The Glacier (2 page)

He steps out from behind his tree and is startled to see another man standing nearby, watching him. The boy freezes and the man watches him quietly, with a friendly expression. Another surveyor, but a younger man, Jonah holds a long surveyor's rod in one hand like a futuristic forest staff. He takes a step forward, gently, but the boy retreats a step, scuffling in the leaves.

Jonah reaches a hand out, slowly, like he's trying to befriend an animal. The boy watches him. Then Jonah's radio suddenly squelches, obnoxiously shattering the quiet—and the boy takes off, disappearing into the trees.

***

The boy sits at the kitchen table again, eating breakfast alone. He clanks his spoon against the cereal bowl.

He stops eating and scratches at his ear. He shakes his head and scratches at it some more. He takes another mouthful of cereal and then digs his finger into his ear, leaning over to the side almost all the way out of his chair.

MOM

What's going on here?

THE BOY

Something's in my ear.

Her hands on his head, and the boy's ear being examined by her fingers…

MOM

Hold still, let me see. Oh—darn it. Leave it alone. I'll be right back. Don't touch it.

His mother releases him and leaves him for a moment.

Just the boy's ear.

MOM

All right, hold still now. Don't move.

She steadies his head. Tweezers enter his ear and dig around inside his earlobe. He whines in a bit of pain.

MOM

Eeew. Okay. Got it.

And she extracts a tick from his ear: a small deer tick, and still alive, its 8 legs cranking helplessly in the grip of the tweezers.

***

The boy exits the house, closes the door, descends the steps, crosses the driveway, rounds the corner, and stops. Whatever he sees in the narrow passage between the two houses has stopped him in his tracks. He moves forward slowly, disappearing down the grass alleyway.

The boy stands in the grass at the end of his house, where the backyard would have led out into the field. Instead, there is a wall of beige vinyl siding, the back of another house.

He looks to his left and to his right. The field is gone. In its place is a long row of more houses. He looks up at the monolithic wall of vinyl siding towering above him where the view to another world used to be.

A lightly humming whir, air being moved through a ventilation system.

A bare light bulb hangs from the ceiling of a self-storage unit. The bulb illuminates the small garage space of corrugated metal walls and a concrete floor. A large, obsolete word processor with a yellow-lit screen sits on a card table. A folding metal chair sits at the table.

Jonah lies on a mattress on the floor, his back propped up in the corner. He's in his 30s, medium build and fit, Midwestern decent looks. He wears brown winter construction coveralls, unzipped and peeled to the waist. The left sleeve of his thermal-underwear shirt is pushed up to the elbow and he holds this arm with his right hand as if he is wounded. On his left wrist he wears a watch. It is ticking. He shivers a bit, feverish, but he lies mostly motionless as if he can't move.

The quirky, tumbling music of an ice cream truck is faintly audible outside. He listens to it, breathing shallow, his breath steaming in the frigid air. He strains to check his ticking watch. Then he speaks to someone.

JONAH

Could you turn the light off?

A dark figure stands at the threshold to the garage space, silhouetted and ringed by angelic halos from the vapor lights in the alley behind him. He moves forward and pulls the chain on the light bulb and Jonah disappears into darkness.

The harsh sound of the metal garage door rolling down and slamming to the ground.

***

A momentary flash of a large tree on fire. The tree is burning ferociously in a dark winter field, roaring in the night, nothing but black around the burning tree and a ring of fiery light illuminating the frozen ground.

***

A vast, empty interior of smooth concrete and metallic light. An event hall after hours. On the far side of the hangar-sized room a steel door screeches open, throwing a long trapezoid of daylight out onto the floor. A figure enters and the door slams shut. Radiation Man walks across the concrete to the center of the space. He is an anonymous man wearing a radiation protection suit. He carries a hand-held Geiger counter.

He turns on the Geiger counter and takes a reading. The instrument chirps away steadily like a cockroach on speed. He turns off the instrument, walks back across the floor, and exits the room. The steel door slams shut behind him.

Ashen skies smolder on the black horizon. Rising light bleeds over skeletal treetops. Power lines cut across the countryside. Power transfer stations sit squatted in the weeds. Mutant cell phone towers rising out of nowhere.

Several morning deer venture out into the open. A buck scans the area, nostrils steaming in the cold air, a full rack of antlers balanced and poised.

Across the field, a row of suburban houses sprawls along the line between earth and civilization. A man's voice cuts across the landscape from an unseen walkie-talkie: the radio chatter of a land survey crew relaying abstract practical jargon intercut with static and squelch.

GUNNER

(radio voice-over)

All right. Good. Add ten. Good! Add five. And just a hair… Good. Shooting.

Brand new suburban houses. Thousands of new homes, everywhere for everyone. Condominiums, duplexes, and house after house, lined up like tombstones across the countryside.

GUNNER

(radio voice-over)

Got the shot. All right. And… Cut two! Good! Let's shoot it again. All right, good. Shooting—

The white spray of a fountain aerating some half-frozen man-made pond. Wild winter geese camped out like refugees and wandering in the yellow, out-of-season grass.

GUNNER

(radio voice-over)

And— Got the shot!

Identical patterns of vinyl siding, milky windows, empty streets, and square lawns. The strange spaces between houses, strips of grass.

The new world is a brand new ghost town, and a cemetery.

***

An automated suburban garage door opens, rolling up smoothly. The boy is revealed standing in the empty garage. He's outfitted for the cold in a blue winter snowsuit. But his cheeks are blazed with orange war paint. Orange and blue feathers rise from an “Indian” headband. At his side he carries a large orange tackle box.

He runs out of the garage, descends the driveway, and runs down the street, struggling with the tackle box that is almost too big for him to carry.

The little “Indian” boy wanders through the neighborhood. The streets are deserted, windows dark. He reaches a cul-de-sac and does a U-turn, walking a large circle around the perimeter of the dead-end. He sits down on the curb, fidgeting, alone, and gazing absently into the cul-de-sac.

Then he gets an idea. He walks into the center of the street and opens the tackle box. The box is filled with large sticks of colored street chalk. The boy chooses a color and draws on the pavement.

His stick of chalk goes around and around, scraping loudly against the street. He looks up and sees another child, a cowgirl, also about 7, snowsuit, holster, cowgirl hat.

COWGIRL

What are you doing?

THE BOY

Nothing… Making circles.

COWGIRL

I can do that too.

She grabs a stick of chalk out of his box and gets down on the ground to help him with his drawing. Around and around, the sound of chalk scraping circles on the pavement.

***

An outdoor labyrinth of corrugated garage doors. Rows and rows of storage units.

A single storage unit identical to all the rest. The door opens, rolling up with a manual clatter.

Jonah emerges from the garage. He wears his thermal construction coveralls, work boots, a winter hat, and a bright orange traffic safety vest.

He pulls the door down and locks it with a rotary dial combination pad lock. His breath steams in the morning cold. He pulls on his winter work gloves and walks down the long row of storage units.

***

A middle-aged man sits on the edge of his bed. Pale, balding, and paunchy, Robert stares down at invisible stuff strewn across the industrial wall-to-wall carpeting. Only one side of the bed has been slept in.

The sound of a loud river rushes through the mundane suburban bedroom. The confusion of muddled dreams, sleep, and watery, groggy awakening. Robert pulls on his bathrobe and moves downstairs, leaving the invisible river rushing through an empty bedroom.

In the kitchen, he pours himself some coffee. Lite music and incoherent news voices interplay softly on the kitchen radio. He sits down at the kitchen table and sips at his coffee.

A ceiling fan rotates overhead, around and around, swooping loudly like the memory of a wartime helicopter in slow-mo.

Robert cradles the warm mug in his hands on his lap, looking down into the coffee.

***

A drive-in movie theatre screen watches over an abandoned lot. Weeds and small trees muscle up through the cracked concrete between rows and rows of old car-park speakers.

An all-white, very white unmarked ice cream truck is parked at the back of the lot by the concession stand, a small cinder block building.

Samson emerges from the building in an overcoat and mirrored sunglasses. He locks up and crosses the lot to his truck.

He cranks the ignition, turning it over several times before it catches and fires to life. He breathes into his cold hands, rubs them together, and waits for the engine to warm up. He's scruffy but handsome, with a huckster's jawline.

***

A small corporate banquet room suitable for semi-intimate business luncheons. 10 round tables are covered in white tablecloths. Each table is set only with empty water glasses.

A young woman is alone in the room. Simone is in her mid-20s. She wears a cater-waiter's tuxedo uniform and is naturally pretty but pale beneath the fluorescent lighting and lite music floating down from the banquet room ceiling.

She moves from table to table, circling each table, filling glasses with ice water from translucent plastic pitchers. She moves with care and painstaking attention, not with the quick mechanization of a jaded veteran caterer, but as if a great effort were required just to be in the room in the first place.

Water and ice pour from pitcher to glass, clinking and singing like sensitive teeth.

***

Brown winter grasses sweep across the crotch of an exit ramp. Cars speed along the freeway in heavy streams of flowing traffic.

Jonah stands in the gravel along the side of the road, just a few short yards from the commuter cars whizzing by. He works with a land surveyor's prism rod, a metal staff about six feet tall. He holds the rod vertical to the ground as if he's planting a flagpole. His walkie-talkie squawks—

GUNNER

(radio)

Good. Got it. And… let's add 10 and we'll shoot 'er again.

Jonah un-plants the rod, turns, and walks in the gravel, counting out paces alongside the busy highway. His radio squawks again.

GUNNER

(radio)

Stop. Good. Let's shoot it.

He plants the surveyor's rod in the gravel. He wraps his hands around the spirit level and eyes-up behind the prism. The prism is a golden mirror at the top of the rod used for reflecting a surveyor's laser.

GUNNER

(radio)

Shooting…

Commuter traffic whips by Jonah as he holds the rod steady. The golden prism shimmers in some brief light.

GUNNER

(radio)

Got the shot. Whoop, hang on. Something's funky here.

Jonah looks out across the gray suburban expanse. The rooftops of houses sprawl endlessly toward the horizon of gauze and ozone.

He pulls a small black notebook out of his back pocket and scribbles down some notes.

***

Simone stops pouring water. She stares at the table, absorbed in some singular thought spread out across the white tablecloth.

The glasses on her tables begin to shake a little, ice clinking gently against cold glass.

***

In his kitchen, Robert takes a couple sips at his coffee. He sets the cup down on the table and hesitates over something, preoccupied. Then he rises and leaves the room for a moment. The ceiling fan slowly stirs the room, eerily animating the empty space.

Robert returns with a double-barrel shotgun. He sits down and loads two shells into the 20-gauge. He lays the shotgun across his lap and sits stoically at the table, waiting and thinking.

He takes his pulse, feeling the loud rhythm of his own beating heart.

***

The heartbeat is pounding.

On the side of the freeway, scribbling notes into his book, Jonah pauses and looks out across the city again. Traffic races behind him.

Strangely, all the cars slow down to a crawl and then stop. They begin honking impatiently until all the honking becomes a single stacked chord of overtones and undertones.

Then the honking suddenly stops.

In the eerie quiet, all the passengers are looking out their car windows in unison, like an audience at the theatre. Jonah turns and watches them all gazing out from inside their cars at something on the horizon.

***

In the parking lot of the drive-in theatre, Samson's truck dies. He turns the key, cranking and grinding the starter but the engine won't catch.

***

Robert turns the shotgun around and inserts the end of the barrel into his mouth. A piercing tone breaks across his kitchen radio.

***

Out in the suburban street, the two children look up from their chalk drawing as a bright red cardinal passes quickly overhead.

***

Alerted by something unseen, the herd of morning deer suddenly raise their heads from grazing.

***

Jonah turns to face the horizon and quickly covers his face as a flash of blinding white light and a thunderous detonation emanate from somewhere out on the hyper-urban sprawl.