The sky is black and they won't tell us why.

I'm tellin you, Winston says, dey invented some cockamamie weapon to fight dem core-dinated riots, only someone messed up bigtime. Blacked out de whole
sky.

You know this for a fact? I ask. We're seated at the table in the OR lounge.
Winston's 42 but until last month he looked about 28; now, 60ish. Tipping a
waterbottle to his lips, he rolls his eyes.

Dunno nuffin for a fact no more.

So what are you saying?

Hell, I ain't sayin shit. Just shootin it.

None of us knew what to think when the military arrived. Their Hummers
appeared a few hours after the sky'd blackened, carrying supplies, weapons,
and of course soldiers — edgy, frightened young men and women rigid with
orders. They prevented no one from leaving but made it clear that if you got
in their way, they'd thrash you ruthlessly and methodically. One woman, I
never knew her personally but I'd seen her face in the halls, I watched that
face get cleaved in half by a rifle butt, one blow, glazed eyes staring in
different directions, a brain-exposing fissure obliterating her nose.
Assaults like that go a long way in deterring others from trying any funny
stuff.

When's de next people hafta be down? Winston asks.

Half an hour.

Maybe I'll go help Elena in de sterile corridor.

A minute passes; he hasn't moved. Sterile corridor, I say.

Yeah yeah.

Apparently we are the hospital's best and brightest — doctors, nurses, etc.
— retained to do the military's bidding (all other staff exiled that first
day into a black-sky milieu wrenched from Revelations). I sleep on a couch
in the OR lounge. I don't know about other departments, but business hours
here means surgeries, sometimes six theatres running at once. I coordinate
patient transfers from ward to OR and Winston transports the patients. Just
like normal times. The military provides us with bottled water, warning us
not to drink tapwater, and feeds us just enough so we don't complain.

Before all this I had a buddy, I say, he actually warned me about food
riots. Couple years ago. Indonesia, then Germany, then Belize.

Winston nods. I member dem.

But he was a known apocalypse nut. I just figured he was spouting more
paranoid gibberish.

Whatever happened to um?

I shake my head. Dunno. Last I saw him was maybe a week before the first
food riot here. Malton, remember?

Did he —

Probably orchestrated it, for all I know. Probably died there.

Did you ever — ?

Twice. Three if you count the thing at Nathan Phillips Square. Stupid hotdog
vendors.

Winston laughs. Darwin awards for dem, sellin hotdogs durin a food crisis. I
mean you can't fault de rioters dare.

Sure, the rioters have committed some quasi-sensational atrocities — like
the mob last spring that stormed Parliament Hill and beheaded a janitor,
then sold footage of it to Al Jazeera — but in all fairness, Winston's point
is valid. They're starving. Plus they don't trust their water supply, for
good, demonstrable reasons, e.g., E. coli outbreaks in the Fraser Delta,
Okanagan Valley, Golden Horseshoe, pretty much all of Atlantic Canada, etc..
Combine these two variables and you've got one truculent bunch. Personally
I'm glad the military keeps them off hospital property. Sometimes when I
sneak over to the main lobby and its gloomy perma-night panorama, outside
I'll hear shots fired.

The lounge door bursts open, in rushes Quint. He dives on my sleep couch and
burrows under my blanket. Moments later a brazen fart cuts the silence,
fluttering the blanket.

Winston says, What de —

Again the door bursts open. In storms an armed soldier, head swiveling back
and forth. She spies the blanket-covered mound on the couch.

Give back the syringe, doctor.

The blanket-covered mound heaves, shudders, then settles heavily into the
couch's cushions.

The soldier brushes past me — faint whiff of white musk — and stands over
the couch, her back to Winston and me.

Take off the blanket, doctor. Give me the syringe.

From under the blanket drifts a feeble groan.

You injected, didn't you. Okay gasman, gig's up. Reaching, the soldier yanks
away the blanket to reveal Quint foetally curled, almost burrowed into the
cushions. Come on, let's go.

Quint replies in snore.

Izzat how it's gonna be? the soldier says. 'kay then.

Leaning down and sort of sideways, giving Winston and me a tasty view of her
tush, the soldier grabs Quint by the shoulders and heaves him most of the
way to a sitting position. Suddenly Quint's hand arcs around and plunges a
syringe into her neck.

You —

The soldier lifts a hand to her neck, then topples.

Presently Winston says, Dat was somefin.

Quint springs off the couch. That's when I begin to suspect he might've gone
a bit sideways. Eyes bulging with bliss, mouth gaping in grimace, dimples
throbbing with rosy tension, he looks like a clown without makeup.

Gotta get out! he whisper-shrieks. Can't take it anymore! Bad place!

Bad? I say. Why?

Quint gestures with twisted claw-fingers. Know what they're doing in there?

Surgery.

Know what kind?

Pre-canning, Winston says.

Huh?

It's a joke, I say. We call it pre-canning surgery.

Winston chuckles, which makes me chuckle.

What's funny?

Laughter subsiding, Winston says, Well, see, what you're doin in dare,
you're separatin de meat from de bone. Dat's de pre-canning stage.

Winston used to work at a meatpackers, I say. Way back when.

Clinging to that bugeyed blissful grimace, Quint issues the laugh of the
damned, a wobbly highpitched giggle. Finally he says, Can't take it anymore!
Gotta get out!

Where'll you go? I ask.

Anywhere but in here!

Winston shakes his head. No sir, you got it wrong. You wanna be anywhere but
out dare.

He's right, I say. Out there's nothing but moonless dark and roving packs of
cannibal zombies.

With a visceral shriek Quint flees, lounge door swinging shut behind him.
Almost immediately, shouted warnings commence: Doctor! Come back! Stop! Then
the squeaky thunder of many jackbooted feet sprinting down the hall. Halt or we'll shoot!

Winston looks at the soldier puddled on the lounge floor, then at me.
Whaddya say? he says. We got time enough fore de next people hafta be down?

I rise and smile. The question is: we got time enough before the anaesthetic
wears off?

From somewhere in the building, not far away, shots fired.

Dat free or four docs so far dis week?

Five, I say. Help me get her up on the couch.


By: The Impudent Hack