Mostly mutated whales.
Monstrously large, sluggish things.
Abundant now where once they were near extinction. (Perhaps the whales should form some sort of GREENPEACE organization for humans now. What do you think, Mr. Journal?
No need to answer just another one of those little scientist jokes.) These whales crawl across the sea bottom near the lighthouse from time to time, and if the mood strikes them, they rise on their tails and push their heads near the tower and examine it. I keep expecting one to flop down on us, crushing us like bugs. But no such luck. For some unknown reason the whales never leave the cracked sea bed to venture onto what we formerly called the shore. It's as if they live in invisible water and are bound by it. A racial memory perhaps. Or maybe there's something in that cracked black soil they need. I don't know.
Besides the whales I suppose I should mention I saw a shark once. It was slithering along at a great distance and the tip of its fin was winking in the sunlight. I've also seen some strange, legged fish and some things I could not put a name to. I'll just call them whale food since I saw one of the whales dragging his bottom jaw along the ground one day, scooping up the creatures as they tried to beat a hasty retreat.
Exciting, huh? Well, that's how I spend my day, Mr. Journal. Roaming about the tower with my glasses, coming in to write in you, waiting anxiously for Mary to take hold of that kit and give me the signal. The mere thought of it excites me to erection. I suppose you could call that our sex act together.
And what was I doing the day they dropped The Big One?
Glad you asked that Mr. Journal, really I am.
I was doing the usual. Up at six, did the shit, shower and shave routine. Had breakfast.
Got dressed.
Tied my tie. I remember doing the latter, and not very well, in front of the bedroom mirror, and noticing that I had shaved poorly. A hunk of dark beard decorated my chin like a bruise.
Rushing to the bathroom to remedy that, I opened the door as Rae, naked as the day of her birth, was stepping from the tub.
Surprised, she turned to look at me. An arm went over her breasts, and a hand, like a dove settling into a fiery bush, covered her pubic area.
Embarrassed, I closed the door with an "excuse me" and went about my businessun-shaved. It was an innocent thing. An accident.
Nothing sexual. But when I thing of her now, more often than not, that is the first image that comes to mind. I guess it was the moment I realized my baby had grown into a beautiful woman.
That was also the day she went off to her first day of college and got to see, ever so briefly, the end of the world.
And it was the day the triangle-Mary, Rae and myself-shattered.
If my first memory of Rae alone is that day, naked in the bathroom, my foremost memory of us as a family is when Rae was six. We used to go to the park and she would ride the merry-go-round, swing, teeter-totter, and finally my back. ("I want to piggy Daddy.") We would gallop about until my legs were rubber, then we would stop at the bench where Mary sat waiting. I would turn my back to the bench so Mary could take Rae down, but always before she did, she would reach around from behind, caressing Rae, pushing her tight against my back, and Mary's hands would touch my chest.
God, but if I could describe those hands. She still has hands like that, after all these years. I feel them fluttering against my back when she works. They are long and sleek and artistic.
Naturally soft, like the belly of a baby rabbit.
And when she held Rae and me that way, I felt that no matter what happened in the world, we three could stand against it and conquer.
But now the triangle is broken and the geometry gone away.
So the day Rae went off to college and was fucked into obli4on by the dark, pelvic thrust of the bomb, Mary drove me to work. Me, Paul Marder, big shot with The Crew. One of the finest, brightest young minds in the industry. Always teaching, inventing and improving on our nuclear threat, because, as we often joke, "We cared enough to send only the very best."
When we arrived at the guard booth, I had out my pass, but there was no one to take it.
Beyond the chain-link gate there was a wild melee of people running, screaming, falling down.
I got out of the car and ran to the gate. I called out to a man I knew as he ran by. When he turned his eyes were wild and his lips were flecked with foam. "The missiles are flying," he said, then he was gone, running madly.
I jumped in the car, pushed Mary aside and stomped the gas. The Buick leaped into the fence, knocking it asunder. The car spun, slammed into the edge of a building and went dead.
I grabbed Mary's hand, pulled her from the car and we ran toward the great elevators.
We made one just in time. There were others running for it as the door closed, and the elevator went down. I still remember the echo of their fists on the metal just as it began to drop.
It was like the rapid heartbeat of something dying.
And so the elevator took us to the world of Down Under and we locked it oft There we were in a five-mile layered city designed not only as a massive office and laboratory, but as an impenetrable shelter. It was our special reward for creating the poisons of war. There was food, water, medical supplies, films, books, you name it. Enough to last two thousand people for a hundred years. Of the two thousand it was designed for, perhaps eleven hundred made it. The others didn't run fast enough from the parking lot or the other buildings, or they were late for work, or maybe they had called in sick.
Perhaps they were the lucky ones. They might have died in their sleep. Or while they were having a morning quickie with the spouse. Or perhaps as they lingered over that last cup of coffee.
Because you see, Mr. Journal, Down Under was no paradise. Before long suicides were epidemic. I considered it myself from time to tune. People slashed their throats, drank acid, took pills. It was not unusual to come out of your cubicle in the morning and find people dangling from pipes and rafters like ripe fruit.
There were also the murders. Most of them performed by a crazed group who lived in the deeper recesses of the unit and called themselves the Slut Faces. From time to time they smeared dung on themselves and ran amok, clubbing me, women, and children born down under, to death. It was rumored they ate human flesh.
We had a police force of sorts, but it didn't do much. It didn't have much sense of author-ity. Worse, we all viewed ourselves as deserving victims. Except for Mary, we had all helped to blow up the world.
Mary came to hate me. She came to the conclusion I had killed Rae. It was a realization that grew in her like a drip growing and growing until it became a gushing flood of hate. She seldom talked to me. She tacked up a picture of Rae and looked at it most of the time.
Topside she had been an artist, and she took that up again. She rigged a kit of tools and inks and became a tattooist. Everyone came to her for a mark. And though each was different, they all seemed to indicate one thing: I fucked up. I blew up the world. Brand me.
Day in and day out she did her tattoos, having less and less to do with me, pushing herself more and more into this work until she was as skilled with skin and needles as she had been Topside with brush and canvas. And one night, as we lay on our separate pallets, feigning sleep, she said to me, "I just want you to know how much I hate you."
"I know," I said.
"You killed Rae."
"I know."
"You say you killed her, you bastard. Say it."
"I killed her," I said, and meant it.
Next day I asked for my tattoo. I told her of this dream that came to me nightly. There would be darkness, and out of this darkness would come a swirl of glowing clouds, and the clouds would melt into a mushroom shape, and out of that-torpedo-shaped, nose pointing skyward, striding on ridiculous cartoon legswould step The Bomb.