Bad Glass Read online

  Taylor isn’t doing well. She isn’t talking. She won’t let me come near, won’t even look at me. She doesn’t even want our eyes to make contact.

  The fear is there, filling her up, where everything else had been. Taylor, her heart, her humor—it’s all gone. I can see it: the belief that if we touch, if we get close, she’s going to lose herself again.

  And that’s all she is now. That fear.

  Sometimes I open the door to her room—it used to be a den, complete with sofa and leather-cushioned Eames chair, bookcases and hardwood desk—and I find her crouched there, alone in the dark. She’s boarded up the room’s only window, but a gap remains at its bottom-most edge, and I find her sitting there with her face pressed right up against the wood, staring out at the street. Quiet. Completely absorbed in that narrow view of the city.

  I bring her food. I talk to her.

  But she doesn’t listen. I don’t think she even hears.

  And we’re not going to leave.

  I know that now.

  It was just a dream, that thought. A fantasy. Something to keep me going down there in the tunnels. But I don’t think Taylor would follow me out of the city. Not now. Not in her current state. And I can’t imagine leaving her here all alone. Not anymore.

  She wouldn’t survive. She’d dissolve. She’d sink into the ground as soon as I turned my back.

  So I stay. And she stays. And nothing ever changes.

  And I’m writing now.

  I don’t know why. I don’t know why I’m putting these words on page after page after page, crippling my hand, but I’m afraid it’s the only thing holding back the darkness. And when I’m done, when I run out of history to record, I’ll be all alone. And that moment’s coming. Soon.

  And then I’ll be just like Taylor, hidden away in her little cave. Alone with the city, alone with its thoughts.

  And what will that do to me? I don’t know. Will there be peace, or screams echoing in a midnight-black void? Will it be painful, or will I go down nice and easy? Just close my eyes and sink.

  And what does the end of the world look like, anyway? What does it sound like?

  Should I keep my eyes open or hold them shut?

  Should I sing along?

  Danny stops by on occasion.

  He showed up the morning after our trip into the tunnels. At the house. He said he never made it underground. He got to the tunnel in the park with a half dozen soldiers but found the way forward blocked. Nothing but dead ends to the left and right.

  I don’t believe him. I can’t believe him.

  I saw him down there in that basement. And I never doubted that it was him. This person, now … I just can’t trust him.

  I don’t know who he is.

  He says that there are other places like Spokane now, popping up all over the world. A neighborhood in Kobe, Japan. A town in Iowa. A building—a single building!—in Washington, D.C. A valley in the Ukraine.

  It isn’t mushrooms, obviously. It isn’t hallucinogenic spores in the air. The army burned all of that from the ground, and still, nothing has changed.

  People still disappear. I still see spiders on occasion. The sky still turns red.

  Danny tells me that the UN has assembled a task force. Peacekeepers, to help in the affected areas. He mentioned something about a telethon airing on all the major networks. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like. Celebrities and phone banks. Did it have its own song? “We Are the World”?

  “We Are Spokane”?

  He says my photographs have made a difference, in the effort. Raising awareness. Some shit like that.

  I don’t know.

  I could have stopped him from posting the images, but I didn’t.

  I could have destroyed them when I had the chance. I could have ground the camera into dust. I could have thrown it from the top of the hospital, out into the dead red wastes. But I didn’t.

  He—Danny, his ghost, whatever—asked to see my camera, and I let him have it. He popped out the memory card and put it in his pocket. I saw him do it. He wasn’t trying to be sneaky or anything, wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on me. In fact, I think he was waiting for me to try to stop him. But I didn’t. He posted the pictures on the Web, on the message board, without text—not pretending to be me, at least, not putting words into my mouth. Just putting the pictures out there for the world to see.

  I don’t think I would have bothered if it had been up to me, but I certainly didn’t stop him. I still had my ego. I was still me—aspiring photographer, artist, poor excuse for a human being—and part of me, at least, wanted people to see my work.

  According to Danny, the pictures caused pandemonium on the board, and the reaction rippled out into the real world. Picked up by news weeklies and cable TV. Mainstream media. Apparently, a Republican senator printed out a poster-size copy of Danny’s picture—dead, arm waving out from his chest—and paraded it around the Senate floor, demanding answers. At first, he was dismissed as pandering to the lunatic fringe, but I’m sure he’s seeming more and more prescient with each passing day.

  And Danny didn’t say a word.

  He saw that picture, obviously, he saw himself, down there underground, but he didn’t ask me about the circumstances, didn’t ask me about what I’d seen. Him, lying dead and mutilated on that basement floor. He didn’t want to know. And that, at least, endeared him to me, whoever he is—this thing, this maybe-Danny.

  There are some things we just shouldn’t know. Some things we shouldn’t ask about, shouldn’t explore.

  And I miss Danny. I really do.

  Out of all of us, he was the one who had his shit together. He was the one I would have trusted with the world.

  Danny brought me this bottle of Wild Turkey.

  For that, at least, he’s got my thanks. Even if he isn’t real.

  I was writing just now, and a loud roar filled the room. It was a physical sound, vibrating through my core. My desk started to shake. You can see the ink on the page—roller-ball quiver, EEG scrawl.

  I stood up and looked out my window, craning my head to peer north. I didn’t see much. A wing, tilting, over the line of buildings.

  And then an explosion. As the plane crashed.

  I don’t want to be human. Not anymore.

  There is smoke rising over the city. A line of military vehicles tore through the street beneath my room, and I cracked open a window. The city smells like fire.

  Fuck.

  I don’t know about this. I don’t know what to think.

  And then the crowd of survivors began to pass beneath my window. They looked shell-shocked, dazed, completely out-of-their-minds fucked, but they were alive.

  They shouldn’t have been alive, but they were alive and marching on the street down below, the military leading the parade. They had vehicles to transport the wounded: Hummers and Jeeps. And I don’t know how many died on impact in that crash. How many met their maker, here, in a crater, in the city, wrapped tight in fuselage and fire?

  This is fertile land here, and things that shouldn’t grow, grow. Things that land, still and static, breathe and breathe again.

  And, of course, I remember the view from the hospital’s roof.

  It’s all coming true. Plane crash and destruction. Ages come and gone.

  And here I am. In my window.

  I can imagine Floyd there, falling through that red sky.

  Did he find peace in those final moments? His final, most successful trick. Did he kiss the sky and soar, untethered for a time, taunting gravity and God?

  And when he hit, did he hit hard? Did he make a crater and fill a void?

  Or did he leave a gaping wound

  in the world,

  a hole that nothing can fill?

  And we’re left here all alone,

  heart bruised and eye blind,

  void of breath,

  and soul broke.

  Watching him fall

  still

  And
that room, up in the sky.

  The red sky.

  I’m hurt here. I can’t stand it. I breathe and it hurts, a rasping grate in my lungs, like sandpaper and gravel, fingernails and coral. And … I don’t know.

  What did we find up there, in that building?

  What does it mean?

  Maybe the universe is collapsing. Physics has run its course, and reality has begun to contract, once again pulling back—a beat, the heartbeat of the universe—the point in the oscillating cycle of time where things stop getting bigger and start to condense. Light and time, pulling back. And the human mind is the last, most resilient part of the universe, resisting and shaping the form of reality. Before it, too, inevitably fails, collapses.

  And there is a table there. And on the table, a stack of pages. And in the pages, the breath that I breathe, the Wild Turkey that I drink, the beauty that flashes in my eye.

  And it resists. Like the human mind resists.

  Or maybe God just left.

  Maybe God got bored, pissed off, fed up, and generally stuffed. Stood up from the table and left the room. Leaving us in charge. And us in charge, with nothing—no one—to stabilize and baby-sit, we’re warping and driving everything into the motherfucking ground.

  Nothing left to see. Nothing left to do.

  Because that’s who we are. That’s what we do.

  And there is a room, somewhere. In a building, somewhere. In a city.

  And the world is red.

  The world is red, and the boardroom is empty.

  And I stop writing.

  And I’m here

  all alone.

  LOT 1105.

  Contents of black footlocker, 513 Madison St, Apt. 540 (back closet):

  handwritten manuscript, 583 pages (document 511; reference case 412); handwritten composition book (document 512; reference case 413); loose paper, handwritten (document 513; reference case 413); loose paper, handwritten (document 514; reference case 419); skateboard; notebook computer (contents cataloged, document 515; reference case 412); Canon Rebel digital camera; 6GB CompactFlash memory card (contents cataloged, document 516; reference case 412); 4GB CompactFlash memory card (contents cataloged, document 517; reference case 412); newspaper clipping (document 518; reference case 412); Sony video camera (contents cataloged and transcribed, document 519; reference case 412, 415)

  Referencing:

  Case

  Devon. Status:

  [Expunged; Executive Order

  Executive Order

  Executive Order

  Executive Order

  Executive Order

  Executive Order

  Executive Order

  Password Clearance: Black Alpha and Higher.]

  Case 012.

  Daltry, Dr. Stephen. Status: DECEASED. (Reference case 013, 417)

  Case 013.

  Daltry, Dr. Cheryl. Status: DECEASED. (Reference case 012, 417)

  Case 053.

  Moon, Lieutenant Daniel “Danny.” Status: LOCATED.

  Case 117.

  Barnes, Sharon (AKA. “Mama Cass.”) Status: LOCATED.

  Case 222.

  Twill, Terence “Terry.” Status: LOCATED.

  Case 315.

  Gilles, Cob. Status: MISSING. (Reference case 316)

  Case 316.

  [Name Unknown], “The Poet.” Status: MISSING. (Reference case 315)

  Case 412.

  Walker, Dean Andrew. Status: MISSING. (Reference document 511, 515, 516, 517, 518, 519)

  Case 413.

  [Last Name Unknown], Wendell (AKA. “Weasel.”) Status: MISSING. (Reference document 512, 513)

  Case 414.

  Stray-Gupta, Taylor (AKA. “Taylor Gupta,” “Taylor Stray.”) Status: MISSING. (Reference case 420, 421)

  Case 415.

  Grey, Julie (AKA. “Sabine Pearl-Grey.”) Status: MISSING. (Reference document 519)

  Case 416.

  Boyd, Floyd (AKA. “Pretty Boy Floyd.”) Status: MISSING.

  Case 417.

  Daltry, Charles “Charlie.” Status: MISSING. (Reference case 012, 013)

  Case 418.

  O’Donnell, Mackenzie “Mac.” Status: MISSING.

  Case 419.

  Siebert, Amanda. Status: MISSING. (Reference document 514)

  Case 420.

  Gupta, Miriam (AKA. “Miriam Stray-Gupta.”) Status: MISSING. (Reference case 414, 421)

  Case 421.

  Gupta, Dr. Harold “Harry.” Status: MISSING. (Reference case 414, 420)

  FOR JIM,

  WHO WAS THERE WITH ME

  IN THE STREETS AND TUNNELS

  IN THE RED AND THE BLUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m the luckiest SOB in the world. I’m lucky to have editors like David Pomerico and Betsy Mitchell. I’m lucky to have an agent like Jim McCarthy. And I’m lucky to be able to call Jim Geist, Vicki Mau, Jeremy Horwitz, Margaret Danielson, Sheryl Burnham, and George Dake my readers, friends, and family. Thank you, all!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  RICHARD E. GROPP lives on a mountain outside of Seattle with his partner of fifteen years. It is a small mountain. He studied literature and psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has worked as a bookstore clerk, a forklift driver, and an accountant. He has a hard time spelling the word broccoli, and in his spare time he dabbles in photography and cooking.

  Bad Glass is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Del Rey Trade Paperback Original

  Copyright © 2012 by Richard E. Gropp

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gropp, Richard E.

  Bad glass/Richard E. Gropp.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53564-1 1. Photographers—Fiction. 2. Quarantine—Fiction. 3. Spokane (Wash.)—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3607.R653B33 2012

  813′.6—dc23

  2012019974

  www.delreybooks.com

  Frontispiece illustration: mckenna71 at stock.xchng

  Cover design: David G. Stevenson

  All cover photographs © Shutterstock,

  except front cover, lower left © Mike Bryan

  v3.1

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: f98160fd-d6a6-48d6-ad9e-c63dd9ddbd4f

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 11.1.2013

  Created using: calibre 0.9.13, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software

  Document authors :

  Richard E. Gropp

  About

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