The Hauntings of Playing God (The Great De-Evolution) (5 page)

9

Amazingly, there is no damage from the storm. Not that she can tell, at least. Of course, she doesn’t venture out of the main room of the Block shelter anymore, except to use the restroom and to take trash out to the incinerator. It’s possible that the main part of the school, where the classrooms once were, suffered severe damage from the wind and now resembles a Greek ruin. All she cares about is that the gymnasium, where kids once played dodge ball and attended pep rallies, is still intact.

When she thinks of the history of the room she works in each day, she can’t help but think back to how long it’s been since she was one of the kids sitting in the bleachers. Somehow, the stench of floor polish and sweaty kids, of popcorn and hot dogs, seems to remain in certain corners of the vast room. She knows this is a trick of her mind, though. In her old age, she can’t even smell the urine, shit, and body odor that must cover every part of the group home. There is no way she can actually pick up the odor of something from decades earlier.

In a similar gymnasium, a lifetime ago, she was one of many uninterested teenagers who was forced to listen to an old man speak about the importance of doing well in school, going to a good college, and getting a decent job. Didn’t he know that the Great De-evolution meant none of those things mattered anymore?

Instead of taking notes and paying careful attention to what was said, all of the kids had day dreamed of what the Great De-evolution might mean for them. No need to find a job! A life free of responsibility. How naïve they had all been to think the end of man would make life more simple for them.

After the Blocks appeared and the last generation of normal kids finished school, this gymnasium, like other school gyms around the country, was gutted of its bleachers and turned into a factory for making food processors. The same adults who taught geography, grammar, and mathematics, took off their slacks and button-up shirts and came to work wearing sweatpants and t-shirts. They were joined by day-care workers and part-time babysitters—people who needed something to do with their time. Anyone who wanted to stay busy but no longer had a profession needed by the aging population appeared at the factory doors. Eventually, mailmen, landscapers, and taxi drivers showed up as well.

A day came when food processors had been shipped out all over the country and the factory was no longer needed, just as the gymnasium had once become obsolete. At the same time, waves of new families were traveling south each day. Fifty years earlier, at the peak of the migrations, a thousand new Blocks arrived in Miami every month. Some were abandoned in city streets by people who could no longer take care of them. Some were rescued from those who preyed on the weak and defenseless. These bodies had to be put somewhere. So the assembly lines were torn apart and the giant room was gutted once more, but only so it could be packed with cots.

That was also when the gymnasium was outfitted with a new air conditioning system. The previous system would break and need repairs every two or three years. As the population grew older, however, and as the room became filled with weak and feeble bodies, even a day without air conditioning in the hot Miami summers could mean hundreds of deaths. The same bill that produced reliable power generators and incinerators for each house in the country made sure new AC units were installed in each group home. Without it, Morgan and everyone around her would already be dead.

But there is much more to the school than simply the gymnasium. There are classrooms, administrative offices, locker rooms. She does not wander the halls, though, does not leave the giant room where her Blocks are. There is nothing to be gained from looking into old classrooms where kids used to raise their hands to answer questions or look down at their desk if they didn’t want to be called on. Some classrooms probably still have framed portraits of each President. Each photograph, though, has faded beyond recognition. Other rooms have maps of the world. But the maps are outdated; the countries on them no longer exist in any meaningful way. Still other rooms have band equipment that has rusted and warped over the decades.

There is no point to visiting the administrative portion of the building, where the principal and vice principal would lecture misbehaving students on the importance of not having their bad behavior recorded on a make-believe “permanent record.” There is no telling what might lie in the janitor’s closet.

For all she knows, every part of the school, save the gymnasium, might have already been turned back over to the wilderness the way the school’s parking lot has been. All it takes is one broken window and the weeds, dirt, grass, animals, and everything else that was supposed to be the outside world, quickly becomes part of the inside world.

There are days she wishes a storm would just go ahead and end everything. On the days she is feeling sorry for herself, questioning if she can even provide adequate care to those who depend on her, she wishes it could all be taken out of her control. There is no chance she would end things herself, but if God was ready for her, she wouldn’t complain when she was called. A category-5 hurricane would certainly accomplish that.

Other days, she is glad for the time she has, counts herself lucky to have a solid roof over her head and a purpose in her days. These are the times she prays for the storms to leave her alone. She is thankful, even if she is surrounded by people who can’t communicate with her, that she has time to think about not only her life, but all life.

It’s impossible not to think about your place within the entirety of mankind when you are surrounded by sixty-four mouths that rely wholly and singly on you. She thinks of lions caring for their cubs. She thinks of early cavemen confronting the unknowns of the world as they tried to keep their children alive. And she even thinks of the Earth as a tiny speck in the galaxy, about how, in the end, the sun is not so different from a lioness or a scared man in a cave. Every part of the universe, she thinks, is dependent on something else. It is a beautiful, yet delicate framework. Just look at how quickly dinosaurs vanished from the earth. A single meteor! And look at how it only takes one lifetime for all of mankind to disappear from the planet. Indeed, life is delicate.

When she thinks of her own place in the universe as one microscopic grain of life on one minuscule planet in one tiny solar system, she wonders if there is anything at all to learn from mankind’s existence or if the entire thing was nothing more than a cosmic coincidence that has run its course. If she knew for sure that there was a god watching out for her, she would know there were lessons she was supposed to gain from what has taken place during the span of her life. But knowing the great expanse that is out there—billions of stars, trillions of planets—she knows there is nothing truly significant about her place in the cosmos, even if there is a higher power.

Maybe life is measured by the first time you question your place in the world and by the final answer you come up with.

Amongst the rows of Blocks that she and Elaine assigned life stories to, there is a minister, a Zen master, a philosopher, and a therapist. Between the four of them, they should be able to provide some clarity. Instead, each one contradicts the others, leaving her more confused than before.

The minister looks up at the stars and tells her, “Only God could create something so majestic and immense. Who are we to question his work?”

The Zen master looks into the palm of his hand. “It is not only the universe that is infinite, it is each of us. We all have different realities regarding the same events. Your consciousness is timeless and spaceless, too!”

The philosopher looks at one tiny piece of dirt on the floor and says, “That single little crumb is your life. Look at how tiny it is compared to the gymnasium. And think of everything that exists outside these doors.”

The therapist frowns and says, “The room is only as big or small as it makes you feel. Oftentimes, a feeling of being overwhelmed during a crisis is due to abandonment issues.”

“All four of you, please shut up.”

“We’re only trying to help,” they say in unison.

“Screw off,” she says, giving them the finger and walking to a different area of the group home.

This is exactly why she doesn’t bother asking them the questions that are always bouncing around in her head; they don’t know any more than she does.

10

Denial does not work. Even as she tries to convince herself that he might have stopped checking his e-mail regularly, considering how long it took for her to reply, each passing day makes it a little tougher to hold out hope that Daniel will ever write her again. Time is denial’s mortal enemy and is always victorious against it. After a week, she no longer checks her e-mail every night. Another week after that, she forces herself to check but without any expectation of finding a new note. This silence is different from the one she put him through. Hers was vexing, inconsiderate. His, she fears, is permanent.

She didn’t reply to his e-mail because she didn’t know what to say. How do you tell someone who is all alone that everything will be okay, especially if you aren’t sure that it will be? What words can comfort someone who realizes they are completely responsible for so many other lives?

Only now, with Elaine gone, does she too have these fears. Now she understands what Daniel must have been going through when he wanted to hear from her. She still doesn’t have the words that could have reassured him, made him believe everything would be okay, but providing any reply at all would have been better than nothing. She knows this now.

Now that it’s too late
, she thinks, punishing herself.

Getting through each day is a little tougher than it was the day before. Without Elaine, she not only has to take care of the Blocks in her charge, she has to take care of herself, do all of the cleaning, maintenance, everything. When the tasks were split between her and Elaine, they would each care for thirty-two Blocks and then divide the other chores. Morgan would clean their beds and wash the dishes while Elaine prepared meals and emptied any mousetraps. Every once in a while, just for variety, one of them would take care of all four quadrants of Blocks while the other person slept in, relaxed, and rested. This was a rarity, though. Like finding a dollar on the ground. Like seeing a beautiful rainbow. Both of them knew that caring for the entire gymnasium’s population wasn’t something their bodies could do for an extended period. They were simply too old.

She could use a day of rest now. Each knuckle on every finger aches and, periodically through the day, locks in place until she rubs them loose again. Her legs feel like she has shin splints, the type she used to have after hour-long runs as a teenager, even though all she does now is shuffle from bed to bed. It takes a little longer each day to make it all the way through the rows of Blocks and get to bed. It takes a little more energy. It wears her out.

“Buck up now,” Jimbo calls out. “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” she replies. “No one else is around to do it. And, I might add, I wish it were easy.”

All he can offer in return is a stubborn, “Whatever.”

It’s only after she is sure she will never hear from Daniel that she allows herself to begin replaying her final days with Elaine.

“Don’t do that,” Jimbo warns. “As soon as you start thinking about the past, old demons will haunt you. Trust me, after I caught the Block Slasher, I—“

“Not now,” she says.

“Whatever.”

It has been two weeks since her friend passed away. Between looking forward to Daniel’s response and taking care of the Blocks from the moment she wakes to the time she goes to bed, she has been able to avoid thinking of the things Elaine said that final night.

“Please… don’t let them get me,”
her friend had whispered. The words echo in Morgan’s head as she tries to think of something or someone that may have plagued Elaine’s nightmares. Who would she have been afraid of? Who would she need protection from? Maybe her friend was simply an arachnophobe and had dreams of spiders crawling on her skin.

“They come for me… at the end…”

Did Elaine know she was going to die that night? Had she seen something to make her believe she was going to close her eyes and never open them again? Who was coming for her? How did she know it was her end?

At the time, Morgan had discounted the words as the nonsense of someone with an incredibly high fever. Alone now, with nothing to do but replay the final statements, she can only take the words seriously and try to figure out what they might have meant.

Even with these thoughts troubling her, she is so tired she can close her eyes and fall right away to asleep. Her legs buckle. She opens her eyes and catches herself before hitting the ground.

Standing at the sixty-forth bed, she realizes she must have put her head down on the last Block and fallen asleep while still on her feet. She shuffles over to her own bed, gives a groan as she lowers herself onto the skinny mattress, and closes her eyes. The longer she stays up and dwells on whether Elaine’s remarks were due to fever-induced hallucinations or were the scared thoughts of a dying woman, the less time she has to rest her body before she must once again start making her way from cot to cot, body to body.