Robby looked like he slept well. He had showered and his hair was wet. Robby looked good.
Robby always looked good.
Robby said, “I am relieved to announce we are safe from committing the worst imaginable social blunder, which is giving your balls the same names as another guy in the same town’s balls.”
“I am thankful for that,” I said.
I took a drag from my cigarette.
Robby said, “My balls are named Mick and Keith.”
“Those are probably the best names anyone has ever given their balls in the history of naming your balls,” I said.
Robby said, “Thank you, Austin.”
He pushed a cassette into the tape player in the Explorer’s dashboard.
It was Exile on Main Street.
That cassette was so old, all the printing had completely worn off it. Robby knew the difference between Exile on Main Street and Let It Bleed only because of the smudge patterns on the plastic shell casings.
The first song on Exile on Main Street is called Rocks Off. Some of the lyrics go like this: The sunshine bores the daylights out of me.
Sometimes I understood Robby Brees better than other times. I knew he was mad at me for leaving him there in the clinic the night before, even if he selflessly encouraged me to do it. That was Robby, and I loved him.
I believed Robby was jealous of Shann Collins.
And, looking at the sky and all the light, I also agreed that the sunshine was boring.
I wished we could go back underground and be alone in the dayless and nightless world of Eden, so we could play music and dance together—just me, Robby, and Shann.
And Ingrid, too.
Ingrid does not dance or bark.
I have tried to dance with Ingrid. It makes her nervous.
We headed off toward the town of Ealing, in the direction of my house. After that, who could possibly know? It wasn’t like there were any specific instructions on how to hunt down and kill wild Unstoppable Soldiers. Even the lunatics who ran the labs at McKeon Industries only had to deal with bugs in a jar, so to speak.
The state of Iowa is a pretty big jar.
Johnny McKeon urged us to take his gun. We did not. Despite being Iowa boys, neither Robby nor I had ever fired a real gun in our lives. I was afraid one of us would accidentally kill the other. That would be worse than being eaten by an Unstoppable Soldier.
Paintballs are just paintballs, unless they’re filled with the blood of your God and you are an Unstoppable Soldier, but a Smith & Wesson .500 magnum could bring down a helicopter.
So we left Johnny McKeon’s Smith & Wesson .500 magnum in Eden.
Johnny McKeon made a sling from two Eden Project jumpsuits, and I carried Ingrid up the ladder with me and Robby when we left the silo. Johnny offered to come with us, but I convinced him the Unstoppable Soldiers would leave Robby—and hopefully me—alone.
Johnny McKeon knew he did not want to leave Shann and Wendy by themselves, anyway. He was just doing the Iowa-right thing by offering us his gun and company.
Iowa-right is the same thing as blue plaid on your boxers.
Johnny McKeon was a humorless, but good, man.
That morning, we had eaten breakfast in the Eden cafeteria. Wendy McKeon cooked pancakes and brewed coffee. I did not sleep well. Neither did Shann. Her eyes were red and her hair was uncombed. It was a look I had never seen before. Shann Collins looked nervous. She looked like Ingrid when I danced with her.
Shann and I managed to have a few moments alone that morning while Robby showered and Johnny McKeon visited the toilet.
It was awkward and embarrassing. We held hands, but it somehow was not like the us we used to be.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Shann said, “I suppose so. Are you?”
Nobody from Iowa ever says I suppose so.
“My knees are scuffed up,” I admitted.
It made me feel horny to think about my knees.
“I never did that with anyone before,” Shann said.
“I. Uh.” I did not know what to say. What could I say? Was I supposed to apologize or something?
I said, “I thought it was amazing. The best thing ever. I love you so much, Shann. Did you . . . Uh . . . Did you like it? Shann?”
“It hurt,” Shann said. “And you told me you would use a condom.”
That was an unfair thing for Shann to say to me. It was cold, too. We never talked about condoms or anything the night before at our little End of the World Party; we just did it because it was what we wanted, the one thing we needed to do. But Shann sounded like someone at a butcher shop rejecting a cut of meat for having too much fat, or shit like that.
“Uh. I must have left my condoms in my other jumpsuit, Shann,” I said.
Shann was angry. She was sorry for what we did.
I felt like shit.
Ingrid was happy to get out of Eden. She shit for a solid ten minutes.
Edens are made for humans, not for animals.
And Dr. Grady McKeon was no Noah. Noah would not have flushed the pope’s sperm down a urinal, not to mention James Arness’s.
“What am I going to do, Robby?”
Robby drove with both hands on the wheel, a cigarette angled daringly from his lips. He looked cool, like a tough guy in a movie, or maybe someone who was about to save the world, but had to think things over first.
I mean, what if the world was not worth saving, after all? What if, in some twisted way, Dr. Grady McKeon really had the right idea about starting over in a well-stocked Eden with stacks and stacks of blank books just waiting to be filled up by New Humans writing a New History where we did not do the same shitty things over and over and over?
“Why do you want me to tell you what to do, Austin? I have a tough enough time figuring out what I’m going to do,” Robby said.
“Uh.”
Robby was right.
“I am sorry for what I did last night, Rob,” I said.
“Why do you have to apologize to me for anything?” Robby said.
“You know,” I said. “I had sexual intercourse with Shann Collins in the bowling alley while you were lying in the clinic having your blood taken out, so we . . . uh . . . you . . . could save the world.”
“The bowling alley sounds like a romantic spot for you and Shann Collins to have sexual intercourse,” Robby said.
“Uh,” I said.
“It’s not like I would have traded places with you,” Robby offered.
“Um.”
Naturally, that made me think again about having a threesome with Shann and Robby. Normally, the thought would make me feel very horny. Too bad Shann Collins did not seem to like me anymore. Too bad Robby Brees did not seem to like me very much, either.
I reached back and stroked Ingrid’s fur.
I did not like myself, but at least Ingrid did.
Dogs are good for that kind of shit.
We drove along Kelsey Creek.
The largest walleye ever caught in Kelsey Creek weighed six pounds, four ounces.
Looking across to the opposite bank, I noticed the streets of Ealing that surrounded Amelia Jenks Bloomer Park were completely deserted. Ealing had become even more of a ghost town than it usually was. Fat, twisting columns of smoke coiled upward into the morning sky. Homes and buildings were burning.
War had come to Iowa.
Robby and I both saw it. We knew what was going on.
It was unstoppable.
“I feel like shit,” I said.
“Was it good? Did you like having sexual intercourse in the bowling alley with Shann Collins?” Robby asked. He glanced at me with an inspector’s no-bullshit appraisal. He shook another cigarette out and tossed the pack across the center console, onto my lap. I lit one and passed the lig
hter over to Robby Brees.
“I guess so,” I said. “Uh. I skinned my knees on the carpet.”
“I have heard that can happen. You have to be careful with that indoor-outdoor shit they made in the 1970s.” Robby said, “It’s like sandpaper on naked knees when you are trying to put your penis inside someone.”
Robby was really smart about carpet burns and sex, and shit like that.
I took a deep drag from my cigarette. It was a brand called Benson & Hedges. The name made me feel rich or something. A name like Benson & Hedges says I spend a lot of money on my cigarettes.
“So, I am sorry, Rob,” I said.
Robby shrugged. “They have a name for guys like you, you know, Austin?”
“Um. Bisexual?” I guessed. I did not think I was bisexual. I was only guessing.
I was always only guessing.
I was trying to talk to Robby and make him not think about things like me betraying my friends; hurting their feelings. But Robby Brees was too smart for that shit.
“No,” Robby said. “The word is selfish. You don’t really care about me or Shann.”
I slumped down in my seat and stared at the columns of smoke across the creek.
It was like bombs had been dropped, and the biggest one just landed on my chest.
Robby turned right to cross the Kelsey Creek Bridge.
He stopped the car.
I was not looking.
I was not looking because I felt like I was going to start crying or shit if Robby said one more thing to me.
Robby Brees said, “Holy shit.”
THE RIGHT KIND OF CIGARETTES TO SMOKE JUST BEFORE YOU KILL SOMETHING
OLLIE JUNGFRAU’S DODGE Caravan minivan sat crumpled against the steel trusses of the Kelsey Creek Bridge.
The nose of the van was folded in on itself, as though it had run head on into an unbendable pole. The front wheels sat in a stew of antifreeze, transmission fluid, and motor oil. There was blood, too. The windshield had been caved in, and dripping smears of blood streaked everywhere, over the shelf of the van’s dashboard, the steering wheel, and both front seats.
I slipped one of the grimacing lemur masks over my head.
“Um,” Robby said.
I wanted to see if any red lights would show up. I wanted to hide my face from Robby Brees.
Ingrid did not like the mask.
If she were a normal dog, Ingrid would have barked at me.
“Do not get out of the car, Robby,” I said from inside my mask.
Robby said, “That’s Ollie Jungfrau’s van.”
I did not say anything. Of course I knew whose van it was.
Robby inched the Ford Explorer slowly past the wrecked vehicle.
I smoked.
The mouth of the grimacing lemur mask served as a kind of cigarette holder. I could easily wedge the filter end of my Benson & Hedges cigarette tightly between two of the grimacing lemur’s lower teeth.
It was very convenient.
“Uh,” Robby said. “What if smoking a cigarette in that mask messes up your sperm, Austin?”
I did not care if my sperm got messed up. I wanted my sperm to get messed up.
I did not say anything to Robby. I kept smoking with the mask on.
Robby stopped the Explorer and slipped the second mask over his head.
He smoked, too.
And Robby said, “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, Austin.”
“It’s okay.” I said, “You are right, Robby. I deserved it. I deserve to have messed-up sperm.”
“Nobody deserves messed-up sperm,” Robby said.
He drove around Ollie Jungfrau’s ruined Dodge Caravan minivan.
Unfortunately, at exactly that moment, Mrs. Edith Mitchell woke up. Mrs. Edith Mitchell was still hiding in the backseat of Ollie Jungfrau’s Dodge Caravan. She had fallen asleep, wedged down between the seats and the floorboard of the van. When she poked her head up to see if she was being rescued, what Mrs. Edith Mitchell saw drove her beyond the brink of her sanity.
What she saw were two monsters with rat-like heads in blue-and-white jumpsuits driving a Ford Explorer while they smoked cigarettes.
Mrs. Edith Mitchell thought Ollie Jungfrau was correct: That aliens from outer space had landed in Iowa, for whatever reason.
Mrs. Edith Mitchell believed the end of the world had come to Ealing, Iowa.
She was probably correct.
Robby Brees and I did not see Mrs. Edith Mitchell looking out at us through the dark rear windows of the crumpled Dodge Caravan. As we passed, Mrs. Edith Mitchell finally mustered enough courage to climb through the bloody muck in the front seat and get out of the van.
Mrs. Edith Mitchell removed her shoes and all of her clothing. She jumped, naked and white, like a fluffy marshmallow schoolmarm, from the side of the Kelsey Creek Bridge into Kelsey Creek.
It was not a good idea.
Mrs. Edith Mitchell did not know how to swim.
Beneath the surface of Kelsey Creek, a cluster of walleyes was engaged in the spring spawn.
On the other side of the bridge, past the parking lot for Amelia Jenks Bloomer Park, as Robby drove into the neighborhood where I lived we saw a television news van that had come all the way from Des Moines. The van was painted with a bold design that said Eyewitness News. The van sat on its side in the middle of the street. The radar antenna had been deployed and was stretched out across the road like a big broken arm.
The doors on the Eyewitness News van were left open. We caught quick, passing glimpses of a bloody mess inside the vehicle. There was one black high-top Converse basketball shoe sitting in the road beside the tipped-over van.
Unstoppable Soldiers do not like to be filmed by television news crews from Des Moines.
The first Converse Chuck Taylor signature basketball shoes were made in Massachusetts in 1932. In 1932, Krzys Szczerba’s Nightingale Convenience Works manufactured the last Nightingale urinal.
That particular urinal, Krzys Szczerba’s final, grand porcelain monolith, ended up beneath the ground in an Iowa sanctuary constructed by a madman. Robby Brees and I urinated into it together, in Eden.
We drove past three houses that were engulfed in flames, and two others that had already burned to the ground. Apparently, the people of Ealing tried to come up with some method for fighting the Unstoppable Soldiers.
Their ideas did not appear to have been effective.
There were dozens of dead Iowans, and mere parts of others, scattered like Halloween decorations across yards, on fence posts and mailboxes, or lying in the streets.
Robby said, “When we get to your house, we have to get the guns loaded quick. Then we need to go back to the Del Vista Arms.”
I said, “Why?”
“My mom,” Robby said. “I have to try to get my mom.”
“Oh.”
Despite Connie Brees’s obvious shortcomings as a single parent, her son, Robert Brees Jr., was a good boy.
Robby Brees really was a superhero.
I did not even think about my mother and father until Robby told me he wanted to rescue his mother. My cell phone was with my clothes inside the locker room in Eden. I hoped my parents, and Eric, my brother who had lost half his right leg and both of his testicles in Afghanistan nearly a week before, were not planning on returning to the continent of North America anytime soon.
“You are a superhero or shit like that, Rob,” I said.
“A gay superhero,” Robby added.
Robby blew a big cloud of smoke out from the mouth of his grimacing lemur mask. It was just about the coolest thing I had ever seen.
“I just realized that the Unstoppable Soldiers’ God is gay,” I said.
“I told you I was—in seventh grade,” Robby corrected.
I smiled and nodded.
The grimacing lemur mask on my head only grimaced and smoked.
“I am sorry, Rob,” I said. I squeezed Robby’s hand.
“There’s nothing you can do about me being gay,” Robby said.
Readers of history may decide that joking while two guys are driving around through a town that has recently been slaughtered by six-foot-tall praying mantis beasts with shark-tooth-studded arms is in poor taste.
It is.
But that is exactly what real boys have always done when confronted with the brutal aftermath of warfare.
Dulce Et Decorum Est.
I said, “I am going to try to be a better person. Not so selfish and shit. And maybe one day you will tell me if I have done it.”
“Uh. Let’s have another fag before we get out,” Robby said. He maneuvered the Explorer as close to my garage as he could get it. Then Robby said, “And then let’s go kill some big fucking bugs, Porcupine.”
“I think Benson & Hedges are the right kind of cigarettes to smoke just before you kill something,” I said.
THERE ARE NO CUP-O-NOODLES IN EDEN
EDEN’S ARMY OF grimacing lemurs landed in Ealing, and it was time for them to go to war.
Robby Brees and I charged up the paintball guns. We injected small amounts of Robby’s blood into dozens of grape-sized jellied projectiles.
When we finished, we left three bloodstained hypodermic needles on the white tiled countertop in my kitchen. It looked like a heroin den.
It was disgusting.
The smell of blood made me want to vomit. I had been smelling it all day.
We smoked and smoked to cover up the defeated odor that hung everywhere over Ealing, Iowa.
Before we left my house, I grabbed an armload of clean underwear and T-shirts and the razor and shaving cream from my bathroom. Tomorrow would be Saturday. Saturdays were shaving days. I did not take my bottle of bubble bath with me. I would miss taking baths. There had to be a bathtub somewhere in Eden.
There were no Cup-O-Noodles in Eden, so I also filled a paper sack with as many of the paper and Styrofoam containers of the miracle food I could find in the pantry.