by Mark DuCharme

—I—

It had been just two years since the plague befell us. I say fell, like a curtain, like a storm, like the sun itself, for it seemed a descent that had come swiftly and cast everything in a kind of haze from which daily life never quite recovered the vitality it had once possessed. At least, that’s how it was in the city. I myself hadn’t traveled beyond since some months prior, so I cannot say for sure how it was in other locales. But here, life had taken on a grim, stoic character. Everyone was cheerlessly preoccupied with mere survival, and no one seemed to take any particular joy in those fortunes survival accorded him.

The impact upon commerce, of course, had been devastating. Many lost their livelihoods, and new means of getting by were fewer and fewer. I was one of the lucky ones, I guess. I’d gotten hired early on as a transporter— that was the title: transporter. A lot of them needed it. Not the living, but the others.

I was lucky, too, to have a home within my means. Hundreds— no, thousands were homeless. They littered the streets like vermin; some thought they were vermin. But I had my little room, where I was safe. It wouldn’t have been thought much, in the old days, the days before. The building was a huge, run-down, shabby Victorian house— no doubt a mansion in some faded, bygone era. It had been subdivided long ago, however— built on to, and then subdivided— into how many units, I didn’t even know. Some said dozens; some, still more. Still, it was an unusual building. It’s not just that sounds travel in funny ways around its sharp corners, crooked halls and winding stairwells. All old buildings, and not a few newer ones, have something of that curious nature. No; it’s that, for a former mansion (if that’s what it even was), it was put together— oddly. The window of my own cozy (though admittedly small, and sparsely furnished) chamber, to give one example, was at a most eccentric angle, like in some blanched old silent film, a strange film I remember seeing as a small child, a child too young to comprehend the skewed images he watched in wonder. I never learned the name of that film, but never forgot the feeling it gave me: like I was in a dream. Strange what emerges from the memory, like fish washed up from the sea: oddments of a song you heard in a shop weeks ago; a forgotten lover’s face, just as it was when you last knew her; or this odd, perplexing film I half remember— or maybe only dreamed. What are dreams anyway but restructured memories— memories, and portents?

It was winter, and in the city, snows linger, becoming gradually begrimed with soot and dirt and the exhaust of buses, cars and trucks. And of ambulances, like the one I drive.

They aren’t really ambulances, though, because ambulances take the sick and the injured to get treated and made well. They’re more converted ambulances, I think— not white, like those conveyances of hope, but always a metallic gray, like the streets, like the skies.

I pick up my cargo at the arena; that’s what they use as a holding area. You can smell it for blocks around— the newly dead. Or at least that’s what they call them.

I pull round behind. There are usually other transport vehicles, metal-gray like mine, parked there, waiting or loading up. Sometimes, there are a dozen or more.

The orderlies help, but it’s the transporters who have to do most of the work, lifting the bodies in. They’re kind of gray too: lifeless, pale, sometimes emaciated. They look like death. Sometimes their eyes are open— always a jaundiced yellow in the eyeballs, one of the sure signs of the plague. That, and their foul breath. Did I say breath? Well, yes, a smell does definitely emanate from them, from their mouths, almost like breath. But I wouldn’t call it breathing. Their chests never rise or fall. They are quite, quite still. And the eyes never move, nor register any hint of cognizance. (Of this, I am terribly grateful.)  And they are cold, like the dead. I mean, they are the dead.  What else could they be?

We stack them— well, to tell the truth, it’s mostly I who stacks them— pretty much like logs in the back compartment of my vehicle. There are no beds, no equipment, no shrouds, nor caskets even. We are spared the grim irony of bereavement, of wishing peace to the lost. Once they’re loaded, my job is to get them where they’re going as fast as possible.  Faster, even. There is no time for formalities, for dignity. I turn on my siren (my gray coach has that, like a proper ambulance, like a ferry for the fallen) and speed off. Speed, I say, is what I do; no one’s very concerned any more about such matters. It’s not that there are no police— Jesus knows there are always more and more of them!— but they don’t care. They expect us to rush our grim cargo off, in fact. Why, I’d stand greater chance of being detained if I went at a polite 35 per hour! No, speeding’s expected, when my compartment’s full, when that smell is following me like Death itself, as I fly down twisted avenues. Some transporters have even killed pedestrians in their haste— children and the homeless, mostly— not quite meaning to, naturally— and the police don’t even bat an eye. They don’t bat an eye at all.

The one thing I’d get in trouble for— and the thing I must be careful of in winter, with its soot-fouled snow and, sometimes, black ice— is crashing the transport, crashing and letting my cargo slip out the rear doors, desecrating the street with those gray corpses, those jaundiced eyes. That happened to Hank, last year. It was a terrible scene. I wasn’t there, but I heard about it. Not that anybody talked— no, they whispered! People screamed and fainted, ran crying off to church, or to mother, or whatever comfort the cold streets had left for them. It was truly horrible. And that was the end of Hank. I mean, nobody knows what happened to him. He was injured, of course, and had to be taken. He must have been taken to the hospital— I mean, where else would he have gone? But no one ever saw him again. It’s not just that he never returned to work; it was as if he’d never been there. His locker was gone from the garage the next morning. His transport was mended back together and given to a new man. (I guess he’s not new anymore, but I still don’t know his name.)  Management never acknowledged the incident. It was something very strange and disconcerting. I try not to think about it, to be honest.

Our cargo always had to be delivered to the facility before dark. Our bosses were very particular about that. You see, they were trying to manage this plague— someone had to— and so certain measures had to be taken to make sure it wasn’t spreading. That’s also why I had to visit Dr. Greenway so often. They had to make sure you weren’t a carrier.

The facility was located at the city’s Far West End. It was a rundown quarter, even more so than the rest of our metropolis, and quite far from any commercial or residential districts. Abandoned factories littered the landscape nearby: huge, hulking industrial wreckage that blighted the skyline and cast the narrow streets in shadow. The light was usually starting to fade when I pulled near; in fact, I’ve rarely seen the facility with the sun properly upon it. It was a dark, imposing edifice, even for this part of town. It fully occupied an entire block, if you want to call it that, for in truth it extended over a much greater area than a normal city block. I’ve never been around it, so don’t know just how far back it went, but it seemed to go on for miles. And with the sun always behind it when I pulled near with my cargo, the facility loomed dark and bulky against the horizon: an imposing structure whose original purpose (for there must have been one) seemed long ago forgotten.

It had a purpose now, though. Although it seemed in rather squalid condition, based on its exterior (for I have never been inside), it was in fact a vital hub of the city’s operations.  It was here, you see, where the bodies were disposed of. And there were so many, the poor souls lost to this dreadful epidemic, that they must be disposed of rather quickly and en masse. There was no time for pity. There was no time for sorrow. There was no time to comfort the bereaved, or to send for priest or preacher, rabbi or imam, to say kinder words of the doomed than would be said were they alive to hear. No; that kind of sentimentality had no place in modern disease management. For they could be carriers, you see, even in their present state. So the dead were simply shunted to the facility in due haste, and without any last respects, and loaded onto the dock from whence they would be disposed. Unlike the orderlies at the start of my daily journey, here the dockworkers helped me. They had a sense of urgency about the matter, in fact, no doubt due to it getting late and their desire to go home. They had cargo lifts unto which we piled the remains, which were then hoisted up to the dock proper, whereupon they were loaded onto flatbeds that were duly hauled into the depths of the facility to be unceremoniously cremated. Dark plumes from this activity poured from smokestacks that generously populated the roofs of that great ruin, sullying the dusk.

In truth, I was glad my work must be completed before night entirely enveloped the metropolis— for it always made me uneasy. The homeless, for one thing, would now be out. But I suppose that’s not quite accurate: they were always out, of course: mendicants seeking coins and pity, or maybe bread or liquor, on street corners, or loitering in the sunken entrances to decrepit buildings, or asleep in alleys or on any abandoned plot of earth with room enough to hold their outstretched frames. But it was the others who  came out when the sun dipped down behind horizon’s clutter.  These never seemed to sleep, and never stood in one place long, but instead wandered restlessly about the boulevards and plazas, always slowly, always purposefully, never stopping unless an encounter with some hapless stranger roused their interest. These creatures without home, perhaps without country, ever moving, reminded me of sharks a little, and they had the most intense eyes. Eyes that seemed almost to burn into you. Or was I imagining things again? But anyway, I tried not to look into those eyes, and I always hurried home once my day’s duties were done.

—II—

Gruber was at it again. I could hear him muttering through the shoddy drywall that separated our adjoining apartments. He was always muttering about something, always to himself.

This time, he was going on about thorns again— or thorn. I couldn’t make out much of what he was saying: just the word “thorn” and “he doesn’t need to be invited!”

“He doesn’t need you to invite him in,” the old man repeated wildly.

He was a little crazy. He’d lived here longer than I— longer than anybody, probably. They say he was a widower and raised a child here, now grown— all that time in that same apartment, now apportioned off to create my unit. Still, his memory was keen. Old folks sometimes lose that faculty, along with those of the body, when the time comes. Not Gruber, though. I’ll say that for him. In some ways, he was really sharp. For a crazy man, that is.

“Thorn doesn’t need inviting!”

He was getting louder, and I was getting tired. I had figured out long ago that the thing to do in these situations was distract him, keep him a little company. He’d soon forget his rantings and grow tired himself.

I grabbed a small measuring cup and knocked on the sturdy oak door that probably hadn’t been polished since the war before the last one. After a minute, it swung open.

“Can I borrow a little sugar, Mr. Gruber,” I inquired. “For my coffee in the morning.”

Gruber motioned me in and closed the door behind me. He was about 70, I’d guess, at least, balding, with white hair and beard, never combed. He was clothed in that same light blue, musty bathrobe and pajamas— I’d seldom seen him dressed otherwise— and he led me toward a centrally located sofa and bade me sit.

His apartment was larger than mine and L-shaped, as opposed to my own rectangular one. It betrayed the dust and clutter of decades lived in one small space. Shelves lined every available wall, crammed with books, and often books on top of books. His special interests were history and the occult. He would speak of them sometimes, when inclined to share his brandy, and I would nod and smile and politely listen and drink. He was a real character, and his yarns could be entertaining, if one were in the mood.

I wasn’t particularly this evening— hauling dead bodies sure tires you out— but I knew it was either this or listen to his mutterings through the wall. At least this way I could distract him from whatever made him so upset, and he would relax and quiet down.

Gruber didn’t go to the cupboard for the sugar, but instead plopped down in an overstuffed armchair across from me. Perhaps I’d used this pretense one too many times for him to be fooled. Perhaps he was distracted by other things.

“How have you been, Johnny? I haven’t seen you in a while.”  He eyed me, sizing up my current state.

“I’ve been busy with my job. I’m a transporter. I take the bodies—”

“I know what you do,” he cut me off, disinterestedly. “Tell me, do your superiors ever talk about how long they think this is going to last?”

“No one says anything to me. And I don’t say anything back. But I get the feeling they expect it to last a good long while. It’s like an industry now— a real industry. I suppose we need something like that, now the other jobs’ve gone.”

“Yes, yes,” he shook his head. “And do you see these victims you drive around all day? What do they look like?”

“Their eyes’re a funny yellow, sir. I never seen anything like it.”

“No, I don’t suppose you have.”  He looked down, then back up into my own eyes. “Johnny, what do they tell you about the bodies?”

“We got to get them to the facility before dark, is all. It’s real important to my bosses.  You’d think they were afraid of the dark, the way they talk about it.”

“Do they say why it’s so important?”

“Because they can be carriers, even though they’re dead. I don’t know much about infections, but that’s a scary thought, that you could catch a thing like that from one already gone.”

He looked down again. “Well, there are scarier things,” he observed, getting up and crossing over to the cupboard: not the one with the sugar, but the one with the brandy. He retrieved two cups from the adjoining cabinet, and brought it all back over and set it down on the coffee table. “Can I offer you some?”

“Sure. Thanks, Jim.”  He poured two glasses.

“Now listen, Johnny. This is going to be hard to believe, but you’ve already seen things you wouldn’t have believed, I’d guess, if I’d told you about them even three years ago. Am I right?”

“Sure,” I said politely, suddenly unsure of where he was leading.

He paused, as if to try to think about what to say next. “Johnny, those dead bodies that you drive around are dangerous, alright. I suppose you could call them contagious, too— just not in the way we’re used to thinking about it.”

“Well, they sure don’t smell good, is all I know,” I interjected.

He looked down again— “No, I’m sure they don’t”— then back up at me. “Johnny, there’s a reason that you have to dispose of them by dark. It wouldn’t be safe to be around—”

“That’s just what my bosses say,” I interrupted.

“And do they say why?”

“No, not really.”

He took a good gulp of brandy and continued. “Johnny, those bodies— they aren’t really dead.”

I froze up for a moment. I’d heard Gruber say some crazy things, but never anything like that.

“But I see them every day,” I insisted. “They don’t move. They don’t breathe.”

“But they would if you were with them after dark,” he replied soberly, looking me straight in the eyes.

“I don’t believe it!”

He paused again to gather his wits. When he spoke, he tried a different tactic. “Johnny, have you ever heard of a man named Thorn? Artemas Thorn?”

There was that word again. Only apparently it was someone’s name. I shook my head.

“Well, you should have. He owns this building, you know. And he has for a very long time. He owns a lot of property in this city. Very wealthy and mysterious— that is, if you can’t see what’s right under your nose.”  He paused again. “If you ever cross paths with him— and you may— be very careful. He’s even more dangerous than they are.”

The old man just wasn’t making any sense, but I was too polite to sit on his couch and sip his brandy and tell him so to his face. So I nodded in agreement and smiled insincerely— a gesture he in no way was assuaged by, judging by his grave expression.

For his part, Gruber was too polite to push the matter further, so we sat and chatted about our usual trifles for another half hour or so, at which point I thanked him for his brandy and excused myself, citing tiredness, which in no way was a courteous white lie, and I retired thus to my own small chamber.

The conversation had been nonsense, of course, but it left me with an uneasy feeling. Maybe it was because I’d sensed that my employers were afraid of those things too. Maybe it was the gravity of Gruber’s manner in telling me all this. I grabbed a beer from my mini-refrigerator and had it as a nightcap. Then I slunk into my bed and a night of troubled dreams.

---

Next Time: Enter Artemas Thorn