from Russell to me and then back to Russell. Russell doesn’t move in the water. I panic, thinking he hit his head and he can’t breathe. And then the man walks toward me, ignoring the knife sticking out of him, raising his hands toward me, moving in with like giant claws to make sure I don’t escape.
When I was little, and I first learned that I don’t have a real family, and back then some people still had real families, I felt sad. I felt sad for a really long time. I couldn’t remember my mom, or my dad. Russell filled me in with some details about my parents over the years, but I don’t know for sure if he just made them up because he knew I was sad then. He always cares if I’m sad. But Russell is my family, the closest thing to it I’ll ever know. And I turn away from the man coming at me because I can’t take my eyes off Russell, helpless in the brown.
I used to talk him up to anyone I met. The other boys, girls, older men, women, it didn’t matter. He was the toughest guy around. Who is he? they’d ask me. I never called him Dad once, always just Russell. He’s Russell I’d say, like they were idiots for not knowing that. Back then he was stocky, but he was tall and stocky. Enormous really. A bear of a man. Six foot three. Maybe two hundred and seventy five pounds. I was always safe when he was around. He’d beaten the shit out of a boy once who’d tried to get me to go home with him. Russell told me that boy had no intention of taking me to his house. He’d been about my age, and I was more curious than anything—I’d never really had a friend my age. He was after my body, Russell said. For food or sex, it didn’t matter. Though things were relatively calm in Philadelphia, and Pittsburg even, and the rain didn’t mean yet what it means now, the reports of cannibalism had already started. Despite those warmer, dryer times, people hadn’t seen the reason to wait, when it was necessary to survive, to eat other people. Society crumbled so fast, Russell says, that it makes the veneer disappear in many before the environment dictates that it has to. Some had different caveats about eating human flesh—they only do it in near-death situations, only if the person is already dead from natural causes, only if it is the thigh muscle, or the bicep, or the breast. Most of those rules about eating human flesh faded by the time we reached Chicago. By Rapid City, all the caveats were gone—and now it’s just the face eaters. Some of them I’ve seen, the ones who hunt in packs, have pieces of their faces missing, and other parts too Russell says, but those missing chunks are concealed under the plastic suits. Russell told me that they’d just as soon cut a block from each other’s arms for a meal than risk the rain some nights. I had thought it was bullshit. But then I saw the bodies—large sections missing, bones with teeth marks, faces with the serrated punctures of canines and molars. Until Rapid City, we were once removed from the face eaters, all the cannibals, because we played it safe. We stuck to the high rises, where food was more plentiful. We stuck to the Sea Queen Marie. We stuck to the towers and the skylines and the towns on mountain tops. It was in the backcountry you ran into the face eaters, Russell told me then. We avoided backcountry like the plague. But after Rapid City, and even long before that, the cannibals weren’t the minority anymore. If a body floated by in the rain that hadn’t been dead for more than a day, it simply meant another day of life for someone else. But we’ve managed to make it this far without doing it. It’s one of the last pieces of the veneer Russell will talk about. That we don’t eat other people. The veneer was so strong before the rain, he says, that no one ate people. I can’t imagine that. We’re just another food source, like any other animal out there.
The man steps carefully on the mud, then again, moving
When I was little, and I first learned that I don’t have a real family, and back then some people still had real families, I felt sad. I felt sad for a really long time. I couldn’t remember my mom, or my dad. Russell filled me in with some details about my parents over the years, but I don’t know for sure if he just made them up because he knew I was sad then. He always cares if I’m sad. But Russell is my family, the closest thing to it I’ll ever know. And I turn away from the man coming at me because I can’t take my eyes off Russell, helpless in the brown.
I used to talk him up to anyone I met. The other boys, girls, older men, women, it didn’t matter. He was the toughest guy around. Who is he? they’d ask me. I never called him Dad once, always just Russell. He’s Russell I’d say, like they were idiots for not knowing that. Back then he was stocky, but he was tall and stocky. Enormous really. A bear of a man. Six foot three. Maybe two hundred and seventy five pounds. I was always safe when he was around. He’d beaten the shit out of a boy once who’d tried to get me to go home with him. Russell told me that boy had no intention of taking me to his house. He’d been about my age, and I was more curious than anything—I’d never really had a friend my age. He was after my body, Russell said. For food or sex, it didn’t matter. Though things were relatively calm in Philadelphia, and Pittsburg even, and the rain didn’t mean yet what it means now, the reports of cannibalism had already started. Despite those warmer, dryer times, people hadn’t seen the reason to wait, when it was necessary to survive, to eat other people. Society crumbled so fast, Russell says, that it makes the veneer disappear in many before the environment dictates that it has to. Some had different caveats about eating human flesh—they only do it in near-death situations, only if the person is already dead from natural causes, only if it is the thigh muscle, or the bicep, or the breast. Most of those rules about eating human flesh faded by the time we reached Chicago. By Rapid City, all the caveats were gone—and now it’s just the face eaters. Some of them I’ve seen, the ones who hunt in packs, have pieces of their faces missing, and other parts too Russell says, but those missing chunks are concealed under the plastic suits. Russell told me that they’d just as soon cut a block from each other’s arms for a meal than risk the rain some nights. I had thought it was bullshit. But then I saw the bodies—large sections missing, bones with teeth marks, faces with the serrated punctures of canines and molars. Until Rapid City, we were once removed from the face eaters, all the cannibals, because we played it safe. We stuck to the high rises, where food was more plentiful. We stuck to the Sea Queen Marie. We stuck to the towers and the skylines and the towns on mountain tops. It was in the backcountry you ran into the face eaters, Russell told me then. We avoided backcountry like the plague. But after Rapid City, and even long before that, the cannibals weren’t the minority anymore. If a body floated by in the rain that hadn’t been dead for more than a day, it simply meant another day of life for someone else. But we’ve managed to make it this far without doing it. It’s one of the last pieces of the veneer Russell will talk about. That we don’t eat other people. The veneer was so strong before the rain, he says, that no one ate people. I can’t imagine that. We’re just another food source, like any other animal out there.
The man steps carefully on the mud, then again, moving
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