On the morning of July 21, John Wilks Booth stood at the window of his rented room and looked out over the vast expanse of Washington, D.C. Off in the distance, a few fires raged, pouring black smoke into the white, clouded sky; here, however, closer to the federal district, things seemed eerily normal, save for the high number of troops. Horse-drawn carriages ambled down the cobblestone streets; ladies in fashionable dresses strolled the narrow sidewalks with their men; children played rambunctious games of cops and robbers, and a boy hawked newspapers on the corner. The only evidence that anything was amiss (aside from the aforementioned troops and fires, that is) was that everyone was wearing a medical mask.
Booth had come into the city from Philadelphia the previous day. He had a part in an upcoming play at Ford's Theater but had he not, he would have left anyway, for things were becoming flaky in Philadelphia. Aside from the plague, a group of red-hat wearing fascists had stormed and occupied the statehouse and black-masked communists were looting and burning everything in sight. Certainly, Washington would be better off.
So far, that seemed to be the case...but only just.
With a little sigh, Booth left the window. The room was sparse and dim: a straw cot sat against the far wall under a painting of Catholic Jesus, a desk and chair huddled in a corner, and a bureau stood proudly near the door. Booth pulled the chair out, sat, and turned up the gas lamp, filling the room with flickering light, dispelling the clinging shadows. He took a crisp sheet of paper from his stack, dipped his quill in a jar of ink, and began to write, his strokes long and flowery:
7/21/69: I've not much to report to you, dear journal, for the day has just begun; my boots are freshly laced and my face is still in want of a shave. I intend to talk to Philips at the soonest. Hopefully he will have some word on whether the play is still going on. Some public places are closed, but curiously theaters and brothels seem to be exempt.
That was all for now. Booth sat the paper aside and went to go shave. He was a thin man, and kept his mustache neatly trimmed; otherwise, he was clean shaven. As an actor, it helped to look manly but civilized, unlike that awful Seth MacFarland; The whole reason he wrote plays now instead of starring in them was because he refused, simply refused, to crop his hippy-like beard. Booth had no intention of being banished from the stage, not now and not ever. Not by man, and certainly not by plague.
After running a razor over his cheeks, Booth threw on a topcoat and stepped into the murky hall. An old Negro was sweeping.
"Good morning, sir; nice weather, eh?"
"Yes," Booth replied tightly, "it is. Have you read the morning paper, perchance?"
The nigger nodded happily. "Yes, sir, I sure have. 40,000 more dead."
"War or plague?"
"Plague," the nygrow said. "That's the ones they know about." He winked. "Whole villages are deserted now. They say New York's as dead as shit."
"Hmmm. Well, then, hopefully those inoculations will be ready soon."
The newgruh laughed. "They had something about that in the paper too. General Grant was just joking about those. There ain't nothin' gonna help us."
"Seems a rather cruel joke," Booth remarked.
The neygruoh smiled. "I think it's called sarcasm, sir. Don't nobody know how to tell sarcasm from truth anymore."
"Yes. Well, if you'll excuse me..."
"Sure thing, sir."
Booth left the n-word to his work. On the stairs, he was accosted by Timmions Sape, a boorish little fellow he had met the day before. "Howzit goin, Boothie?"
"Quite good. I'm actually headed out at the moment."
Sape's doughy face fell. "Oh, too bad. I was hopin to have you over for a beer and a joint. Welcome you to the building."
"Yes, well, that sounds splendid. I'll be sure to stop in when I return."
Sape nodded. "Alrighty then. See ya later, Boothster."
I detest that man already, Booth thought as he stepped out the door.
The walk to the theater was a long, meandering one. Booth stopped off in several shops specializing in antiques (a hobby of his) and grabbed a bite to eat from McDonalds. While slowly savoring his Egg McMuffin in the dining room, he was approached by a teenaged girl with braces. "Mister Booth, can I have your autograph?"
She was a pretty young thing, clad in a simple white dress, her auburn hair flowing over her thin shoulders.
"Of course, dear," Booth smiled. "To whom shall I sign it?"
"Sarah," the girl blushed.
"To Sarah," he said as he wrote on a napkin, "the most lovely creature I've seen all day. Signed, J. Wilks Booth."
She giggled.
"You know, I'm staying in town for a few weeks, doing a show over at Ford's. Why don't you give me your number? I could use a local guide; it's been forever since I've been to D.C."
"Okay!" Sarah nearly squealed. "Do you have a cellphone?"
He did. He took down her number and promised to call her as soon as he was available.
He didn't need a guide and he did not plan on calling her, but what else was one to say in such a situation? He wished to avoid unpleasantness and confrontation where he could.
After finishing his sandwich, he left and strode down T Street past high brownstones and well-appointed townhouses. There weren't as many people out and about as usual, and a few troop transports lumbered down the street, their big tires thumping on the cobblestones. A man in a robe and sandals walked along the opposite side of the street ringing a little bell. "Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!"
Booth shivered.
The theater was close to River Park. As he came upon it, he read the now dark marquee: OUR HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR STREET, STARING JOHN WILKS BOOTH, JULY 25-AUGUST 15.
Booth smiled to himself. It had been awhile since he had shad a starring role. About time he jump started his career.
He paused at the box office, but found it empty, a note tacked to the glass: THEATER CLOSED BY ORDER OF HEALTH DEPARTMENT.
His stomach lurched. No!
Stricken, he pulled out his cellphone and called Philips. It rang and rang. Finally, he answered.
"Yo."
"Mr. Philips, this is John Wilks Booth."
"Booth! Hello!"
"I'm standing outside of the theater right now, and it appears to be closed."
"Oh, yeah, it is."
Booth jerked. "Mr. Philips! T-t-t-t-t-his cannot be! I haven't had a starring role since-since-since..."
"Hey, man, I'm sorry," Philips said, "but the man shut us down. Said we can't hold any more shows until this plague thing clears up."
"That may take months! Or even years! Listen, Mr. Philips, this is my career..."
"Yeah, I know, mine too. You think I'm happy about it?"
Booth started to tear up. "Please, Mr. Philips..."
But Philips got pissy. "Are you crying? Are you fucking crying? Booth...you gotta be kidding me. What a bitch! Listen, Glenn Beck, call me back later. If I'm in a good mood, I might let you in on some underground work I got planned. Until then..."
Philips hung up.
Booth fell to his knees and wailed. This was the worst thing to ever happen ever. Nothing could compare. Not the plague, not the war, nothing.
Lost in mourning, Booth ripped his shirt.
Later, after he had composed himself, Booth dragged himself back down the street and found a little hole in the wall that served cheap drinks. Inside, it was dim and dank, the yeasty smell of beer and the odor of vomit heavy on the air. A few men in working-class clothes sat along the bar. Booth joined their numbers.
The bartender, a beefy man with a ponytail, came over and flashed a fake grin. "What'll it be, friend?"
"Something strong," Booth said miserably, "I just want to forget everything." He covered his face in dejection.
"Okay. Three-fifty."
Booth forced himself to pay the man, and then took the mason jar he offered; it was filled with a clear liquid.
"Can't get much stronger than that."
"Thank you," Booth sniffed.
The bartender just stood there, grinning like a fool. "Say, you're kinda familiar..."
"Do you watch gay porn?"
He left him alone after that. Ha. Worked every time.
Booth took a sip of the liquor, and nearly jumped up. It burned his throat, seared his esophagus, and exploded in his stomach. Hot God, that was powerful stuff!
Two drinks later, Booth was giddy. Four, he was stupidly grinning.
Unfortunately, however, he wound up dropping his phone into the toilet in the bathroom. At first, this struck him as funny, and he laughed until he wept. But as the realization that his phone was gone for all times sank in, he began to cry.
The next morning, Booth woke in a dreary mood. His show was canceled, his phone was dead, he had nothing to live for.
Close to tears, Booth fumbled in his pockets and found the phone. When he opened it, he was surprised to find that it wasn't, in fact, dead, but very much alive.
"It's a miracle!" he cried, sitting up.
For most of the morning, Booth remained in bed, playing with his phone, so happy to have it back he occasionally kissed it (toilet water forgotten).
By noon, he was feeling rather hungry and restless, so he threw on an overcoat and went for a walk. He remained chipper for the most part, but became sullen whenever he passed an open store or restaurant.
I see they're open today. Apparently plague germs make their homes exclusively in theaters.
The injustice of it enraged him so much at one point that he shook, a keg of gun powder ready to explode.
I ought to burn down every building I see with an open sign. Show them what happens when they shaft me out of a show!
But he didn't, and he wouldn't.
Around lunchtime, he stopped in a small café nestled along a shady side street, and took his sandwich on the iron-gated patio. Such a lovely and tranquil patio it was, brick walled and ivy laced. It put him in mind of a place where poets and artists supped after long days of exploring the world's innate beauty. It occurred to him only then that he was the only one out here. The streets, too, were empty, and the only vehicle he could remember seeing was a garbage truck filled with bodies.
Hm. Things were getting dire.
Just then, his phone vibrated against his leg and startling him. Realizing what it was, he fished it out of his pocket. It was Philips.
Suddenly bursting with hope and joy, Booth answered it. "Hello? Mr. Philips?"
"Crybaby! What's up?"
Booth stiffened, offended. He thought of saying something coarse, but wisely decided against it.
"I'm just finishing lunch and had a lovely stroll."
"Cool. Listen, about that underground work. I have a friend who owns a bar in Southeast. It's got a huge basement where they store extra tables and kegs and shit like that. I talked to him last night, and he's agreed to rent it out to me. I'm hoping to have it set up by the 25th."
"That sounds simply delightful, Mr. Philips! Thank you..."
"I'm trying to get a cast together," Philips went on, ignoring him, "if I'm all set by then, how would you like to play Dean Martin in Our American Cousin?"
Booth's heart nearly leapt out of his chest. "I would be honored, Mr. Philips! I've always..."
"Cool beans. I'll call you when it's all good."
The line went dead.
Kato Sanchez studied his pale, gelatinous face in the grimy bathroom mirror; a fresh crop of nasty red-and-yellow pimples had risen from his forehead overnight. Usually he spent however long it took painstakingly popping them, but today he left them. He checked his yellowed teeth, his swollen gums, and his greasy hair. All was to his pleasure.
One thing Kato had never worried much about was personal hygiene. Why bother? The jackals at his mental institution of a high school would have taunted him no matter what he looked or smelled like. Not only was he nearly four hundred pounds during his junior year (he was considerably more now), but he was also slow, at least compared to the others. Japan placed a very high value on pragmatic intelligence; anyone with without a technical inclination was shunned as though he were retarded, which Kato certainly was not. He had always read at an advanced level (he was devouring classic literature at eight) and consistently received 100s in history, but the liberal subjects were the ones that mattered least; in Japan, it was math and science, always math and science, what the instructors at his pitiful high school called the "practical subjects." You can build a better future with math, they said, and cure the world's woes with science, but what can you do with language? Entertain layabouts who don't have anything better to do with their time?
The world needs houses and doctors, not poets and writers. Ha! They actually said that. The philistines!
Given the anti-intellectual sentiment of the Socialist Party (Japan's only party) within the past fifteen years, it really wasn't surprising. The government wanted workers, bees, drones, ants, not philosophers and writers. Kato, unfortunately, had a rich imagination and a way with words that shamed his parents. Whereas boys fifty years ago hid Playboys under their bed, Kato was forced to hide the works of Shakespeare and Poe, Keats and Byron. He kept them all (his lovelies, his treasures) hidden in a shoebox in the back of his closet. At night, when everyone else was asleep, he would sit in there with a flashlight and read until his eyes grew heavy and he fell asleep. In the day, during lunch or math, he would gaze out the window as the teacher droned on and on in an alien language of numbers and decibels, dreaming of great battles in space, pirates on the open sea, zombies rising from the grave, and Godzilla attacking Tokyo, only to be foiled by a clever little boy named Kato Sanchez.
Oh, how they would mock him; his peers, his teachers, and even his parents. Once his mother found several American comic books stashed in his desk drawer under his school books. When she confronted him with them, she called him so many hurtful names, he broke down and cried like a baby, a big, fat, one-hundred-seventy pound baby. Adding insult to injury, his father, later, coldly asked, "Are you a homosexual, son? Do you cry because you crave man?"
No, he wasn't a homosexual (or at least he didn't think he was; he was still a virgin), he was an intellect, a misunderstood rebel in a time of gray conformity, in a nation of gray conformity. He wanted to exist on a higher, more vibrant plain; he wanted to write the Great Japanese Novel. He was already a master of the short story by the time he was sixteen. His works filled many notebooks, one of which he was never without.
And how ashamed his parents were! Their son was a writer! And a good one, too! In fact, he was the only good writer left in Japan. After the purge three years ago, the only people left alive were mathematicians and scientists. He was alone. Maybe there were a few isolated holdouts like him, but he was the only one he personally knew of. He was truly the last of a dying (dead) breed.
His parents wished he had died with the rest. They never said or properly implied it, but he knew. They never cared about him; all they wanted was to look good in front of their Commie friends. Their fat disappointment of a son read books that weren't about building atom bombs and Persecoms. How awful!
They hated him. Which is why he didn't grieve when they died three hours apart from each other on the morning of the 20th. No. In fact, he smiled as his mother jerked, cried out, and fell still. He really smiled when his father went. He even bid him farewell...
...By reading him a poem by Percy Shelley. His father hated it, Kato could tell that he understood even in his delirium, so strong was his contempt for everything smart. His red, watery eyes dried and darkened; his erratic breathing slowed; and a disdainful sneer crossed his face.
"May you rest in peace, father," Kato finished as he closed the slim, hardbound tome. "In the land of writers and poets."
Since the old man gave up the ghost, Kato had been reading voraciously, sucking down everything that he could stuff into his mind. All of the books were ones he owned and had read dozens of times in the past, but reading them openly, in the living room, in the kitchen, on the toilet, in his parents' room, was such an intoxicating feeling that he couldn't get enough. From sunup to sundown, he read. And he loved it.
Last night, as he raced to finish The Great Gatsby so that he could start on Bound, the lights flickered once, twice, thrice, dimmed, and then went out. After struggling out of bed and into his Hoverround, Kato raced to the living room.
The apartment building he lived in was over fifty stories high, and he was on the top floor. From the big picture window, he could see all of western Tokyo; save for a few flickering pinpricks, the world was black.
The power was out, Kato realized with drawing horror. Something must have happened at the plant on the east side of the city.
He spent most of the night in his room, a semicircle of candles surrounding him. The dancing flames made it hard to read, so he thought and daydreamed; he seethed as he remembered his torture in school; he fumed as he recalled the way people would look at him when he expressed himself like a civilized being; and thanked God for the plague. He hoped it killed everyone in the whole country, with the exception of himself, of course. He knew that that wouldn't happen, though, unfortunately; doctors at the Plague Center had said on TV that only about 98 percent of the population would die.
The plague, therefore, wasn't enough; something else needed to happen to mop up the rest of the Commie fuckers...
...And that's when it struck him.
In the dim candle light, he smiled, a wicked, twisted grin.
Now, satisfied with his appearance, Kato pulled a rising sun bandanna across his forehead and tied it in the back. From a hidden sheath attached to the side of his scooter, he pulled a long, razor sharp Katana, his father's sidearm when he had been in the navy. It was time to begin.
In his father's office ten minutes later, Kato opened a closed door, and removed from a dusty shelf a small, black box with knobs and a screen. From one end sprouted a corkscrew wire terminating in a rectangular handset. A CB radio.
Kato checked the battery compartment and found it empty. Never fear, there were batteries in his father's dresser drawer. He rolled across the apartment to get them, humming an old song. At the door, he paused for the briefest of seconds (his parents were starting to get ripe; he would have to do something about that eventually), and then scooted on. The room was cool and gloomy. The dresser sat under the heavily curtained window. He retrieved the batteries, and sped back to the office. There, he inserted them into the radio and turned a dial; it came to life, dispelling the tomblike silence with roaring static.
Kato cleared his voice, depressed the call button on the side of the handset, and spoke: "Hello? If you can hear me, come to the Fushima Apartment Building on Yamomoto Avenue. I have food, supplies, and vital information regarding a survivor's colony being established on an island. If you can hear my voice, come..."
Kato broadcasted the same message all morning, until his throat was sore and his stomach rumbled (he thought of recording his voice and putting in on an endless loop, but he didn't have a tape recorder anymore – it broke last spring when he accidently sat on it), and broke around noon. For lunch, he made himself two large pizzas and a heaping helping of bacon chili cheese fries. He ate at the picture window, admiring the sweeping view. When he was done, he washed it all down with a bottle of Coca-Cola.
Before going back to work, he masturbated to a porn magazine he kept hidden under his mattress (it was bent and torn from suffering under his gigantic weight). The naked schoolgirls, their eyes almond and dark, excited him more now than ever before; he dreamed of one hearing his message and coming. Ooooh, he would have fun with her ass, and then he would kill her, perhaps kill her as he fucked her. Eyes closed, stroking his throbbing shaft, he imagined a girl under him, bright red blood gushing down her pale chest, outlining her pert little breasts, and came so hard he cried out.
He cleaned himself up with a towel he kept under his bed for just this purpose (it was stiff, the edges so hard they could cut flesh nicely), and then buzzed back into the office on his HoverRound.
"Hello?" he said into the CB. "Is there anyone there?"
Static.
"If you can hear me and answer, please do so."
Nothing.
"I am Kato Sanchez, and I know of a survivor's colony south of here. My uncle is an aide-to-camp to General Hyaki, who is in charge of it. If you are healthy and able, come to the Fushima Apartment Building."
Still nothing.
Kato sighed.
.Two hours later, he got his first nibble.
"My name is Herikaci. Where are you?"
Kato, giddy, gave him the directions.
"I will be there in an hour."
For the next sixty minutes, Kato made preparations for his guest: he laid a plastic tarp on the bathroom floor, and brought in a number of cleaning agents from the cabinet under the kitchen sink. By the time a faint and tentative knock came at the front door, Kato was slathered in sweat and winded.
Herikaci proved to be a short, balding man in his late forties or early fifties; his large, Coke bottle glasses made him look like a bug. When he saw Kato, a heaving, red faced blob spilling out of a blue motorized scooter, he seemed taken aback. A hot rush of anger rose in Kato's chest.
"You are Kato?" the man asked, almost demanded.
"Yes, I am Kato; come in, please."
Herikaci looked critically around, sniffed the air as if in search of a foul odor, and stepped grudgingly in.
"Come this way; we have much to discuss." Kato spun around and led the old man to the bathroom. He turned in the hallway, and backed in.
Herikaci stopped at the doorway. He looked from the plastic on the floor to the bottles and boxes lining the sink. Then he looked at Kato.
"What is this?" he asked.
Before the words had even left his mouth, his head was sliding off of his neck like a slice of watermelon, his eyes wide. As the head dropped, Kato saw with something like horror that his lips were still moving. It hit the floor with a thud, and Kato puked all over himself.
The body had stood on its feet for several seconds after decapitation, blood shooting from the neck like water from a hyperactive geyser. Ichor covered everything; the walls, the ceiling, the hallway wall, the door, the mirror, Kato. He had never seen so much blood in his life. Its hot, coppery smell mixed with the rank stench of his stomach bile, and he nearly fainted with revulsion.
The mess, in other words, was incredible. And Kato had to clean it all.
The job took three days, for he would break every five minutes, his gorge rising. By the end of the second day, he was soaked in sweat and dried blood was packed under his fingernails. The worst part about it all, though, was the fact that he couldn't properly shower; being over five hundred pounds, he could only wash himself with a damp cloth. Though he looked clean in the full-length mirror in the hall, he felt dirty, foul, putrescent.
After he scrubbed the last bit of blood from the wall (the carpet was saturated with gore and vomit; the smell of it was hellish), he vowed that he wouldn't kill anyone ever again. Let the fools kill themselves off.
But at night, his fevered desire became too great, and he would dream of schoolgirls in short skirts, long socks, and little else, bouncing and giggling, their crotches hot and wet, their pussies so tight you could barely slip a pinky in.
In the steely light of a gray, overcast morning, Kato Sanchez picked up the handset and spoke...
It was easier the second time.
Kato prided himself on his right brain intelligence so much so that he often failed to think the practicalities of things (like murder, for instance) out. Had he paid more attention to the business side of things before Harikaci showed up, he would have discovered two fatal flaws in his plan: first, by leading his victim to a designated killzone, equipped with everything but a sign, he spooked him, forcing him to kill him before he was ready. And second: he attacked the head rather than the heart, which ended up making an apocalyptic mess. The heart, he realized a day or so after cleaning the bathroom, was the organ to kill. Why didn't he see it sooner? The heart was a pump, and the moment it was destroyed, blood stopped flowing, ergo no mess, or a very slight one that even a wheelchair bound fatboy like Kato could easily clean. And the best thing about the heart is that it's fragile. Stab or shoot someone there, and they almost always die instantly. And instant death meant instant stoppage of blood flow.
This great truth (which Kato had not held self-evident) came to him as he struggled Herikaci's body out the picture window in the living room, a giant battle which took nearly an hour and left him sore and exhausted.
Though death and dead bodies were a part of everyday life now, he did it after dark so that no one would see him. All he needed was someone spreading rumors that he was killing people. Starting out, he planned to chuck at least his mother over the side as well, but by the time he was done, he was too winded to move, so he just sat there in the cold, moonwashed darkness, looking out over the black landscape, so much like the jungle wastes of primordial earth. He caught himself wondering once what might lurk in the darkness, and reprimanded himself for being such an unenlightened fool. Things like the living dead do not exist, Kato, and you know this.
He did, but still.
Still what?
Still, it was disquieting. Had there been nothing below him but trees, he wouldn't be bothered. But there wasn't. The night was hiding an entire city down there, one populated with the dead, and at any moment, one of them might start twitching...
That night, Kato slept with nearly a dozen candles burning. He locked the door to his room and pulled the shades, lest something down there see the light and come up. When he dreamed, he dreamed of Herikaci dragging himself up the black stairwell, his fingers cold and vengeful, an eerie whistle that may have once been laughter escaping from his shattered neck. In the brief moment of utter disorientation, after he woke, Kato was sure that a clanging in the hallway had wakened him. His heart sputtered in his chest, and he laid silent and unbreathing, sure that he would soon hear a scratching at the front door.
In the light of day, he was able to laugh away his nocturnal terror. He ate a hearty breakfast and washed himself with a wet rag. In the office, he divided his time between the radio and a book. At ten past ten, after making another plea (he was getting tired of the survivor's colony story, and was thinking of switching it up), he was rewarded with the most pure, angelic voice he had ever heard: "Hello? Mr. Kato?"
He snatched the handset back off its hook, his hands trembling and his fat encased heart once again slamming in his chest. It was a girl, and she sounded beautiful. "Yes, this is Kato Sanchez, who are you?"
"My name's Kiko, and I'm at the police station on Tokyo Road."
His stomach flipped. She was close, so close.
"Come to the Fushima Apartment Building. Do you know where that's at?"
"No," Kiko replied, somewhat miserably, "I just got here."
"Go outside and look up. It's a glass high-rise. You can walk here in ten minutes."
Kiko brightened. "Okay!"
Kato rubbed his hands crisply together. She sounded gorgeous. Moronic, but gorgeous nonetheless. He wondered briefly if her stupidity would be a sexual block, but judging from the thumping erection in his pants, he'd get by.
When the knock came ten minutes later, Kato gasped, smoothed back his hair, and called from the kitchen, "Come in!"
The door shortly opened, and for a suspenseful minute, the kitchen threshold stood empty. Then, a bashful head poked around the corner. "Mr. Kato?"
When she stepped fully into the doorway, Kato caught his breath. She was short and thin, her eyes and hair black and her breasts pert under her tight pink tanktop which stopped halfway up her flat, milky stomach; she wore a belly-button ring, and Kato shivered.
"Hi!" he said cheerily. "I was just making some lunch. Would you like to join me?"
She nodded warily. "I guess."
He smiled. He was nervous, so nervous that his hands shook and his stomach threatened to shoot forth its contents. God, she was perfection. Her long legs, her sandaled feet, her tight butt...
"Do you like pizza?"
The girl nodded shyly.
"That's what we're having!"
And later, Kato added to himself, I'll be having you.
