Kingdom come

Time had pulled to a stop and was proceeding on tip-toe. Cable news didn’t report it, because there was nothing to report yet. And nobody knew. And everybody held their breath.

Deep under the Earth, Jacqueline d’Estime sat within a dirt cell. She was not locked in, just waiting. But the horror of a small space. The worst possible silent suffocating despair...

Lucas lay upon a dirt table in a dirt operating room.

Not dead. Sleeping.
In Kansas City MacAbee and Nadyenka arrived bleary and sore. They’d hitched in with a friendly bunch of eastbound Mormons. They’d wandered downtown. It was dark. Lots of streetlights were out. Some cars were stopped in time on the road, idling, some with blinkers left signaling turns that would never get made.

“The Rapture,” said Nadyenka.

“Feh,” said MacAbee.

“You think the Mormons made it?”

All the restaurants were open, lit up like flight decks. Nadyenka and MacAbee picked one and sat. They waited. The city whispered a few cars around, a few homeless—an empty library save for an uninformed page reading stack after stack, waiting silent and respectful for her substitute. I may wink out of existence at any moment, she thought, though this was unrelated.

They waited, with menus. MacAbee was reading The Book of Nephi.

“I’m not sure those were Mormons.”

“Yeah?”

[ two ]
MUTATIS MUTANDIS

He had been separated from his wife, Dyna, for three months. Padraig and Dyna were billing compliance officers at competing hospitals. They’d known of each other’s existence for years before a blind date contrived by mutual friends drew them together. They married after seven months. That was two and a half years ago. Padraig was now forty-one and Dyna was fifty-two, a tall woman with white hair of the formerly-blonde cast. They were childless.

Because he’d been decidedly obese as a boy, Padraig had an extreme jealousy problem and couldn’t tolerate any of Dyna’s other relationships. If Dyna spoke to her mother for an hour on the telephone, Padraig became fidgety and hot, wondering what emotional support he wasn’t providing. In extreme cases he’d been known to ambush Dyna’s relatives and press them for details. If Dyna went out with girlfriends some evening, Padraig became fidgety and hot, mumbling in front of a muted television, imagining all the enjoyment they were having, to which he could never contribute or be party. A number of times he had orchestrated chance meetings—here during a birthday party at an Italian restaurant, again on the way out of a romantic comedy. In adulthood Padraig was only slightly overweight, somewhere in the vicinity of two hundred and thirty pounds, at nearly six-foot. But all the fat was bunched at his stomach and his rear end in an embarrassing way.

It was soft, hairless, cherubic material—baby fat.

The fight that occasioned Padraig and Dyna’s separation was one they reprised constantly. It took place after Padraig called Dyna’s office from his own to invite her to an early lunch. Discovering she had already taken one, Padraig drove to the restaurant down the block from Dyna’s office, J. Freely’s American Grill, where Dyna ate the same grilled chicken Caesar almost every day. Here Padraig espied his wife sitting at a raised wooden pub table beneath a green canvas parasol. The man across from her was a creepingly debonair grief counselor named Artie Gunn. Artie worked at Dyna’s hospital as well as Padraig’s. Padraig recognized Artie’s red and silver hair. He caught the glint of Artie’s oversized wristwatch.

Padraig had dealt with the man several times. Artie was Dyna’s age, handsome, with sparse blond middle-aged-man fur, and the sort of dry, ruddy skin that contains head-to-toe freckles. There were two occasions in which Artie, constant advocate of the wretched and bereft, had blocked Padraig from prosecuting a delinquency claim. This required Padraig to defend the part of his job that he did not enjoy: heaping troubles on the already troubled. Moreover, the CFO who granted Artie’s requests, gently overruling Padraig, was an attractive older brunette named Sall with whom Padraig always used to flirt.

Now, from behind some juniper ground-cover on a hexagonal parking lot median, Padraig witnessed Artie and Dyna laugh and toast. He watched their hands come close together and part again. Padraig had heard Artie’s laugh before. It had a mourning quality—like wind over a stringed instrument.

Dyna touched Artie’s arm in an otherwise unscandalous manner.

Padraig became fidgety and hot.
“Why are you so fragile about things like this?” Dyna demanded that evening, when they’d been shouting over it for several minutes.

“Oh,” Padraig said. “I’m fragile.”

“Yes. You’re fragile.”

“Well, I don’t know, Dyna. Maybe it’s because you and your guy-friend are both a decade older than me, and I’m the stupid younger kid who outlives his use with the older kids five minutes before they desert him forever.”

Dyna struggled for words and air—

“That’s preposterous!”

And so on.

In the end Padraig announced that he’d be taking time away from Dyna to reconsider his own “assumptions” about their marriage. He said this because it sounded mature, and he was not feeling very mature at the time.

For a moment Dyna searched for a retort. Then she gave up.

“You know what,” she said, sighing. “Maybe that is a good idea.”

So Padraig spent three months paralyzed with jealousy and a confused, centerless rage at what all Dyna might be doing and feeling, and who all she might be doing and feeling it with in his absence. All of Padraig’s sensations during this period might properly come under the label fear. This Padraig realized two nights ago as he sat in a tub of motel bathwater that had come out lukewarm, smelling like bleach, and was now cold as ice tea on all his exposed surfaces. With the image of his naked body down below him—bobbing in the pool-green water—Padraig realized he was the true source of his pain, for he was the source of his idea of the world. It all came at once.

“I am the source of myself,” said Padraig, consummating properly the philosophic starvation quest that is trial separation, his voice ringing metallically in the small bathroom. “I am self-generating—”

And so on. As long as Padraig remembered, it was his habit to craft a life maxim for any moment of significance. It had never occurred to Padraig how incapable he was of receiving information from anyone other than himself. Though he had been called “unteachable” thousands of times in his life, he never considered the possibility that the word had any meaning.

He looked upon his naked totality.

“...And I am unteachable,” he said.

Padraig had identified the problem, he didn’t know how to begin seeking a solution, but now, Saturday morning, January 2, he was going back: a sadder and more hopeful version of the Padraig that had stormed out all those impoverished weeks ago. On his way back to the house Padraig stopped by a drug store and got a shrink-wrapped gift basket of foot anointments perfumed with essence of guava and essence of cactus. He also bought a cushion-brush by Conair and a bottle of Salon Selectives, and worked for several minutes in the car smoothing shut his bald spot.

He’d worn the cleanest shirt he had available.

As Padraig climbed the approach to his house, his whole heart swelled in apology—he felt it as a tingling in his lungs, a constricted sensation in the muscles along his jaw. So contrite was Padraig, and so renewed in passion for his wife, that after he knocked and, receiving no answer, let himself in; and even as a kind of bumping and scuffling came from a further room, involved with a strange, emotional sort of moan, he thought nothing of it—he hardly heard it. He was actually smiling as he came out of the hall and into the living room, bearing his footcare products proudly: naïve.

To Padraig’s surprise, Dyna had metamorphosed into a coffee table. Or, if not metamorphosed into, become scrambled up with, as though an impossible DNA transfusion had taken place. “Transubstantiation” was the particular word that did not cross Padraig’s mind, for he had been raised in a nondenominational church that conducted itself in a disused sports complex.

Dyna looked up with a wretched combination of pain and conscience.

“I fell,” she said.
Why hadn’t Padraig seen it coming?

It taught him the importance of watching the news, anyway. And the importance of rumor.

For weeks incomplete information regarding the End of the World had moiled among the populace, existential contradictions slipping into news stories, oddities taking root in the verifiable world. The Strangeness grew like an ivy or a wild blackberry: instead of expanding upward in a conspicuous way from a single spot, it sent runners out along the ground, looking for a place to grasp, and jump into unexpected bloom—the unexpected unexpected, a concept not considered deeply enough till now.

Or perhaps it was more conspicuous after all. Perhaps people simply bent their lives around the Strangeness without ever admitting its presence. Perhaps people had learned to doubt their eyes.

One shouldn’t—let that be said.

For his part, Padraig felt the same cruel ineptitude he did whenever Dyna went to a romantic comedy with her sister, or if she simply got her teeth cleaned or had the cellular material about her cervix analyzed—that he could never give his wife everything she needed, nor ever stop feeling the need to do so. How he could have saved Dyna this calamity Padraig didn’t know, but it was his instinct to resist the edicts of practicality, and to agonize by default.

Dyna’s transformations were these.

Her head was intact, and protruded from the tabletop about center. Her right arm maintained its integrity as well and was in the unfortunate position of having replaced one of the table legs—that is to say one of the legs was now supple, and had at the end of it a nice silk cuff, and beneath that a fully opposable hand. Dyna had to keep the limb rigid at all times, however, if she did not wish to fall over.

You might say the other metamorphoses were undergone by the table, their produce more table than lady. Though the grain of the wood was unperturbed, the oak itself was flesh-toned. The table legs were now like terribly accurate carvings of human appendages, woody, obdurate and somewhat reduced in size. The tabletop had retained it’s shape, but turned an even lighter color than the rest of the wood, almost pink or bright peach—and the hibiscus blossoms that had lined Dyna’s blouse were now faintly visible beneath the grain.

“I had just gotten off the phone, I remember,” she said, delving back into the event with calm. “It was a wrong number. Someone with this terrible, but very beautiful voice. It was almost sexual to hear…”

Padraig nodded, tight-lipped. He had felt far too much today to feel a great deal of anything just now.

“He said he was looking for a Captain Duckett.”

Padraig looked up. “Your father?”

“I don’t know. I said: ‘Captain Duckett has been dead for twenty-five years.’

“‘Oh,’ the voice says—you should have heard it—‘Oh. Was he in the US navy by chance?’

“‘Who is this?’ I said.

“The voice goes, ‘Was he a freemason by chance?’

“I said: ‘Who the hell is this?’

“‘...Wrong number,’ it says.”

“Bullshit,” said Padraig.

“I know,” Dyna said. “But that was all I got.”

“Huh.”

But “Lego” was about as far as Padraig really heard. And it was more than he was prepared to cope with. This was a childhood toy Padraig took out and enjoyed on a regular basis—a calming, meditative activity. And it was a regular complaint of Dyna’s to find the mislaid pieces: in the sofa, in their bed, in the pockets of dirty clothes—and in the carpet. The last time Dyna confronted him about it, Padraig had improvised, accusing her of borrowing his razor again without permission and soiling it with leg and genital hair—an infraction she had made once, on accident, and apologized profusely for about a year ago.

Padraig began weeping quietly.
Pain and confusion, it seems, are far more commonplace than human beings generally try and believe. Thus, when pain and confusion are in abundance, as they are in all human beings at certain times, and in certain human beings at all times, the tendency is to transfer, explain, bury, warp, deflect, misdirect—anything but own and absorb and digest the fact. As Padraig Mitchell drove toward Peerless Self-Storage, he tried to keep this truism in mind.

“I accept the facts of this situation,” he said, as they crawled down the highway—Padraig in the cab of his late-model Korean pick-up, Dyna bouncing along in the payload behind, snugly under a sheet. “Resisting the facts is counterproductive.”

And so on. It is almost impossible to believe oneself when making such proclamations, and Padraig did not. But by the time they arrived at Peerless Self-Storage, he summoned his mettle. He would need it.
As the Mitchells initially assessed their predicament, there in their living room, it had quickly become clear that Dyna knew more about the End of the World than Padraig—mostly by virtue of the fact that she kept a wider social life and was exposed to a wider range of gossip, the only useful information stream at times like these. Even as long ago as Artie Gunn, the first person who discussed the Strangeness with Dyna, the gossip engine had been in motion: working out interpretations of both the federal government’s cryptic reassurances, and the contemptuous minimizations of the national press.

“Okay,” Padraig had said. “So I think we wait it out. We just hang here and see if it goes down.”

“It’s not a fever,” Dyna said.

“Well...” Padraig said. He frowned. “But let’s not start ruling things out.”

Dyna sighed. “Have you heard of something called “The Abnormal Vigilance,” Padraig?”

Padraig shook his head slowly. “No.”

“The Abnormal Vigilance is a federal taskforce,” Dyna said. “It’s in every American city, now. And this—” Dyna looked down at herself. “Is exactly the kind of thing they’re looking for. God knows what they do to people.”

Dyna’s friends had heard about Ft. Worth and of similar disturbances in other cities— Portland, Alberta, Atlanta, Minneapolis—the number was growing. Whispers indicated that the so-called Abnormal Vigilance was now conducting random neighborhood searches, looking for incidents of Strangeness.

“Well...” Padraig said again, as he searched for a thought. “Well, then I don’t know what to do.”

“You will go see Artie Gunn,” said Dyna, the impossible coffee table.

Padraig thought.

“I don’t want to go see Artie Gunn,” he said.

“You will go see Artie Gunn. Artie is a Zoroastrian. He knows all about this.”
Padraig shook his head. “I don’t like Artie Gunn.”

“You hardly know him, Padraig.”

“I know enough. I know he dresses better than I do. I know he drives a Ford Super Duty. I know he has over on his patients.”

Dyna smiled. “He’s a good man, Padraig. He’s a natural pathologist. And he doesn’t have over on his patients.”

Padraig thought again. “I don’t care what kind of crap he’s into.”

The feeling was similar to the one Padraig had just battled for three months—fear. Like being frisked by a bear.

“We can’t just call him?”

“He doesn’t have a phone,” Dyna said. “He lives in a fire temple.”

“Artie Gunn, as in Artie Gunn—amateur racquetball champion? Why don’t I know any of this?”

“He’s very private about it,” Dyna said.

Padraig thought. “Then why do you know any of this?”

“I went to him when you and I separated,” she said. “I knew him, and I asked for his help. He took an interest in my situation.”

In response to this information Padraig’s face twisted and untwisted. He stood suddenly. Then sat again suddenly. He could not compose a protest.

Dyna cleared her throat. “Now then,” she said. “I can’t stay here while you’re gone.”

Padraig looked up. “You don’t think?”

“How could I defend myself.”

Padraig squeezed tears back. “You can’t stay with a friend?”

Dyna shook her head. “I’d just be putting them in danger,” she said.

Padraig nodded. “I’m so sorry, Dyna.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s gonna be fine.”

Padraig moved to his knees and put his arms around the tabletop.

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” he said, his nose and mouth squashed against the wood. “I can’t.”

“You can,” she said.

“I love you sooo much, Dyna.”

“I love you too, Padraig,” she said gently. “Let’s get to work.”

“Now then,” she said, “we’ll go straight north, then take Swope Parkway across...” and proceeded to outline the swift, mostly deserted route.

As Padraig’s love and admiration swelled to an almost unbearable degree.
The row of rentable closets was grim and low. They’d waited until dark to transport her. Padraig looked around sadly, trying not to think about how long this would be Dyna’s home. Here and there along the closets people were unloading possessions onto truck beds and into backseats and trunks. They worked with a silent, unthinking kind of fever. Nights had become unnerving in the extreme. Padraig took a circuitous route through the parking lot so as not to give anyone a casual view of his cargo. His and Dyna’s storage module was all the way around the far side of the facility, which was darker and grimmer, flanked by the trees of St. Francis Park. Their row was unpeopled.

Padraig carefully backed up to the aluminum structure. Then he got out, unlocked the retractable door and pushed it up. The first thing Padraig noticed when he flipped the light switch was a large sticker on the near wall. In black letters on a yellow background it laid out Peerless Self-Storage policy. Padraig had read the regulations before; now it occurred to him that he should carefully reabsorb the information.

E.g.
Do : Store unused dog houses, birdcages, and cat gymnasia in your Peerless Self-Storage module.
Do Not : Store dogs, birds, cats, or any other living thing in your Peerless Self-Storage module. Both temperature and ventilation may fluctuate. Suffocation, dehydration and heat stroke are common results.

...
Do: Use the state of the art public restrooms in our leasing commons (by the vending machines).

With gentle encouragement from his wife, Padraig slid Dyna off the truck bed and placed her inside the module. He cleared as much space as possible, arrayed provisions and diversions as she wished, and braced her operable corner with an abandoned jack stand so that the functioning arm would not have to support her weight and she could reach and manipulate anything within a foot or two.

“Okay,” Padraig said. The weeping impulse clenched up his jaw again, but he didn’t cry. He cleared his throat and breathed a little. “Okay,” he said again.

“Now,” Dyna said. “I need you to promise me something.”

Padraig gazed at her. “Okay,” he said.

“Promise me,” Dyna said, “that whatever Artie tells you to do, you’ll do it.”

Padraig didn’t move at all for a moment. “Dyna—”

“For me,” she said. “Promise.”

Padraig coughed. “I promise.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll see,” Padraig blurted. “I won’t even be gone a day.”

“Padraig.” Dyna spoke slowly. “You do exactly what Artie tells you. I’ll be fine.”

“Dyna...” Padraig exhaled, bleary. “Dyna Mitchell, you are the incomparable love of my life.”

Dyna smiled. “Go—”

Padraig departed with the distinct impression of leaving his wife behind in a grave. He drove. West.

A chaotic phone bank had been thrown together in back. Horde members were given call-lists and instructed to recruit humans of “nautical expertise.” But the lists were out of date, a lot of the numbers were dead, and the calls mostly drunk and incoherent.

The gaming floor blinked and bipped in its incessant madness. The Horde loved it. They ate a maitre d’hotel. Then they ate the mayor. They laughed and puked out gallons of green tequila. They got in some city-limits trim. They got their asses beat.

Satan had skipped town. He couldn’t stand them.

**
The next morning in downtown Kansas City the Federal Building was abuzz. In among the myriad byways of this grand labyrinth shock troops jostled propagandists; Yogis remonstrated with assault tacticians; doctors of theology bickered with research psychologists. All this to the incessant baying of drug dogs, who could only be calmed with scripture. In the upper suites of the building, agents sat at long tables where airport maps and sewer maps and maps of world nuclear sites were strewn among downloaded stills from the Holy and Satanic Bibles. The smell of weak coffee and unchanged suits proliferated. It was the same scene, more or less, in every such facility nationwide.

On the helipad of the building’s great roof, black smoke poured from the mouth of an improvised alter, a twenty foot square, five cinderblocks deep. The men working around it had taken off their suit-coats and shirts, and the balmy January cool blew their sweat marks cold, the morning glinting from their badges and sunglasses.

Each man wore a black ball cap with tall gold letters that stood out in the sun like trumpets:
SECRET AGENT

announced the hats.

These agents were performing a hecatomb. Already they had piled twenty disassembled oxen on the sacrament—dozens more of the huge animals waiting patiently beside the helipad. An attractive young man named Martin who had long ago apprenticed as a kosher butcher weaved among the oxen with a razor-sharp blade long as his arm, basted purple-red. The waiting brutes milled, unruffled. Smoke hung out over the city in a long undulating tail.

The Abnormal Vigilance had been installed.