The Weight

By Thomas Butler

Nearly jumped out of my boots when Carmen started pounding.

As if I could.

“We gotta problem?” she demanded.

“Gahddamn it, woman!” I snapped, my stream squeezed down to a mere trickle.  Get all clenched up when I’m surprised, you know?  “No, there ain’t no fraggin’ problem!  Go find yasself a bush or sumppin’ an’ leave me be!”

She quieted and waited until I was relaxed – waited, that was, until I had relaxed enough to attain a full pressure flow once again – before she exited the cab, slamming the door hard enough to rock and sway on her springs.  Ready for it this time, I pivoted neatly on my heels and watched as my golden arc fizzled into the dusty boot prints where she’d stood just moments before.  Pausing just long enough to flip me the bird, Carmen took off cackling before I could draw enough breath to start cursing her in earnest.  

Christ! but she was a piece of work.

Finally, my tank tapped to empty, I tucked my tube back in and waited while my MOPPET ran a full sanitization cycle on my nethers.  I sat patiently until the generated bubble of man-made medicinal fart tickled its way down and under, pushed like a wall of fog across my swampy taint, and then climbed once more up through the foresty crack of my ass.  When it ultimately reached the cleft at the small of my back, I shivered like I always did.  Pawed a bit at my crotch until everything settled back into place, and then climbed carefully back down to ground level.

I gave the surroundings a dutiful and perfunctory visual sweep. 

There still wasn’t much to see.  

Just as much a dusty shithole in the early morning sun as it had seemed in the previous evening’s dusk.  

We’d pulled into Nazareth last night as a necessity, forced to double-back when we’d discovered highway 27 was no longer passable.  All eight lanes were gone.  Washed away by what must have been a flash flood of Biblical proportions.  Still twenty miles shy of Lubbock, our assigned and scheduled charging stop, we were now without a road to get us there. Twenty miles. It may as well have been a thousand. Fanny hadn’t the power to make it back to Amarillo, our departure point at sunrise yesterday. 

I didn’t know of any other sure-safe points between the two.

It had been desperation plain and simple which had led me to start searching on the sat-com.  Hurried desperation, the worst kind.  A Hail-Mary, shot in the dark, toss of the dice, turn of the wheel, fat chance sucker’s bet.  Each minute ticking by drained down our charge and reduced the viable range of the search.  Goddamn, though, I’ve always been lucky. After zooming in twice, a charging panel still shone green on state route 86. 

Within range, if just barely.  

Nazareth, as it turned out, was a no-stop-light, bug-shit stain on the map, but at least it was in the general direction we were headed.  So, since it was a choice between taking a chance on Nazareth, or nothing at all, I steered old Fanny west when the exit came along.  We rolled in, half-past dead, and my heart sank into my stomach with each passing block.  The only road through town was cracked and ragged.  Populated by tumbleweeds and dust devils, there wasn’t a fuzz to be found.  That was a little strange, but not really.  It was barely a town; sparsely lined by dust-caked houses on small dirt lots, each one adorned by broken and empty windows.  Abandoned.  

Once upon a time, it had been a farm town.  

Maybe a cattle town, but more likely cotton or wheat.  This part of Texas had never been an easy place to farm, it was the panhandle after all, but for generations it had been manageable.  For a while, at least.  Maybe the water had dried up, maybe the cattle got a virus, or maybe they just ran out of kids willing to see the appeal of a simple, small town existence.  God knows, apathetic offspring had killed plenty of towns, businesses, and bloodlines since time immemorial.  

It’d probably been a ghost-town even before the world had gone tits-up.  

I’d never let it show on my face, but from the moment we’d rolled in, the space between my stomach and sphincter had clenched and roiled like a bag of snakes. It came from knowing we had no other choice but here.  If there was no power to be found here, we’d have nowhere else to go.  A rescue, realistically, just wasn’t in the cards. 

The shit-serpents stilled a bit when they came into sight. Sat-com had been right. On the far side of town, sure as shit, we found a full row of solar panels.  Intact.  Dusty, sure, but still in one piece and with a powerbank sitting pretty on a full charge.  

Carmen had immediately set out to recon the town, while I’d hooked up Fanny’s feed cable and checked the status of our load.  Vitals still held steady.  Temperature was good, as were the atmospheric levels.  Everything was green across the board, squared away and five-by-five, but for one exception.  

We were heavy.

Some of it was purgeable, sure.  The water tanks and waste tanks would be emptied before loading.  All non-essential materials could be stuffed into a waste tank and jettisoned.  That was all SOP anyway . . . and, well, it might be enough.  

Might not.

Anyway, it didn't matter if we didn’t at least get there first.

I climbed down from the roof of the cab, while Carmen found herself a quiet corner in which to squat and piddle. Fanny sat fat and happy on her full batteries.  The sun still hung low enough on the horizon to cast long shadows, stretching and warping familiar silhouettes into fun house homunculi.  Single-story homes became wicked, spiraling towers. Dead trees reached like demon’s claws from the sulfur pits of Hell.  Picket fences became the spindly teeth of hidden dragons.  None of it was real.  Still, drawn and distorted as it was, I could see there was something wrong with Fanny’s shadow.  

There was a bulge on her that did not belong.

I strolled a wide circle around her side, already fairly certain what I’d find.  Sure enough, a damned fuzz had managed to creep up in the night and latch on while we’d slept.  It was a miracle I hadn’t seen him (her?) when I’d gotten up in the morning.  

If it’d been a snake, it would’ve bit me.  

I completed the circuit, to make sure it was alone.  When I was satisfied it was, I stored away Fanny’s hook-ups and then proceeded to scour the surrounding area for a branch, or pole.  Anything I could use to knock it loose without having to get too close.  Well clear of any bits that might break free when it crumbled.  

After a bit of cautious searching – not wanting to run into the rest of the fuzz’s former family – I scrounged up a length of rebar from a junk pile next to an abandoned Ag and Feed shop. A scrub oak was growing through a gaping hole in its roof.  The rebar was a good eight feet long, still mostly straight, and heavy enough to do some damage.  I carried it back to free my Fanny from the unwelcome clutches of the stranger.

From the shape, I’d say the fuzz had been a man before.  

An old man.  

Of course, this being the hard-scrabble of Texas, it could just as easily have been a scrawny, beef-jerky-muscle and rawhide-complexion panhandle Pammy.  Whatever it had been before, it was just a fuzz now.  The fine white and purple gossamers had spread to cover the entire body, grown to a length of four or five inches, obscuring all but the most general of features: arms, legs, torso and head.  Just like some cacti, it offered a soft and cuddly appearance which was horribly deceptive; each strand was as thin as a hair, and sharper than glass.  

A hypodermic needle with a gauge of just a few microns at its widest diameter. 

I judged this one to be two or three day’s growth.  Probably only two, since it had been ambulatory enough to make it over to Fanny and clamp on. The left arm gripped the driver’s side mirror mount.  I wondered briefly where it had been hiding, and what had brought it out in the first place.  Even if it had come from the closest building, it would have needed to start walking last night.  Likely, not long after we’d arrived.  

Attracted by the noise of our arrival? 

Maybe called over by the heat from Fanny’s bonnet?  

Who knew?  

And, at this late date, who cared?  

I couldn’t see any blossoms sprouting yet, so it was safe enough to give a whack and knock it loose. Gripping the rebar with both hands, I raised it high above my head and let gravity do most of the work.  I aimed close to the wrist.  When it shattered, I’d only have to pick off the smaller bits.  Coming down hard, the rusty iron snapped clean through the brittle remains below the delicate spiny crust of fuzz.  The hand, by now the tensile strength of fine china, disintegrated and rained tiny pieces to the ground below.  The rest came apart when it dropped to the ground.

The blossoms, I realized too late, must’ve been hidden just below the surface.  Ready to push through and burst. Instead I’d broken this one open like some demon pinata, sending a fine red cloud wafting up and out from the shattered pieces.  

Alarms pulsed away in my ear, and cool bitter air was puffing up my MOPP suit like a balloon.  

I’d misjudged my swing by a few inches and the tip of the rebar had screeched against sheet metal.  I let the rebar drop from my fingers and leaned back against Fanny’s fender, waiting for the blood – both his and mine– to settle.  

Fat Fanny – both the name of my rig and my spirit animal – was illustrated gloriously on both sides of the bonnet.  She was a fat ass with a fat ass.  Together, we’d been haulin’, kickin’, and tappin’ it for the better part of twenty years.  We’d worked in all forty-eight of the lower contiguous, and ventured both north and south of the border in the pursuit of making a living.  When I say we’d traveled a million miles together, it was an under rather than overstatement.  

She was the closest damn thing I had to a mate, as silly and sad as that may sound.

A three inch gash now gouged into Fanny’s flank, and all but severing her hind leg just below her rump. While I waited, I rubbed away at the scrape and tried to knock off any of the loose edges.

“Shit,” I mumbled.  “Sorry, pretty lady.  I’d tell you I’d make it right when this ‘ere trip is done, but I think we both know that’d be a lie.”

It took about ten minutes for air to clear enough to quiet the exterior sensors and silence the MOPPET’s alarm.   I siphoned off some waste water from the load tanks, and used it to spray down Fanny and the surrounding area.  It mixed with the pulverized fuzz to make a kind of red-velvet mud.

Those chores done,  I finally had a moment to wonder what had become of Carmen.

“Pinch it off, Sargent!” I called loud enough to be heard by all ears within a fifty foot radius.  “We gotta put some miles behind us today.”

I heard no response, so I thumbed the button at my throat to open the com-link and repeated the same thing verbatim, adding only, “I got no time to waste hearing about your hair, your nails, or your monthly.”

“Is the ETM secure?” Her voice was strained.

“”Course it is,” I said, making no effort to hide the indignity such a question implied.  “Squared away and ready to roll, as soon as my military escort gets ‘er shit together, so to speak.”

Normally, this would necessitate a minute or so of listing off all of the important duties she performed, while minimizing my actual driving of the truck.  Instead, she ignored me and asked, “Are we still running heavy?”

“Two more days on the road.  We’ll lose some weight ‘long the way,” I said, instinct telling me to soften my tone a bit. “Always do, y’know?.”

“Yeah,” she sounded tired.  “But, will it be enough?”

“Can’t say ‘til it happens,” I shrugged, though she couldn’t see it.  I waited for her to say something more, but the com was silent.  I was about to ask where she was when her voice came through again.

“How much?”

“Well . . .”

“Not counting the waste, the water, and the whatnot, how much are we over?”

“Just over 50 kilos.”

“Fuck,” she said with vehemence, though her voice was just above a whisper.  “What’s our average drop during transit?”

“‘bout half that,” I said, supplying her with the answer she already knew.

Again, I waited for her to break the silence, but after a minute, I spoke up again.  I tried to keep to my usual sunny disposition.

“Well, shit, not alotta we can do –”

“Cut the feeds,” she said, her voice cold.  “No more feeds until we hit weight.”

“Sarge,” I hesitated and then tried again.  “Carmen, you sure now?  There’s some little ones in there now. That might–”

“No more feeds,” she repeated.  “Not until we make weight.  Raise the internal temp too.  As high as you can within safety regs.  That ought to get us some shrinkage.”

“We are in Texas,” I reminded her.  “Even with the AC on full-blast, I can feel heat in Fanny’s cab once we get past noon.”

“Drop 50 kilos, you can freeze ‘em to your heart’s content.  Until then, my order stands.”

I didn’t like it, but I could see the logic of it.

I hated to admit she was likely right.  

I had many opinions on Sargent Carmen Villareal.  Her sense of humor was sporadic but bitchiness remained a constant. When she sang along with Fanny’s radio, she had the voice of an angel.  Her ass was too flat and her tits too small, but I could fall in love with those big brown eyes.  She had no real respect for the uniform, though truth be told I couldn’t decide if it was a mark for or against her.  I was certain, though: she knew her job and she did it well.  

If she felt cutting feeds was an acceptable risk, then I knew better than to argue.  

“You’ve got your orders,” her voice on the com was one I’d never heard before.  She sounded close to tears.  “Get rolling.”

“Sure, sure,” I said.  “See, though, it’s me that’s waiting on y’all to get back here.”

“Yeah,” she said, and then laughed without humor.  “About that . . .”

I never did find out how the devil got ahold of her.  

It was another fuzz.  Of course, it was.  This one, though, had already started springing up blood red blossoms all over its body.  Two big ones protruded from the left and right sides of the forehead, giving the appearance of horns.  He’d – or she’d, still no way to tell under all that fuzz – gotten hold of Carmen’s MOPPET on the left shoulder, just above the armpit.   I still don’t know why she didn’t call for help, instead of trying to handle the situation on her own. Not to say I believe that the outcome could have been much different.  

Maybe, it would have, but . . .

The drag lines in the dirt showed how far she’d come with the Devil dragging along, as if escorting her for a morning stroll along mainstreet.  She’d made it about eighty yards or so before those thin probing tendrils of fuzz were able to pierce the fabric of the MOPPET and cause a catastrophic seal failure.  

The fuzz had made it inside.

By the time I got there, a rash of black-heads and white-heads had already formed on Carmen’s cheek.  Where the needles hadn’t punctured, they’d dripped that deadly red dust across her bosom and back. Blossoms had burst as she had dragged the devil along, and her MOPPET was a powdery red all along her left side.  She had taken her sidearm out of the holster and had tossed it a few yards ahead of where she now stood.  

Except for the Texas road dust, it still looked clean.

“Goddamn!  I knew you’d still come.  You are one can-tank-erous bastard,”  she said, but smiled when she did.  “Never could follow an order, keep your eyes off my ass, or even try to hold in a fart.”

“In a fraggin’ MOPPET?  What’d be the point?”

“See what I mean?” she laughed.  “Irritating as you may be, I can always count on you to be you.”

She laughed through a sob, and then fixed her face to a stoic smile.  “And you, being the man that you are, would not refuse a lady’s last request. Right?”

“‘Course not,” I replied indignantly. “Why? There a lady ‘round here somewhere?”

 Her smile remained, but a tear broke free and ran through the bumpy rapids spreading on her face.  “Cantankerous bastard,” she said again.

I retrieved the gun from where it lay. 

As last-words went, she could’ve done worse.

I should have taken a few more steps back, because when she dropped, the devil went with her.  All of those bright red blossoms – each ready to burst their payload to the wind – split open wide when they hit the ground. I was immersed immediately in a scarlet fog.  The MOPPET’s alarms started freaking out just as they’d done before, but I started to become concerned when a warning light started flashing in my peripheral.

It read “filter.”  

I set out back toward Fanny at a quick walk, but half-way there I heard my circulation fan cut out.  The filter must have been a solid red brick by that point to choke out the airflow entirely.  I took a deep breath and ran.  The air inside the MOPPET was likely still good, but there just wasn’t that much of it.  

Two, maybe three good lungfuls.  

I took a second one when Fanny came into view, and I was able to hold onto that until I got to the waste water pump again.   The puddle which was tamping down the fuzz I’d demolished a short while ago had already started to dry.  No surprise in this part of the panhandle.  However, I didn’t see any powdery patches, even at the edge, so once I was clean I’d likely be safe enough to make a quick change.

Though words like “likely” and “safe” didn’t have much meaning in this world any more.

I took a third deep breath.  

It was like breathing in from a balloon I’d just filled, and my head started to get a little swimmy.  

Not much time.  

I soaked myself as thoroughly as I could and for as long as I dared, knowing that my next breath would have to come from the outside.  When my lungs began to burn, and the edges of my vision began to darken, I knew that I had pushed it as far as I could.  I dropped the hose and rotated the locking ring that sealed the helmet onto the rest of the MOPP suit. 

I took a breath.

Nothing I could do about it now.  Either I’d hosed off enough, and I’d be lucky, or there was still enough red in the air that I’d find a patch of fuzz had sprung up somewhere on my fertile flesh in the next one to twenty-four hours.  Still, there was no reason to push it.  I hustled to one of Fanny’s rear storage panels and twisted the worn chrome handle to pop the latch free.  Inside were three hermetically sealed packages cased in the baby-shit green plastic of which the Army has always been so fond.  Each was about the size of a small drinks cooler, and vacuum-sealed like a pound of ground coffee.  

Like everything produced for the military, it was clearly labeled in big, black, block lettering:
Mission Oriented Protective Protocol (MOPP): Extra-Terrestrial

I shed my old MOPPET like a snakeskin, and tore the seal on my new set of duds.  I will give Uncle Sam credit for one thing: he does try to make things user-friendly.  The MOPPET consisted of one large garment – like a mechanic’s coveralls, but made from some kind of carbon fiber that had a weave of less than a micron – with boots and gloves attached at the ends of the appropriate portions, a “zipper” that ran diagonally across the chest from left hip to right shoulder, a ring seal around the neck, and a helmet that locked into the ring.  All the filters, fans, decontamination chemicals, power supplies, all the little bells and whistles to make the thing work, were hidden neatly away within the lining.  

The only part that took any sort of skill was negotiating the “undergarment,” portion.  Like a clear-rubber hammock with leg holes, it vacuum molded itself around you when the suit was activated.  There was a system that allowed for waste to be expelled from the suit, basically long tubes with one way gaskets to prevent anything from coming in the front or back door.  However, if you didn’t take the time to line yourself up properly, you’d end up with a horrifyingly painful, skin-peeling rash from sitting in your own waste until your next suit change.  

It was not a mistake you made twice.

I stepped into the boots, and then ducked my head through the ring.  Left arm went in next, followed by the right, and then I sealed the “zipper” across the chest.  In reality, the interlocking teeth of the zipper would offer too many gaps to make the suit in any way effective, so it was actually a quick-curing epoxy.  A wax paper strip keeps apart in the package, but a quick rip of the paper and a careful line up of the two chemical strips creates an airtight seal within seconds.  

Of course, the exothermic reaction of the two chemicals bonding made it feel like you’d be left with a burn scar running like a seatbelt between your nipples, but there is just enough padding in the MOPPET so that the heat doesn’t leave any lasting marks.  Last step, the helmet, completes the seal with its own interlocking ring.  When it clicks into place, all the MOPPET's systems fire up and start running, filling the suit, and your lungs, with medicine-bitter air.

Beats the alternative, I suppose.

I decided that I’d had enough of Nazareth.  After a quick adjustment to the interior temperature of the cargo, I climbed up behind the wheel.

Fanny and I bid our good-byes and farewells to this picturesque little corner of Hell.

Route 62 led south out of Nazareth.  

Our original Primary route took us through Lubbock, by way of the Texas Army National Guard and the Texas Tech ROTC offices.  Specifically, the media and communications training facilities.  It had just undergone a multimillion dollar upgrade, all state of the art equipment, finishing mere weeks before the world had up and gone to shit.  When we departed Amarillo, the equipment still pinged back as being online.  Of course, sat-images still showed the 27 as being intact and passable.  

Which is to say, sometimes shit happens.

Our secondary was Odessa, and the US Army Reserves base there.  Maybe not as up to date as Lubbock, but it had the slight advantage of being accessible by intact roadways.  At least, it looked that way so far.  

About an hour down the road, some restless commotion started coming from the cargo.  The routine had been altered and it was not a welcome change.  The morning feed, a full day’s ration of food and water, had not been dispensed before we’d started moving.  If I had a way to still provide water, while holding back the food, I would have ignored that portion of Carmen’s final order without a second thought.  

Cantankerous Bastard, that’s me.  

Unfortunately, it all got dispensed at the same time and through the same mechanism.  If I’d thought she was in the wrong, I’d still have ignored the order, despite it being of the dying wish variety.  After all, I’m still a civvie and I have that luxury.  

The problem, still, was the weight.  

Cold Blooded as it was to starve ‘em, Carmen was right.  The numbers didn’t lie.  The math was the math and it didn’t matter if you were happy or miserable.  The weight had to come down.

After an hour, they settled down.

When it started to get hot, the commotion started up again.

They settled faster the second time.

We made Odessa before nightfall without any further excitement.

There was no solar array on the Army Reserve base, but there was a Bio-SNG jenny behind the administrative offices and the tank was still two-thirds full.  After twenty minutes of searching,  I found the right adapter in one of Fanny’s storage panels.  I got her hooked up and charging for the night.  

The generator powered up the building as well, so I went inside and found the com center.  Normally, this would be Carmen’s duty while I restocked our supplies.  I’d seen what she’d done several times, though I’d never had to do it myself.  

I sat myself at the terminal and accessed the menus as best I could remember.  I guess my memory was pretty good, because after a few minutes three dots appeared on screen, pulsing in a short ordered sequence from left to right, just below one word: connecting.

A video window popped open and a small white dot lit up at the top of the monitor, indicating that my camera was active as well.  A clean-shaven young man in a bit-mapped jungle foliage uniform appeared on the screen.  I thought of pointing out that he was currently 200 miles above the closest tree in which those fatigues would be useful.  Then again, he was clean, safe, and – to my knowledge – hadn’t put a bullet in a friend today, so who the hell was I to judge?

“Where is Sarget Villareal?” he asked.

I knew I was being recorded, and this would go into Carmen’s file.  Besides, she had family up there.  Least I could do was play it straight.  I tried my best to sound like her.

“Sargent Villareal intercepted a hostile vector before it could attempt contamination of the payload.  She was successful in her efforts to prevent said contamination, but her protective gear was damaged in the process.  She was exposed and rapidly became symptomatic.  Sargent Villareal followed established protocol to prevent further spread.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie.  “Established protocol” meant you killed the carrier before they turned full fuzz.  Like a good soldier, she was supposed to turn the gun on herself.  Of course, in a way, she had.  

She’d just used me to pull the trigger.  

“Wait one.”  The audio from the com link went silent, but the face on the screen continued to speak.  From his lips, I could see he was relaying my message.  I think he may have thrown in a couple of adjectives and phrases like “act of extreme bravery and heroism.”  It was an official report, after all.  Maybe Carmen will get a medal out of it.  She won’t care, of course, but if she still has family alive up there, it might be a nice way to set her apart on the wall of the dead.

I heard the hollow hiss of the audio cutting back in.  “Proceed,” the young man commanded.

“Uh-huh, well,” I cleared my throat.  “Made it to Odessa.  The 27 is completely gone, by the way.  ‘Bout twenty miles north of Lubbock.”

I paused here, anticipating another “wait one,” while he updated information and re-routed other crews.  It must have been old news, because he just stared at me and waited for me to continue.

“Right, so, I’ll charge here overnight, and should arrive at the payload destination by midday tomorrow.”

“Wait one.”

I waited, but I was starting to get fidgety.  The building looked mostly intact and, from the layers of dust on everything, had been largely untouched for several months.  It was a small installation, likely evac’d early to a larger base.  If I was lucky, they’d gone when these were still “temporary measures” and wouldn’t have thought it strange to leave a full stock of supplies behind, knowing they’d be coming back soon enough.  

With the generator running, I might even be able to get a hot shower.

“Oxygen saturation 19.5%, relative humidity 5%, filters 32% of capacity, feeds 80% expended, temperature at 120% of normal.  Total payload 6036 kilos,” I rattled the last one off in the same monotone, but it didn’t slip past.

“You’re heavy.”

“Sargent Villareal’s final order was to cut the feeds. At the time, the order was to stand until we dropped 50 kilos,” I replied. “We’re down sixteen kilos from this morning.  Temp is up, humidity is down, and no more food is going in.  There may be some loss to payload, but the Sargent felt it would be within acceptable limits.  Target weight should be achieved before we reach Van Horn.”

“Wait one.”

I was beginning to reach the limit of my polite conversation.  Either we’d drop enough weight or we wouldn’t.  He could come back on in a moment and order me to resume feeds immediately, and I could smile and nod, or I could give him the finger, and either way the result would be the same.  

There would be no more feeds until we dropped 50 kilos.

And, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

“Command agrees with Sargent Villareal’s assessment.”  

Well, whoop-dee-doo.  

“Resume transit as soon as vehicle charging is complete.  Optimal window for payload delivery is 15:00 hours tomorrow.”

“I’ll leave at first light,” I said.  “It’s only a couple more hours to our destination, I need to get some sleep, and it won’t do anybody any good if I can’t see another road washout because it’s dark.”

“Wait one.”

I got up and walked away from the terminal.  

As I’d hoped, I found a storage room cornucopia.  I restocked Fanny’s holds to capacity with MREs, MOPPETs, and I even found a cheap pocket hard-drive with eight terabytes of movies and music.  It also had about eight years of bank records and wedding photos for a PFC Daphne Brigham Cooper.  Her musical taste held a love for K-pop which I didn’t share, but I spotted some movie titles that I’d always meant to watch but never did. 

There was also a folder marked “Honeymoon,” that I’d enjoy exploring later on.

Never did get a shower, though.  By the time I’d packed Fanny full-to-bursting, I’d run completely out of steam.  I found a comfortable-enough couch in the CO’s office,  locked the door behind me, and made myself dead to the world for a few hours.

I’d like to say I dreamt of Carmen, and that she’d been happy.  That she was pleased to have been freed from this dying world and released from her duty to it.  I didn’t, though.  I dreamt I was in an apartment I had in my early twenties, ‘cept there the hallway was longer than any one-bedroom could hold, lined with more doors than it had any right to have, and God help me I was desperate to take a dump . . .

When I woke, I discovered I needed a new MOPPET.

I should have shut off the lights and other power-draws before I went down for the count.  I didn’t, so as a result I awoke to darkness and silence.  Synth-gas –  a methane biofuel – burns clean and leaves a zero-sum impact on the environment, but it surely does burn fast.  I made my way from memory best I could.  On my way through the darkness, I only tripped over two chairs before locating the back door of the building.  

I shed my soiled skin and left it where it fell.  From my replenished stores, I managed a clean up and a quick meal before sealing myself away in a fresh suit.

Fanny’s charge read three-quarters full.  With the additional drain of the payload container, that would give me a range of only around two hundred miles.  

Enough.  

At least, it was enough to get there.

I had my hand on Fanny’s door handle, ready to swing up into the pilot’s seat and set this rig to rollin’, when I heard a sound I thought I’d never hear again.  From the direction of the officer’s housing, I heard the low mournful wail of a hound dog howling at the moon.

“No gahddamn way!” I mumbled.  

All thoughts of delivery windows, duty, or even basic human decency were forgotten.   

Somewhere on this base was a dog.  

An honest to god, living, non-fuzzed dog.  

If it wasn’t infected, it was sure as shit coming with me.

Out of the building, the moon provided enough light for my eyes to adjust.  I could make out a large modern-colonial abomination of a home, which had to be where the CO had hung his hat at the end of the day.  If anyone on this base were able to “allocate” enough meds, food, and protective gear to keep a dog alive, when so many humans were rotting where they fell, it had to have been the CO.

There was a mailbox at the foot of the driveway, reading Col. Hester, and I doubted that a reserve base of this size would have rated any rank higher than a full-bird colonel.  The dog must have heard my approach, because his lonely howl gave way to excited barking.  

It was coming from the rear of the house.

The colonel must have been stationed here for quite some time.  He had opted to invest a considerable amount of his limited paycheck into an in-ground swimming pool, enclosed in a frosted glass greenhouse-like structure.  A sizable gamble on a property that you might be ordered to leave at any time.   

The house gave the quiet stillness that only comes from a building with no occupants, not even sleeping ones.  No doubt, if I were to go inside, I’d find at least one patch of dried and crumbling fuzz in a room dusted in red spores.  No need to confirm it, though.  

I’d seen that plenty of times.

I found a side door to the pool’s hot-house enclosure, and as I approached two big paws thumped up against the glass in eager anticipation.  I reached for the handle, but then hesitated.

The hound didn’t sound infected, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get infected.  At the moment, he was in a clean-room of sorts.  The cracks and seams of the glass had been caulked to keep the dry desert and the West Texas sun from whisking away the pool through evaporation.  Over the course of a few years, the building had probably paid for itself in terms of water cost.  However, that same closed-environment seal was what had kept the dog alive this long.  If I brought it outside, without any form of protection, it was just a matter of time before it too would turn fuzz.

I turned and hustled back toward the front of the house.  The hound started up his sad howls again when he heard my feet going in the wrong direction.  Hopefully, he’d forgive me if what I had in mind worked.  

It was a long shot, though, and I knew it.  

When the first fuzz first popped up in Jamshedpur, it didn’t take long to find the origin.  Hell, we’d practically been begging for this for some time.  We knew we’d find life out there eventually.  Hell, we’d been making movies to that effect for well over a century.  Some were friendly.  Most were not.  Still, when it did come it was a surprise.  

We just didn’t think we’d find it quite so close to home.  

Why would we?  Industry had been mining asteroids for close to twenty years, and hadn’t found anything other than the expected rocks and minerals in all that time.  Hell, at its base, the fuzz was just another mineral.

The governments, of course, were sure they could contain it.  

Then, of course, they blamed each other for not containing it.

At least, though, they were certain they could kill it.

Well, undoubtedly, they could protect us against it.

Well, now, aren’t we glad they invested so much of our money in the space program when they did?

After all, it led us to our best course of action: run away from it.

The problem, as it turned out, came from trying to think of it in terms of what we already knew.  It looked sort of like a fungus, so we attacked it like a fungus.  Of course, it being an entirely alien form of life, just because it looked like something Earthly, didn’t mean it responded the same.  

As a species, we’d been able to suss out that it was a silicon-based form of life.  It functioned a little like coral, but not really.  The little red motes it puffed into the giant red clouds, like the spores of a fungus, looked a bit like squids when viewed under a microscope, but acted more like a cockleburr.  They’d cling onto something soft and then burrow on in.  If they landed on the skin, and you caught on quick, you might be able to pop ‘em out like a pimple.  Once they got in deep, though . . .

Well, silicon is one of those things which we knew was in the human body, but didn’t quite know what it did.  It seemed to be necessary for bones, ligaments, and tendons, but its various forms, like silica, caused all sorts of lung diseases and cancers.  The fuzz, when it got in, did what any living creature did: it ate and it multiplied.  It seemed to like warm bodies, more than cold-blooded creatures, but I’d seen a fuzzed out turtle shell one time.

Dogs too. I’d seen plenty of fuzzed dogs..

However, during that phase between looking for a cure and abandoning spaceship Earth, there was a period of time when a large amount of money and effort went into trying to live safely amongst the fuzz.  The MOPPET was adapted technology from that strange period of time.  There were many civilian capitalists as well that sought to cash in on people’s fear.  I remembered one infomercial in particular.

It was, in essence, a MOPPET for dogs.

I searched the garage and then ventured, against all better judgment, into the house proper.  I found the expected fuzz in the upstairs bathroom, but closed the door quick enough to prevent all but the smallest puff of red from floating out.  There were bedrooms for children, three girls based on the decor, but dresser drawers had been pulled from each, and sat stacked, empty, on the three empty beds.  The Colonel’s missus had taken the girls and fled.  If they were lucky, they’d made it safely up into orbit.  If not, they were drifting somewhere in the wind down here with me, but not in this house, thank God.  

Despite my best searching, the Colonel had either never purchased the MOPPETs for his dog, or had used them up before sequestering the pooch in the pool house.  

No matter.  I was pretty sure I could make something work.   

The sun was starting to rise by the time I returned to the colonel’s pool house.  The dog's big paw prints were again plastered against the frosted glass in anticipation.  I shifted the cardboard box in my hands to be held under one arm, and blocked where the door would open with my body to prevent him from getting past me.  I hoped he wouldn’t bite me, but even if he did I don’t think it would have slowed me down at all.  

I was too excited to care.

My hopes were shattered when I got a good look at him.  He, or rather she, was a tawny brown bloodhound, but her hazel colored fur was coated in red from muzzle to chest.  No fuzz was apparent yet, but with that saturation around the mouth and nose, the first of the gossamer strands were sure to be coming soon.  

I thought of the layers of dust in the colonel’s office.  I wondered: why now?  If she had survived this long, had made it this far into the apocalypse unscathed, then how did that hellish red shit find its way in now?  

I looked around for a broken panel of glass, or another door that had maybe settled on its hinges enough to allow a gap at the top.   What I found filled my heart with both relief and sadness.

The colonel had been dead for some time, apparently.  He had been keeping his dogs – there had been four of them it seemed – in his pool enclosure.  I could see the remains of three large bags of dog food, all of which had been chewed open and every last kibble devoured.  There were also the remains of three large dogs.  

All of which had been chewed open and devoured.

This pretty little lady was the last one standing.

I figured she’d be hungry, so I’d brought a few MRE’s as well.  She made short work of all that I put before her, and then licked my gloved hand in thanks.   

When she’d finished, I cleaned her up with the pool water as best I could, and dried her off with a chlorine-stiffened beach towel which had been left draped over a plastic lounge chair.  She stepped into the cut off arms and legs of the MOPPET easily enough, and waited patiently still while I held the chemical seal away from her fur for it to cure.  I removed her collar so the tag – which read, “Jacqueline” – wouldn’t get caught on or bang against the helmet.  

I thought she might struggle when I tried to put the human-sized headgear on her, but she only tried to back away once before resigning herself to the indignity.  Wide thick rubber bands, from the Colonel’s home office, and duct tape from his garage, I fastened the cut sleeves and pants tight around her legs, and held make-shift shoes – just patches of cut MOPPET cloth – over her paws.  At every seam, I layered on the duct tape.  It wasn’t perfect, and there were numerous places where the fuzz could creep in, but it was the best I could do.  

It was certainly a better chance of survival than leaving her here.

I’d pictured her riding by my side for the rest of the trip, figuring I could keep her safe for at least that long.  She would ride up beside me, filling Carmen’s vacant seat.  She could take her place and listen to me prattle on about whatever happened to come to mind during the drive.   

Jacqueline, it seemed, had other plans.

She was gone as soon as I opened the door, her four feet carrying her away at a far faster pace than I could manage.  I couldn’t even track her progress once she had rounded the corner of the house.  

I’d like to think she made it to safety somewhere.

Still, if she knew a place on the planet that was still safe, then I wish she’d shared it with me too.

I made it back to Fanny and took off out of Odessa like a cannonball, the sun casting our shadow long on the empty highway ahead of us.

Van Horn, very briefly, had been a central stronghold for one of the superpowers when the space-race fell to the private sector.  

In America, three mega-billionaires did their best impressions of the Astronauts and Cosmonauts of the 1960’s, and spent ludicrous amounts of money to one-up each other.  They’d spare no expense to out-do the records of the others, all the while completely ignoring the rest of the world.  Some took actors with them from fictional space adventures.  Another launched an enormous toy car, complete with a driver.  Another built an orbiting space hotel for the ultra-rich elite.

NASA just couldn’t keep up.

However, when a small Australian start-up became the first to successfully mine an asteroid, it made the company’s founders amongst the richest ten individuals literally overnight.  It also plunged the world into a near economic meltdown when the price of platinum, gold, iron, nickel, and palladium all plunged to 1/1000th  of their previous day’s price because the Aussies had flooded the market with all they had brought home.  

The previous big three had decided to expand their view.  

With raw materials no longer a concern, a new age of exploration dawned.,  Rather than countries racing to plant their flags, corporations moved as fast as they could to stamp their brand on the rest of the galaxy.  

Orbiting corporate platforms – cities, countries really – were created.  

The farming platforms came first, and just like that: world hunger was a memory.  Poverty was annihilated soon after, because there was no shortage of work – on Earth or in orbit– when the factories started-up in earnest.  Enormous space platforms for the construction and launching of interplanetary colony stations, as well as interstellar generational ships.  

Christ, it all happened so fast.

It was still early days for all of it, when the fuzz first hit Earth, but luckily the framework – the factories to make it happen – were there.  

“Thank God,” it was repeated on many evening news reports, “for the Corporate Sector.” 

 Sure, they’d actually brought Armageddon down upon us with their ravenous greed, but they would also save humanity from the horrors they had wrought.  Maybe 5% of the population had already been sent out, ready to spend the rest of their lives orbiting Mars and mining asteroids.   To build terraforming colonies on any surface that could be made habitable one day.  

Another 10%, at least, were going to spend the rest of their lives on a ship, having and raising babies, who would have and raise babies, who would have and raise babies, who might have a chance to see another star up close before they died.  

“No matter what happened with the fuzz,” those of us still on Earth were told, “we could take comfort in the fact that humanity would survive.”

Suffice to say, few of us still on Earth breathed a sigh of relief.

As the fuzz spread, the one resource that we thought we’d never run out of, people, became a scarce commodity in the span of months.  

The corporations did what they always do; they bribed the government to help them to corner the market.  

Martial law was declared, and the uninfested were placed in containment.  They were told it was for their protection.  From there, they were herded into specialized cargo containers - emergency transportation modules, like the one currently being carried by Fat Fanny – which were loaded into the cargo bay of the shipping rockets regularly employed for moving commodities between the Earth and their overlords in the sky.  

The goods were delivered to whichever corporation sponsored that particular launch.  

They didn’t even care who they got.  Old, young, man, woman, tall, short, fat, thin, it didn’t matter.  Provided they were healthy, then they were valuable.  When they packed them into the ETM’s, they didn’t even bother to count how many went aboard.  They were measured the same way that commodities have been measured for centuries.

Weight.

An ETM has a maximum attainable launch limit of 6000 kilograms.  Any more, and the fuel will run out before orbit is achieved, and the whole thing will come back down, burning like a matchstick, until it’s smashed into the surface by gravity.  Even one kilogram over, and the automated systems would scrub the launch.

Once the system was set up, functioning with only minimal flaws, the Government did what it did best: took credit.  

They declared eminent domain and took over the whole thing.  

Corporate logos were painted over with flags and emblems.  International borders and sabre-rattling went right up into orbit as well.  I remember watching as one of the early flotillas of Chinese rockets, launched – not bothing first to check orbital traffic or flight-paths – and single-handedly wiped out the nation of New Zealand.  Knocked the whole remaining populace out of orbit.  An entire people burned up on re-entry, leaving only the kiwi’s, the hobbit holes, and the town with the longest name in the world to remember them by.

China did apologize, but no one was really sure who they were apologizing to.

I was thinking about the fireball New Zealand made as we cruised straight through the skeletal remains of Van Horn, and to the corporate launch pad on the outskirts of town.   I hadn’t been close enough to appreciate it properly.  It didn’t look like the destruction of an entire culture.  To me, it could have been eclipsed by a quarter.  

The ETM behind me was significantly smaller.  However, if it was still too heavy, and if I was able to somehow override and launch anyway (as I intended to do, if it came down to it), its potential fireball would be a hell of a lot bigger.  At least, it would be from my perspective.  

I’d be standing directly under it after all.

When viewed from above, the Van Horn launch pad was a huge concrete nipple standing hard on the leather-tanned flesh of the desert.  If I were to continue with that metaphor, I suppose I’d have to say that Van Horn’s nipple was into some kinky shit.  At the edges of the areola, a dozen spikes stuck out like some BDSM accoutrement, and a long waxy glob of white seemed to drip down the northernmost point.  

I guided Fat Fanny straight across the tarmac to the north tower.  At the base, about thirty feet out, an angled gantry led up to the cargo hold of the rocket.  The system was totally automated, provided that it still had power.  I’d line up Fanny’s rear-end and back it up gently until I felt/heard the click.  Then the ETM would be winched free from my ride, sent up the inclined gantry, and then onward to points beyond.

Once I felt/heard that click, it would be all out of my hands. 

Twenty feet short of the locking point, I made a u-turn, lined up, and then put Fanny in park.  I climbed down and dragged my feet toward the rear, my heart sinking as I approached.

6022 kilograms.

I checked the time.  1:32 PM.  The launch window was just over two hours away and God only knew when the next one would be.  Protocol said that if the launch window was missed, I was to return the ETM to our point of origin, and the process would begin again.  

Separation into clean rooms, quarantine for 48 hours, weighed, and loaded into an ETM until maximum weight is reached.  

All of this happened before, but either someone outside did the math wrong, or someone inside snuck a load of contraband aboard.  Either possibility was just as likely.  

It didn’t change the fact that I didn’t see any spare ETM’s in Amarillo.  

We were scraping the bottom of the barrel now.  Just going through the motions.  If there were people and ETM’s and rockets, sure, we’ll do what we’re supposed to do and put them all together.  No one, though, was breaking their back to keep making more.  As was apparent at this empty launchpad, on the western edge of the middle-of-nowhere, rockets and ETM’s were nearly used up.  The military was bugging out and heading upstairs on their own equipment. 

No, this load was getting out today, or not at all.

Which made what came next a lot easier to put into perspective.  

I double-tapped a small icon on the corner of the screen, cleared my throat to get their attention, and then layed on the charm.

“One of you is too gahddamn fat,” I said.  “The weight is over by 22 kilos, which means y’aller too heavy to launch.  Now, I tried to skinny y’all up fast over the last two days, but my guess is that one-ah you sneaky sumbitches smuggled your own goodies aboard and been stuffing his or her face while everyone else starved.  If that’s the case, then what comes next should be easy for the rest of y’all.

“On the front wall, inside the med-case – the one with the big red cross on it – is an emergency surgical kit.  There’ll be novacaine pens, and a self-cauterizing amputation saw.  Now, be careful with that.  It’ll get purty near to white hot.  A human leg makes up about 10 percent of a person’s body weight.  If you’ve got someone in there past or pushing four-hundred pounds, then you can probably get away with taking off just one leg.  If not, you’d better take off both. Cut below the femoral artery which y’all’ll find to the front of the fattest ass you’ve got in there.  Drop the leftovers down into the waste tank, and they’ll purge along with everything else.  If you understand, pound once.”
The intercom only worked one way.  

A distinct, single thump answered from inside.  

“Pound twice when it’s done.”  

I double tapped the icon again and shut off the mic.

After about a minute, I could hear a bit of struggle from inside.  The ETM rocked enough to make Fanny sway a bit on her springs from side to side.  Not for long though.  Soon enough, they knocked again.  

Twice.

I double tapped the icon again. “Now, are you certain that was enough?  Once I drop that waste tank, that’ll be it.  The weight’ll be the weight.  If y’all still too heavy, y’all ain’t going nowhere.”

One knock.

“You’re sure now?”

One knock.

“Stand by,” I said, and closed the mic once more.  I walked around to the passenger side and moved my way up the side of the ETM.  When I reached the halfway point, I squatted down to peer up at its base.  

A white rectangle of mostly opaque plastic was mounted flush with the bottom.  The nauseating movement of liquid and solid waste could barely be seen through the plastic, but it could be seen.  For a moment, I thought I saw a hand press flat against the wall of the tank, but it could also have been a wad of toilet paper.

 Next to the waste tank was a handle.  I cranked the handle down toward the ground, and the whole tank moved down by about an inch.  I repeated the motion, and it came down a second inch.  It took about six more repetitions before the whole tank dropped free, landing with a rancid splash.

When her head popped out of the hole on the top, I nearly shat myself and died on the spot.

“No goddamn way,” I whispered.  

She said nothing, but she took a great big whooping breath of fresh air.  Then, she began to work her way free of the tank.  It was a tight fit, but she was a skinny little thing.  Maybe nine or ten years old.  Her eyes might be asian, but I couldn’t get a good read on skin tone since she was entirely covered in liquid shit.  She was also completely and totally exposed, now that she was in the non-filtered air outside of the EMT.

“I’ll be right back,” I told her, and then ran for a fresh MOPPET.  

On the way, I passed the readout of the vitals:  5,998 kg.

They might be some cold-hearted sonsofbitches, shoving a whole girl into a chemical toilet, but they’d made the weight.  

I grabbed a MOPPET, a half-full bottle of window cleaner, and a roll of paper towels.  When I made it back to her, she had emerged, soiled but unharmed, from the tank.  I offered what I could, and she accepted the items in silence.  Not rude, or ungrateful, but stunned by what had just occurred.  In shock.

She began to strip off her soiled clothes, so I walked back up the side to give her a bit of privacy.

I double-tapped the microphone.

“Do y’all care if she’s alive or not?”

Knock.

“She is.  She got family in there?”

Knock. Knock.

“Figured as much.  Alright, then.  Y’all best settle in and get secured.  Congrats: you made weight.  I’ll get you loaded on the rocket, and then it's out of my hands.  Safe travels.”

Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock.

“Alright, I’m still here.  You got a question?”

Knock.

“Well, I’m not sure how you’re going to ask it.  I never learned morse, even if you did.  Is it about when you leave?”

Knock. Knock.

“Is it about the girl?”

Knock.

“Huh, well,” I scratched my head and pondered for a minute.  “Well, I can answer the things I’d be wondering if I was in your position.  She’s okay for now.  I got her in a MOPPET, and I’ve got plenty of rations for us both.  I’ll do my best to look after her and whatnot, for what that’s worth.  Will she get ‘nother transport?  I honestly don’t know.  Probably not, is what my gut is telling me.”

I paused and thought a little more, considered being kind, and then decided to go ahead and be myself.

“So, did y’all just doom a little girl to save your own asses?  Yeah, you probably did.  I’ll keep her alive as long as I can, but . . . yeah, you did.  That ‘bout cover it?”

No knock came, so I guess it did.  I put a fist into the screen and snapped a spider web of cracks into the plastic.  

“I hope you’re dressed,” I called, “‘cause I’m coming on back, ‘kay?”

“‘Kay,” a timid voice spoke into my ear through the com.  Well, she had the helmet on now at least.  I turned the corner at the tail end, and she was safely sealed away inside her MOPPET.  

“What’s your name, hon?”

“Anna,” she said.  “Anna Li.”

“Can I call you Anna?”

“That’s what Luke called me,” she said.  

“Luke?”  She looked at the ETM.  “Was Luke the one that, well, was Luke the one?”

She nodded.

“Well then, what about Annie? Can I call you Annie?”

“‘Kay,”

“Alright, Annie, I’ve got to finish up here,” I said, and pointed to the ETM.  “You want to ride in the truck with me?  You can help me kick Luke off our planet.”

“‘Kay.”

Once again, things went pretty quick.  The ETM locked smoothly into position, and was whisked away up the gantry.  It locked into place on the rocket, and at approximately four o’clock that afternoon, a warning siren began to wail.  Annie and I had already backed Fanny away to a safe distance, next to a lone solar panel which was slowly bringing her batteries up to full charge.  The siren gave way to an automated ten second countdown, at the end of which the last of the Van Horn rockets lifted off, seemingly without any effort at all.  We waited for the smoke to clear, and then broke out some of the MRE’s I had liberated from Odessa.

After dinner, we fell asleep in the cab as the stars came out.  So many of them seemed to move now.

It took until noon the next day for Fanny to have drunk her fill.  Thankfully, by that time, I had figured out what to do with young Annie.

“Have you ever had your own dog?” I asked.

“No,” she replied, but with a touch of hope that I had not heard the day before.

“I found one a couple of days ago,”  I said.  “It ran off, but I bet we could track it down.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I assured her.  “No kid should have to grow up without a dog.”

She settled her small frame into the seat, and I steered Fanny back toward Odessa and what might be the last living dog on Earth.  I don’t know how long this would keep her occupied, or even if I could keep her alive and uninfested, even if we had an endless supply of MOPPETs.  Which we didn’t.  Or an endless supply of safe food.  Water.  Medicine.  Even if I can keep her alive, what kind of future can she expect?

Less than 60 pounds dropped into my life, but it suddenly felt like the weight of the world.

And you, you bastards, you put the load right on me.