Walking with Hemlock

When your implacable enemy becomes your best friend

A new free short story exclusively for my subscribers

Image licensed from Adobe Stock

Annie was next in line. She stared at the backs of four men who were taking care of their business at the urinals. She appreciated the intricate weaves, loops, and patterns of the filtration systems that adorned their backs, but she also loathed them because they represented dependence and the planet’s scorn. Each system possessed a unique artistic vision with dozens of thin tubes attached to the filter in each man’s backpack. The tubes were threaded by patient hands into carefully crafted webs of survival art.

They were meticulously crafted because the importance of the filters to the lives of Mall citizens had given birth to an ongoing community art contest with no winners aside from the congratulatory nods of fellow contestants. Each intricate nest of tubing represented the gift of life, because without it, breathing was ultimately fatal. Pipes and hoses and valves and penstocks, all as vital as blood and water, were rendered into individual flexible sculptures by each individual throughout the colony.

One of the men finished and walked past Annie, so she ambled up to his abandoned urinal, unzipped her printed metallic pants, pulled everything down to her knees, and squatted so that she could pee. One of the next people in line was a boy, probably about eight or nine. She stuck her tongue out at him as she peed. He giggled. When she finished, she stood up and gave the boy the finger as she walked past him. He giggled again and scrambled to the urinal.

Hemlock was waiting for her at the entrance with his long machete, sheathed like always in decorative, stiff black leather, holding its handle menacingly, his thick, arching black eyebrows sending unmistakable warnings to anyone with ideas. His dark, tattooed arms, which looked like oak barrels etched with ink illustrations of barbed wire, a hawk, and the beautiful face and long dark hair of a woman from long ago, flexed and twitched under a tight black T-shirt.

Hemlock’s machete was the only weapon Annie ever saw at the Mall aside from crossbows wielded by Nationals, who used them to shoot at packs of feral dogs that occasionally found their way inside the Mall’s interior. Hemlock never, not once, unsheathed it for her, either to show it off or as a passive aggressive form of discipline.

It was said that the Distributors carried long guns, but she never saw them. They delivered food drops without revealing anything more than robots designed to unpack the goods and leave them in the rotunda every morning.

Beyond Hemlock, into the Mall’s interior, a long queue of fidgety people needing to pee snaked along the length of the promenade lined with abodes, then around a bend into another promenade of abodes. “How come you, like, hardly ever need to go?” Annie asked Hemlock as he put his hand on her shoulder to guide her out of the bathroom.

“And how come you, like, always ask me that question?” he snarled. It was his good snarl, though, the one that made her feel safe.

Hemlock had always claimed to be her father, but she had never believed it. He cared for her better than any father she knew of, for one thing. He was more like a mother, she thought, although she never knew her mother, nor did she have much of an understanding of how mothers behaved.

Sometimes, she’d get glimpses. A mother crouched in an alley with her child as waves of dogs rampaged through the Mall, a mother nuzzling her nose against the face of an infant, or, perhaps, just a look of wariness and protection of a mother holding the hand of a child as they walked by.

Her only resentment towards Hemlock was his insistence that they continue their wanderings. Most people lived in abodes, which at one time were stores that still contained much of their original merchandise. Annie was wearing printed silver polyester pants she had acquired from one such place, called Moose Knuckles, where a man and wife speaking in accents she didn’t recognize lived with their seven kids.

When Annie had walked into their abode with Hemlock and asked if she could have a pair of the metallic-looking pants, the man smiled happily as he introduced her to a circular rack full of the things. “You may have one, choose whichever you wish,” said the man. His accent was Nigerian (Hausa, to be specific), but Annie didn’t know that.

One item was the generally accepted merchandise limit in all the abodes. There was no way to enforce the rule. Someone could, if they were so inclined, force their way into an abode to snatch more, but it was in nobody’s interest to do so. Everyone lived by the same code, and nobody needed an entire rack of metallic Moose Knuckles pants or a coat rack full of Thom Browne suits. Not at the Mall.

But their wanderings also gave her an opportunity for adventure. She was sure she was the only twelve-year-old girl who had climbed all the roller coasters, each one from one end to the other, top to bottom. She and Hemlock had spent countless nights at the adventure course and other parts of the indoor amusement park, which had long ago fallen out of service.

When it rained, they found a covered amusement, or huddled under part of the Mall’s broken roof, much of which had collapsed before she was born.

One day, Hemlock tried to find a way to the old, ravaged hotel next to the mall, but the only way there was outside, because the festooned skyway between structures was impassible, despite a long tradition of bored amateur sculptors risking their lives to transform its ruins into high art. He had snuck out of the amusement park while she was still asleep, leaving a note for her in crayon.

There were so many crayons in the Mall that you could see one with nearly every glance — on the floor, on a ledge, in an abandoned flower or plant pot, under a loop of roller coaster tracks. Sometimes Annie wondered if they reproduced on their own.

When Hemlock had returned, he looked like he had taken a mud bath. He told her there were thousands of dogs outside. Like everyone else at the Mall, he was stuck. Unlike most people at the Mall, he didn’t want to be.

What he really wanted was to get to Minneapolis. “It would be a lot like this place,” he had told her once. “But ten times better. We could live wherever we want, and we could see the outdoor life.”

“But the air,” she had said. “Filters are easy to get here if one goes bad.” He had nodded in agreement sadly, and that had been the end of it.

“I kinda need to poop now,” she said as they walked away from the bathroom queue.

“You have got to be kidding,” said Hemlock.

“I know, I know,” she said, “Regular at nine, or we go to the shrine. I’m usually good about it, Hem, right?”

He put a palm gently on her sandy blonde head. “You’re always good, kiddo.” They didn’t say anything for a bit as they walked along several clothing abodes. She couldn’t carry any more than she already had in her stuffed backpack, but she always looked. Hemlock knew she always wanted to go inside.

“I could trade these for something else,” she said brightly while patting her pants with one hand, noticing a crazy checkered and striped shirt inside one of the adobes.

“You look great in those things,” said Hemlock, referring to her metallic pants. “Besides, nobody wants your skanky-assed worn clothing. Also besides, they’ll just give you a shirt if you want one.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess so. But sometimes people are mean when we ask.”

“That’s what this is for,” said Hemlock, slapping the handle of his machete. Annie had never seen Hemlock kill anyone in the Mall. So it was just one of his stupid “I’m a badass” jokes. But he did look badass. “You okay? You gonna last a couple more hours?” he asked. The portable poop latrines were rolled out promptly every morning at 9 am. If she wasn’t able to hold on, they’d have to walk a long way to the shrine, which had the only plumbing in the Mall for poop.

“I’m okay,” she said.

“Good. I don’t want to have to carry you for a mile to the shrine while you’re clenching, trying not to pinch a loaf.” He had done that once when she was six. He never let her forget it.

“Be nice,” she retorted.

“You hungry?”

“I’m afraid to eat. I might want to poop,” she giggled. “But yeah.”

“We’ll stop by the food court, get some eggs. You’ll be fine.”

“I hate wasting food vouchers on breakfast. Breakfast portions are always a rip-off,” said Annie.

“I got lots of vouchers, don’t worry.”

“Someday you won’t got lots of vouchers,” she said.

“There’s always dogs,” said Hemlock.

Annie looked at his machete. “Yeah. Been awhile, though.”

“Yeah,” said Hemlock. “Maybe they all had a meeting and decided this wasn’t a great place to scavenge, after all.”

“Shuddup.”

“We could stop by Kate’s. She adores you. She’ll give you a good portion.”

“She loves everybody, Hem. She’s not gonna do me special.”

“Hmm. Well, let’s check her out, anyway. Because she loves everyone. I’m not in the mood for fools.”

“When are you?”

When they arrived at Kate’s, Kate sat them down at a big plastic table next to the kitchen.

“This thing,” Annie complained as she wrestled with her backpack while trying to sit. Her backpack was twice the size of everyone else’s because she and Hemlock walked so much. Her filter was smaller, too, but the Distributors had said the miniaturization was by design, and that it was a good one.

“I’m afraid all I’ve got today is egg drop soup,” said Kate as she helped Annie with some of the tubing. Kate sat down and looked at Hemlock. “Hemlock, the food drops are getting worse. I don’t know what’s going on. Nobody says nothin’. The Distributors are giving us zero information for the last two weeks now. Some folks here are sayin’ we oughta get a dog hunting crew out ready. For food.”

Hemlock shook his head. “There’s no manpower for something like that. Last time I went out, there were thousands of dogs. More than thousands. Never seen anything like it.”

“Took ‘em one generation to be able to breathe the air,” Kate said, shaking her head.

“That and double in size,” groaned Hemlock.

“Well, what’s feedin’ them things?” asked Kate. Kate was a tall noodle of a woman, middle-aged, whose real name was Sunita, from Bangalore, she had said to Annie once. But she liked being named after her kitchen, which had once been a restaurant named Kate’s Place.

“I dunno,” said Hemlock. His black hair was as dark as Kate’s. When Annie thought about that while they were talking, she realized that Hemlock looked Indian, too. Annie looked at her pale hands and shook her head. Father my ass, she thought.

“You okay?” asked the always alert Hemlock.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Annie.

“I mean, I guess there’s lots of animals out there, Kate,” said Hemlock. “But to get at ‘em, we gotta deal with all the dogs.”

“The Nationals are good for nothin’,” sighed Kate.

“They bring us food,” said Annie. Kate and Hemlock looked at her like she was crazy. “Well they do.”

“There’s more to it than that,” said Hemlock. He was always saying there was.

“What if they just stop?” insisted Annie. She didn’t understand their animosity toward the Nationals or the Distributors. “Like, tomorrow? Then what?”

“We all become dog fighters,” said Hemlock without emotion.

“So then why do you hate them?” asked Annie.

“The Nationals?” asked Hemlock.

Annie nodded. “And the Distributors.”

“Same folks, basically. I don’t hate them. I don’t like being dependent on them.”

“And we don’t know them much, sweety,” said Kate, looking at Annie. Kate swiped at a lock of black hair with her long, mottled, dark fingers. Annie loved how a few streaks of gray interrupted the shimmering black curtain of Kate’s hair.

One of the reasons Hemlock had given long ago why they never settled in one place was that everyone was depressed about their conditions. He said he didn’t want Annie around a bunch of doom-mongers. But Kate wasn’t a doom-monger. She was always light and cheery. Her husband had been killed in the roof collapse nearly a decade ago. Word was she had been exiled outside after going a little crazy and threatening a crowd of people with a fistful of yarn needles.

When she returned to the Mall, everyone gave her a second chance. She wasn’t just grateful. Something had changed within her essence. But she never really said much about what it was that had changed her outlook. “Animals,” she had muttered once, looking blankly into the dusty air.

“Why don’t we know them?” asked Annie innocently. “If they feed us.”

Kate laughed. “They don’t feed you. I feed you. We all feed you.” She swept her hand around to indicate all the other kitchens nearby. Most of them still had at least remnants of their original signage. Places like Panda Express and Little Tokyo and Poukei and Long John Silver’s. “They bring us the raw materials to feed you, I’ll grant you that.”

This was when Kate noticed that the food court didn’t have its usual distinct breakfast aroma. She wondered if the other food courts in the Mall were the same.

“Now what’s wrong?” asked Hemlock. Annie didn’t realize she looked like she thought there was something wrong.

“Nobody else is cooking?” she asked in answer to his question.

Kate shrugged. “Like I said.”

“Well, that’s not good,” said Hemlock.

“We gotta hope it’s just temporary, but like I said, they aren’t saying much.”

Hemlock nodded, but Annie thought he looked worried. The last time she remembered seeing him look this worried was when he carried her to the shrine. She had barely made it without pooping her pants.

When Kate stood up and headed for the kitchen, Annie noticed a large wet spot on the ass of Kate’s light, loosely fitting blue jeans. Kate also seemed to leave behind an unpleasant odor when she walked away. “Hem,” she whispered. “Kate needs to hit the bathing fountain.”

Hemlock didn’t say anything. The gaze of his dark brown almond shaped eyes was fixed on something distant.

“You’re worried,” said Annie, who always wanted to muss his long thick hair, especially when he was distracted.

“Nah, I just…” They both knew he couldn’t lie to her. “Maybe a little. But I don’t know why, so that’s why I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Last time you were worried, about a zillion dogs came into the Mall and killed like, fifty people. You said the same thing then. That, and that time I had almost pooped.”

The only weapons they had were some crossbows that Distributors dropped into the middle of the mall during the attack. Hemlock didn’t use his machete. Didn’t unsheathe it once. Annie never asked him why. Even when he found himself in a close battle with one of the dogs, he shoved a crossbow arrow into the dog’s neck instead of using the machete.

“It’s nothing. I don’t think,” said Hemlock.

“You thought you heard a dog, didn’t you?”

Hemlock nodded.

“You’re kind of paranoid,’ said Annie as Kate approached with three bowls of soup. As she slurped from a big, short-handled plastic spoon, she said, “My friend Zazzie says dogs were considered man’s best friend back in the whenever days.”

“There’s no nice way for me to say this,” said Hemlock, “But Zazzie’s an idiot. Dogs will kill you as soon as they get a sniff of you.”

“We’ve talked about this,” said Kate scornfully while drilling Hemlock with her eyes.

Hemlock shrugged. “All I see is what I see.”

And they had talked about it. Dozens of times. Kate had argued that the reason there were so many different kinds of dogs, even though they were all bigger now, was that humans bred them as loyal, loving pets. But she was never able to convince Hemlock, even though he had heard similar stories from dozens of other people.

Kate looked at Annie. “There’s another old phrase,” she started. “He has puppy dog eyes.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Annie.

“Hmmm. Well, I think it meant loving, soulful, maybe a little innocent, too.”

“Not a problem with Hem,” Annie said through a slurp.

Kate laughed. “Wasn’t considered a problem by most.”

Hemlock reacted to Annie’s teasing with, “I hate dogs.”

“They changed,” said Kate. “Got nasty. They’re pack animals. Now that the world is ruined, they’ve gone back to basics. It’s pretty simple.”

“Those stories. Just a way to cope with the fact we’re their biggest food source.”

And that was that. The same discussion as others between Kate and Hemlock, this time repeated over egg drop soup, and with Annie’s inquisitive ears listening and taking notes.

“Why are you skipping?” asked Hemlock as he and Annie began their next short journey.

“Because I love Kate and we’re heading for the coasters.”

“Says who?”

“Because there’s nothing else in this direction close enough to the poop trucks.”

“You gonna make it?”

“I dunno, Hem. It’ll be an adventure to find out,” she giggled.

Hemlock muttered something under his breath that Annie assumed was one of his more colorful curses.

Then he stopped — halted like he had been roped by a phantom pulling at his chest with an invisible lariat. Annie stopped, too. Hemlock made a shush symbol with his finger to his mouth.

Her heart pounded. When Hemlock was startled by something, it usually meant trouble. Whatever he heard had to compete with other sounds from the mall: Distant talking, music, gears grinding from places far away from Annie’s purview, undiscernible echoes offering little hint of their true selves. But Hemlock’s ears were like machines, Annie knew. He knew every sound in the Mall, the changes that morning, afternoon, and evening each brought to the overall platform of sound that stretched across the massive structure.

Or maybe he saw something, Annie thought. His eyes were the same as his ears. He could detect the subtlest change.

But she didn’t dare ask. Not because he’d punish her. He never did that. But because to speak now could be fatal.

He unsheathed his machete.

“It’s a dog,” he whispered.

“We can talk?”

“Shush.”

He advanced slowly. She followed. He didn’t try to stop her. Metal banged somewhere to their right. Hemlock approached the sound, so she did, too. The sound led them to a small metal door that was too short for humans. Metal clanged and rattled, along with something else. Annie thought it must be the sound a claw makes when it scratches metal, but since she’d never heard such a sound, it left her desperate to learn more.

And something else. A squeal of some kind. It sounded like a whimper. A low whine like some nonverbal kid. She’d heard of those sometimes being found. Kids who’d lost their parents or lost themselves somewhere in the Mall’s labyrinthine tunnels or metal passageways. The squeals seemed to accompany each claw sound.

Hemlock bent to one knee next to the metal door and began to pry it open with the machete.

“What are you doing?” asked Annie, alarmed. She wanted to believe Kate’s stories, but even if she could, even if she did, that was for an earlier time. Not now. The door popped open after Hemlock twisted it at the top with the machete. A dog launched itself into Hemlock’s gut, which threw him onto his back.

The dog couldn’t continue, though. It was stuck in a mass of wiring. And it was tiny. A little tan furball, Annie thought, with brown saucer eyes.

The dog had leapt because the wiring at the base of the nest that had captured the small beast was slack, but now that it was taut, the dog could do nothing.

Hemlock gathered himself and approached the dog on all fours, pushing the machete in front of him, before kneeling. “I always knew this machete would come in handy someday,” he said as he raised the machete in the direction of the little creature.

“God, Hem, no!” Annie yelped. She wanted to stop him so badly that she almost instinctively pulled one of the filtration tubes on his backpack.

The machete descended with fury, cleanly cutting the nest of wires. The tiny dog looked up at Hemlock with what Annie would later say were puppy dog eyes, its tail wagging like it was sure to spin off and take the dog with it, high into the air. It began to furiously lick Hemlock’s hands where he held the machete’s handle.

“What’s he trying to do to me?” Hemlock said with alarm. “Stop that!”

The dog would have none of his objections. It ran several circles around Hemlock and attacked his hand again with its primary weapon of love, showing no mercy, leaving Hemlock in a changed state that he never recovered from.

Thanks for reading!

Aarf.