Part I

The Early Times

“Come, let us descend, and confuse their language, so that one will not understand the language of his companion."

(Genesis 11:7)

CHAPTER 2

He was two drinks in when he remembered he hated business meetings. A swollen amber droplet slipped over the edge of the smoked glass and puddled onto the thin paper bar napkin underneath. The man sitting next to him, his face shining with sweat, his heavy lips moving slowly, mopped at his neck with a stained handkerchief he yanked from the breast pocket of his light blue suit. His boss sat on the other side of him, casually pulling sips from a glass half-full of lime-flavored seltzer water. A short, black stirring straw was tucked between his back molars, rolling across his tongue slowly as the sweating man spoke. Roger Anders had stopped listening and sucked the short glass dry, the whiskey burning his throat as it disappeared into his stomach. He lifted his hand to the sweet brunette behind the bar and his boss shifted his eyes sharply in his direction. He plucked the straw from his mouth and dropped it into his glass.

"Look, Mr. Johnston. That all sounds wonderful, but we usually don’t deal in projects that small. We’re one of Boston’s largest construction firms and it’s hard to delegate resources to smaller projects."

The man next to Roger started sweating more and slurped at his glass of beer, sputtering it all over the front of his shirt. He swiped his hand against his lips and peered at Roger then back to the man across from him.

"M-Mr. Morgan, my client understands that completely. He is willing to pay a p-premium for your trouble."

Paul Morgan looked between the man and Roger, sipped at his drink again, and shrugged his shoulders. Coiled muscles bulged beneath the thinly striped dress shirt, the tension rippling through the highway of sinew through his arms.

"Ok. I will have Roger call you in the morning with our figure. If it pleases your client, then we will make it work." He stood and jutted his hand into the man’s personal space and it was met a moment later with a clammy, pale hand. Mr. Johnston looked at Roger and the two men watched each other intently. Johnston dropped his gaze first and disappeared into the half-light of the restaurant.

Paul sat and motioned to the waitress. "I’m starving."

"You scared the shit out of him," Roger muttered, changing seats to sit across from him. He was thirsty and the minute buzz he had was already slipping away.

"Poor kid. It’s really the slime ball he works for that Jimmy doesn’t like. But since he is too much a coward to come himself, the messenger gets killed," Paul chuckled softly, flipping through the heavy, laminated menu. "In a manner of speaking, obviously." He smiled to no one in particular, his teeth straight, unblemished, and white.

"Can I help you, gentlemen?" The waitress smiled politely at them and Roger returned it with no effort. She was gorgeous, a natural beauty. She wasn’t wearing makeup or nail polish, and her hair was pulled back in a messy, utilitarian bun. Her eyes, deeply green, were tired — the perpetual look of those who worked too hard and paid too little.

"Yeah, another round of drinks and I want a cheeseburger, fully loaded, and a pile of cheese fries," Paul ordered. He quickly emptied the glass and slid it to the side to be cleared.

"And you, sir?" She smiled at Roger and if he had been able to read her mind, she would have seen the burden of the working class in the clear blue eyes he turned to her.

"Plate of buffalo wings. Spicy as they come."

"Dangerous man," the waitress said, grinning. They all chuckled and Roger felt his cheeks burn red as he shrugged. "There was another man with you?"

"He’s gone. Only the two of us now," Paul said cheerfully. The waitress nodded and slipped away. Roger watched her walk away with a barely audible sigh, not realizing that Paul had started talking; he was already a million miles away.

There was a sharp rap against the table and Roger snapped out of his daze, blearily looking up at Paul.

"Ah, man, I’m sorry. It has been a long day." At some point, his drink had been replaced and the chicken wings had been deposited in front of him.

It had been a long day. He oversaw construction on a parking garage downtown and it had been one near-disaster after another. Then this dinner meeting, then whatever foolish game he was going to have to play tomorrow with Johnston. It was too much. He needed a vacation. One that involved large quantities of alcohol and bad movies over the internet.

"Rog, I was thinking you should take some time off. You’ve been putting in a lot of OT lately and you’re starting to look burnt out. I will deal with Johnston; you take a four-day weekend. Shut off your cell, lock your doors, and come in fresh on Tuesday, ok?" Paul smiled at him, animalistically sinking his teeth into the burger.

"Paul... uh, thank you. This is the best news I have heard all day. I really appreciate it." Paul grunted in response, wiping drips of juice from his chin. Roger focused on his whiskey and threw it back, sucking through his teeth and setting the glass down heavily. The buzz was coming back. It was shaping up to be a good night.

A few hours later, he stumbled up the stairs of his apartment building, fumbled for his keys for at least ten minutes outside of his door, and finally tumbled onto his living room floor, somehow managing not to break the three bottles of cheap whiskey he had picked up at the local package store. His mouth tasted like it had been stuffed with cotton, his mind swirling with disconnected thoughts and memories. His head ached, the temples pulsating slowly and deeply against his brain.

Roger slowly rolled over onto his back and focused on the light fixture that danced against the ceiling. If he thought hard enough, it stopped moving, and so did the world. The chicken fingers churned unhappily in his stomach and he had the sudden urge to vomit. He only made it to the kitchen trashcan, the toilet impossibly too far away. When he finished, he lay with his face pressed against the hard plastic, reviewing the night’s activities.

He had drunk a few more rounds with Paul and when the waitress had left the bill, he had scribbled his number onto it. By then he was well on his way to drunkenness, but insisted they hit a bar afterwards. Paul had declined and had helped Roger to the subway, sending him off in the general direction of the suburbs. By some miracle, he had made it to the dive bar down the street from his place. Then the store. Now he was puking in his kitchen. Glorious start to vacation.

He reached, twisted off the cap to one of the bottles, and took a long swig that punched immediately against his brain. In that instant, he was lucid and mobile, and he took full advantage of it. He placed the paper bag on the counter, snapped the lock on his door, and shuffled into his bedroom, stripping off his clothes until he stood sweating in only his boxers. The temperature was an oppressive ninety degrees in his bedroom and he turned on the air conditioner, dropping into his bed with a heavy sigh.

The bedside clock said one forty-five and the single, green LED light indicating an alarm was set glowed brightly in the corner of the black face. He didn’t bother turning it off. He was already asleep.

Sharp bursts of static punctuated loudly the blaring, rhythmic buzzing of the alarm clock. The sound dug into the depths of his brain and brought him up gasping from the stupor of hung over sleep. Roger’s hand slammed on the nightstand once, twice, before finally nabbing the snooze button of the alarm clock on the third. His head screamed in pain, the stabbing of alcoholic remembrance grinding into his face. He turned and vomited on the floor, the crumpled comforter, and the empty remnants of what used to be a whiskey bottle.

“Damn it.”

His voice sounded strange, foreign; his accent thick and watered down, at the same time. His tongue felt swollen, his ears burnt, his brain numb. Something was off. The alarm mixed with static again and he moaned in pain and disgust, snapping the button to the off position. He realized he must have bumped the clock in the night and accidentally knocked the tuner from the channel to which he usually awoke. That was bad timing. Static wasn’t what you wanted to hear first thing after a bender.

His eyes hurt but he managed to will them to work as he lifted the clock close to them. A layer of foggy confusion formed over his thoughts. The numbers were fuzzy, illegible even, as if carved out in some ancient script he didn’t know. He had the urge to get sick again and he rolled off the opposite side of the bed, stumbled, and barely made it into the bathroom, dry heaving nothing into the bowl. When he finally dropped his body onto the smooth, cool leather of the couch, he felt worse. He took a swig from the bottle of water on the coffee table, trying to erase the taste of his stomach.

The fifty-inch wall-mounted flat screen showed the screensaver — multicolored blobs that danced across the black background. He could have sworn at one point they had said the manufacturer’s name, but honestly couldn’t remember. He pressed the button on the remote to turn on the input and faced a long beep and the sharply colored stripes of the standard test bars. He remembered the screens from when he was a kid. They would appear shortly after the national anthem played the broadcast off to sleep. It meant the television day was done.

Done.

All done.

Something dropped in the pit of his aching stomach and he didn’t know exactly why. Something inside of him, something on a primal, unconscious level snapped into awareness, pushing aside the hangover and the alcohol-induced fever. It reached into the nerves of his brain and filled his body with adrenaline. It turned his eyes and ears into perfect radars and telescopes that focused on the tiny room in which he sat, and beyond. It was only then did he really listen.

He heard the sirens.

He threw open the window and the noise outside was deafening as he saw two cars bury into each other in front of his place. No other traffic traveled along his usually busy road. In the distance, towards Boston, a thin stream of black smoke reached for the clouds and dissipated into them. Sirens approached but there didn’t appear to be a reason to rush. He scanned the roadway and saw two bodies lying still on the pavement.

Roger closed the window against the humid air and rubbed his hands over his face, the fingers pressing hard against his sinuses. First the radio, then the TV, then whatever was happening out there. This had to be the alcohol manifesting the scene. There was no other reasonable explanation for the strangeness of the morning. He looked back out the window and saw a police car speed past the wreckage and disappear up the sharp curve into the distance.

Panting, he pulled on his crumpled dress pants, large splotches of buffalo sauce staining the thighs, and shoved his feet into the slippers by the door. He had to see what was happening for himself. The TV still showed nothing, the high-pitched beeping of the emergency response vibrating against his ears.

Outside he smelled a scent he couldn’t place. The crashed cars dripped radiator fluid onto still warm engine blocks, but that wasn’t the source. He saw people peering through their drawn blinds but no one else was outside. The smoke in the distance had thickened, the sirens increasing. He thought he heard screams. He felt sick again.

One of the bodies was partially hidden beneath the wheels of the other car, the shattered windshield showing his exit point. Roger stepped into the road, not even bothering to watch where he was going and ran over to the body. The man, wearing one bloody bedroom slipper and only his briefs, lay at unnatural angles on the oily asphalt. By the position of his head on his torso, he was obviously dead. The other body, a woman, was curled onto her side by the open door of her car. The ignition chimed, the car still sputtering. Roger leaned over and removed the keys, killing the idle.

He bent towards the woman, who after closer inspection was still alive. Her breathing was shallow and whistling, each exhalation shuddering her entire torso. He was afraid to touch her, and instead, knelt beside her.

“Hey, ma’am, you all right?”

His words again. They were all wrong. He knew what he was trying to say. He knew he said it right. Nevertheless, it came out sounding wrong. There was some sort of disconnect between his brain and his mouth. Oh, God, was he having a stroke? Some sort of brain malfunction? He pushed the thought away and spoke again.

Hey, ma’am, you all right?

This time the dialogue was only in his head, his lips had formed the question, but what came out was only strangeness. Sharp grunts and indecipherable sounds. He fell back onto his rear, pulling his hands through his hair. Something was happening. Something wasn’t right. Something unnatural and terrifying.

The woman stirred and blankly looked up at him. Trickles of blood slid from her lips. She struggled to speak and nothing came out. Nothing but rubbish. She snarled at him, reaching out a hand and he recoiled from it, slapping it away forcefully, snapping it to the ground. He scooted back onto his heels and got to his feet, his blue eyes flashing wildly, sweat springing onto his forehead. He turned and ran, not looking again where he was going, jamming at the lock of his building with every key but the right one, and finally sprinting up the two flights of stairs and bursting through his door, locking it, and collapsing against it.

No. Nonononononono. This wasn’t happening. Whatever this was, was NOT happening.

Roger searched for his cell phone and found it tucked into the pocket of his pants. He yanked it out, sending change scattering across the hardwood floor. He fumbled with the touchscreen, running his finger over it once, wiping it on his shirt, and doing it again. The backlight illuminated the face of the phone, an unknown, stock landscape shining from the background. Running on habit, he pressed the icon he recognized for contacts and a menu appeared.

And he couldn’t read it.

Weird characters filled up the places where words were supposed to be. When he pressed on Paul’s picture, more strange characters replaced the numbers that had been there only the night before. He scrolled through the information and nothing looked familiar, nothing was legible. He pounded his finger against what he hoped was Paul’s number and waited.

The phone rang for what felt like forever and then dissolved into a busy signal. Roger tried it again. And again. And again. On the tenth time, the phone clicked on. He heard a voice, a voice that he had heard for the past ten years of his life. The gravelly incantations, the nasally breathing that preceded it. But that was it. He couldn’t understand him. Roger screamed into the phone frantically, realizing only at that moment that hot, angry tears sprang from his eyelids. Paul shouted back, but it fell on useless ears.

Roger flung the phone across the room and it smashed against the wall, a million hairline cracks splintering across the screen. He could feel his blood surging through his veins, hormones dilating every cell in his body. His fist, a stranger on his wrist, swung hard against the scratched surface of the living room floor and hit it an innumerable amount of times, screaming into the humid morning air until his voice faded. By the time he was done, nothing remained of the skin across his knuckles except torn flesh slicked with blood, smears of red streaking the floor. There was no pain yet, and as the crimson spots left his brain, he was thankful for that.

He found that his fit had made him too weak to stand, and he slowly crawled towards the bathroom, his right hand pulled across his chest, large droplets flecking against his bare skin. His frustrated tears had tightened the skin around his eyes, and when he finally managed to look in the mirror, there was almost no white around the blue rings. He turned on the water, which sputtered for a moment and then ran clear in the sink, running his battered hand beneath the cool stream. He hissed sharply and watched as the water went from clear, to red, to pink, and finally back to clear again. He closed the faucet and examined his fist.

It had already begun to swell, every knuckle drifting into an ugly shade of purple. He tried to close the hand and pain exploded in his brain until he opened it again. He was sure at least something was broken in there, but wasn’t sure what. It didn’t matter anyway, it seemed. No one could understand him. Something terrible had happened, and he could neither read, nor talk. It was as if every single piece of language he knew had simply vanished. He was mute and illiterate. And hurt. And alone.

A knock on his door.

Roger froze and leaned backwards from where he stood to look at the door. The knock came again, sharper this time and his jaw tightened. He looked at his hand, and then at his face in the mirror. He was sweating again and his stomach hurt. He grabbed the slightly damp, moldy washcloth from the corner of the sink and wrapped it around his knuckles. He’d have to get something better later, but for now, he only wanted to stop the bleeding.

The knocking came again, this time hard and forceful, the doorjamb rattling. Roger looked around his apartment, looking for something with which to protect himself. He didn’t know why, but he knew that if anyone else were experiencing the morning he was having, he would be just as frustrated and pissed. He didn’t have any kind of relationship with any of his neighbors, so there would be no reason for them to visit him.

The knife block in the kitchen was his best bet. It held a wide variety of mismatched knives, some from the original set his parents had given him for his first apartment, and some cheap replacements. None of them was particularly sharp or deadly, but the weight of the one he selected gave him a slight sense of safety. His bandaged hand couldn’t hold it, so he shifted it into the other one and approached his door.

He pressed his cheek against the door, the knife held tightly and awkwardly in his left hand. The ear crushed against the wood strained to hear anything in the hallway. Nothing. He squinted one eye shut and flicked the other to the small circle of glass beside it. He hadn’t known he had been holding his breath, but it came out so forcefully, his lungs burned in the next inhalation.

Roger threw the door open, darting his eyes down the hall. He tugged Paul into his apartment and turned the locks on the door again. He set the knife down and rubbed the hand across his face, looking up at his boss. Paul looked tired and drawn, his face covered in some sort of oily black substance, with a small cut above his left eyebrow, already mostly clotted. They both frowned at each other for a long time.

Neither of them wanted to speak, afraid of what would come out. Paul had driven here like a madman, dodging cars that had gone off the road, slamming into the back of a pick-up truck and nearly totaling his car. Stunned, he had driven off, not looking or caring if the driver was injured. When Roger had called, and they grunted angrily at each other, Paul knew something was terribly wrong.

The sound of an explosion in the distance snapped them out of their thoughts. Roger went to the window, drawing the blinds tightly and separating the aluminum slats slightly. A large fireball rose from the north, puffing dark, vile smoke into the sky. With a second explosion a moment later, the fireball glowed white and faded quickly from red to orange. Roger stepped away, his eyes wide and scared.

Paul had moved into the kitchen and pulled out two glasses, a bottle of vodka, a pad of paper and a half-chewed pen. He twisted off the cap and poured them each a ration. Roger sighed and tried his boss’ name and it tasted like razor blades on his lips. He downed the glass of vodka quickly, trying to get the flavor out of his mouth. Paul twisted his face, wrote something on the paper, and slid it to Roger. He looked and shook his head. He drew a circle around the characters and made a slash through it. He pushed it back to Paul.

I don’t know what it says.

Paul frowned and drained his glass before refilling them both. They sat in silence and had no idea how much time had passed. Eventually, the bottle was empty. Roger reached for the paper, and scribbled a stick figure of a heavily pregnant woman. He pointed to it and shrugged his shoulders.

Where is your wife?

Paul looked at the paper and he smiled. He pressed his palms together and tucked them under his right cheek, tilting his head and closing his eyes. Roger smiled and nodded. Asleep. He gave a thumb’s up with his left hand and Paul quirked an eyebrow, dropping his gaze to Roger’s other hand. He pointed and Roger frowned. He pantomimed slamming his fist against the floor repeatedly. Paul returned the frown. He straightened out his hand, and pointed at Roger. The younger man tried to extend the half-curled fingers and grimaced. He shook his head. Paul closed his hand in a fist and pointed at him. Roger tried to close his hand and spots exploded behind his eyes. He gripped onto the kitchen table.

No way. I think something’s broken.

Paul looked at him, his face void of expression. This was almost worse than anger or disappointment. Those he could deal with, but this? This was nothingness. How in the hell do you deal with nothing? What can you say to vacancy? Emptiness was incompatible with emotion. He suddenly felt very fragile.

Paul reached out his hand, took Roger’s, and laid it on the table. He pulled off the foul-smelling rag, and gave his coworker a disgusted glare. Roger shrugged sheepishly. The knuckles were mangled and still bleeding, the swelling almost double what it had been when Paul had arrived. Paul carefully tried to bend each finger and Roger’s stomach lurched each time, the pain dimming the edges of his vision when his boss was finally done. They both frowned again, and Paul scribbled on the paper. Roger looked and shook his hand.

No hospital. No.

Paul gripped his chin before sliding his hand to his own wound. It didn’t hurt him, and he had almost forgotten it had even happened, but the tightness around it was abruptly noticeable. In fact, many things were noticeable that usually weren’t. In the almost total silence of the apartment, sounds usually drowned out by conversation, or electronics or traffic, were now very prominent. The dropping in the bathroom faucet, the slight mechanical hum of the refrigerator, the electric buzzing of the overhead light fixtures. All of it, assaulting his ears at once, almost made him feel insane.

He pointed again to the picture. Again, Roger shook his head. Paul grunted, and reached forward, gripping Roger’s pale shoulders and shaking him. He opened his mouth and a slew of angry ramblings came out. Spittle flew from his lips and his cheeks reddened, his eyes depthless and rolling almost uncontrollably around the sockets. Roger pressed his hands hard against his boss’ chest, the right one screaming in pain at the motion, and tried to wrestle him off. He started shouting as well, but nothing meaningful, and someone watching the argument would think it was apes squabbling instead of men. When Roger finally managed to untangle the older man from him, they were both panting.

They looked at each other for a long time, but even before either one of them moved, they knew that something had changed. The friendship they had forged over the past decade had dissolved the moment they couldn’t communicate with each other. Each one of them was too headstrong, and too impatient to work through the tedious task they had been presented. Two friends, who should have been able to come together and figure out what the hell was going on, couldn’t do so in this situation. Take away crude jokes, playful banter, and shared knowledge, and all that was left were two teenage boys unable to express anything except through playground punches. As quickly as language had seemed to disappear from the world, so did their teamwork, and their respect for each other.

Paul shoved the contents of the table onto the floor, glaring at Roger as he passed next to him. Roger snarled and jutted up the broken, swollen, bleeding fragments of his middle finger into his boss’ face. Paul’s lips pulled back and he spat in Roger’s face; Roger gritting his teeth as Paul threw open the door and slammed it behind him. It would be the last time he would ever see him. Despite the angry way they left each other, it would be the last time Roger would see a constant friendly face for a hundred days.

It was Day 0.