Extinction Journals by Jeremy Robert Johnson

Author:Jeremy Robert Johnson [Johnson, Jeremy Robert]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Swallowdown Press
Published: 2012-12-20T16:00:00+00:00

6

Three more days—maybe four—passed. Dean and his suit made good time. In another, less nuclear world this whole ambulatory clothing thing might have sold great to people who wanted to conserve fuel. The ASPCA and PETA would have complained, sure. That was what they did. But the rest of the world didn’t give a damn about insects. Get them past their initial revulsion, make it look pretty and clean, and you’ve got a best-seller.

During his travel Dean acquired two loaves of rye bread, one jar pureed vegetable baby food, one scarf with the words “Winter Fun” embroidered on it, three gallons unfiltered water in various containers, and one overall sense of crushing ennui.

To keep busy and clear his mind he handled a lot of the footwork himself and periodically checked his suit for birth-signs. So far the host of egg cases adorning him remained in gestation, but they looked darker. Soon the nymphs would be here, demanding sustenance.

He kept the “Winter Fun” scarf wrapped—very lightly—around his face and crossed his fingers. He had to keep breathing but guessed that the air quality around him would petrify even coal miners.

So far, though, there were no signs of the cellular corruption that had taken Boot Lady and Wendell to their graves.

A day ago he’d woken from his sleep to the sound of flowing water. He’d popped up quickly enough to run down to the river’s edge and fill the containers he’d amassed in his backpack.

Could have been the Ohio River. Could have been the Mississippi. He cursed his D minus geography skills and wished he knew. But since then he’d been heading south, probably a few hundred yards from the river at any time. It seemed crazy to abandon a water source, but it also seemed crazy to stay still when they were certainly in a dead zone. Besides, if he made it to the gulf perhaps he could find a boat and head south to a less ravaged continent. Who would bomb Peru? Someone who hated llamas?

The clouds overhead remained black as ever, but also seemed to emit a low luminescence that coated Dean’s path like filthy moonlight. Maybe his sight was just adjusting.

Any longer in the dark like this and I’ll be pure white with pink eyes, finding my way with echolocation. Interplanetary spelunkers will find me and call me a wondrously adaptive creature. Look at how he works in concert with the roaches which surround him!

That was the other thing bothering Dean. When he wasn’t fighting off a sense of weary resignation and trying to chase away the self-destructive worries that paralyzed him, he found himself experimenting with the seemingly stronger link between his desires and the actions of the suit.

He could make patches of the outfit skitter faster than others. He executed circles and vertical rolls. He could choose which group of clustered mouths would drink from his carefully-poured puddles of water. Most disturbing, he found that if he concentrated hard enough he could get them to twirl their feelers in clockwise or counter-clockwise directions.

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