Glimmering

In the west, heavy weather took a more bizarre turn. An unrelenting series of fronts hung above the plains and farmlands, a squall line that stretched from Texas north to the Dakotas. Storms broke constantly, but in the phenomenon known as virga, the rain evaporated before it hit the ground. Immense scythes of lightning raked sky and drought-ridden prairie, starting fires that burned until there was nothing left for them to feed upon. In the wake of the thunderstorms, mesocyclones spawned scud clouds and funnel clouds and tornadoes, land spouts, and, upon the Great Lakes and Mississippi River, waterspouts that swallowed pleasure boats and freight barges. Some of the tornadoes were tracked spinning clockwise, all but unheard of in the northern hemisphere. As the deadly fronts moved east and the twisters collapsed, they left mounds of debris, the remains of houses and livestock, planted fields and shopping malls. In Kansas a church filled with refugees was flattened, killing more than three hundred people. Afterward the church marquee was photographed in the branches of a scrub oak tree seven miles away.

I SAW A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH

FOR THE FIRST HEAVEN AND THE FIRST

EARTH WERE PASSED AWAY

Across North America crops failed. In the cities, the first soft footsteps of famine could be heard. There were rumors of cultists who claimed to see a shimmering green brilliance hanging about the bodies of those who would die within twenty-four hours.

By the time the storms reached the Atlantic Coast, they had dissipated to warm rain and a steady wind. From his room at Lazyland Jack watched the fronts moving across the Hudson, passing overhead to break at sea like so many vast leaden waves. At night the usual array of flickering bonfires was gone, as were the tents that marked the fellahin encampments. Instead, through the tattered scrim of trees, Jack could see figures inside the ruined mansions that flanked Lazyland. He smelled the caustic scent of burning plywood, and heard staccato bursts of music from the smoke-blackened remains of the maharani’s carriage house. Sometimes he glimpsed the squatters themselves, all but naked despite the spring chill, their long hair matted as they stood in the shattered windows and stared defiantly across the filth-strewn lawn at Jack. Once he heard a baby crying.

It all infuriated him.

How can they live like that, he thought. Until one day, returning home exhausted and empty-handed from yet another futile trek up to Getty Square in search of food, it struck him—

We all live like that, now. The fellahin were just better at it than he was.

Still, inside Lazyland all was relatively warm and bright. The house was heated by an ancient coal furnace. In January, Jack had had the coal cellar filled; there was enough fuel to see them through the next winter. When there was electricity, television reception became such a game of chance that most nights they didn’t bother—the risk of seeing something horrible outweighed even Jack’s considerable hunger for news. When the phone lines worked, there were obscene faxes from Leonard to break the monotony, and the usual trickle of calls regarding submissions for The Gaudy Book. Jack’s network of loyal editors and writers continued in their doomed efforts at triage, arranging for articles to appear online, for popular artists to have their holographic or recorded likenesses on the magazine’s cover in a futile effort to boost sales. He never wondered if The Gaudy Book was worth it. It was not, certainly not from any financial standpoint, and as a cause of stress in his own life he would certainly be better off without the dying magazine. But he was haunted by the image of his father and grandfather, who had never doubted that The Gaudy Book would greet the new millennium.

He spent nearly the entire month of April indoors, except when he walked out to his office in the carriage house. Then the smell of rotting vegetation choked him. For the last four weeks he had been taking the Fusax religiously, half a dropperful every morning, on an empty stomach. The little bottle was about a quarter empty.

And he was feeling better: no doubt about it. His brush with pneumonia had left him weak, with a ghastly cough. At the hospital they’d given him antibiotics, which Jack took religiously until they ran out. The cough, however, had lingered, as did his general malaise and the too-familiar checkpoints of fever, diarrhea, loss of appetite.