The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (reading fiction .TXT) 📗

Fifteen minutes? Ten? Dyson planned to cook the men a celebratory lunch of pork tenderloin, and it seemed needlessly cautious—and risky—to discard the meat he’d marinated overnight. We needed to feed the men something when they arrived. After all, their savings were funding the meals—theirs and ours. Dyson collected “Enrollment Fees” from them weeks earlier to purchase building supplies and months’ worth of groceries. I gave the raw meat and the sides a prolonged, dutiful sniff. Nothing smelled rancid or bold. So: I refueled the gas tank. The power returned. I hoped for the best.

I was dressed in my standard uniform: light wash jeans and a black Atmospherians T-shirt—the one with Sasha ending in a flourish—no makeup, lips thickly Chap Sticked, hair in a schoolteacher bun. I stood in front of the barn gripping a clipboard against my chest. The midday sun was pinned to a pool-water sky. Across the clearing, pines leaned dreamily in the breeze. The generator burped and gurgled; its smoke seasoned the air.

My stomach was in knots over the men. Part of me wished Dyson had kept me in the dark about their pasts. I felt no more prepared for their arrival, only a slick of dread spilling through me. I tried to slow my breathing, tried practicing lines, tried to soak up and appreciate my last few precious minutes of solitude for some time—but the men charged through my mind like rhinoceroses, goring every hope in my head. Our men were unhinged and resentful, with fingers inexplicably missing, men with grudges and prior convictions and restraining orders and big, bellyish laughs. Their families and friends had discarded these men like fat trimmings cut from a steak. They were unwanted. They couldn’t stand to be with themselves. They feared their own thoughts the way flies fear rolled-up magazines.

Last night, Dyson again reassured me that the men would follow our orders so long as we remained confident, firm, and friendly—as if we were training hounds. I didn’t trust this to be true. But at this point, I had no other choice but to put faith in him.

Dyson was scheduled to arrive at 12:00 exactly—but 12:00 became 12:01 became 12:02 became 12:03 became 12:27. 12:43. 1:09. Sweat collected beneath the band of my watch and under my bra. I imagined scenarios in which he never returned, fantasizing about surviving here on my own. There was enough food to last me for months. I could create a new life for myself. I could remake myself into an online homesteader—claim the cabin and barn as my own constructions, claim Barney as my loyal best friend. This life appealed to me more than the life set to arrive at any moment. I drifted into a reverie of isolation.

The sound of the bus rustling gravel deflated this fantasy. Dirt clouded the trees. A blurry yellow pill appeared at the edge of the clearing, then expanded into a school bus as it drew near. I stepped forward ten paces from the barn—just as we’d planned—but Dyson braked too late and nearly flattened me under the hood. The engine exhaled on my face. If I’d stuck out my tongue, the tip would’ve sizzled against the grill.

I circled the bus twice. This added gravity, purpose, and we wanted to make the arrival ritualistic. The men fixed their faces on the seats in front of them. Their nostrils quietly flared. Lips were licked, ears picked; furry fingers knuckled the sleep from their eyes. I made meaningless marks on the clipboard to make the men feel judged and studied. Near the end of my second pass, at a window close to the door, I sensed one of them watching me.

He was ghoulish, gaunt, with slicked blond locks—the only one who had styled his hair—and a nose curled like the claw of a hawk. I paused beneath his window; his eyes returned to the seat back in front of him. He held this pose, as rigid as a road, until his tongue budged through his teeth like a diving board. He rushed it back, winked at me—as if flirting—and I slapped my clipboard against his window.

Dyson opened the door. Out came a gust of eggy air so foul I had to cover my mouth. The first man slugged off the bus clutching the railing. He nearly face-planted when his feet hit the grass.

“Name,” I said to him.

“Gerry Simpatico.” He was a milky, heavyset man wearing sweatpants and a Big Dogs T-shirt. His hair was thick and dark, shiny with grease, and the pupils of his blue eyes were like two tires adrift on the sea. Our Righteous Man. He’d been fired from his job for running a smear campaign against his boss. Standing before me, however, his mouth nervously quaking, he seemed to have been stripped of whatever animosity and resentment had led him here.

“Your phone,” I said. I relished this power.

He dropped it beside my foot and formed a line behind me.

“Name,” I said to the next man, then the next. What a vulnerable act, I thought, as the names and men piled up. Each man may as well have presented his head on a platter. Beneath every name was a whisper: Know me. Remember me. See me as a person.

The fifth man stepped off the bus: the one with the tongue. “Randy Dent,” he said before I asked. He pounded his fist on the bus as if denting it might prove his identity. His jaw was boxy and scabbed, his teeth shockingly white. He wore a black short-sleeved T-shirt and cargo pants. A splotch scarred both sides of his left forearm, just under the elbow. It was pale pink with a gangrenous tint at its edges, a cherry-sized bump in the center. He tapped it. “Firework accident as a runt. I’m lucky I still have this side of my body,” he said with a laugh. He wasn’t handsome but carried himself like a handsome man would. Someone, I gathered, had once called him handsome, and the