Chainsaw 

Mike said they should hike up to the forest and find out who had the chainsaw. But why not just stay away? Skeeter wasn’t ashamed to admit that he was afraid. If you weren’t afraid, you were just stupid. 

The damn crows were everywhere. Skeeter had seen what they did to roadkill. Like vultures, cawing and flying off if you got too close. Creepy, creepy birds, and now they seemed to be following him and Mike. Creepy. 

They’d hiked for days and found no signs of human life until the chainsaw. Before that, Skeeter had wondered if everyone else had been wiped out, pulverized by the bomb thing. Who launched it? Mike kept saying, too many possibilities. If Mike didn’t know, who did? 

The trees whispered as Skeeter and Mike crunched through the underbrush. Plants and animals seemed less affected by the bomb-y gas, for all the good that did the remaining humans, who had no idea how to live off the land. What did an auto mechanic and a philosophy professor know about which mushrooms were poisonous? Nothing, as it turned out. 

Skeeter was tired in mind and body, but he couldn’t admit to having trouble keeping up with the old professor, who chugged along like a human steam engine. Mike had survived after ducking into the basement of the building where he’d taught hundreds of students about Plato and Aristotle. Those great philosophers never dreamed humanity would be dumb enough to make a bomb to destroy themselves, he told Skeeter. They had no idea just how incredibly stupid we actually are. The other college people sheltering with him had died, and Mike had lived, due, he said, to his years of smoking a pipe in a windowless office the size of a walk-in closet. If his lungs could survive that, they could certainly take a little gas. 

Mike was full of bullshit like most eggheads, but why had Skeeter lived? He’d run out of cigarettes two days previously, savoring that last drag as long as he could smell even the faintest bit on the wind. His hiding place had been a cave that went deep, deeper than any hole in the earth should go. Some weird animal feeling (or maybe God) had compelled him to keep walking farther down, even as that sound shook the whole damned earth, a noise more than a sound, a feeling that the universe had moved over, shifted in some way, put humans back in their own damned place. 

When he crawled out, newborn, just like a little wet calf, he couldn’t find Lorraine, who wouldn’t follow him. She wouldn’t go in a cave even if her life did depend on it. He hated himself for not staying with her, but the instinct made him go down and down. He hadn’t thought he was leaving her to die; he hadn’t thought. The animal or maybe God part of his mind took over and told him exactly what to do, flee to the depths of the earth. He had to obey. 

Crawling out of the cave after the booming stopped, he found a new world. Animals made noises in the woods, creatures that, like him, survived the devastation by finding places to hide. But still, the forest was too quiet, and someone had changed the sky—now it was gray with weird purple ash clouds. Lorraine’s pack was on the ground, but she was gone. Skeeter couldn’t think too hard about that as he rummaged inside for her trail mix and dehydrated soups. He didn’t know if he’d find fresh water, but he stowed the food in his pack anyway, leaving behind her wallet and photos of her kids, no doubt gone too. That animal (God?) part told him they weren’t on earth anymore. But where? Heaven? Reborn? Nobody knew, not even his new friend, Mr. Smarty Pants. He hoped the kids ended up wherever Lorraine was, so they could be together. 

He’d shouldered his pack again and walked until he met Mike, glassy-eyed and frowning, coming the other way. Mike had convinced him to turn around and follow. Skeeter couldn’t help but think of Jesus then, making him the Fisher of Men, and he almost told Mike to get stuffed. But he was afraid to be alone, so he fell into step, crunching along behind Mike’s wingtips. 

They’d walked around the national park, following Mike’s instincts. He led them to a spring with fresh water and they camped at that site for a night, using sleeping bags that Mike found somewhere else. Mike never said what he was looking for, but Skeeter trusted him and went where he did. They found a ranger’s cabin with nothing in it, and a house on a hill with way too much in it, too much horror for them to even think about raiding it for food or other useful items. Was it some kind of leftover? Why couldn’t he and Mike remember what made them scream and run? Don’t think. Don’t think. After the inside-out house, Skeeter might have given up, but Mike soldiered on, still searching. 

The next night, they stayed in a tourist cabin stocked with a few items the missing campers had apparently brought for their stay. Strangely, there was no car parked out front. That was a mystery that Skeeter didn’t understand. The cars. Had there been more survivors than he’d thought, and they’d taken all the vehicles and left? Did the bomb gas make cars disappear, like Lorraine? Or had some people known about the bomb and fled before it came? The first thing he’d naturally thought to do when coming out of the cave was return to his pickup truck where he’d parked it by the ranger station, but it was gone. Mike had told Skeeter he didn’t own a car (egghead) and when he’d come out of the building, his bike had been stolen, despite being locked to the rack. Strange times, he’d said, the lines on his forehead actually doubling in number. 

Skeeter thought the bomb-y bomb was from space, not revenge from some other country, but aliens. Gas everyone and come down and take what and who you want, including his truck, Mike’s bicycle, and Lorraine maybe. He floated the theory to Mike, expecting derision. Instead, Mike looked at Skeeter with surprise and something like admiration, especially when Skeeter explained about the missing cars, something Mike hadn’t thought of. Mike didn’t go so far as to agree with Skeeter, but he admitted that the theory made a certain amount of sense. As much as anything else in this purple-sky, cawing crow nightmare. 

The chainsaw noise sounded louder, and Skeeter’s hands became slick with sweat. What was somebody doing with a chainsaw at the end of the world? That was what it felt like to Skeeter, who was no philosopher. Mike, who was, hadn’t shared his thoughts, preferring to talk about how they should head for the town on the other side of the mountain rather than the city of Ganger Ridge, where he’d come from. When Skeeter asked why he didn’t bring more supplies when he fled the university, he just said conditions weren’t favorable. Skeeter had no idea what that meant. Was the town a gaping horror like that one house? He couldn’t ask. Why else would Mike have left for the seclusion of the national park? Or had a leader emerged and hoarded the town’s supplies? Skeeter knew from zombie movies that the end of the world wasn’t pretty. All for one and one for all turned into everyone for themselves as soon as food got scarce. 

Skeeter had been headed for Ganger Ridge when he’d found Mike. How many survivors remained in the Piggly Wiggly/Dairy Queen town? Just how many people did Earth now contain? Mike wouldn’t speculate any more than he would share what happened in town. Skeeter didn’t want to know anyhow. Everything was too much. 

They rounded a corner and immediately saw an abandoned El Dorado sitting in the middle of the road. A car! And an El Dorado at that. Skeeter loved them, beautiful, slick, with engines like strong ponies. Plus, he could hotwire one in an instant, which he proceeded to do, Mike serving as lookout, sitting on the front like a ridiculously large hood ornament. When the engine started, Mike got into the passenger side silently and turned the radio tuner up and down the dial. Static. 

Skeeter felt better in the car, climbing up the hill steadily, not thinking about where the El Dorado’s owner was or what they’d find at the top of the mountain, just navigating the curves of the road, each turn following the next, seeming to go on forever. But around one bend, the road ended at a recently constructed wooden gate, the logs still raw and dripping sap like blood. Goddammit. Zombie film bullshit. 

Mike opened the door and got out. Skeeter didn’t want to know what was going on behind that gate. He considered driving away and leaving Mike, but he’d checked the gas tank and he’d never make it any farther than the bottom of the mountain and then what? Was Mike even afraid? Damned egghead. College boy or man or whatever. In hours or days they could be doing God knows what on an alien spaceship. Did they want us for food? Poor Lorraine. They killed so many people, they couldn’t be treating the disappeared ones well. Why the cars and Mike’s bicycle? The purple sky was driving him nuts. The sky wasn’t supposed to be purple. He still wasn’t used to it. You looked up and, surprise, purple! Though the damn crows didn’t seem to mind. And now that sound. That chainsaw at the end of the world. He’d thought he wanted to know that someone else had survived, but now he was scared they were going to meet a crazy person. He couldn’t think anything because if he did, he wouldn’t want to go on, up the hill or down. 

Lorraine was supposed to be his salvation, or maybe he was meant to be hers. He met her when she brought in her Ford station wagon with a busted transmission, an expensive job that she clearly couldn’t afford. She’d dragged along Benny, the youngest, a runny-nosed kid with a toothless smile and a stained T-shirt. If she was looking for sympathy, it worked. He charged her parts and no labor, even though the extra would come out of his paycheck, writing off that expense as another dinner of Dinty Moore beef stew with a side of Coors. Her smile was worth it, a lopsided grin, like she was a child herself, not sure whether he expected anything in return. He hadn’t. Helping her was enough. People acted tough all the time, but it felt good to help someone just to help them. Put that in your corncob pipe and smoke it, Mom and Dad. 

And then she’d asked him out anyway, Chinese takeout and a movie on TV at her apartment, which was cluttered with toys and discarded sippy cups. He’d been swept away by her laugh and her round breasts. Having grown up with five younger siblings, he was hardly bothered by the giggling in the background when he’d kissed her on their third date and taken off her bra on the fourth. The camping trip had been arranged with help from her mother (Toyota Camry, faulty fuel line), who watched the kids, cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth as she waved goodbye. 

Skeeter had no real interest in camping, but Lorraine actually had good childhood memories with her departed father, so of course he went, even though he felt silly bringing a tent and dehydrated food into the mountains. He parked his pickup at the park ranger station and they hiked up the hill. Maybe God helped, because Skeeter saw the entrance to the cave three full minutes before hearing the boom-y boom, the noise that wasn’t a noise. And Lorraine wouldn’t go in the cave with him. Should he have carried her? He knew it was death to stay outside, but he didn’t know how he knew it. Part of him didn’t believe the part that knew, so he just ran, figuring if he was wrong, the worst he’d do was look dumb. It wouldn’t have been the first time. But he was right, and that was the hell of it. Lorraine, Lorraine.  

Skeeter patted his pocket to make sure the useless cell phone was still there, no one to call, no battery, no bars. No hope. Mike seemed to have hope, or at least something pushing him up that hill, arms pumping, head bobbing at his own thoughts. Skeeter tried to have no thoughts, just the crunching of his feet and the caw of the crows overhead, waiting. He hated himself and Mike. Irrationally. How had they lived? How did they deserve to live more than Lorraine and her kids? She was a good mom. All gone now. Lollipops, video games, Cheetos. 

Skeeter was angry the trees wouldn’t stop and then they did, opening into a clearing as big as a football field and full of people, he guessed maybe a hundred. He couldn’t focus. Too many faces and all of them seemed hungry. Some sat, some stood, some stretched out on the ground, maybe dying. No sign of gas sickness, the flesh sloughed off like paper and all the flowing stuff. The house! Inside out! Don’t think about it. Don’t think. Were all these people smokers too? What a sick joke. Lorraine smoked. Where was she? And the cars? Where did all these people come from? Judging by the clothes—shorts, backpacks, hiking boots—most were tourists like him, people looking for a relief from their office-dwelling, mechanic shop, checkout line lives. But they’d gotten more relief than they bargained for and were in shock or brain-damaged by the gas (or something, who knows?), listless, blank-eyed. A different kind of sickness? Or was Mike wrong? They barely seemed to be aware of Mike and Skeeter. 

Skeeter couldn’t stand to look at their defeated faces, so he searched for the chainsaw. He followed Mike through the crowd and then he saw a woman standing on a rocky hill making a chainsaw sculpture of an eagle. Well, goddamn. She saw Mike and Skeeter, stopped, and set down the machine. 

Mike asked her what the hell was going on and she didn’t know. All these people had just come to this place on this mountain, but she had nothing except a chainsaw and a can of peaches. She offered him a peach and Mike said no, even though Skeeter knew he was hungry and thirsty. The way the dumb people’s faces opened in awe as they lifted up toward the woman made Skeeter think they believed she was Jesus on the mountain and somehow she could make that can of peaches feed them like the thing with the bread and fishes. But they were dead wrong, or soon to be dead. Jesus never had to deal with this purple-sky hell world. 

The woman’s face was ruddy, like a half-rotten apple, arms thick tree limbs. Less than five feet, maybe a hundred fifty pounds. Ordinariness radiated from her like barbecue smoke. How would anyone believe that she was meant to save them? Desperation, Skeeter supposed. Even the hikers with packs would have run out of food in a week, especially if they shared with those who had less. Many had probably been here for days and now, hunger and exhaustion had made them crazy. It wasn’t gas sickness, which, if Mike was right, killed people quick. It was just having a body. Did Lorraine have a body now? Skeeter shivered, his own not far from collapse. Bodies. Just because you have one doesn’t mean you have to be one. Or does it? 

The chainsaw artist stepped down from the rocks and led them to her cabin where there was an empty refrigerator and a TV. She plugged Skeeter’s cell phone into an outlet and started a generator, explaining that she had a little gas left. She flipped through TV channels but, like the car radio, they made static. They sat down on the couches by the fireplace. 

Her name was Hannah and she lived up in the mountains, writing articles about plants for magazines and occasionally foraging for food. Squirrel was nasty, and rabbits the best game. But the animals fled when the crowd arrived, after the bomb. She asked if Mike and Skeeter knew how to get rid of the people, comparing them to locusts. Great, another Bible thing. 

Mike asked why the crowd was there in the first place and Hannah said she didn’t know. They seemed not to be normal, she said, like the bomb had scrambled their brains up. If she didn’t run the chainsaw for a while, they got mad and started shouting for her to turn it on. Soon, she would run out of gas, and they would kill her. They hadn’t told her that, but she knew somehow, felt it in the purple breeze. Skeeter understood, and Mike seemed to as well.  

Mike asked how the zombie people were surviving and she told him that she’d had stockpiled food, but they’d taken it all, except for the peaches. They seemed to think that she and the chainsaw would provide food. Mike remarked that a chainsaw seemed like a strange sort of god and she shrugged. 

Skeeter remembered God feeding the people in the desert with manna from heaven, but he didn’t mention it. That wasn’t going to happen. Goddamn sheep were as doomed as all the nonsmokers had apparently been. The El Dorado could hold maybe ten people if some rode in the back. They could ferry them down the mountain a few at a time if they had the fuel, but Skeeter knew they didn’t. Hannah had a half-depleted can and the El Dorado tank was less than a quarter full. The nearest town was at least twenty miles away, maybe more. 

Mike told Hannah that they had to get away and she nodded. She’d thought about escaping but figured she wouldn’t make it to the next town on foot, and she was afraid to go alone. If the crowd saw them leaving with her, they would revolt. Skeeter couldn’t see a solution. It reminded him of the old problem of getting a fox, a rabbit, and a cabbage across the river. He couldn’t remember the answer, but he knew it had to do with taking one of the things over the river twice. That wasn’t going to help them, though. That bastard in the story had plenty of gas. 

Mike fisted his hand under his chin and appeared to ruminate for a long moment, staring at the blank TV. Finally, he told her that he had a plan, but she had to agree to his conditions. She listened and nodded when he was finished. By then, the phone was charged, and Skeeter grabbed it, following Mike out of the cabin like a forgotten puppy.  

Mike and Hannah went up onto the rock pile she had been standing on when they’d first arrived. She picked up the chainsaw and revved it, getting the crowd’s attention. No one seemed to notice Skeeter as he slipped around the group of people, carrying Hannah’s gas can. If someone asked what he was doing, he didn’t know what he would say. With the extra gas, they had enough to go farther than the other side of the mountain, maybe. He didn’t know how far they’d have to go before they’d find a place where they could get food and shelter without getting killed. Maybe there was no place.  

Guilt and fear rolled around in his guts like spoiled meat. He nearly dropped the can twice, and when he got to the El Dorado, his hand shook so hard that he could barely make the tube go into the gas tank. When he finished, he dumped the empty can in the woods and sauntered to the back of the crowd, trying to act like he belonged. 

The woman and Mike were still on the rock pile, but the chainsaw was silent. In the absence of the sound, the crowd rustled. Feet shuffled; faces turned in every direction. To Skeeter, they looked like dumb chickens, no direction, no thought. Skeeter wasn’t normally afraid of crowds, but, Lord, this one made him nervous. A mob, liable to riot on any suggestion. Violence probably cooked just below the surface of any group of desperate, hungry faces. But these people had vacant, zombie eyes. And the food wrappers and cans lying on the ground were as clean as if they’d been washed, every molecule of sustenance gone. They had nothing, nothing except the crazy belief in this woman and her chainsaw. Zombies don’t have baseless faith, do they? And how did Skeeter know what they believed? But he knew, just like the cave, just like he knew Lorraine was on some damned ship in some dimension disastrously crisscrossed with ours. He knew that Mike was going to lie to this group of maybe-humans and it didn’t matter because the zombies were toast. The Lord is my shepherd. I will not want.  

Mike’s voice carried over the crowd, obliterating the sound of the sniffling, the coughing, the shuffling. The chainsaw goddess was not satisfied with them. She required proof of their devotion. But before Mike could give his prepared story, his lie, he was interrupted. 

A voice from the crowd spoke up, almost as loud as Mike. “God stick woman! God stick woman!” God stick? The sky was purple and now a chainsaw was a god stick? Her carved eagle wasn’t even very good. Hannah cowered behind him, more afraid of the crowd than Skeeter. He shrank back again, ashamedly thinking of taking the El Dorado and leaving Mike. But the prophecy told him no and, anyway, he was almost as terrified of venturing into this newly emptied world alone as he was of the people. Prophecy. So he stayed and watched. 

Mike explained that the god had called him here, just as the god had called them. Heads around Skeeter nodded in agreement, sheep heads. He was going to show them what the god wanted, Mike told them. Skeeter cringed, waiting for the next part. He knew that Mike was lying. He also knew that if the plan didn’t work, the crowd would likely kill him, Mike, and Hannah.  

The god wanted a blood sacrifice. Whoever it took had to volunteer, however, and couldn’t be forced. The victim must be killed by the chainsaw and it must be done by another person from the crowd, not Mike or Hannah. Skeeter didn’t like this part. Not only was Mike lying, but he was telling them to kill someone. But when he’d objected, Mike had pointed out that all of the people were going to die soon anyway, so what difference did it make? Skeeter consulted his inner post-apocalypse daemon, the source of prophecy. It had told him to go to the cave and run from the inside out house and now nothing. The crowd had to be turned on itself, Mike argued, in order for them to escape. “Utilitarianism” (Mike’s word) said the ends justified the means, the right thing to do was the thing that produced the most overall happiness. Either everyone would die, or Mike, Hannah, and Skeeter would live, and the rest would die. Neither solution might be what they would want in an ideal world, but they didn’t have an ideal world, they had this one with these choices and they were bound by morality to act in such a way as to produce the most happiness. Skeeter knew there was something wrong with Mike’s argument, but how could even a God-touched auto mechanic argue with a professional philosopher? What do you do when reason goes against faith? The daemon was silent. So he’d gone along with it, just like all those times in high school guzzling the purple Jesus juice. 

The loud voice protested again, saying that he wouldn’t believe Mike’s claim unless the woman agreed. Hannah stepped forward and drew herself up, her ruddy face determined. Skeeter knew that packs of dogs, and people too, sensed hesitation and went in for the kill. She’d better lie well. Skeeter expected her to fail, but somehow knew she wouldn’t. She’d held off the people for two days before he and Mike arrived. She could do it again. It felt that way. 

When she opened her mouth, nothing came out, at least nothing that Skeeter could hear. The crowd inched forward, like wolves. They’ll eat her alive, he thought, cut her up with that chainsaw, and eat her. But then her voice boomed out. 

Mike’s story was God’s will, that dam-breaking voice said. She added that she was not allowed to witness the killing, that she had to leave before it began. They had to go before returning triumphant. The doubting part of Skeeter thought surely they wouldn’t buy that, it was too obviously just an excuse for the three of them to get the hell away. But the loud-voiced man in the crowd didn’t speak up again, and by the time she’d finished explaining, the crowd hushed, as though accepting fate. She admonished them to choose wisely and then she and Mike climbed down from the rocks, leaving the chainsaw behind. 

The plan was that now the people’s attention should turn from the woman and Mike to one another. The crowd was supposed to fight over who would be sacrificed, but they all just stared at the chainsaw, sitting there quiet on the rocks, as if it would make the choice itself. Maybe it would call out a name or come down among them and pick a volunteer. Skeeter knew when that didn’t happen, they’d look to Mike and Hannah again. What else would they do? Who else would lead them? Mike had counted on chaos to take over, just enough confusion for them to escape, but it wasn’t happening. The people were calm, waiting. Someone had to do something, but what? 

Skeeter thought about his life. What good was it? Lorraine was gone, and her kids surely died from the sickness. His daemon told him. He had no one else, no purpose. He couldn’t save this crowd of doomed souls, but a true prophet would save Mike and Hannah. Maybe that was worth doing, maybe it wasn’t, but it was something. He cried out and began pushing his way through the crowd toward the chainsaw. He motioned for Mike and the woman to flee. Mike hesitated, his eyes questioning. Skeeter nodded, and the crowd began to converge on him, the victim. Skeeter didn’t blame Mike and Hannah for leaving. No use in everyone dying. Utilitarianism. 

Then, it was just Skeeter and the chainsaw on the rock. The machine sat idle, like a sleeping god. The crowd had stopped, a ring of faces, all anguish. No one stepped forward. No one took charge. Skeeter was alone. It was up to him now. 

The man with the loud voice came forward. Bigger than Skeeter, he lifted hands like baseball gloves and looked at him, not like a lunatic, but like he understood everything that had happened, maybe even more. He picked up the chainsaw and held it high. The crowd made a noise like waves breaking on the shore. 

Skeeter lowered his head, prepared to die. He’d dreaded dying, but not this kind of death. He’d hated the idea of rotting away in a hospital bed, his mind slipping from his grasp. His father, a powerful man, had gone out that way, a wrinkled bundle of skin hooked up to machines. If Skeeter had to die, he preferred being hacked to pieces by a chainsaw. He waited for the big man to make the first cut. 

The chainsaw remained in the air. The man addressed the crowd instead, telling them that the whole chainsaw thing was bullshit. It was just a chainsaw and Hannah was just a woman. They’d all come to the mountain for nothing. Skeeter trembled. What the big man was doing was dangerous and crazy. Rather than the “noble” (Mike’s word) lie they had chosen to tell, this man, whoever he was, had decided on the truth. As he talked, he glanced at Skeeter, seeming surprised that he was still there. With a look and a wave of his giant hand, he told Skeeter to leave, get out while he could. Skeeter didn’t want to leave this stranger, the real prophet. Skeeter wanted to see what would happen and maybe even follow him instead of Mike the philosopher. But the big man didn’t want to be followed. His gesture became more insistent. The daemon echoed his command and Skeeter had to obey. He climbed down the rock and found Mike and Hannah at the bottom. He knew they would drive together to where the sky was golden. He knew it.