As He Walked, the Land Died

As he walked, the land died.

The land died as he walked.

City officials had to use a bullhorn to talk to him. Glasses with polarized lenses, too. One scientist referenced eclipses and the atomic tests, the need to protect the eyes. But instead of going blind or suffering the slow decay of radiation sickness, those who beheld him openly and too close simply died.

The mayor and the chief of police were in a panic, eager to keep the man from walking through the city. The talks with him went on for days. City officials spoke through the bullhorn, and used a directional microphone to hear his quiet answer. Why are you here? No reason. What do you want? Nothing really. What can we give you to go away? Your one true desire.

“That means he has a desire,” my half-sister Bernie said.

“No, it means he has a need,” I replied.

The two of us stood at the far end of the field where the man stood. Police had erected a fence around him, the safe distance marked by the bodies of those who’d strayed too near, either from curiosity, like our cousin Gill, or because they’d been ordered to, like Deputy Bridger. The bodies smelled, but they didn’t really rot. I guess the bacteria died, too. I know the flies certainly did, drawn by the smell, collecting near the bodies like little piles of black jewels. The bodies just lay there, slowly shrinking in their clothes, mummifying under the autumn sun.

Nearly a week had passed since the man arrived. Photos had been posted in the paper, the photographer using a telephoto lens to get a close up. The photographer went blind, then entered the hospital. The photo in the paper looked crisp upon first glance, but then distorted and blurred until all that was visible were the man’s eyes, staring out as if he could actually see you. People cancelled their newspaper subscriptions. TV stations refused to run any footage. Videos on social media flourished until sickness did, too, and the city put a moratorium on any recordings, jailing those who refused to stop livestreaming.

The only way to know what was going on now was to be there in person, so Bernie and I came to the field of now-dead grass to watch for a few hours every day after work. I don’t know what we expected to see. The man never moved. A few people who thought the man a prophet used a t-shirt cannon to shoot him foil-wrapped hot dogs and bottles of Coke. Though the man drank and ate what was sent, he didn’t seem to need to. He never used the bathroom. He never even sat down.

Originally, we’d felt just as scared as the rest of the city. The man’s approach was unprecedented. No other cities in the country had ever reported anything similar, and now they weren’t reporting what was happening to us, either, as if there was a media blackout. There was nothing on the local nightly news. We’d expected the FBI or some other federal government agency to come in, but it was as if they had a blind spot. And so we came to see him as a local disaster: a house burning down that threatened the immediate neighborhood instead of a forest fire preparing to consume the entire city.

“He’s gonna move tonight,” I said.

“No,” Bernie said. “Not tonight. He’s too relaxed.”

On the third day, Bernie and I’d started placing bets on what the man would do. We weren’t the only ones, either. Not making bets, I mean, but watching him. All around the perimeter people were scattered in small groups. Some had picnics, brought their entire families. Maybe it was fatalism, but what else are you supposed to do with death standing on your doorstep?

Now, six days into it, we had a bottle of cheap scotch Bernie’d taken from her dad’s house. She brought shot glasses, too, so we wouldn’t be tempted to drink from the bottle and get so fucked up we wouldn’t make work tomorrow. Maybe she’d be okay missing a barista shift, but Walmart would can me. I was already on thin ice. Seemed strange worrying about this while eyeing a man who could kill us just by strolling a few dozen steps towards us, but as our mom used to say, you just have to keep living until you die.

We sipped our scotch. It tasted like burnt plastic, but felt good once it was down.

“This can’t go on forever, can it?” I asked.

“Can’t it?” Bernie replied.

And maybe it could’ve gone on forever, just like that, the man becoming a fixture on the edge of the city, a tourist attraction even, like Niagara Falls or the volcanos in Hawai’i. A danger you got used to. That hurts no one except the foolish and the stupid. But the Mayor and other city officials couldn’t let that happen. Scientists couldn’t guarantee the safety of any level of exposure, theorizing that everyone in the city could be at risk no matter their distance, and we wouldn’t know for sure until years, or even decades, had passed, the man’s poison building up in us like silt choking a river.

It didn’t go on forever. Not because the man decided to walk again. Not because the city somehow gave him what he wanted. But because a man with a gun decided he had the answer to our problem and it was his right to use it.

Why hadn’t a gun been used before? The police had snipers on top of nearby buildings within an hour of the man’s arrival. They could have shot him at any time. But because no one understood really what was happening or why, they decided not to shoot the man unless he advanced on the city. This is what my dad told me—having worked for years as a cop, then private security. Now he was a guy living off disability and retirement. He was bitter and mean and abusive, but he was trying to be better. He said the city wouldn’t take the risk of shooting him, because what if that just made everything worse? I told him that’s never seemed to stop cops before and, after a sharp intake of breath and some uncomfortable silence, he said that yeah, I was probably right. He’s learning, though I still refuse to meet with him in person.

Of course, the man with a gun didn’t know about this theory or care about it. He was just doing what was right.

There was a pop-pop-pop, the man’s head knocking back twice in quick succession, a half-dozen or so other bullets kicking up the dirt around him, and the man in the center of the circle of death died. The man who killed the land when he walked, who killed everything living, who breathed (we assumed) and ate and drank (we saw) was now dead.

There was a hush as everyone watching realized what had happened, our brains catching up with our eyes. I expected the cops to start shooting, too. I started to my feet, ready to run, but Bernie grabbed my arm and pulled me back to the ground.

“Don’t make yourself a target,” she hissed.

She poured another shot for each of us and we downed them. The expected return fire never came. Instead, that’s when people started walking.

The deputy mayor moved first. He’d turned at the gunshots, the security around him closing in like a curtain, but now he walked towards the dead man at the center of it all, his pace deliberate. When he passed the edge of the circle of death, the deputy mayor died, falling first to his knees, then flopping onto his chest, momentum keeping him going for that one extra step.

At first, his security yelled out for him to stop, but their voices went quiet quickly. Even before the deputy mayor died, they’d started walking, too.

“What are they doing?” Bernie whispered. Her face was flush with fear or alcohol. The bottle, full when we’d arrived, was already half empty.

I didn’t answer her, because I didn’t know. I was distracted by the movement occurring all around us. A family of four on a picnic blanket put their paper plates on the ground and headed for the circle. Two women who were using the crisis as an excuse to practice their guitars stood up and strolled toward the dead man. The shooter began screaming at people to stop. This wasn’t supposed to happen! He fired his gun at those closest to the circle, but they ignored him. A stray warning shot took a woman in the leg, knocking her to the ground, but she crawled forward, leaving a smear of blood on the trampled grass. Everyone who reached the circle of dead grass died themselves. The shooter had stopped screaming, stopped shooting. He, too, was walking towards the man he’d killed, gun hanging limp from his hand until it caught something on the ground and was pulled free. The police snipers fell from their rooftop nests, lying unconscious where they landed or dragging themselves along in spite of their broken limbs.

Now it was those who weren’t moving that I noticed. Scattered all along the perimeter were a few like Bernie and me, empty cans of beer littering the grass around them, wine bottle at their side. One older man with a fifth of whiskey in his hand ran, just bolted away, dropping the bottle as he stumbled and weaved.

“We should go,” I told Bernie, but she wasn’t there.

She was about twenty feet in front of me walking towards her death, more slowly than the rest, with hesitant steps.

“Bernie!” I shouted.

She paused for a moment, barely noticeable, but didn’t turn her head. I got up to run after her and the world swung around me wildly. As I ran to Bernie, every step threatened bringing me down to earth, my stomach feeling at one moment empty, the next full, and the next as though it wanted to jump out of my mouth. I grabbed onto Bernie to hold her back, but lost my balance and toppled us both to the ground, my hand bending back painfully as I broke my fall.

“Can’t you feel it?” Bernie asked.

I could. I could feel it. A yearning like a hunger pulling me toward the dead man and the aura of death he brought with him. It wasn’t a desire for suicide or a wish for death. I didn’t want to die. Bernie didn’t either, I was sure. But I could feel a promise there out ahead of us, in that circle, a promise for something better, something certain, something sure and pure. I wanted it. I wanted to go there.

Yet the scotch had hit fast. Bernie struggled to keep moving, but our bodies were tangled up and I wasn’t going anywhere. I looked at the circle, blinking away blurriness, and felt sick at all the dead bodies, more every minute. There was something off about them. I had to work out what I was seeing again and again, my thoughts faltering just before I understood, until I realized they were getting closer. Every person walking in got a little bit closer to the dead man. The circle was shrinking. Eventually it would be gone, and we’d be safe.

But the people didn’t stop coming. There hadn’t been that many of us looking on, and the official contingent was permanent, but small. I tore my eyes away from the man, the circle, the people dying, the place that something in my chest wanted me to crawl to, and witnessed dozens, then hundreds of people approaching. Old people from the nearby nursing home, along with staff in scrubs. Business casuals from the bank and few office buildings. An entire shift from the canning plant, still wearing aprons, rubber gloves, rubber boots. The entire population of the trailer park.

“We have to go,” I repeated to Bernie. “We have to go.”

I managed to sit up and get my arms around her, and scoot backwards until I could reach the bottle of scotch. It had toppled to its side. Most of the whiskey had poured out into the grass, but there was enough left, I hoped. I swigged a bit. The taste of it made me gag and my stomach roiled and twisted. Then I put the bottle to Bernie’s lips until she finished off the rest. I fell back and she rolled beside me, both of us facing up at the sky now bruising into evening. The stars appeared, wobbled in the darkness. All around us there was a silent shuffle. I was horrified, or I wanted to be, but all the scotch in my body tried to come back up, burning my throat, and I was convinced if I threw it all up, my brain would clear enough that I would follow everyone else to the circle, and I did not want to go, even as a tiny fragment of me screamed that I was missing out on paradise, a Heaven I refused to believe in.

How far did the dead man’s influence go? Would it draw in the entire city? What about our mom, our dads, the friends we had, the friends we’d given up on, our exes, our teachers, our bosses?

“Fuck our bosses,” I murmured, mouth thick with gummy saliva. The darkness in the sky was dragging at my brain, pulling me into something like sleep. Bernie coughed weakly, then snored.

I grabbed Bernie’s hand and intertwined our fingers, trying to lock us together like otters sleeping on the open ocean. I thought of how the dead man’s plans—whatever they were—had failed, the government had failed to protect us, the man with the gun had failed to save us. But maybe when we woke up this would all be over. We could pick up the pieces then, Bernie and me. Maybe our parents would still be alive. And all of us, together, could build a home again.