Everett Maroon's Blog, page 3

Excerpt from Intermediate Time Travel, the sequel to The Unintentional Time Traveler

We were on day four of traveling south to Mobile, Eleanor’s hometown, and we weren’t making much progress with the horses. I knew Pie by herself would be faster than this, but Holiday was a bit older and we had a wagon full of our provisions to boot. And it seemed like every new mile was hotter and stickier. I was driving this portion, not a cloud in the sky to get between us and the sun, and the reins were tacky in my hands, leaving some of the tanning dye on my palms.

“This is gross,” I said to Lucas, who kept nodding off. How dare he try to get out of any of this.

“Mm? What’s gross?”

“This,” I said, waving one arm around in a big circle to mean: everything, dude.

“I think it’s pretty,” he said, and he closed his eyes and hunched himself up against the corner of the seat. As a final screw off to my comment, he pushed his black cowboy hat over his face.

I tried to appreciate the surroundings. Even though there was only one state between Eleanor’s state and ours, the landscape was pretty different. Here the trees were covered in thick green moss on one side, many of them tangled up in some kind of vine. The bird calls were different, too—I didn’t hear any morning doves, but I did spot a few woodpeckers. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t have any run-ins with wolves or coyotes, because all of the big predators seemed to have fled a while ago.

Pie suddenly went lame and stopped walking, snorting instead in a way that made me think he was in real pain. I tapped Lucas on his knee and hopped down to look at the horse.

“What, what? Why have we stopped?” he asked, lifting his hat and looking around.

“It’s Pie,” I said, lifting each of her hooves. Then I found it—the shoe on her right rear hoof had come partially off and the spike had started rubbing the frog—the soft part of her foot. Lucas bent down and pressed gently on her to see how deep the wound went.

“She must have been walking like this for a while,” I said. “Oh, Pie.”

Another snuffle from the horse, and then she bent down to eat some grass.

“She’s one tough horse,” he said. He stood up, dusted off his knees, and trotted to the back of the wagon. I meant to tell him not to wake little Nate, but then the baby cried. Oh well.

He toddled out to me, smiling to see me, and then losing his fat grin when he saw Pie’s hurt foot.

“Ouchy?” He asked, pointing.

“Yes, very ouchy.” I nodded and scooped him up. I brought him to Pie’s face, and they pushed their heads together. Lucas came back with some old pliers and pulled the shoe off of Pie’s foot, and he wrapped a white rag around her injury to keep the dirt out of it. I unhitched her from the wagon knowing that Holiday probably didn’t want to pull the whole thing by herself, but whatever.

“Time to step up, Holiday,” I said, giving her a little pat. She whinnied at me and I told myself not to read into what she was trying to communicate to me.

Around the curve ahead a car rattled toward us—a very well used Model T, probably twenty years old at least, front hand crank bouncing between the tires. As the car came closer I could see the driver wore goggles and leather riding gloves that went up to her elbows, and some kind of Great War uniform for men.

She’s just like me—uh, just like Jacqueline.

I smiled and waved, trying to flag her down. She gave us a nod, and the Ford ground to a sudden halt, kicking up brown dirt clouds. Holiday gave a little jump but Pie wasn’t feeling well enough to protest.

She cut the engine and set the brake, then jumped down, lifting her goggles off.

“It ain’t often I see a vehicle on the road older than mine. You folks moving to town? I’m Miranda.” She stuck out her hand and Lucas shook it.

“Passing through on our way to Mobile,” he said, sounding casual in a way that Lucas never sounded in real life. I had to give him some credit.

“Oh, well that’s a ways away,” she said, noticing Pie’s ginger foot. “Horse come up lame?”

“Her shoe is giving her trouble,” I said. “Do you know a blacksmith around here, or a farrier?”

Miranda raised one eyebrow. I tried to look all regular but she burned into me, like she was examining me and my family.

“’Round these parts, them’s one and the same, ma’am.”

“Beg pardon, I’m Lucas Van Doren and this is my wife, Jacqueline, and our son, Nathaniel.”

“You have a lovely family, Mr. Van Doren. Can your horse walk at all?”

“Yes, but she’s slow going right now.”

“Well, if you like I can take your wife and child into town with me and let the smith know you’re out here and he can help your horse right here.”

“That sounds great,” said Lucas.

That doesn’t sound great, what are you talking about?

“Dear, may I have a quick word?” I asked, attempting to be nonchalant.

“All right,” he said slowly, like he was unsure. I took his hand, still holding Nate in my other arm.

When we were at the back of the wagon, I whispered to Lucas.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to split up.”

“She’s merely offering help, Jackie.”

“We don’t know her, we don’t know anyone around here. What if she’s working for Elizabeth?”

“You are truly paranoid,” said Lucas, and the baby began to fuss, probably from our arguing. “We are so far from home, how would anyone know us out here?”

It made sense when I listened to him, but I still wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything in all of this mess. But I couldn’t find a way to argue with him—he was right, I sounded paranoid.

“Okay. You’re just going to wait here for this woman’s friend to come help Pie, once we’ve gotten into town.”

“I’m not exactly defenseless,” he said, holding up his arms in a way that made him look, in fact, pretty defenseless.

“Okay, Captain America,” I said.

“Who?”

“Forget it,” I said, shaking my head. I handed him Nate to hold for a moment so I could put a few things in a bag. I didn’t see why we couldn’t all wait with the horses but then the baby started to squirm, so maybe this would be a fun distraction for him. I took Nate by his tiny hand and we climbed into Miranda’s car, both of us in the front seat, with my arms clamped around him. It’ll only be another forty years before seat belts, I thought, but at least Model Ts didn’t go very fast. Or uphill on a low gas tank.

“Okay, allons-y!” said Miranda as she lowered her goggles over her eyes before she cranked the engine. I noticed she was using the wrong grip on the hand crank and could really have hurt her thumb if the engine kicked back, but I didn’t say anything.

Please don’t be an axe murderer, I thought.

#

“Have you been married long?” she asked me.

I raised an eyebrow, wondering how to answer. For one, I had a hard time ever knowing how long it had been since event x or y, because I jumped around so much. Time is a blur, lady!

“I mean, I guess a few years at least,” Miranda mumbled, looking at Nathaniel.

“We married in ’27,” I said, thankful to remember at least the year of the wedding.

“He looks to be a kind man.”

“He is very kind.” And hot, so you better step off, okay?

“We don’t get travelers around these parts often,” she said, and I tried to cover up my flinch at the word traveler. But of course she didn’t mean time traveler, right?

I nodded, and tried to give off an air of nonchalance, or disinterest, or anything that would get her to stop talking. Nate babbled about all of the things we saw on the ride, which was so bumpy I had a hard time holding him on my lap.

“Sorry, these roads are a little rough today. We had a bad storm last week and now there are loads of sinkholes. Did you get rain where you were? Where are you from again? I don’t mean to pry.”

“Then don’t, please. The bumps are fine.”

“My apologies.”

Now I felt bad for getting snippy.

“I do really thank you for your help.”

She flashed a quick smile, and nodded as we drove past a farm on the right. The house looked abandoned but the fields were in use. Peas, maybe.

Miranda noticed my interest.

“Alabama isn’t without its problems, of course,” she said, picking up a little speed. Model Ts didn’t have accelerator pedals—instead the driver used a hand control to set the engine firing to change speed. I concentrated on not dropping the baby. Maybe she was reconsidering her offer to take us into town.

“Every town has its issues,” I said, thinking of Dr. Traver and the chaos in Marion, Kentucky, where I’d first landed as Jacqueline when she was still a girl.

She nodded again, not saying any more about it, only now I wanted to hear the story. I was not good at interacting with people today, apparently. Nate leaned his head on me, and I remembered that we’d interrupted his nap. So now I was uncommunicative and a terrible parent. Terrific.

We hit the outskirts of Huntsville, where Lucas and I had passed at least an hour ago, but which took half the time in the car. There wasn’t much to the city—broad, dusty streets, proper looking storefronts on one block, and then large swatches of unused land. It wouldn’t be long before the Great Depression would happen, and from the look of it, this city wouldn’t be ready for a downturn. But there was a streetcar just ahead of us packed with people. And then I noticed that all of them were white. Right.

Miranda skidded the car around a corner and rolled up to a towering brick warehouse. Three pickup trucks sat outside, one filled with hay, one with watermelons, and one empty.

“Here’s the foundry, where the smith works,” she said, getting cheery again.

“Lovely.”

The streetcar’s bell chimed loudly behind us as we walked into the large room, even bigger than Erica’s uncle’s carpet warehouse. Long black metal tools hung from the far wall, blocking some of the windows, and a furnace large enough to hold a grown man stood in the middle of the room as two men hammered away on an anvil, the smoldering metal glowing red-orange and resisting their blows even as it succumbed to whatever design they had for it. Nathaniel and I were immediately fascinated. Each clang as their hammers crashed down rang in my ears. Nate seemed particularly interested in their enormous silver gloves. He pointed four, five, six times.

The taller of the smiths, wearing a long black beard and a curled moustache stood up straight and set his tool aside, plucking off his gloved arm to reveal a chapped hand. At least six feet tall he still seemed swallowed up in his heavy leather apron. He said hello to Miranda and rolled down his shirt sleeve while he walked over to us.

“Well, I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance before, ma’am.”

“Walter, this is Jacqueline Von…”

“Van Doren. Pleased to meet you,” I said, smiling. I’d learned not to thrust out my hand for a shake, because that was too forward. Ridiculous rules in these times. “My husband and I have a lame horse south of town.”

“Oh, uh-huh,” he said, a little disinterested. Maybe I was taking the wrong approach. Why would he travel all the way down to help us? Would he want a lot of money?

Miranda jumped in to save our dying conversation.

“One of the nails in their mare’s shoe came partway out and started cutting the poor thing’s foot,” she said. I did a doubletake as she batted her eyelashes at him.

It worked.

“Well, I s’pose your husband doesn’t drive around with a spare set of nails and shoes now,” he said, and I stifled a giggle thinking about what Lucas would make of this Lincoln lookalike. “I can get down there in a couple of hours.”

Whoa. A couple of hours? Seriously? I knew I couldn’t explain the urgency to him or Miranda, but holy crap, we had the unraveling of the time continuum to deal with here.

“Well now, that’s all right, Wayne, and thank you for your effort in advance. We will just take a little tour of town and I’m sure her husband will be happy to have your assistance.”

“Indeed,” I said, figuring less is more. I tried to seem more feminine by dropping my left hip. And then I threw up in my mouth a little bit, and Nate looked at me as if to ask what was wrong with me.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, shuffling back to the anvil. The other smith never even looked at us during the whole conversation and I realized I’d become very uncomfortable.

“Have a nice tour, ladies. And Miranda tell your father I’ll see him at the lodge tonight.”

I shouldn’t have thought of that as ominous, but that’s how it felt. The faster we got out of Huntsville, the better.

#

Miranda and I sat on a bench at the end of a small park while Nate played with the end of a see saw, the lone piece of playground equipment, and the first play area I’d seen in these times. He really didn’t know what to make of it.

“I know some people in Mobile,” Miranda was saying. I kept trying to shake my sense of uneasiness. I didn’t even know how long we’d been here, but the sun had dropped low in the sky and everything had taken on an orange-pink tinge.

“Who do you know down there?” she asked me.

It was a fair question. And I didn’t have an answer, but under no circumstances should I have told her who we were looking for.

So of course that’s the name I blurted out.

“Eleanor Fitzgerald,” I said, immediately wanting to vacuum up my words. But hey, Mobile was a big city, and Fitzgerald was like, a common Southern name, right?

“All right. You need to tell me who you really are,” she said, leaning in to me and clamping down on my wrist. “If you love that child, you need to come clean right now. How do you know Eleanor Fitzgerald? Are you a Guardian?”

Two thoughts flashed through my brain—she knows about Travelers and Guardians. But more importantly, she is capable of hurting my kid. Shit.

Upon the Latest Shooting in America

People kill with guns they’ve stolen. People kill with guns they legally bought at a show with no background check. People kill with their parent’s legally purchased gun. People kill with guns after they went through a background check. People kill with guns given to them as presents. People kill with guns they’ve modified to shoot more and faster. People kill with guns using illegally large ammo clips. People kill with guns whether they are mentally ill or not, whether they have predetermined targets or not, whether they are familiar with the terrain or not, whether they have planned it for years or are shooting out of a temporary rage of emotion. People kill mothers with guns, they kill children in school, they kill elected officials, they kill people attending the movies, they kill people they believe have slighted them, they kill their classmates and their former workmates and they kill old women in their church basement. We pretend that policy can’t save us, but the truth is that policy has saved lives in other countries, and it would here, too.

There is no one safe from the muzzle of a gun in America, there is no good time to talk about the dead, because as soon as the NRA holds its mourning period for one shooting, another is just beginning. There are fifty-two weeks in a year on Earth, and we have just hosted our forty-fifth mass school shooting of 2015 (and 294th if you count all shootings involving four or more people). Please. If you want to see gun control, call your Congressperson today. And tomorrow. And Monday. Call them more than once. Call your Senators, both of them. Tell them: enough.

Here’s how to call your representative: http://www.house.gov/representatives/

Here’s how to call your senators: http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/

Remember, to own a dog you have to register the animal, telling the public health department where the dog resides, and ensuring you give your pet an annual rabies vaccination (there are no personal belief exemptions with this one). When we think about cars, which also account for more than 30,000 deaths a year in the US, we have collectively taken steps to reduce those deaths:

We regulate how cars are built, especially regarding safety design (seat belts, crash cages, placement of the gas tank, etc.)
We regulate how cars are driven (speed limits, road curve design, right of way laws, traffic lights, etc.)
We regulate how cars are maintained (inspection stations, emissions rules)
We regulate liability and insurance in case of an accident
We regulate who can drive cars (vision exams, age limits, license point systems, etc.)
We register every car to an owner and an address. The DMV databases are commonly used in police investigations and by crediting agencies.

And consider that deaths are something that sometimes happens with vehicle use. Killing is not the primary purpose of a car. Killing is the primary purpose of a gun. Do guns seem over-regulated with regard to other human activity that the government is compelled to oversee? Your answer should be “no.” Guns are not regulated as much as driving is, or educating our children is, or how our food is grown, or how our health care system is managed/delivered, or how our corporations’s finances are managed. All of these regulations are put in place in order to minimize harm to people and the world we live in, but for some reason the NRA would have us believe that regulating guns—and only guns—is a danger to America itself.

I dream of a day when we don’t buy that lie anymore. Please, give your elected officials a call and tell them to stand up to the NRA.

Spinning Plates—Raising a Family & Writing Books

Two toddlers, one with limbs like Plasticman, the other in the throes of potty training uncertainty, one partner with a busy academic career, the other attempting to navigate the policy morass that is post-Affordable Care Act implementation, a year into a house purchase that has seen no fewer than half a dozen small renovation/replacement projects, and it’s no wonder I am struggling to stay on top of my writing schedule. Even my weekday schedule itself is upside-down: now that both children are in preschool in the mornings, my late afternoon writing time has evaporated.

But here’s the thing about being a writer—I still find time to make words appear on the screen. I might not meet my goals in a given week, but writing is something of a flexible career. That story I wrote last year finally found a home over at Expanded Horizons. The back burner project left languishing in the recesses of my brain suddenly jumps forward and then I have an essay ready for a market. The followup to my memoir, a mess of incorrect chronology and meant-for-journal-only prose at long last feels emotionally available to me, so I can restructure it and add to the 44,000-word count. If I’m lucky my editor will tell me it’s not total trash when I eventually email it to her. And then I can get back into the sequel to my YA novel and finish the first draft (I’m at 52,000 words on that one so far).

If this looks like my work is all over the place, it is. I haven’t even mentioned the speculative piece I’m working on for an anthology submission, the pitch I’m trying to write to get a column in a market for the 2016 election, or the adult novel I’ve been working on for three years that needs a research grant so I can delve into an archive on the east coast. (Please, NEA, please.) I’ve missed a couple of deadlines in all of this chaos, but that’s okay—if I can’t make the submission date, I must not have been that interested.

Call it all Writing While Gemini.

——–

It’s two days later since I started this blog post, and here I am at a desk with a vanilla latte inches away from my thirsty self, and a computer under my fingerprints that is beaming its 99% battery charge at me with something like glee. My four-hour writing window is here, so toodaloo, friends. My process is messy, encumbered with all kinds of nonsense and scatterbrainedness, but it works for me … mostly. Would that we all find our productive processes wherever they may be.

The Pointlessness of Blogging

I started this blog, lovingly named Trans/Plant/Portation to refer to my gender identity, my then-imminent relocation to the other side of the continent, and the travelogue that I’d be writing about as we drove across country (and through part of Canada). I was volunteering to give up my day job, figuring that after fifteen pretty successful years in the workplace I’d land something new and interesting shortly after unpacking my last box in our new house. Instead I blew out my left ACL three weeks prior to our trip, watched the global credit economy implode, and didn’t find work for another two years.

Somehow, the blog that was supposed to be my fun-filled journal for friends turned into my stop gap, my virtual solace-finder—one of my only outlets for my extroverted personality. Susanne was worried for me, I could tell, but she had her own anxiety regarding acclimating to her new college environment. She had to start her faculty career and sort out the myriad characters at work. All of a sudden everyone we knew was Susanne’s coworker—fine, insofar as coworkers go, but not a group to whom one can express their concerns about their Very Recent Moving Experience.

Also, the new house reeked of cat urine, the walls bulged, and the upstairs tub occasionally leaked into the kitchen, via the spotted ceiling.

At some point, I took up writing again, after something like an 18-year absence. This move really worked out for me in that I now have two published books, three more in progress, and several other writing credits to my name. I’ve done more than twenty readings and met a lot of talented writers and activists, and I feel like I’m contributing something not entirely crappy to the nascent transgender literary scene. Go me. In the swell of resurgent writing I turned my attention to topics I didn’t see taken up elsewhere on the Internet—trans community, trans health, trans youth, trans & popular culture (sensing a theme here?), and trans literature. Oh, and hamburgers.

Then, boom. One, two extremely adorable children came into being, created so lovingly and at great labor of my partner, Susanne. Thank goodness I’d gotten those writing projects mostly finished before they came along, because now I have some momentum in between the diaper changes, spit-up cataclysms, sleepless nights, general chaos, and intense learning. All of my less-priority writing has been pushed to the back burner (which sits on our kitchen island right next to the binky on deck and a mostly used box of tissues).

Also in the meantime the Web gave rise to many new, intelligent voices who covered my beloved topics very well, and in my dearth of free time it seemed like I’d only be echoing their sentiments, and on a smaller platform to boot. So I pretty much stopped blogging. Nearly eight hundred posts live here at transplantportation.com, and sometimes people even stop by and read them. I’m proud of every word. I’m proud of the 150,000 words I contributed to The Pop Culture Blog Which Shall Not Be Named, even if the owner deleted them all in a fit of juvenile rage (maybe I’m still annoyed about that, I guess). And I’m not saying I won’t be blogging anymore, but I am overdue to reassess my writing projects.

I’m also going to be reorganizing this blog in the fall, making it easier to find the links to my work that’s available online, and separate out the “writing about writing” posts so those are easier to find for the six people in the country who care to read such things (seriously, there are six of them out there). I think I’ll get back to blogging as I revamp my weekly schedule. And I’m grateful for what this little virtual place has meant for me. But 2016 needs to be a year of focus for me, or I won’t get anything done.

And you know, in the writing, activist, and parenting worlds you’re only as useful as your last good deed.

Friday Fiction: Running from Zombies

I think this is a cute story (as zombie stories go), but it’s never going to sell to a market, so I’m publishing it as part of a brand-spankin’ new, occasional series of Friday fiction pieces. I hope you enjoy reading it.

RUNNING FROM ZOMBIES

Ezra walks like a drunk sailor, or how I think a drunk sailor would walk, because like I have never seen one but I’ve heard that sailors drink a lot and drinking makes people stagger around the way my little brother does, but whatever, Ezra stumbles around the house all the time. Mostly he clings on to furniture if it’s near enough to cling to, but some of the stuff that Mom Two buys on her antiques shopping sprees is really tippy, so then I have to rush up to Ez and make sure that he doesn’t bonk his head or break some fancy Louis XIV chair in the process. It gets tiring, but the extra allowance is worth it. Plus he’s cute, and so when we’re out somewhere like the arcade or the hipster park where everyone beautiful plays lawn Frisbee or whatever the hell it is, people come up to us all agog and shit because Ezra is teetering around, saying “arararar gagagaga Amuhwee” which is some apparently adorable pronunciation of my name, Emily.

Yes, our parents gave their two children E names. It is so awesome being us, let me just say. Actually my original name was not Emily. I had to convince my parents that I was really a girl. It wasn’t easy to get them to believe me, but they’re more or less okay with it now, and I have learned all kinds of ways to be a more patient person. The universe gave me my parents so I would learn how to get what I need, and then it gave me Ezra so I would continue to work out my core muscles. Thanks, universe, for looking out for me.

The phone rings. It’s my friend Iggy who is also trans and a year younger than me. He left his extremely crappy high school because of constant bullying. Iggy is funny as hell lately because he finally started hormones after years on the blockers and now he texts me every time a new chin hair appears. Seriously. I have like 126 texts from him, all about freaking chin hair. Guys are so weird.

“What’s up, Ig?”

“I was going to hang at Gus’s house, you wanna come?”

Gus is one of those kind of asshole, kind of cool dudes you can’t ever pin down. But his parents have a pool and it is close to 100 degrees outside, and he’s willing to hang out with us, which is more than I can say for 98 percent of my high school classmates.

“Well, but I have Ez today. Mom One is in surgery.”

“And where’s the other one?”

“At some fancy furniture store in Oregon, I can’t remember where.”

Iggy sighs into the phone, which I hate because it sounds gross and wet.

“I mean, can you keep him from drowning?” he asks me.

“Do I have the word stupid tattooed on my forehead?”

“I don’t know, because we’re not on video, dude. See you in twenty,” he says. But Iggy doesn’t comprehend punctuality.

I pick up Ezra on my way to my room. Swimsuit, board shorts, protective sun shirt, sunscreen, and then I rush down to the nursery to get Ez’s swim diaper and bright green floppy hat, because nothing says baby like old lady hats and nothing says fun like trying to keep a hat on a baby’s head for more than twelve seconds.

“Gah,” says Ezra, who smiles at the sight of his green and blue shark swimsuit. Ez only has four or five words, but he uses them for 800 different things. Context is key.

He coos at me as I strap him into his little seat that sits behind the rear tire of my bike. If I didn’t have his little carrier we would never go anywhere, and since he’s got his favorite blanket and a bunch of old raisins in there, he loves going on all of our adventures.

Gus’s house is ridiculous, with these huge iron gates that block the roadway, flanked by lions, and you can only get through once someone inside buzzes you in. I could totally climb the gate or the fence, but I did slip once doing it and pierced my right ass cheek.

“Let me in, jackass,” I say into the monitor.

“Screw you, buttwipe,” he replies, and the gates open.

By the time I reach the front door Gus is standing on the top step, a towel thrown over one shoulder like it just happened to land there. He is so clueless. Off in the distance I see Iggy scraping his way through the gates before they close. It’s not until evening that I realize they didn’t shut all the way.

Iggy barrels up to us.

“You daredevil you,” I say.

“I live for the thrill,” he says.

Gus shakes his blond head, his hair is shaved close enough that I can see each individual hair at its sprout point. The haircut is new.

“What’s with the Hitler Youth look, bro,” I ask, and Iggy cracks up.

“I don’t even know why I invite you two clowns over,” says Gus. He actually looks a little defeated, and I feel badly for him. He didn’t ask to be wealthy and beautiful.

“Street cred,” I say, and I pick up Ezra under his armpits, making a beeline for the pool, which is a magnificent creation. It is lined in pretty blue and green glass beads, a mosaic of waves and small fishes, and every time I come over I find a new part of the picture I’ve never noticed before. Gus’s parents clearly spend a lot of time out here because the pool chairs are made of thick canvas and easy to nap in; the large umbrellas keep the sun off in a wide circle and there’s a wet bar out here with its own soda machine and we can splurt out a pop anytime we want one. Being rich is gross and amazing all at the same time.

It’s not long before Gus and Iggy find Ez and me in the shallow end, with Ezra kicking and laughing. Pools are his favorite places.

Iggy calls out a cannonball and a giant wave of water mushrooms over us, splattering the pool deck. Gus shakes his head.

“Be right back, gotta take a piss.”

“What a gentleman,” I say.

Iggy does his best to float quietly on the surface of the water, but as he comes near us he takes aim at me with by splashing at my face. Ez, ever the expert modeler, starts kicking hard and then Iggy is on the defensive, covering his face with his arms.

“Stop, kid, stop it!”

“Don’t talk to him like that,” I say, and at the same time Ezra squeals from all of the fun he’s having.

It’s the scream from inside the house that makes us all jump.

“What the hell,” says Iggy, and he launches himself onto the deck from the side of the pool. But he doesn’t make it into the house before he backs up toward us again. And then he can only talk in a weird low voice that not even his man-hormones have given him before now.

“Em, get out of the pool,” he says.

“What? Why? Where’s Gus?” I don’t even know why the hell I’m asking these questions, but they seem to be all I can manage.

“I’m telling you, get OUT of the POOL,” he growls, and I listen because some part of my lizard brain understands that he’s genuinely afraid to speak any louder. I shush Ezra as I climb back out of the shallow end. Once I’m in the shadow of a big bright umbrella I can see into the house.

Four people are eating Gus.

It takes one second for me to understand the catastrophe in Gus’s great room—a woman looks like she’s face-planted in his chest and when she pulls up her head I see that part of his intestines are hanging out of her mouth, while a grown man is gnawing on one of his feet, another man is chewing what is left of his face, and what looks like a large child or teenager is ripping Gus’s right arm apart with his teeth. It takes half of the next second for me to scream because I can’t unsee any of this, and one more millisecond for me to stifle the sound coming out of my mouth because I know that beyond the complete wrongness of what I’m seeing, I’m in danger, too, and so is Iggy, but oh my god so is Ezra.

Iggy slaps his hand over my mouth to cover up the split second of my howl but it’s too late and not enough, and the crazy killer people all look straight at us, then come barreling toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that line the side of the house between the great room and the pool area.

Holy shit, is all I can think before I pivot and run to the fence beyond the pool. Ez is crying again, only now it sounds far away even though I know he’s still in my arms. His wiggling and arching makes him hard to hold.

“Please Ez, settle down,” I say even though this is ridiculous. My own heart is pounding out of my chest. The people bang against the windows like animals, and I turn and see Iggy yanking an umbrella out of its stand.

He runs up to us, flips the umbrella, and yanks the pole off the fabric.

“What are you doing?”

He says nothing but his eyes look wild.

One large window pane cracks, and then two more whacks later it shatters, looking a little like the mosaic at the bottom of the pool.

“We have to get out of here,” I say, “not joust them!”

Iggy points to the brick wall that stands a few meters past the deck, just beyond the expensive landscaping. I gulp down and balance Ez on my shoulder as I bolt for the wall. It must be seven feet high, so why we’re running to a dead end, I’m not sure. No sooner do I question Iggy’s intelligence than he plants the pole into the grass and flies to the top of the wall like he’s some Olympian. Holding on to the top of the wall, he hoists himself up and then straddles it, leaning over with his arms out for the baby.

Without considering the safety of my brother I hand him up.

The people clambering after us aren’t super-fast because their legs don’t move the right way. But they’re not exactly taking all day to get to us, either.

“I don’t know how to get up there,” I tell Iggy, who has wedged a screaming Ezra between his legs.

“Grab the pole, Em!”

I find the umbrella pole and turn around to see that they’re figuring out how to cross the pool area just fine. I give the end to Iggy and he orders me to climb up.

I don’t have this kind of upper body strength anymore, or at least, not in usual circumstances. But in this life/death moment, my shoulders find a reserve of strength and I make it halfway up the wall where Iggy grabs me and pulls me up. Then the pole clatters to the ground, and the murderers try to claw their way through the brick. We look at them.

Only now do I see how moldy their clothes are, covered in blood and threadbare in places. Their skin is mottled, one woman’s arms are atrophied and I flash back to when I’d gotten a cast removed from my leg after a roller skating accident, when at the time, I could barely move it. She seems pretty capable though, smashing herself into the wall with control, if not athleticism. I get a glimpse of one man’s eyes, and I know instantly several things at once—that his irises are gone, along with most of his eyeballs, that thus he shouldn’t be able to see anything, and that he’s not just a psychopath on a killing spree.

“Iggy, I think they’re dead.”

“Emily, they’re zombies. What the fuck? They’re actual zombies.”

“Don’t swear in front of the baby.” Ezra is grabbing at my shirt, looking for a shred of comfort.

For a moment we’re quiet, stuck. I can’t figure out what to do next. Then one of the people below breaks their arm off banging into the wall, and completely ignores that it’s now lying in the grass.

I sigh.

“Okay, they’re zombies.”

Iggy peers over the wall.

“We’re screwed,” he says.

Instead of asking why—because really, aren’t zombies enough to answer that question—I look at the house and see that it is now overrun with at least two dozen of them. Poor Gus, I think. There must be nothing left of him.

“Look!” Iggy points beyond the wall we’re on. I look over the other side at the fake rolling hills of the golf course. I only see one group of people playing, and they look like they’re actually uh, playing golf. Iggy and I scan don’t see any zombies. But they’re piling up on the wall in Gus’s backyard, and we start to feel the vibrations of their pounding through the stone.

“We have to get out of here,” I say.

“Agreed.”

Ezra makes a sign for food. I hold him close. All of this scrambling around and we’re only in our bathing suits. I’ve got scrapes on my hands and knees and they hurt.

Iggy jumps up in an entirely imprudent fashion and I realize that he really has taken to this whole androgen thing. At least for once he’s using his muscles and not bragging about them. I scramble after him and we jog down the top of the wall. It’s a few inches wider than a balance beam, thank goodness, because I am not known as Tipsy in phys ed for nothing. Iggy points to a large pond at what I guess is the eighteenth hole of the golf course, because there’s a grandstand behind it, as if anyone would ever come here to watch golfers. I mean, maybe people come here and watch golfers, and maybe other people enjoy watching paint dry.

Iggy leaps off of the wall and careens through the air, flailing his arms and legs in I don’t know, some kind of attempt to fly even though we all know flying isn’t a thing people do very well. Next I’m blowing on Ezra’s face like we do in baby swim class, and he looks at me like he knows not just to hold his breath, but like he knows everything that is going on. The undead killers, the death of the friend we pretend to hate, our scrambling around and the holy shitness of the whole afternoon that has literally, and I mean literally, gone to hell.

I push off the wall as hard as I can, and now that we’re hurtling through the air in what I can say is a completely ungraceful way, and my right shin has already begun reliving the last time it broke in two places in a painful V fracture, I want to take back the decision but honestly, I’d rather start the whole day over. I don’t know why there are zombies, or why jumping off a wall into green algae seems like my best option, or how long we can keep running with no shoes on and a small toddler to haul around, but as I break the surface of the water I feel little Ezra’s fingers clasp my shirt, and I shut my eyes to stop the tears.

Then we’re back above water and I’m crying as Ez giggles in my ear. I seem to be in one piece, and Iggy has found a golf cart for us. We rush into it, and I strap Ez to the seat, grateful for a moment to catch my breath. I look back at the brick wall and see only ivy and mortar and stone and for too short a time I can pretend that we’ve just been having some elaborate dangerous fantasy.

“Hey!” yells a groundskeeper who has managed to be completely unaware that the world is in jeopardy.

“Get in,” says Iggy, circling back for him.

He tries to take the wheel from Iggy, who tells him to sit down in the last of the four vinyl seats.

“You can’t just steal a cart, son,” says the guy, and it’s then that we hear the moaning and a section of the wall crumbles. Sixty people fall over themselves and stagger onto the rough of the golf course.

“Oh yes I can,” says Iggy, and he floors it so now we’re going at a not-fast-enough clip of ten miles an hour or so.

Groundskeeper looks back, trying to understand the mound of moaning people. He looks tidy for someone who works in dirt all day, with his light brown button down shirt tucked in to his belted pants, and his fitted baseball cap resting perfectly on his head. He’s got a farmer tan, his forearms a few shades darker than the caramel tone on the rest of him. Small wireframe glasses look weightless on the bridge of his nose and his tan work boots are worn but clean. It doesn’t look like a lot has ever interrupted his world before, but I’m not a good judge of people.

“What the hell?”

“We can explain later,” I say, as we cruise along the paved paths.

It seems easier to make introductions.

“I’m Emily, and this is my friend Iggy, and this is my little brother, Ezra.”

He looks only behind us, at the zombies who are now ruining his careful gardening.

“I’m Greg,” he says, in a daze. He pushes his glasses up his nose.

“What’s wrong with them?” he asks, not taking his eyes off of the dead people.

“They’re zombies,” says Iggy, skeetering around a turn behind the country club pool house.

“What?”

“Zommies,” says Ezra.

“Where can we go that’s safe around here?” asks Iggy.

“Safe?” asks Greg.

“You know, that’s strong and where there aren’t many people,” I add, trying to be helpful. Greg is maybe not worth dragging along with us, but I can’t see leaving him, not after what happened to Gus.

“You need to snap out of it, man.”

“Okay,” he says, straightening up and blinking.

“Turn right, go down that hill. Holy shit, are those people eating her?”

“Don’t look at the zombies, Greg.” I say. “Just tell us where to go.”

“Okay,” he says, and he tells Iggy to turn left, go down this path, and then we’re at some strange building half-buried in the slant of a hill.

“Here.”

“What is this,” asks Iggy, jumping out of the cart.

“It’s a fallout shelter,” says Greg.

“It’s locked.” Iggy is jiggling the handle but the door is stuck tight.

“I’m one of two people on the whole course with a key.”

“Who’s the other person?” I ask.

“Uh, she was being eaten,” says Greg. He’s coming around and I feel sorry about that.

He pulls a huge key ring out from a retractable cord attached to his belt, and starts sorting through them. I hope he knows which key it is before mummyland catches up with us.

I hold Ezra tight. Hang in there, baby. He grumbles in my arms and rubs his eyes. I realize we smell really bad from the pond dunk.

The door scrapes open and I am almost grateful how musty it is inside. Not a pleasant smell, but better than us. I look around for zombies and don’t see any, and finally remember my phone at Gus’s house.

Greg clamps down the door, sliding a heavy metal bar across the doorframe.

“I wish I could call my moms,” I say.

“There’s no signal in here anyway,” says Greg. Ezra is crying, loud. Two lights cover this main room, which is not much more than a couple of cots and shelves that line the length of the space, most of which is army green. I see a toilet in the corner. I guess privacy isn’t much of a concern during a nuclear holocaust.

“Do you have a phone,” I ask Greg.

“It’s a fallout shelter, girl, we’re inside four-foot thick concrete walls.”

I roll my eyes at him because he just wrote me off, but I stand my ground.

“Isn’t it worth trying?”

Greg sighs and pulls a phone out of his pocket. I notice he has the screen lock on. Guess you just can’t trust the country club set.

“Nope, no signal,” he says, staring at it for a few seconds before he shuts off the phone.

“You can put the baby down now,” says Iggy.

“I can’t put him down, look at him. Is there any food in here? I think he’s hungry.”

“Next room,” says Greg, who shuffles past the interior door.

“This is a hell of a luxe bomb shelter,” says Iggy, looking around the quarters. He runs a hand over the comforter on the cot that sticks out of the wall and flops down on it.

“Pretty sure these sheets are nicer than mine at home.”

“Dude, foster care isn’t known for the amenities.”

“Shit, ain’t that the truth.”

“Shi,” says Ezra.

“I told you, no cursing!”

Iggy sighs. “Sorry.”

“What are we going to do? We’re talking about sheets and it’s like the end of the world out there. I want to know where my moms are.”

“I don’t know what to do, Emily.”

“I do,” says Greg, walking into our room with a handful of stuff. He’s got a radio, bottled water, some green boxes, a pile of blue shirts, and a teddy bear of all things. Ezra right away makes a pinching motion for the bear, his cries shifting into snuffles.

“This fallout shelter thing is weird,” I say. I find a kid’s shirt that mostly fits Ezra, and another for myself.

“It’s cool as hell,” says Iggy, now bouncing on the cot.

Greg flashes Iggy a little grin that looks like pity, but Iggy is too excited about the box of rations to notice. I’m worried, meanwhile.

“Our phones didn’t work, so why would the radio?”

“Totally different frequency system,” says Greg. There’s more to this guy than impeccable dressing standards. Who is he?

He clicks it on. Like everything else in here, it’s army green and surplus issue. I used to love hanging out in army-navy surplus stores before I transitioned, and I still think they’re cool, but I haven’t gone since I started hormones. A bunch of static and then through the crackling:

… counties are under a mandatory curfew from the governor’s office—Yolo, Placer, and Sacramento. Please shelter in place and wait for further word from the California State Government. Repeat, the following counties are under a mandatory curfew…

“Well, that’s us,” says Iggy, sighing again.

“Yes, but it isn’t everyone,” I say. It’s not Mom Two, Meredith, because she went to Bend for the day. But Mom One is probably at the hospital. I’m still worried but I decide I can handle it, mostly.

I look over and Ez is eating a chocolate bar.

“They seriously have candy in here?”

“Oh sure,” says Greg, who has a little smile at the corners of his mouth, having just fed a toddler chocolate without—ahem—consulting his caregiver. “Back in the day everyone had a fallout shelter. The President told us to build them, and we did, and we put all of the stuff in them that we thought we’d need.”

“That’s uh, some old chocolate.”

“The course manager liked to keep things fresh in here. She was one of those doomsday preppers.”

“Dang, and she got eaten in the first hour? That sucks,” says Iggy.

“How long were people supposed to live in these?” I ask Greg. “They seem a little…overstocked?”

“Well, this one is for a lot of people, so it’s got a lot of supplies. But two weeks or so.”

Iggy stands up, stretches, points at Ezra’s chocolate covered face and hands. For his part Ezra is thrilled with his situation.

“At least he doesn’t understand what’s going on,” says Iggy.

“He does and he doesn’t,” says Greg, who reaches down to tousle Ez’s short halo of brown hair. Ezra giggles in response.

“He’s really cute,” says Greg.

A loud bang ends our moment of chocolate happiness. Greg rushes to the door, moving faster than I’d think someone his age could manage.

He puts his ear on the metal door.

“You can’t hear anything through there,” I say.

“Shh.”

More banging, insistent. Ezra starts crying again, and crawls over to me, leaving a trail of chocolate on the concrete floor. I pick him up and squeeze him.

Greg makes a move to release the slide bolt from the door. I yell at him.

“Stop! Don’t do that!”

“I think it’s a person,” he says.

“I don’t care if it’s a person! Those things are out there!”

Greg stands aside, looks at me shocked while the pounding continues.

“Don’t you have a heart?”

“We have hearts, and those zombies want to eat them,” yells Iggy.

“Guys, we have to see…I think it’s a person. Like an actual person!”

Without any further discussion he opens the door.

An older white man rushes into the room.

“Close it, close it, close it!” he says, and Greg complies. I immediately decide I don’t like him, nor his yellow polo shirt and plaid golfing pants. His cleats click on the floor. Plus with all of his apparent money nobody has told him that wraparound hairdos are a fashion no-no.

Greg slams the door and throws the metal bolt behind the clasps.

“Oh my God,” he says, panting. “What are those things?” He turns to face the door as if it’s not made of lead-lined, nuclear-repelling atomic whatsafiggies. Like I’m pretty sure Clark fucking Kent can’t see through this door, jackass.

“They’re zombies, duh,” says Iggy, and I have never felt such fondness for him as I do right now.

Captain Wraparound ignores Iggy, staring only at the shelter door and Greg, who has slowly backed away from him. I see that Greg has started shaking a little.

I pull Ezra to my hip, smelling a tiny waft of chocolate along with pond scum. I realize I’m scanning the room for any kind of weapon, because the hairs on the back of my neck tingle.

Mr. Golf Pants keeps panting and muttering. Greg points in the smallest way at the man’s midsection, and I have to sidestep a few inches to get a better angle, but then I see that there’s a tear in his polo shirt and a spreading line of maroon.

“They got you?” asks Greg about as casually as one can inquire during the zombie apocalypse.

Iggy who has been fuming about the man’s incredulousness snaps to attention, and I try to point with my eyes at a plunger that sits mostly behind the toilet in the corner. He gives me a subtle nod, and while Greg is conversing with Bleeding Plaid Man, Iggy gets the plunger in his hand and tucks it behind his shoulder blades.

“What?” asks the golfer, who even though he may not be ready to accept his injury, has put one of his hands over the spot.

“Your shirt…” says Greg, as he backs up two steps.

It isn’t far enough.

In a blink Mr. Ugly Pants turns freakazoid and screams, lunging at Greg, trying to rip out his throat with his teeth. But Greg fixes his palms on the man’s shoulders and holds him off, looking like Ripley in Alien 3, complete with the streaming saliva.

“Now, Iggy!” I shout.

“Right!”

Iggy plants the plunger on Dead Golfer’s growling face, shoving him into the door. Or the lock bar, more precisely, because his cleats have slipped out from under him and his head has made a beeline for the bar.

A loud crack bounces around the room and I spend a second shocked that skulls aren’t tougher than a metal rod, but this is a ridiculous thought and I need to get back to what I should do next, so I look away from the goo sloshing down to the floor. Ezra of course is screaming and I try to cover his eyes with one hand as I pivot back to Iggy. Newbie zombie, between losing his brains and you know, just now becoming one of the undead, can’t seem to figure out why there’s a big suction cup on his face.

Iggy asks Greg if he’s been wounded, and Greg shakes his head, moving to release the lock.

“Don’t touch the goo,” I say, completely unhelpfully.

“Right.”

We are not stopping to think about what else is right outside, if the golf cart is there, if we’re opening Pandora’s stupid box, but none of us needs to be convinced that getting out is better than being stuck in a fallout shelter with grumbling hungry zombie, especially if he has the gall to wear plaid pants in the afterlife.

Greg grapples with the bar and then Plaid McPlaiderson scrambles back to his feet and hurls himself at Greg again. So I trip him. This time the golfer runs into the wall, sliding down in a groan, leaving a narrow strip of blood and snot behind on the concrete. Back outside we hear moaning and screaming from all around us, but for the moment we don’t see anyone. Greg checks the cart, which looks just as we left it a couple of hours ago or however long it’s been.

“Seems okay,” he says, motioning for us to jump in.

I’m worried about Ezra and then I remember we’re back outside.

“Give me your phone, Greg,” I say, holding out my hand.

He unlocks it again and it gets warm as it searches for a signal. And then:

EMERGENCY ALERT: Gangs of criminals at large in Yuba, Sutter, Placer, Yolo, Sacramento, and El Dorado Counties. Curfew in effect. More information to come.

A bright red button underneath reads:

REPORT SIGHTING

I push the button and Greg speeds away. Iggy points off in the distance.

“Two o’clock!”

We look back toward the driving range on the side of the golf course and see three older men in golf gear limping toward us.

I look at my phone. It’s ringing 911. Ringing. Still ringing.

“I think they’re a little busy,” says Iggy, scanning for more zombies.

I try to call Mom One. There’s a beep and a voice message: “System busy.”

Mom Two. Same result. I really hope they’re okay. I try not to think of every sweet memory we’ve ever had together in the last seventeen years.

“So, any ideas on where to go?” I ask.

Greg shakes his head.

“The fallout shelter was my best idea.”

“It was a fine place until you let that asshole inside,” says Iggy.

“You know, I’m doing my best, kid,” says Greg.

“Hey,” says Iggy, “we should go to the reservoir!”

“Are you kidding?” I ask. “That place is huge. It’s got to be swarming with zombies.”

“It’s totally closed off, chained up, nobody is allowed in there except the crew and they only go in there like…like not often.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Three or four families ago, the dad worked for the water department.”

“Wow. Way to go, foster system for once. But how do we get in?”

Iggy smiles and gets this champion look in his eyes.

“Titanium golf clubs are probably strong enough to break the chain at the gate.”

“Of course,” I say. “Titanium golf clubs.”

I look at the back of the cart.

“And there they are.”

A zombie lurches at us from the sidewalk, and Greg swerves hard to avoid him.

“Dude, drive faster,” Iggy says.

“This is as fast as it goes.”

Iggy stares behind us, which makes me turn to look.

There are at least fifty zombies running after us. Arms outstretched, full Thriller mode, groaning and making their way up the street.

The reservoir is past the next hill.

“So, even if it’s empty now, it will be full of zombies as we lead them there,” I say.

“Point taken,” says Iggy. “But at least we can drown them this way.”

“Sure, and never drink the water again,” says Greg. “I’ve got a better idea.”

“Oh, better than the country club fallout shelter?” says Iggy.

Greg grunts in response.

Our golf cart hums along. Now that we’re heading downhill, we pick up a little speed. The zombies, not so much. Ezra points at them. I cover his eyes with my hand but he’s strong and he pushes me away easily. I wonder what kind of emotional damage this is doing to him.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“The hills,” says Greg, and then he pauses. “But we need something other than this to get there.”

Iggy taps Greg on the shoulder.

“Pull over here, next to that Suburban.”

“What?”

“Just do it already! Jesus!”

Greg growls, but pulls over. I wonder if he’s thinking he hates getting bossed around by two trans kids and their youngling, but whatever.

Iggy leaps out of the cart, runs to the driver side door and checks to see if it’s locked. It opens.

“Dang, and I was gonna break the window and everything.” He genuinely looks disappointed.

Iggy waves at us to get in. I have a pang of guilt because there’s no car seat, but I figure the rules are a teensy bit suspended today. He clicks the unlock for all the doors and we hop inside, Greg running around to the front passenger seat, me and Ezra climbing in the back. By the time I strap us in Iggy has pulled out the starter wires from the console and I hear the engine turn over.

“Gone in ten seconds,” he triumphs.

“You’re a criminal,” says Greg, buckling in.

“Please. I’m not a criminal.”

He speeds off toward the mountains to our east.

“It’s the system that’s criminal!”

“Where are we going,” asks Iggy, already pulling away from the curb.

“The fracking wells,” Greg answers. “You know where I mean?”

“Down on Butte? Sure, I know where you mean. There’s a fence and monitors and stuff, though.”

“I don’t think those will stop you,” says Greg and I think they may be bonding? Ugh, boys.

Up ahead of us are seven or eight zombies, these in nice-ish suits.

Iggy plows right through and a couple of them fly up in the air, landing behind us in dull splats, a greenish, reddish muck spewing out of them all across the roadway. The rest we mow right over.

I ask Greg for his phone again, which he still hasn’t reached for the whole afternoon. He chucks it back to me. I dial Mom One and it actually rings.

“Mom, hi!”

“Emily? Emily, are you okay?”

“Mom!” Tears flood my eyes and instantly my nose is stuffed with snot. Terrrific.

“We’re okay, I’ve got Ezra, he’s okay. We’re uh, trying to lose the trail of these things. Where are you?”

“I’m on the roof of the hospital along with the most of the staff. We’re okay. We managed to get some of the patients up here with us. But … we couldn’t get them all.”

She’s talking through tears. I can’t remember the last time Mom One cried. Mom Two is all mush and sobs over long distance commercials. But Mom One is a surgical nurse and a rod of steel.

“I haven’t gotten through to Mom Two yet.”

“I talked to her, my phone keeps cutting out. She’s still in Oregon. This crap isn’t happening where she is.”

Well thank Xena for small favors.

“Do you … have a plan?”

“We’re waiting for the National Guard to come to the helicopter pad. They’re going to take us to 63rd Regional …” The phone cuts out.

“Mom? Mom? Mom!”

“She said she was going to be airlifted to 63rd-something.”

“63rd Regional Support Command,” says Greg. “It’s near San Jose.”

“You’re a font of information. How do you know that?”

Greg makes a flat smile.

“I was Army.”

Iggy weaves around one random zombie who has managed to lose both of his legs below the knees, so he is pulling himself along by his beat up fingers. On the side of the road we see a small girl, crying. Without thinking I look her over for blood, guts, or signs of impending zombification.

“Pull over,” I tell Iggy.

“No.”

“Pull over!”

He mutters but stops the car. I push past Ezra and burst out the passenger side door, and run over to her. The hot asphalt hurts my feet.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She nods.

“Did anyone cut or bite you?”

She shakes her head. Her black hair is a mess, much of it in her face. I push it aside and see she’s sweaty but unhurt.

“Come with us, we’ll keep you safe.”

That’s all it takes and she practically leaps into the car. I run around to my side and get in, closing the door right before another zombie throws himself at the glass. He’s too dumb to realize the structure of human mouths don’t lend themselves to biting through windows.

“Okay, you can drive now,” I say.

Iggy speeds off, and now everything on the other side of the window is filtered through a streak of zombie gore.

Greg’s phone buzzes.

EMERGENCY ALERT: The public is under mandatory evacuation orders to leave the city limits of Sacramento before 6:00PM PST.

“Huh,” I say, as I tell the others about the message. The little girl looks terrified.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Rosa,” she says.

“What a nice name, I’m Emily!”

She gives me a smile, then it fades.

Iggy passes Sunshine at the edge of the city. Then we’re peeling onto a service road that leads to the dusty highway into the hills.

“Where are your parents?”

“No say. Yo estaba en el apartamento de mi abuelita cuando llegaron las personas enojadas.”

The angry people, she calls them. She buries her head in my arm, so I pat her back and feel useless. I can’t imagine seeing my grandma get killed by zombies.

“What is our ultimate plan here,” asks Greg as we speed away. It’s weird there aren’t more cars out here. Maybe everyone is evacuating in a different direction than us.

“Well, I want to get my GED, and then apply for community college, and get some vocational training or maybe an apprenticeship to a trade,” says Iggy.

“Really, man?”

It doesn’t escape me that Greg hasn’t noticed all day that either of us is trans. I guess all we needed to pass was a small-scale zombie epidemic.

We drive by a small airport. I see a lot of blood, a few dead bodies, and hear some groaning, but no zombies in sight. Then Iggy makes another turn, and we come to the fence that blocks off the natural gas reserves.

“Okay, here we are,” he says like he’s a tour announcer and these are the Hollywood Hills.

I look around. No zombies. No people. No bird noises. No grass. No water. This is a decidedly unattractive stretch of earth. Stuff seems mostly dead, and not from what’s been going on today. Like, it’s been dead for a while here.

“This place is a shithole.”

“Iggy, language.”

I open the door for Rosa and lift Ezra out of the car. After some hesitation, Greg and Iggy exit, too, and we wind up standing behind the idling SUV, looking back at the city.

Iggy’s plan is to set the fracking well on fire and cut us off from the zombie brigade. If there were one.

“Well, I’m not sure we need to blow anything up,” says Greg, looking around.

“I guess we can get to Mount Aukum and wait until the government does whatever it is it’s going to do to end this,” I say. Like hey, it seems that once again we’re totally inconsequential, but then again, maybe there’s something to be said for not having to figure out all of the world’s problems oneself.

Greg’s phone buzzes in my hand. It’s Mom Two.

“Mom gave me this number, is this Emily? Emily?”

“Hi, Mom! You’re okay?”

“Yes, but you need to get out of the city, now!”

“We did. We’re maybe twenty miles away?”

“Go farther if you can. You need to hurry.”

I put my hand over the speaker.

“Mom Two says we need to get further away.”

Greg nods.

“They’re going to bomb the city,” says Greg.

Wait, what?

“You’re okay, Mom?”

“Yes, honey, I’m fine. Please, keep going, get as far as you can.”

Silence. I yell into the phone for Mom Two but again the call has dropped. I try the star-69 and get a strange beeping tone in response.

“How do you know?” Iggy asks him, but Ig is already running to the car. Ezra protests about going for another car ride, but once again, I’m ignoring him. Good thing we have such a great relationship, because I’m calling in all my favors today.

Greg runs to the driver’s side and motions for Iggy to get in on the passenger side. There’s no time to complain, and once our asses hit the seats Greg peels out toward the mountain. I kind of wish I’d taken the time to learn to drive, but cars are planet killers. Instead I think about the city: the carefully lined up palm trees, the grand Spanish architecture, the colorful markets spilling over with fresh fruit. My home. I stare out the bloody window at the dusty mountainside and Rosa takes my hand. I give her a little smile. I’m not sure which of us is comforting the other.

“What we really need to do is get to the other side of the peak so we’re not in the valley anymore,” Greg says as we bump along.

“Okay, so you’re not just a groundskeeper former Army dude,” I say.

“There is nothing undignified about being a groundskeeper, girl, but I was Army, yes. Did three tours in Iraq. Worked in counterterrorism.”

The phone buzzes again.

EMERGENCY ALERT: Fifteen minutes until mandatory evacuation order is in effect. The public must leave the city limits of Sacramento before 6:00PM PST.

“They’re going to kill anyone still in the city. How can they do that?” I can’t believe our government would just drop a bomb on us.

“They must think there’s no other way,” says Greg. “Half a million people in Sacramento, seven million in the Bay Area. That’s what they’re trying to protect.”

“Fuck everything,” Up in front, Iggy is crying.

It’s too much. We’re freaking kids. Is my mom at the air base? I bang on the phone but it doesn’t connect.

Three minutes before six we are up at the top of the ridge, and Greg pulls over, the car still idling.

We get out and stare through the haze at the city. Who thought this was the best solution? Did everybody get out?

Up in the sky are five shiny large planes in a big V. Their wingspans are enormous.

“I can’t believe our own government would do this!” My whole body is shaking.

“I can,” says Iggy. We stand in a line on the roadway’s edge, me and Iggy still in bare feet.

“B-52s,” says Greg. “Here we go.”

The bombs fall silently in little lines, like they’re chasing each other. I cover up Ezra’s eyes and he cries at me and tries to yank my hand away so I hold his head in the middle of my chest and face away from the city.

We only hear a dull roar as the bombs hit the ground. The people, the houses, the my house, whole neighborhoods. Citrus Heights. Arden-Arcade. Curtis Park. Colonial Heights. Folsom. They’re gone, it’s all gone, we’re gone.

Rosa tugs on my board shorts. I pick her up, so now I’m holding two small kids as if I am a protective adult.

I am an adult.

The rumbling comes to an end and I look over at Iggy and Greg.

“I fucking hated that city,” says Iggy. “But it was home, too.”

Greg is crying, the first actual emotion I’ve seen from him all afternoon.

Fires sprout in columns across the valley and the skyline is so different I can’t pick out specific blocks I should know. I walk slowly back to the car with the small ones. I don’t know what happens tomorrow.

“We have to keep driving,” I say.

 

THE END

The Seemingly Impossible Problem of the Small Screaming Child

The story about the diner owner screaming at a toddler who’d been whining and crying while waiting for her pancakes is all over my newsfeed. I’m a little astonished this is difficult to assess. It’s a classic situation and there is actually a load of literature on how different responses net different outcomes with regard to small kids who are crying/having a tantrum/whining/etc.

1. It is well catalogued that a stranger screaming at a screaming or crying toddler may quiet the child down momentarily, but it is the worst response to take. Why? Because:

a. The child may have a good reason for crying (in this case, hunger), and the screaming at the kid doesn’t change their biological need to cry in response to their need.

b. The child may have already exhausted other tactics of communication, may come from an abusive household, or may have difficulty communicating another way (e.g., the kid may be autistic), and the stranger’s screams may only serve to trigger or frighten the kid, or worse, add to the child’s trauma. Rule of thumb: If you’re the bigger person, you have more power, so use it kindly.

c. Ironically, you’re teaching the child that screaming is a terrific response to frustration. So the kid shouldn’t scream but the grownup can?

d. It’s also been shown that being nice can defuse these situations even better than yelling. “You must be really hungry, huh? Would you like these crackers, honey? How growly is your belly right now?”

2. All human behavior is temporal. It changes over time, is dependent on things like mood, learning, wakefulness, context, and so on. By all accounts this child did not enter the diner screaming, she worked up to it. If she exhibited calmer behavior earlier, then she was capable of de-escalating back down to it. Unfortunately for her none of the adults in the room helped to calm her or chose to meet her needs. So the pancake takes forty minutes? Give her a small bowl of applesauce, or some freaking crayons. But identifying this–or ANY–child only via her screaming is to dehumanize her, and I will not concede this point. The kids who take the most crap for their behavior are the ones who aren’t as traditionally “cute” looking, or whose parents are marked by some presumed defect. We do not single out screaming kids just for their screaming. Go back and read the way the diner owner talked about the whole family, and see the code: this is how she justifies screaming violently at a human being. And she’s totally lost the perspective that she was once a child, and that there was probably a moment in her life when an adult was unkind to her, and that she felt something negative from that experience. She has just pushed that onto the next generation. And this child will carry that moment forward in time with her now. What could have been a temporary moment of frustration is now an echo that will last for a while.

3. Just as small kids aren’t always screaming, parents aren’t always horrible or always terrific. Let’s not label them as such. I think I’m a pretty good dad, but I’ve had my poor moments, of course. People base their approval on this woman’s yelling because they have an issue with who the adults were as parents. That is very presumptive, and frankly, not rational thinking. If somebody had an issue with the parents, they should direct their communication to the parents. In all likelihood the owner ignored what was going on while it was escalating and began quickly getting resentful, so by the time she acted, she was also not responding rationally or carefully. Maybe she’s frustrated at having such a busy diner, or too small a space for her to work. Maybe lots of things, but what’s clear is that these weren’t regular customers that she knew, so she felt free to label them and scream at their child. Sometimes I bring my kids to breakfast restaurants and they’re not always perfectly behaved, but if the owner came and screamed at them they’d have two crying boys on their hands and one very upset parent (two if Susanne were with us). But come on, there is no defense to yelling at a small kid when who you’re really angry with is the adult at the table.

4. Small kids are among us, they’re a part of our culture. They’re also very vulnerable. They don’t always know why the grownups around them are tired, or frustrated, or mad, or sad, but they will often ask and they are great at giving comfort. These are the people who will support us all when we are in our senior years and need all kinds of care. I still find it amazing how fast human beings develop from only having one cry to having several that mean different things, to finding words, to forming sentences, to using language to think about the world around us. If children are merely a temporary inconvenience to you, I think your world view is lacking. To me, children are a joy and a fascination, and I get a lot out of interacting with them. When you have an opportunity to be kind to a kid, please try and take it and pass on the good will that has been shown to you.

Also, 40 minutes for pancakes is absurd.

Dear Ms. Burkett: It’s Not About Brains

I finally read the opinion piece in last Sunday’s NY Times (I’m not going to link it, but it’s easy enough to find) by Elinor Burkett, ostensibly about Caitlyn Jenner’s trans coming out in something of a media onslaught, but which quickly descends into a diatribe against all trans women (and some trans men, but more on that later).

Look, I agree with you about brains. I don’t think men’s and women’s brains are much different. But along that thought:

1. Just because a specific trans person says they believe in any particular thing, doesn’t mean all trans people agree. Remember your oft-referred to women’s studies training—no community is a monolith.

2. Just because a trans person says something with which you disagree doesn’t mean you ought to go whole hog in throwing the entire community under the bus as trampling on your womanhood and need to be kept on the margins of culture because you personally are so offended. To reverse your example, my cis gender partner Susanne has identified as female her entire life and she disagrees that there are male and female brains, but SHE DIDN’T JUST CALL CAITLYN JENNER A MALE PRIVILEGED FAKE WOMAN IN THE NEW YORK FREAKING TIMES. Because all women have different opinions from each other. Isn’t that nice?

Now then, let’s move to your understanding of experience, since it seems to be a bridge too far for you to honor someone else’s life if they didn’t walk exactly in your steps. There is zero accounting for race or class difference in your brand of feminism as articulated in your opinion piece. You think you get to exclude trans women from the extraordinarily broad range of femininity and womanhood because for some portion of their life they lived as men or boys? Well I have a news flash: EVERY WOMAN’S EXPERIENCE IS DIFFERENT. (As I said on Facebook, if you want to see the differences in your experience as a woman from someone else’s, just go swimming in a pool in Texas.) Your experience is different from Black women, from women who come from a socioeconomic class not immediately preoccupied with career advancement but with keeping food in their cupboards, from first-generation immigrant women, from disabled women, and hell, from women with endometriosis, since you brought up period flow. (You don’t scare me talking about period flow, even if you used in such an incredibly disingenuous way.)

The wonderful, powerful thing about womanhood is that it is entirely capable of including all of these disparate experiences. It grows and flexes and rises up to meet the challenges of every modern age that has asked it to change. When capitalism asked women to enter the workforce, they did, and although there were men who mocked the riveter Rosies, they were still women. When lesbians came out of the shadows of culture and said they were their own community, there were people who railed against them, but they insisted they were still women, EVEN AS they themselves eschewed the 1950s brand of femininity that they said had previously kept them in the closet. When women in the 1980s said they wanted to break the glass ceiling and sit in the executive board rooms across America, they were labeled Feminazis, but feminists stood up and said they’re still women.

So now it’s 2015, and feminism has pushed from all angles at the notion of womanhood and here you are, drawing some ridiculous line in the sand? Now? In 2015? Ms. Burkett, that argument is over. It’s gone. You’re reaching back to the same threads of reductive hate that you yourself have fought against. It doesn’t matter that your veiled invective is aimed at a different sub-population of women, you’re still fighting against yourself as you make arbitrary and intellectually impoverished swipes at trans women. Feminism has moved on from your little corner of thought, and it did so a long time ago.

I agree talking about essential male and female characteristics is unhelpful. I wish Caitlyn hadn’t said she thought her brain was different, but it’s not a point to use against her entire identity. Many trans people are looking for validation, especially as they begin transition, as an anchor. How does a person REALLY know they’re trans? For me, I wasn’t sure for something like the first five years. It is so out of left field that I thought I was losing my mind—how could I possibly be a man? After all, I’d hit all of the so-called milestones you included in your opinion piece, the inconvenient menarche, the chronically underpaid paychecks, the fear of assault, plus I was tall and large, which oh my gosh, didn’t jive very well with some people’s notions of womanhood! Can you imagine! So when it started becoming a thought in my mind, and then a fixation, and then an obsession, that I might live as a man, that I might actually IDENTIFY as a man, I wanted some kind of evidence. There is none. At the very least, our culture hasn’t been working on helping individuals figure out their gender identity and presentation, or more precisely, it wasn’t a cultural project back in my day (I grew up in the 70s and 80s). So please forgive my fellow trans travelers if we sometimes latch onto an idea or concept that doesn’t jive with your version of feminism. It’s not a justification to say that we’re not real people in these lives we’ve worked hard to live.

One more thing: every time you point to a biological marker, like uteruses or penises or menstrual blood or breasts, you’re doing the same thing you’re critiquing PLUS you’re making trans women feel bad ALL OVER AGAIN about the limitations of their bodies. That’s not only unfeminist, that’s cruel. And also, you’re missing out. Trans women, no matter how long they lived before they transitioned, they didn’t experience male privilege in the way you think they did. Just as I didn’t revel in the joys of womanhood—each marker of my gender only served to make me confused, aggravated, or depressed. And through this experience, many trans women I know developed a terrific insight into gender that today’s feminism finds vital. Quite of few trans women friends of mine also have the sharpest wit, great senses of humor that are amazing to witness as, say, you’re sitting around complaining about your limited paychecks with the girls. Feminism, womanhood, identity, and the world are so much larger than your vision. They’re more generous, grand, and inclusive. They’re pushing progress in ways I never thought I would see when I was a fresh out of the box lesbian in 1990. I’m excited to see this new world unfold and I wish you would join us in it.

But madam, you have a LOT of reading and thinking to do first.

Everett

P.S.: If someone is working on reproductive rights, do you really care what their gender identity is, or whether they have a uterus in their body or not? I mean, ALEC is out there doing everything it can to stop abortion and choice in the US, how about we work with the folks who are showing up? For Pete’s sake.

This Quote from Michelle Duggar Says It All

“She [Michelle Duggar] said the fondling devastated her and her husband and made them question whether they had failed as parents.” —Michelle’s comment to Megyn Kelly of FoxNews, on the revelation that her son Josh molested four of her daughters and his babysitter

Yes, Michelle, you failed as parents. Not when Josh initially molested his sisters and his babysitter, but when you learned about it and didn’t move to prevent more abuse.

Yes, Michelle, you failed as parents when you let the abuse continue for sixteen months without getting Josh treatment and without getting your daughters specialized counseling–in fact, ANY counseling–to deal with the trauma they’d experienced.

Yes, Michelle, you failed as parents when you sent Josh to work for a home renovator and then called that treatment.

Yes, Michelle, you failed as parents when you focused only on Josh’s so-called redemption while utterly dismissing what happened to your daughters.

But Michelle, you failed as PEOPLE when knowing all of this you paraded your family on national television proclaiming your vision of family as perfect and superior to so many other families who didn’t erase their own children’s trauma. You failed as PEOPLE when knowing all of this you took to the recording studio to make robocalls in a critical civil rights vote, demonizing trans women for the VERY SAME ACTS your son performed that you so callously disregarded, even though he’s done them against YOUR OTHER CHILDREN, and even though there is no evidence that trans women are ipso facto pedophiles, nor even pedophiles AS OFTEN AS STRAIGHT MEN are. You failed as PEOPLE when you covered up your family history in order to make millions off of your ruse of a family unit. And you failed as PEOPLE OF FAITH when you warped what Christianity means for millions of people with your simplistic, reductive, nonsensical value system that is really just a cover for rape culture, misogyny, patriarchal order, and emotional abuse.

I don’t believe in Hell. And the good old Roman Catholic Church even disavowed purgatory a decade ago. Good thing for you, because I’m sure rotting in your graves will be a lot kinder eternity for you than where you’d otherwise someday go. You and Jim Bob are the worst kind of parents and people I can even comprehend.

EDITED TO ADD: I was texting with a friend about this and he said, “I imagine [the survivors] will need counseling and emotional support.” And I said, hell yes:

First, they were abused, period. Second by their brother. Third, more than once. Fourth, the parents after learning about the abuse did nothing to help them. Fifth, they had to go on national television for eight years and act like everything was hunky dory. Sixth, they had to nod their heads and take it emotionally whenever mom or dad or big brother went on public tv to talk about how great they were as christians and how they needed to stop the child molesting gay and trans people.

Honestly, Just Write and Stop Worrying

I am no stranger to anxiety. Anxiety may even be something of a close friend, but it’s one of those friends who talks on and on about themselves during your coffee date together and maybe you don’t even realize it until you’ve hugged and you’re walking home and then finally you think, “I didn’t even say that my dog died/I’m breaking up with my partner/I got a new job/something momentous and totally worth mentioning.” I’ll put it this way: I hate my way through my relationship with anxiety, one miserable unwanted thought at a time.

That said, I am a product of no fewer than half a dozen terrific therapists and my neuroses are down to a dull, annoying grumble in the back of my head. I recognize frenemy Anxiety as soon as it pops itself into my consciousness, and sometimes I can stamp it out even when it’s bumbling about in my semi-conscious, because things like my body will send up an alert, and then that decade of therapy kicks in, and well, if I have to Goldberg Machine my way to functionality, so be it. It’s working for me. I’m even past the point where I tell myself to fake it till I make it.

Couple this tendency toward self-junk and my time spent writing, and I have all kinds of layers of negative messages to unpack. And unpack them I have, from doubting I had even a sliver of talent to keeping my writing locked up offline, to berating myself over every rejection slip, and along the way I admitted I was somehow making progress. If nothing else, being full of self-flagellation means one has a natural path toward humility. I don’t have to be the trans dude version of Octavia Butler (as lovely as that sounds) to write something robust and worth reading. In fact, if I shift my goals from being the next so-and-so to penning the stories I think are important to tell I pivot away from anxiety and toward improving my craft.

It’s a hard thing for many of us to just write and stop worrying, but I’ll say again: it is possible. It is within reach of all of us, especially once we give up the idea of perfection. Perfection is anti-human, anyway, which makes it anti-authorship, anti-functionality, and ultimately, anti-writing.

So, the writing thing. For those of us who see the brass ring as publication, I am here to throw a little water on your fire. There is so much more to it than that. I was watching a rant unfold online last night on the part of a few fellow authors whose book sales are nowhere near where they thought they’d be two months past release. I can understand the frustration, but sales aren’t going to be off the charts right after launch unless the author is J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, or James Patterson, because they have lots of presales to bookstores, etc., that drive their initial numbers. For authors still on planet Earth, we have to earn every single sale, which means we need to be our own best marketers. Marketing doesn’t mean annoying the crap out of everyone on Twitter, but it does include examining your genre to see where other books are getting noticed, who is writing the most thoughtful reviews of similar books, what authors say about specific book promotion sites, and how to get yourself well situated as a quality writer in the author community.

When I read the rant I thought about how it set up an unrealistic vision for authors, so I wrote a response that included:

If publishing were perfect, authors would lie on a fainting couch and the words to their latest novels would magically appear in the air, crystalline and jewel-toned, launching themselves onto a ream of the finest linen paper, and small elves would appear with nice-smelling woodland creatures who would carry off the fresh pages and bind them into bestsellers. Nobody would have to do any promotion because knowledge of the new opus would immediately fill the minds of every potential reader, a process called “autoloading.” People would trample over each other (but nicely) to procure the book, would take to the information superhighway to exclaim their literary engorgement with the author’s ideas, and the author’s phone would vibrate off of the table with calls from The New York Times and Missouri Review and McSweeney’s.

Writing is hard work. Getting through the editing process is hard work. Publishing is hard work. As is marketing and promotion, contract negotiation, dealing with rejection slips, bad reviews, unexciting sales, and watching other authors’ success. We do it because we love writing. If you’re doing it for the money or the glory or the pats on the back, or the Amazon ranking, you are bound to be disappointed, at least for the first fifteen years of your writing career. Those things are slow to grow. But if you focus on the writing?

It won’t let you down. The only trick is……

YOU HAVE TO KEEP WRITING.

Ridiculous Ways Viewers Think Mad Men Will End

Mad Men has been a strange, amusing series, replete with historic moments like JFK’s assassination and the moon landing, full of smoking and daytime drinking, and loads of human foibles, chief among them our ability to compartmentalize (and I’m not just talking about Dick Whitman). Beyond the character arcs and season-long plot points are some meta-analyses of the show that have kept me watching, fascinated. I’ve posted before about how I see Dick/Don as a kind of trans narrative but there are other interesting interpretations of the show, like the limited ranges of success, nay, life, for women in the characters of Betty, Joan, and Peggy (and how they differ from what we know will be the options for Sally), the clash of generations over cultural meaning and production (“What is the Carousel?”), and ultimately, where is meaning itself? That’s the question Dick/Don has been asking at least since he accidentally blew up his commanding officer in Korea, and perhaps since his youth at the brothel after his mother died. While Dick/Don in last night’s penultimate episode seemed to be finally coming to terms with an answer for himself, we the audience are in full-plummet mode as the series finale looms.

I suppose it’s not surprising with so much still swirling around in the MM universe that some viewers have come up with riotously preposterous endings for our friends on Madison Avenue. Including:

Don Draper becomes D.B. Cooper—It’s a theory, just a theory, and when clever viewers watch layered narratives like this one, some of them are bound to come up with inventive stories about jumping [sic] off points from the finale. See what I did there? Funny, right? Anyway, this theory is that Dick Whitman, trading as Don Draper, takes up another false identity and becomes the dapper airplane hijacker from 1971 November who made off with $200,000 and was never found. (Of course, most of the money also never turned up, but The Theory doesn’t concern itself with what became of D.B. Cooper, just who he was.) There are lots of clues, because there are always lots of clues—well, just enough, anyway—to support conspiracy theories like these. Don looks like D.B. in his aviation sunglasses. He’s hit the road and is heading west. He was framed in a shot reminiscent of North by Northwest, and hey, the plane D.B. hijacked was a Northwest Airlines jet. Don has also looked up into the sky at a plane. Seriously. It’s not exactly iron-clad evidence (even if it is a little fun).

Don Draper has been dead all this time—First of all, this has been done before, at least twice (on St. Elsewhere and Lost), and both times the critics and audience cried out in actual pain at the absolute asinine wrap-up to complex shows about human relationships. I don’t think Matthew Weiner is that lazy or uninventive. This is the team that came up with the indoor lawnmower accident, after all.

But more to the point, if Dick Whitman dies in Korea, he can’t know about JKF’s death, or Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1968 speech, or any of the exacting time-period details so carefully laid out for us in seven seasons. His vision would be anachronistic, like in Jacob’s Ladder, or timeless. So no, he hasn’t been corporeally dead for twenty-plus years, even if he’s been psychically dead for a while.

Megan Draper gets killed by the Manson family—Weiner himself has come out publicly and said no, this doesn’t happen. (Much as some of us would like for her to be Sharon Tate, ahem.) It’s too tentative to say look, she wore a shirt that we’ve seen Sharon wear. Megan is going to wear the fashions of Hollywood, so honestly, this theory is not only ridiculous but uninteresting and weak.

Don dies—Well, we have watched him falling through the air before each and every episode. I give this theory a bit of support, if only because Dick/Don has been looking for freedom his whole life, and there’s a twisted way in which his newfound rootlessness is the impetus for letting everything go. But 90 percent of me disagrees because a person indebted to ending it all doesn’t check in with his daughter. He’s still searching in the second-to-last episode, which signals to me that he’ll still be around at the series’s end. Besides, he always lands on his feet at the end of the intro.

Six more days and we’ll have our finale. I can only hope it’s better than the sharp cut to black at the end of The Sopranos. Although I’m pretty sure the writers will leave us with just as many loose ends and characters we are unable to continue witnessing.