Birthmark
by Sonny McLean
Dreams are like moles and beauty marks—features in the wallpaper growing to some unknown depth below the surface. Presumed benign, happily left unchecked. Don’t hold up well to daylight. I’m covered from head to toe, hardly a barren square inch across me —one big, beautiful, very-born baby riddled with horrible potential. There is no magic number of checkups or exams to attend, no sum to pay, no volume of sunscreen to apply that guarantees my skin won’t one day turn on me. So I stuff it down.
I’m haunted by the thought that the world is alive with forces greater than I can wrap my head around. It’s the unsettled feeling of staring out from a beach, knowing there’s land out there but an unknowable gulf sitting between me and it. I can’t distinguish between lake, bay, or ocean. But there’s promise in those distant shores, I’m certain of it. At some point I have to get in the water, but I might be the type that forgets about boats, or worse — tries to build his own. Plane? Preposterous. On the wrong day I might start swimming.
***
I spend a lot of time dreaming of the rapture. My own private apocalypse. Am I smart enough to reverse-engineer modern life if all of the pieces are left to me? Failing that, how long can I last?
In the simulation I run, I wake up with a basic understanding of the rules:
I’m the last living human on the planet; all other people and domesticated animals have vanished all at once without a trace and I’m apparently taking this in stride
This is a continuation of the current timeline — all natural cycles are still in motion, at least as they would be (i.e. the earth is still revolving around the sun, etc.). But anything requiring maintenance by people is affected by their absence
Go!
I’m still in my landlocked little studio in the heart of Denver. There are three grocery and two convenience stores in a ten-block radius. Food is not a problem. I’m a pescatarian, so I’m moving all fresh cuts out of those stores to spoil where I needn’t smell them, and indulging in the dairy and produce while it’s still fit to eat. There’s much pasta and peanut butter in my future, no need to rush into it. I’d wager the longest-lasting foods on the shelves with nutritional value are going to keep maybe five to six years at best, so I’ll need to learn how to replace them.
My snooping around empty homes last about as long as the last good pint of Ben and Jerry’s in the city — it’s a luxury with an expiration date. Based on nothing but my gut, I think the internet’s gone within three weeks, electricity and water in a month and a half, and gas in maybe twice that. Now is the time to bone up on some knowledge and keep the lights on as long as possible.
But I’m lazy and I’m no engineer. A telling silence grips my city. I’m setting up shop in a cozy little penthouse suite by the central library and plundering the shelves of the reference section for a couple of weeks. Then getting bored, and finally accepting that my fate is in the foothills if for no other reason than it being the romantic conclusion. I’ve read Into the Wild. It’s time to go where I won’t recognize my own footprints. I make my way west now by choice, rather than waiting for necessity to thrust nature upon me.
***
Months ago I am nursing a beer on the club patio where Martin’s holding court. I’m there to run through the Friday rites:
Him
[Tired]. [Kid’s driving me nuts]. [Still working on the house].
Me
[High as fuck]. [Work still sucks]. [Volunteering’s alright]. [No luck with women].
Him
[Boilerplate dating advice]. [Next set starts soon]. [Let me buy you a drink].
But Martin is in rare form that night. The mood’s grim— California and Australia are on fire and we’re still seeing semi-regular reports of North Korean missile tests. And with his three-year-old son Jamie on his mind, things take an unexpectedly fatalistic turn.
He pulls another cig from his snap case. How do you prepare a child for a future with none of the luxuries to which he’s accustomed? Do you look for a school that teaches survival skills?
Lights cig. Do you teach him to use a gun? What’s the right age for that?
I hide my grin behind a swig of beer. The thought of this middle-aged goth awkwardly loading a rifle is almost too much. I don’t believe he’s ever camped by choice; no, the Martin I know is a city boy through and through. He’s domesticated, the perfectly air-conditioned man. He’s a fucking professional DJ.
That same rifle slung over a teenage Jamie’s shoulder while trekking through the Front Range, though, is a hard image to dismiss. I can see it in vivid color. There’s a lean and loyal spotted Pointer to trot beside and ahead of him, and a rustic cabin in the distance that they call home. A post-apocalyptic boy scout.
***
I remember, after two long weeks in the wilderness, that generators and solar panels exist. Perhaps I could start a farm or, better yet, work an abandoned one. I set out for the nearest town where I can restock on dry goods and hope to find a government building with information on local farmsteads. Stuffed into my running pack are a bigger bag, a water bottle and a small first aid kit; I sling it across my tanned and toned shoulders, the bottom resting on the raised callous on my lower back, and carefully pick my way back to what once housed civilization.
Ten years later, on what was once a modest farm on the Western Slope, there is a meager yield in the rows of bean bushes and untended fruit trees. A strapping young lad wearing a rifle on his back and a coonskin cap rocks up to the ranch house. The faint smell of death catches the breeze and drifts through the screen door. His dog bays.
The smell comes from the bedroom. The body is stiff but as yet untouched by maggots—recently dead. On his side in a loose fetal position, back to the door. He has a small paunch but is otherwise lean, which makes the lump on his lower back all the more noticeable.
Sonny McLean is a reluctantly modern sap living alone in Denver with his aging cat, Holic Guilt, who hogs most of their queen-size bed.
