went on with her meal. No fried chicken at this picnic, no potato salad or carrot sticks or freshly baked peanut butter cookies.
Bradley steadied the barrel on a rock, aimed and fired. Another one fell. The birds flew around and around, in a virtual panic, smelling death and yet seeing too much movement to risk dropping down. Bradley thought he could smell the birds now, even as they sniffed the death down below. He felt like one of the vultures, watching from on high, swirling around, keeping his swooping eye on a few fixed points.
Fewer with every shot.
The troops would be on the way soon enough, he suspected. He had already heard a couple of helicopters, maybe checking out the bird-tornado. They hadn’t flown close enough to see into the clearing, though. Yet. They would, soon enough. Maybe they were coming in trucks.
He wanted to be done before they got here. He didn’t want anyone interfering with what he had to do.
#
He hadn’t intentionally killed since his twelfth summer. Until today. And was it really killing, if they were already dead?
They didn’t even know enough to hide. They just kept picnicking as he hit one after another in the brain—whether it took one shot, two, or six. One of them, he thought maybe Jerry himself, had kept gnawing on an arm after Bradley’s narrow miss had blown off most of his lower jaw.
Which made it feel less like murder, somehow.
That was good. Bradley had left murder behind long ago.
One by one, he put them down. Giving them peace, he told himself. Once he even shouted it to them, not that they understood. “I’m doing this for you, Suzanne! I’m letting you rest.”
She might have looked up the hill toward him when he called to her. Or she might have been watching the birds, or just tilting her head for no reason. He put the next bullet between her eyes and she collapsed in the grass.
Finally, only one remained.
#
The vultures grew bolder. Below, most of the movement had stopped. Only one still sat upright, and he was small and fair and his motions were slow and close, reaching out for another handful, bringing it to his mouth, then sitting and chewing for minutes at a time. Almost still.
The vortex started to descend, drawn by the carrion on the ground.
Bradley tried to convince himself that he wasn’t too late, that the cloud had spared his son.
But Benjamin had always been a finicky eater. Bradley watched the boy lift his mother’s hand, bringing it up to his mouth. Not to kiss it.
One last time, Bradley took careful aim, although tears made aiming harder.
One last time.
