Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [98]
“I do say that,” Mrs. Karvel called from the kitchen. “Because it’s the damn truth, even before you dragged me down here.”
“So … what was with the strip-us-naked thing?” I used this opportunity to ask my host. I felt a big foot kick my knee at the end of this sentence and looked across the table to see Garth was staring me down. We were both currently clad solely in Karvel’s bathrobes. It didn’t seem like an inappropriate question.
“Hey, don’t worry, I ain’t one of those,” he said, laughing. “Just didn’t want to throw your clothes in the incinerator with you in them. Who knows what they’re contaminated with? We don’t know what happened out there in the world, do we? I was hoping you all would know, but it’s pretty clear not one of us does. One minute I’m sitting here watching Fox & Friends, then they start talking about some riot. I go get some nachos, next thing you know I come back and it’s all dark. It’s dark everywhere: TV, phone, Internet. Nothing.” Shaking his head, taking a swig of his beer, Karvel drops his voice both in volume and in pitch before continuing. “First thought: nukes. Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, they’ve been begging for it for years. But a nuclear attack couldn’t have taken out everything at once, not even a big one. So I’m thinking, something biological. Then you got a bigger list: add in Syria, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Cuba, Somalia, Chechnya, China, and I sure as hell don’t trust Russia. Probably engineered or something, sitting dormant in everybody’s system while it spreads across the world. Silently spreading all across the world, see? The smart people, they been talking about this for years. Then on a set time, on a set date, boom, it goes off. Just like that, everyone’s dead. Blood in the street, blood pouring from eyes, babies screaming, dogs dying. Everything. We been talking about stuff like that for years, but still, when it happens …”
I looked at the painter for a moment, petrified. As he talked, Karvel became increasingly morose, his voice dropping with his shoulders, joining in with the chorus above. It was almost as if you could see the fear radiating off of him, that if you reached out your hand you could feel it blowing out his pores.
“Well, let’s hope that’s also highly unlikely, right? Could just be a satellite problem, or an international computer virus.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought at first. Then the repair and supply plane stopped showing up. We were supposed to get that boiler fixed, damn thing probably won’t go over seventy-two degrees without exploding like the Fourth of July—it’s a menace. Course, they use computers for everything now, so who knows? Right? Let’s just hope it wasn’t the Rapture, ’cause if my wife finds out that Jesus came and didn’t take us with the righteous, she’s going to make my life a hell,” he said. “I’m kidding,” he followed with. I didn’t know about which part.
After the meal of brown bunnies with Kraft mac and cheese, “Jiffy” mix muffins, and heaping portions of Betty Crocker roasted garlic and cheddar mashed potatoes, Mrs. Karvel cleared our plates and even complimented us on our appetites. Mrs. Karvel was a plain woman who was also plainly a bit intrigued by Garth and me: her smile was a little too wide, her laugh a little too quick, her retreat to the kitchen a little too nervous. I thought this might be a reaction to our race, but that was probably more about me than about her.† I did know that the food was a welcome change from our moment of starvation and weeks of krakt, and after I was done I felt more like a man again. Garth, though, seemed like less of one, having regressed in the presence of his hero. For one thing, he couldn’t stop staring at the painter, darting his eyes in Karvel’s direction every time the man looked away. When not staring, Garth just rotated his head, slack jawed at this life-size terrarium Karvel had created.
“It’s a state-of-the-art 3.2 Ultra BioDome,” Karvel told us as he gave his tour. We had each been given a pair of his