IGMS Issue 11 by IGMS

Author:IGMS [IGMS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hatrack River Enterprises
Published: 2009-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

We crawled from our hutch in the ruins and took off running. The air was thick and hazy hot. Everything looked like it had been soaked in melted butter. And though I ran as hard as I could, I didn't feel I was getting any closer to home.

I wanted to believe that as soon as I was home, I'd be all right. That what I'd seen that day -- the details of which appeared in my mind with greater and greater clarity -- would start to fade. I needed to believe all of it would dissolve like a dream. As soon as I was home . . .

It was late when we finally slowed down. Long shadows reached for us as we walked. I didn't realize how far out of our way we had gone or how tired I was until my legs flat gave out.

"I have to stop," I said. "I don't have enough spit to swallow. You got any water in that basket?"

Suddenly, Karin was laughing. She set the basket down then doubled over, shaking her head, trying to speak, waving her hands, laughing hard enough to hurt. She pointed at the basket and collapsed on the ground where she rolled back in the dirt and kicked her legs up into the air.

Her going off like that gave me the shivers. But it also made me feel like the world could get normal again. I plopped down in the grass beside the basket. It was heavier than I expected -- Karin had carried it the whole time. There were fourteen little pill bottles inside. Around each one was a band of adhesive tape on which had been inscribed a name and a date -- Tony Reynolds, 2 July 50; Mildred Foust, 25 June 50 . . .

"What's in these things? Pee?"

Karin righted herself on the ground beside me. "It is only water," she said, still struggling to recover her wits.

"What else's in them?" I said. "What did you put in them!"

"I told you. It is only water." She grabbed the basket out of my lap.

"Is that the stuff you put in that jug of whiskey?"

She nodded.

"Then it isn't ordinary water. You put some kind of vodoo Argentine junk in there. Something to make them go crazy like that. Or else you put germs in there and gave them a disease."

"Have you ever heard of such a disease?"

"How do I know what kind of diseases they have in Argentina or any other place you've been to?"

Karin was relaxed now, her old self. She sat tall, her back straight as the barrel of a rifle.

She plucked out a bottle and read the inscription. "This one I collected last Sunday in Creedmoor. You remember they baptized three teenagers . . . and Tammy Milford. It did not take me long to discover that Tammy had an interesting past. The ladies of the church talk, and so do the men -- in separate groups of course. No one takes any notice of me standing close by because they think I do not understand them.

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