Radiation Face by Phil Skaggs Jr.
It’s easy to get out of the house. To sneak out and turn your back on the people who raised you. That was surprisingly easy. It’s harder to think about. I can’t stomach going back and seeing the look on my mom’s face. Or even my dad. He was just trying to do what was right for me. Get me a decent job.
Get my foot in the door of one of the few places that accepts people like me. But I just can’t do it. I can’t take the work there. I’m just not tough enough to make it out there.
Willy offers me a place to stay and I take it. It’s a bunk in the back of the locker room. It’s not the ideal place. It lacks all the things I would call home. But it has the essentials. Running water and place to sleep. So I’ll have to take it for now. And figure out the rest later.
My dreams are flashing and take me over.
I think about where things would be if I wasn’t here. If I had left a while ago. If I had never been born. I dream about where my life is going. Where it can’t possibly go. Where I want it to go. Where I never want it to go. And I know I have to wait to see where it actually goes. And that is exciting to me. But then a dark cloud comes in and my dreams turn to nightmares and I’m sweating and gasping for air and I need to figure something out. I need to get my life going. Or just give up on it. Then my head clears.
The time passes quickly at the gym. Sleeping and waking and training and cleaning. I learn a lot and it keeps my mind away from other things.
#
‘Swing into it.’ Sam frowns as I try to give it another go. The bag gives a dull thud as my fist makes contact. Sweat is dripping off my forehead. My muscles are aching. I’ve been at this most of the day. It’s Sunday so I get to practice in the Bishop with Sam. It’s just me and her. Well, Willy keeps coming in and out doing something but otherwise it’s just the two of us.
‘Here.’ She pushes me to the side and takes a stance in front of the gym bag. She swings and connects. I don’t see a difference from what I’m doing. She nods for me to take position again. I swing. A thud. And she tells me to do it again.
‘My shoulder’s going to give out, Sam. I can’t keep this up.’ I tell her.
‘I don’t care if it falls off. You keep at it until I say it looks good.’ She gives me a stern stare.
I swing again. And look at her. She gestures to the bag. She wants them to keep coming.
‘That’s it. I can’t do another.’ I start to unwrap my hands.
‘Where you going?’ She asks.
‘I gotta rest. I’ve been at it all morning.’
‘A break?’
‘Yeah, a break!’ I yell back at her. I grab a chair leaning against the wall and unfold it.
‘For god’s sake.’ Sam mutters to herself. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?’ I spit out a mouthful of water and take another drink.
She just pauses and I can see her jaw tense up. Then relax. She walks up and grabs a chair next to me.
‘School sucks.’
‘No shit.’ I reply.
‘Well, more than usually. Ken and all those guys have gotten even worse.’
‘Really? I figured they’d back down now that the mutant wasn’t showing up to school.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s not the case.’ She rocks the chair back on its heels.
‘Well, if it’s not hanging out with me, I assume you’ve been picking fights again.’
She gives me a sideway glance. ‘No.’
‘Then I have no fuckin’ clue.’ I grab my shoulder and rotate it a little. I stop cause it keeps pissing me off.
Sam keeps silent, but I can tell that there’s something she wants to share. But it’s hard for me to feign interest right now. The shoulder and all that work this morning. I’m too upset to let her know I care today. She’ll have to share it on her own if she wants to share it. I’m not pulling it out of her. Not right now. She decides to give me more despite my indifference.
‘I guess you wouldn’t since no one ever talks to you.’
I don’t say anything.
‘Here.’ Sams stands up and walks in front of me and starts to lift up her shirt.
‘Whoa. Hey, Sam. I dig you and all, but this isn’t what I want. I think we should stay friends. Or just trainer/fighter. You know, professional.’ I wave my hands in front of my face and stand up. Smiling.
‘Sit down, idiot.’ Sam scowls at me. I sit down. She tends to know what she’s doing most of the time.
She lifts up her shirt and underneath it is another shirt. She lifts that one up while holding the other one under her chin. And under that one is a wrinkled up shirt. And under that was wrapping. A large wrapping up around the chest and stomach. The kind of wrap for a swelling ankle. Only much longer.
She finds a small little hook on her side and starts to unravel it from around her body. It slowly drops from her, and I start to see it. The lumps, the sagging skin, the purple splotches. It’s not pretty. But then again, neither am I.
But I know now, that the genes didn’t miss her. They passed right down through Willy and to her.
She’s a mutant. Plain and simple.
I look up from her body and into her eyes. She’s staring me down. I open my mouth and nothing comes out. I finally realize what it’s like for all those normals who meet me for the first time.
‘Well?’ She looks me over. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
‘What do you want me to say?’ I shoot back. Mostly out of habit.
‘I don’t know. I figured you had something to say. Most people do.’
‘Yeah, but I’ve seen this stuff before.’
She gives me a look like I’ve been caught sitting outside her window.
‘No, not with you. This is new info. But I’ve seen it back home. It’s nothing new. It’s no big deal.’
‘Maybe not for you. But people didn’t know before.’ She puts her shirt down and picks up the wrappings from the ground.
‘Yeah, all my crap is stuck on my face. Pretty hard to hide that.’
‘I’m not trying to say anything-’
‘No. No worries. I got it.’ I start to unwrap the tape on my hands. ‘I guess it’s gotta be hard trying to fit in around here when you don’t really fit in. I’m guess I’m lucky in not having a choice.’
She walks over and grabs a chair from the wall and sits down next to me.
‘You know, I was really jealous that you got to walk around as yourself all day. Not giving a crap what other people thought. I just couldn’t imagine what that would be like.’ She shakes her head.
‘Yeah, well, i didn’t have the choice like I said. It was go for broke or go insane.’
‘I guess.’
‘How’d they find out.’ I ask.
‘Ken tried to cop a feel of me at some party. Put his hand right under my shirt. Got a handful of surprise. Whipped my shirt up to see. Snapped a photo. That asshole.’
‘Jesus. That’s messed up.’
‘Yeah, I knocked him out. Left the party. Went to school the next day and it had spread everywhere. Everyone knew.’
I don’t have anything to add. We both know how messed up it all is.
‘So now that they don’t have you, I’m the one taking the heat.’
‘Well, it’s not that bad.’
‘Says the guy who left school and home to live in a gym.’
‘Okay, it’s horrible.’ I shrug. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’
‘I don’t know. It’s even harder cause I had a few friends there too. And they’re gone. Want nothing to do with me. They were barely hanging on when I started talking to you.’
‘That makes it even worse.’
‘Tell me about it. Sorry.’ She looks over at me.
‘For what?’ I ask.
‘For being a dick about workout today. You have the punch down. I was just being...well, you know.’
‘Yeah, don’t worry I know people can be asses when they don’t mean to be.
‘But you do need to work on your speed.’
‘My speed?’ I raise an eyebrow.
‘Yeah, it’s horrible right now. But it can get better. Not like your strength.’
‘What about my strength?’
‘You’re a little small.’
I put my arms out and flex them as best I can. ‘Yeah, okay, I’m a little thin. I’m not a meathead or anything. But that’s what working out is for.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t know if you’ve got those huge muscles in you. I think speed is going to have to be your thing. Speed and endurance.’
‘Well, I’ve got some endurance already. At least give me that. How many people would have kept swinging at that bag like I did.’
‘Yeah, I’ll give you that. But I think you can get better.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘Take it however you want. Just make sure you're ready to get to work again tomorrow.’
‘I will, coach.’ I nod my head.
Willy walks back into the gym carrying some sandwiches from around the corner.
#
Rumble...
That’s the sound I wake up to. It is a low and mournful sound. I just catch it as the Earth shook the floor around me. I’m in the gym. Sleeping off the workout before. Trying to keep out of my parents’ hair as they go on with their lives.
Dad is talking to me again. But he’s still pissed with the way I left things. Just walking off like that. But I didn’t know any other way if I’m being completely honest. He often says ‘What am I going to tell the guys at work?’
I don’t know. I only met them once. I can’t even recall their names.
It was all about the gym. I cleaned up from nights and practices that day. In the evening, Sam would come from school and run me through everything under the watchful eye of her dad. He barely said a word. She knew what she was doing. And I could feel it at the base of my bones. I was getting stronger and faster. And ready to step into that ring again.
Rumble...
It’s louder and heavier now. It sounds like the whole building is going to go. I shoot up and grab my clothes and head for the street. No one is in the gym. They don’t open up til ten. There is still a good hour before anyone would come around with the keys.
I hit the streets and start looking around. It is panic everywhere. Mutants and normals running around like the end is coming. They’re all looking up towards the East. I follow one little girl’s arm up to the sky and see this massive form shadowing the buildings.
It looks like a green brick wall had been built up to the sky overnight. My eyes need to adjust, but I know right away what it is. I’ve seen that up close living in the zone.
The monsters have come to Keystone.
The creatures seem to barely move. The images of what is happening hit long before any sound so there always seems to be a delay. Like an old overdubbed movie. It’s hard to tell what’s going on. Where exactly they are. But I need to know what damage they’ve done so I head home.
#
Getting home isn’t that difficult despite the traffic. I run. This no worse than my daily run. Just a little more weaving in and out. And the waves of people are headed in the opposite direction of me. Making me think ahead. Making me not drift off like I normally do. But mostly it’s the same. It takes me awhile to get there. The monsters are gone before I reach my street.
The little upscale houses that I never felt comfortable in look more like my old hometown. There are cracks in brick walls and chimneys collapsed on themselves. The grass is yellowing and turning in on itself. Vinyl siding droops a little under the heat. I can’t tell if the monsters had come through here or not. The damage seems so small.
Some houses are worse than others. Like the randomness you see after a tornado.
On the way up my street, I see it. It’s some of that slime I slopped through by the zone a few weeks back. It’s crawling down the sidewalk and looks like it is coming up out of the yard. From underground. It must be spilling over from the fight. It’s soaked into the ground over by those two creatures and bubbling up here. It’s starting to look like home.
I notice a curtain move in the top window of the house with the sludge. Some old woman is looking out at it with her eyes wide. She glances down at me and closes the curtain quickly. She was one of the loud ones when we first moved in. So sure bad things would follow my family. The destruction my old town was cursed with.
Her prejudice seems confirmed today.
The house has looked better. But still looks great compared to my old place. I splash through the sludge creeping onto our walk-up.
I open the the door and head in. Mom is sitting there, watching the news. The tv works for whatever reason. She looks up at me and smiles meekly.
‘Is it bad?’ She asks.
‘It’s pretty bad.’ I don’t lie.
She nods and keeps watching the news.
She’s seen stuff like this happen back home. We both have. It isn’t anything to get worked up about. Well, it is. But what are we going to do? Luck either saves you or kills you. There’s really nothing you can do against creatures like that.
The people here have never dealt with anything like this before. That’s always something us godawful mutants took the brunt of. And Their fear is obvious, watching these news anchors try to reassure the public while the paleness in their skin and in their eyes says something other than calm and collected.
Rumble...
Mom holds her belly. She only has a little while now before my little brother comes. Which I’m not happy about now. Two broken towns is not a place for a kid to grow up.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I ask.
‘Work. He called. He was going to bring some guys up here to help out. If he could get them past the security on the bridge.’
‘Where were they?’
Mom looks at me. Still holding her belly.
‘The monsters?’
‘I think they said near the school.’ She shifts in her seat.
Rumble...
I just nod and sit back into the couch. There is nothing I can really do. Nothing I can say. It’s just watching and waiting and hoping that they passed you by when it is all over. So Mom and I just sit there and watch the tv and don’t say anything.
#
News crews from around the area descend onto thee town. People from as obscure as North Dakota and as far as Oregon come looking for any bit of sensationalism to put on the screen. It’s happened a hundred times in my old home and no one ever went there.
But I guess it makes better news when something clean and perfect is destroyed.
I don’t know.
Mom packs my dad a lunch and I head out to take it to him. He made it back that night. Tired from having security running circles around him. They thought he had loaded up his crew to smuggle them in or something. Not to help. I don’t know why they thought the mutants would want to move here now.
I take my time walking through the area. I don’t really want to see the main point of destruction where everything took place. It isn’t going to make me feel good.
Not like I had dreamed back home. Or when I first got here.
To have all that shit that was being piled on to my friends and family. To have it finally show up here. Give all these perfect faces something to see. To understand what it’s like for us. I wanted that so bad. But now that I see all the damage. All the shit that made my home crap. I don’t want to see it. No one deserves this. This doesn’t make us even or show them anything. It’s just violence and destruction. And no one deserves this.
There are a few cars flipped over and houses falling apart, but the closer you get to the center, the less you see. Everything has been flattened. Cars are just ash and tin. Houses seemed like they are waiting to be built on newly cleared land. There are bodies here and there. But not many. They were pulled out early on. It’s been long enough to get the visible ones out of here.
It’s gone and everything it was is ground to fine dust. Pools of the sludge is collecting in these craters. Dad’s working down at the base. So I grab a hard hat from one of the guys and head down with the lunch. But I know he won’t be ready to eat for some time so I set it down.
I don’t say anything and pick up a shovel and start digging trenches to keep the sludge from covering up the school’s remains. Parents are still coming down here to look for any piece of their child. And clean up crews are trying to get the debris out. So dad and I and a few others keep them dry from the sludge that’s slowly pouring in.
Willy is here. Digging through everything. His large tongue rolling in and out of his mouth as he pulls at old textbooks, looking for names and dates. He looks up and nods to me then gets back at it.
I haven’t spoken to him since the funeral. And I barely got anything out. I’ve never been too good at that kind of stuff. Even with all the practice I’ve had in the past.
I didn’t attend any of the other funerals. Not even the big one they held for the whole town to attend. I don’t know if I was wanted. There were a handful of kids that had stayed home sick or ditched school. Most of them survived. Others had been caught in the crossfire somewhere else.
Everyone looked at me like I had some magical ability to survive this. That maybe if I had been at school that day then I could have instructed everyone on what to do. Where to run. Where to hide. How to survive. But I couldn’t. These are forces of nature. They are things that barely know we exist. If at all. But still, I heard the whispers.
Besides none of those guys cared for me when they were alive. Only Sam’s funeral had any meaning for me.
It’s been funny. I knew she was dead the moment I ran out into that street and watched the wall of monsters cast a shadow over everything. I knew she wouldn’t make it. But I didn’t believe it. I still didn’t when I stood in front of that empty casket. I think her shoes were in there. The ones her dad found at home.
I still don’t believe it. Not in my heart. My head has connected all the dots. But that’s it. It’s given me certain clarity. Those dark demons I had. The ones in the back of my head don’t come up for air anymore. I don’t feel like ending it. Just leaving this place behind. Not in the slightest. It feels like it would be an insult to Sam and everyone else who was atomized in this madness.