Songs of the Dead Read online

  The smoke continues to take form. The carriage horse stops, looks. The driver hits it with the reins. A few dogs pause, sniff, raise their snouts into the air, raise their ruffs and tails the way country dogs do when they smell bears, behavior I’ve never quite seen in city dogs. I nod. The dogs smell it too. So does the horse.

  Oddly, I’m not scared. Apprehensive, yes. But not scared. I know the muse would not lead me into danger. And suddenly I know what is coming, and I wonder what could ever have taken me so long to understand, and wonder even more that no one else seems to notice.

  The man in the obscene shirt stops. His hair is short and black. He wears it greased, as seems to be the fashion here. The smoke rises, swirls, forms a solid mass.

  I hear that same hissing, but now I know where I’ve heard it before. It grows and grows until it fills the entire street. It comes not just from this column of smoke, but from all of them. The columns are everywhere. No one else notices.

  When it seems it can grow no louder, it stops. A dog barks. Another whimpers and drops into a submissive pose. Owners jerk on leashes. The driver hits the horse. The man with the shirt talks to a woman.

  I hear a loud pop, and the column of smoke takes solid form. It is a demon from that dream—that visitation—of so long ago. With a quick flick it draws one clawed finger across the man’s throat. Blood spurts. The woman screams. The demon yanks the man’s head to an impossible angle, rips the skin on his neck with one hand, attaches its mouth, and begins to suck.

  I can’t breathe. I force vomit back down my throat. I want to run, but I hear another pop, and another demon stands in front of the couple on the bench. One swing takes off the woman’s head. Another opens the man from throat to navel. Yet another demon grabs a man in a business suit, plants its mouth over the man’s mouth and nose, and sucks. The man collapses. The demon keeps sucking.

  I stagger, then freeze. I think over and over, The muse would not lead me into danger. The muse would not lead me into danger. But I am sheer animal panic. If there was someplace I could go I would run. If I could make my legs work I would run.

  People scream, run, trip, cower. Demons leap person to person, killing, eating only the choice bits—like bears in a run of salmon—and dropping the rest for later or to be eaten by someone else.

  People try to escape in cars, but demons break windows to get at them, to pull them out, to kill them, to feed. Drivers run over other humans too slow to get out of their way. But these drivers too do not escape, as there is no room for them to make a break, and somehow I know that no matter where they go, there will be no- where to hide.

  I want to close my eyes, but I cannot. I want to look away, but each time I do I see some new horror.

  Bodies fall from buildings. I do not know if they jumped or were thrown, but this tells me that there are demons inside the buildings.

  A few people pull out guns, but every demon hit merely turns back into smoke, then disappears—seeming to go back where it came from—to be replaced by more and still more demons.

  The driver furiously beats the horse, who refuses to take a step. A demon leaps onto the carriage, picks up the man, breaks his back, then throws the man to the ground. The man moves his arms weakly. The demon jumps off, looks in all directions, looks at the horse. With quick motions the demon uses a claw to cut the traces, cut the bridle. The horse spits out the bit, shakes her head. The leather falls to the ground. The horse turns toward the demon. They lock eyes. The demon walks away. The horse steps toward the driver, looks into the man’s face. The horse raises a hoof, places it on the man’s head.

  I see a woman holding a Scottish terrier. A demon moves toward her. She throws the dog at the demon, who bats the dog away, then advances on the woman.

  Some dogs defend their owners. These are killed, dropped. Some dogs cower. Others, like the horse, turn on the humans. All these dogs are ignored.

  I see a very old dog, a yellow lab/spaniel mix, walking through this abattoir—this city that has been an abattoir as long as it has been a city, though we never seemed to notice since we were the butchers, not the victims—walking slowly with an arthritic gait, bobbing her head with every step. She pays no mind to the slaughter, but walks. A woman in heels trips over her, knocks the dog down. The dog struggles to her feet, continues plodding. A demon stops in front of her, stoops, reaches with one clawed finger toward the dog’s nose. The dog stops, looks through clouded eyes at the demon, sniffs, touches the finger. The demon stands, leaps over a grated wall into a restaurant, overturns a table, and reaches down to kill a child left behind when his parents fled. The dog continues to walk.

  I wish I could walk. I wish I could run. I wish I could move. I do not want to be noticed. I’m hoping they cannot touch me. But an older man with a briefcase runs into me, almost knocks me down. A demon follows, brushes me on its way past, pulls off the man’s head with one twist, and turns toward me. I can’t die here, I think. I’m supposed to die in Spokane.

  The demon speaks, in a hissing voice I hear inside my head: “It doesn’t work like that.”

  I can’t breathe. I don’t know what that means.

  It takes a step, looks me in the eye, and shakes its head. It reaches out one finger, then it turns and runs after someone else. It does not lessen my terror, but I know I am safe for this moment. Someday they may come for me, or they may not. I understand that now is not my time to die. Now is my time to watch.

  It’s done. The demons are gone, moving back through the same passageways they’d used to get here. I can now breathe. I no longer want to vomit. There are dead humans everywhere, on the street, in cars, hanging out of buildings. None of this scares me. It is the killing that troubles me, not the dead. Dogs run, pigeons fly, leaves of imprisoned trees talk in the breeze. I hear a few moans, some screams. After the longest time I see a very few people—a very few crazed, stunned people—wander from buildings and stand amidst the dead. I see one of them shake his head, as though to clear it, and then I see him walk into a store and pop open the cash register. I see him reach into the pockets of the dead for their wallets.

  I somehow know—as though I was told—that this outbreak was not merely local, that these demons came in everywhere, that they covered the planet, they fed, and they returned to wherever they came from. I know they will return.

  I don’t know how many humans are left alive. I don’t know who is left alive. Because this is in the future, I don’t even know if I am left alive—presuming the psychopath in Spokane hasn’t killed me first—and I don’t know if those I love are left alive. I do know that most people are dead. I know, too, once again as though I’ve been told, that neither technology nor religion nor morality nor immorality nor wealth nor poverty protected people from the demons. The demons were in that sense indiscriminate—or discriminating in ways beyond my understanding—like a tidal wave, like an epidemic, like an explosion, like a fire.

  I look at the buildings around me, and time again begins to shift. It moves quickly, as months and years pass, and I see plants reach up, see them climb the sides of buildings, see them pull down these buildings as surely as the demons pulled down the people. The buildings fall, trees rise. And in the south I hear a roaring.

  And then. . . .

  I’m standing next to Allison. Drops of sweat hang from my hair. My shirt sticks to my back, to my sides. My fingers are sore from clenching, and my palms are white, then red, when I release them.

  Allison doesn’t ask what I saw. She takes me by the arm, and leads me to the hotel, to our room.

  For several days I cannot tell Allison what I saw. I cannot think about it, and I cannot keep from thinking about it. I am too scared to stay in our room, and I am too scared to go outside. I am scared of smoke, and I am scared of hissing, and I am scared of pops. I am scared of carriages and I am scared of obscene shirts. I ask for a dream, and I get one that consists of the sentence, “I am trying to tell you something.” That’s all. Somehow that makes me less afraid.
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  I tell Allison what I witnessed.

  She doesn’t say a word.

  I ask what she is thinking.

  She says, “Keep going.”

  I say, “I know what I am supposed to feel about this, and I know what I do feel.”

  “What are you supposed to feel?”

  “Well, it terrifies me. That’s just the truth.”

  “It should.”

  “I didn’t want to witness what I witnessed.”

  “No sane person would.”

  “But there was something I didn’t feel.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “I felt the same horror I feel at any massacre site: any clearcut, any factory slaughterhouse, any fishing factory, any city.”

  She still doesn’t say anything.

  “And I was scared for my life and I wish I didn’t have the images inside of me, just as I wish I didn’t have images of clearcuts or industrial fishing nets inside of me.”

  She nods.

  “But I couldn’t muster outrage toward the universe for this— what do I call it?—this blasphemy. People think they’re at the top of some hierarchy . . . people think that there exists some hierarchy to be on top of . . . and violence is supposed to flow down. But I didn’t . . .

  Silence.

  I continue, “The whole time I kept hearing a voice say again and again, ‘This is what it feels like to be a forest faced with this culture.’ And then the voice would say, ‘This is what it feels like to be a river. A mountain. A wild animal. A factory farmed animal. This is what it feels like to be indigenous.’ The only difference is that this slaughter lasted minutes, and the other slaughters have gone on and on and on for thousands of years, since the beginning of this culture. Six thousand years of relentless slaughter. Six thousand years of unremitting terror.”

  She takes a breath, lets it out.

  I go on, “No. There’s another difference. The demons at least ate the people. They didn’t kill them to make money. And there’s another difference, too. A forest does nothing to deserve this. The salmon do nothing to deserve this. Tormented chickens in factory farms do nothing to deserve this. Vivisected monkeys do nothing to deserve this. But none of the civilized—none of the wétikos—are innocent. Children, I suppose, and the extremely poor. Subsistence farmers. The remaining traditional indigenous.”

  Silence.

  “I don’t know.”

  More silence.

  “I need to know what you’re thinking.”

  Finally she asks, “How do you stop a rabid dog?”

  I don’t know what she’s talking about.

  She says, “I just read that the US military has scattered 2,200 tons of depleted uranium all over Iraq. Background radiation levels are now so high that simply to exist is to receive the equivalent of three chest X-rays per day. Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. How do you stop them?”

  I blink.

  She continues, “What if the cannibal culture stuff—the wétiko stuff—really isn’t a metaphor? What if the reason members of this culture are so destructive is that they really do have a highly contagious spiritual illness that causes those infected to consume the souls of others, causes them to destroy? How do you stop them? How do you stop a rabid dog? Do you see those in power stopping the use of depleted uranium because we ask nicely?”

  My mouth forms, “No,” but no air comes out.

  “I also just got an email from my friends Tom and Rene in Georgia, the ones doing that documentary about the collapse of civilization. They interviewed some climate change experts, and said they were. . . .” She steps to her computer, which is on the hotel room table. She opens a program, reads, “‘both big-brained scientists, and both seemingly unable, or unwilling, to really look at the world situation as a whole. No surprise there, I guess. They’d acknowledge some really horrible bit of info about the changing climate, and then they’d say there’s nothing to worry about “unless you really love polar bears.” They just can’t seem to put it all together. For all of the usual reasons.’”

  She turns back to me, says, “What if ‘all of the usual reasons’ includes brain damage from this spiritual illness? It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that this culture is killing the planet. It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that an economic system—any economic system—is less important than a landbase. It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that changing the climate is a really bad idea. And yet is anybody doing anything significant to stop global warming? We all know what needs to be done: we need to shut down the oil economy. We need to shut it down completely. We need to dismantle everything we see around us. Now. This isn’t a fucking computer game where you get to save and go back and try again. This is life on the planet we’re talking about. Why aren’t people shutting down the oil economy? Because we’re fucking insane. We’re rabid dogs.

  “What if God is real? What if God hates life? What if God infects people, causes them to hate life as much as God does, causes them to want to infect other people with this hatred, causes them to propagate this sickness? Can you explain the insanity any other way, Derrick? They’re killing the planet, and oh, by the way, the Yankees won today, so life must be good.

  “How do you stop a rabid dog?

  “Leatherback turtles are going extinct. We can say the same for so many others. Who cares? The stock market went up today. Life is good. How, Derrick, how? How can anyone be so cruel? And how do we stop them? What did you say to Dr. Kline? How did you put it? How do you stop a rapist? Only now it’s not just this or that woman. It’s the planet. It’s everything. How do we stop them?

  “How do you stop a rabid dog?

  “Just today the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reduced protection for salmon in the Northwest by about 90 percent. Why? Because the National Association of Homebuilders asked them to, acting in proxy for big timber. This is how it goes, Derrick. Every time. Every fucking time. You know this. I know this. We all know this. They’re fucking rabid dogs, Derrick, and they need to be stopped.

  “As we speak the fish are all dying in the Black River, here in New York. Do you know why? Because three million gallons of cow shit spilled from a factory dairy. The cows are tormented, the land is destroyed, and now the river. And did you know that workers in factory slaughterhouses have to wear earplugs or they would go deaf from the screams of pigs being hacked to bits while they’re still alive? What will it take to make all of this stop?”

  She’s crying now. “I don’t think salmon will be outraged by the arrival of the demons. I don’t think the few remaining leatherbacks will either. Nor redwoods. Nor white pines. Nor cows in factory farms. Nor pigs. Nor any others. Nor will I. I’d imagine most nonhumans are praying day and night for the demons’ arrival, and the question most nonhumans—and most indigenous, and those others who love life on this planet—are asking is: Why are you taking so long?”

  twenty three

  on the run

  We’re on the last leg of our journey back west, flying from San Francisco to Crescent City, California, on a plane that holds about twenty people. I’m looking out the window. The propeller spins, shredding the flesh of thick clouds. I wonder how much it hurts.

  I turn to Allison, say, “You’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. I’m a woman, remember?” She smiles. “About what?”

  “I think the wétiko disease causes brain damage. You know that question I always ask about whether politicians and CEOs and corporate journalists—and in fact most members of this culture— are stupid, or are they evil?”

  “Or both.”

  “Maybe the disease causes people to become really stupid.”

  “Public discourse would suggest this is the case.”

  “Maybe it causes them to act against their self-interest, like the ants who climb to the tops of blades of grass and clamp on tight. Certainly people are clinging just as tight to systems that are killing them. And maybe it tur
ns them into idiot savants, into people who can’t think clearly but who can send a rocket to the moon. . . .”

  “And who can build really big bombs.”

  “And who have a gift for making money.”

  “And maybe it causes them to hallucinate, to actually perceive money as worth more than life, to actually perceive heaven as worth more than earth. It’s not that they’re poor deluded souls who just don’t quite understand. They are incapable of getting it, just as people with Alzheimer’s or Mad Cow are incapable of remembering or thinking clearly, just as humans are incapable of seeing ultraviolet and bees are incapable of seeing red.”

  “One characteristic of sociopaths” she says, “is that they’re incapable of feeling certain emotions, including joy, sorrow, regret, and especially empathy or compassion. Incapable. If, at a very young age, your caregivers don’t nurture you—if they don’t bond with you and you don’t bond with them—you may very well not develop the capacity to care, to feel. If that’s the case, it doesn’t matter what therapy you get later, the neural pathways simply aren’t there.”

  I respond, “I once had a friend who contracted measles as a fetus. The disease scarred her eyes. She has something like three percent vision. You and I could talk to her all we want, we could sign petitions, we could file lawsuits, we could beg, plead, bribe, but it wouldn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. She is incapable of seeing. Of course in her case she can empathize, very well, actually. But the point is that when certain diseases cause certain damage, there is nothing you can do about it.”

  We deplane on land that used to belong to the Tolowa and Yurok, to the salmon, the steelhead, the redwoods, the grizzlies. Now it belongs to the wétikos. Or at least they claim it.

  Allison’s parents—George and May—pick us up, drive us home. May has—as she always seems to—cooked a delicious meal, this time carrot soup, homemade bread, mashed potatoes, and chicken with homemade noodles. Over dinner George tells us stories. I’ve heard most of these before, but he tells them well, and so long as it’s only the fourth or fifth time, I don’t mind.